[X-Files] The Syndicate, were they right?

[Lonestar]

I'm current burning through the X-Files series(your taxdollars at work), and I've just finished Season 6. For those of you not keeping track, this is the season where the Rebel Aliens kill the original Syndicate.

When the Cigarette Smoking Man lays out (some) of the conspiracy to Mulder he claims that colonization was inevitable, and by proposing a alien/hybrid they were prolonging the start of the colonization and saving lives.

Of course, at some point between the contact with the Colonists and the Syndicate the alien Rebels contacted the Syndicate and offered an alternative, whcih was rejected on the basis that (1)the Rebels wouldn't win and so (2)it would expedite the colonization process if they threw in with the Rebels.


Did the Syndicate make the correct decision?

[Havok]

What ended up happening anyway? I can't even remember. My X-Files collection is on VHS and I haven't had a VCR in about 8 years.

It always seemed like both sides were right, it was just that neither option worked out well if they failed. With the human race in the balance, it was too big a chance for the Syndicate to take. I would say under the circumstances, the evil you know was the correct decision.

[Lonestar]

What ended up happening anyway? I can't even remember. My X-Files collection is on VHS and I haven't had a VCR in about 8 years.

It always seemed like both sides were right, it was just that neither option worked out well if they failed. With the human race in the balance, it was too big a chance for the Syndicate to take. I would say under the circumstances, the evil you know was the correct decision.

A "New Syndicate" was created(one that excluded the CSM, IIRC), and since most of the scientists who had originally worked on the human/alien hybrid were dead the New Syndicate had to start over. Some of the New Syndicate were Colonists disguised as humans, whereas the original Syndicate were all human.

[loomer]

Given that the Syndicate actually had a plan for defeating colonization - or at least making it a much harder fight for the Colonists, since they lacked the orbital power to fight them in space (barring a few killsats) - I'd say they made the right call. Planning for a long guerrilla war you can fight whether or not the rebels are capable of actually defeating the colonists is a better option than staking the entirety of human existence on an unknown factor.

[Lonestar]

Given that the Syndicate actually had a plan for defeating colonization

Right...part of the hybrid scheme was to create a vaccine against the Colonist "Black Oil".


It's just interesting watching it, them being so "sinister" when really they were just powerful men who were picking the least bad option.

[FaxModem1]

Well, from what I can remember, they handed over their families so that they could have an alien fetus to work on to create a hybrid. At least, that's what they told the aliens. In reality, they were creating the vaccine to the virus that was going to be distributed by bees, but were wiped out by the bounty hunters without faces.

So, compared to Mulder's plan of...oh right, he didn't have a plan. The Syndicate were at least trying to do something to stop the Aliens.

[18-Till-I-Die]

Thing is, were the Colonists really that powerful at all?

I can't recall them doing anything worthy of such fear. If the Rebels are anything to go by it appears they attack with glowy sticks that burn stuff, and oh yeah they can take people, apparently one at a time, up into spaceships with patented Asgard "Go-Away Beams". Or were the Colonists the Asgard, all Greys look alike to me.

An aside: wouldn't it be quite ironic if the Asgard and the Colonists were the same race, but the Colonists were just asshole militarists and the Asgard proper saw them as batshit insane and powerless as we see survivalists and militias today? In essence we'd have bene terrified all this time of the alien equivalent of racist Teabaggers.

Anyway, now that I insulted all conservitives...the point I was laboring towards was that we have no reason to believe the aliens are very powerful at all. If they were then how come they even CARED about the Syndicate? What possible offer could the Syndicate give them, if they're even as powerful as Star Trek's Federation, that would not seem pathetic and all but worthless to such a blisteringly advanced species.

So far, and correct me if I'm wrong it's been half a decade since I watched the series, they demonstrated only two things: they can teleport people away, and they have FTL. Granted these technologies would be all but magical to our eyes, but then what? They can take over people with Black Oil (hey guys isn't that REALLY redundant? What other fucking color would oil be? Blue? Beige?) but they can only do that if you're tied to a table and have it dripped on you if memory serves. Realistically unless they have 7,000,000,000 tables and several oceans worth of this stuff we're kind of in the clear on that one.

So what else? They have connections to a cartel of alien bounty hunters apparently. Ok...and then what?

Maybe I'm just forgetting something (and really I may be, indeed I feel like I am) but just because they have FTL and spaceships doesn't mean they're that impressive. We've never seen their weapons, so for all we know they're no more sophisticated in that respect than we are. This isn't War of the Worlds (1950's version) or ID4 were we SEE nukes bouncing off them and we KNOW for a fact they're outrageously superior in terms of weapons and defenses. Everyone including the Syndicate seems to just assume that the aliens are powerful because they're aliens.

My point is, answering the question "was the Syndicate right?" ignores a more important question: why didn't they tell every government on Earth so we could fight these things or at least try to? What exactly were they afraid of?

[adam_grif]

The syndicate threatened to trigger a global nuclear war which would render the planet unsuitable for colonization. The aliens were prevented from colonizing the planet by the last ice age, and the threat of large scale nuclear winter was enough to get them to come to the table and negotiate with the syndicate for colonization on mutually agreed upon terms.

[18-Till-I-Die]

Yeah but that's what I mean...

The threat of nuclear devastation stopped these guys, if they were so advanced then why would they not just zap every nuclear silo and sub on Earth.

What I'm saying is practically speaking I believe the Syndicate was really afraid of the aliens because they were alien, and never stopped to ask why these "godlike" aliens hadn't teleported all our nukes away or just dropped a few kinetic projectiles on them from orbit if they were so advanced. The people from Aliens could do that (shoot something from orbit). And they had the technology to laugh off a nuclear winter too since they could turn a literally airless rock into a habitable world in a few decades, and did so on such a frequent basis it has become a business model...so far the Colonists have demonstrated less technology than the Weyland-Yutani Corporation, people who still think that shotguns and .45 caliber pistols are cutting edge technology with which to equip their soldiers.

Again, this isn't ID4 where we know, with certainty, that these guys have defensive technology and weapons so far beyond our understanding it's absurd. This isn't the 1950s War of the Worlds where we've seen an H-bomb bounce off their defenses like a firecracker off the side of a tank. For all the Syndicate knew these people were bluffing when they claimed they could easily take over the Earth if they wanted to. Apparently they were or the Syndicate's threat would have had no effect at all.

My point is the Syndicate was made up of scared old men who had no idea of what or who they were making deals with, because if they had they would have stopped and asked themselves "Wait a sec, why didn't these guys take over already? If they're so powerful why do they even need to negotiate?"

[FaxModem1]

Did they ever give a demonstration of power to the Syndicate or Mulder and Scully?

All I'm thinking of right now is the ability to fly a giant UFO that was under the northern ice cap in the movie.

[Lonestar]

Did they ever give a demonstration of power to the Syndicate or Mulder and Scully?

All I'm thinking of right now is the ability to fly a giant UFO that was under the northern ice cap in the movie.

Antarctica.

And of course we don't know for sure what demonstrations, if any, were made to the Syndicate. We do know that alien(presumably Colonist but maybe Rebel as well) space craft can rip the space-time continuum a new space-hole(The episode where Mulder and Morris Fletcher switched bodies). We do know that the most surefire way to kill a colonist was to stab 'em in the back of the neck, and that their blood(but not that of the Rebels, who were apparently another race) was toxic to humans.

We do know that the Rebels referred to themselves as "The Rebels".

We know that some Colonists rebelled but were not Rebels per se(specifically the ones that became great baseball players ).

We know that when the Colonists made their demand to the Syndicate/Millienium Group/Majestic-12/Etc in the '70s the Syndicate threatened to to create a nuclear war and salt the Earth. Bear in mind we don't know whether or not the Colonists could have stopped it from happening, what we DO know is that the Colonists considered Earth important enough(maybe there's a scarcity of earthlike planets out there, maybe the FTL isn't that fast) that the Colonists decided not to risk it, not that they felt they couldn't prevent it. Hell for all we know SALT and START came because of a Colonist demand of "good faith".

In other words, 18-till-I-Die is making what I think is a silly assumption; that Aliens with tractor beam technology, FTL travel, ripping new spaceholes, etc; are not that much more powerful than Humanity which at best has a few dozen alien fighter jet knockoffs at Groom Lake and some operational orbital bombardment cannons.

[adam_grif]

It's concievable enough that the colonists could have stopped the Syndicate from doing that, but not with the limited resources they had on Earth at the time. I.e. it's something that would take many ships to perform, but the fleet wasn't all there yet, and by the time they left to get them the Syndicate could have done the deed.

Or there's a small chance that it will occur and they feel it's better not to risk it, since they've already waited thousands of years anyway and another 40 isn't hurting their long term plans.

[Sea Skimmer]

It could be the colonists had firepower and technology, but not the numbers to spare to control a planet. Rather exactly the situation the US has found itself in recently fighting in Iraq/Afghanistan. So they had to recruit local lackeys to help out. Since we don't really know what they wanted to do with earth its hard to judge the motives; but the above is pretty much what I assumed. For all we know the aliens may have ships busy guarding a million worlds, with only the 1000001st Infiltration Company or even some random mercenaries assigned to take earth.

[18-Till-I-Die]

In other words, 18-till-I-Die is making what I think is a silly assumption; that Aliens with tractor beam technology, FTL travel, ripping new spaceholes, etc; are not that much more powerful than Humanity which at best has a few dozen alien fighter jet knockoffs at Groom Lake and some operational orbital bombardment cannons.

What does "ripping spacetime a new asshole" have to do with anything? So far the extent we know of that "power" is that they can make crappy sitcom plots come to pass by switching people's bodies somehow. And in fact, wasn't that, correct me if I'm wrong, because humans were fucking around with their FTL drive? (I assume you're referring to the episode where the soldier and the old woman switched bodies right?) And if that's the case then for all we know it's not even something they can weaponize. I mean if I use a car improperly, like say drive it into a house, it'll destroy the house a lot but that doesn't mean the army will suddenly start sending kamikaze Toyotas into Afghanistan or something. And of course that's assuming it is even life threatening, I don't even recall if it was implied to be.

And again, where is the evidence these people are so godlike? We never see the aliens do JACK SHIT besides pick up things and fly really fast. You're making claims based on the assumption their abilities are somehow really, really impressive when in fact they seem damn impressed by our nuclear arsenal or else they'd have zapped them and been done with it.

If you want to know if the Syndicate was "right", first you have to establish wether or not the Colonists were such a serious threat that just fighting them would be futile, and so far the evidence is at best inconclusive and at worst points to a race of people only slightly more powerful than a single company from fucking Aliens.

You can't just say "Oh they have tractors, they're dangerous" you have to show those tractors can actually do something besides pick up humans and mutilate cows.

[TOSDOC]

I don't think the Syndicate were scared of the Colonists so much as the Black Oil itself, a viral substance which rewrites the infected's DNA to create another alien (as seen in Fight the Future). All their clandestine efforts, including turning over their own families in order to get a sample of an alien fetus, were in order to produce a vaccine. When you think about avian flu and the like that have the potential to spread in a pandemic easily, only each sick person turns into a murderous alien, that sounds like armageddon right there. With vaccine in hand, the Colonists might not have been much of a threat at all--without the threat of contagion, maybe they can't even colonize Earth to begin with and just leave.

(hey guys isn't that REALLY redundant? What other fucking color would oil be? Blue? Beige?)

I hope that the vegetable oil I'm cooking with is yellow, not black.

[Lonestar]

18 is just being an idiot.

"How do we KNOW that the Colonists were technologically advanced? Sure they have FTL and could drop kinetic weapons from orbit, but they use slugthrowers and stabbing devices in the course of clandestine operations on earth, as well as deciding 'what's another 40 years?' when the risk of a nuclear war to render the planet uninhabitable is generated!"




Seriously, the whole assumption is that "since we didn't see the Colonists deploy deathrays and killbots they could obviously be defeated by Earthican tech."

[Darth Hoth]

Just how much of a "nuclear winter" would a 1970s-era Third World War really cause? Would it even drop average global temperature by more than a degree centigrade or two? Now, that might be bad for us for any number of reasons, but it certainly does not render the planet as a whole uninhabitable to us as a species, much less an alien colony supposedly more advanced in technological development than we. Neither should the nuclear fallout be such an extreme problem. At most, it will limit the planet's usefulness to them.

Of course, the same is true for the Ice Age as well (if to a lesser degree), so maybe the aliens were just very picky with what planet they wanted or what resources they could sink into it relative to gains. (I forget, did they have some "unique" reason for wanting Earth, like the magic metal in Avatar, or were they just out to conquer it and drown us in black goo for the evolz?) But either way, to me that does seem to imply that either their abilities or their willingness to invest in Earth were somewhat limited.

[Samuel]

Maybe they wanted the infrastructure and biosphere intact and viewed a full-scale nuclear exchange as detrimental to that.

[Darth Hoth]

I thought that their original idea was to colonise Earth already back in the pleistocene era, and they were only held up because of the Ice Age? If so, there would be precious little infrastructure to exploit. Or am I misremembering things?

[18-Till-I-Die]

18 is just being an idiot.

"How do we KNOW that the Colonists were technologically advanced? Sure they have FTL and could drop kinetic weapons from orbit, but they use slugthrowers and stabbing devices in the course of clandestine operations on earth, as well as deciding 'what's another 40 years?' when the risk of a nuclear war to render the planet uninhabitable is generated!"




Seriously, the whole assumption is that "since we didn't see the Colonists deploy deathrays and killbots they could obviously be defeated by Earthican tech."

And you're making an argument based on what you assume they can do with no evidence.

We never once see them 'drop kinetic weapons from orbit'. We never see them deploy any weapons from orbit whatsoever, unless I'm completely forgetting an episode. And again, if they can drop kinetic weapons from orbit then WHY ARE THEY SCARED OF A NUCLEAR WAR?

IF they were as sophisticated as you say then why don't they take out our nuclear facilities? And if it takes, as someone said, "the whole fleet" or "a great effort" to do this then yes they're not much more sophisticated than we are.

And again I point this out...fucking Weyland-Yutani (a mining company, all told) would laugh at the very idea of 'rendering a planet uninhabitable', since they have the technology to turn airless rocks breathable in twenty years instead of weighting forty. These aliens lack technology common enough to fucking Aliensverse that it has become mass produced by a corporation, like cars. Nevermind that we know for a fact that Weyland-Yutani also possesses the technology to "nuke x from orbit". Fuck the people in Event Horizon claimed they had "tac nukes" blow up the titular ship...and they were a SEARCH AND RESCUE SHIP. These Colonists so far are being outclassed by the space age equivalent of Haliburton and the mid-21st century spinoff of Mother, Jugs and Speed (it's a movie, google it).

YOU are the one saying they can do all this shit, so where is the evidence? Not implications, but actual evidence? Where did we ever see them do this shit? If I'm forgetting an episode then please name it and describe what happened, and if it is in fact what you're claiming then fine you win, but so far you're just making shit up.

The fact is we never see the Colonists present any kind of technological advantage beyond FTL and tractor beams, neither of which they appear to have weaponized at all since they seem to be cowed by simple atomic weapons and can be killed by knives and guns (you'd think they'd at least be able to make a forcefield, since we know they can manipulate gravity as we see their ships do it). So unless something explicit is said we can't just assume based on speculation that the Colonists can do xyz because they do abc. ESPECIALLY since abc is itself unspecified (we have no idea what limits their FTL and tractors have).

[18-Till-I-Die]

AND ANOTHER THING:

I just remembered, these aliens were unable to stop some indians a long time ago because magnetic rock in the ground hurts them. If they can nuke shit from orbit why didn't they vaporize that place?

And yet another thing, why didn't they just blitz Earth if they can preform kinetic orbital strikes? Using that technology and a sufficient number of men, it should have been child's play to wipe out the entire military infrastructue of the planet in mere hours. In fact, maybe not that long if they preform a decapitation strike and just kill off the whole commact and control strcuture in one shot.

Either these guys ARE as powerful as Lonestar claims and they're enormously stupid and unable to use their own technology properly, or they're just not that great at all, because the very act of using kinetic orbital weapons SHOULD make any Earthly threat utterly and completely impotent in comparison.

[MKSheppard]

AND ANOTHER THING:

I just remembered, these aliens were unable to stop some indians a long time ago because magnetic rock in the ground hurts them. If they can nuke shit from orbit why didn't they vaporize that place?

Thanks for reminding me of the finale of the X-Files, you son of a bitch.

A few months ago, I finally finished my marathon of the X-Files that inspired THIS thread.

At the time I was between jobs and had free time, so I caught up on the X-Files, watching Seasons 1-9 in a massive marathon.

I then stalled out on the opening of 9x16 "William" and said fuck it.

A bit ago, I finally got around to finishing up that last season.

Predictably, 9x16 was such a pile of dogshit I fast forwarded a lot. But the next two were actually golden.

9x17 "Release" (Dogget's son)
9x18 "Sunshine Days" (About Brady Bunch House)

Then.....we get the finale...The Truth; which revealed predictably fucking nothing, and in itself was a massive pile of shit and hilariously bad.

[Skylon]

Then.....we get the finale...The Truth; which revealed predictably fucking nothing, and in itself was a massive pile of shit and hilariously bad.

I mentally end the show at the season 7 episode where Mulder learns the fate of his sister. At that point the Conspiracy has gone to utter shit. CSM is revealed to be dying. It's the only thread that was left to resolve IMHO. Everything past that was pointless.

[Lonestar]

AND ANOTHER THING:

I just remembered, these aliens were unable to stop some indians a long time ago because magnetic rock in the ground hurts them. If they can nuke shit from orbit why didn't they vaporize that place?

Dunno, because they want the planet in one piece? Hell one of the aliens flat out tells a Rosewell Sheriff Deppity that "We don't think like you people, and you need to accept that".

(and being hindered by magnetic rock puts them in the same league as the United Federation of Planets, by the way)

And yet another thing, why didn't they just blitz Earth if they can preform kinetic orbital strikes?

For all we know only one ship was in the AO, and they Colonists on that ship did not feel they had enough assets on hand to take out all the nuclear delivery systems simultaneaously, and as has been pointed out, they've waited 40,000 years what's another 40?

Using that technology and a sufficient number of men, it should have been child's play to wipe out the entire military infrastructue of the planet in mere hours. In fact, maybe not that long if they preform a decapitation strike and just kill off the whole commact and control strcuture in one shot.

Either these guys ARE as powerful as Lonestar claims and they're enormously stupid and unable to use their own technology properly, or they're just not that great at all, because the very act of using kinetic orbital weapons SHOULD make any Earthly threat utterly and completely impotent in comparison.

Or they have an extremely long view(which we know they have), and they decided that the risk, however small, of the puny humans tossing nukes around and doing damage to the planet was not worth immediate colonization. Again, what's 40 more years? Especially when all you got on hand are smaller ships and SPACE! BLACKWATER performing clandestine operations?

[Todeswind]

The more I get into the X-Files the more Jaw droppingly stupid it gets. The first four seasons were a conspiracy theorist's wank fest but they at least had some level of underlying credibility and didn't seem so painfully contrived as everything following the first x-files film, which I happened to enjoy a great deal coincidentally.