Editing Space: Above and Beyond (section)

==Story arcs==
''Space: Above and Beyond'' connects episodes through prominent story arcs beside that of the main arc, the Chig War. In an approximated descending order of significance, these are:

===Chig War (2063)===
{{Redirect|Chigs||Chig (disambiguation){{!}}Chig}}

'''Chigs''' (sometimes referred to as Glyphs) are a fictional alien species in the science fiction television series ''Space: Above and Beyond''. ''Chig'' is not the species' name for itself but a human-coined [[nickname]] (referencing the [[Tunga penetrans|chigoe flea]]).<ref name="The Farthest Man from Home"/>

====Background====
Chigs are humanoid, [[bipedalism|bipedal]] aliens that serve as the primary [[antagonist]]s in the series. They appear to be unable to survive in atmospheres that support human life; they are often seen wearing armored life-support systems that provide them with the [[methane]] they need to breathe. Chig armor suits also have a suicide mechanism that is triggered when the helmet is forcibly removed, quickly dissolving the Chig inside. In the episode "Choice or Chance", a Chig is apparently able to take human form and interact with other humans in an ordinary atmosphere until killed, when it turns to slime in the manner of earlier Chig deaths.<ref name="Choice or Chance"/> How this is achieved is not explained. Distinguishing characteristics of the un-armored Chig are small black eyes set deeply in the head, pink skin, a lack of a prominent nose, a protruding upper jaw, and structures resembling [[gills]] to either side of the [[mandible]].

[[File:Space- Above and Beyond - Chig (2).jpg|thumb|A Chig's face is shown in the series finale.]]

The series provides little evidence about the Chigs until the last two episodes, choosing to initially present the Chigs as a traditional science-fiction alien enemy out to destroy humanity. Throughout the series, the writers provide several small clues regarding the nature of the Chigs, their motives, and their biology before devoting the last two episodes of the series to revealing the possibility that Chigs and humans are related species.

====History====
As the series presents it, human contact with the Chigs begins when an uncrewed probe, launched by the military-industrial corporation Aero-Tech, lands on "celestial body 2064K" (later given military designation 'Anvil'), the [[natural satellite|moon]] orbiting the Chig homeworld. This moon is sacred to the Chigs because it is where life originated via [[panspermia]] and where Chigs still go to be born.<ref name="And If They Lay Us Down To Rest..."/> The Chigs evolved from bacteria that originated on Earth billions of years ago: an asteroid collision threw these bacteria into space, carried by [[meteorite]]s, where they eventually landed on the Chig sacred moon. Life on Earth had already advanced to the [[eukaryote]] stage of development, and the rate of evolution proceeded slightly faster for the bacteria on their new world, allowing life there to evolve to the point that it could produce the sentient Chigs at roughly the same time that modern humans evolved.

The Aero-Tech probe manages to obtain a limited amount of data before the Chigs send a warning signal through it and destroy the probe. Aero-Tech, for unknown reasons, apparently chooses to keep this "[[First contact (science fiction)|first contact]]" a secret from the governments of Earth. In early 2063, Chigs declare war on humanity, launching what appears to be an unprovoked first-strike against humanity's budding interstellar colonies. The colonists, sponsored by Aero-Tech and called the Vesta and Tellus colonies, are attacked, destroyed, and the few survivors taken prisoner. The Chig space forces begin a push towards Earth, devastating the unprepared Earth forces. Only the actions of the US Marines Aviator 58th Squadron at the Battle of the Belt prevent Earth itself from falling (the battle was fought in the [[Jupiter Trojan|Trojan asteroid field]] at Jupiter's [[Lagrangian point]], not the [[main asteroid belt]]).<ref name="Pilot"/>

Through surprise, superior numbers, and advanced technology, the Chigs gained the advantage in early battles. However, humanity's adaptability and ferocity catch them off guard. The Chigs, who favor large, direct military strategies, are unprepared for the guerrilla tactics used by the human forces. [[Special operations]] missions, infiltrations, assassinations, [[sabotage]], and small unit engagements all prove effective against the Chig attackers. The Chigs ally with the remnants of the [[Silicate (Space: Above and Beyond)|Silicates]], a human-built race of [[Android (robot)|androids]], that fled to space after losing the AI Wars on Earth. The nature of the alliance is vague and not expanded upon in the series. Just as humans are ready to conquer the Chig homeworld, an emissary comes to negotiate for peaceful relations. The emissary reveals that humans and Chigs seem to have a common origin, based on their chemical makeup.

====Technology====
Chig technology is slightly more advanced than Human technology at the beginning of the series, though only loosely, on the scale of a few decades of advancement. Chigs have [[faster than light]] spacefaring technology and advanced weapon systems. They use a combination of plasma-based energy weapons and [[ballistic missile]]s for their aerospace fighters and [[capital ship]]s. Chig ground forces use [[anti-gravity]] hover tanks (T-77s) for heavy armor and anti-personnel [[plasma weapon]]s and [[flamethrower]]s. Study of a downed Chig fightercraft in early episodes revealed that they are faster and have a better rate of climb than their human counterparts. Human "Hammerhead" fighters have a heavier weapons load and are more maneuverable. The Chigs have large battleships and a destroyer-class vessel, capable of causing energy spikes within human starship reactors, that uses a special [[microwave energy]] weapon generator. They have also developed a [[stealth fighter]] with a hull impervious to standard aerial cannon fire, and they have a red-colored fighter that can travel across the gravity field of a [[black hole]].

====Culture====
Much about Chig society remains unknown throughout the series, which presents them as mysterious and terrifying aliens trying to destroy humanity. Their hierarchy and general [[social structure]]s remain unexplained. From the Chig ambassador's claims in the final two episodes, it seems that they consider the moon on which they evolved (codenamed "Anvil" by humans) to be "[[sacred]]". One curious practice observed since early in the war with humanity was that whenever Chig infantry encountered the grave of a dead human soldier, they would dig up the body and mutilate the corpse, typically by dismembering it. At first, the human military thought this was a terror-tactic, meant to frighten human soldiers. It was eventually discovered that while the Chigs may possess some form of "religion" (given that they consider their breeding grounds to be sacred), they never developed a concept of an [[afterlife]].

Humans are, it turns out, just as much mysterious and terrifying aliens to the Chigs as they are to humans. As the Chigs encountered snippets of human culture, through intercepted radio transmissions or recovered personal effects, they drastically misinterpreted this alien concept of an "afterlife". This led the Chigs to believe that dead human soldiers will ''literally'' spring back to life sometime after their death and that burying a corpse aids in this process. Genuinely terrified of this human "army of zombies", Chig infantry then began to dig up the graves of human soldiers they came across in order to dismember their corpses to make sure they "stay dead".<ref name="Pearly"/>

Just as humans have applied the [[derogatory]] "Chig" [[moniker]] to the aliens, they have a slang term for humans. According to their Silicate allies, the term loosely translates as "Red Stink Creature".<ref name="Choice or Chance" /> Chigs have green instead of red blood, and they smell like [[sulfur]]. As it turns out, humans' red blood and non-sulfur smell strikes the Chigs as just as disturbingly "unnatural" as their alien biology seems to humans.

====Chigs of note====
* "Chiggy von Richthofen" – named after [[Manfred von Richthofen]] – flew an advanced Chig stealth fighter, with the words [[Inferno (Dante)|"Abandon All Hope"]] written in English on its hull. Its armor was impervious to standard cannon fire, and it was a superior vessel to Earth fighters, destroying dozens of them. "Chiggy von Richthofen" was killed in a dogfight against Lt. Col. T.C. McQueen, who used missiles to breach the armor of the fighter.
* Chig Ambassador: A Chig envoy sent alone and unarmed to the USS ''Saratoga'' to negotiate an end to hostilities between humans and Chigs. It was equipped with a translation device capable of producing English. The Chig attempted to explain the circumstances of the Vesta and Tellus colony massacres, blaming Aero-Tech CEO E. Allen Wayne for desecrating the sacred moon of their homeworld with an uncrewed probe. When Wayne refused to admit to the act, the Chig attacked him. As Lt. Col. McQueen fired a weapon to kill the Chig ambassador, the mixture of methane and oxygen ignited, resulting in an explosion that killed the Ambassador, Wayne, and several top Earth military officers.

===Silicates===
Silicates are a fictional race of [[android (robot)|androids]] created by [[human]]ity to be servants.

====History====
The Silicates were created to be servants and soldiers, but they developed intelligence and sentience after they were infected by the ''Take a Chance'' computer virus created by Dr. Ken Stranahan (name from the show's visual effects supervisor). This sparked an AI rebellion by the Silicates, who attempted to free themselves from human rule. The war continued for many years, until the Silicates captured military spacecraft and escaped into space. As they went into space, the Silicates suffered from a lack of maintenance which caused problems for them. The remnants of the Silicates that fled into deep space serve as mercenaries and actually aid the alien "[[Chigs]]" in their war against humanity.

====Capabilities====
The AIs ([[Artificial Intelligence]]) were manufactured by humanity to serve them, and they appear as [[human]]s but with enough differences to appear as machine creations, namely their rifle sight-like [[crosshairs]] in place of [[pupil]]s. They were made to be beautiful and physically appealing. The surviving Silicates that fled into deep space have suffered from a lack of adequate maintenance for many years, and they frequently possess minor damage to their outer covering, which reveals their machine parts underneath.

Silicates were designed to be [[domestic servant]]s or pleasure models and not particularly for [[hard labor]], which would be done by heavy machinery. As a result, standard Silicates are actually not that much stronger than a human, and, because they were not originally designed to fight, it is not particularly difficult for a trained human soldier to defeat them in [[hand-to-hand combat]]. This is partially offset by the fact that Silicates are not hindered by physical pain and cannot experience fear.

Silicates communicate with one another through modulation schemes made by wireless telephone which comes across to humans as a series of electronic beeps and chirps. This wireless network allows each AI to know the position and operating status of the other units. Their mechanical nature allows them to store information and retrieve it, making them excellent in information gathering which can be shared with their colleagues when demanded.

====Behavior====
As the AI Silicates were created as a "servitor" species, they were programmed to understand abstraction, but their programmes restricted original thought and creativity, leaving them to simply imitate rather than create. Had the "Take a Chance" [[computer virus]] not been created, it is likely the Silicates would have remained servile. Risk-taking has become the prime ideology of the AI Silicates, which results in them seeing activities as a risk or gamble. The first "risk" was the indiscriminate killing of their human creators in the AI War, which lasted for ten years. The Silicate robots refer to humans as "carbonites", because they are carbon-based life forms.

Because the Silicates were programmed to comprehend abstract thought but restricted from formulating original thoughts and not possessing normal emotions, they are capable of understanding that humans experience fear, albeit this comprehension is on an academic level. This made the Silicates a deadly enemy in the AI Wars, because while they experienced no fear in combat, they realized the value of random and savage attacks meant to terrify and demoralize humans. While the Silicates were incapable of originating such tactics, they simply needed to imitate the long history of terror tactics used by human armies.

A Silicate's inability to experience emotion is contradicted in two episodes: 'Pearly', in which a Silicate displays concern for the welfare of and affection for a Silicate that is badly injured and 'The Dark Side of the Sun', where revenge upon the protagonists for the death of another Silicate is attempted. The emotional capability of Silicates is never explored in the series, so it is unknown if these displays of emotion were out of character or the intentional development of character types.

It is implied that the AI Wars were not much of a conventional war, with each side gaining and losing territory, but largely consisted of Silicates infiltrating human societies and committing random acts of [[terrorism]] and sabotage. Fighting was not limited to "[[front line]]s" as the Silicates intentionally attacked places humans thought they would be safe in order to terrorize them: Shane Vansen's parents were killed when a group of Silicates drove into her [[middle-class]] suburban neighborhood, randomly storming her house. The Silicate's gambling-centered ideology even extended to combat tactics: they randomly chose to attack Vansen's home as the result of a coin toss.

The tide of the Human-Chig war began to turn after initial Chig successes because Chig battle-tactics favored large and direct military assaults; the human military switched to guerrilla warfare, which the Chigs were not conceptually experienced in fighting. The subsequent alliance between the Chigs and the remnants of the Silicates, who are quite experienced at non-conventional warfare and terror tactics, partially made up for this deficit in Chig strategy.

===In Vitroes===
In Vitroes are artificially [[gestation|gestated]] humans, produced through [[genetic engineering]]. Originally, the Silicates were built to be humanity's servants and soldiers, but, after they revolted, the In Vitroes were developed to replace them as the new disposable [[underclass]]. Large numbers of In Vitroes were grown as [[shock troops]] for use in the AI War.

In Vitroes are created by mix-and-matching [[chromosome]]s and genetic sequences from dozens of donors to create optimal traits; they do not have "parents" who ever existed as distinct people. In Vitroes are easily identified by their protruding navel located on the back of the neck, rather than on the abdomen. Some In Vitroes from the same batch contain similar enough genetic material that they could be considered siblings, but they rarely meet. In Vitroes do not generally have "family" members – a fact that affects their [[morale]] and loyalty.

In Vitroes do not share [[social equality]] with the so-called "naturally born" humans. Literally removed ("born") from their individual gestation tanks at the physical age of eighteen, they are educated swiftly and harshly to enable them to enter society with at least a nominal idea of how to comport themselves. They are derisively termed "tanks" by regular humans, which seems to be a [[double entendre]], describing not only their method of birth but also their physical toughness, which is always greater than "naturals", and their disposable nature as the first to come in battle, the [[tanks]] that open the way for the infantry.

Due to their limited [[emotional development]], their deployment in the AI War as troops was not as successful as the pioneers of the In Vitro program nor the military would have liked, as the In Vitro battalions had no emotional connection beyond the most basic to their country, planet, or even race; this led to their racial reputation as "lazy" and "not caring for anything or anyone", which contributed to the [[prejudice]] against them from "naturals". In Vitroes also seem to refer to themselves as "tanks" when around each other. Before its abolition, they were subject to [[indentured servitude]]. There is still considerable [[racial segregation]] within humanity, resentment by normal humans, and governmental abuse for morally dubious purposes. Two main characters, Cooper Hawkes and T. C. McQueen, have to face all the ramifications of such a society from their perspective as In Vitroes.

This repeating theme explores topics such as [[racism]] and prejudice in a society and [[liberty|freedom]]. It differs from other story arcs in its complexity in the form of a division into two sub-stories. One is presented as historical [[narration]] by the characters or [[flashback (literary technique)|flashbacks]]; the second occurs in the present, with the experiences of Hawkes and McQueen, including a subtle sub-story of the shifting relationship between Nathan West and a maturing Hawkes.

===Aero-Tech and the UN===
The dark Aero-Tech and UN story arcs inject elements of [[conspiracy]] and high-level [[cover-up]]. Aero-Tech, founded in 2015, appears to be a [[monopoly|monopolistic]] [[aerospace]] and [[arms industry|defense]] supplier. It is connected with the United Nations (UN) by Aero-Tech's clearly evident [[political power]] with the UN (with a former Aero-Tech director becoming the [[United Nations Secretary-General]] early in the series) and with the armed forces, as evidenced by its control over advanced technologies. It is also suspected that Aero-Tech was aware of the Chigs before the rest of humanity, and that they deliberately endangered the ''Vesta'' and ''Tellus'' colonists. Aero-Tech further gathers, uses, or withholds strategic information in pursuit of its corporate agenda. The Aero-Tech and the UN story arc explores topics such as power, intrigue, [[politics]], the [[military-industrial complex]], perhaps to some degree also the [[ethics]] of science in the service of military and corporate interests and [[moral responsibility]].

===Ending===
The final episode of the series ends in a [[cliffhanger]], with T. C. McQueen badly injured and most of the major cast apparently [[killed in action|killed]] or [[missing in action]], with only Cooper Hawkes and Nathan West left. Yet, with Earth in a much stronger strategic position, there is hope, despite the losses and sacrifices. These closing elements of the plot were written at a point when the producers knew that the show was likely to be canceled.