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We Will Not Use Stage Make-Up in the Future

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Our space-faring heroes must pass as alien creatures, if only at a cursory glance. Off we go to Sickbay, to be transformed into Rubber Forehead Aliens via Applied Phlebotinum! This, despite centuries, nay, millennia of cosmetics use by humans, and the very advanced art of stage makeup and personal Special Effects developed in the late twentieth century. In fairness, this could be because DNA testing has become fast, convenient, and widespread, and/or the characters in question must use as foolproof a disguise as possible. Examples of We Will Not Use Stage Make-Up in the Future include:

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Our space-faring heroes must pass as alien creatures, if only at a cursory glance. Off we go to Sickbay, to be transformed into Rubber Forehead Aliens via Applied Phlebotinum! This, despite centuries, nay, millennia of cosmetics use by humans, and the very advanced art of stage makeup and personal Special Effects developed in the late twentieth century. In fairness, this could be because DNA testing has become fast, convenient, and widespread, and/or the characters in question must use as foolproof a disguise as possible. Perhaps because there is not a cosmetics counter or a functioning professional theatre department, doctors on starship, space stations, and other Sci-Fi locales are in charge of cosmetic alterations. Then again, considering the Alien Non-Interference Clause is in effect in many of these series, you'd think they'd have a "First Contact/Infiltration" department who is skilled at this. One might try to justify this by appealing to the Literary Agent Hypothesis: The "real" aliens actually look more lifelike and alien. They just look rubbery on screen due to technical limitations... A more plausible justification is that your rubber foreheads and voice modulators might fool us Puny Earthlings, but aliens who identify their friends by scent first and appearance second will see (smell?) through your disguise before you can say, "Live long and prosper." A good analogy would be how convincing rudimentary "blackface" or "yellowface" makeup is (not very), and that's trying to disguise someone of the same species. Or it could be that modern actors often have to spend hours in makeup, and that's just to fool cameras, using constrained angles and controlled lighting, plus editing in post-production. Given sufficiently advanced technology, surgery or bio-engineering may well be able to produce a more convincing result with less work. Yet another is simply that makeup wears off, prosthetics fall off, and you won't get a second take or a trip back to the makeup chair when the forces of the Reticulan Secret Police are all around you... Examples of We Will Not Use Stage Make-Up in the Future include: