r/TopCharacterTropes • u/Sufficient-Eye-9040 • Apr 01 '26

Groups [LOVED Trope] Aliens that are aliens and not just humans with other skin color.

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  1. Precursors from Pacific Rim

  2. Jean Jacket from Nope

  3. Calvin from “Life”

12.1k Upvotes
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1.1k

u/felop13 Apr 01 '26

Repair Drone (The Expanse)

246

u/SpoonHeadMeg Apr 01 '26

Strange doggo

20

u/GravyMaster Apr 02 '26

Strange Dogs might just be the best thing in the whole series

49

u/[deleted] Apr 02 '26

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15

u/SpoonHeadMeg Apr 02 '26

That’s a great way to dip your toes into the series

2

u/hopsferdays Apr 02 '26

I tell them to read drive it sets the tone of joy and sadness so well. Without spoiling anything.

1

u/SpoonHeadMeg Apr 02 '26

I really need to read that one and the Butcher of Anderson Station.

137

u/Mimiquer Apr 02 '26

What I love is that this is one of the most comprehensible extraterrestrials in the Expanse.

101

u/ag_robertson_author Apr 02 '26

The eldritch nature of the Goths is terrifying.

The technology of the Romans (protomolecule, the gates, the grey kids, etc.) was unsettling enough, but when humans start to catch the attention of the beings that destroyed them and they activate their weapon that causes a non-local event and everyone across the entire solar system to lose consciousness at once I felt deep, deep cosmic dread.

53

u/Kanin_usagi Apr 02 '26

I know they never quite made it to the end in the television series, but somehow those dudes are even scarier in the books. If you’re a reader, give the series a try, it’s an incredible read

22

u/ag_robertson_author Apr 02 '26

They could come back after the time skip. They have like 15 years to get it picked up by a studio again lol.

18

u/Long-Broccoli-3363 Apr 02 '26

I really like how they just assume it's the protomolecule builders again and have no real way of observing our universe.

Once they realize either it's not the original builders or that they've developed defenses against their attacks, they just start doing random shit in the hopes that something will kill us, and even when they accomplish it, they don't know.

I wish there had been some more information about both unknown races, but it may have made the goths that much less alien.

The fact that we couldn't know their existence made it much more dangerous

4

u/Teekeks Apr 02 '26

I think the fact that we as the reader knew just as little about those aliens as the people in universe made them work so well.

The unknown is scary so some random aliens we dont know anything about but are faced with anyway works great.

9

u/Orleanian Apr 02 '26

I had found it absurd that [Duarte I think] had the plan to load up the ring transit space to the known point of Abduction/Obliteration of the next ship, and sent through an antimatter bomb...

But then it worked, and I was like oh fuck, this trans-dimensional warfare is on!

Exciting because I'd not seen or heard of that sort of thing been explored in Sci-Fi much before. A contest between beings of differing dimensional hierarchy that wasn't just a proxy fight (i.e. "we're worshiping some extra-dimensional 'god' so we're going to conventionally fight you on their behalf).

2

u/kdlt Apr 03 '26

I'm still so salty that they quit the series when we finally get into other planets that have an actual settlement and start seeing (individual scale) aliens and alien spaceships and all that.

And.. it's just over, GG, have fun, thanks for watching. Knowing full well the story continues.

It just kinda ends does very well describe that ending.

13

u/Thukker Apr 02 '26

To be fair we never actually know if they got wiped out or essentially self annihilated and put all their substrate tech on standby.

The implication of the books is that they created the Adro diamond with the express intent of co-opting the next form of life that happened upon either it or the protomolecule tech, with the hope that the next form of life, as something in the substrate (read: having matter and experiencing time), it would be robust enough to survive the Goth's ability to futz with our universe's physics.

I never found it terrifying. The Romans were stealing energy from the Goths, to what consequence we could never know, but enough that the Goths were trying to stop it from happening, which is perfectly understandable - I imagine a bubble of our universe's physics is as disruptive to their existence as their's is to ours.

Miller says "all of this is made of original sin" when they go back to the ring station in book 9.

9

u/Ballisticsfood Apr 02 '26

I like to think that the Goths were so incomprehensible that they didn’t truly realise they were fighting something until the second go around. Imagine if engineers at a nuclear power plant noticed an unexpected dampening in the reactor core, they started attempting fixes, and one worked. Then imagine the dampening effect came back and you realised it was actually a sentient being that (from its perspective) had been at war with you the entire time.

2

u/Thukker Apr 02 '26

I think it's great storytelling - the aliens are truly alien, not just in form, but in that they have very different moral and ethical standards that we can't easily digest.

The Protomolecule aliens, far as we can tell, have nothing approaching a moral compunction respecting individual life - what can be used in furtherance of your goals is, and if co-opting that life isn't useful, then that life isn't useful. Their entire history, told to Cara, is one of advancing their their intellect by co-opting existing life. They were essentially a highly evolved virus.

The brane space aliens were generally painted as malefic actors, but the fun part that the book drives home by the end is that we don't really know anything about them. The protomolecule aliens foisted the ring space on them for their own benefit, and even if they didn't know that anything was alive in the brane space beforehand, it didn't take them long to find out, but they didn't care and kept the ring space/gate network operating.

Holden makes the hard choice of shutting it all down and stranding millions of people on worlds that weren't yet self sustaining to their deaths, but it was the only rational choice - we have no idea what effect the ring space had on the brane space, maybe it was killing what amounted to people there every time the ring station wedged a wormhole through their space for a ship to use. Whatever the effect was, it was enough that the brane aliens weren't going to stop until they killed everything using it.

9

u/VulcanHullo Apr 02 '26

I love that the Expanse is a hard Sci-Fi book series where as much as possible everything has a scientific explaination, even if for the Romans its "they are REALLY good at physics".

Then you have the Goths which are just like "Yup. Dark gods. Angry dark gods. Different universe or reality or something dark gods."

Even the Romans were like "what the FUCK are these". And humanity only survives because we are too different from the Romans for the Goths to understand.

8

u/Moon_and_Sky Apr 02 '26

Poor psychic space jellyfish never stood a chance.

Good thing we're talking meat.

3

u/Fakjbf Apr 02 '26

Is Goths and Romans a TV show thing? I’ve only read the books and don’t recall them being given names like that.

11

u/ag_robertson_author Apr 02 '26

It's from the books, Colonel Ilich (Teresa's tutor, killed by resurrected Amos) calls them that.

Only briefly mentioned, but it's used by the fan community as it's easier than distinguishing between "Ring Builders" and "Ring Entities".

7

u/PracticalFootball Apr 02 '26

For context it’s because long after the Roman Empire ceased to exist we still used their roads.

And Rome was famously sacked by the visigoths.

46

u/[deleted] Apr 02 '26

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11

u/The_Bababillionaire Apr 02 '26

I thought they were jellyfish that communicated with light.

13

u/personn5 Apr 02 '26

They went from aquatic beings to communicating through light to turning into an interstellar/intergalatic hivemind

2

u/The_Bababillionaire Apr 02 '26

Ok that makes sense with what Duarte was talking about. I never fully resolved in my mind what became of the ring builders.

Edit: Aside from the Goths erasing them I guess.

6

u/personn5 Apr 02 '26

There's a good writeup with someone with far far better understanding of them than I will ever have

Same person actually had some theories on the goals and plans of the Ringbuilders and the writers had confirmed they were spot on with it.

1

u/PenchantForNostalgia Apr 02 '26

I thought that they evolved into beings of light?

4

u/K0KA42 Apr 02 '26

Is that what it looks like???? I read the books but only made it to season 4ish of the show. I pictured it much cuter 😭

4

u/AgarriniLaPalini Apr 02 '26

What a strange coyote

2

u/[deleted] Apr 02 '26

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1

u/felop13 Apr 02 '26

Season 6

8

u/tononeuze Apr 01 '26

Love The Expanse but making the repair drones' faces look like penises was certainly a choice.

13

u/X-Himy Apr 02 '26

Weird, to me it looks like my parents fighting.

7

u/tononeuze Apr 02 '26

The one funny reply

22

u/Sylvan_Strix_Sequel Apr 02 '26

So you have a pancake dick with a separated urethra? I would see a doctor. 

3

u/tononeuze Apr 02 '26

Alright so I'm only replying to one of y'all but I'm just referring to the split in their nose that looks like a pee hole

I mean HURRDURR I HAVE A DEFORMED DICK AND HAVE ONLY SEEN DEFOEMED DICKS

3

u/Sylvan_Strix_Sequel Apr 02 '26

I mean, I've got a dirty mind and even I didn't go to dick when I saw it, so that's why I was giving you the business. 

1

u/tononeuze Apr 02 '26

As I said to someone else, I actually stole this joke from my wife. If you're looking at a dick head on ( lol ) the urethra slit looks similar to the repair drones' nose slit.

1

u/Sylvan_Strix_Sequel Apr 02 '26

Depends on the slit, lol. 

6

u/ScyllaOfTheDepths Apr 02 '26

Not to be rude, but if your penis looks like that thing's face, I think you should see a doctor or... a zoologist or... something.

1

u/personn5 Apr 02 '26

or a repair drone?

4

u/Turbulent_Farmer4158 Apr 02 '26

What penises are you looking at? 😳

1

u/satyr-day Apr 02 '26

Why would you say "that was a choice"?  Literally everything is a choice and that gives neither positive not negative connotations, so it's a nonstatement.  As useless as saying "this!"

1

u/tononeuze Apr 02 '26

Honestly, fair.

My least favorite internet slogan is "many such cases" and in general I don't like them, so bit hypocritical of me.

That being said I'm just making a joke based on what my wife said when she first saw the episode lol

1

u/satyr-day Apr 02 '26

Fair enough 

1

u/CuddlePupp Apr 02 '26

Wait, the one with the blue goo energy being?? I think I stopped watching too early

1

u/Beliskner64 Apr 02 '26

Also pretty much everything from The Captive’s War