Where does the friendly alien begin? Not with E.T., but with a Martian exiled to Edwardian London to reform the most selfish man alive.

Journey Through Sci-Fi returns with a brand new series. We Come in Peace traces the history of friendly aliens on screen. In this opener we set out the stall: what makes a visitor friendly rather than hostile, why everything gets measured against E.T., and how one mistranslated Italian word put Martians in our heads.

Then we go back to 1913 and A Message from Mars, widely held to be the first British science fiction film. Ramiel, a Martian stripped of his rank and banished to Earth, has to reform a selfish London bachelor called Horace Parker. It is A Christmas Carol with a spaceman, and almost every benevolent visitor since owes it something.

In this episode:

• Friendly visitor or invader? Where the line actually sits
• Voltaire's Micromégas (1752), possibly the first friendly alien story ever written
• Kenneth Arnold, Roswell, and how 1947 gave us the flying saucer
• Schiaparelli's canali: the mistranslation that built fictional Mars
• Ramiel's tough love, the zap power, and some baffling 1913 camera trickery
• Lizard people or Arthurian courtiers?
• Britain in 1913: picture palaces and a film industry inventing itself

Also discussed: E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Cocoon, Batteries Not Included, Earth Girls Are Easy, It Came from Outer Space, Aelita: Queen of Mars, A Princess of Mars, Project Hail Mary and Armageddon.

Watch along with us. A Message from Mars is free on BFI Replay: https://replay.bfi.org.uk/video/7f470ecc-3ccd-5cde-aca0-ac97153f8ecd

Lizards or courtiers? Tell us what you saw.

Next time: The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) meets its 2008 remake.

Hosted and produced by James Payne and Matt Willcock. Edited by James Payne.

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