Alien Conquistadors
Basically I'm looking for media where the world is invaded by aliens who want to Civilize humanity. They tell us they're here to save our souls, but what that winds up meaning is slave labor, forced conversions, torture, and executions. Bonus points if it covers Earth's later status as a colony to Space-Spain, and more bonus points if this is all tied to the Space-Doctrine of Discovery uniting Space-Europe under the Space-Pope
I know there have to be a few popular stories out there with premises like this, but I can't think of any, and I'd like to try some
Half-Life 2 is that. The aliens use a human front to claim they're only here to help humanity, but it's obviously not true. They're referred to constantly as "our benefactors" by the human representative, who talks about the aliens in glowing, warm terms of how this is the next stage of human evolution.
In reality it's just a bunch of slave labor and weird genetic experiments. They seem to be siphoning away Earth's water reserves too.
There's also an implication that the aliens don't really care that much about Earth in particular, since they're a multidimensional psychic species with control over dark matter. They keep spreading because it's just what they do now. The game is set somewhere around 20 years after they conquered earth in the hilariously named "Seven hour war."
The Combine have some machine set up that makes it impossible for humans to reproduce or possibly even get horny. It's mentioned in the background a few times. For the collaborators to get promoted within the security forces they have to submit to surgical manipulation, literally giving up their humanity in the process of becoming post human "synths" better suited to the Combine's needs. A lot of the Combine's technology, notably their gunships, are other species that have been converted by the Combine until they're effectively non-sentient machines.
Earth is polluted with trans-dimensional refuse - headcrabs are ubiqiuotous threats in every damp and out of the way place. Antlions have colonized large coastal areas making them extremely hazardous. The seas are full of carnivorous leeches. Alien wildlife is widespread and causing serious problems.
I adore how much detail is in the combine radio chatter and how it just doesn't come up in-game unless you're paying attention to it. It's unreal how detailed it gets. Like how you're charged over the radio directly with various crimes if you're at low health, my favorite being "divisive sociocidal counter-obeyance." You also get called different things over the overwatch as the game goes on, initially you're a "staph infection," then they start to catch onto who you are. They'll start identifying you as an "anticitizen" which seems to mean something like public enemy, then you're either "Anticitizen One" or "Freeman."
But my favorite thing is what you mentioned. Combine soldiers will get offered various things for your capture. At first it's just things like rations or drugs (stimulants). Somewhere around the canals you can hear them get offered "non-mechanical reproduction simulation" which has got to be some kind of psychic wet dream? After the canals the soldiers get threatened with death or "permanent offworld assignment" if they fail to capture you.
Their military jargon is cool too, like their guns are swords or daggers (if you get a jump on a soldier they might say "daggers free" or "go sharp"). Echo is a soldier, helix is a medic. Then they'll use terms like amputate or clamp to refer to various tactics.
Deep space nine's cardassians are exactly this, but not done to earth
Childhood's End is not exactly this (the alien agenda is not so overtly sinister) but it's sort of in the vein
They drop the aliens except as a side gag pretty quickly.
Iirc, Colony was kinda like that, but it's largely told from the POV of resistance hiding among collaborators. Things get weird at the end though. It gets canceled without a real ending sadly.
I can't stand it when serialized programs just end because they didn't get picked up for another season. I don't care if you have a whole grand, multi-year vision in your mind, you can still tell a coherent story in 13 episodes.
The Last Angel has some of this as the backstory. Humanity gets attacked by the Compact, an alien empire that wants to bring civilization to lesser species and essentially is white mans burden ideology cranked to 11. Humans say fuck that, and fight back, including making sentient AI(aliens really hate this), kill one of the aliens' leaders(aliens really, really hate this) and aliens decide to exterminate humanity. The story starts like 2000 years after this, and follows both the AI of a human ship, who has been self upgrading and fighting a 1 ship guerilla war for centuries, and the descendents of the last few human survivors, who managed to escape genocide, and instead were conquered and their culture subjugated. Strong parallels to amerikkkan treatment of natives. Essentially imagine if american colonialism, but native people somehow built a jet fighter in the middle of being colonized. that occasionally blew up a military base or oil pipeline and the crackers couldn't manage to find and kill it for centuries. But the main story is military sci-fi. Also lesbian relationship that I dont remember being written in a male gazey way is always a plus.
it's not a 1-for-1 fit with what you're talking about, but your description gave me V vibes.
basically big ass spaceships show up one day "in peace" lead by a being who looks like Morena Baccarin with a very short haircut and a personal stylist that probably was poached from italian Vogue. the "visitors" claim they only need an insignificant amount of earth's resources and in exchange they will provide us with advanced technology to cure all disease and become a very advanced civilization. it turns out they are here to do something more akin to colonialism (enslavement, genocide, etc). and the series is about a few humans resisting and many humans collaborating (through naivety or morally bankrupt calculus), and the odd alien being like, "no wait, this is bad, actually" and joining the resistance.
i never watched it all, but i remember liking what i did see. i guess it was a remake of an earlier series, so there's a lot to the franchise if you deep dive all the media. it should be noted this was 2009, for regular TV, so the special effects are likely not going to have aged well.
i can tell you one thing....
if a powerful alien species showed up and their leader could appear like morena baccarin with short hair
spoiler
i'm selling out humans. adios muchachos! see you on the flip side of that big burger in the sky.
I was gonna say V as well. The original miniseries is WAY more explicit about this (and way better tbh).
also be glad that you didn't watch the entire remake because it had such a bullshit ending lol
I mean I think this kind of describes The Borg. Maybe not the part about saving souls, but their conception of assimilation could be thought of as civilizing if you view it through their epistemology.
The game XCOM2 hits this vibe in the opening cinematic. https://youtu.be/TGIDNPTIx08
You're going to hate me for suggesting this, but isn't this essentially what is happening in Signs?
I haven't seen it in a very long time but I think the subtext and some comments from Shyamalan suggest that signs was a supernatural, religious event that most people interpretted as aliens. I can't remember the details though.
it's also been a very long time since I last saw it, but I could've swore that there was a literal scene showing in plain and clear view, the alien spaceships packing up and leaving after Mel Gibson realized that water killed them?
One of the Three Body Problem books has
spoiler
every human rounded up and put into a concentration camp in Australia. But that's more like settler colonialism, and ends up not even being a major focus anyway iirc
The Twilight Zone episode To Serve Man, based on the short story of the same name
Iain also gave us the line "an outside context problem happens to a civilization the way a period happens to a sentence.
It’s a spoiler and only half fits, but this is the twist premise of
A Dark Room.
The game leads you to believe that you’re a human exploring an alien landscape, but you’re actually the alien and your race has subjugated humanity.
