It’s ridiculous, isn’t it? It’s gotten to the point where you can’t even mercilessly body shame someone on the internet until they change schools anymore, not without some white knight coming to their rescue and being all “Hey, stop acting like a monster. That’s a human being.”
But do you know who’s not a human being? An alien. You can say just about anything you want about a fictional alien’s looks and no one can sue you for emotional damages. It’s like a life hack for the social contract, and it’s made all the sweeter by the opportunity to call E.T. a pear-shaped little nobody in a public forum. He thinks he’s better than me just because he made a phone out of a kid’s Speak & Spell? You know what’s really cool, E.T.? Owning your own phone. You’re an adult. Grow up.
And so, like the mean girls we’ve always been deep inside, let’s Burn Book some little green men with bad skin and no girlfriends.
10: Droopy McCool
Imagine if the Jim Henson company built a tardigrade Muppet on a day when everyone was hungover. That’s Droopy McCool, the space-oboe player for the Max Rebo Band in Return of the Jedi. In truth, he’d be higher up on the list if it weren’t for two extenuating circumstances: The fact that he kind of looks like someone drew the bottom half of a dog’s face and then never finished it, and the world that he was born into. Star Wars has a longstanding tradition of forcing background aliens to play woodwind instruments like a bunch of nerds. It’s not your fault you had to join the marching band right when you were at your most awkward, Droopy. Still, would some pomade kill you?
Final judgment: Coruscant 2, Mos Eisley 6. Stop soaking your reeds in the break room, it’s gross.
9: Aximili-Esgarrouth-Isthill
Let’s start with the obvious stuff: His brother was a prince, so if this guy just screams “entitlement,” there’s a reason.
Aximili-Esgarrouth-Isthill was the Andalite buddy to a bunch of child soldiers in the Animorphs books and TV series. Sure, his look was gaudy – Horse body plus scorpion tail plus guy chest plus Andorian head? Hat on a hat much? – but the really unattractive parts of him were more than skin deep. Making friends with a bunch of seventh graders and then encouraging them to believe that your nickname is “Ax” shows a level of internal ugliness not usually seen outside of youth ministry.
Final judgment: Morph into someone with self-esteem, “Ax.” PS, we talked to your mom and we know that your real name is Paul.
8: Abzorbaloff
“Now there’s a mucus-colored troll doll with the lady who played Moaning Myrtle in his solar plexus,” you might say. “Better swipe right quick before someone else snatches him up.”
And do you know what’s worse? He’s a catfisher. The guy presents as a looker named Victor with a 10/10 coif and van dyke and then drops a shirtless, mohawk-that-incorporates-his-back-hair look on you after a couple of months. Not cool. Even for a one-off episode of Doctor Who, not cool.
Final judgment: Congrats on beating steep odds and being the pastiest, doughiest guy on the BBC, Abzorbaloff.
7: Grand Nagus Zek
Let’s go down the list: Ears are too big to look good on a human and too small to look good on a Ferengi. Lots of body hair issues, doesn’t file his teeth enough – grooming seems like a consistent problem. Gaudy taste in clothes. Works too much and always talks about it. Not much of a listener. Career politician. He’d be ranked lower, but he’s rich.
Final judgment: It’s not definitely going to happen, but it’s not inconceivable.
6: This little guy from V: The Final Battle
In recent days, Hollywood has been giving baby aliens the kinderschema treatment, inflating their eyeballs and scaling down their mouths until the audience’s ovaries get sore. It’s the tactic that put a Grogu under every tree for the last three Christmases and a Baby Groot on every pack of pistachios for the last four Pistach Wednesdays.
V, on the other hand, was of a different age – an age when you could stick a priest and Freddy Krueger in a room while a woman gave birth, film the wet Boglin that came out of her, and call it a cult classic. And that’s where this little miracle of life came from. Just look at it. It’s like it the Hulk stuck out his tongue and it was just a smaller, veinier Hulk.
Final judgment: The “V” stands for “vunattractive.” Next.
5: This guy that Scotty is holding
First seen on Star Trek episode “The Enemy Within,” he’s not outwardly ugly, but the stuff he says on Twitter is repugnant.
Final judgment: You don’t get to call it “satire” just because people on the internet get mad at you, guy.
4: The thing from The Thing
Another in a long line of on-screen aliens who can look however they want to look, but somehow wind up as a mess of tentacles and liquid latex, snot, and Karo syrup. Messy eater. Mean to dogs. Also, if he gets too close to a candle or tries to light your cigarette for you, he’ll turn into a punctured can of Silly String made out of wet ham.
Final judgment: Hard pass.
3: Wioslea
What’s that? You don’t remember Wioslea? That’s because she got cut from the first Star Wars movie. Yeah, a movie that proudly featured a jam band made of butts with bug eyes started second guessing its aesthetic when Wioslea hit the screen. It’s like she told the mover that was carrying her eyes into her new face to just put them wherever and then she never rearranged. My home office still looks like her face, but with my vinyl collection instead of a thousand eyeballs.
For the record, this was the lady that bought Luke’s speeder when he “noped” out of the family business like, ten seconds after the Empire showed his aunt and uncle 11 herbs and spices up close. It’s probably for the best that our heroes got off-planet before Wioslea she got behind the wheel. She’s got “distracted driver” written all over her. Pedestrians in Mos Espa probably started dropping like flies the week she got a car. In short, we can’t wait for her Disney Plus series, we hear it’s the new Andor.
Final judgment: There are a couple of ways to interpret the words “weird looking,” and she’s both.
2: E.T.
Pear-shaped little nobody. You thought I was kidding earlier, but I said what I said. By all means, argue this point all you want; heck — another writer on this very site did, but I stand by it.
Final judgment: Don’t eat food off the ground, and stop hanging out with kids, you creep.
1: Yoz and Tak
Farscape was a heck of a thing. It was weird. Its aliens were weirder. They were designed by a bunch of guys who spent the rest of their time making backup Elmos for PBS. There was going to be some creative frustration to vent.
But then came Yoz and Tak, a couple of Halosians from season two, hanging out in space, puking up Jell-O shots and generally being little stinkers. Their ugliness doesn’t come down to their evil plan – chasing an alien promotion by killing a show’s protagonists is pretty boilerplate stuff in sci-fi. It doesn’t even come down to the fact that they look kind of like birds, creatures which are a mistake of evolution and deserve whatever’s coming to them.
No, the Halosians are ugly for one reason above all others: That they’re definitely just the Skeksis from The Dark Crystal, right? Some puppet designer at the Henson workshop rolled into work at the Farscape office late one day, panicked when he realized he had an assignment due, and dusted off an old Skeksis that someone left in a storage tub next to his desk. “Here you go, guys,” he said, “A brand new, never-before-seen creature of my own design,” and because it was the early-2000s and caffeinated malt liquors were just starting to take off, nobody noticed what was happening until the show made it to DVD.
Final judgment: The ugliest thing anyone can do is not be themselves. Also, birds are gross.