{"id":1480,"date":"2026-11-06T18:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-11-06T18:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wade.one\/blog\/?p=1480"},"modified":"2026-11-06T18:00:00","modified_gmt":"2026-11-06T18:00:00","slug":"every-background-alien-deserves-a-completely-unnecessary-backstory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wade.one\/blog\/2026\/11\/06\/every-background-alien-deserves-a-completely-unnecessary-backstory\/","title":{"rendered":"Every Background Alien Deserves a Completely Unnecessary Backstory"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Give me a strange little creature in the background of a space film and I am immediately willing to believe it has a very busy life. The main characters may be dealing with the fate of the galaxy. I would also like to know whether the person with four eyes near the door has finished their shift.<\/p>\n<p>Imagine the alien who appears for three seconds carrying a box. What is in the box? Is this a routine delivery? Has the dramatic music made them late? There is a whole smaller film available in which the galactic emergency is an annoying obstacle between one tired courier and a perfectly ordinary evening meal.<\/p>\n<p>Inventing that sort of nonsense is part of the fun of a busy fictional world. A crowded scene gives you people who seem to belong somewhere beyond the edge of the camera. The more seriously the main plot takes itself, the more appealing it becomes to imagine that somebody nearby is mostly concerned about finding a chair.<\/p>\n<p>I do not need an official series about every passing creature. I am quite happy to supply a daft explanation myself. The box contains replacement spoons, the courier is called Colin, and the entire crisis has made the delivery paperwork considerably more complicated. There we go. Another corner of the galaxy accounted for.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Give me a strange little creature in the background of a space film and I am immediately willing to believe it has a very busy life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[5,14],"tags":[314,313,315],"class_list":["post-1480","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-films","category-random-stuff","tag-aliens","tag-films","tag-imagination"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.8 - 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I'm going to talk about specifics in the film here so if you've not seen it yet and intend to, don't ready anymore. It starts\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Films&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Films","link":"https:\/\/wade.one\/blog\/category\/films\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/wade.one\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/11\/9-movie-poster.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":425,"url":"https:\/\/wade.one\/blog\/2010\/01\/13\/avatar-is-a-must-see-film-at-imax-in-3d\/","url_meta":{"origin":1480,"position":1},"title":"Avatar is a must see film &#8211; at IMAX in 3D","author":"Wade","date":"January 13, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"On Tuesday night we went to see Avatar at the IMAX in Bradford's National Museum of Film and Photography. I had semi high expectations for the film but had heard some bad press so how good it would be was left wide open. someone suggested we go to see it\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Films&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Films","link":"https:\/\/wade.one\/blog\/category\/films\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":942,"url":"https:\/\/wade.one\/blog\/2015\/07\/19\/back-to-the-theatres\/","url_meta":{"origin":1480,"position":2},"title":"Back to the &#8230; Theatres","author":"Wade","date":"July 19, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"Christopher Lloyd and Michael J.Fox (Universal) Yup, Back to the Future is coming back to cinemas (hopefully across the country) on October 21st 2015 alongside the launch of several box sets including the movies, the animated series, extra content, a light up flux capacitor, behind the scenes footage and more.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Events&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Events","link":"https:\/\/wade.one\/blog\/category\/events\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/wade.one\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/PRESSKIT-2-2.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":383,"url":"https:\/\/wade.one\/blog\/2009\/12\/22\/st-trinians-2-good-but-not-that-good\/","url_meta":{"origin":1480,"position":3},"title":"St Trinian&#8217;s 2 &#8211; Good, but not that good","author":"Wade","date":"December 22, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"We went to see St Trinian's 2, the Legend of Fritton's Gold on Sunday in Bradford at Cineworld. It was fun to watch, but sadly, it was definitely a sequel, it failed to live up to the sheer audacity and stupidity that St Trinian's 1 offered. I'm not saying it\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Films&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Films","link":"https:\/\/wade.one\/blog\/category\/films\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":52,"url":"https:\/\/wade.one\/blog\/2009\/09\/07\/innoisam-district-9\/","url_meta":{"origin":1480,"position":4},"title":"InnoISAM \/ District 9","author":"Wade","date":"September 7, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"InnoISAM is what I need, a happy medium between InnoDB and MyISAM. I need the speed of inserts of InnoDB with the speed of selects of MyISAM - no HEAP will not work because the JOIN that I do results in the HEAP table being converted into MyISAM. You get\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Films&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Films","link":"https:\/\/wade.one\/blog\/category\/films\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":106,"url":"https:\/\/wade.one\/blog\/2009\/09\/14\/the-final-destination-3d\/","url_meta":{"origin":1480,"position":5},"title":"THE Final Destination (3D)","author":"Wade","date":"September 14, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"In a word: no. In three words: not worth it. Yeah it was gory, but the second one was better (still not beating the first but that had the advantage of being the first.) It followed the plot of the sequels exactly; people avoid a disaster, guy keeps getting premonitions,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Films&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Films","link":"https:\/\/wade.one\/blog\/category\/films\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wade.one\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1480","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wade.one\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wade.one\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wade.one\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1480"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wade.one\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1480\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1494,"href":"https:\/\/wade.one\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1480\/revisions\/1494"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wade.one\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wade.one\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1480"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wade.one\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}