Imported Alien Phlebotinum: Difference between revisions

A nifty trick to get some of the traditional [[Science Fiction]] capabilities in a show that's set in the present. Rather than growing your own Phlebotinum, just have a passing [[Sufficiently Advanced Alien]] [[Not of This Earth|dump some on you]].

 

 

Allows for even more [[Phlebotinum Breakdown]] than usual, since our heroes often have [[Low Culture, High Tech|only a passing understanding of how it works.]]

 

 

 

Sometimes the aliens do this on purpose, to lend us humans a helping hand. Sometimes, it's an accident. In the latter case, they might show up later and want it back. Violently.

If the technology is not fully understood, and has side effects that didn't show up in testing, then it's an example of the [[Black Box]].

 

 

See also [[Lost Technology]], which is inherited from advanced beings of the same planet, but a different time.

 

See [[Spice of Life]] when it is an edible resource with some use in space.

{{examples}}

* The aliens wanting their phlebotinum (the SDF-1) back was the driving force for ''[[Robotech]]''.

** That wasn't even the driving force behind ''[[Macross]]''. The Zentradi were in hot pursuit of an ''enemy'' ship, and had planned to simply destroy it until they found out that the locals had salvaged it with their own brand of Phlebotinum: the knowledge necessary to ''repair broken stuff''.

* The Core Robots and related technologies from ''[[Parallel Trouble Adventure Dual]]''.

* ''[[Super Robot Wars]]: Original Generation'' has a variation on this: The alien faction known as Inspectors gave humanity the Black Hole Engine to see if they were advanced enough to figure it out. If they could, it signaled that they likely had a good enough tech-base to justify invading and stealing it to hybridize with their own.

 

* The 1990s comics sequel to ''[[Lost in Space]]'' used this as a [[Retcon]] to explain how Earth could have interstellar technology in 1997. The ''Jupiter 2'' had been reverse engineered from a crashed alien ship from Alpha Centauri. The "foreign agents" who employed Dr. Smith were revealed to be Alpha Centaurians working to prevent humanity from reaching their world.

* [[Iron Man]]'s [[Arch Enemy]] the Mandarin has ''ten'' rings of power. These rings were found on a crashed spaceship of Makluan origin.

 

== Films -- Live Action ==

* This was the whole premise of the movie ''[[Explorers]]''.

* ''[[The Meteor Man]]'': The title character survives a direct hit from a meteor, and gains superpowers.

 

== Literature ==

* In the ''[[Into the Looking Glass]]'' series by [[John Ringo]], Earth is attacked by an [[Organic Technology]] using [[Hive Mind]] through a series of "portals" opened up by a lab mishap. Humans also encounter a friendly alien species, the Adar, who give them a literal [[Black Box]] created by a (different) species of [[Sufficiently Advanced Aliens]]. After a brief period in which the device appears to have no function save as a "reusable nuclear hand grenade," they conclude that they were using it wrong and find a way to use it as a [[Faster-Than-Light Travel]] drive. This allows them to build a starship that can travel faster than light, but doesn't give them any other typical science fiction technology (although they manage to invent some of the nearer, harder-science applications themselves). Much of the drama of the second and third novels comes from the crew of the ship finding themselves in [[Star Trek]] situations without the advantage of things like phasers, tricorders, and transporters.

* The [[Frederik Pohl]] novel ''[[Heechee Saga|Gateway]]'' relates the misadventures of a "prospector" seeking fame and fortune by traveling aboard abandoned but still-functional alien spacecraft, discovered by humans on Gateway, an ancient, hollowed-out asteroid inside Venus' orbit. The problem: no one knows how the spaceships work, only that they travel faster-than-light to preset destinations on missions of unpredictable durations. Also, ships don't always make it back, and that's still no guarantee that the crew will even be alive if they do.

* The Escafil device from ''[[Animorphs]]''.

* ''[[Ender's Game]]'' has at least instantaneous communication from the Buggers, possibly more.

* ''Cleaning Up'', a short story by [[Iain Banks|Iain M. Banks]] (published in ''State of the Art''), is a humorous subversion of the trope. At the height of the [[Cold War]], bits of Imported Alien Phlebotinum start materializing all around the world, seemingly at random. The U.S. Military scrambles to understand and find some use for the devices [[Red Scare|before the Soviets do]], but before too long it turns out the whole thing was caused by a [[Artificial Stupidity|hilariously malfunctioning]] alien garbage disposal system. Features an [[Anti Gravity]] [[Hover Tank]] built out of the equivalent of a stained water-bed from an alien [[No-Tell Motel]].

* In the ''[[Troy Rising]]'' series alien computer chips act as this at the beginning. Earth's computer industry is devastated due to a shortage of rare materials and the alien tech is so sophisticated that a single circuit board can replace a supercomputer. Later on the protagonist starts importing alien [[A Is]] and gravity manipulation technology to run his industrial empire. He is able to produce more on his own after a while but is still unable to make any from scratch. An existing AI is needed to make more [[A Is]] and any gravity manipulation technology manufacture requires existing gravity manipulation tools.

* Partly played straight in [[Harry Turtledove]]'s ''[[Worldwar]]'' series, where the [[Lizard Folk|Race]] is more advanced than humanity during [[World War Two]] (and, in some cases, is more advanced than us 21st century humans). A small chunk of the series is spent on several characters attempting to reverse-engineer parts of the Race technology and incorporate it into its human counterparts. They, more or less, succeed with taking apart and figuring out how to improve human (mostly British) jet engines, and the [[Those Wacky Nazis|Germans]] manage to get their hands on an intact alien tank (traded for a bag of [[Alien Catnip|ginger]]). Later on, the a mutiny takes place on a lizard base in Siberia, and the mutineers surrender to the Soviets, believing they'll be treated well (not a very good assumption), providing them an entire military base to study. The British, notably, fail to figure out how the Race radar works, given that it uses integrated circuits instead of vacuum tubes (or valves, if you're British). At that point, it's very much a [[Black Box]], which the Brits, nevertheless, attempt to integrate into their new jet fighters in order to try to match the enemy in performance. By the ''Colonization'' series, the war is over, and the humans and the lizards have to live side-by-side (more or less), resulting in much more technology being traded and studied. In ''Homeward Bound'', the first human starship, the ''Admiral Peary'', is based on the Race design.

== Live Action TV ==

* The Stargates from ''[[Stargate SG-1]]'' and ''[[Stargate Atlantis]]''. In those same shows, staff weapons, naquadah generators, zats, and the hybrid technology used by the SGC's intergalactic space ships. I mean, seriously, what could be cooler than the notion that by the year 2007, the US Air Force could build no less than ''five'' intergalactic space ships? (Ignoring the fact that two of said ships were destroyed.) Hell, they gave one to ''Russia'' and another to ''China'' for Pete's sake.

** One amusing aversion- they never got around to trying to replicate staff weapons. In Stargate [[Kinetic Weapons Are Just Better]], so [[Genre Savvy|why waste the resources]]? ([[Stun Guns|Zatts]] would have been useful, but they ''were'' kind of busy.)

** And then Earth inherits a payload of Alien Phlebotinum when {{spoiler|The Asgard give them their entire technological database before blowing up their own planet}}.

* The holographic doctor on ''[[Star Trek: Voyager]]'' gains mobility by the acquisition of a mobile emitter from the future (granted, it's the federation future, but is there anything more alien than the future?)

* Sarah Jane Smith has scads of this in ''[[The Sarah Jane Adventures]]''. Central to the series, she has the [[Magical Computer]] (actually a {{spoiler|silicon-based alien in a computer shell}}) Mr. Smith and her sonic lipstick, not to mention many different gadgets which just make one-off appearances.

* Quite a few ''[[Doctor Who]]'' plots have been sparked by something like this- a society or groups abuses or gets abused by alien technology they don't understand. For example, in "The Curse of the Black Spot", a pirate ship is plagued by a siren who takes any person who is ill or injured. {{spoiler|The siren is actually a holographic computer program who functions as a doctor for a crashed alien ship.}}

* Morphing technology in ''[[Power Rangers]]'' initially came from Eltarians, Karovians, and innumerable other unnamed alien species, but we figured out how to make our own without any help within a decade or so.

* Most research options in ''[[X-COM]]: UFO Defense'' are opened up by acquiring artifacts from or interrogating aliens. If you want to build some of these artifacts yourself, you need to consume the phlebotinum.

** To be specific, Elerium 115 is the fuel of the alien spaceships, it is used in pretty much ALL high-tech manufacture you can carry out at your base, and there is ''no way to acquire it'' except as salvage from downed enemy vessels.

* The widely panned game ''[[Predator]]: Concrete Jungle'' is set [[Twenty Minutes Into the Future]] on an Earth technologically advanced by the study of accidentally-leftover Predator equipment.

** The molten-metal-shooting Thanix gun from ''ME 2'' also counts. It's based on {{spoiler|reverse-engineering Sovereign's weapons}}.

* The TCS ''Midway'', from ''[[Wing Commander (video game)|Wing Commander]] Prophecy'', gets this later in the game, in the form of a [[Wave Motion Gun|plasma cannon that can obliterate entire fleets in one shot]].

* ''[[Prey]]'' takes it to the next level. Aboard this massive bio-mechanical alien spaceship, you eventually find a gun that ''the aliens themselves cannot identify''. Imported Alien ''Alien'' Phlebotinium!

** Assuming you speak of the {{spoiler|acid sprayer}}, it's built by {{spoiler|[[La Résistance]]}}.

* The "Medi-porter" used in ''[[City of Heroes]]'' to justify the use of [[Death Is Cheap]] is based off of recovered Rikti technology. In the parallel world of Praetoria, where the Rikti did not invade, [[Fridge Logic|there is no explanation given]] as to why the medi-porter still exists.

** In Praetoria the Medi-Port was created by Praetor Keyes (Anti-Matter). This is public knowledge and given in the Preatorian Tutorial. Later you also discover that he in fact stole and reverse engineered the technology from the Rikti.

* All the elements of this trope are used in ''[[Megas XLR]]''.

* In ''[[Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers]]'', two aliens share their [[Faster-Than-Light Travel|hyperdrive]] with Earth in exchange for our help in defeating the evil Crown Empire.

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Applied Phlebotinum]]