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No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture

335 statements
61 feature instances
28 referencing feature instances

No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture	type	FeatureClass
No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture	label	No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture
No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture	page	NoSuchThingAsAlienPopCulture
No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture	comment	The tendency for alien civilizations (and sometimes futuristic human civilizations) to be portrayed as having no native analog of contemporary popular culture, even when it would make sense for an advanced planetary or interplanetary civilization to have some kind of mass media. Sometimes this can be due to The Law of Conservation of Detail, but frequently these cultures are exquisitely detailed: the creator of The 'Verse has written a rich, deep, complex culture with its own religions and traditions... but what do people do for fun? In practice, this means that while Klingons have their own culture complete with Proud Warrior Race Space-Jesus and Vulcans have their Proud Scholar Race Space-Socrates, there's no alien equivalent of The Three Stooges or Dragon Ball Z. These rich, detailed cultures, spread over dozens of planets and actively exploring the galaxy, seemingly have no literature that isn't ancient and part of their mythology. They have no television, films, novels, etc.; only epics, myths, legends, sacred scrolls, and ancient tomes. Frequently, the entirety of an alien culture is equated with its religious mythology and traditions, completely excluding the existence of a secular mass media (there being only one religion on the planet is a problem in and of itself). This leads alien characters to interpret human popular culture along religious lines, for example when G'Kar in Babylon 5 asks if Daffy Duck is one of Garibaldi's household gods. If an alien culture is explicitly detailed as being rooted in its theology, extremely isolated, and/or controlled by an authoritarian government (and these are almost always examples of planetary monocultures, sometimes in cultural stasis), this may be justified. Indeed, this can be seen in Real Life in totalitarian states like North Korea and Khmer Rouge-era Cambodia, where the media is dedicated almost entirely to promoting national mythology and propaganda. Perhaps the biggest reason this trope exists is simple practicality. For a writer to explore alien pop culture, they would have to invent brand new genres of entertainment which could be unlike anything on Earth. Even the fiction mainstays—drama, romance, comedy, adventure, and horror—would still rely on social cues and cultural references that would be, well, alien to a viewer from Earthnote It's a safe bet, for example, that a race with Bizarre Alien Psychology would have a nearly unrecognizable version of Psychological Horror; If they evolved a fight-or-flight response that makes them reflexively spew acid instead of scream like ours does, for example, then they'd likely have a trope called "Acid Jet Discretion Shot" instead of Scream Discretion Shot. Even here on Earth, what one culture considers entertaining might be seen as boring, trashy, or weird to another. Comedy in particular is extremely difficult to translate across cultural lines. Creating all this from scratch would be a daunting task for even the most seasoned showrunners. For this reason, it's much easier to vaguely state that yes, these aliens have their own Jay-Z and BeyoncÃ©, then move on without lingering on the subject. When this trope is in effect, an alien Cultural Rebel may find that when Klingon scientists get no respect, Earth becomes the general direction of interstellar brain-drain. NOTE that this trope, common to Space Opera films and television, is usually remedied in Expanded Universe material like novels and comics which attempt to show more realistically diverse alien cultures. Also note that while this trope also covers futuristic human societies, it should not overlap with Outgrown Such Silly Superstitions, which is a separate trope. Please limit examples to aversions, subversions, and instances in which the trope is sufficiently played around with to warrant mention. Finally, note that instances in which aliens assimilate popular culture from Earth are not true aversions, but this trope being in effect is what makes Earth pop culture so irresistible to E.T. in those cases. Sub-Trope of Aliens Never Invented the Wheel.
No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture	fetched	2024-02-11T15:46:45Z
No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture	parsed	2024-02-11T15:46:45Z
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No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_10afc57b	type	No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture
No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_10afc57b	comment	Constellation Games is all about the video games that a hundred-million-year-old society, or group of societies, have created throughout their many different species' histories.
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No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_1a4438ee	type	No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture
No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_1a4438ee	comment	In All Guardsmen Party, the gang gets a T'au cartoon show made of them, which is generally assumed to be a stereotypical anime cut with some Warhammer 40,000 and misunderstandings about how Imperial culture and humans themselves work.
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No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_1c309c36	type	No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture
No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_1c309c36	comment	Part of the background of the Teenagers from Outer Space role-playing game is that Earth has the best pop culture in the galaxy. There may be some pop culture put out by alien races, but it's our Hat and the reason all the aliens have come to Earth.
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No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_24a18ffe	type	No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture
No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_24a18ffe	comment	In The Ship Who..., classical Shakespearean human actors also learn and perform alien plays. One is congratulated for conveying "the vital interplay of color, odor, and rhythm." Musical forms are also appreciated - having learned to sing despite being incapable of opening her mouth or properly breathing, Helva is particularly good at "Reticulan croons".
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No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_2acb12c5	type	No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture
No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_2acb12c5	comment	The X-Universe averts it, although you'll miss it if you're not paying attention to flavor text on some of the Fetch Quests. Various junk carried by NPCs also points to a stealthy aversion.
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No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_2d2dc041	type	No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture
No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_2d2dc041	comment	Serina Averted with the solitary Gravediggers, of all species. Once they make a series of effective traps, they typically don't need to expend much energy hunting, so they find ways to amuse themselves. One of the most common is using scratch marks and soil derived pigments to create art in trees which can be used as a form of primitive social media. Also averted with their contemporaries the Woodcrafters, who have a rich oral tradition of dramatic myths and tall tales complete with legendary creatures.
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No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_3a9d9a5c	type	No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture
No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_3a9d9a5c	comment	Tamagotchi: Initially played straight, as Tamagotchi life was much simpler before meeting humans. Completely averted after visiting Earth, as much of the planet changed to resemble Earth, including a massive influx of pop culture, and several breeds came into existence as a result of mimicking the planet's cultures.
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No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_3b11106f	type	No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture
No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_3b11106f	comment	The planet Mongo in Flash Gordon is implied to have TV as Kala says all the channels will show Baron and Zarkov being executed before Ming's wedding starts.
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No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_3b73c4a0	type	No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture
No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_3b73c4a0	comment	Subverted even further in the prequel series Caprica, where various colonial subcultures (V-World, the Ha'la'tha, the Monotheists) were shown in great detail. 58 years before before the Fall, Caprican society was like our world now but on hyperdrive. Holobands were a good example of a realistic treatment of a fictional commercial application of virtual reality, though not without their critics.
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No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_3f3abe9	type	No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture
No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_3f3abe9	comment	All sorts of alien pop culture is showcased in Rick and Morty. There are even two episodes dedicated to viewing snippets of interdimensional television, with many of them being from alien worlds, and one set in an alien video game arcade.
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No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_494e23	type	No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture
No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_494e23	comment	A plot point in Nyaruko: Crawling with Love!, where pop culture is explicitly humanity's hat. In one episode Nyarko explains that aliens do have their own entertainment media, but they vastly prefer Earth's because of the quality and variety.
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No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_49e5d731	type	No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture
No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_49e5d731	comment	Averted in the Wayfarers series. The various races of the Galactic Commons all have their own pop culture, and we see several examples of it, from politically subversive Harmagian stimthump music to Quelin virtual reality environmental sims.
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No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_4f7a49d9	type	No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture
No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_4f7a49d9	comment	An â€œinformed aversionâ€� in The Keys Stand Alone: The Soft World. After Ringo gives Theecat a very truncated history of The Beatles, he expects the little alien to not understand him, but it turns out that Theecat is well aware of mass media and popular culture.
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No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_50bcf7a6	type	No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture
No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_50bcf7a6	comment	Homestuck is also an aversion. Alternian pop culture is highly advanced — they have video games and TV and tabletop RPG lore and bad books about vampires. In fact, the troll movie industry has been running for so long that they've run out of titles, and instead describe films with a list of the tropes that appear in them. This is appropriate because the characters are all Geeks into varying fandoms. Karkat is even into an Alternian Expy of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. Played for Laughs, mostly. It should be noted that in-universe Alternian pop culture has actually inspired human pop culture - because trolls created the human universe.
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No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_53bd0aaf	type	No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture
No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_53bd0aaf	comment	Averted in With Strings Attached almost as soon as the Fans appear in chapter 3. One of Varx's stated goals for using the ex-Beatles in their Alien Psychology class's Different Worlds experiment is that he hopes they'll play music that he can record and sell to other students. Later, Jeft the gamer joins the little group, and he makes it clear that live-action gaming is a big deal among some aliens. Also, various throwaway lines talk of things like mass media, restaurants, and sodas.
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No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_5450d6cb	type	No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture
No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_5450d6cb	comment	The Tendu in The Color of Distance have qabirri, a kind of storytelling dance art form. They're encouraged to interpret and portray specific qabirri in different ways, incorporating new imagery sometimes. It's noted that the culture is stagnating though - new qabirri are rarely composed and those are more rarely performed, because they're not the classics.
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No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_56fa0ea4	type	No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture
No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_56fa0ea4	comment	Civilization 5: Brave New World does this to cultural victories. You can create works of art, but they tend to be the widely accepted works of literary canon, classical music and art. While the dialogue for cultural dominance of another civilization does mention pop culture, not a scrap of it can be found. Strangely, there is also no abstract art. Make of that what you will.
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No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_5c897f4a	type	No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture
No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_5c897f4a	comment	Schlock Mercenary: Averted. Not only do Terran species have many contemporary forms of entertainment that are mentioned (in particular, they seem to be on a musical adaptation kick), but other species have their entertainment mentioned on a regular basis. A Unioc Police Procedural called Murderfinder and Meat-Puppet is referenced several times when a Unioc cop has to coach a Unioc mercenary investigating a crime scene, whenever a particular bad bit of science is brought up it's pointed out that it's the sort of thing that shows up in kid's entertainment to teach kids how it's wrong, and after the first instance of Time Travel the narrator points out that the plot is identical to a recent and terrible failed tv series.
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No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_611c72dc	type	No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture
No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_611c72dc	comment	The Star Trek Novel 'Verse tends to avert this, for all that the TV series tended to play it straight. For example, the novel A Singular Destiny features a character owning a large collection of novels and comics (or equivalent) from Klingon popular culture — most of these had been introduced in earlier novels, only to be collected together here for Continuity Porn. In the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Relaunch, a popular joke is mentioned several times, and a minor subplot involves the crew of Defiant all reading their way through a melodramatic Klingon novel. The same series introduced a Bajoran children's educational series, The Adventures of Lin Marna. Meanwhile, in Star Trek: Klingon Empire mention is frequently made of the Narm Charm found in the politically-charged animated series Battlecruiser Vengeance. In one novel, Ezri Dax is distracted by her memories of a Trill nursery rhyme. The Gorn talk about the thermal sculptures they use as one form of popular art, and the Tzenkethi hum popular songs and ditties.
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No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_628b342c	type	No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture
No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_628b342c	comment	Averted in Dr. Blink: Superhero Shrink. According to the spacefaring Major Amazing, alien races everywhere eventually gravitate toward lowbrow entertainment.
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No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_69daf29	type	No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture
No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_69daf29	comment	Grrl Power: While there definitely is alien pop culture, Earth still produces an excessive amount of entertainment. This helps protect them; as a low-tech planet they have very little anyone would want, and conquering them would just disrupt the entertainment industry.
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No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_6f6971b5	type	No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture
No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_6f6971b5	comment	Played with in Sector General. At some points, popular television programs from many different alien cultures are available to patients at the titular hospital; but in one novel the only thing a ward full of patients has to entertain themselves is playing space poker.
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No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_73d7930f	type	No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture
No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_73d7930f	comment	In addition to the operas mentioned before, Klingons in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine just love to sing. Every episode set on a Klingon ship features at least one song with the whole crew joining in, and when Miles and Julian were briefly stationed on a Klingon ship during a Time Skip it apparently started getting on their nerves. Worf even picks up the new Mad Libs Catch Phrase "many songs will be sung about x".
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No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_760ce135	type	No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture
No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_760ce135	comment	Played for horror in Blindsight: among the eventual discoveries of first contact is that the aliens in question don't transmit anything besides simple practical communications, because despite their high intelligence, they have no consciousness or sense of self, and therefore interpret the overwhelming amount of human communications as meaningless, therefore a deliberate attempt to waste their time trying to interpret it, therefore an expression of hostile intent.
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No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_7988cb68	comment	Mass Effect has some popular alien films, but most of them are relatively recent. Examples include Fleet and Flotilla and Blasto: The Jellyfish Stings (although that sounds more like a human production than a hanar one, and Mass Effect 3 reveals it to be a salarian production). Several alien video games are mentioned as well, such as Galaxy of Fantasy, which was based on turian mythology. Other forms of art come up in passing, including a recurring feature on Cerberus Daily News recounting the latest box-office hits and bombs. Apparently salarian horror is cerebral and fourth-wall-breaking, asari make lots of romance flicks, and nobody likes krogan war epics (except krogan, who see them as comedies). Also, it turns out that the Blasto movies are a multispecies production, run by a salarian. Presumably they're in it for the money, since there's no artistic integrity to be found. The game even mentions the side effects of this. One planet you can scan in the first game is mentioned as looking grim and desolate enough to serve as a filming location for Starless, a gothic horror film which became a classic of the genre. As the planet's atmosphere is near-vacuum, the sets are perfectly preserved and a popular tourist destination. There is mention in Mass Effect: Andromeda of a salarian soap opera that ran for seventy seasons. Salarians only live for forty years if they're lucky.
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No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_7c19a801	type	No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture
No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_7c19a801	comment	Ghosts of the Federation, an FTL: Faster Than Light fic, features a discussion on a genre of Mantis films called "Gladiator Dramas," particularly the one that was the Trope Codifier for the whole genre but now feels stale to modern viewers. Slugs aren't interacted with beyond their criminal shennanigans, Rockmen go the "no pop culture, just the local answer to 'The Bible'" route, and Engi, being robots, have very little culture TO explore.
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No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_7de8951a	type	No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture
No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_7de8951a	comment	Traveller In Interstellar Wars it is specifically stated that there is an aristocratic Vilani culture and a commoner Vilani culture. Aslan have a fancy for decorated weapons and elaborate epics. They also have insult contests, bragging contests, and tall-tale contests. Recreational dueling (which often requires a ritual insult that the recipient pretends to be offended at) can be either an Aslan high culture or a pop culture depending on how the GM presents it. However their Proud Warrior Race ethos makes them one of the straighter examples. Of the Major Races Humans, Aslan, Vargr and possibly K'kree are really the only ones to which this trope could apply. Hivers and Droyne are Starfish Aliens so it is hard to say what would be high culture and what would be pop culture among them. Among the Hivers the "topical clubs" might count as pop culture.
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No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_7ef13d72	type	No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture
No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_7ef13d72	comment	In a guest strip of Draconia Chronicles, we get to see the climax of an episode of My Little Dracony: Togetherness is Magickal, which a character muses is blatantly propaganda, and violent propaganda at that. Princess Luminia also collects Hello Kitty memerobilia. As for the tigers, being cavewomen, they don't have pop culture due to a lack of communication. However, they do have oral histories, preserved as lute ballads.
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No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_7f41f1cb	type	No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture
No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_7f41f1cb	comment	In Things XCOM Operatives Are No Longer Allowed to Do, the Alien Entertainment System (a peice of Shop Fodder from the original UFO Defense game) is officially off-limits, but if people do mess with it anyways, they're not allowed to beat the Commander's High Score.
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No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_7fd403f8	comment	Galaxy Quest is a deconstruction. The Thermians had no concept of lying at all before encountering Sarris. Through painful experience, they now are aware of lying for malicious purposes, but cannot concieve of any other forms of lies. This means that fiction — lying to an audience who are aware of the lie but have agreed to pretend to believe you as a means of entertainment — is way beyond their capabilities. This drives the entire plot, as they mistake a human sci-fi TV show for a documentary and seek out its stars to act as their protectors. Sarris's people, on the other hand, clearly have fiction and TV shows of their own. The moment he witnesses the opening titles of the Thermian's "Historical Documents", he realizes immediately that he's dealing with actors and not real space explorers.
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No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_81692f99	type	No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture
No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_81692f99	comment	Star Trek: Star Trek: The Next Generation: When a human boy raised by Talarians is on the Enterprise, Picard walks into his room to find him listening to what sounds like a death metal band doing the sound effects for an iron foundry, played at eardrum-piercing levels. It is, apparently, the latest thing among Talarian teenagers. The infamous Klingon operas, which come up frequently since TNG. Some are suspiciously similar to conventional, Human operas, others are... special. Specifically averted in the episode "First Contact", when the Enterprise (as the title implies) visits some aliens as part of a First Contact scenario. Less interesting than most aversions, since we never get to see any examples. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Generally considered the best aversion in the franchise. As the show remained in one place with three major planets nearby (Bajor, Cardassia, and Ferenginar), this allowed the creative staff to explore popular culture for the respective races. Bajor, a planet that is rebuilding after fifty years of occupation by the Cardassians, is well-established with numerous poets, musicians, and an entire religion explored. The Ferengi are the mercantile traders of the galaxy, so naturally they come stocked with holonovels like Vulcan Love Slave and other gems of the 24th-Century entertainment complex. Their children also collect action figures presumably based on a popular culture franchise, Marauder Mo (TM). One episode also features Bashir and Garak having a debate about the virtues of the Cardassian "repetitive epic", a type of story in which the essential plot is repeated several times over in order to drive home a point. In this case, service to the state above the self, which becomes something of a theme with both characters as the show goes on. Bashir and Garak also discuss "enigma tales", Cardassian mystery novels. Bashir finds them unsatisfying because everyone is guilty; Garak says that the point is to figure out who is guilty of what. This accords with the Cardassian legal system, where the accused is immediately found guilty and sentenced, after which the trial determines how they committed the crime. Cardassians apparently also have a rather thriving art and architecture community. When Jake is used by a... Muse Vampire?... he's awestruck that she knew a prominent Cardassian architect. During the Dominion's occupation of the station Gul Dukat's daughter wins an award from a Cardassian art foundation - Cardassian art is very traditional Japanese in style. In one episode, mention is made of a Breen lullaby. With nonsensical but catchy lyrics, apparently. In addition to the operas mentioned before, Klingons in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine just love to sing. Every episode set on a Klingon ship features at least one song with the whole crew joining in, and when Miles and Julian were briefly stationed on a Klingon ship during a Time Skip it apparently started getting on their nerves. Worf even picks up the new Mad Libs Catch Phrase "many songs will be sung about x". One episode of Star Trek: Voyager featured a Klingon romance novel called Women Warriors at the River of Blood. In another we heard Klingon heavy metal. Another episode features a children's edutainment franchise built around a character called Flotter T. Water, with Naomi Wildman having a holodeck story in the setting. Janeway mentions that she also loved the character as a child, establishing it as a long-running series. Voyager also contains a particularly egregious example of this trope in Tom Paris. Not only is he really only interested in Earth pop culture, he's only interested in 20th Century Earth pop culture.
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No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_9029ed4d	type	No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture
No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_9029ed4d	comment	Interstella 5555 features a race of aliens with its own pop band, who are kidnapped and disguised as humans so they can be "the next big thing." The kidnapper has apparently done this for centuries.
No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_9029ed4d	featureApplicability	1.0
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Interstella 5555	hasFeature	No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_9029ed4d
No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_90c73dda	type	No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture
No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_90c73dda	comment	Despite taking place either on Earth or in a space military setting, the main Animorphs series manages to avert the trope, at least for the Andalites. In internal monologues Ax mentions musical forms from his homeworld (and that he hates Earth's), and that people who can morph in creative ways (making themselves into Winged Humanoids when morphing birds and so on) are bona fide performance artists. The Yeerks however, are a straight example. When Edriss fist arrives on Earth and scans the planet, she is mystified by the enormous amount of non-military communication humans transmit, and initially takes it to mean that we are some kind of juggernaut. Justified by the Yeerks being, when not controlling a host body, limbless, blind, deaf slugs; they don't have the physical capability to produce art as we know it. In the backstory the Ellimist's race had a love of strategy video games... and were promptly annihilated by another alien race that saw a transmitted tournament, didn't grasp the concept, and thought they were mass-murdering lunatics who must be stopped.
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Animorphs	hasFeature	No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_90c73dda
No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_90e2f673	type	No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture
No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_90e2f673	comment	While BattleTech strictly speaking has no aliens as such, the Clans as the next best thing that does exist seem to play this trope pretty straight. This is another way in which they contrast with the Successor States, where contemporary pop bands and imported soap operas can be found even in such restrictive regimes like the Draconis Combine or Capellan Confederation, and the possibility of the Clans' lower castes becoming 'infected' with Inner Sphere cultural mores if allowed similar access has been brought up on both sides of the fence (with the Clan leadership naturally viewing it as a threat and at least one shrewd Kurita business magnate considering it a possible opportunity). The Clans do have some pop culture (there's a children's cartoon that's been confirmed as canon that's produced by the Clans), but they're a caste-based society with everything geared toward supporting the warrior. As such, production of any sort of entertainment is a very low priority for the laborer caste (which is the lowest of the castes).
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BattleTech (Tabletop Game)	hasFeature	No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_90e2f673
No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_925296da	type	No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture
No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_925296da	comment	In The True Meaning of Smekday, the Boov aliens that invade Earth are said to have Fun T Shirts, comic books, and nursery rhymes.
No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_925296da	featureApplicability	1.0
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No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_93489ff	type	No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture
No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_93489ff	comment	Dungeon Crawler Carl: The galaxy-spanning Syndicate has almost no pop culture besides Dungeon Crawler World, a seasonal program where a planet is destroyed and the survivors stuck in a murder-dungeon to compete with each other. To make it worse, it turns out that Earth's pop culture attracts a lot of interest; if people had noticed this before the world was destroyed, Earth likely would have been spared. Donut comes up with the idea to recreate Earth's shows for a galactic audience, in the hopes that people will be more interested in those than the murder-dungeons. Who knows if it will work, but at least one alien thinks it's worth trying.
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No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_959494f0	type	No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture
No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_959494f0	comment	VBirds averts this; Planet V was where the VBirds had their first No. 1 single, implying that's there's enough music to maintain a record chart, and Bling says they had "millions and trillions" of fans.
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No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_979fddca	type	No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture
No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_979fddca	comment	Crossing over with Alien Arts Are Appreciated, in the Chanur Novels, races with pop culture tend to trade it with each other.
No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_979fddca	featureApplicability	1.0
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Alien Arts Are Appreciated	hasFeature	No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_979fddca
No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_9838249c	type	No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture
No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_9838249c	comment	Averted with Transhuman Space. Every third sidebar covers pop culture elements from 2100.
No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_9838249c	featureApplicability	-1.0
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Transhuman Space (Tabletop Game)	hasFeature	No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_9838249c
No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_a50ae25d	type	No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture
No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_a50ae25d	comment	The Klingon TV series Battlecruiser Vengeance was first mentioned in the pre-Novelverse work The Final Reflection, in which the main Klingon character is a fan.
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The Final Reflection	hasFeature	No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_a50ae25d
No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_a5479044	type	No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture
No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_a5479044	comment	In Sudden Contact, Liara reminesces about a TV show she used to watch when she was little, which is quite similar to The Ship Who... series.
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Sudden Contact (Fanfic)	hasFeature	No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_a5479044
No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_aa33d9d	type	No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture
No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_aa33d9d	comment	The Last Spartan has an unggoy (grunt) sitcom entitled My Life with Yapyap, which is almost but not entirely unlike Friends. It deals with the misadventures of the emponymous grunt and his asari wife. It also features Elites acting in commercials.
No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_aa33d9d	featureApplicability	1.0
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The Last Spartan / Fan Fic	hasFeature	No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_aa33d9d
No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_ad3288a0	type	No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture
No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_ad3288a0	comment	In The Next Frontier, we at least get to see that Bob's little sibling is what a person of earth would call a "tumblrina," so Kerbals at least have social media. They also have their own TV shows, and really enjoy human sci-fi (specifically, Star Trek).
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The Next Frontier / Fan Fic	hasFeature	No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_ad3288a0
No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_b5a03cec	type	No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture
No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_b5a03cec	comment	Robotech/Super Dimension Fortress Macross has an interesting example. There's an aversion with the future human society, since they still have pop stars and things like that (they're only 20 Minutes into the Future). But the invading Zentraedi don't have anything like that; they are an entirely militaristic society. In fact, this becomes a plot point later on. The Zentraedi, having never been exposed to singing or anything like it, are rendered stupefied by a recording of a singing pop star. The humans actually seize on this and use it as a tactic in battle, making the pop star both a weapon and a morale booster. In fact, pop culture's key role in causing Zentraedi to defect en masse to humanity is what ultimately saves the day.
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Robotech	hasFeature	No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_b5a03cec
No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_bb8d2f1a	type	No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture
No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_bb8d2f1a	comment	In The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, most alien cultures are parodies of Earth's culture, so alien rock bands, idiotic advertisements, and goofy sports abound. (In most cases these amount to a couple of adjectives in front of an Earth sport, such as "Brockian ultra cricket." Which apparently isn't actually much like Earth cricket, given how the rest of the galaxy feels about that. Particularly the little ball hitting the wicket, that's very nasty.)
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No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_bcadd7cb	type	No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture
No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_bcadd7cb	comment	Warhammer 40,000 There are relatively few mentions of what the Imperium of Man considers culture, and the few instances of it are things like only Gregorian Chant being the only thing broadcast between work announcements to the only channel on a space station. Though, there are several references to opera and plays, still very little in the way of pop culture. Fanon holds that they have propaganda cartoon serials. However, Ciaphas Cainnote HERO OF THE IMPERIUM! seems to be more familiar with Imperial pop culture than a run of the mill Inquisitor or Space Marine, and his series makes the majority of the references to Imperial pop culture. These include the popular if historically inaccurate holo series Attack Run, a holo series very loosely about Cain himself called Cain's Heroes, the children's song The Tracks on the Land Raider Crush the Heretics, and Pyrus the Flame from an edutainment book on promethium. For those more familiar with 40K than they are with Ciaphas, this might seem a bit weird, but 40k is a universe done in Broad Strokes to leave a lot of room for storytelling, so a comedy series like Cain's in the grim, dark far future may seem like Mood Whiplash, but the universe was designed to leave room for it. Not to mention that it does indeed make Cain's books funnier. Never any mention of alien pop culture, but that's because no Imperial citizen cares what the filthy xenos do with their free time, and the ones that do are filthy heretics that need to be burned with extreme prejudice. The Eldar Harlequins do plays on the fall of the Eldar Empire. Really, really intense plays. Gav Thorpe's Eldar trilogy, in addition to the aforementioned Harlequin performances, show that the civilian populace of the Eldar spend most of their time making and enjoying art, whether it be painting, sculpture, or drama. This is to keep them busy with worthwhile pursuits and prevent them from descending into hedonism again. Their counterparts, the Dark Eldar, are the complete opposite. They like to think that they have only high culture, but their culture revolves around their need to inflict pain, and they get off on doing it. They set their arias to the screams of the tortured, works of art is largely painfully rearranging the bodies of their slaves, and they do love their gladiatorial arenas. Also the basic form of entertainment and having a meal is by torturing whatever poor soul they have on hand and "drinking" up the pain and despair, and torture made to be as painful and drawn out as possible is probably considered a skill. They do this because they have to rejuvenate themselves on pain and suffering with psychic vampirism, as they don't have the Craftworld Eldar's discipline and monk-like asceticism to keep free of Slaanesh constantly sipping from their souls. Orks, on the other hand, being primitively-thinking brutes, tend to have brutal and violent pop culture with nothing in the way of high culture. There's been passing references to Ork settlements having some forms of entertainment enjoyed by all the Boyz, a gladiator pit as a ready means of settling disputes as well as providing entertainment, the occasional impromptu demolition derby, squig eating contests, fungus beer, a number of other things. Several other Ork pastimes are practiced widely, but with differing levels of popularity, depending on the Ork clan involved: looting, arson, death races, building bigger and weirder and more cobbled-together weapons and war machines. Orks also have Rock and Roll, and used to have models representing Goff Rokkers (now long out of print). And most of all, Orks love fighting and going to war. Depending on the work, Orks are Played for Laughs with heavy elements of slapstick and Comedic Sociopathy, or are Played for Drama and you see them as violent and unempathic creatures bearing down on innocent bystanders as well as enemy soldiers for no other reason than that they enjoy killing.
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No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_c675b3d7	type	No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture
No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_c675b3d7	comment	Star Trek Expanded Universe: The Star Trek Novel 'Verse tends to avert this, for all that the TV series tended to play it straight. For example, the novel A Singular Destiny features a character owning a large collection of novels and comics (or equivalent) from Klingon popular culture — most of these had been introduced in earlier novels, only to be collected together here for Continuity Porn. In the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Relaunch, a popular joke is mentioned several times, and a minor subplot involves the crew of Defiant all reading their way through a melodramatic Klingon novel. The same series introduced a Bajoran children's educational series, The Adventures of Lin Marna. Meanwhile, in Star Trek: Klingon Empire mention is frequently made of the Narm Charm found in the politically-charged animated series Battlecruiser Vengeance. In one novel, Ezri Dax is distracted by her memories of a Trill nursery rhyme. The Gorn talk about the thermal sculptures they use as one form of popular art, and the Tzenkethi hum popular songs and ditties. The Klingon TV series Battlecruiser Vengeance was first mentioned in the pre-Novelverse work The Final Reflection, in which the main Klingon character is a fan.
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No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_d461f757	type	No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture
No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_d461f757	comment	The colonies of Man in Battlestar Galactica (2003) have pop music and indications of different subcultures. They also have sports, card games, nude magazines and novels that have nothing to do with the Sacred Scrolls.
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Battlestar Galactica (2003)	hasFeature	No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_d461f757
No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_d8040caa	type	No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture
No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_d8040caa	comment	Space Jam has the alien villain looking to kidnap the Looney Tunes and use their appeal to boost sagging interest in his interplanetary theme park.
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Space Jam	hasFeature	No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_d8040caa
No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_daa8eeb6	type	No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture
No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_daa8eeb6	comment	They Are Smol: Human astronauts assigned to alien crews have a choice on how to spend their rec period: watching some good old Earthling TV to remind them of home, or a Fun with Subtitles edit of one of their host's shows/movies (we get to see a jornassian action flick with this treatment) to make them seem less intimidating; everyone else having evolved from terrifying apex predators. In the third story arc, we get to see snippets of 1) a dorarizin saturday-morning cartoon, which has the same kind of zany supervillain shennanegans and adorable victims we have (except those adorable victims are humans, because everyone else thinks we're cute), and 2) a multispeciese MMO videogame (something to do with robots and zombies) the main human charachters are fans of. The karnakians pass the time with Hypothetical Fight Debates centering around their various religeon's popes. It's noted to be simultaneously heretical enough to get you thrown in jail for a month, and universal, to the point that the aforesaid popes do it amongst themselves when they think nobody's listening
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No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_e42c133a	type	No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture
No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_e42c133a	comment	The What A Cartoon! short Captain Buzz Cheepley features a space captain coming across a planet whose civilization revolves entirely around television and beer. They essentially have nothing but entertainment and leisure (not even buildings, apparently).
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What A Cartoon! Show	hasFeature	No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_e42c133a
No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_e6267766	type	No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture
No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_e6267766	comment	Star Wars Legends: The Essential Guide to Alien Species details Rodian theatre, which started as little more than staged fights to redirect the Rodians' Proud Warrior Race Guy tendencies away from hunting each other into extinction, but eventually evolved actual story. The novel Shadow Games is about Dash Rendar acting as bodyguard to a galactic pop star. One character from the X-Wing novels is a former child star of the Empire's Propaganda Machine.
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Star Wars Legends (Franchise)	hasFeature	No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_e6267766
No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_e68decb8	type	No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture
No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_e68decb8	comment	Star Control mentions a few alien past-times, such as the Zoq-Fot-Pik's sport "Frungy". The Arilou are also depicted as doing something akin to catch-and-release fishing when in local time-space, saying that they hunt for Ngnnn, and when they catch them, they immediately let them go again. A Spathi ship on a long mission has "FunROMs" for entertainment, which from context are equivalent to CDs or DVDs, though the contents are left to the imagination.
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Star Control (Video Game)	hasFeature	No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_e68decb8
No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_e694aadb	type	No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture
No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_e694aadb	comment	However, Ciaphas Cainnote HERO OF THE IMPERIUM! seems to be more familiar with Imperial pop culture than a run of the mill Inquisitor or Space Marine, and his series makes the majority of the references to Imperial pop culture. These include the popular if historically inaccurate holo series Attack Run, a holo series very loosely about Cain himself called Cain's Heroes, the children's song The Tracks on the Land Raider Crush the Heretics, and Pyrus the Flame from an edutainment book on promethium. For those more familiar with 40K than they are with Ciaphas, this might seem a bit weird, but 40k is a universe done in Broad Strokes to leave a lot of room for storytelling, so a comedy series like Cain's in the grim, dark far future may seem like Mood Whiplash, but the universe was designed to leave room for it. Not to mention that it does indeed make Cain's books funnier.
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No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_eb3f3551	type	No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture
No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_eb3f3551	comment	There is mention in Mass Effect: Andromeda of a salarian soap opera that ran for seventy seasons. Salarians only live for forty years if they're lucky.
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Mass Effect: Andromeda (Video Game)	hasFeature	No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_eb3f3551
No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_eeaaec28	type	No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture
No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_eeaaec28	comment	Played with with the Jovian Lizards from Martian Successor Nadesico, who are in reality humans who separated from Earth generations ago, and base their entire culture around an old mecha anime that multiple members of the Nadesico are fans of.
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No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_eeb76a8e	type	No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture
No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_eeb76a8e	comment	Total Distortion varies on this, where millions of alternate dimensions contain worlds and people based on Earth pop culture, speculated to have been dreamed up by children. You spend the game exploring a Grunge Rock dimension, which has its own rock concert hall, and a literal "garage in Hell". Inversely, the dimension's leader, the Metal Lord, loathes the idea of humans filming the place for profit, and dispatches Guitar Warriors in an attempt to stop you.
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Total Distortion (Video Game)	hasFeature	No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_eeb76a8e
No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_ef076a36	type	No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture
No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_ef076a36	comment	One episode of Star Trek: Voyager featured a Klingon romance novel called Women Warriors at the River of Blood. In another we heard Klingon heavy metal. Another episode features a children's edutainment franchise built around a character called Flotter T. Water, with Naomi Wildman having a holodeck story in the setting. Janeway mentions that she also loved the character as a child, establishing it as a long-running series. Voyager also contains a particularly egregious example of this trope in Tom Paris. Not only is he really only interested in Earth pop culture, he's only interested in 20th Century Earth pop culture.
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Star Trek: Voyager	hasFeature	No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_ef076a36
No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_f74b5f80	type	No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture
No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_f74b5f80	comment	Babylon 5 The Minbari nearly count as a straight example, but that's because outside of the Religious Caste, we know nothing about Minbari culture. However, most of the Minbari we got to know were either Religious or Warrior Caste, so the largely unseen Worker Caste may have their own separate cultural roots. Also, Minbari humor (not specifically Religious caste humor) is said to be based around failure to attain spiritual enlightenment (and puns). It's worth pointing out that because of the long-standing tension between the Warrior and Religious Castes, the Warrior Caste probably doesn't take things like myth and prophecy too seriously, and several episodes indicate they have a more secular outlook, though still obviously influenced by the few shared Minbari values (collectivism, sacrifice, honor) that cut across caste lines. The alien parents in "Believers" appear to come from a planet like this. Somewhat justified as it's specifically mentioned their planet is backward and isolated and their contact with aliens is limited. They're not even members of the League of Non-Aligned Worlds. They also appear to be a fundamentalist theocracy of some kind, which probably doesn't help. The Centauri and Narns both have musical theater. Whether they developed independently or one influenced the other is never elaborated upon, however. The bits of each we hear are completely different; the Centauri version sounds like show-tunes, but the Narn Opera we hear sounds like mechanical shrieking. Centauri also have video games; as seen in episide 4 of season 1; with Vin being totally engrossed in a gameboy until Sinclair takes it away from him. In Crusade, the crew of the Excalibur recover an extensive popular cultural archive of a now-extinct species.
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Babylon 5	hasFeature	No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_f74b5f80
No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_fe16b92c	type	No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture
No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_fe16b92c	comment	Averted in Happy Heroes, where Planet Xing has a pop culture much like Earth's, with stuff like films and TV shows. There's even a specific celebrity news reporter on the planet named Miss Peach who appears often and is the Celeb Crush of Doctor H., the surrogate father of the Supermen.
No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_fe16b92c	featureApplicability	-1.0
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Happy Heroes (Animation)	hasFeature	No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_fe16b92c
No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_ff9ab17f	type	No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture
No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_ff9ab17f	comment	Star Trek: The Next Generation: When a human boy raised by Talarians is on the Enterprise, Picard walks into his room to find him listening to what sounds like a death metal band doing the sound effects for an iron foundry, played at eardrum-piercing levels. It is, apparently, the latest thing among Talarian teenagers. The infamous Klingon operas, which come up frequently since TNG. Some are suspiciously similar to conventional, Human operas, others are... special. Specifically averted in the episode "First Contact", when the Enterprise (as the title implies) visits some aliens as part of a First Contact scenario. Less interesting than most aversions, since we never get to see any examples.
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No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_ff9ab17f	featureConfidence	1.0
Star Trek: The Next Generation	hasFeature	No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture / int_ff9ab17f

The following is a list of statements referring to the current page from other pages.

No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture	processingCategory2	Alien Tropes
No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture	processingCategory2	Fictional Culture and Nation Tropes
No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture	processingCategory2	Speculative Fiction Tropes
Happy Heroes (Animation) / int_4168491	type	No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture
Tenchi Muyo! Ryo-Ohki / int_4168491	type	No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture
Albedo: Erma Felna EDF (Comic Book) / int_4168491	type	No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture
Dr. Blink: Superhero Shrink (Comic Book) / int_4168491	type	No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture
The Crimson Garment (Fanfic) / int_4168491	type	No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture
Flash Gordon (1980) / int_4168491	type	No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture
Galaxy Quest / int_4168491	type	No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture
The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra / int_4168491	type	No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture
Chanur Novels / int_4168491	type	No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture
Constellation Games / int_195244b1	type	No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture
Janitors of the Post-Apocalypse / int_4168491	type	No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture
Star Maker / int_4168491	type	No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture
Star Trek Novel Verse / int_4168491	type	No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture
The Color of Distance / int_4168491	type	No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture
The Folk of the Air / int_4168491	type	No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture
The Red Vixen Adventures / int_4168491	type	No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture
The True Meaning of Smekday / int_4168491	type	No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture
Wayfarers / int_4168491	type	No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture
Refractions (Magazine) / int_4168491	type	No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture
NoSuchThingasAlienPopCulture	sameAs	No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture
CDT Adventure (Roleplay) / int_4168491	type	No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture
The Good Place / int_4168491	type	No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture
Teenagers from Outer Space (Tabletop Game) / int_4168491	type	No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture
Xenoblade Chronicles X (Video Game) / int_4168491	type	No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture
Draconia Chronicles (Webcomic) / int_4168491	type	No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture

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