Aliens Steal Cable: Difference between revisions

 

Regardless, misunderstandings and misinterpretations about Earth culture and human behavior from tiny snippets of old sitcoms are [[Rule of Funny|comedy gold]] especially if it means they [[Wrong Genre Savvy|expect earth to be like that]], if they [[Learnt English From Watching Television|learn their English from it]] it justifies [[Aliens Speaking English]] and so the concept keeps coming back up. Compare [[Alien Arts Are Appreciated]].

 

{{examples}}

* A major plot point in ''[[Super Dimension Fortress Macross]]'', starting with the Miss Macross pageant and culminating in the battle against the Bodolza fleet. It neatly sidesteps the distance and signal strength issues by having the transmission come from the titular ship, and the Zentradi warships chasing it are (in astronomical distances) a stone's throw away.

* In the [[Sentai]] anime ''[[Shinesman]]'', the ditzy female villain once asks about the heroes, but she's got the completely wrong idea about them. A nearby mook admits, when a smarter villain asks, that they didn't have enough footage of the ''actual heroes'' so they had to fill in the blanks in their report with examples from a sentai tv-series.

* In ''[[Haiyore! Nyaruko-san]]'', Earth entertainment is popular amongst aliens.

 

* Book four of 2000AD's ''[[Nemesis the Warlock]]'' is set in the Gothic Empire, populated by a race of shapeshifting aliens who received the first large scale radio transmissions of the 1920's. They promptly based their society on what they thought was Earth's pre-1914 Golden Age, particularly on Victorian society and the British Empire (even with their own version of Jack the Ripper).

* This trope is a part of the origin of [[The Savage Dragon]]. He was {{spoiler|a warlord who wanted to subjugate Earth despite the fact that his race is pretty peaceful. They decide to rip out chunks of his brain in order to give him amnesia (he has a healing factor). Since they were monitoring Earth for years, they used their satellite feeds to give Dragon new memories and dumped him in [[The Windy City|Chicago]].}}

* In the ''[[X-Men (Comic Book)|X-Men]]'' books, the residents of the Mojoverse have had their dreams bombarded with TV transmissions from Earth for thousands of their years (time works differently in their dimension). Sort of like the ''[[Star Trek]]'' Iotians, this exposure turned them into a Dimension of Hats organized around emulation of television, to the point that their [[Dimension Lord]] is whichever network executive has the best ratings.

 

* ''[[Spaced Invaders]]'' has Martians hearing [[Orson Welles]]' famous reading of ''[[The War of the Worlds (novel)|The War of the Worlds]]'' and thinking that the rest of the army is on earth, so they go to find them.

* ''Explorers''.

* In ''[[Highlander|Highlander II: The Quickening]]'' it can inferred this is the case from the alien General Katana's fondness for pop culture references. Apparently there isn't a lot to do on Zeist.

 

* In the novel version of ''[[2001: A Space Odyssey]]'', the [[Sufficiently Advanced Aliens]] that are going to turn Dave into the [[Energy Beings|Star Child]] first calm him by giving him a mock-up of a hotel suite. They don't get all the details right, though: he's disturbed when he notices drawers won't open and the books are part of the bookcase. What happened becomes clear when he turns on the TV and sees a scene from a movie set in a hotel suite exactly like the one he is in.

* ''[[Animorphs]]'' used a version of this, albeit without the "long distance" part (but, interestingly, still using the trope as an [[Homage]] to 1980s TV): the [[Puppeteer Parasite|body-snatching]] aliens first visit Earth in 1991, and panic upon discovering, while in orbit, [[Star Trek|news reports]] indicating that humans have mastered [[Faster-Than-Light Travel]] and [[Energy Weapons]]. They quickly realize that it's not real, and conclude that human indulgence in escapism makes us an even better target.

* The alien invaders of ''[[The Killing Star]]'' ultimately decide that humankind is a threat because they {{spoiler|intercepted old episodes of ''[[Star Trek]]'' sent out centuries ago and concluded that all of the [[Rubber Forehead Aliens]] were an indication that humans were so xenophobic that they would never accept relations with an alien species that was not humanoid.}}

* In three books starting with ''Surfing Samurai Robots'' (1988), Mel Gilden told of Zoot, from the planet T'toom. T'toom has been picking up our radio broadcasts and managed to figure out our languages ([[Aliens Speaking English|speaking English became the "In" thing]]). They '''didn't''' decode TV signals, though, so there's uncertainty what Earthpeople look like. Zoot, who's fascinated with [[Philip Marlowe]], decides to actually [[Casual Interstellar Travel|visit Earth]]. Arriving at Malibu, California, [[Twenty Minutes Into the Future]], he makes friends with the beach crowd<ref>Who remote-control robots on surfboards rather than actually surfing themselves</ref> and then ... well, he calls himself "Zoot Marlowe, from Bay City" and acts as a private eye,<ref>Without troubling to get a license</ref> complete with [[Private Eye Monologue|plenty of metaphors and similes]] that'd make Chandler proud. [[Rule of Cool|Possibly because this is so cool]], [[Unusually Uninteresting Sight|people don't pay much attention, certainly not '''hostile''' attention, to the fact that Zoot is humanoid but clearly not human]].

 

* ''[[The Adventures of Pete and Pete]]'': Big Pete befriends a boy who dresses like he's from the 1950s, and who is obsessed with Johnny Unitas and the the 1958 NFL Championship Game, which is credited with putting the NFL in the public consciousness and essentially making pro football "big", which featured Unitas leading the Colts to a 23-17 overtime victory over the New York Giants.

* ''[[Star Trek: The Original Series]]''' Trelane, the eponymous "Squire of Gothos", wasn't receiving radio signals, but clearly was limited by speed-of-light transmission when he thought that 18th-century fashions and behavior were the latest things for Earth people, there on his planet some 600 light years from Earth. Then again, he was merely a child from a race of [[Sufficiently Advanced Alien]]s and might be excused from making such a mistake.

** He was also somewhat enamored with ''[[The Clangers]]'' some decades previously.

 

* The [[Filk]] song "Extra-Terrestrial Outrage" by Diana Gallagher has aliens arrive in the late 21st Century to declare war on Earth ... because they're angry about the cancellation of ''[[Star Trek: The Original Series]]''.

* The [[Split Enz]] song "oor Boy" frames this trope in a romantic context.

 

* ''[[Ziggy]]'' at least twice had aliens show up referencing ''[[Star Trek]]'': one set who, like the Thermians from ''[[Galaxy Quest]]'', didn't realize it was fiction and wanted to join the Federation ("Take us to Captain Kirk!"), and a couple of others who decided to complain to Ziggy about how silly the plots were getting "lately."

 

* In the "Scared Spirits" supplemental adventure for the ''[[Ghostbusters]] Frightfully Cheerful RPG'', the PKE-stealing aliens learned English by watching television broadcasts and speak "Madison Avenue-ese." That is to say, they are constantly spewing slogans from TV commercials. For some reason, any human they "zombify" by draining them of PKE also talks like this.

 

* The Scrin frequently gather data from human networks in ''[[Command & Conquer: Tiberium|Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars]]''. At the beginning of the Scrin campaign, {{spoiler|the mothership's AI taps into satellite communications to run a cryptanalysis on the television broadcasts that appear throughout the other campaigns, learning [[Machine Monotone]] English from them}}. In an interesting subversion of this trope, the Scrin expect from [[Planet Looters|experience]] that Tiberium drove humanity to near-extinction but after {{spoiler|almost getting blown out of the sky by GDI ion cannons}}, they tap into military frequencies and eventually conclude that humanity is fragmented yes, but they're also "[[Humans Are Warriors|warlike to the extreme]]". Finally, the Supervisor intercepts the cutscene where {{spoiler|[[Magnificent Bastard|Kane]] explains the part of his plan involving the Liquid Tiberium Bomb}} and realizes they've been duped into invading at least a century earlier.

 

* ''[[Schlock Mercenary]]'' is probably the lone example to go for plausibility. Aliens with FTL travel probe the radio spheres created by inhabited planets. They're not even trying to decode the signal, just confirm the presence of one to study its most distinctive feature: Every radio sphere found in Andromeda is in fact a radio shell... {{spoiler|with a [[Star-Killing|supernova shell]] inside.}}

* Aaron Williams has a few one-shot comics playing with this. If aliens steal the show, they may as well [http://comic.nodwick.com/?comic=2005-06-24 give some feedback]. And if they don't want to see it, [http://comic.nodwick.com/?comic=2005-06-23 spam still gets through].

* ''[[Questionable Content]]'' has Pintsize hypothesis: «[//www.questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=948 if aliens ever really tried to contact us, it'd be through internet]…»

 

* In ''[[Agent To The Stars]]'', not only is this trope played straight, it's the basis for the story. Having received Earth's TV broadcasts, the aliens decide that the real power on Earth is Hollywood, and make their first contact with Hollywood's biggest agent.

** [http://pineight.com/mw/index.php?title=MPAA_news Wait, it isn't]?

* In ''[[Chaos Fighters]] II: Historical Chronicles-Beyond The Earth'', this trope is used to explain why people in Vertrifo [[Aliens Speaking English|speaks English]]. They steal cable using magic, though.

 

* The Soviet cartoon "An Old Record" is about aliens borrowing a few records to listen (and, through some strange technology, view, too).

* ''[[Futurama]]'', as usual, played with an old [[Sci Fi]] chestnut. Lrrr, of the planet Omicron Persei 8, 1000 light-years from Earth, commonly watches early 21st century Earth TV. His first appearance, with an invasion fleet, was because Fry thrashed [[FOX|WNYW]]'s transmission console, cutting the signal when the [[Grand Finale]] of the ''[[Ally McBeal]]''-esque program ''Single Female Lawyer'' was being broadcast.

* In ''[[Young Justice (animation)|Young Justice]]'', Miss Martian based her form and personality on a short lived ''[[Saved by the Bell]]'' style sitcom called ''Hello Megan!''

 

* Maybe inverted with the [[wikipedia:Wow! signal|"Wow! signal"]]—or maybe not.

* Not exactly extraterrestrials, but in the depths of the [[Cold War]] some kids in Russia and Eastern Europe were able to receive communications from an alien culture - western pop music on Radio Luxembourg or the American Forces Network.

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Index of Exact Trope Titles]]

[[Category:Speculative Fiction Tropes]]

[[Category:Alien Tropes]]