by Jim Jepps

The Aliens takes us to the dirty edge of civilisation where we quarantine outsiders. Turning small differences into hard and fast lines of demarcation over which ‘they’ must never step.

Science fiction is uniquely placed to comment on the politics of everyday life. Freed from statistics, headlines, partisan pressures and the damning strictures of the specific it is free to play with ideas, delve beneath the surface, indulge in thought experiments.

Obviously it should be done well, the idea of the over-worthy Guardian article simply set in space does not have much appeal. Imagine George Monbiot in orbit above Earth screaming down ecological scorn upon the surface’s worthless population or Polly Toynbee on her knees on some future desolate beach screaming “You fools, you finally did it, you finally blew Labour up” and then tearing up a signed photo of Jeremy Corbyn… actually, I’ve changed my mind, that does have a certain appeal…

One of the most pressing political issues of our age is the refugee crisis and yet there has been precious little representation of this in speculative fiction. The extraordinary movie District Nine (which The Aliens has clearly drawn from), some of the stories in the collection Octavia’s Brood and, of course, we interviewed Gillian Cross last week on her children’s fantasy After Tomorrow which deals with a lot of these themes are a few examples, but it’s pretty few and far between, possibly because the issue is so serious and involves actual children actually dying.

So it was with a little bit of nerves and a touch of relief that I realised that Channel Four was going to take on the subject in The Aliens (which you can watch completely legally here). Our main protagonist is a border guard, tasked with keeping an internment camp full of extraterrestrial refugees away from human society while allowing those with the correct papers to come through to work for us on the cheap. If the news continually frames immigration and refugees in particular as a problem can speculative fiction do any better?

But stop.

The first and last question we should ask is – is it funny? Did it entertain? Was it well acted and thoughtful? Would it make a “normal” person want to watch another episode? Before marking its worthiness we have to ask was it worth watching?

I think the answer is yes. Possibly not YES. CLASSIC. But a quietly confident, looking you straight in the eye – yes.

It comes from the creators of Misfits so, as you might expect, it focuses on the lives of ordinary people facing extraordinary problems. It also eschews star gazing postulations for more Earthy humour. If you like amusing scenarios involving people shitting themselves, or dick jokes or kidnap murder plots going hilariously awry (and why wouldn’t you) then this is definitely for you.

The characters feel before they think. They’re sexual, angry, worried, kind, confused, betrayed, and bored – as they should be in all good drama but it’s a simple standard that many fall short of. They lead with their flaws and sometimes those vices turn out to be virtues. I liked it.

But back to the politics.

I’ve got no desire to subject The Aliens to some sort of political purity test. All I’m interested in really is whether it has something positive to say and does that work.

It seems to me that from step one we’re exposed to the injustice of the situation. The way the aliens are treated, the vilification they are subjected to and the way that their poverty, and precarious way of life, is something that has been thrust upon by their social situation rather than any genetic differences. This is helped in the fact that it’s pretty difficult to see any differences between those inside the camp and those outside of it, apart from which side of the wire they have found themselves.

We also see that life for the refugees is grim and some respond with violence, anger and criminality. They become the centre of drugs rings which in turn allows the border guards an ideological justification for keeping them away from the rest of the population.

We don’t know, at heart, what makes them alien except the fact that they are treated as alien. Small differences aside they love, fear, joke, and fart like everyone else. In some ways the fear of the other creates something to be frightened of.

It felt very well judged and well balanced to me. Not bludgeoning you over the head with a message in the way it would have done if I’d written it but allowing it all to slowly seep through while we’re distracted by exotic adventures, unrequited erotic dreams and daring do. In fact it’s exactly the way I like my politics. Sneaky. Well done.