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From The Diary Of Leanne Walker
It became obvious early on that the aliens on this ship were ... well, pretty darn stupid. The 'Reds' haven't been a worry at all - they stick to doing various maintenance tasks, and just cower and try to run away if anything at all worrying happens near them.
The 'other' kind of alien are more of a problem. They're ones that do the shooting, run the experiments, and boss round the Reds. But even so, they don't seem very bright either. The more I've seen of them, the more certain I am that they are some kind of biological robot. Maybe only a few of the command crew are the real deal, or maybe they are just better robots - they certainly put up more of a fight when we barrelled into the Bridge. We took a few injuries, but nothing that Stimpacks or Bio-Gel couldn't fix.
The aliens' simplicity extended to the main controls of their mothership. Took Sally hardly any time at all to figure them out and to pass on the basics to the rest of us. Just as well she did, because a 3-D image of an alien appeared in the middle of the room. Exactly like that one who jabbered at us before firing their Big Gun. I dunno, could have even been the SAME one, not like I can tell them apart.
He got his message across - another alien ship, a twin to ours as far as I could tell, appeared in the observation window and began shooting. So we began shooting back as best we could. All the time having other aliens busting into our Bridge to try and take us down. Interesting times.
I don't know how we did it. I'm not going to obsess about the outcome, life's too short, what's done is done, and no one is gladder than me that we won. But, logically, we shouldn't have.
Maybe these aliens are simply terrible fighters and worse tacticians. Maybe we were so strange to them that they couldn't figure us out. Maybe our ship was a lot "better" than theirs, despite the visual similarity. Maybe what happened was their idea of ritual suicide, like in those Samurai stories Chiaki likes so much. They SHOULD have had us, they got in several solid hits, but we were the ones left standing when the smoke cleared. Go figure.
Now all we have to do is clean up the mess, and figure out what to do next. Sally and Eliott both want to stay on board - she to look for her sister, and he to work out how to revive the other people here. Paulson, Somah and that Samurai fellow are all super-keen to go "home". If we can get that teleporter thing working safely, that will be a step in the right firection.
Me, I want to go home in the worst possible way.
But I also want to see if we can set up a reliable link with this ship. My reasoning is both 'practical' and not. On the practical side, advanced technology here that would be valuable on Earth, and we don't know if more aliens might show up eventually. The impractical side being that I owe Sally and Eliott BIG, and abandoning them and the other people stuck here is wrong.
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No mods, but a very respectful nod and tip of the hat to the 'Mothership Zeta Crew' series of mods, which fully addresses certain points that Leanne raises here.
For reasons relating to personal preferences and system limitations, those mods are not used in The Walker Files, but they are brilliant. We can infer that Leanne and Co will eventually try for a severely watered-down version of what goes on there. In spirit, anyhow.
Dedicated to Mr Leonard Nimoy. A good man, who played a half-alien who was infinitely classier than any of the aliens in Mothership Zeta. ;)
12 comments
I do agree that the new actors are surprisingly good in fact very good especially the new young Spock but I do understand why the fans of the old series and movies may not like the writing since they had to make a movie that would also be popular with those who are unfamiliar with Star Trek and correct me if I am wrong I think financially the two new movies did much better than any of the previous movies. It may had to make a few compromise but the majority of the viewers didn't either mind or care. I guess it's a lot like the new Transformers movies which I totally dislike since I totally loved the cartoon series that I used to watch back in the days
Classic Trek didn't neglect action, but there were also strong characterizations (and not just of the regulars), wry humour, a smidgeon of social commentary and a VERY positive view of humanity and where it is going, which all seems to have been somewhat marginalized in favour of CGI and blowing s##t up.
Yeah I was hoping to see mr Nimoy in the next star trek movie
I like the reboot's new actors - Zach Quinto has been doing very well as Spock. My biggest concern so far has been with the writing.
I'd have to agree the aliens do seem to be pretty dumb. Robots makes sense. Asimov's argument was that a sufficiently advanced race would create self-replicating robots and send them out to explore space. Why suffer the boredom of space travel or the dangers of radiation yourself. Makes sense.
Moving on ...
Yes, robot explorers are certainly an option.
Though I have to think that any starfaring race worthy of the name would need to get their feet wet sooner or later. Minimizing risk by sending in robots first is a smart thing to do in a lot of cases. But I also think most of us would much rather visit places worth visiting (eg. the Moon, Disneyworld, the Grand Canyon, etc.) IN PERSON, rather than just send a robot instead. It really aint the same.
Then too, going the robotic explorer option kind of puts one in the same league as this guy;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1iXkUXMQ9g
Asimov went even further with his theory. He said that since we have not seen any space faring robots, there are no advanced species nearby. A common thread thoughout his books maintains that man is the only sentient being.
Thirty-plus years ago, we were certain that all the other bodies in our Solar System were just barren balls of ice and rock. Refer any science text of that time. We know better now - the moons of the Solar System may be mostly in the same size range, but the differances between them are quite astounding. Furthermore, the odds of some kind of life existing on places like Mars, Europa and Titan just seem to get better and better.
At about the same time, we were certain that the deepest parts of our oceans were entirely dead and empty. Again, we know better now, with the amazing lifeforms that live in deep ocean vents and so forth.
Now, we seem to be finding an unending string of worlds orbiting other stars, upon which recognizable life should be possible.
I recall an SF novel where humans meet some (friendly) aliens, and tell them about humanity's (unsuccessful) SETI efforts and Fermi's Paradox (ie. if there are aliens out there, then where are their radio signals?). The aliens find the entire notion absolutely hilarious, and teasingly ask why we didn't also search for smoke signals and giant signs. Their point being that EM communications (such as TV and radio) were superceded by other things a long long time ago.
So, we may be living in a part of the Galaxy in which there are few other sentients - or maybe the answer is that we are missing something in our searches for them.