In the 'Doctor Who' episode "Stolen Earth", Harriet Jones, the former Prime Minister of Great Britain in Toobworld (See? I know who she was.), believed that the Doctor was wrong. The world did need to protect itself against the threats of alien invasion. They couldn't always count on the Doctor being there to save the day.When you think about it, the Doctor - as shepherded by RTD - is rather full of himself. And all of these Christ analogies that have been shoved at us have been pretty insulting.
But as Harriet Jones pointed out, Toobworld has been a target for aliens for decades, and the Doctor has not been around to save the planet most of those times.
Okay, granted - this is because these alien attacks happened on other shows. But if you think that way, you're just not playing the Toobworld game.
Somehow most of these invasions were beaten back, because they have no visible effect on the shows we see today. Some of them may have been defeated thanks to the Doctor, but for the most part it was due to the human race doin' it for themselves.
There's no way I could go through ALL of the alien invasions that have occurred since the 1950s in Toobworld. It's not that there were too many; it's just that I'm lazy. So instead, I'm posting another "Deep Six" - six of the alien invasions which didn't depend on the Doctor to resolve them.
THE VISITORS("V" & 'V: THE SERIES')
The human race was on its own back in the 1980s when the Visitors arrived. They offered to solve the world's problems, but they were only interested in harvesting humans as a food source.
It was a rebel alliance of humans that finally vanquished the Visitors, with a poison in the atmosphere that was deadly to them but not to the native life of the planet. Ironically, the poison was developed from the blood of a human/Visitor hybrid.
THE INVADERS'THE INVADERS'
"The Invaders, alien beings from a dying planet. Their destination: the Earth. Their purpose: to make it their world. David Vincent has seen them. For him, it began one lost night on a lonely country road, looking for a shortcut that he never found. It began with a closed deserted diner, and a man too long without sleep to continue his journey. It began with the landing of a craft from another galaxy. Now David Vincent knows that the Invaders are here, that they have taken human form. Somehow he must convince a disbelieving world that the nightmare has already begun."
- opening narration for each episode
Despite David Vincent's attempts to warn the world of their presence, I think those bent-pinkie aliens are still among us. Well, the televersions of us. They may not have replaced the entire human population of Toobworld, but they're possibly in key positions where they manipulate the world's events.
And the Doctor has yet to take care of them. (More than likely the Invaders have figured out, after forty years, the solution to their bent pinkie problem.)
DEMONS 
'BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER' & 'ANGEL'
Non-human threats don't just come from outer space. Thank God for the Slayers and the Council of Watchers for protecting Toobworld from the demonic forces that seep from the various hellmouths across the world, because the Doctor hasn't really addressed the issue - aside from Bok. Not all demons are a threat of course; and I think it would be cool if the Doctor got to meet Lorne. He'd certainly make for an interesting Companion.
THE CANAMIDS'THE TWILIGHT ZONE' - "TO SERVE MAN'
The Doctor wasn't much help back in the early sixties when the Canamids made beef jerky out of Lloyd Bochner, was he? They haven't been back, so maybe the Doctor did find a way to eventually stop them from making a deli run to New Delhi or wherever. But in keeping with his reputation as the "Oncoming Storm", a lot of humans did have to end up in the stew first.
THE TENCTONESE
'ALIEN NATION'
In this case, the alien invasion was - like Earth itself - mostly harmless. The Tenctonese were escaped slaves who overcame their masters and landed on Earth during the 1990s. Many of them settled in the Los Angeles area and tried to fit in with their human neighbors.
So why didn't we see any Tenctonese in L.A.-based shows like 'Standoff', 'The Shield', or 'The Bold & The Beautiful'?There's always the possibility that another 'Alien Nation' TV movie may be produced. But I think the space-ship has sailed on that idea.
So for Toobworld today, I don't think there could be more than 100 or so Tenctonese still living on Earth. (And just to keep the franchise alive, that would include the Francisco family, Cathy Frankel, and Albert Einstein.)
But what happened to the thousands of others who arrived on that slaver ship? I think this is where the Doctor DID get involved - either he was able to repair their ship with his handy-dandy sonic screwdriver, or he got them all into the bigger-on-the-inside TARDIS for a trip to a new planet which they could call their own, without having to share it with any other race. (The Doctor couldn't bring them back to Tencton - the slavers would only find them again.)
And the Doctor might have felt a kinship with them. After all, they share one particular aspect of biology - two hearts.
THE MOUTH-LESS MIDGETS'TALES OF TOMORROW' - "THE GREAT SILENCE"
Finally, this is a particular favorite of mine and a great example how the Doctor isn't the only one who could stop an alien invasion all by their lonesome.
In 1953, strange little aliens, with antennae and no mouths, arrived on Toobworld, just outside of Kenasha, Idaho. There they started releasing a gas which would render humans incapable of speech. The government had no clue what was happening and tried to snow the general populace with a tale of a temporary after-effect from H-bomb testing.
But an illiterate backwoods man whom we would only know as "Paw" knew that these aliens were to blame. But unfortunately he couldn't even get his own wife to believe him, let alone the local authorities. So armed with dynamite, Paw snuck up on the flying saucer and blew it to Kingdom Come, thus ending the menace.
Let me know of your favorite alien invasions from TV over the last fifty years!
BCnU!
Toby O'B
No comments:
Post a Comment