Recently, the Kepler space telescope discovered the world’s smallest extra-solar planet, similar in size to Earth but way too close to a star to support life. The fact that astronomers are constantly looking for Earth-like planets points to two human obsessions: finding alien life and finding a suitable replacement for our planet. I mean, let’s face it; we’re going to eventually ruin the one we’re on. Whether through nuclear war or environmental disaster or an angry god sending down swarms of locusts, Earth is going down. Even if we miraculously survive the 5 billion years our sun is supposed to last, we’re still going to have to find a new place to live once it swallows the Earth. This will most likely require the most utopianist idea of them all: terraforming a dead planet.

Is that even possible? NASA think so … kind of. Possible solutions include building “a large mirror, many miles in diameter” and placing it in orbit over Mars in order to melt the polar ice caps. Yes, that is in fact a real suggestion from NASA and not an evil plot hatched by a Superman villain. The other solution involves engineering super-plants to release huge amounts of greenhouse gases. We plant them, wait for an ozone to build up and, voila, a new lush, untouched paradise for us to one day ruin before moving on to the next planet.

Engineering magic plants and giant space mirrors are fun and all, but we prefer instant gratification a la the Genesis Device from Star Trek. Fire up your FTL drive and get ready for a trip down terraforming lane.

Total Recall

Before he was California’s governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger occasionally appeared in tasteful, independent-minded dramas like this quaint period piece about a crazy Austrian man whose eyes almost explode on the surface of Mars. (Check out this entertaining 7-minute summary). Spoiler alert: After plenty of absurd plot twists, it’s revealed that evil Mars colony director Vilos Cohaagen has been hiding a machine that, seconds after Schwarzenegger pushes it, release air into the atmosphere and renders it breathable in a matter of seconds. I love this movie for the same reason I love all of Paul Verhoeven’s so-bad-they’re-good films (RoboCop, Starship Troopers): its absolute lack of regard for good taste or subtlety.

Rating: I’m sorry, but the planet began its transformation as Arnold was gasping for air and completely changed in time for him to kiss his girlfriend at the end of the movie? Even for a schlocky sci-fi movie, the science is pretty unbelievable. 1/5.

Star Trek III: The Search for Spock

I know what you’re thinking; the Genesis Device first appeared in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. Well I’m going with the Search for Spock because most of the movie takes place on the actual Genesis planet, where a young Spock and some totally gross space-worms are growing at an alarming rate along with the planet’s atmosphere. Unlike the craaazy “artifact” used in Total Recall, the Genesis Device takes a respectable couple of hours to work its magic. Unfortunately, Captain Kirk’s son, the bone-headed David Marcus, violated the first rule of pseudoscience and used unstable protomatter in the device, causing the planet to age rapidly towards its demise. In the end, the Enterprise crew rescues Spock, Kirk pushes a Klingon down a cliff and everyone lives on to appear in the next movie, The Voyage Home, which for some sad, sick reason takes place in ’80s San Francisco.

Rating: According to the internet, the definitive source of information that adult virgins care about, the Genesis Device works by causing a massive explosion and then using a preprogrammed matrix to reassemble the subatomic particles into the desired configuration. That certainly doesn’t sound plausible; one point for believability, two points for use of explosions. 3/5.

Aliens

First I’d like to state that if I ever saw a facehugger scuttling towards me, my reaction would be to scream “Oh hell no!” and then flush myself out of the airlock. Now, back to the James Cameron-directed Aliens, the much more plural sequel to Ridley Scott’s Alien. In this movie, Sigourney Weaver’s character Ripley decides to go back to LV-426, the planet where she first encountered the alien eggs because, hey, why not? Now the planet is home to a terraforming colony, or at least was home to a terraforming colony before the aliens ate all of the colonists, save for an adorable little girl named Newt. In the end, Ripley fights the giant alien queen in a sweet-looking exosuit cargo loader and is free from the aliens for like five minutes until Alien 3 happens.

Rating: This is the most accurate portrayal of terraforming yet, in that it doesn’t really work. 4/5.

Serenity

I’ve limited this list to movies, which is why you won’t find Dr. Who or Battlestar Galactica anywhere on it. Luckily for us, Joss Whedon’s stellar TV series Firefly was released in convenient movie form in 2005. This entire series is centered around terraforming. Hell, it’s in the intro to the show:

We moved out, terraformed and colonized hundreds of new Earths; some, rich and flush with the new technologies; some, not so much. The central planets … them as formed the Alliance … decided all the planets had to join under their rule.

Read that last passage in a folksy drawl for maximum effect. Serenity centers around a planet called Miranda, the career-minded redhead of the bunch. Turns out the Alliance, the despotic governing body of the universe, tested a drug on the planet in hopes of making its population more docile and easier to control. It works, kind of, in that 99.9 percent of the people lose their will to live and .1 percent become homicidal space mutants. Everyone wins! Laser battles ensue, people die, movie over.

Rating: Firefly never really explains how terraforming works in its universe, but we do know it takes decades with the aid of huge machines, and that newly terraformed planets in the outer rim are far less developed than older, more established terraformed planets. Couple that with the fact that the ones doing the terraforming also try subjugate each new colony’s inhabits and you’ve got the most likely scenario yet. 5/5