Six years after the Lumiere brothers’ groundbreaking motion picture The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat Station (1896), Georges Méliès created A Trip to the Moon, the earliest motion picture that depicts astronauts defeating bug-like creatures on the lunar surface. Since 1902, Hollywood’s fascination with alien life has altered the way we think about extraterrestrials.

Movie producers would have us believe aliens are aggressive, hungry for human flesh, and hell-bent on enslaving our minds. See for example The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951, 2008), Independence Day (1996), Signs (2002), Life (2017), Proximity (2020), The Tomorrow War (2021), and every recreation of The War of the Worlds, et cetera ad nauseum. The number of films involving aliens is so extensive, one could spend a lifetime watching them and still not view them all. Most too, favor the fiction aspect of the genre, instead of the verisimilitude of the story. With very few exceptions, the plausibility of truth has become the antithesis of the alien trope.

But a new sci-fi TV series, The Signal, released earlier this year on Netflix, steps away from the us-versus-them plotline. Even the physical descriptions and potential motives of the otherworldly are muted. Instead, the four-part mini-series utilizes the premise of alien contact to take a hard look at the human condition and our most dangerous characteristics. The show is so plausible, that it would be more accurate to label it speculative fiction, an umbrella term for which sci-fi wavers beneath. With this in mind, let’s set aside Fermi’s Paradox and theoretical wormholes, and instead discuss the plausibility, or rather—the inevitability—of first contact with alien life, as well as how The Signal approaches such a contestable sci-fi trope.

The Implausibility of Space Travel

In the world of cinema, extraterrestrial life is synonymous with humans traversing outer space. Yet, when we consider the exploration of the cosmos, and just how short a distance humanity has really traveled, it becomes clear why we haven’t made first contact. As of this writing, Voyager I and the golden record, launched in 1977, is the furthest manmade object from Earth. After coasting at 61,000 kilometers per hour for nearly five decades, it is, in 2024, just shy of one light day away from Earth. The achievements of Voyager I are impressive for sure and are not to be outdone anytime soon. Still, the probability of the spacecraft contacting a nonhuman lifeform this century is near zero.

Consider the fact that the closest star to our own, Proxima Centauri, is 4.2 light years away. Assuming the planet orbiting this star, dubbed Proxima Centauri b, has intelligent life like our own, and assuming Voyager I is heading straight in its direction, those extraterrestrials could listen to the golden record in about 80,000 years. And then, if our theoretical pen pals choose to respond, and assuming their technology is not unlike our own, it would take just as long for us to receive an answer.

We must consider too that Proxima Centauri is still within our own galaxy, which is 100,000 light years in diameter. Again, of that vast distance, humanity has explored a single light day. To assert that we have ‘visited outer space’ is laughable. It is more accurate to say if The Milky Way is our backyard, we have modestly surveyed a single blade of grass. No wonder we haven’t made first contact. Cinematic depictions of space travel with all its renditions of wormholes and blackholes and traveling at light speed makes for good entertainment, but those stories cling tight to the world of science fiction, with a hard emphasis on that last word. If there is no alien life in our solar system, it is unlikely we will be the ones making first contact. When we encounter another intelligent lifeform, it will be them that comes to us, not the other way around.

The Plausibility of First Contact

The Signal, a new four-part series on Netflix, depicts extraterrestrials approaching Earth. And like the golden record affixed on Voyager I, they come to us with a message. The show is possibly the most human-centered alien story since “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street”, a classic episode of The Twilight Zone from 1960, and encompasses all our destructive human characteristics: gaslighting, conspiracies, megalomania, and misogyny. For these reasons, it is a true reflection of humankind, not to be dismantled by the unrealities of the science fiction genre.

The premise of the show focuses on Paula, an astronaut with a mental health disorder. While aboard the International Space Station, she hears a radio message from somewhere deep in space, and concludes it is an alien life form attempting to communicate with Earth. Based on the signal, she calculates the date, time, and exact coordinates of the alien spacecraft’s arrival, and broadcasts that data to Earth. Upon hearing of the inevitable alien visit, government agencies fire high-grade missiles at the foreign object as it descends on our planet, negating any chance of peace negotiations or of acquiring new knowledge about the alien species.

The Signal forces viewers to recall the purpose of Voyager I and the creation of the golden record. Our message to the universe from 1977 represents a collectiveness of humanity, our mathematical symbols, art, music, and a unifying message—broadcast in 55 languages—welcoming those who might want to visit our planet. Yet, with a touch of irony, when we do make contact, we greet that foreign life with immediate and unprovoked hostility. The Signal is therefore not a story about the strangeness of alien life, but rather the strangeness and hypocrisy of the human condition.

The truth is this: if we do receive a signal from an alien race, it is far more likely we will destroy ourselves before the aliens can destroy us. Perhaps if extraterrestrial life did notice Earth on its radar, they might recognize the plagues of our species, and choose to not visit at all. In which case, they might choose to transmit a signal not unlike the one we sent them on the golden record.