VALDRON'S FIRST LAW - Human Beings and Christmas Trees do not have sex!

This sort of gets my goat a lot. Basically, in movies, including many of the Toho and Daiei Showa Era movies, all too often, the aliens appear to be all too human.

And often indistinguishable from human. We get treated to aliens who not only look like us, they talk like us, they are amorously inclined like us, even to the point of becoming romantically involved with us, and occasionally producing hybrids.

All right, well…fair is fair. It could be that they've just evolved in a similar to us because of parallel evolution.

But let me put the argument forward, that frankly, if it looks human, sounds human, smells human, has sex with humans and reproduces with humans... it's a human.

The reality is that aliens are creatures with whom we share no evolutionary history. We've been evolving for three billion years. They've been evolving for three billion years. We're six billion years of biological development apart.

That's a pretty big gap.

Look at it this way. A Christmas tree is a plant. Plants and animals on Earth diverged only about a billion years ago, so we've been developing separately since then. We're only about two billion years apart. I don't find Christmas trees sexually attractive, and I hope you don't either. We certainly can't reproduce with them.

Crocodiles? We only diverged from a common ancestor with them 250 million years ago. So we're only really 500 million years apart. No one looks at a crocodile and goes, "Hot Mama!" Humans and chimps diverged from a common ancestor as little as five million years ago. We're less than ten million years apart. Chimps are not attractive to humans.

So the notion that we would be lip-locking or attracted to aliens seems pretty remote. It seems pretty remote that they would look anything like us at all.

Now, it's possible that parallel evolution on another world would produce something very much like a human, both physically and psychologically.

But this is a yes and no proposition. There are many instances of parallel evolution on Earth. Both vertebrates and cephalopods have evolved the same kind of camera eye structure. Dolphins (mammals), sharks (fish) and Itchyosaurs (reptiles) have all evolved the same basic body structure, complete with dorsal fin. Bats and pterosaurs evolved the same kind of extended finger structure for wings. In Australia, there are marsupial equivalents or copies of squirrels, moles and cats. The fossil record shows marsupial wolves, tigers, saber-tooth tigers, etc. In short, parallel evolution has produced some remarkable instances of two unrelated animals strongly resembling each other.

But only up to a point. Did you know that parallel evolution's equivalent to a deer turned out to be a kangaroo? Look at the heads and faces, and yes, deer and kangaroos are pretty close... but then it drops away. Meanwhile, anyone can tell the difference between sharks and dolphins. Or if they'd been around, people would have no trouble distinguishing pterosaurs and bats, or Tasmanian wolves from real (placental) wolves.

Parallel evolution generally turns in a very rough equivalent. There's a lot of room for variation in the designs, including the very important differences in starting points and root species. Parallel evolution will never turn a dolphin into a shark or vice versa. Parallel evolution is very good for the big broad stuff, but it almost never gets the fine details.

And with too many of these aliens, such as the Mysterians, the Xians, the Peacelanders, etc., there are too many fine details. I can accept aliens looking something like us, very broadly. Perhaps close enough that in a real dark alley, you might not be able to tell easily.

But a lot of aliens we've seen in the Toho Showa chronicles could pass for human in a restaurant. They've got eyebrows, eyelashes, earlobes, the same sort of teeth, hair on their heads, facial hair, the same proportions of limbs, elbows and knees in the right places, the right number of fingers, fingernails, the same numbers of finger joints, the same ranges of height, females have breasts, etc.

Basically, if an alien has all these fine details which are just like us, that can't be explained by parallel evolution. Instead, the only explanation is that they come from the same stock as us - i.e., they are actually human, or they have been cosmetically modified to pass for human.

Well, we know in some cases, e.g., the Simeons, Nebulans, Natalians and Kilaaks, that they're just passing.

But what about cases like the Xians and the Mysterians? They seem to have no overt reason to disguise themselves, we're seeing them in their space stations or bases at home...but they still look like us. So? What's going on there?

There's more to consider, of course: Sex and Reproduction.
Obviously, humans don't even find Christmas trees attractive, much less crocodiles or chimps. Our capacity for sexual attraction is an evolved one. We have evolved secondary sexual characteristics, like breasts on females, to be attractive to the opposite sex. We have evolved wiring in our brains to be attracted to members of the opposite sex (or sometimes the same sex, but it's still evolutionary wiring). We have visual cues and pheromones that we respond to. We even have biologically and culturally hard-wired into our behavior certain kinds of mating rituals by which people romance each other. This is all so specific that even our closest relatives, the chimps, do nothing at all for us.

We have to assume that genuine aliens have their own primary sexual characteristics, secondary sexual characteristics, pheromones, visual cues, biological and cultural wiring. And that all the details, the fine details, will be different from ours.

So while there might be some possibility of some sort of platonic love, a meeting of the minds along the level of cyber-romances, I don't think that there's much chance of actually developing a real romantic relationship between a human and a non-human alien. But that's exactly what happens between a human and an Xian.

And of course, even if there was romance, there's almost no chance that the sexual anatomy would be at all compatible. Although, perhaps we should leave this aspect of the topic alone.

Moving on to reproduction, it is absolutely impossible that two genetically different species could reproduce. Lions and tigers can reproduce, as can donkeys and horses, and horses and zebras. But these creatures are all extremely closely related. Humans and chimps, or chimps and gorillas are not nearly as closely related and cannot reproduce. Humans and Christmas Trees... no chance.

Yet, humans and Christmas trees are only a couple of billion years apart, we share a lot of basic DNA, including the same complements of amino acids, the same sort of inherited cell structure and biochemistry. Aliens would not have any of that. So, reproduction seems completely impossible.

Except that the Mysterians intend to reproduce with human women. How about that?

The only possible conclusion that we can draw from all of this is that aliens like the Xians and Mysterians must actually be human. There is no other possibility. They are simply too close to human in too many fine details of appearance and anatomy, in terms of sex, in terms of reproduction. This goes far beyond the possibilities of parallel evolution. They have to be human.

For the record, I've developed and applied this argument to the Sebaceans of "Farscape," the humans of "LEXX," the Exar of "Starlost," and many aliens of film and television that we've seen in those mediums over the decades.

But, as always, this leads to another problem. If these aliens are human, then how did they get out there? Or how did we get here? Are we really from outer space? And if we aren't, then how did they manage to get into space without us knowing?

First things first. The overwhelming preponderance of evidence suggests that we are not from outer space. Humans are from Earth.

We can start with the fossil record. Human bones are showing up for a good long time. And before human bones, we have very closely related species, like Neandertal, Homo Erectus, Homo Habilus, Australopithecus, Ramapithecus. So, either we evolved here, or some friendly alien would drop by our planet every few million years and repeatedly seed it with creatures who were going to look very much like our ancestors, millions and millions of years before they got around to putting us here. That doesn't seem very likely.

Also, we seem to be closely related to other animals on Earth. We share 99% of our DNA with the chimpanzee. Are chimpanzees from outer space, too? We and chimps share a lot of DNA with gorillas and orangutans. Are they from space, too? How about monkeys? And of course, all of these creatures have fossil histories. So were aliens planting their ancestors too?

Even beyond our closest cousins, we share skeletal and anatomical features with other mammals. A bat has exactly the same set of bones in its skeleton as we do in ours. They're just arranged differently. So we've got things in common with dogs, horses, elephants, etc. And mammals seem to have overlaps and relationships with reptiles. Reptiles relate to birds and amphibians. Amphibians relate to fish. And they've all got fossil records going back hundreds of millions of years.

So, there's no question. Humanity is from Earth. We just fit way too neatly to be a foreign product dropped in. And frankly, the alternative is a billion years of periodic interventions for no good reason. Nope. We're from here.

And if the alien is human as well, then he/she has to be from here originally. So...how do human aliens get out there?

Broadly speaking, there are only three ways.

1) Some other race of friendly star-traveling aliens must have come across our planet sometime in the last few thousands of years, encountered humans, decided we were a happy useful species, and decided to transplant us on another world, or perhaps several other worlds. This is actually what is acknowledged to have happened in the Farscape Universe, the Stargate Universe, and has been hinted at in at least some cases in the Star Trek Universe [this was indeed the case in the Star Trek Universe, all courtesy of a mysterious race known only as the Preservers-CN]. In other words, we were cavemen hitch-hiking to the stars.

In the Showa Toho Universe, there is no sign of such a friendly alien race. So, without evidence, we'd probably have to rule them out. Interestingly, in the Showa Daiei Universe, there is a powerful and benign friendly alien race, the Paira, who may well have done this.

2) Alternately, we must acknowledge that the human species has been around for at least 100,000 to 1,000,000 years, and advanced ancestors probably a few million years before that. Yet our history of civilization goes back only 10,000 years. So there seems to be some ample room to posit an advanced civilization emerging with enough interplanetary or interstellar capacity to establish colonies in outer space. That civilization obviously fails and disappears. The colonies survive, perhaps forget their origins, and eventually stumble over or come looking for us.

Of course, in our Real Universe, there's no evidence for such a civilization. Oh, there are plenty of legends of things like Atlantis, Lemuria/Mu, and whatnot. And there are even odd anomalies, like ancient sea maps, and megalithic ruins. But the best evidence for a lost prehistoric civilization does not indicate that they got further than 18th century level.

And there's a big absence of evidence that any hypothetical prehistoric civilization ever managed to meet or exceed our level. One thing that our civilization does, and likely any 20th or 21st century level (or better) civilization would do, is that we build our garbage to be indestructible. PCB's, for example, will last hundreds of thousands of years, as will nuclear waste, but even the exotic trace elements for processes used in computers, or special kinds of industrial waste, will be around for a long time. We haven't found any traces of long-term molecules which would be clearly artificial and definite proof of a previous civilization. A hundred thousand years from now, all a future civilization or alien race will have to do is take a core sample of ocean mud, and they'll know we were here because they'll find trace elements and molecules that couldn't have come into existence any other way. We're not finding those traces of anyone before us.

A civilization at our level rearranges the landscape, quarrying out huge piles of rock, building other huge piles, diverting rivers, creating lakes, leveling mountains, pumping out oil wells. Today we can find the traces of Egyptian quarries 5,000 years old. 100,000 years from now all aliens or some future civilization will need will be satellite photos, and they'll be able to spot where we've been messing around. Well, today, satellite photos don't show anyone ever having messed around on our scale.

So, for better or worse, in our 'real' universe, Option 2 seems to be right out. On the other hand, in fictional universes, there are lots of evidence for ancient prehistoric civilizations, including a great many instances where there is direct or indirect evidence that these ancient civilizations may have made it out into space.

There are, in some cases, even a suggestion of a wrinkle. In the TV series "Starlost," set 700 years in the future, there is an encounter with an alien-human society which is most likely the result of a previous interstellar expedition. The lost civilization which gives rise to the human-aliens, in that case, is us.

In the Showa Toho Universe, there are actual remnants, in the form of Seatopia and 20th century Mu, of a lost prehistoric civilization that may well have been advanced enough for space flight.

3) The third option is a sort of 'catch all' category. If aliens, for whatever reason, have not picked up humanity and transplanted them elsewhere, and if we didn't develop a civilization that could get out there on its own...what's left? Well, in the Edgar Rice Burroughs Universe, there are several instances where people like John Carter or Ulysses Paxton simply 'teleport' from one planet to another via psychic means...without even a change of underwear. So...we have to leave the door open for psychic means, or magical or mystical means, dimensional travel, wormholes, flukes, accidents, weird anomalies in space and time, who knows.

VALDRON'S SECOND LAW - Any aggressive civilization sufficiently advanced that it has mastered interstellar travel is going to kick our ass!

Unless, of course, they are really unlucky, or very stupid.

This applies to Chris N's Showa Tohoverse, but it also applies in a much larger sense to good and bad science fiction all around.

The basic principle here is that interstellar travel is a huge undertaking. The technology to build even a sublight interstellar spaceship is currently decades or even centuries beyond our own. There are different options available for sublight, including fast ramjet ships or slow moving space arks. But by and large, such a civilization requires three things:
1) A very high level of technology;
2) A huge industrial base;
3) A lot of wealth and resources.

For a viable interstellar traveler with FTL capacity, we're looking at a civilization with a technology centuries beyond ourselves, and with a technological capacity that is frightening. Technology does not exist in a box. The technology or the level of technology that would enable a generation ship, interstellar ramjet, or warp drive is generally available to be applied to all sorts of other things...like weapons systems.

And here on Earth, we've established that even small differences in weapons systems will make big differences in results. Look at the last two Iraq Wars. Technologically, the US and Iraq were on almost the same level. The difference was as little as ten or fifteen years, or one or two military tech generations. The result was that the Iraqi military ground units got slaughtered.
In the 19th century, the European powers managed to slaughter huge numbers of indigenous troops because of superior firepower...gattling guns, longer range rifles, etc.
In the 18th century, American sharpshooters with superior rifles managed to put paid to British soldiers.
In the 17th century, Conquistadors with horses and armor conquered the Aztec and Inca Empires.
In the 16th century, British longbowmen wiped out the pride of French knighthood at Agincourt.
Do we see a pattern here?

Now, sometimes this was the result of a huge technological gap, a fatal mismatch. Conquistadors with horses, steel, armor and firearms faced off against a Stone Age empire. 10,000 spear-carrying Zulu on an open plain were no match for a handful of British machine guns.

But just as often, the technological gap was fairly narrow. Often it was just a bit of better tech. The French and the English at Agincourt were just about on identical technologies, the English had simply come up with one better weapon, and a better way to use that. The same holds for the American revolutionaries and the British a century or so later. The French and the Germans in WWII were quite close, technologically.

Even a tiny edge makes for big results. Close only counts in horseshoes, and war is a zero sum game. Basically, the 1% better weapon system, is 1% better 100% of the time. Which means that the 1% better weapon wins, and quite often, it wins big.

So, stop and think about it. Given the clear advantages that technology shows us, over and over and over again on Earth, can anyone seriously imagine that the technological advantage of a species advanced enough to travel between stars wouldn't be overwhelming?

Look at the future human civilizations seen in the Star Trek Universe: they have warp drive, force field generators, teleportation, disintegrator beams and artificial gravity. How do you win against something like that?

Our society has to struggle to even get very far out of the atmosphere. We haven't been to the moon in 30 years, and even when we went there, it was a three-day trip. We talk about going to Mars, but that trip would take months [specifically, at the very least 18 months, with our current level of rocket-powered space vessel-CN]. Our space probes are designed for trips of months, years or decades duration across relatively tiny distances.

So assuming that there was a hostile alien race out there...by and large, we can't even touch them. Captain Kirk hardly ever needs to put his shields up. All he has to do is park in a relatively high orbit, and laugh. And if we ever managed to get a missile up in his direction...well, all he has to do is put the shields up, or back off a bit [or blast it into oblivion with a quick phaser beam from his ship-CN].

Technologically, our space travel is in its infancy, and we have no capacity to hit back in the solar system. Even in thirty years time, we probably won't have much capacity in this regard. In the Daiei and Showa Toho Universes, and in certain other fictional universes, there is a fair bit of evidence for Earth's enhanced interplanetary space travel and exploration technology, but even in these universes, the military capacity is fairly restricted from the '50's through at least the '70's [in the Showa Toho Universe, Earth reached the moon and had the capacity to reach the asteroid field between Mars and Jupiter by the year 1965 as seen in the films Battle in Outer Space and Godzilla vs. Monster Zero, respectively, and was able to reach the planet Venus in a period of two months travel by the year 1988, as seen in The War in Space; in the Showa Daiei Universe, Earth had a large, permanent lunar base by the year 1985, as seen in Gamera vs. Zigra--CN].

But there is more to it. Being at the bottom of a gravity well, our world and our civilization is vulnerable. Alien invaders can just orbit out of reach and drop anything they like, destroying our cities at will.

In fact, in Larry Niven's "Footfall" this is exactly what they do. They park out in orbit and drop big rocks on us. The rocks land with the force of nuclear weapons. In the Mirror Universe episode of "Star Trek: TOS," we see that Imperial policy is to simply vaporize cities from orbit.

And that's just basic stuff, rocks and phasers. We can assume that aliens would have a variety of increasingly exotic and deadly weaponry, from atomic, neutron or hydrogen bombs, which we already have, chemical or biological weapons, which we already have, to exotic rail guns, ion guns, charged particle emitters, blasters, disintegrators, anti-matter bombs, you name it. All of which they can safely use on us with impunity. They can stand up in orbit and hit us with anything they want, and we can't really hit back at them up there.

Of course, even the Zulu would win a battle once in a while, if the British were foolish enough to put their machine guns in a swamp or jungle, where the effective firing range of the weapon was the same or less than a thrown spear.

It's possible that if the aliens landed, built ground based facilities, and decided to go mano el mano with our tanks and fighter jets that we'd have a fighting chance.

But then...they'd have to be really stupid to do that, wouldn't they? I mean, if you're an alien commander, why would you bother? Why not just bomb a few capital cities until the planet surrendered, and then let the local governments keep the population in line, or you'd bomb a few more cities? Or, if you really wanted the territory, why not just lay down a few neutron bombs, some poison gas, a biological agent to sterilize the landscape of unwanted humans in a given area, and then park a few defense satellites in orbit to laser any missiles or fighter jets crossing into your space?

There are other things besides technology, of course. There's raw power in terms of energy available to the aliens. But let's face it, if they've got warp drive, gravity control, force fields or ramjets, they've probably got that. If they've managed to travel between the stars, they've probably mastered fusion, or have antimatter, or something even better. And if all else fails, all they have to do in our solar system is unfurl a lot of solar power panels, and they've got all the electricity they'll ever need.

Another way of looking at power is in industrial capacity, for want of a better word. You see, every now and then the Zulu's would win one, just because the British machine gun ran out of bullets. So, conceivably, we might catch a break, if the invading aliens didn't bring along enough ammo or weapons or resources to do the trick. Of course, the problem for the Zulu's was that even if the regular British soldier or colonist might not be able to manufacture or obtain enough bullets...British society could manufacture an infinite number of machine gun bullets. Or at the very least, they could manufacture far more bullets than the Zulu's could produce more Zulu's.

Normally, we would have to assume that a robust society with a manufacturing or industrial capacity capable of producing interstellar, or even interplanetary craft, would by definition have the manufacturing or industrial capacity to produce an infinite number of alien weapons systems. Or, to put it another way, more bullets than we've got Zulu's.

Basically, it all comes down to technology and power. And if you've got a civilization that is crossing interstellar distances, then most of the time, we have to assume it's got plenty of both.

But, we've seen plenty of alien invasion movies in the Showa Universes, in the '50's and '60's movies of the US Sci Fi Retroverse, and even in pulp science fiction, and they don't succeed. So, how do we explain that?

I'm tempted to go straight to bad writing, and call it all a bad job. But, if we take these works at all seriously, perhaps the aliens' failures to conquer tells us a little something about them.

In 'The War of the Worlds,' both the Wells novel, the Wells radio play, and the Pal movie, the aliens are not defeated by humanity, but by bacteria. So, there's one way that aliens can legitimately fail. They were just unlucky.
Nothing to do with us. They were kicking our asses just fine, right up until the end.

In other tales, the aliens are simply stupid. I'm sorry, there's no other way to put it. They're feebs, morons, retards from outer space. They're goofuses, doofuses, incompetents, losers, chuckleheads. The best example are the saurian race from Harry Turtledove's WORLDWAR series of novels. These aliens are so stupid, it apparently took them over 100,000 years to invent the flush toilet. The dwarf elephant creatures from Niven's FOOTFALL are another race of feebs. Meanwhile, Niven's Kzin warriors turn out to be both unlucky and well known for not thinking things through. The worst example would be the alien invaders from SHYAMALAN'S SIGNS, who are water soluble, yet thought it was a good idea to invade a water covered planet, and who apparently didn't bother bringing either pants or weapons with them.

Well, these movies and novels ask us to imagine that space is being traversed by races who could not safely cross a street, who probably invented velcro because they couldn't manage shoelaces.

Well, who knows, maybe they're out there.

But that still doesn't explain most other sets of alien invaders. How about this? It's possible that the effort of getting all the way across interstellar space is so expensive and difficult that they simply do not have the manpower, resources, energy, etc., left to invade. Instead of giant space fleets, all we get is one lousy little ship, with a couple of crewmen.

That's entirely possible. Except, in that case, it's more likely they're not even going to bother to invade or take over. They're much more likely to make contact and try to beg or trade.

And in fact, that's what happened in the original European Ages of Exploration in the 15th and 16th centuries. We sent small ships out across the oceans, with small crews, making contact with societies in Africa, Asia and the America's, and they would beg for food. When they got a little more on the ball, they offered to trade. But no conquest.

So, if we've got some incredibly long range interstellar expedition that is so bare bones that they've barely got any muscle, and they still try the conquest bit...well, we're back to morons from outer space, once again, aren't we?

So here's the thing in the Showa Toho Universe. There are several different sets of alien invasions. But by and large, they don't seem to have all that much power behind them.

Why not?

It strikes me that the only way we can explain their failure to conquer us utterly and immediately, is to consider that there may be less here than meets the eye.

That is, that their technological edge over us, while large, is not as vast as it may appear. In short, they may not truly be an interstellar society. They may be only an interplanetary society. Instead of being centuries beyond us, they may only be decades [albeit many decades-CN].

Also, their power availability/industrial capacity may be a lot more limited than we assume. They may not have the resources, the manufacturing, the industrial ability to fully use their technological edge.

In short, what we may be seeing instead of a planetary society which has mastered interstellar travel is in actuality a much smaller relic or outpost society with far less technology and industrial capacity.

Consider in the Showa Toho Universe, or in the Showa Daiei Universe, that the aliens seem consistently underpowered. Their numbers are invariably small, whether it be Virians, Zigrans, Kilaaks, Simeons, Xians, Mysterians, Natalians, or Nebulans. They have only a few spaceships (comparatively speaking), a small number of weapons. Their tactics are subterfuge and bluff. Often they attempt to gain control of Earth resources or dai kaiju rather than rely on their own strength.

In short, we're not facing the full might of a vast alien civilization, but simply a relatively small and powerless 'outpost' group, or expedition, with very limited resources and abilities.

If we look at American, Mexican and European sci-fi films and television from the '50's and '60's (a group I call the Retroverse), we see the same thing. Essentially, small numbers of spaceships, small numbers of aliens, attempts at subterfuge, bluff and takeover of Earth leaders or resources.

All of which tells us that their civilizations are unaccountably weaker than expected. Less than meets the eye.

VALDRON'S LAW #3 - An Orgy is not a Coincidence

Our history so far has mostly been alien free. I mean, okay, maybe there were a few ancient astronauts. And every now and then some peasant sees a light in the sky. That's fine. But mostly, our ancestors pretty much had things to themselves. Got it?

Now, new topic: Space. Space is very big. Space is really huge. Incredibly gynormous. Space is so big, that if you think of the biggest thing you can imagine, really, that's just the tiniest speck in the infinite expanses of space. Space is so vast and empty, that if you had even the vaguest conception of how large it was, you'd puke.

Okay, the thing is, space is so vast that under normal circumstances, you might expect that one space traveling race wouldn't be running across another intelligent race all that often. It's pretty unlikely. Once in a hundred years? Once in a thousand? Once in ten thousand? It's long, long odds.

Particularly, it's long odds when you are not a space traveling race yourself. In such a case, you're not going out to meet anyone. You're just sitting there, minding your own business, waiting for someone to come along and stumble over you.

So........in the Showa Toho Kaijuverse, what are the odds of as many as ten separate alien races stumbling over Earth in a single narrow forty year span of time, particularly when there hasn't been much tangible signs in the preceding 10,000 years of our history?

Does anyone want to sit down and take a guess? Figure it out?

If we look to the Showa Daiei Kaijuverse, we've got at least five separate alien encounters within that time period.

What are the odds on that? If the two Kaijuverses are connected, what are the odds then?

And of course, if we look to the body of American/European/Mexican sci-fi films and television of the '50's and '60's (the Retroverse Era), we've got collectively dozens of apparently different alien races stumbling over Earth at around the same time.

What are the odds there?

I'm thinking pretty damned astronomical in all cases.

Coincidence?

Okay, now, try this little fact on for size: most or many of the races in the Toho Showa Kaijuverse appear to be human or human-derived. Most or many of the races in the Retroverse appear to be human or human-derived.

How about that. What are the odds that we would be visited by a human race? Or by multiple human races? Or by multiple human races within an impossibly tiny time frame? Or by multiple human races employing roughly the same technology, tactics and goals?

Coincidence?

I don't think so.

Okay, but if we reject the possibility of astronomical coincidence, then what are we left with?

The only possible conclusion is that these alien races in each of the aforementioned alternate universes, must be connected somehow.

There are different possibilities.

One, which I've argued for the Retroverse, is that what we may be seeing is smoke and mirrors. In the US/Mexican and European sci-fi films of the '50's, there are not a multitude of alien races, but rather merely one or a small number, who keep changing their hats, pretending to be different races for their own purposes in order to confuse us Earthlings.

Or it may mean that some or most of these alien races have a common origin, giving them a shared history, culture, technology, communication and rough location. This would explain why so many seem to have about the same level of technology and weapons, the same sorts of spacecraft, the same goals. It may even explain, if they're coming from the same region of space, why they all seem to be arriving at roughly the same time.

Their close arrival on each others' heals might also be explained if they're in communication with each other. In the Showa Toho Kaijuverse, there is actually direct and indirect evidence for that communication. Several alien races use King Ghidorah and Gigan against the Earth, which suggests that there is some sort of communication or contact through these monsters. In one movie, Godzilla vs. Megalon, it's clear that the Seatopian civilization is in communication with the Nebulan aliens to obtain Gigan's services.

Even in the Daiei Showa Kaijuverse, there are several overlaps that suggest a level of connectedness. Three alien races, the Paira, Zigra and Viras show strange overlaps with each other. Meanwhile, the Paira (in Warning from Space) and Terans (in Gamera vs. Guiron) both claim that their home is on the opposite side of our sun.

But if we assume that our various alien races are connected at some level, then we can use the evidence of their various appearances in movies, coupled with logical deduction, to deduce a great deal about them, and formulate working theories.

SHOWA TOHO ALIENS

So...where are we with this bunch? Let's recap. 1) Several of them are human or human-derived, no ifs ands or butts. They look human, talk human, romance and reproduce with humans and have all too many fine details. 2) As humans, they are from Earth. This applies, at least, to the clearly human (as opposed to the entities that appear to have been created via genetic engineering, such as the Natalians, simian Simeons, Kilaaks, and possibly the green-skinned Venerians and their beast man servants).

3) The aliens, humans and non-humans, are all connected in some way. Most likely by a common origin, and share communication, technology, weapons and transportation, and goals.

4) A prehistoric human civilization, whose relics on Earth are the 20th century Muan kingdom and Seatopia, is the most likely common connection. This civilization mastered space travel, established colonies, and either colonized or created the non-human aliens, before collapsing on Earth.

5) The fact that all of these aliens, human and non-human alike, are showing up at roughly the same time, suggests that they are all in roughly the same general area of space. The closer they are to each other and to us, the more likely they are to show up in the same broad time frame. The farther apart from each other and us, the less likely. If in interstellar space, they would probably be spread out over an incredible volume. More likely, they are relatively confined, most likely within our own solar system.

6) The relative poverty of their attempts to conquer, the small number of aliens, the few ships, the limited weapons, the reliance on subterfuge, bluffing and taking over Earth resources or weapons, suggests that their societies are relatively puny.

7) Based on 6, we can either assume that they are handicapped by traveling vast distances, which does not seem wholly consistent with 5 or with the timing of their arrival, or that they are much closer, but actually far weaker and smaller than we might originally assume.

8) If they are interstellar level societies, even tightly grouped together in space, they should still be overwhelming. If they are within our solar system, then even at interplanetary technology levels, they are still relatively small and weak.

The hypothesis, based on the above eight points, is that the Showa Toho Aliens are surviving colonies of a past civilization, occupying marginal inhospitable worlds with limited resources, supporting limited populations and probably ancient 'hand me down' technology. Limitations on resources and technology have made what should normally be an easy conquest, difficult.

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