Alien Hair

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    When humanoid aliens on TV have hair, it almost always falls into one of the following styles:

    1. "Generic Humanoid" Hair: Almost always included a recessed hairline to show off the rubber forehead, which on female characters meant to be attractive is usually only slightly bumpy. Also almost always assumes that Aliens Have No Eyebrows. If this type of alien does have eyebrows, they will be unusually shaped (probably swept-up Romulan-style). The hair can be and frequently is any color.
    2. "Klingon" Hair: Varies from long and thinning to long, full and luxuriant to long, full and mangy or unkempt. Again, the hairline is recessed to show off the craggy forehead ridges. Almost always brown or black hair. May or may not come with eyebrows and/or facial hair.
    3. "Romulan/Vulcan" Hair: Typical of Space Nazis and Space Communists. Varies from the near-human looking hair of Vulcans to the super-sleek-and-shiny wigs of Next Generation-era Romulans. Often comes in a bowl cut, or slicked back. Almost always black hair. Rarely comes with facial hair, unless it is a goatee. Usually look like wigs, and often are. Ditto Aliens love this style.
    4. "Wookiee" Hair: Not so much hair as fur, because it covers the entire body. Usually a rubber suit alien, but more increasingly represented by Muppets or Serkis Folk. Can be expensive to pull off well. Usually varying shades of brown.
    5. "Tenctonese" Hair: Otherwise known as naturally bald... at least on the head. Usually accomplished by a shave or a bald cap, often with a pigment pattern or odd texture, and frequently (but not always) are complimented by enlarged craniums suggesting superior intelligence. Again, this is an alien hairstyle that does not often come with eyebrows.
    6. Not-Hair-At-All "Hair": If the writer (and the budget) allow for aliens who don't have hair but have something else on their heads that they wear like hair. Feathers, scales, or even flowers or vines for Plant Aliens can make for a creative physical difference. One subvariety is "Predator" Hair: not actually hair, but bundles of head tentacles/antennae that look like dreadlocks. Usually placed on the head in the same pattern as the Klingons, back from the forehead. Some writers have gone so far as to posit unique sensory organs or symbiotic species. An alien who otherwise looks nothing like Cthulhu might have tentacles.
    7. Multiple/Combinations: There's no reason a species can't more than one of the above. They might be features of subspecies or races, or the result of a particularly Bizarre Sexual Dimorphism, or because the aliens are just like humans in that they can't agree on a single hairstyle that everyone has to have.

    Note that any and all of these hair types might be a genetic trait of the alien species in question -- or they may be a style popular or even enforced by the dominant/primary/only culture of their world.

    All of these hair types have a tendency to manifest on and/or typify Ditto Aliens -- even alien species that readers/watchers might not think of as Ditto Aliens.[1]

    Examples of Alien Hair include:

    Type 1 - Generic Humanoid Hair

    Live-Action TV

    • Frequently the case in Star Trek. Old-style Klingons from Star Trek: The Original Series are a good example, as well as most of the "aliens" who were visually indistinguishable from a normal human.

    Real Life

    • Humans. After all, we're the aliens to everyone else.

    Type 2 - "Klingon" Hair

    Live-Action TV

    • As befits the classification name, this kind of hair can be seen throughout the Star Trek franchise:
      • Malons from Voyager had the long and thinning variety.
      • Long, full and luxuriant hair was sported by Worf in TNG and DS9, as well as all the Green-Skinned Space Babes from TOS)
      • Martok, most other Klingons, Nausicaans, and Kazon all demonstrated the long, full, mangy or unkempt type.

    Type 3 - "Romulan/Vulcan" Hair

    Live-Action TV

    • Again, as might be expected from type name and the descriptive above, seen in Star Trek:
      • Do we really need to repeat the bit about Vulcans and Romulans?
      • Cardassian hair is an example of the the "slicked back" variety.

    Type 4 - "Wookiee" Hair

    Film - Live Action

    Mister Owl, do Wookiee-types have eyebrows?
    The world may never know.

    Live-Action TV

    Type 5 - "Tenctonese" Hair

    Film - Live Action

    Live-Action TV

    • 'Babylon 5 has a few:
      • The Minbari are genetically bald with a bony crest that the females have carved and shaped. Oddly, some male Minbari have beards—the ones descended from Valen/Sinclair, maybe? -- and obviously, Delenn grew hair after her transformation.

    Modern Myth/Urban Legends

    Type 6 - Not-Hair-At-All "Hair"

    Film - Live-Action

    • The Predator from the film of the same name and its various series and spinoffs. Looks like it has dreadlocks, probably doesn't.
    • Quarren from Star Wars don't count because they are generic "squidheads."

    Live-Action TV

    • The green-skinned species seen in the episode "Visitors From Down The Street" of Crusade (the short-lived Babyon 5 Spin-Off).
    • Ka D'Argo from Farscape.

    Oral Tradition, Myths and Legends

    • The Gorgons, females with snakes in place of hair. Depending on the Writer, they may have wings, or have once been human, or both, or neither, but they always have the snakes. Medusa is the most famous of the Gorgons.

    Video Games

    • The Protoss of StarCraft naturally have a long bundle of cable-like nerve cords growing out of their head like a ponytail; Dark Templar crop theirs to sever their connection to their race.

    Type 7 - Multiple/Combinations

    Film - Live-Action

    • The Na'vi from Avatar have nerve tendrils growing out of their head, but have actual hair growing over the neural cables.

    Live-Action TV

    • Babylon 5
      • The Centauri are an interesting case. If the (male) examples we've seen are any indication, they seem to have an average hairline much higher upon their heads than humans, borderline qualifying them for "Generic Humanoid Hair". At the same time, they have very specific gender-based hairstyles, at least for the upper class Centauri we get to see in the show: Centauri females shave their heads, and males style theirs into an up-thrust "fan", the height of which corresponds to their social standing. Centauri males can go bald like humans, and aren't required to wear false fans in that case, as seen with Emperor Turhan. And the mad Emperor Cartagia defied convention by keeping his hair short -- a practice which was not continued by his immediate successors, Mollari II and Cotto.

    Tabletop Games

    • Gensai from Dungeons & Dragons 4th edition have crystals (Windsoul, Stormsoul) or fire (Firesoul) in place of hair; others are simply bald (Earthsoul, Watersoul).

    Western Animation

    • Decapodians from Futurama have bald heads, but tentacle mustaches.

    This page needs more examples. You can help this wiki by adding more entries or expanding current ones.

    1. ↑ Think about it -- when did you last see a Vulcan with naturally curly hair?
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