MickeyNeedlessly Messianic
"They are a good people, Kal-El, they wish to be. It is for that reason- their capacity for good- I am sending them you, my only son..." And Jor-El so loved this world that he sent unto us a Savior, to serve as an example of a someone living up to their higher aspirations. The whole idea of someone with otherworldly powers sent here to saaaaaave meeeeee has been done more than a few times.
In Smallville, much of teen-aged Clark's angst manifests as whining about how his biological father wants him to learn how to use his superpowers to save the world. That, or whining about how he failed to learn from Jor-El's lessons before royally screwing over the planet at the beginning of the current season. While Superman is one of the first not-intentionally-religious versions of an alien messiah, the idea came up before the "My only son" speech in Superman: The Movie.
In 1968, with Star Trek facing cancellation Roddenberry hedged his bet and wrote an episode designed to launch a spin-off. In "Assignment: Earth," the Enterprise crew travels back in time to the 1960s where they meet Gary Seven (Robert Lansing), a human descended from a group that has lived in an extremely advanced society for millennia. Seven and cohorts were sent back to Earth to help save us from destroying ourselves- and of course to enjoy the usual wacky stranger-in-a-strange-land hijinks.
When Star Trek was cancelled and the spinoff didn't happen, Roddenberry re-worked the idea replacing Gary Seven with an android in The Questor Tapes. Questor (Robert Foxworth) turned out to be a product of alien tech, here on the usual save-us-from-ourselves mission. Unfortunately Roddenberry was interested in the character's quest to discover who he is and what he might become, and the network wanted a rip of The Six Million Dollar Man with Questor using his robot strength to jump over buildings and fight crime.
Even after Roddenberry's death his ideas kept being brought to the screen (and ultimately destroyed by "creative" decisions by immensely non-creative people). In Earth: Final Conflict the Taelons brought us advanced tech, a virtual utopia, and eventually a hidden agenda that involved us in their wars with other species. While the series got dumber and less focused each season, at least here the aliens had a reason for 'improving' the human race.
The Raelian cult has seized on the idea that the aliens are here to save us for real. Raelians have borrowed from von Daniken and other sci fi writers to make up their high-tech, alien god. Their god does, in fact, need a starship- one with much better deflectors, since the Raelian gods are afraid to land on a planet as primitive as Earth is now. Raelians are technophiles, believing that alien science and technology will help to produce paradise on Earth. Another good thing about the Raelians is they don't attack others merely for believing a different religion. Of course, it helps that almost every known prophet on Earth was inspired/contacted by the Raelian aliens.
In real life it seems very unlikely that aliens would want to 'save' a primitive, self-destructive species. If said species can't learn to evolve itself and overcome its own self-destructive drives before learning to tap into the real power sources of the universe, best they destroy themselves with a minimum of collateral damage.
In Smallville, much of teen-aged Clark's angst manifests as whining about how his biological father wants him to learn how to use his superpowers to save the world. That, or whining about how he failed to learn from Jor-El's lessons before royally screwing over the planet at the beginning of the current season. While Superman is one of the first not-intentionally-religious versions of an alien messiah, the idea came up before the "My only son" speech in Superman: The Movie.
In 1968, with Star Trek facing cancellation Roddenberry hedged his bet and wrote an episode designed to launch a spin-off. In "Assignment: Earth," the Enterprise crew travels back in time to the 1960s where they meet Gary Seven (Robert Lansing), a human descended from a group that has lived in an extremely advanced society for millennia. Seven and cohorts were sent back to Earth to help save us from destroying ourselves- and of course to enjoy the usual wacky stranger-in-a-strange-land hijinks.
When Star Trek was cancelled and the spinoff didn't happen, Roddenberry re-worked the idea replacing Gary Seven with an android in The Questor Tapes. Questor (Robert Foxworth) turned out to be a product of alien tech, here on the usual save-us-from-ourselves mission. Unfortunately Roddenberry was interested in the character's quest to discover who he is and what he might become, and the network wanted a rip of The Six Million Dollar Man with Questor using his robot strength to jump over buildings and fight crime.
Even after Roddenberry's death his ideas kept being brought to the screen (and ultimately destroyed by "creative" decisions by immensely non-creative people). In Earth: Final Conflict the Taelons brought us advanced tech, a virtual utopia, and eventually a hidden agenda that involved us in their wars with other species. While the series got dumber and less focused each season, at least here the aliens had a reason for 'improving' the human race.
The Raelian cult has seized on the idea that the aliens are here to save us for real. Raelians have borrowed from von Daniken and other sci fi writers to make up their high-tech, alien god. Their god does, in fact, need a starship- one with much better deflectors, since the Raelian gods are afraid to land on a planet as primitive as Earth is now. Raelians are technophiles, believing that alien science and technology will help to produce paradise on Earth. Another good thing about the Raelians is they don't attack others merely for believing a different religion. Of course, it helps that almost every known prophet on Earth was inspired/contacted by the Raelian aliens.
In real life it seems very unlikely that aliens would want to 'save' a primitive, self-destructive species. If said species can't learn to evolve itself and overcome its own self-destructive drives before learning to tap into the real power sources of the universe, best they destroy themselves with a minimum of collateral damage.
