We Need More Dumb Aliens In Sci-Fi

As far as we know, humans are the most intelligent life form in the known universe. But if you look around on planet Earth, it’s full of idiots. As the president of the North American Chapter of Earthbound Idiots, I find it hard to believe that any other “intelligent” species out there has evolved to the point where every single extra-terrestrial being is on the honor roll.

It could be that only the most advanced representatives of an alien species are trying to take over our planet, and that they leave their dumb alien cohorts behind on their home planet, but without sci-fi fully exploring this notion, your guess is as good as mine. Sometimes the best innovations come from C students because they’re thinking outside the box, but until I see a dumb alien come crashing down through our atmosphere, I can only assume they’re stuck with a manual-labor job on Rigel VII.

Even Kang and Kodos from The Simpsons know to douse Homer with rum after abducting him so nobody believes his story, so I can’t even call them dumb aliens.

While one could argue that there are already plenty of dumb aliens in sci-fi, I’m going to have to respectfully disagree. Star Trek’s Pakleds seem to be the exception rather than the rule when it comes to dumb aliens. Sure, they seemingly have the mental capacity of your common 3-year-old, but they’re still intelligent enough to cobble together pieces of existing advanced technology for their own needs.

Linguistic limitations aside, Pakleds still boast a healthy amount of practical knowledge, intuition, and survival instincts that allow their species to survive. So are they dumb, or just lazy?

You can similarly assess the Na’vi from Avatar as a lesser-developed species. But just because they’re not advanced on a technological level, it doesn’t mean that they’re not emotionally intelligent, or incapable capable of living a harmonious life that has a clear natural order that they adhere to. The Na’vi aren’t dumb aliens, they’re just a primitive species who have a different value system that seems to work for them.

The dumb aliens that I’m looking for need to be egregiously stupid yet aggressively confident in a way that embodies the Dunning-Kruger effect like we’ve never seen before. I want to see a group of intergalactic marauders bust through our atmosphere in a trash-can that’s been retrofitted with found technology that they have limited understanding of, but still think they can overthrow world governments despite their profound lack of emotional, practical, and intellectual intelligence.

I guess we have the Garbage Pail Kids, but I don’t think anybody’s going to fault me for not considering an intellectual property made popular by Topps Chewing Gum to be canon. But still, these little mucus-dripping marketing menaces are self-aware in the sense that they know they’re not too bright and only exist to plug Pepsi in their movie.

I understand why creators shy away from the concept of dumb aliens, but I think we’re missing out on some untapped potential for science fiction properties to explore. Where’s the group of time-traveling renegades who find themselves stranded on a tropical planet, a la Gilligan’s Island, who could get back to their home planet if only they knew how to build a flux capacitor into a coconut? Meanwhile, the leader of the group is preoccupied with hunting wild space-boar, but doesn’t know how to use a soldering iron, rendering his blaster useless.

Prometheus and Bob almost gets us there, but the former character is actually intelligent and stuck trying to teach a human caveman how to use sophisticated technology.

While the idea of dumb aliens has been toyed with, I’ve yet to see a ramshackle affair of an Earth invasion led by underdeveloped Predators. Even the Xenomorphs, who probably don’t understand basic mathematics, have problem-solving skills that allow them to propagate their species and operate machinery at a basic level. Until I see an adaptation of War of the Worlds where the aliens give up on their mission because they’d rather watch reality TV, I’ll just keep watching re-runs of 3rd Rock From the Sun.