Aliens Never Invented the Wheel/Playing With

Basic Trope: A highly advanced alien race lacks an invention that seems totally trivial to humans.

• Straight: The Centaurians have achieved interstellar travel but have never seen a wheel before.
• Exaggerated:
  • The superintelligent Centaurians have somehow come this far without discovering language.
  • Insufficiently Advanced Alien: the only high tech the Centaurians have is space travel; apart from that they're entirely inferior to humanity.
• Downplayed: The Centaurians are more advanced than us but never discovered electricity.
• Justified:
  • They discovered the technology for Anti Gravity while still in the stone age. Wheels were never necessary.
  • They're a Witch Species, and all mechanical technology is redundant.
• Inverted: They think its a joke that we never discovered Anti Gravity, when the necessary tools are perfectly available to us.
• Subverted: An archaeologist reveals that the Centaurians once had wheels, but they've advanced so far since then that nowadays the average citizen knows as much about them as we do about flint-knapping.
• Double Subverted: He was just showing off so we jumped-monkeys wouldn't think we were better than them in any way.
• Parodied: Following a What Is This Thing You Call Love? discussion, the Centaurians question every concept the humans mention, until they cotton on that the aliens are screwing with them.
• Zig Zagged: Technology Levels are thrown out of the window - the alien civilisation has some technology that vastly outstrips our own, some that is about our level, and some that even cavemen would sneer at.
• Averted: Technology Levels are in full effect; the aliens' tech is across the board either better or worse than ours.
• Enforced: The portrayal of futuristic civilisations using hover-tech for Mundane Utility where wheels would be more efficient is a pet peeve of the author, so she works a parodic explanation into her alien culture.
• Lampshaded: "How have you advanced this far wihout wheels?
• Invoked: Both civilisations were created and guided by aeons-old Precursors to settle a bet as to what's better - the wheel, or the leehw.
• Exploited: A Proud Merchant Race specialises in making First Contact, identifying that world's unique techs, jumping on the Galactic Patent Rights and selling them to worlds that don't have them.
• Defied: "Why do you insist on trying to find the technologies we don't share? Face it, we're just better than you."
• Discussed: "Captain's Log: Am descending to the planet's surface to initiate First Contact. Who knows what our races will have to teach each other? They may even lack some of the things we take most for granted. I've got 500 credits on the wheel, Science Officer Smug has fire, and Ensign Mickey is hoping they haven't established the link between sex and pregnancy."
• Conversed: "How could they have cogs and rotors but not wheels? How big a mental leap is that?"
• Deconstructed: The introduction is revolutionary, as any new technology is, but it's shown to be no worse than any native breakthrough. While the human high command discipline the contact crew for breaking the rules, and the alien ruling elite are predicting the downfall of their civilisation, the Centaurian on the street loves the wheel and is grateful to humanity for its introduction, seeing the elite as closed-minded traditionalists devoted to the Good Old Ways.
• Reconstructed: While the Centaurians may have been missing some human inventions, over the centuries they'd achieved a utopian technological stasis, and the planet was at peace. This simple new introduction proves to be the straw to break the camel's back, and throws the whole world into war.
• Played for Laughs: Finding out they've never heard of a "wheel", Ensign Mickey sees an opportunity for profit, and introduces them to... roulette.
• Played for Drama: The introduction of a paradigm-shifting technology overnight has unintended consequences, which serve to show exactly why First Contact so heavily regulated.

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