Is it considered unrealistic for there to be humanoid aliens? I would think there would be a pretty good chance that aliens that evolved in a similar environment to ours would evolve to look similar to us.
Dark Matter, SyFy's new space show, premieres June 12th
- Thread starter Quinton O'Connor
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Oh, that's very unrealistic. Lots of Earth species have evolved in similar environments and haven't ended up looking anything like us. Even granted that technological species have a reasonable chance of being two-armed bipeds, they could just as well end up shaped more like a velociraptor or a kangaroo than a human. And there's no reason other body plans couldn't work too. The most intelligent species on Earth other than humans and our sibling apes are: Elephants, corvid birds, cetaceans, and cephalopods. There's enormous variety there. And elephants occupy much the same environment as primates, yet their body plan is profoundly unlike ours. Ditto for cetaceans and cephalopods -- both ocean-dwellers, both competitors for a similar niche (whales and squids are mortal enemies), yet astonishingly dissimilar to each other in body plan. And that's just on one planet and based on one genetic code.
No other order of life on Earth has evolved to match a human shape, so it would be even less likely to happen on a completely different planet. Sure, we like to make up arguments about how our shape is the "natural" shape that intelligent, tool-using life would tend toward, but the fact that we've found intelligence and tool use among elephants, cephalopods, birds, etc. pretty much debunks that. It's a human habit to expect ourselves to be the center of all things, but we've always been wrong about it before. We weren't created in God's image, the planet wasn't created for our benefit, Earth isn't the center of the universe, the Solar System isn't the center of the galaxy... now we even know that our planetary system is actually an oddball rather than a typical system, that it's unusual to have all the rocky planets near the Sun and all the giants farther out. We should've learned by now that when we expect ourselves to be the template for the universe, that's nothing more than ego.
Indeed, the human shape is actually far from ideal. We're shaped the way we are because we're a bunch of tree-swingers still in the early stages of our adaptation to walking upright. We haven't even come close to evolving into a perfect form for upright locomotion, which is why we have so much trouble with bad backs and fallen arches and even hemorrhoids. We're in transition, betwixt and between, still only half-adjusted to our niche. Which is probably part of why we've needed to invent technology to compensate for our many physical shortcomings. Other intelligent, tool-using species might well be similarly ill-adapted and half-evolved, but the odds that they'd happen to share our particular misfit attributes are quite low.
And sure, it's a big galaxy, and there are probably a few planets where a shape roughly similar to ours has developed. But they wouldn't be so identical that they could be replicated by sticking pieces of latex onto a human's face.
Eh. Close enough. I like outer space but I also acknowledge the budget limitations of TV sci-fi. (Hey, if they had money, they wouldn't be shooting it in Canada in the first place!
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(Hey, if they had money, they wouldn't be shooting it in Canada in the first place!
Actually Dark Matter and Killjoys are Canadian series to begin with, although the latter is a Syfy co-production.
The Expanse is also shot in Canada...Eh. Close enough. I like outer space but I also acknowledge the budget limitations of TV sci-fi. (Hey, if they had money, they wouldn't be shooting it in Canada in the first place!
Everything is shot in Canada...
So alien life evolved in Canada. Explains why most aliens are such hosers.
Exactly. And the pedestrian sets don't mean that the story or the atmosphere has to be bad; I thought that 6s scene in the doctor's waiting room (episode 4, IIRC) was golden. Transfer transit was introduced in that scene.Eh. Close enough. I like outer space but I also acknowledge the budget limitations of TV sci-fi. (Hey, if they had money, they wouldn't be shooting it in Canada in the first place!
Not everything has to be big SF with massive sets. Interesting characters are more important that big ideas to me, at least in this kind of TV series. The science fiction elements are serving the story and the characters, rather than the other way round.
In other news, the episodes will now get names in season 2 (first season used numbers).
Nonsense, everyone knows that New Zealand is Australia's Canada.^^
Australia is just southern hemisphere's Canada...
Everything is shot in Canada...
It's the side-benefit of the lower dollar value these days. All the X-Men movies have been made in Canada thus far too, IIRC.
^Again, though, Dark Matter and Killjoys are not American shows filmed in Canada to save money, like Stargate or Fringe, say. They're Canadian shows, made for Canada's Space network and imported to the US by Syfy, like Lost Girl and Bitten.
Everything is shot in Canada...
The Shannara Chronicles shoots in New Zealand.
Aren't they co-productions with Syfy though? This distinguishes them from, say, Continuum, which was just a direct import.
As I said already back in post #604, only Killjoys is a Syfy co-production. Dark Matter is pure import. (Although you'd think it'd be the other way around, since Dark Matter is from a couple of Stargate producers while Killjoys is from the creator of Lost Girl and the production company of Orphan Black. So I always have to remind myself which one is the co-production.)
Been watching for it, but surprised to see no blu-ray release yet.
Most of them, yes. Not quite all of them. X-Men: First Class was shot primarily in the U.K. X-Men Origins: Wolverine was primarily Australia. The Wolverine was mostly Japan playing Japan.
But the other 5 were all shot primarily in Canada: X-Men, X2, X-Men: The Last Stand, X-Men: Days of Future Past, & X-Men: Apocalypse.
Different parts of Canada, though - mostly Vancouver, but also Montreal and also Toronto and a wee bit of stuff outside Calgary. We're a really big country. Lots of different looks to the place.
Then again, Arrow, Flash and Legends are all shot in Vancouver, and they're pretty masterful at giving those three shows different enough looks despite often having the same skyline in the actors' backgrounds.
Mark
Then again, Arrow, Flash and Legends are all shot in Vancouver, and they're pretty masterful at giving those three shows different enough looks despite often having the same skyline in the actors' backgrounds.
Mark