Does Star Trek support Ancient Astronaut theory
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I wouldn't say any of the writers "believe" in AAT but for adding drama and entertainment purposes they indulge in those storylines once a while.
Just the opposite, actually. In TOS: "Return from Tomorrow," Sargon suggested that humans might be descendants of his people, but Dr. Mulhall replied, "Our beliefs and our studies indicate that life on our planet, Earth, evolved independently." I would guess that maybe the original story or script intended to imply that, but the show's scientific consultants pointed out how stupid it is, since the fossil and genetic record make it exceedingly obvious that we're closely related to the other life forms on Earth.
Also, it's misremembering TNG: "The Chase" to interpret it as humans being genetically engineered by aliens. Rather, "The Chase" asserted that the primordial soup of planets throughout the galaxy was seeded 4 billion years ago, before life arose, with DNA programmed to gradually encourage the evolution of humanoid forms. The Progenitors were long extinct billions of years before humans emerged; their DNA programming worked independently to subtly influence evolution, with no active guiding hand.
And no, that was not an expression of belief in the notion of "ancient astronauts," an odious and idiotic superstition that was invented by neo-Nazis who wanted to discredit the intelligence of non-white races by claiming their civilizations were given to them by aliens rather than being their own inventions. The Arretians in "Return to Tomorrow," the Preservers in "The Paradise Syndrome," and the Progenitors in "The Chase" were all intended as handwaves for the existence of humanoid aliens and/or Earth-parallel civilizations in ST. Star Trek had to have human actors play aliens due to the unavoidable limitations of budget and technology, and the dramatic need to have alien characters be relatable to human audiences. Its creators knew it was a fanciful idea, but it was a necessary part of the fictional universe. So occasionally, writers of ST have tried to offer explanations for why there are so many humanoids.
Although it's true that there have been a few Trek episodes that touched on the idea of human cultures being influenced by aliens. TAS: "How Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth" pretty much embraces the usual ancient-astronaut BS by claiming that Kukulkan gave ancient societies their cultures; the writer was Native American and was trying to pay tribute to his heritage, but unfortunately it misfired badly and ended up being quite disrespectful to indigenous cultures around the world, not only claiming that they were given their civilizations by others, but claiming that they all got it wrong (and mangling history and chronology in the process). "The Magicks of Megas-tu" claimed that our mythology of devils and witches and the like came from the Megans, though that's a more limited influence. And Voyager: "Tattoo" claimed that the "Sky Spirits" came to Earth, discovered proto-humans with no language and culture, and interbred with us to give us the genetic inheritance that let us become fully human and spread across the world. (It's often misinterpreted as saying that only Native Americans are descended from the Sky Spirits, but the claim that humans had no language or culture before they arrived would have to mean that they arrived at least 80,000 years ago, before modern Homo sapiens spread out of Africa to the rest of the world.) In a franchise with many different creators, it's inevitable that a range of different ideas would be introduced, some sillier than others.
You're forgetting "Who Mourns for Adonais?"
And I am aware of not so much as a single canonical reference giving the name "Arret" to "Sargon's Planet." The only canonical "Arret" is the one in the reverse-time universe visited in "The Counter-Clock Incident." Mentioning something in the stage directions of a script does not make it canonical; if it doesn't appear either in dialogue or in on-screen graphics, it's not canon.
And I am aware of not so much as a single canonical reference giving the name "Arret" to "Sargon's Planet." The only canonical "Arret" is the one in the reverse-time universe visited in "The Counter-Clock Incident." Mentioning something in the stage directions of a script does not make it canonical; if it doesn't appear either in dialogue or in on-screen graphics, it's not canon.
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You're forgetting "Who Mourns for Adonais?"
Yeah, that too. Which got the timing absurdly wrong, because the heyday of Greek culture and mythology was a lot less than 5,000 years ago.
Who the hell brought up canon? I said "Arretian" because it's convenient. It's shorter than "Sargon's people." This is a BBS conversation, not a TV episode, so don't waste our time playing canon police.
You're making a huge leap assuming that writers have to "believe in and support" far-out concepts in order to employ them in fiction. You don't have to literally "believe" in some imaginative notion to see its story potential. Nor is there anything wrong with that. It's called science fiction, not science non-fiction.
And this applies to any number of concepts. I don't personally believe in reincarnation but I've used it as a plot device in various stories because of its inherent storytelling potential. See also telepathy, mind-melds, precognition, UFOs, ghosts, hauntings, Bigfoot, Atlantis, etc.
It's a mistake to think that, just because somebody writes a fictional TV script about ancient astronauts, they must therefore believe that ancient astronauts were actually a thing in real life. By that reasoning, Trek writers would also have to believe in giant space amoebas, time portals, the Mirror Universe, and the undying spirit of Jack the Ripper . . . .
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Indeed. Stan Lee & Jack Kirby wrote about Thor and the Norse gods, but they were Jewish. Chris Carter created The X-Files, but he's a skeptic about UFOs and psychic powers. Which meant he could probably write about them more interestingly than someone who sincerely believed in them could, because he approached it purely as entertainment. He could step back from the material and have fun with it as a fictional concept in ways that a true believer probably couldn't.
Exactly. And I harped on this point because this is a not uncommon misconception: that if you write SF, you must therefore believe in UFOS and alien abductions; that if you write horror, you must believe ghosts and demons or whatever . . . .
Nah, we're just telling campfire stories, basically.
Nah, we're just telling campfire stories, basically.
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Plato's Stepchildren also features aliens living among ancient Greeks. Likewise, Paradise Syndrome indicates there was contact between Native Americans and aliens, though that contact might exclusively have been abduction and relocation.
Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow introduces the idea the timeline has been mucked with by aliens from the future. Times Arrow showed us a variety of aliens, including at least 1 El-Aurian visited Earth in the past.
Tattoo flat out says Chakotay's people encountered aliens that were later found in the DQ. The 37s revealed a number of humans were abducted by aliens and taken to the DQ. Distant Origin indicates an entire species arose on Earth and reached the level of spaceflight before humans were on the scene.
Lots of Ancient Astronauts to choose from.
Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow introduces the idea the timeline has been mucked with by aliens from the future. Times Arrow showed us a variety of aliens, including at least 1 El-Aurian visited Earth in the past.
Tattoo flat out says Chakotay's people encountered aliens that were later found in the DQ. The 37s revealed a number of humans were abducted by aliens and taken to the DQ. Distant Origin indicates an entire species arose on Earth and reached the level of spaceflight before humans were on the scene.
Lots of Ancient Astronauts to choose from.
It would be very naive to think the Earth is the only planet in the universe with intelligent life forms
Which has absolutely nothing to do with the superstition that those intelligent life forms are visiting us in flying saucers and happen to look exactly like a popular speculation from the 19th and early 20th centuries of what humanity might evolve into in millions of years. It annoys me when people equate the New Age religious cult of UFO belief, which is just ancient belief in fae folk or demons dressed up with modern trappings mostly borrowed from sci-fi movies and TV, with the legitimate scientific assessment of the likelihood of extraterrestrial life existing elsewhere in the universe. That's like mistaking the scientific study of volcanoes for the worship of volcano gods.
I actually got a story published in Analog, reprinted free on my Patreon, in which a real alien lands on Earth, encounters a UFO believer, and demolishes his superstitions.
No. It said that those aliens interbred with pre-linguistic humans tens of thousands of years ago, implicitly that all humans are partially descended from them, but that the only surviving population that retains a significant enough percentage of their genes to look visibly alien is an isolated Central American tribe that Chakotay and his father visited once.
"Dammit, Bones, I'm a starship captain, not an ancient historian!"
Plus Vulcans visiting Earth as well in "Carbon Creek," and possibly again.
Trek has definitely flirted with it, plus we see Qs intervening in various parts of history too. I think it has a partial support in Trek, regardless of what one might think of the hypothesis in real life.
IIRC, Roddenberry always hated the Ancient Astronaut theory and didn't want Star Trek to indulge in it. Even in the 60s when he knew he was just a man producing a TV show and hadn't yet drunk the Gene's Vision Kool-Aid.
I think it uses the theory quite a bit, but it supports it like it supports any of the other nonsense that shows up in a given episode. Does Barclay becoming a spider support theories about us becoming spider people?
“Ancient astronauts didn't build the pyramids. Human beings built the pyramids, because they're clever and they work hard.”
― Gene Roddenberry
I have to say I've always found the ancient astronaut hypothesis to have elements of elitism and discrimination. To me, it always approaches human wonders like pyramids, astronomy, math, etc., among mostly non-European cultures from the perspective of no way could "primitive savages" have come up with the science to accomplish these things on their own without help.
I come from a polynesian background. It gives me a sense of awe that probably one of my crazy ancestors got on little more than a makeshift raft and explored the Pacific Ocean based on nothing but the stars and tides. And I don't think an alien told them how to do it.
Yes, absolutely. The "ancient astronaut" theories that Erich Von Daniken popularized were inspired by Nazism and the occult, and he believed ancient non-European cultures could never have achieved great things on their own and thus must have needed pasty white aliens to show them how. The whole thing is just 19th-century eugenicism with space aliens tacked on. A lot of the pseudoscience alt-history programming that airs regularly on the so-called History Channel is thinly veiled white-supremacist ideology and is widely embraced by the modern "Alt-Right." It's one of the ways that they encode their ideology in a way that seems harmless to non-racists (ooh, ancient alien visitors, rad), which lets them infiltrate their ideas into the public discourse and smooth the way for more overt rhetoric.
https://badarchaeology.wordpress.com/2014/01/12/is-pseudoarchaeology-racist/
http://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/the-astonishing-racial-claims-of-erich-von-daniken
https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2018/01/02/close-encounters-racist-kind
On Voyager Episode Distant Origin, the ancient astronauts in that episode are related to the dinosaur genus of hadrosaur, lived on Earth during the Cretaceous (65 million years ago), and are now living in the Delta Quadrant and call themselves Voth.
"Distant Origin is the first one I thought of. I just think of it like them going "Isn't this a weird thing that happened?" "I guess."
Like so what if we ran into Native Americans on another planet? And so what if it happened again? And then it happened one more time after that and also in the Delta Quadrant or something but so what?
At least the writers held back from showing aliens built the pyramids and what. Probably because "Stargate" already did it, but it's something, right?
Like so what if we ran into Native Americans on another planet? And so what if it happened again? And then it happened one more time after that and also in the Delta Quadrant or something but so what?
At least the writers held back from showing aliens built the pyramids and what. Probably because "Stargate" already did it, but it's something, right?
No, that's the opposite of ancient astronaut theory, because it posits that beings from Earth settled other planets, instead of beings from other planets colonizing Earth. Although it's ambiguous whether the Voth's hadrosaur ancestors had a civilization of their own that was lost to the geological record (not impossible) or were transplanted from Earth by some Preserver-like alien civilization. (I like to imagine they were resettled by the same aliens that transplanted Clan Ru's theropod ancestors in the TOS novel First Frontier, which had a similar premise and which Diane Carey co-wrote with an actual paleontologist fittingly named James I. Kirkland).
That's essentially what TAS: "How Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth" did, in fact, claim -- that all the various pyramids and ancient architectures of cultures around the world were failed attempts to follow the plan of Kukulkan's city (which is even more insulting to indigenous cultures than the usual ancient-astronaut crap). Given what was said above about Roddenberry's opinions on the subject, it reinforces my impression that he didn't pay much attention to TAS, or he would've probably shot that episode down when it was first pitched.
Stargate (the movie) frustrated me. They came up with a great idea, a portal that could go anywhere in the galaxy, and all they could think to do with it was to rehash hackneyed ancient-astronaut tropes that had gone out of fashion after the 1970s. The TV franchise was a vast improvement in creativity.
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