What with wars, destroying the environment, and general
imbecility, humanity is constantly getting itself into trouble. More than a few
kindly aliens have come to Earth trying to help us change our ways, and for
the most part, we’ve tried to kill them. Here are a dozen aliens that, directly or
indirectly, tried to save us from danger… which was most often ourselves.
1) Klaatu, The Day the Earth Stood Still
Perhaps the most iconic of all space messiahs, Klaatu was an
alien who came down to Earth in the 1951 movie The Day the Earth Stood Still.
He came with a message of peace, a warning, and a gift for the president. A
nervous soldier shot him, which led to him being held under guard by the
military, which led to him escaping and living secretly among Earthlings for a
bit, which leads to him getting shot by the military. The giant robot Gort
resurrects Klaatu — space messiahs love their resurrection, as you’ll see — in
order to give humanity this message: If you spread your violence into space,
you will be destroyed. And thus Klaatu sacrificed himself In order to at least
give us a chance to save ourselves.
2) Valentine Michael
Smith, Stranger in a Strange Land
Valentine Michael Smith isn’t an alien, but he was raised by
them. The first human child born on Mars, he was also the sole survivor, and
taken in by the native Martians, who taught him their own psychic powers. A new
mission eventually comes to Mars and brings Smith back to Earth, where he’s
bewildered by pretty much everything about humanity, including religion. After
dabbling in several, including the all-sin-all-the-time Fosterite Church, he
eventually founds the Church of All Worlds, which is kind of like an esoteric
Buddhism with more emphasis on fucking, and he’s eventually killed for this
blasphemy by the Fosterites. Oh, and then he speaks from the afterlife a bit,
thus basically co-opting the Fosterite church into his own.
3) Kaworu Nagisa, Evangelion
Although he looks like a 14-year-old human boy and appears
to be a regular EVA Unit pilot, he’s actually an Angel, one of the mysterious
beings — from space — that keep getting sent to down to seemingly destroy
humanity. Kaworu does befriend the mopey main character and fellow Evangelion
pilot Shinji, however, which kind of backfires when Kaworu reveals that he’s an
Angel, tries to find the body of Adam (as in Adam and Eve — seriously, just
roll with it), and Shinji catches him and is forced to pulp him using the
Evangelion’s giant robot hands. However, Kaworu let himself be caught by Shinji,
and by letting himself be destroyed, did effectively save the world from the
threat he posed. Of course, the world still ended a few days later, but it’s
the thought that counts.
4) Superman
Now, when you think of Space Messiahs, Superman probably
doesn’t make the list. He’s a superhero, sure, but does punching bad guys
really make one Jesus? Well, consider the evidence. He certainly comes from
space, and he certainly spends most of his time saving humanity and the planet,
over and over again. He even sacrificed himself to save the world from
Doomsday, dying in the process (and coming back with a mullet, but enough about
that). And, while he hasn’t inspired any religion in the current-day DC
universe, all peeks into the DCU’s future reveals that Superman’s heroics have
not just inspired future superheroes, but perhaps all of humanities. He may not
have a regular church service with worship, but Superman’s example is one
almost every DC superhero of the future tries to emulate.
5) The Blood Beast, Night of the Blood Beast
Okay, you might be wondering how a creature called the Blood
Beast makes it on a list of space messiahs. Well, the Blood Beast comes to
Earth hitching a ride on a rocketship, and offers his people’s help in
advancing Earth’s technology, science, and all that good stuff, and warning
them of the danger of nuclear weapons, with which his own people annihilated
themselves. Unfortunately, to get to this point, the Blood Beasts impregnated
the male pilot of the rocketship with Blood Beasts babies and beheaded a
scientist in order to learn English, so the humans he’s trying to convince
decide better safe than sorry, and pelt it with Molotov cocktails.
6) The Doctor, Doctor Who
He comes from space, he saved a bajillion times, and he
sacrifices himself constantly — sometimes for the world, sometimes for the
universe sometimes just for pals — but has a built in safety mechanism to
regenerate, so he can keep sacrificing himself repeatedly. But the Doctor never
got more Space Messiah-y than at the end of nu-Doctor Who’s third season, when
the Master turned him into Dobby the House Elf, and Martha Jones has to spend a
year in the Master’s dystopia telling everyone on the planet to think really
hard about the Doctor on a certain day at a certain time, which somehow gives
the Doctor all his powers and good looks back. No one on Earth remembers this
cult of the Doctor, except the poor viewers who are still shocked at how
ridiculous it was (even for a show about a madman with a flying, time-traveling
box).
7) Winston Niles
Rumfoord, The Sirens of Titan
Unlike most of the entries on this list, Winston Niles
Rumfoord is a human, a rich man that that decided to explore space on his own,
but ended up caught in a “chrono-synclastic infundibulum”on the way to Mars; this essentially unstuck him in time,
allowing him to appear on Earth, Mars, Saturn’s moon Titan, and even
Betelguese, while seeing the past, present and future simultaneously. Along
with an alien Tralfamadorian who crash-landed on Titan eons ago, Rumfoord
devises an elaborate plan to save humanity which includes his own wife, a rich
bastard named Malachai Constant, a Martian invasion he instigated that was
intended to be annihilated from the start, and a new religion called the
“Church of God the Utterly Indifferent.” Unfortunately, all this was merely a
plot by the Tralfamadorian who was manipulating events to get a single piece to
repair his spaceship, but Rumfoord’s intentions were good.
8) Goku, Dragonball Z
Just like Superman, Goku came to Earth as a baby, grew up
thinking he was a human, discovered he had incredible powers, and used them to
protect his new home planet time and time again. He also sacrificed himself,
dying at least a couple of times, in order to save the planet from the various
super-powered bad guys looking to destroy it. Sure, he concentrated on saving
humanity physically and not spiritually —he is, to be sure, kind of a moron —
but we’ll give him an E for Space Messiah Effort.
9) Leeloo, The Fifth Element
Technically, when Leeloo came to Earth in Luc Besson’s 1997
film, she was just the Fifth Element, who crash-landed her on an alien ship.
Scientists turned this element into the underdressed woman named Leeloo, who escaped into New New York, met cabbie Bruce Willias, and ran around the
galaxy trying to find the other four elements in order to keep the Earth from
being swallowed by the Great Evil. Eventually they find ’em, come back to Earth
and assemble ’em, although she kind of stalls until Bruce Willis kisses her.
Really, her messiah-ness stems from the vaguely spiritual mumbo-jumbo accompanying
the five elements, which is somewhat diminished by the fact that she celebrates
saving the world by fucking Bruce Willis in a temple. Hey, I didn’t say they
were all good space messiahs.
10) Thomas Jerome
Newton, The Man Who Fell to Earth
Thomas Jerome Netwon is a unique case among space messiahs;
he actually came to Earth to save his native Mars, by amassing enough wealth to
finance a spaceship to take badly needed water to his family, who may be the
sole Martians surviving. But the Martian technology he “created” as Netwon to
make money certainly benefitted humanity, even if it wasn’t his primary goal.
Alas, Newton succumbs to human vices such as booze and sex, and is eventually
captured by the government just before he can complete his mission, where he
basically gives up everything. Thomas Jerome Netown comes to Earth to be a
savior, but instead Earth makes him sacrifice everything about himself,
leaving him with one thing — humanity. And as it turns out, it’s a pretty
shitty gift.
11) Jesus, Prometheus
If Jesus came from outer space, then by definition he would
be a Space messiah, correct? That’s what a major storyline in the early drafts
of the Alien quasi-prequel Prometheus was going to be about, and the final
version of the movie still doesn’t make much sense without it. We know an
Engineer created life on Earth by drinking the black goop. And we know the black
goop can either create good life — like when the Engineer drinks it at the
beginning — or super-deadly life, when it’s ingested by those who are angry or
evil or whatever. Now, the movie says something 2,000 years ago got the
Engineers so upset that the black goo reacted to their negative emotion, turned
into Xenomorphs, and killed them. The theory is that the Engineers saw their
creation, humanity, was running wild and
killing each other, and they sent a babysitter to calm everybody down.
And then humanity killed the babysitter, which is another reason why the
Engineer is so grumpy with humans once the Prometheus crew wake him up. Now,
this may all just sound like a coincidence, until you read interviews with
Ridley Scott who says, without any ambiguity, “Yeah.
The reason the Engineers don’t like us any more is that they made us a Space
Jesus, and we broke him.” So… yeah.
12) E.T., the Extra-Terrestrial
The parallels between E.T. and Jesus cannot be denied. Sure,
E.T. came from space and Jesus was born of a virgin in a manger, but after
that, they both were clearly loving and gentle-hearted, they both performed a
lot of miracles, they both died and came back, and they both loved the shit out of Reese’s Pieces. Hell, E.T. even swiped God’s pointing move from
Michelangelo’s The Creation of Adam painting. While Jesus started a worldwide
religion based on his radical interpretation of Judaism designed to bring us
closer to God, E.T. perhaps gave us the greatest gift of all — he took his
horrible little anthropomorphic nutsack body and got the hell off our planet.
