Has an alien species (in a movie, TV show, etc.) had guns that DIDN'T shoot laser beams? [x-post from AskReddit]

echospeaks · 5 months

Ewoks. Heh.

But I do get what you are saying. It does feel like alien species are either highly advanced or very primitive. There is never an in between. I think a lot of alien species in any media are probably more likely to be highly advanced, because there is an assumption that if they are able to travel across the galaxy they have probably also designed some spiffy weapons to accompany them. No one treks across the galaxy to destroy a planet using only muskets (although that would show some serious balls).

The second point would be that many times alien species are used as a reflection of some aspect of human civilization, so there is some exaggeration of that quality. Either technocrats or luddites, in the case of technology.

greatscoot · 5 months

Not aliens, but I like the way the Dune novels handled far-future weaponry. Personal defense shields are commonplace and can stop any fast projectile. If a laser hits the shield, a giant explosion results, killing the shield wearer and the shooter. Therefore, bullets and lasers are out of favor. People fight battles in hand to hand combat with swords and poisoned knives. They have developed methods of combat involving fast parrying and slow attacks to try to penetrate an enemy's shield, emphasizing strategy and trickery over brute strength. "The slow hand passes the shield." Very cool!

The David Lynch Dune film added another weaponry wrinkle. It's creative and strange, but pretty stupid in my opinion. The weapons seemed to be a kind of sound-gun that could amplify the user's voice into an explosive force that could blow things up from a distance. This was not a part of the Herbert novels, and just one of the things that makes the Lynch film so kooky.

raevnos · 5 months

Battle: Los Angeles squids. New BSG Cylons. Lots of Warhammer 40k aliens (but energy weapons are common too). Many species in the Old Man's War 'verse.

rmwpnb · 5 months

My personal favorite here. Definitely no laser beams.

Cerulilly · 5 months

The aliens in District 9 didn't, it was electric arc guns.

Quack2TheFuture · 5 months

no laser guns in the mass effect or halo universes

Mister_Shady · 5 months

The aliens from Fallen Skies use physical projectiles.

keef2000 · 5 months

The Na'vi from Avatar, although they are humanoid and don't use guns, plus Avatar is a "us invading their planet type film" rather than the more common "them invading our planet type film".

lvlobius · 5 months

The aliens in the Xcom video game were all armed with plasma guns. It was actually the humans that developed lasers as weapons. A weird thing to note is that since the aliens used plasma (arguably better than laser), their armor was also built to stop it. It had very little effect against lasers.

they also used a self propelled explosive football. shrug

k1down · 5 months

A couple of races encountered in Star Trek use classic projectile firearms. In a voyager I watched the other night it looked like they were just toting black glocks.

paradox1123 · 5 months

The Mass Effect guns fire paint chip sized metal shaving accelerated to relativistic velocities, and they were used by aliens before we made first contact with them.

ovnem · 5 months

The xenomorphs in the Alien films. The Predators use a variety of weapons. The aliens in The Abyss didn't ave laser weapons (that we saw anyway).

joelwilliamson · 5 months

All the aliens in Turtledove's The Road Less Taken use muskets, cannons, etc.

quarksurfer · 5 months

in district 9 there's a great scene where they try a bunch of alien weapons. there were certainly some non-laser ones...

MercurialMithras · 5 months

Jonas Quinn's people in Stargate SG-1 and Ronon Dex's people in Atlantis were at approximately our level of development, but they're indistinguishable from humans, so I'm not sure how much that counts.

You're right, though, in that I can't think of a species that looks "alien" which is not either extremely primitive or extremely advanced. I think part of this might be that, at the point in the future when a lot of sci-fi is set, humans are also usually in possession of energy weapons, etc. so the aliens using fire arms would seem backwards by comparison. In that situation, human-level technology becomes the baseline, and most species encountered are at least at that level or farther. The only people who are below the human-level of technology in science fiction are usually that way because it was dictated by the plot.

Of course, this never stopped aliens from wielding other technically obsolete weapons (Bat'leths come to mind), so take that for what it's worth.

OwlEyed · 5 months

I think a majority of the weapons in the John Carter series are swords and guns. I could be mistaken, though, since the wording is usually pretty vague.

rpglover64 · 5 months

Farscape has a variety of weapons, IIRC, many of which aren't laser-like.

Also, my mother can tell the difference between a pulse weapon and a beam weapon.

thunderbird1 · 5 months

The aliens in Gerry Anderson's TV series "UFO" used bullet-firing machine guns.

golden_boy · 5 months

In doctor who, the nesteen use plastic bullets

I know you said metal rounds, but I'd consider any solid projectile to be sufficiently separate

ramp_tram · 5 months

The Eldar from Warhammer 40k have shuriken cannons.

Neebat · 5 months

You can't get much more alien than the things you fight in Half Life. Very few of them use any kind of beam attack. Some highlights:

Tethered darts (aka tongues)
Weaponized insects
Sonic blasts
Explosive body parts
Teeth
Good old fashioned claws

Moracy · 5 months

The bounty hunters from the Critters movies.

Humerous · 5 months

Although, in fairness, the humans/mutants/robot could be considered the alien species

joelangeway · 5 months

Oh man, this always drives me nuts in shows like Star Gate and generally everything on the scifi channel. The aliens are made of squishee bloody meat just like us but carry energy weapons that fire once every couple of seconds and don't even kill you most of the time while the humans have sub-machine guns or assault rifles. In a more believable sci fi universe given the premise that the humans have machine guns while everyone else has shitty lasers, the humans would be regarded as terrible monsters who rend the flesh of their enemies from far away, completely un-fuck-with-able. At least in star-trek the phaser was a sort of general purpose beam carried by people that generally didn't want to kill anybody.

Salkovich · 5 months

Technically speaking, nothing in Star Wars or Star Trek shoots a laser beam.

darmon · 5 months

prawns had different ballistics and electrical discharge weaponry in District 9.

Yage2006 · 5 months

The aliens from Phantasm didn't have laser shooting guns. They had those spheres of death equipped with blades and saws and stuff.

hollywoodbob · 5 months

How about the Kilrathi in the Wing Commander franchise? Didn't they use projectile weapons?

limbodog · 5 months

I was going to say "Predator" because his main gun is some kind of plasma cannon, but he does have a targeting laser...

The brood from the Alien series tho'. No shooting.

Occamslaser · 5 months

The Prador in Neal Asher's Polity novels use a lot of rail guns.

captain-ballsack · 5 months

Mass Effect. I mean, the collectors sort of did, but the rest of the alien races didn't.

Bullets are more effective than lasers anyway.

Tigerantilles · 5 months

If you were traveling to another world, and you expected to be shooting something, how would you figure out how much ammunition to take?

As a plot device it's easier to charge a phaser than it is to reload a Glock?

Afaflix · 5 months

The Day the earth stood still .. the remake

hacksoncode · 5 months

If your mother saw someone shooting a .50 cal with tracer rounds, she'd probably call it a laser beam.

That aside, TV and movies are likely not going to generate that many hits, as "lasers" just make better visual media.

There are plenty of examples in SF literature of aliens that use projectile weapons. My favorite example are the Tines from A Fire Upon the Deep :-), which probably don't count because they start out with arrows rather than bullets. But various alien weapons in Iain Banks Culture series fire bullets, among many, many others.

ender1980 · 5 months

Dark Angel (I come in peace)

entertanus · 5 months

The Transformers shoot a very large variety of different weapons, I can't recall any lasers though.

joelfriesen · 5 months

eXistenZ shot bio-weapons with bullets made of teeth

FnordBear · 5 months

Wookie bowcasters are basically railguns that fire a long projectile encased in an energy sheath.

ThrallState · 5 months

The aliens from falling skies use bullets.

GALACTICA-Actual · 5 months

Cylons had only kinetic and nuclear weapons. But, they weren't aliens, so they don't count.

danzilla007 · 5 months

In babylon 5 they had PPGs which fired a small charge of superheated helium

EnoughWithThePuppies · 5 months

The space elephants in Footfall used kinetic weapons. They were particularly fond of raining metal rods down from orbit onto earthbound targets. That was a book though.

BigBreakfast · 5 months

The Na'vi from Avatar had bows and a big psychic tree.

diamened · 5 months

Predators come to mind. Also Cylons (from the new BSG).

PSBlake · 5 months

Stargate SG1 and Atlantis encountered many planets which were technologically close to us, using bullets and other non-laser weapons. Arguably, they're not "alien species" but this kind of gets handwaved after a while.

distractthepaladin · 5 months

Klingons and Romulans carry disruptors, which I think shoot a kind of shock wave with no visible beam.

StochasticOoze · 5 months

Most of the weapons in Mass Effect are high-speed projectiles.

z0n3 · 5 months

Halo, there are dozens of different projectiles used in the series.

comradevoyager · 5 months

No Fifth Element love?

ifeelstabby · 5 months

Always with the slow laser beams too. No wonder they always lose.

Can't watch SG1 because there isn't a single machine gun type laser. Take 4 staffs, put them together and put them on a alternating pattern. They could have wiped SG1 out in the first show.

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