TNG-era Borg, before they wer “Bergmana-ated” and wussed out to the point that Assimilation became a minor annoyance…
[Holodoc]Please state the nature of the medical emer…Ahh, Capt. Janeway, you got assimilated AGAIN?! <sigh>, here take two of these <hands her some pills> and call me in the morning, no it’s not futile, just take the pills, and please stop pestering the Borg, all this de-assimilating is getting annoying
I find the *doppelganger-*style aliens from Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Thing, etc. to have the most disturbingly practical and efficient invasion strategy. While other alien conquerors must rely on overwhelming force to defeat a native population, the Body Snatchers don’t need to be any stronger, or faster, or even smarter than their victims. Dangerous microbes in the environment? Not a problem for these guys; while other, less subtle extraterrestrial invaders might experience humiliating setbacks from terrestrial microfauna, the Body Snatchers gain all the necessary resistance from the domestically evolved forms they mimic. They simply drop in on a pre-existing ecological niche and make themselves at home, causing minimal disruption of the target ecosystem.
And most importantly, they win. With alarming frequency, they achieve victory or at least an opportunity to strike again. Ask Dr. Binnell from the original Body Snatchers; he’ll tell you a few things. And what about that non-ending for Carpenter’s The Thing? Even when they’re not victorious, the Body Snatchers and their ilk have the uncanny ability to turn defeat into uncertainty, and thereby end their movies with a big question mark. “The End…or is it?” You never see a lone Martian war machine sneaking off over the horizon at the end of any version of War of the Worlds, do you? Of course not! It’s the Body Snatchers, I tell you! Binnell knows! Macready knows! You’re nex
Darn I hit post by accident. Where was I . Oh yes.
Of course aside from their sheer competence, undeniable superiority, and overwhelming charisma, the most endearing quality of the Body Snatchers is their entertainment value as purely escapist fare. The unlikely concept of higher, more important life forms covertly infiltrating and displacing us genuine humans, absorbing our identities and precious biomass, is clearly ludicrous in its comical impossibility. Seriously, it is to laugh. However, is it not pleasantly distracting to contemplate the ridiculousness of such a patently untrue scenario, even as we mock and disregard its insane proponents? As we actual humans scan the heavens for wastefully powerful radio emissions from other inferior life forms, it is reassuring although fictional to imagine that our existence might one day be justified, if our gross biological template were ever deemed worthy of adoption by a truly worthy species.
Audrey 2. He’s a mean green mutha from outer space and he’s baaaad.
The Invaders, (the ones that look human except for stiff little fingers.)
Invaders from Mars (1953) was one of the scariest movies from my childhood. That Martian leader that was just a head with tentacles inside a glass globe was the best! Told from the kid’s point of view made the terror that much more believable for us youngsters. I remember looking at the back of my parent’s necks before I would go to bed that night, just to be sure…
I forget the name of the movie, but if anyone knows it PLEASE let me know.
1950s. A flying saucer lands in a place that’s half Mayberyy/half Washing DC. It has only two inhabitants. A “man” who leaves the ship and takes a room ina boarding house, and a robot that just stands there and guards the ship. Finally, the man demends to see the heads of all nations and tells them that unless they give up war forever, that the m ore advanced world we he is from will blow up earth.
He gave some pretty cool speeches. And the robot was the most stoic badass ever.
That would be the Day The Earth Stood Still
“Gort, Klaatu Barada Nikto.”
detop, Peter Morris,
Kalak inda ik. (Thanks.)
Great movie, but why destroy 
Earth? As technologically advanced as they are, they could easily blockade the planet and subvert any Terran attempt to leave the planet or solar system. Big ol’ orbital signs: “WARNING! Red necls with nukes! Stay away!”
The original THE THING from 1953: “A giant intellectual carrot! The mind boggles!”
Eros, Tanna & The Ruler, and their undead puppets Vampira, Tor & Bela/Ed’s Chiropractor
I like the kraken things from John Wyndham’s “Kraken awakes”, very sneaky bunch. They come to earth and then hide at the bottoms of the oceans completely out of reach of any human weapons while melting the polar icecaps and attacking cities that are close to the sea. If nothing else their approach is very original.
Klaatu, Barada…Nicghruyid<cough>…
One of the best “Monsters from Outer Space” ideas I encountered was ina book called “Conquest of Earth” (by Manly Bannister (no, I did not make that name up). It’s a post-armageddon Earth, and the survivors are getting their act together but they’re having problems because weird monsters keep turning up from the Blasted Lands and either attacking them or just making a huge mess.
So a hero-type heads off to the Blasted Lands to see what’s making all this mess, and after about 150 pages of whatnot discovers that the Blasted Lands are the remains of a city that was attacked in the war that caused all the Armageddon, and in the center of that city is a still-functioning Star Portal that lets beasties from other worlds wander into our at random intervals, since no one’s staffing the place, everyone being dead and all. Most of the beasties die pretty quick, but those that don’t tend to be motherfuckers.
It’s a hell of an idea for a movie or a novel, I wish someone would steal it.
OMG I have this book! I’ve had it since I was a kid! You are the first person I’ve ever heard mention it, too.
The Scarlet Order of Men battling the evil Trisz… great stuff!
I got this and a whole bunch of other Airmont paperbacks as a kid. Damn good, some of them. Prolly my favorite is Invaders From Rigel by Fletcher Prett. His intelligent elephant conquerors beat Footfall by more than 50 years (the short story that was the basis for the novel appeared in 1931).
I don’t remember much about the Trisz, though the Scarlet order of Man rings a bell … just mostly remember that killer premise and the image of some guy fighting a many-tentacled thing in a futuristic ruin … prolly from my imagination, I think the cover had a fellow in a short red cape at a futuristic phone booth, looking noble.
I vote for the green pyramidal betentacled things from the *Tripods series (**White Mountains, ** et al).
A sympathetic honorable mention to the squishy brain slug from The Hidden, just because of the abuse it went through. Invading is hard work!
You just made me change my vote. The bad guy from The Hidden is my favorite. You know why? Here he is, he can control any human body on Earth and make it do whatever he wants. What does he want to do?
Put on some Death Metal, crank the volume to 11, and drive a really fast car really, really fast.
