Aliens in the House - Resident Alien and The Humans

[Antonio Montagnha, Ed. D.]

This is a two for one review. I'll be looking at the excellent Syfy television show Resident Alien, and Matt Haig's novel The Humans. The two works share a great deal of initial setup as they feature protagonists who are aliens, the kind from outer space, who are masquerading as humans, and both are on a mission to either kill the entirety of humanity or limit our knowledge and a way to render us harmless to the rest of the galaxy. There are even some similar character elements between the protagonist other than their aliens, but the works to stand on their own and both have a great deal to offer.

Resident alien, based on a graphic novel/comic book series that began in 2012 is a television show starring the incredible character actor Alan Tudyk (Rogue One, Firefly, Dodgeball) that began in January 2021. The premise of the show is an extremely advanced species decides humanity is too dangerous and stupid to continue their existence and so in a preemptive move to guarantee their own safety they decided to take out humanity by spreading what appears to be some sort of energy weapon or biological weapon. In the first moments of the pilot episode the alien operative sent to complete the mission crash lands on earth near a small Colorado town where he is able to enter into an isolated lakeside home of a wealthy local doctor where he kills the doctor and shape shifts into his form, hiding the body in his freezer.

The show is darkly funny, for example the alien assuming the name of his victim Harry, learns English and basic human interaction from watching the never-ending reruns of Law and Order. You can guess how well that goes. Fake Harry discovers his victim was the town doctor and so he must now be. This also leads to a great deal of tension and humor as our alien Harry can barely disguise his utter contempt for the general idiocy of humanity. The only person he tolerates initially is medical assistant Asta, a Native American (actually played by a Native American actress). He is a brilliant doctor due to his specie's high level of intelligence and ability to quickly ingest information in a practical way, and quickly becomes valuable to the town where people like him and appreciate him despite his utter contempt for them. This changes Harry as he becomes closer and closer first to Asta and then to his neighbors in general and begins to have a serious moral dilemma about eradicating the human race. I cannot recommend the show more due to the high quality of the actors, the writing, and the overall tone of the show.

As a minor note of trivia, and for me a satisfying one, one of the lead executive producers of the show is Robert Duncan McNeill, a.k.a. Tom Paris from Star Trek Voyager.

In his novel The Humans, Matt Haig introduces us to a somewhat similar alien who adopts the name of his human doppelgänger "Andrew" after operatives from his species strip mine his brain for a modicum of personal details and kill him in the process. In this story advanced aliens have been monitoring earth for a very long time and have discovered that a particularly brilliant human, the aforementioned Andrew, a brilliant mathematician at Cambridge University, has solved one of mathematics most difficult and persistent problems dealing with the pattern of prime numbers. The solution will unlock the universe for humanity in a way that these advanced aliens, called The Host, do not believe we are ready for and may never be ready for. We are labeled as violent and greedy and actively engaged and destroying our own planet. We are not seen as trustworthy enough to be allowed into the greater cosmos, and so our protagonist has been sent to destroy all evidence of the discovery and clouding killing anyone the original Andrew has told about this discovery.

Much like Resident Alien we are introduced to this protagonist with the knowledge that he has participated in the murder of a human and has been assigned to murder still more, to serve what is presented as a greater good. However, to do this Andrew has to fully submerge himself into the life, family, and friends of the person he's imitating. It's here he discovers that humans are about more than violence and greed and that we are violent and greedy we have the potential for more.

This story relies less on cool gadgets and science fiction innovations and more on discovering the nature of humanity from an outside perspective. It also relies heavily on fish out of water humor, and as an opportunity to comment on some of the more ridiculous elements of our society especially western society. It is a common strength of science-fiction that it uses either unfamiliar settings or outside context characters to point out the foibles shortcomings and simply arbitrary elements of human culture that too many of us treat as sacrosanct or somehow objectively justifiable.

This novel was far more of an emotional impact for me than the television show resident alien, but then again, I believe that was at point. The author began writing this novel in the early 2000s despite its publication in 2017, due to his severe depression and suicidal ideation. He essentially has stated that he felt like an alien living outside of human society while being thrust into the middle of it and that writing this was a form of therapy. Indeed, the delay in publication which included several rewrites is reflective of its role in his personal therapy and how he set it aside until he was a different person and could look at the story more objectively, in aid of improving it for a general audience. Yet for all that generalizing it is still a very personal novel and emotionally resonant to me, as I have had my own moments of depression and a feeling like an alien surrounded by humans.

Has anyone had else had an opportunity to watch resident alien or read the humans by Matt Hagg? I'd love to read your insights.

[Breneir Tzaracomprada]

Based on your description alone I just bought The Humans

[Antonio Montagnha, Ed. D.]

Great! Let me know what you think.

Based on your description alone I just bought The Humans