Non-Humanoid Aliens in TV shows?

Lots and lots of classic Doctor Who. They had everything--insects, plants, blobs, fish, a gigantic virus, robots, alien supercomputers, plastics...my memory ends sooner than all the aliens they roped into the show. If Doctor Who had had anything like a consistent worldbuilding back then, their story universe would have been hugely complex, and frankly quite impressive.
 
Your comment on Dr. Who featuring plants as an alien species made me think of the Triffids.

A side note. Now I'm on Netflix I intend to binge watch all of the new Dr. Who. I haven't seen many, (maybe six in all) and I suspect that I am in for a treat,
 
Don't forget the 1980s series Helping Henry.
The alien N3 crossed the universe to find out about humanity - he looked like a dining chair!
Screenshot_20221226-143329.gif
 
Others I can think of:
The visitors in Arrival.
The trans-dimensional hyperbeing white mice and Zaphod Beeblebrox (two heads, three arms) from Hitchikers' Guide to the Galaxy.
Any number of 'shapeshifters' who took on humanoid form from convenience.
Some stages of the Xenomorph from Alien's life cycle.
The batspider thing from Angry Red Planet.
The Thing.
Vger from StarTrek the Motion Picture - or rather the unseen alien mechanoid species who found Voyager and sent it home.

EDIT: just realised this is a TV thread not a film thread and all these come from movies.
 
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JunkMonkey said:
Others I can think of:
The visitors in Arrival.
The trans-dimensional hyperbeing white mice and Zaphod Beeblebrox (two heads, three arms) from Hitchikers' Guide to the Galaxy.
Any number of 'shapeshifters' who took on humanoid form from convenience.
Some stages of the Xenomorph from Alien's life cycle.
The batspider thing from Angry Red Planet.
The Thing.
Vger from StarTrek the Motion Picture - or rather the unseen alien mechanoid species who found Voyager and sent it home.

EDIT: just realised this is a TV thread not a film thread and all these come from movies.
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H2G2 was radio first then TV a film version never existed, you must have imagined that.
 
Trying to remember some specific non-humanoid Doctor Who aliens.... (I'm taking the broad definition of "humanoid" as "shaped at least vaguely like a human.")

Daleks: neither the casing nor the biological contents is humanoid, though they were once.

Zarbi: giant ants, complete with 6 limbs and bulbous abdomens. (Though the human in the costume is a little obvious....) Their boss, the Animus, is an imobile and rather abstract octupus/spiderweb hybrid. The Marca are weird-looking crabs about the size of a rhinoceros.

Occasional non-humanoid robots cropped up in the first few years in an effort to replace the Daleks with something not owned by Terry Nation. The Mechanoids are geodesic spheres and the Chumblies look like a stack of upside-down bowls.

The Nestene Consciousness and its Autons don't really have a fixed physical form. Axos is a kind of living spaceshipe made of fleshy vines, though it can exude golden humanoids to interact with its victims.

The Krynoid is a giant, mobile plant that can control other plants. More disturbingly mobile vines!

I thought the "456" from Torchwood were an impressively non-humanoid design. It's a little hard to make them out through the mist. But instead of a head, their public-facing appendages are a trio of what looks like scorpion tails, and the rest of the shape does not have a humanoid posture.
 
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No one here remembers ALF. :cry: :cry::cry:

ALF was an anacronym for 'Alien Life Form'. He was a wise-guy called Gordon Shumway, who crash-landed in the garage of the suburban middle-class Tanner family. It was a forerunner of shows like Third Rock from the Sun, while it clearly had its more off-the-wall origins in shows like Mork and Mindy, and the story from the film ET. However, I think it was more than a kids show, and it did feature SF elements and science in stories.

Mostly ALF was a puppet, but occasionally he was a small uncredited costumed actor. It ran for four years in the late 1980's (102 episodes) and was then repeated regularly (in the UK anyhow) before completely disappearing. According to Wikipedia, there was an unresolved final episode, then a made-for-TV film (but without his host family) then a reboot that got cancelled.

I think I used to watch it very late at night/early morning when I worked shifts.
 
I remember ALF. I watched it as a kid when it was regularly repeated in the UK. There was also a cartoon which showed his life on his home planet before ALF.
 
Do we really need a "what is humanoid" definition discussion? The dictionaries are quite vague. ALF does walk on two legs, he has two hands, two eyes, two ears, two nostrils and two teeth...

Here is a photo for those who never saw him:

0b5b505aba34a55b6e8f8ea86f33b57ee6-01-alf-2.jpg
 
There is definitely a sliding scale of fictional aliens from "entirely human-like" to "not human-like at all," with a lot going on in the middle.

It's a real shame that modern Doctor Who has never revisited Axos, come to think of it. It was a thoroughly strange entity. Turns out I've misremembered it slightly. The "spaceship" component of Axos looked like it was made out of golden-brown clay, though it also had faceted eyes and had tentacles and claws sprouting within its corridors. Its Axon drones were shambling vine/tentacle masses, but could disguise themselves as slim, golden humanoids. They could also convert other living beings into more Axons.
 
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Fiberglass Cyborg said:
It's a real shame that modern Doctor Who has never revisited Axos
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While on the subject of Doctor Who, the Sontarans (those huge militaristic, humanoid, potato-headed guys) were described as being involved in a millennia-long space war against their mortal enemies the Rutans. So, I was once-upon-a-time quite eager to see how the members of this other great galactic power might have looked. Imagine my surprise then, when we were shown a Rutan in The Horror of Fang Rock, (Tom Baker) and they turned out to look like fluorescent green jellyfish-headed seaweed! It didn't even appear to have prehensile limbs and had dropped some of its self on the lighthouse steps.
 
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