Aliens in Schisms personal Fanwank on them.

What do you think their intent was to conquer our dimension or what?

 

to study us

 

Generally, this alien abduction business has the built-in premise that the aliens are more advanced than us, in order to be capable of the abductions in the first place.

Here the premise is that there exists this whole parallel universe, or possibly several, where pretty much the same things happen as here (we have "bipedal" "folks" strapping other folks to "tables" under "lights" and applying "knives", and we never learn of a valid reason to apply those quotation marks to separate all that stuff from the local brand we're familiar with). There is no a priori reason to think that the aliens would be stranger than Riker and Crusher, with different physiologies or needs or a radically different level of technology.

It sort of follows that their motivations shouldn't be alien, either. They are less likely to think of us as bugs to toy with, pull legs out of, or crush, than, say, Q or the Metrons or even the Vians. Unless they happen to be the Vians of their respective realm, that is.

Mundane motivations could drive them, including the need to understand, the need to prepare for or against, the need to exploit. They know how to connect to our plane of existence, and our heroes might figure out how to return the courtesy. But it's all awfully tentative at this apparent stage; invasion plans, if any, might be centuries in the future. And even then, it would probably be the Feds invading, with that "boldly going" motto of theirs.

Timo Saloniemi

 

I always assumed it was just a good probing they were interested in, though the thought of an invasion from an alien race that can pull people into their dimension with ease does raise some interesting questions about how to protect ships and repel hostile ships and troops.

 

I think the bigger question is why did Riker lie on that table staring at the open portal for round about five minutes before he finally got up and left.

 

It could actually be much more innocent than we're lead to believe. Geordi admits that the whole reason they knew to come calling in the 1st place, was because he'd modified their sensor array to reach into subspace in unusual ways

They'd probably never even knew our Trekkers were out there, until that signal went out for them to find. Once they did, they were compelled to investigate, & when finding unknown beings, they were similarly compelled to learn as much as possible

Here's where it gets sticky. In the end, Riker seems to think they were "More than just curious", possibly a threat, because people ended up dead. However, look at it from their possible perspective. Being Salanogen based creatures, there was maybe no known way for them to make any kind of contact with these unknowns, probing into their realm, other than to hone onto it, create a rift & pull a few into a lab type setup there.

That's dangerous if you have no idea who you're collecting. So if possible you'd preferably want to keep them sedated, at which point, you're relegated to studying them like specimens & frankly, being so alien to us, they might have had no reason to think of their abductees as anything more than that anyhow.

Alien contact is messy. Compare this to the episode Homesoil, where it's the humans who have inadvertently trampled to death some poor intelligent lifeforms from ignorance. The whole reason we think of alien abduction as horrific, is because it's all too familiar to us, because we do it all the time to creatures that aren't like us. It's dehumanizing... but if you aren't human how would you ever know you were dehumanizing a being if you had no idea of its humanity in the 1st place? There's bound to be missteps now & then.

Since we never hear from them again, one could assume that just like the ones in Allegiance, they had gathered more than enough data on our crew, to know they'd made some serious miscalculations & maybe ought to steer clear. lol

 

In STO they're back and Riker was right - they were more than just curious. They're a scientific proxy race for the Iconians, who are planning a comeback and want to study the various species of the galaxy for weaknesses.

 

But "Contagion" has Picard and the gang saying the Iconians were not conquerors:

Now notice how often Worf is turned down because he's always flat-out wrong (and hyper to get to zapping everything that moves ):


(even Riker brings up the "don't assume they're belligerent" issue and he's usually the one whipping out his big phaser to get to the action! )

 

Wow. Can STO get any more wanky? Dear gawd....

 

There is a Titan novel about them as well.

 

I thought it was a bit inconsistent... they had the medical abilities to chop off Riker's arm and reattach it, without post-op pain or disability. But it didn't occur to them that we couldn't survive with liquid polymer for blood.

 

Or they just didn't care about their victims, and the only reason they re-attached Riker's arm was to see if they could / wanted to keep him alive for follow-up experimentation.

From a story telling point of view and contained within the episode, these aliens of course were flat characters, their role was just to be nasty, mysterious, and threatening, and look repulsive. without even the need for a clear or consistent motive,

 

They were a bit underwhelming, given the great buildup. Especially that bit on the holodeck, which was brilliant.

 

They weren't. Picard was absolutely on the money about them being feared by those who didn't understand and thus ganged up on them.

Turns out though, a species that's had that done to them might get a bit pissed off and decide "not happening again".

 

click ... click ... click
click click click
clicklicklicklick
CLICKICKICKICKICK!!

That scene and the holo reconstruction in Identity Crisis are superbly creepy

 

I really liked that scene too! Great suspense building, and also one of the times the holodeck is actually used in an original and constructive manner rather than for silly adventures.

 

They were also trying to create a pocket of their own universe in ours.

 

It loses something when they subtitle the clicking:

"I feel awful that we are hurting these human creatures! They seem nice."
"Yes, but we are so close to curing the horrible plague killing billions of our children."
"At least we are anesthetizing them; I'd feel terrible if they experienced any pain."
"I know, right? And I truly regret that mixup with the blood that one time."
"It was indeed unfortunate. Well...this will all be over in two more days, and then just think of the relief and joyous celebrations we will all have."
"Finally, our poor little babies will be safe - - wait! Is that one awake?! Oh Gods, he's attacking us! Please, sir, we are only trying to save billions of lives--{zap}

 

That was a really creepy episode for me with the clicking and all, and still kind of creepy to watch now and I love it.

What does salanogen based even mean? That's lovely writers wank right there.

 

Those and the creepy aliens from Enterprise would be nice as an anti-Federation.