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00:00I've seen things you people wouldn't believe.
00:08The history of science fiction is the history of the imagination.
00:17I mean, wow!
00:19The true seed of any great science fiction story is the idea.
00:24What if? What if?
00:26This series explores the four corners of science fiction.
00:30Flying saucers.
00:31The ultimate threat of alien invasion.
00:33They're coming to get us.
00:36Aliens should be mean. They should be out to kick our asses.
00:39Time travel. A world of infinite possibilities.
00:43Time travel is the coolest thing in the world.
00:45I wish it was real.
00:47What if I could go to another time?
00:49The fantasy of it is eternally appealing, I think.
00:53Space exploration. Journeys into the unknown.
00:56And what's out there?
00:58The cosmos and the mystery of space.
01:00Space. The final frontier.
01:02Other cultures, other places, other dimensions.
01:05When this dead hand moves.
01:07And the mysteries of artificial life.
01:10Where technology and humanity collide.
01:13Is as close as we get to touching immortality.
01:16And that can sort of be a scary thing, as well as an exciting thing.
01:20Will technology be how we live forever, or will it destroy us?
01:23The spine-tingling, blood-chilling story that stuns your emotions.
01:32Our guides are the men and women who fell to Earth.
01:35The people who created the real history of science fiction.
01:46My God.
01:48It's full of stars.
01:54Throughout its history, science fiction has preyed on our fears of invasion.
01:58From full-scale assault.
02:00To sinister hidden threats.
02:04The great thing about an invasion film.
02:07Is that it creates the ultimate life or death risks.
02:11They've landed here and up to no good.
02:14So it's up to us to stop them.
02:16And fight for our humanity.
02:19These fears have evolved as the concerns of different eras produce their own particular anxieties.
02:25And it all began with the original alien invasion story.
02:29About a Martian invasion.
02:31The War of the Worlds.
02:34There's this malevolent race of beings intent on our destruction.
02:40For no reason, by the way.
02:42No reason it's ever given.
02:43And they're plotting out there on the angry red planet.
02:49Intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic regarded this Earth with envious eyes.
02:55And slowly and surely drew their plans against us.
03:02The War of the Worlds was written in 1897 by the great British writer H.G. Wells.
03:09War of the Worlds is one novel that spawned a thousand movies, an entire genre based on War of the
03:17Worlds.
03:23In Wells' novel, the humans are outgunned by a force of invaders from Mars, trampling everything in their path with
03:30their giant tripods.
03:35It's a story that has drawn us in repeatedly, each new generation finding its own basis for a fear of
03:41alien invasion.
03:45Welles was inspired to write his story by the experience of British colonialism.
03:52H.G. Wells was once talking to an acquaintance of his about the fact that if you were an Indian
03:57and you saw the juggernaut of the British Navy and the Army come to your lands,
04:03well, how would it be if all of a sudden the Martians were to come down to the Earthlings?
04:08And so he saw this as a lens, a lens through which we could actually make social commentary.
04:15Wells was also fascinated by science and drew on the latest knowledge of microbiology for the key to the Martians'
04:22downfall.
04:23In a twist, not humans, but the lowest form of life, germs, finally bring down the invaders.
04:31The Martians have somehow radically miscalculated what the Earth was going to be like.
04:37You know, you have to buy this. It's a little bit dopey if you don't buy it.
04:40And they're like, we conquered the Earth. Let's open our spaceships. Oh, my gosh, there are germs here.
04:45Ladies and gentlemen, we interrupt our program of dance music to bring you a special bulletin from the Intercontinental Radio
04:50News.
04:52In 1938, the War of the Worlds seemed as relevant as ever to an America facing the threat of a
04:58Second World War.
05:00This time it was presented as a radio play.
05:02A young Orson Welles heightened the realism of the story with fictitious news reports to dramatic effect.
05:10And they got a small beam of light against a mirror.
05:14What's that?
05:16It's a jet of flame springing from that mirror and it leaps right at the advancing men.
05:19It strikes them head on.
05:22The laws are turning into flames.
05:24Listeners thought the news reports were real and widespread panic ensued.
05:30A science fiction work had never had this kind of impact before.
05:35This version of the War of the Worlds remains the most famous radio drama ever made.
05:40It perfectly captured the anxieties of an era.
05:45Today, the greatest threat to peace is the expansionist aims of the Kremlin.
05:50By the 1950s, America faced a new fear.
05:54Soviet invasion.
06:02Once more, science fiction returned to Welles' novel.
06:05But this time, it was the Cold War we were fighting.
06:08And now, it was on the big screen.
06:12This could be the beginning of the end for the human race.
06:15For what men first thought were meteors or the often ridiculed flying saucers
06:19are, in reality, the flaming vanguard of the invasion from Mars.
06:24At $2 million, the War of the Worlds was one of Hollywood's most expensive science fiction works to date.
06:30A new generation fell under the spell of its Martians.
06:33Look!
06:38These were really sculpted and almost naturalistic-looking manta ray-type hovering beings or vehicles of some kind.
06:47And I thought it was really terrifically well done.
06:49Even though you could see the wires, I said, OK, I don't mind.
06:51I don't mind seeing the wires.
06:52It was profoundly influential to me when I was little.
06:57The way that the creatures looked and acted and their ray-gunned.
07:02It had things that we hadn't seen before in films.
07:07The film of the War of the Worlds presented an alien invasion that was both real and terrifying to a
07:131950s audience.
07:20Forty years later, another film would be inspired by Welles' destructive vision
07:25and depict the mayhem of an alien invasion on an even larger global scale.
07:30It was called Independence Day.
07:34Independence Day.
07:41So what does blow up first, the White House or the Capitol?
07:44And I said, the White House, because the White House is this, like, shining symbol.
07:50I always, like, said to everybody, look, if this thing blows up in the middle of the movie,
07:55everything is possible in this film.
08:04Boasting spectacular visual effects, director Roland Emmerich was determined that Independence Day would dwarf previous invasion films.
08:13I thought, why are they always so small, these flying saucers?
08:17You know, if you want to kind of take over a planet, and a big planet like ours, you know,
08:21you come with the big ships, you know?
08:35They must have some kind of protective shield over that hall. Knights, pull up, pull up!
08:43It was the conclusion of H.G. Wells' original story, with the Martians brought down by germs,
08:48that provided the inspiration for Independence Day's ending.
08:53And we said, like, it would be great to have a nod to War of the Worlds, because that's the
08:58first kind of movie who did that.
09:02Independence Day reimagined the biological virus as a computer virus that could be used as a weapon.
09:09Human ingenuity rather than blind nature defeats the aliens, a more optimistic ending than Wells' own.
09:20The virus is in.
09:27All we can do now is pray.
09:30The fundamental problem of every alien design, and we face it all the time, and Doctor Who, and every TV
09:34series and movie faces,
09:36how do you break up the human form?
09:38How is it obviously not a man in a suit?
09:40I think this problem has been solved exactly once.
09:43Once.
09:44With the Daleks.
09:47The War of the Worlds has supplied science fiction with whatever it needed to match the mood of the times.
09:53But if we were to be invaded, what would befall us?
09:56What would the aliens want of us?
09:59And what form would the invaders take?
10:03Science fiction had the answers.
10:06One television series has repeatedly explored these questions to thrill and terrify successive generations.
10:21For 50 years, the British television series Doctor Who has brought us face to face with alien invaders
10:27and explored the very different methods they might use to conquer us.
10:32Behold, Doctor! Behold the might of the true Dalek race!
10:39A mutant race incapable of any emotion apart from hate, the Daleks have one purpose, to wipe out all other
10:46species in the universe.
10:50Exterminate! Exterminate! Exterminate!
10:54Daleks are one of the great science fiction villains.
10:58Implacable.
10:59Violent.
11:01Unpredictable.
11:02Unstoppable.
11:03Can't be reasoned with the most frightening killing machine in the universe.
11:16Incased in an armoured shell, each Dalek is a living weapon.
11:21They're like tanks, and they can come after you wherever you are.
11:27And they're just remorseless, scary and merciless.
11:31Doctor! You will step forth or die!
11:38In 1964, the horror of the Daleks was fully realised in a shocking story titled The Dalek Invasion of Earth.
11:46Daleks on Earth? Doctor, how do you leave this to me, dear boy?
11:53Its vision of London under Dalek occupation proved unforgettable for British viewers.
11:59When I speak to people who used to watch Doctor Who when they were younger, when they were kids, they
12:04are genuinely really scared of the Daleks, and that's really cool.
12:08Exterminate him! Exterminate him! Exterminate him!
12:12You can go up to anyone in the UK and do that, and they'd know that it's a Dalek.
12:16Exterminate them at zero range!
12:20I mean, it's a sink plunger and a whisk, but you overlook that almost immediately.
12:29I think there's something in the design that is just kind of glorious, so simple, almost ludicrously simple, and yet
12:37it became iconic.
12:41The fundamental problem of every alien design, and we face it all the time on Doctor Who, and every TV
12:45series and movie faces,
12:47how do you break up the human form? How is it obviously not a man in a suit?
12:51I think this problem has been solved exactly once, once, with the Daleks.
12:56The Daleks are as big as the show, if not bigger, and it's extraordinary that this has become something that's
13:03become a worldwide phenomenon.
13:07Extterminate him! Extterminate him!
13:12But the Daleks have competition. The Doctor has repeatedly had to fight off a rival invading race.
13:18What do you mean? I've seen them before.
13:21One which plays in a very different kind of fear.
13:24What are they? Cybermen.
13:33The Cybermen, for me, was scarier than the Daleks.
13:38When I was seven years old, I remember watching these Cybermen who didn't really say anything, mostly.
13:44They just came out and they did things.
13:46The Cybermen are genuinely intimidating.
13:50I remember working with a one-armed Cyberman that was moving around in a really weird way, and that was
13:55scary.
13:58Also, if you look way back into the classic episodes, they look even scarier then.
14:05And they had these terrifying faces of these round eyes and these little slit mouths and the silverness, and you
14:14wondered what was underneath.
14:17Chillingly, what lurked beneath the Cybermen's masks was shockingly human.
14:25The Cybermen are cyborgs, a race of once human-like beings who have replaced their body parts with artificial ones.
14:34I believe the inspiration came from the idea of organ donation, and sort of the idea that we could be
14:38kept alive by bits of other people.
14:40And if you extrapolate that idea, eventually you're replacing everything until there's nothing left.
14:46They're people.
14:48They were.
14:49They had all their humanity taken away.
14:53Unlike the Daleks, the Cybermen don't want to exterminate us.
14:57Their agenda is possibly even more disturbing.
15:00They want to assimilate us into their race.
15:03To turn us into Cybermen.
15:11What happens in there?
15:13What's upgrading me? What do they do?
15:15I think they removed the brain, and they put it in a suit of armour.
15:20That's what these things are.
15:23They're us.
15:26And that's the key to what makes us afraid of the Cybermen.
15:30That we could be deleted and transformed, and that everything that we recognise as humanity could be replaced out of
15:37us.
15:42With both the Cybermen and the Daleks, Doctor Who gave us an unforgettable vision of alien invaders, and the different
15:48ways they might conquer us.
15:52But what if the invasion took a less obvious but even more terrifying form?
15:56What if rather than turning us into them, the aliens made themselves indistinguishable from us?
16:07There's no defence, and there's no warning, and you can't prepare for it because you don't know about it.
16:14I don't want any part of it.
16:15You're forgetting something, Miles?
16:17What's that?
16:18You had no choice.
16:25In the early 50s, American science fiction was drawn to a wave of paranoia fuelled by a fear of communist
16:31infiltration.
16:33This was the era of Senator Joseph McCarthy's attempts to root out the enemy within, the Reds under the bed.
16:40I have never sullied the honour of the American people.
16:45This climate of fear gave birth to a variation on the classic alien invasion story.
16:50What if the invaders were already here, but disguised as your neighbours, your loved ones, even you?
16:59You could do a big Independence Day sort of approach, but it's scarier if everything is being done under the
17:06cover of secrecy.
17:09There's no defence, and there's no warning, and you can't prepare for it because you don't know about it.
17:16The essence of a secret invasion was captured by John W. Campbell in his novella, Who Goes There?
17:22It features an alien that can adopt the exact likeness of another being, and terrorises a group of scientists on
17:29a research base in the Antarctic.
17:33This is the spot where it was first seen, and these are the first...
17:37The story was filmed in 1951 as The Thing from Another World.
17:42How did it get here? Where did it come from? What is it?
17:48It played on our fear of a hidden enemy by concealing its alien in the shadows.
17:58But it took another 30 years for cinema to show us Campbell's shape-shifting monster and its ability to imitate
18:04us in all its glory.
18:07I thought, let me go back and try a crack at this imitating thing.
18:13Director John Carpenter was determined to use every trick in the book to capture the alien's grotesque transformations.
18:20There's just a bunch of rubber on the floor, so you've got to make that look like it's doing something.
18:25So there's all sorts of servo motors, and you can puppet some things from under the floor, pull it with
18:32wires.
18:32We tried everything we could to make the thing come alive.
18:39Trapped in their Antarctic base, the scientists realized the creature could be masquerading as any one of them.
18:45But who?
18:47The story's most paranoid moment comes when they attempt to find out.
18:52The blood test scene was my favorite scene in this novella.
18:58Nobody trusts anybody. There's only one way to find out who is who.
19:04And that's to go down to basic biology.
19:07And it separates the creature from human.
19:11This is pure nonsense. Doesn't prove a thing.
19:14I thought you'd feel that way, Gary.
19:16You were the only one that could have got to that blood.
19:18We'll do you last.
19:23Get away from me!
19:25We're treating!
19:30It's one thing for an alien to take over a far away Antarctic research station.
19:35But what if the invasion is happening under your nose?
19:38Just down the street.
19:41Jack Finney's 1955 novel, The Body Snatchers, involves sinister alien seed pods
19:47that could duplicate the residents of a small California town.
19:51It was filmed in 1956 as Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
20:02You live your life, you think things are a certain way, you wake up one morning and discover they're not.
20:07You discover that your wife is not your wife, that your husband is not your husband, your child is not
20:11your child.
20:12It's all about your identity. I know I'm not the monster.
20:16But I don't know if you're not the monster.
20:18Suddenly, while you're asleep, they'll absorb your minds, your memories.
20:24I don't want any partner.
20:25You're forgetting something, Miles.
20:27What's that?
20:28You have no choice.
20:31From city to city and incredible...
20:33They're coming to take your soul.
20:35They're not just blowing up your house, they're taking you and your children and they're taking you.
20:42By the 1990s, the fears of the Cold War era had faded.
20:47Suspicion and paranoia were increasingly directed towards government, following a series of political scandals.
20:53The mood was right for the television series, The X-Files.
20:58When we started the show in the early 90s, we were still reeling from things like Watergate, even though that
21:05was in the 70s.
21:06But I ran Contra.
21:08There was a general distrust of government and authority.
21:13Chris Carter didn't have to make that up.
21:15He just kind of, you know, looked out the window and went, oh, there it is.
21:19We're gonna put that in the show and scare the hell out of people.
21:25That was fast.
21:27Jerry, is that you?
21:30Yeah.
21:31Who's this?
21:34The X-Files centers on FBI agents Dana Scully and Fox Mulder, who are tasked with investigating unexplained phenomena.
21:43That bacteria I had analyzed, they're saying that it doesn't exist in nature.
21:51They're saying that it could be extraterrestrial.
21:55Over the course of their investigations, Mulder and Scully discover an overarching conspiracy in which elements of government are in
22:02league with alien invaders.
22:05There's been a belief for a lot of folk, I've come to find out, that the government is hiding evidence
22:12of the existence of extraterrestrials and spaceships and aliens.
22:16And all we did was, I think, take advantage of that.
22:23The X-Files also explored government scientific research into alien hybrids and biological weapons, tapping into a fear of what
22:31monster science might unleash.
22:34We were, I think, most successful storytellers when we kept the stories rooted in hard and rational science.
22:43In fact, that's the way we came up with a lot of our stories, was by finding science that interested
22:49us and asking what if, what if this were to happen, what if this were to be true.
22:54I think that describes most X-Files.
23:01And it was science's huge destructive power that inspired the invasion of monsters not from space, but from the depths
23:10of the Earth itself.
23:15The first Godzilla movie is deadly serious, and it plays with our fears of nuclear Armageddon.
23:26In science fiction, there are some invaders that don't arrive from outer space.
23:30They are man-made aliens, born out of the labs of our own scientists, monsters inspired by the fear of
23:37science's most devastating invention.
23:51In the wake of the atomic tests, a whole series of movies were made of different monsters that had become
23:58irradiated and gotten big.
23:59But monstrosities were always created, and they were always monstrosities that were caused by either the misuse of science or
24:06the curse of radioactivity.
24:10A nuclear explosion could free one from his icy tomb.
24:15One of the first atomic monsters to hit our screens was the beast from 20,000 fathoms.
24:21Where it was clothed, granite and steel would crumble.
24:24Soldiers and their weapons would be powerless before the onslaught of the beast.
24:29The beast, the beast, the beast from 20,000 fathoms.
24:35The beast from 20,000 fathoms went on to inspire the most iconic monster of all.
24:42In 1954, a Japanese studio called Toho decided to make their own version of the beast.
24:48The result was the film Gojira, better known as Godzilla.
24:52Well, when Toho reimagined the beast from 20,000 fathoms as Godzilla, something kind of magical just happened because of
25:01the context of the atomic bomb being dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
25:09The first Godzilla movie is deadly serious, and it plays with our fears of nuclear Armageddon in a very kind
25:17of powerful and visceral way.
25:35Godzilla became an iconic creature on both sides of the Pacific and spawned a huge fan base but also a
25:41ton of imagery throughout popular culture.
25:45Godzilla remains the definitive science fiction monster.
25:52By the 90s, our fear of the bomb may have subsided, but our concerns about science remained.
26:00Author Michael Crichton brought monsters back to science fiction, reflecting a fear that genetic engineering could bring about its own
26:07invaders.
26:08He filled a theme park full of rampaging dinosaurs, recreated from prehistoric DNA, and called it Jurassic Park.
26:19Such was the obvious appeal of the book that even before it was published, director Steven Spielberg had snapped up
26:24the film rights, but it was still a risk.
26:27Any film of Jurassic Park would stand or fall on how believable the dinosaurs were.
26:36Stop motion veteran Phil Tippett was given the job of overseeing all aspects of the dinosaurs' production.
26:43Well, Steven was very clear about what the dinosaurs should be and didn't want to play the dinosaurs as monsters.
26:49He wanted them to be portrayed as animals.
26:53And I remember when I was initially doing some tests on Jurassic Park, I gave the raptors a lizard tongue.
27:01You know, because I was looking for something that they could do that would be cool.
27:08So as they're looking around, their tongues are like lizards, go...
27:16But they brought Jack Horner, a paleontologist, as a consultant, and he saw that and he just went livid.
27:23Yeah, he was just like, dinosaurs don't do that.
27:25Dinosaurs are birds. They're not lizards. They don't do that.
27:29So I was like, okay, we take the tongue out. You know, I was just, I mean, it's pretend, right?
27:37But the decision to use traditional animation changed when the results of the first computer-generated dinosaurs were shown.
27:45The plan was to take the wide shots and to do computer graphics for those characters,
27:51because on a production scale, the computer, you know, if you make one, you just hit a button,
27:56and then you can have, like, 50 of these things, as opposed to if you're doing a stop-motion thing,
28:01you'll have to build a whole bunch of puppets.
28:20They're moving in herds.
28:23Steven just took one look at it and goes, like, well, that's how we're making a movie.
28:32Spielberg decided to put computer-generated dinosaurs at the heart of the action.
28:39Steven asked me, you know, like, so, how does this make you feel?
28:43And it's like, I feel extinct. And he goes, like, that's a good line, I'm gonna put it in the
28:47movie.
28:48And it's like, well, thanks for your sympathy.
28:51Fortunately, Tippett's animating skills were still vital to help the computer-animators
28:55recreate the lifelike movements of the dinosaurs.
28:59It was the pack of nimble velociraptors that provided a fresh take on the solitary giants of the 1950s.
29:21If you don't believe those dinosaurs when you first see them, then you're not gonna buy the rest of the
29:24movie.
29:25And you totally buy them. They totally work. Totally. It still works now.
29:29It ages very well. And you feel the wonder.
29:32I thought what was interesting about Jurassic Park is it had its cake and ate it, too.
29:36Which is, it gave us the sense of wonder.
29:39But you shouldn't be doing this.
29:41You know?
29:44Jurassic Park's computer-generated dinosaurs were a cinematic landmark
29:47and captured our fears of invasion with a new and dazzling realism.
29:55But what if we had nothing to fear from our invaders?
29:58What if the aliens came in peace?
30:04E.T. was like a child himself.
30:08And he was a little, naked creature an impossibly long distance from home.
30:18In the 1970s, rather than prey on our fear of annihilation,
30:22science fiction began to explore the possibility of a more peaceful encounter with extraterrestrial life.
30:30It reflected our longing to find out what aliens would be like
30:33and was encouraged by scientists like Carl Sagan.
30:38It's beginning to look as if there may be an enormous number
30:43of advanced technical civilizations out there in the universe.
30:54The possibility of alien intelligence fascinated director Steven Spielberg
30:58and inspired his 1977 film Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
31:06It was the first time an artist said,
31:10you have nothing to fear by looking up and seeing what's out there.
31:15Okay, come on.
31:17All right, let's see.
31:18Before we stop, meet you to the single circuits
31:20and meet you right to nowhere.
31:24Married to him?
31:25That was the most unexpected move ever.
31:30I mean, it was, it was a shock.
31:41They locked the camera onto the cab
31:44and rolled the cab over.
31:46That's it.
31:47That's all they did.
31:48So everything seemed to be floating around
31:51while I sat there, but in fact, it was rolling with, with us, right?
31:58But this was just an early glimpse.
32:01The film builds towards the arrival of a full-scale alien mothership.
32:06But how do you design a ship worthy of such a momentous encounter?
32:11Spielberg said,
32:12well, what if the mothership looked like a city in the sky
32:15and it's got a zillions of lights
32:18and it kind of looks like the, um,
32:21a combination of oil refineries in San Pedro
32:24and sky, you know, skyscrapers in Manhattan.
32:29And so we said, well, that all sounds good.
32:31And, uh, I had been developing this idea of the smoke room
32:34to photograph the mothership in
32:36so that these would be lit up
32:37and create a kind of a glow in the atmosphere,
32:40which turned out to be really quite beautiful.
32:57When the ship finally opens, we briefly catch sight of the friendly aliens.
33:07They're children, and they're benign, godlike.
33:13And there's, like, what Steve does brilliantly is that sense of wonder.
33:16Steven's ambition was as large as the universe in that film.
33:22And being on that train with him was a thrill.
33:28And it was a thrill I'll take to my grave.
33:44Close encounters saw a man leaving Earth behind.
33:48But what if one of those childlike aliens were left stranded on Earth?
33:53That idea was the starting point for another Steven Spielberg film,
33:57this time exploring how he might befriend an alien,
34:00E.T., the extraterrestrial.
34:08The E.T. is an interesting companion piece to Close Encounters.
34:10In a way, it's the same aliens.
34:12It's as if one of the Close Encounters aliens gets lost on Earth, gets abandoned.
34:17It's basically the same family, right?
34:19Essentially, that's the family that Richard Dreyfuss left.
34:23Single mom and kids, they live in another suburb.
34:26And then it becomes a kid's adventure.
34:28It's the way that kids would have liked to have experienced Close Encounters, in a way.
34:33In E.T., it's Elliot and the other children who befriend the alien and try to help him.
34:41E.T. was like a child himself.
34:45And he was a little, naked creature an impossibly long distance from home.
34:53He could not have been more vulnerable and helpless.
35:13E.T.'s puppet had 12 operators and could achieve an incredibly life-life performance.
35:19Enough to convince one of the youngest actors, Drew Barrymore.
35:23I don't think she paid any attention to the fact that there was a cable coming out of his belly.
35:28I think when she looked in his eyes and he went...
35:32And looked at her and tipped his head and extended his neck.
35:37I think that was a miraculous creature in front of her.
35:41And we could see the wonder growing on her face.
35:48Although the film is told mainly from the children's point of view...
35:51...a pivotal character was the government scientist known only as Keys.
35:57I've been presented as a scary figure.
36:00I've been shown from the waist down, these keys at my belt.
36:05And it's all the awe and power and danger of the grown-up world on the world of children.
36:12But I said to Steven, it's very important that we don't make either adults or science the enemy.
36:21So let's craft of my character someone who is like Elliot, but all grown-up.
36:28The resulting scene captured the fascination that all of us, young and old, have at the prospect of meeting an
36:34alien.
36:36He came to me. He came to me.
36:42Elliot, he came to me too.
36:46I've been wishing for this since I was ten years old.
36:50I don't want him to die.
36:53He came to me too.
36:55I've been waiting for this since I was ten years old.
36:58I remember asking my dad, what did he mean by that?
37:02My dad just looked at me and said, he's like you.
37:05He wants aliens to come. He wants to meet aliens.
37:09Spielberg's films challenged traditional science fiction.
37:12By suggesting that alien visitors should be welcomed, not feared.
37:16But could we really cope if those aliens decided to stay and live among us?
37:24But what if they're aliens that just are trying to eek out their own living?
37:29Now that's the worst disguise ever. That guy's definitely an alien.
37:32If you don't like it, you can kiss my furry little butt.
37:39As the world's great cities have become melting pots for people of different cultures and races,
37:45science fiction has asked if they might become home for extraterrestrials as well.
37:54In a twist on the theme of secret invasion, a film made in 1997 explored the idea of peaceful alien
38:01immigrants hidden away from the public eye.
38:04Now that's the worst disguise ever. That guy's definitely an alien.
38:07If you don't like it, you can kiss my furry little butt.
38:11I remember some of the first images I had from Men in Black.
38:14They were like a little tail visible through someone's trench coat or something.
38:20And then I started thinking, well, wait, what if they're not like aliens that are trying to come down and
38:25attack us?
38:26But what if they're aliens that just are trying to either eek out their own living or they're stuck here
38:32for some reason?
38:33Or what if all this is going on at the same time and we had no idea?
38:36And that was what led me to, well, then what if there's this police force that has to deal with
38:41them?
38:45Men in Black was based on a comic book series about government agents who have to cover up all manner
38:50of alien activities to avoid public panic.
38:54I don't know whether or not you've forgotten, but there's an alien battle cruiser about this.
38:57There's always an alien battle cruiser or a Carillion death ray or an intergalactic plague that's about to wipe out
39:02life on this miserable little planet.
39:03The only way these people get on with their happy lives is they do not know about it.
39:11As well as keeping the presence of aliens secret, the Men in Black were science fiction's version of America's Immigration
39:17Service, or INS,
39:19whose role policing the U.S.-Mexican border had become increasingly high profile by the time the film was made.
39:27To me, the immigration stuff at the beginning was just, what would be a cool way to illustrate that they're
39:34like INS guys, but with aliens?
39:37What if you think it's an INS bust, and then it turns out to be something entirely different?
39:42At any given time, there are around 1,500 aliens on the planet, most of them right here in Manhattan.
39:48And most of them are decent enough. They're just trying to make a living.
39:51Cab drivers?
39:52Not as many as you'd think. Humans, for the most part, don't have a clue.
39:55They don't want one or need one, either. They're happy. They think they have a good bead on things.
40:02Well, why the big secret? People are smart. They can handle it.
40:05A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals, and you know it.
40:12Men in Black has fun with the idea of a hidden alien population.
40:17But what if the aliens were living in plain sight?
40:21Science fiction suggests that this might not be quite such a laughing matter.
40:27In the 2009 film District 9, aliens are ghettoized in a Johannesburg shantytown.
40:33The object of fear and prejudice, they are in a state of constant unrest.
40:39Stop it!
40:41Stay low. Where is he going? What is he doing?
40:44Can I just move away?
40:45It's clear that security isn't very high.
40:47What District 9 did so brilliantly was it made that world real.
40:53And not just the alien insect people, but everything about it.
40:59You know, you could smell the stench. It was like Slumdog Millionaire, you know.
41:05District 9's South African-born director, Neil Blomkamp, drew on the country's experience of apartheid and influxes of refugees.
41:14It's a movie about economic disparities, socioeconomic changes, and what we do to others, explicitly to others.
41:21Only there, they're these really vile, to our eyes, aliens. They look really gross.
41:26Open up! Open up!
41:28The more the characters in the movie try to dehumanize them, which is a terrible word in this case, because
41:33they're already not human, the more human they sort of become.
41:43The film even offers an ironic take on the theme of alien assimilation, when the main character is exposed to
41:49alien blood and starts to mutate into one of them.
41:54That movie does what science fiction is supposed to do and rarely does in movies, which is address some larger
42:00social themes and still give you a cracking action scene and people and exoskeletons fighting with aliens with guns and
42:08stuff.
42:09I would like to have it all. Yes, I want all those things to happen.
42:18From H.G. Wells' depiction of military obliteration in the War of the Worlds to the Cold War anxieties captured
42:25in 1950s monster movies and more recent films about extraterrestrials living on Earth, we've been presented with a host of
42:33alien invaders.
42:35Exterminate! Exterminate!
42:39Whether they are here to annihilate us like Doctor Who's Daleks or assimilate us like the Cybermen, science fiction has
42:47used these creatures to reflect our fears about the world we live in and, at its best, to challenge those
42:53fears.
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