UFOs

[Valka D'Ur]

I'm a fan, and remember that timeless classic well. Kudos to Harlan Ellison for injecting humor in an absolutely serious episode. But as you pointed out, that's entirely the writer's choice.

Harlan Ellison didn't write any humor into "City on the Edge of Forever". I don't see anything funny about a down-and-out guy accidentally killing himself because he stole McCoy's hand phaser.

Actually, there's a lot of "City" that Ellison didn't write. That episode is notorious for the behind-the-scenes rancor between Ellison and Roddenberry, and in fact Harlan Ellison dined out for the rest of his life on how Gene Roddenberry and the other executives at Star Trek "ruined" his script.

I've read Ellison's original script (it was published in a dramatic anthology called Six Science Fiction Plays). It wasn't a bad story, but it wasn't true to Roddenberry's Star Trek. He had drug-dealing happening on the ship, and there was too much mysticism going on.

Both versions won writing awards, so it appears that people saw merits in each.

Consider: if a sufficiently more advanced species wanted to keep tabs on us - let's say, like the Vorlons from Babylon 5 -, would they send field teams or simply intercept our own satellite system?

It's been over 20 years since I last watched Babylon 5, and am blanking on who the Vorlons were.

 

[Sarin]

That would be one good reason, if you're mining the inner solar system for a planet that spends little time in the vicinity the Earth would be a good source for food. God's Garden.

Again, this doesn't make sense. If you were farming another planet for food, the last thing you want in its inhabitants is intelligence. Humanity has been a menace to world's ecosystems ever since we invented pointed sticks, been polluting this planet for hundreds of years and nearly blew itself and most of the Earth's life out of existence a few times. I don't care what planet you come from, if you find Earth's life edible, microplastics and radioactive isotopes that humanity spread around can't be good spice.

Sitchin believes the Sumerian 'sar' was based on the orbital period of the planet of 'God'. The word would end up as caesar and czar and could have caused a problem for the biblical authors, the days of man before the Flood were numbered 120 years.

Sitchin obviously wasn't able, or willing, to check the reality before spouting his...ideas. Caesar was a Roman cognomen in use hundreds of years before it was transformed into a title, and its origin had nothing to do with any planet or timekeeping.

Edit:

It's been over 20 years since I last watched Babylon 5, and am blanking on who the Vorlons were.

They were those telepathic energy beings in encounter suits that's been keeping tabs on everyone. Remember Kosh?

 

[Kyriakos]

I am personally always suspicious of advanced 3d aliens, who at the same time seem to consistently fail in not being detected. What would be the logic in that? If they didn't want to be detected, they must be really terrible at what they do, and if they don't care or wished to be detected, they could do that unilaterally.
The Lovecraft plots already were pushing it as far as limited detection goes, and that was with 50s human tech.

 

[r16]

what's deep fish things ? And from guys like as old as me !

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if gonna claim things , claim good things ! Though ı have always been a Witchblade person .

iranian UFOs are also fake as hell , used to sow doubts amongst their military so that Jimmy Carter's creeping lslamist / Jihadist coup or takeover could succeed ; as Farsi Nationalist Shah didn't exactly mix with ever loved Saudis . Accordingly there was a case in late 1970 something in which a Phantom intercepted a reported light thing and its avionics would die everytime it tried to put the nose on the saucer , you know , with an intent to fire . ı still don't know who ... but either Someone or Somebody wore the Blue , he might or might not have done the F-104 or maybe beyond or maybe not , but am pretty sure they could sit on the backseater's location and reach the box of fuses or whatever and punch enough to close down a Phantom for a second or two , while the front seat person would create a fake radio show .

the nuclear thing is more recent . The F-14 that had been just refurbished and accordingly had the best set of avionics was sent up to intercept an American drone , flyng wing , stealth coating , lR surprassing and the Republican Guard shot it down in error , which is a thing that happens a lot in lran , if you remember that Ukranian airliner . lnstead of accepting error , the Guard command made up lights that zip around at Mach 10 , also capable of downing a Tomcat with a wish ...

 

[Kyriakos]

Δεεπ Ονες:

"We shall dive down through black abysses...and in that lair of the Deep Ones we shall dwell amidst wonder and glory forever." H.P Lovecraft

They were anthropomorphic fish that lived in massive underwater cities with spirals and domes.

 

[Bestbank Tiger]

I am personally always suspicious of advanced 3d aliens, who at the same time seem to consistently fail in not being detected. What would be the logic in that? If they didn't want to be detected, they must be really terrible at what they do, and if they don't care or wished to be detected, they could do that unilaterally.
The Lovecraft plots already were pushing it as far as limited detection goes, and that was with 50s human tech.

That's why they kidnap dumb drunk rednecks. So nobody will believe them

 

[r16]

couldn't find any passable mermaid , so false Sonja will have to do . Hostility maybe yes , but anyone advanced enough to live deep beyond notice will still be like no fishead .

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starfleet Admiral , you know ...

 

[Sofista]

Harlan Ellison didn't write any humor into "City on the Edge of Forever". I don't see anything funny about a down-and-out guy accidentally killing himself because he stole McCoy's hand phaser.

Well, black comedy's reception is notoriously a niche.

Actually, there's a lot of "City" that Ellison didn't write. That episode is notorious for the behind-the-scenes rancor between Ellison and Roddenberry, and in fact Harlan Ellison dined out for the rest of his life on how Gene Roddenberry and the other executives at Star Trek "ruined" his script.

I've read Ellison's original script (it was published in a dramatic anthology called Six Science Fiction Plays). It wasn't a bad story, but it wasn't true to Roddenberry's Star Trek. He had drug-dealing happening on the ship, and there was too much mysticism going on.

Both versions won writing awards, so it appears that people saw merits in each.

Thank you, this is new to me!

It's been over 20 years since I last watched Babylon 5, and am blanking on who the Vorlons were.

Aphorisms Some Might Have Heard: 'better a doctor and a dullard than a doctor alone' (meaning: once in a blue moon the dullard will remember something the doctor forgot). And as much as I love SF, I'll never know more about it than you, which leads to...
Random Rave: I'm that dullard today! Yay!

 

[Terxpahseyton]

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[Sarin]

However, to conclude

is IMO a kinda respectable position, at that point. But not a position which stands as fact, sure.

Allow me to use this to demonstrate the fallacy that permeates this and people like Sitchin and Von Däniken abuse to peddle their books.

Given the lack of material evidence, the amount of possible explanations is huge. Still, the possibility that some of these sightings truly are alien vehicles is not to be discarded...I'd even give it 10% which, given the lack of material evidence and being such extraordinary claim, is quite respectable.

So...if they're here, maybe they were here before. There are...unexplained events in human history. Could be that aliens are behind some. Maybe 5% chance? After all, we have only unconfirmed reports. Still...respectable enough to warrant consideration.

And if they were here before, could they also mess with ancient civilizations and human development? We have plenty of weird stuff from those times. 5% that some of that comes from alien interference.

So...three claims, each on their own seem to be plausible enough to be at least considered. But because each of the latter two ones is based on the previous ones being true, the overall chance is 5% of 5% of 10%...that is 0,025%.

In betting terms 4000:1, Would you bet on a horse with those odds?

 

[r16]

mach 17 keeps coming back , with commentors on blogs bringing up some type of engine and proposals for research about it , meaning USAF did that and forgot to tell anyone , or something . Alien crowd then hit back with stories how aliens existed back in 1950s and did they have 13000 mph planes back then or whatever . lf ı can , ı will look for this pdf file where some guy in1950s talk of the electronic trickery that made it look like UFOs flew over the White House , with scrambled jets finding "nothing to see" , watch the thing that am not using "nothing to report" ...

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and of course there is this upheaval in the country , which ı don't have the time to "examine" in full r16 style ... Though it has been reported the Topkapı Palace and stuff has been attached to some directorate and artifacts are to be stored in the first airport of lstanbul , currently used as a cargo hub ... Having a lot of grass which can be converted into buildings on taxpayer money as well . Though there will be those who will say it would be convenient if the upheaval became too much . lt would be against CFC rules , no doubt , talking about guts to be ripped if all those collectors in the West and stuff proved they bought their stuff lawfully and they have papers and so on . With the inevitable claim about the relics from the Prophet . Because someguy had some other things to do and ı had no chance to remark that ı have been told that Cthulthu meat takes some extra heat to do it right , but it's delicious , because Excalibur and equivalents . Like the ginger Sonja would be the one to be armed with the Ex thing ...


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you know that's supposed to come with the sword , but there are also curves and not much of clothing . Arabs can do without ours , dear people who are native English speakers and so on .

 

[Terxpahseyton]

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[innonimatu]

I liked the movie Abyss and Lovecraft's myths, so I think UFOs are made by a civilization of half-fish guys inhabiting the bottom of the ocean. Mostly at the Bermudas triangle obviously. They have been studying us since the dawn of humanity because suspect we could poses some intelligence but it is not clear yet.

In Lovecraft the "half-fish guys" (Deep-ones) are actually an enemy faction, and not part of the "Old ones". Although possibly they were also created by the latter.
In Shadow over Innsmouth, the Deep-ones don't seem to have particularly high tech, and are of roughly human-size. Their strength is in numbers (many billions), but I am not sure if that would be enough.

It's good fiction

Might be that very advanced aliens are watching us. But then why do they always manage to have their artifacts photographed with lousy resolutions, impossible to recognize? And they remain impossible to recognize despite the fact that in the last 10 years everyone started carrying a camera around and cameras have increased hugely in resolution.
An advanced tech for messing with cameras? As likely as the Earth being 400 years old and fossils having been planted by god to fools us!

What I think is that living in a godless society is hard. We humans keep wanting something bigger than us to make sense of life. So our modern societies keep replacing the old trappings of religion with new stuff to achieve the same results. Out with the priests, in with the psychologists. Out with the theologians, in with the cosmologists. Out with the crazy sect leaders, in with the ancient aliens guys. And so on.

And this is not such a modern thing. There's premonitions of this already in the ancient world. That which I'm better acquitted with, the ancient Mediterranean, you can find it in the inclination of the stoics and the epicureans (who moved away from traditional religion) to cosmological speculations already. See Lucretius' De Rerum Natura for one example. Still very popular with militant atheists I know!

 

[Terxpahseyton]

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[Broken_Erika]

How do you know aliens weren't at the first thanksgiving?

 

[Gori the Grey]

Myself, I won't be convinced until I see the handbags. I have it on good authority that space aliens have a very distinctive form of handbag.

 

[r16]

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have to link this thread to the spacecadet one where the same exact question has popped up . Will also help me find my like totally cool garbage in the future ... So , what's the Latin for this ? Civis Pacem, Para Bellum? (That one's Turkish translation can be translated back as "lf you want peace, be ready for war")

and of course to support the spacecadet post , this is what the Americans have spent their years and treasury . No , didn't happen for real but one always remembers Dabya telling the French they would just go and fight Gog and Mog , instead of openly saying they would kill all the Arabs in the Middle East , because they were as almost as bad as the Biblical Evil . lnstead of simply saying it would be good business for Haliburton ... Also served neatly to cut the French from the contracts to rebuild lraq , with their surprised faces and stuff taken as proof that they were in love with people who wear towels .

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we have also decided Ginger Sonja will be Scottish . Because why not ? As inventing is free in Alien Biz .

 

[Berzerker]

Again, this doesn't make sense. If you were farming another planet for food, the last thing you want in its inhabitants is intelligence. Humanity has been a menace to world's ecosystems ever since we invented pointed sticks, been polluting this planet for hundreds of years and nearly blew itself and most of the Earth's life out of existence a few times. I don't care what planet you come from, if you find Earth's life edible, microplastics and radioactive isotopes that humanity spread around can't be good spice.

You're venturing into the Flood and Babel stories from the Bible, in both God either destroys or disperses humanity for becoming a nuisance. According to the Sumerians their gods disagreed about making us and what technological advances they'd allow. Maybe this is why peoples all over the world were hesitant about 'modernization' and believed in culture bearers and gods permitting and guiding our development. Plastic and nukes are recent, these aliens made us ~200-300kya.

Sitchin obviously wasn't able, or willing, to check the reality before spouting his...ideas. Caesar was a Roman cognomen in use hundreds of years before it was transformed into a title, and its origin had nothing to do with any planet or timekeeping.

I forgot Kaiser and a few other variants... Sitchin said the Sumerian sar was a calculation of royal time, the divine year - 3600 years. This was the basis for God's biblical decree man's days would end at 120 years. Those are sars, the arrival of the aliens was 432,000 years before the flood sent to destroy man. There is additional evidence from various kings lists showing extraordinarily long reigns in multiples of 3600 years. The etymology of the word didn't begin with the Romans, people across the Mediterranean world understood that for thousands of years before they showed up.

Myself, I won't be convinced until I see the handbags. I have it on good authority that space aliens have a very distinctive form of handbag.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

these aliens made us ~200-300kya.

The anthropologists and archaeologists disagree with this. Yes, there is physical evidence.

This was the basis for God's biblical decree man's days would end at 120 years.

Then I guess Methuselah was in trouble, right?

Those are nothing like the Louis Vuitton handbags in the rock drawing. Would you kindly stop moving the goalposts?

 

[Ajidica]

Then I guess Methuselah was in trouble, right?

I suppose it ain't necessarily so.

Methus'lah lived nine hundred years
Methus'lah lived nine hundred years
But who calls dat livin'
When no gal will give in
To no man what's nine hundred years ?