Things THEY Don't Want You To Know: The Best-Looking Science Fiction Alien Chick.

It's Friday, and I get to spend a lot of the day driving, which I love because it means I get paid to listen to sports talk and my iPod, and it's kind-of-almost-spring here because it hit 39 degrees yesterday, so I'm going to give in and just throw out some cheesecake here. But I have to, as usual, overanalyze it because if I just post pictures of women and say they're good looking, Sweetie thinks I'm looking at them and I think they're pretty.

But if I post pictures of women and explain that they are aliens and that I'm only rating them for how they look as alien chicks as part of a scholarly analysis on aliens in science fiction, then Sweetie will...well, she'll still think I'm looking at them and I think they're pretty, but she'll also think I'm a terrible liar. Like the time I tried to convince her that I liked Xena for the storylines and not for this scene:

Which, Sweetie, is here just to explain that anecdote and not for any other reason.

Aliens were not always "hot chicks," as any science fiction fan can tell you. Aliens, when they first came out in public, were machines with tentacles:

Or robots:

But around the 1960s, two things happened. First, science fiction got televised, which meant low budgets for aliens, resulting in this:

That is, aliens began looking a little more human, because it was cheaper to put them in blue jumpsuits and a prosthetic head than to have them be slimy and tentacled. (Although even Sigmund the Sea Monster looked a little scarier than that Lost In Space guy, above.)

And the second thing was that sci-fi producers realized that sci-fi lovers were primarily geeky guys reading comics, and that our televisions was really the closest we'd get to hot chicks, and that we'd watch simply for the hot chicks, resulting in this:

And as a result of making aliens simply hot chicks, Star Trek achieved legendary status.

That re-birth of sci-fi caused some difficult times for us geeks for whom a shot at love lay only in the stars, since girls in my high school didn't like fat guys with glasses -- but aliens would because they'd like intellect -- because the re-birth of sci-fi had George Lucas messing with what had become a good thing and replacing hot chick aliens with aliens that, while they might like me, I wouldn't want to mess with them in any sense of that word:

And that kept up for a long time, what with E.T. and the Star Trek movies putting big budgets and special effects back into the mix. But luckily, sci-fi returned to TV, with its low budgets and resultant "aliens." First came "Firefly," which had no aliens at all, so far as I could tell... and then came the only remake I've ever truly embraced: "Battlestar Galactica," the new series.

Now, let me say that the chicks on Battlestar were not the only reason I liked it. I watched the remake-miniseries and really liked it a lot because I loved Battlestar as a kid and this new one had all the same ideas but wasn't cheesy and also had realistic space action. In fact, when the miniseries came out, I was critical of it because Cylons are supposed to look like this:

But on the series, they cheaped out and had Cylons looking just like humans. Which I didn't embrace, immediately, because I did not give any thought to the, um, creative possibilities that could result when our sworn enemies look just like us...

... yes. Creativity! Way to go, creativity!

So Battlestar Galactica has come back to where sci-fi should be, which is taking ideas about our culture, wrapping them in a futuristic patina, and making us think about our own lives through the lens of the future.

Yes, the lens of the future. Culture. Where was I? Oh, yeah-- sci-fi has lots to teach us, blah, blah, blah. Battlestar also has learned from the mistakes of the past and has prominently featured hot chick aliens trying to destroy humanity, two of whom are the [SPOILER ALERT] last two pictures here -- Tricia Helfer and Grace Park.

But they are not The Best Looking Science Fiction Alien Chick. While they are eye pleasing and are also pretty good at being aliens and making me... think... about the future... they are not The Best Looking Science Fiction Alien Chick because the winner in this category has vaulted from that alternate universe in the past right into the future. She's gone from nearly making out with Gabrielle in that hot tub to controlling the race of evil robots that is trying to kill humans and also she's trying to discover who the missing Cylons are and there's some mystical stuff about God. That's right: Lucy Lawless, who is only the Number Three cylon on the show, is The Best Looking Science Fiction Alien Chick.