Centauri Dreams’ resident movie critic turns his attention to a personal favorite from the canon of science fiction films. My own memories of The Thing from Another World go back to late Saturday night black-and-white TV, where I first saw the chilling tale as a boy. The scene where the team fans out on the ice as they try to figure out what it is that is frozen down there still puts a chill down my spine. Who knew at the time that The Thing himself was James Arness, early in his career arc toward Gunsmoke’s Matt Dillon? Larry gives us all the details, including reflections on the film’s significance in its time and the questions it raises about our attitudes toward the unknown. Don’t be surprised to find a collection of Larry’s Centauri Dreams essays making its way into book form one of these days.
by Larry Klaes
Ah, aliens. For some humans, they are the conquering interstellar warriors of some tyrannical Galactic Empire. To others, they are angelic saviors just waiting to uplift humanity into the wider Cosmos. To still more, they are aloof godlike beings who are completely indifferent to anyone unlike themselves. If an alien happens to be a member of the Star Trek franchise, the chances are very good they will look, talk, and act very much like a certain primate species of the planet Sol 3 (a.k.a. Earth), with perhaps some variations to the ears and nose.
In many science fiction stories dealing with extraterrestrial intelligences (ETIs), aliens can be all four of the types mentioned above. However, just as often our imagined cosmic neighbors can and do become little more than outright monsters: Creatures of the Id aimed at our basest fears who exist only to maim, extinguish, and sometimes consume unwary victims – while giving audiences visceral thrills designed to voluntarily release portions of their currency to these story makers multiple times.
This last category became the standout feature of many science fiction films, hitting their stride in the 1950s. The results range from great in a few notable cases down to quality levels that were found wanting for the majority of the rest.
One of the earliest and most memorable standouts of this genre from the mid-Twentieth Century was the science fiction/horror film titled The Thing from Another World (often referred to as just The Thing), Produced by the Winchester Pictures Corporation and released by RKO Radio Pictures, it premiered on April 27, 1951.
Given a cursory look, the main plot and overall trappings of this cinematic experience called The Thing can give one the impression of this motion picture being a standard, albeit classic, “monster movie.”
Or so it might seem…
Members of the United States Air Force (USAF) stationed at an air base in Anchorage, Alaska, are ordered to investigate a report by scientists at a remote Arctic research station of a possibly unusual aircraft that has crash-landed near the North Pole. Speculation on the craft’s identity ranges from the Canadians to the Russians, with the latter described as being “all over the pole like flies.” This is during the first decade of the Cold War, after all.
Image: The original film poster for The Thing from Another World.
The team of military airmen, the lead scientist of the research station, and a nosy journalist who is eager for a juicy story fly together to the reported crash site: They come upon not the expected terrestrial airplane in need of rescue, but instead a saucer-shaped alien spacecraft frozen in the Arctic wasteland! As the team attempts to remove the extraterrestrial vessel buried in the ice using thermite bombs, they accidentally destroy the entire ship in the process. However, the body of a lone occupant from the craft is found nearby, frozen in the ice.
The rescue/expedition team flies with their invaluable “prize” to the science research station just ahead of an approaching blizzard. There they crudely quarantine their confined “visitor”, only to have the alien being accidentally revived from its ice prison (by an electric blanket left on, no less).
Surprising the single guard on duty, the sentry uses his gun to shoot the alien multiple times, but without noticeable effect. The being subsequently escapes and proceeds to go on a rampage, injuring and killing both men and several of the station’s sled dogs.
Despite the creature’s violent and deadly behavior, which includes procuring the blood of its victims for both food and reproduction, the resident chief scientist perceives the alien as a highly evolved and therefore wiser and better being than his fellow humans: After all, this extraterrestrial life form arrived in a starship.
The scientist explains the alien’s hostile actions as a defensive response to its treatment by the equally hostile “alien” creatures from the station, along with their unwillingness to truly communicate with it. In stark contrast, the military personnel naturally and not without reason see this “thing” from outer space as a dangerous monster that threatens all their lives and possibly every other organism on Earth!
After attempting and failing to kill the alien intruder with bullets and fire, the airmen have one last plan to stop the creature before they are either slaughtered by the alien or freeze to death, as the alien has sabotaged the station’s furnaces. Their hope is to trap the alien in the generator room, where the humans are making their last stand, and electrocute the creature with a contraption rigged up along the floor.
Just as the alien enters the trap area, the lead scientist breaks ranks and rushes right up to the being, where he attempts to plead directly with the alien in order to reason with it to save its life so that the alien may in turn share its presumably superior knowledge and wisdom with humanity. The being responds by harshly knocking the scientist aside and continuing after the airmen.
The creature does step into the trap, where it is brutally electrocuted to the point of disintegration: The station and the world are saved by the menace from beyond the stars by a bunch of modern-day warriors wearing leather bomber jackets underneath their parkas.
Later on, having a news “scoop” beyond his wildest dreams, the reporter relays the events of the last two days to his very eager listeners. Ready to plunge in with the details, the reporter first gives his audience (and by proxy the film’s viewers) this warning and plea:
“Every one of you listening to my voice… tell the world. Tell this to everybody wherever they are: Watch the skies everywhere. Keep looking. Keep watching the skies!”
Roll credits.
Let us first acknowledge what should be the obvious: That The Thing is a film with a story and characters written by and for human beings of the planet Earth; in particular, American human beings from the mid-Twentieth Century in the midst of the Cold War era who were also in the thick of dealing with anti-communist “witch hunts”.
There was also a particular mindset in terms of social conventions at the time of how men and women should be and behave, especially towards anything that was different, even in ways that did not have to be literally alien to trigger certain responses.
The alien visitor in this story could have been friendly, or at least non-hostile, without sacrificing dramatic suspense and excitement in the process. This is what took place in the contemporary science fiction film It Came from Outer Space, released in 1953: The ETI in this story were also the victims of a spaceship that crashes on Earth, yet their only intentions were to repair their vessel and return to the stars. These aliens were explorers, not conquerors. They even informed the main human character, who happens to be an astronomer, that the two species were not yet ready to meet peacefully, for it was humanity which had a lot of maturing to do.
The aliens’ take on the situation was reinforced by the fact that an angry, armed mob of humans had been coming to destroy them, certain that these uninvited “guests” from outer space had only hostile intentions for the native terrestrials. Granted, the aliens had temporarily “possessed” certain townsfolk, which made them act unusual in the process, but this was only done in order to provide camouflage so that the distant voyagers could obtain the repair tools they needed in the nearby desert community as unobtrusively as possible. Had the aliens revealed their true physical appearance to the humans, they would have automatically terrified the local populace and created an even more immediate hostile response.
The resident scientist in It Came from Outer Space had been successful in quelling the mob from destroying the aliens in his story. The astronomer even kept the ETI from killing the humans that threatened them, which they reluctantly intended to do rather than be either captured or exterminated by these comparatively primitive and savage creatures.
This was not to be in the case with the “thing” in The Thing. The deck was stacked against this alien almost from the start. The very title of the film calls the alien a “thing”, even though the lead scientist, Dr. Arthur Carrington, emphasizes repeatedly the fact that the being came to Earth in a starship from another part of the Milky Way galaxy, stating that it therefore must possess at least some superior knowledge and wisdom (the alien is even dressed in a “civilized” fashion, wearing some type of manufactured coverall uniform).
Even the 1938 short story written by John W. Campbell, Jr., that The Thing is based on was titled “Who Goes There?” and the alien in that version was far more hideous, manipulative, and deadly to the trapped men of the Antarctic research station than the one of the 1951 film (the alien in the 1938 story was referred to only as the Thing, though).
The original cinematic plans for the physical appearance of the alien were more monstrous than the result that eventually arrived in the final film version. In a screenplay draft dated August 29, 1950, the first clear sight of the alien is described this way:
“He switches on his flashlight, and centers its beam on the ice-block. As Ericson said, the ice is now almost transparent. Through it, only partially distorted, can be seen an unearthly horror. It has a bulbous head, a tiny suck-hole for a mouth, multiple eyes, no ears. Its arms are extra-long, ending in thorny clusters, rather than hands. It stares malevolently through the ice.”
Despite this and other ambitious and creative concepts developed during production of The Thing, the filmmakers had neither the special effects technology nor the budget to make the alien look both so elaborate and convincing on screen. They finally settled on a being that bore more than a passing resemblance to the famous “monster” created by Victor Frankenstein in what is considered to be one of the first modern science fiction novels: Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, written by English author Mary Shelley (1797-1851) and first published in 1818.
Specifically, the alien bears definite similarities to the version which most people identify with Frankenstein’s creation, the one made for the iconic Universal Studios film, Frankenstein, released in 1931 and played by actor Boris Karloff.
This decision, intentional or otherwise, has its own allusions to our discussion theme. In the original Shelley novel, the “monster” was actually intelligent, articulate, and feeling. He only became hostile and murderous after relentless negative encounters with human beings who were frightened by his appearance. A similar situation took place with Frankenstein’s creation in the 1931 film (and initial sequels), although here the “creature” was portrayed as being less intelligent and verbose, though no less feeling. In fact, had the makers of this landmark horror film gotten their way, the “monster” would have been reduced to a purely instinctual killing machine, all for the sake of entertainment.
Image: Actor James Arness portraying the title character. Note the more than casual resemblance to the cinematic Frankenstein monster, and not just due to film production budget and contemporary FX technology restraints.
Nature versus Nurture, or You’ve Got to be Taught to Hate
As the alien was not terribly big on civilly “dishing” about itself during the film, the hapless humans trapped with it (and by proxy, the viewing audience) often had to make their own assumptions regarding the nature of their uninvited guest from the stars and its true intentions. Naturally human biases, instincts, training, and educational backgrounds play a big role in the numerous assumptions and reactions. This includes the thoughts and intentions of the script writers, both subconscious and conscious.
A big part of these guesses involve whether the alien was provoked into its hostile reactions, or did it indeed intentionally come to Earth to introduce its species as the new dominant life form for our planet. We know for a fact that the humans were already splitting off into their own camps of thought from the moment they realized that the craft which crashed in the Arctic was no terrestrial airplane, not even something exotic from their chief Cold War rival.
Image: The airmen and scientists discuss what to do with their unexpected visitor trapped in the ice – but soon their “guest” will force their hands in the matter.
When they found the alien in the ice and brought it back to the research station, the enlisted military men who were assigned to guard it repeatedly told the others how uncomfortable they felt just being near the creature, even though at first everyone assumed it was dead. This instinctual reaction led one of the sentinels to place an active electric blanket over the ice block containing the alien so he would not have to look at it – or have the being look back at him, which he swore it was doing. This event caused the frozen chunk of water to melt and subsequently release the alien – which turned out to be very much alive!
One item before we continue: It was stated in the Internet Movie Database (IMDB) Goofs section for The Thing that the heat from a working electric blanket placed directly upon a large amount of ice would produce a lot of liquid water, enough to short out the blanket early on. Of course the plot required an unintentional reason for the alien to be released and active, since the USAF officer in charge, Captain Patrick Hendry, refused to have the alien removed from the ice block for any reason until he heard back from his superiors for further instructions.
One wonders what might have happened if the alien had not only been placed under more competent security, but included being monitored by the station scientists? They were in a civilian scientific research station, after all, not a military base. Instead, the being was placed in an unheated store room (a window pane was broken to make the room even colder from the outside air) and watched by shifts of lower ranking airmen – men who were trained to respond to unknowns either defensively or offensively and only follow orders.
While certainly none of the humans in this story had ever encountered an actual alien being before, these members of the warrior class were probably the least advisable people to have watch over such a life form in such a situation (and why just one person at a time, for that matter?).
When the alien did become free of its ice prison, the first reaction from the guard was to shoot it with his gun, six times in fact. We later discover that the bullets had no lasting effect on the alien, at least in the physical sense. Soon after, as the being was attempting to escape from the station, it was set upon by three of the sled dogs. The alien also survived that encounter (and killed two of the dogs outright in the process, while injuring the third badly enough that it had to be put down on the spot), but it lost an arm during the attack. No doubt by that time, if the being had any thoughts of the natives of this planet being friendly or at least non-hostile, they were utterly extinguished.
Of course the audience already “knows” that the alien is going to react negatively towards any and all terrestrial life forms it encounters. Not only is it called The Thing in the film’s title (as opposed to, say, E.T. The Extraterrestrial, like that friendly and adorable little alien in the 1982 film co-produced by Steven Spielberg), we are told and shown in various ways via the 1951 film’s trailer and marque posters that we are going to see a horror flick. The Thing is not a balanced, scientific documentary on the subject of ETI thinking, behaviors, and intentions.
Despite being quite humanoid in appearance, the alien in The Thing is revealed to be even less like a human or even what most humans consider to be a “higher” life form: When the scientists analyze the arm ripped off the alien during its battle with the sled dogs, they discover it is composed of material more like a plant than an animal.
The mammalian humans present are clearly not easily able to wrap their minds around the idea of a thinking, walking plant in general, let alone one that can build and fly a starship. This combination of ignorance, fear, and bias only makes the extraterrestrial being even more alien to most of the station residents, heightening their concerns about their “guest”.
The reporter, Ned “Scotty” Scott, and Dr. Carrington have the following conversation during this revelation, which leads to one of the most infamous lines in the film:
Scotty: “Please, doctor, I’ve got to ask this. It sounds like, well… Just as though you’re describing some form of super carrot.”
Dr. Carrington: “That’s nearly right, Mr. Scott. This carrot, as you call it, has constructed an aircraft [!] capable of flying millions [!] of miles, propelled by a force as yet unknown to us.”
Scotty: “An intellectual carrot. The mind boggles.”
Dr. Carrington: “It shouldn’t. Imagine how strange it would have seemed during the Pliocene [!] age to forecast that worms, fish, lizards that crawled over the Earth would evolve into us. On the planet from which our visitor came, vegetable life underwent an evolution similar to that of our own animal life, which would account for the superiority of its brain. Its development was not handicapped by emotional or sexual factors.”
When the reporter tells the scientist that his readers would likely consider the notion of an “intellectual carrot” as too wild to be taken seriously, Dr. Carrington counters this attitude by asking one of his colleague to give several examples of real terrestrial plant species: One type, the acanthus century plant, can capture and consume a variety of small animals. The other flora mentioned is the telegraph vine, which is aptly named, as it can send signals to other members of its species many miles apart.
“Intelligence in plants and vegetables is an old story, Mr. Scott. Older even than the animal arrogance that has overlooked it.”
Dr. Carrington’s fascination and unabashed admiration for the alien only grows when they discover that the being reproduces by creating seed pods from its body:
“Yes. The neat and unconfused reproductive technique of vegetation. No pain or pleasure as we know it. No emotions. Our superior. Our superior in every way.
“Gentlemen, do you realize what we’ve found? A being from another world as different from us as one pole from the other. If we can only communicate with it, we can learn secrets that have been hidden from mankind since the beginning.”
Dr. Carrington betrays his own biases here. While he is likely the only human at the research station who does not want the alien either dead or at least sent somewhere very far away from them, the scientist also assumes that just because the being came to Earth in a technologically advanced spaceship, it is therefore morally and ethically superior as well, if such concepts can be applied to a species that evolved in a different manner on another world in another solar system.
The film also betrays its own stereotypical views when it comes to scientists: Dr. Carrington is deeply impressed, bordering on envy, over how the alien makes copies of itself. Since it does not involve sexual reproduction and all the “complicated” (read messy) physical and psychological baggage that process tends to bring, at least for higher intelligence species like humans, Dr. Carrington sees the alien’s method as essentially unemotional and therefore superior. This goes along with his character’s devotion to Science with a capital S and not the more mundane pursuits and behaviors most non-scientific human beings focus their lives on – like the airmen.
The film assumes a man like Dr. Carrington will be passionate about science but otherwise unemotional and certainly not one to have physical feelings – behaviors we witness all too well between Captain Hendry and Nikki Nicholson, Dr. Carrington’s secretary. This almost makes him the human equivalent of the alien: Mentally superior, highly intelligent, aloof, and therefore potentially just as much a threat to the station and beyond as the alien, since Dr. Carrington seems more than willing to sacrifice all their lives in his single-minded pursuit of what he sees as a much higher and therefore better life form.
As the cinematic representative of Science and its practitioners, this stereotype is no fairer to the field and its professionals than the automatic assumption that a being from the stars is on Earth only for conquest and destruction rather than exploration and contact. This also goes for the film’s representation of the Air Force men, who are portrayed as being much more average in intelligence and far more interested in the baser pleasures of life that Dr. Carrington undoubtedly disdains. Their baseness includes the almost instinctual response to anything unknown with lethal force, especially an actual alien.
Even when the airmen were first on their way to investigate the crashed flying craft, which they knew almost nothing about before finding it, their general consensus was that the vehicle was probably of Soviet origin. For Americans of the early Cold War era, this could mean little else than a potential threat to their nation, whether it was a spy plane or something more elaborate like an experimental weapon. Worse, the airmen generally tended to blend into one another in terms of having any prominent individual characteristics.
Image: Our predetermined heroes on their way to meet their destinies near the North Pole.
In essence, everyone in The Thing is one level of stereotype or another, including the character of the film’s title. While this may be expected from Hollywood cinema, especially back in the day to use a phrase, it does have ramifications in terms of making audiences think certain ways, even if it is just reinforcing their already preconceived notions about certain types of people and concepts. Thus Science is represented by a man who is devoted to it and little else, be it biological urges or his fellow humans.
Oh, Dr. Carrington is constantly emphasizing how he wants the presumably superior knowledge of their visitor from the stars for all of humanity, yet he is not unwilling to endanger the lives of all the humans at the research station in order to communicate with the alien, including his own.
Dr. Carrington said the following declaration in the 1950 script draft, which was retained in a watered-down version of the final released film:
“Two of our colleagues have died and a third is dying. Those are our losses – and the battle has only begun. There will be more losses. The creature X is more powerful, more intelligent than us. We are infants beside him. He regards us as soft, vulnerable earth worms important only for his nourishment. He has the same attitude toward us as we have toward a field of cabbages.
“A new world has come to devour us. Only science can conquer it. Our minds, gentlemen – the little muscle that thinks, observes, examines and finds answers. All other weapons will be powerless.”
We get to the core of the filmmakers’ take on science as an amoral force in pursuit of its own agenda at the sake of all others during the following scenes when it is learned that Dr. Carrington is secretly growing the seed pods from the alien in the station’s greenhouse.
We observe more indications of the airmen’s views on science as amoral or at least indifferent to the safety and concerns of the wider world with this next bit of dialog from the 1950 film script draft. These scenes contain some extra useful details that did not survive into the released film, yet neither detract from nor drastically change what was shown on screen.
Dr. Carrington: “A secret has come to us, greater than any secret ever revealed to science. It must not be destroyed! It must be studied – and learned.”
Captain Patrick Henry (later changed to Hendry): “I saw it, Carrington. It’s not something to put under glass – and examine. And there are thousands more of them hatching. They’ll reproduce like weeds. They’ll tear the world apart.”
Dr. Carrington: “That doesn’t matter!”
Henry: “It kind of matters to me.”
Dr. Carrington: “Knowledge is more important than life, Captain. We have only one excuse for existing – to think, to find out, to learn what is unknown.”
Lt. Eddie Dykes: “We haven’t a chance to learn anything from that pookey Martian, except a quicker way to die, Doctor.”
Henry: “I’m ordering you back, Carrington.”
Dr. Carrington: “It doesn’t matter what happens to us! We’re not animals. We’re a brain that thinks! Nothing else counts, except our thinking. We’ve thought our way into nature. We’ve split the atom – ”
Dykes: “Yeah, and that sure made the world happy, didn’t it!”
[Stage direction] The mewing [of the newborn aliens raised in the greenhouse] out of the wall speaker increases.
Henry: “I’ve ordered you out, Carrington.”
Dr. Carrington: “We owe it to the brain of our species to stand here and die without destroying a source of wisdom! Captain, I beseech you. Science, government, the Army – civilization has given us orders.”
Henry: “They’re wrong order[s]. They come from people who don’t know what they’re talking about.”
Reporter Skeely (later renamed Ned “Scotty” Scott): “I’m with you there, Henry. In a pinch I always put my money on a little man – against all top brass.”
Dr. Carrington: “You set yourself above all human progress, above all science!”
Henry: “I set myself against an enemy, Carrington.”
MacAuliff: “Come on, Doctor. You’ve said your piece. This is one time when science doesn’t blow up the world… just to see what makes it tick.”
Note in particular the mention by Dr. Carrington about splitting the atom as one of science’s greatest achievements and the airmen’s reactions to it. The two sides were juxtaposing the benefits of atomic energy for running our technological civilization against the destructive reality of the atomic bomb. This latter item was often viewed by the general populace as a creation by science without either thought or safeguards as to whether or not it should be made – even though nuclear weapons came into existence in the United States at the demands of the government for the military: First to force the Axis powers of World War Two to surrender (and simultaneously beat them at developing such a weapon before the Allies could) and then to “balance” geopolitical power with the Soviet Union and their Iron Curtain allies.
There was also a quick comment early on in the film that Dr. Carrington is “the fellow who was at Bikini.” This is a reference to Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean, which was used for conducting multiple nuclear bomb tests from 1946 to 1958. The atoll was left uninhabitable for humans due to the excessive amounts of radiation from these tests. Some of its numerous islands were outright obliterated from the powerful nuclear explosions.
These tests were performed as a major aspect of the Cold War: The nuclear weapons were, ironically, created and meant to prevent yet another global-scale war by making the possibility of a nuclear attack so devastating to Earth as to be untenable to any rational and ethical person or nation.
That the Thing looks so similar to Frankenstein’s monster as mentioned earlier only adds to the perception of science as an amoral force that delves into areas beyond where humans are considered capable of understanding or meant to be there. While the initial reasons for the alien ultimately resembling the Universal Studios film version of Mary Shelley’s monster were both technical and financial, the underlying message taken from it may have been consciously taken advantage of once the filmmakers saw the end result.
Both sides in The Thing have their points in their takes on the alien: The military men were already afraid of this being from another world even when it was presumed dead and encased in the Arctic ice when they first discovered it. That it came from another world in a vessel with unknown technologies and therefore abilities (including the underlying possibility of carrying weaponry with a similar bent) were reasons enough for them to be on alert for the worst possible scenarios of this unexpected and largely unplanned for situation. When the alien turned out to be very much alive and became free of its ice prison, their fears became confirmed and they immediately and instinctively went into warrior mode.
Dr. Carrington pointed all this out to Captain Hendry:
“Captain, when you find what you’re looking for, remember it’s a stranger in a strange land. The only crimes were those committed against it. It woke from a block of ice, was attacked by dogs and shot by a frightened man. All I want is to communicate with it.”
Captain Hendry: “Fine, provided it’s locked up.”
Of course we already know the deck is stacked against the alien being benevolent or even neutral, which makes the pleas and plans by Dr. Carrington seem naive at best and just as dangerous as a direct assault on everyone there at worst. However, it is not the scientist’s fault that he is unaware of what the filmmakers had in store for their characters.
It seems a bit much for such an intelligent man, no matter how excited he may be about coming upon what would be considered the most important scientific discovery in human history, responding to Hendry’s warning that the alien’s progeny will “reproduce like weeds” and “tear the world apart” by exclaiming “that doesn’t matter!” Unless Dr. Carrington’s illogical outburst was a combination of disdain for the Captain’s much lower level of scientific knowledge and words borne from exhaustion and an anxiousness not to lose such a unique intellectual prize. Nevertheless, it is still both excessive and irrational, especially if Dr. Carrington wants to reveal the supposedly superior wisdom and technology of the alien to the whole of the human race for their benefit. Getting his entire species wiped out in the process would rather defeat the purpose.
I think it is safe to say that Dr. Carrington’s personality is one that does not contain any serious levels of sadism, masochism, or megalomania. He has an obvious ego, of course, but this is borne of multiple earned achievements from a life-long career in science, including the Nobel Prize. As a further indication of Dr. Carrington’s overall character, it is interesting to note that someone of his stature and renown is still out working in the field – in the remote Arctic, no less – rather than a much more comfortable and perhaps even more profitable academia equivalent of a desk job, or in the corporate world, or even with the military, for that matter. His devotion to science is, if nothing else, certainly not for show but a genuine passion.
The words put into Dr. Carrington’s mouth by the scriptwriters show their biases on science and its practitioners in general. This reveals a genuine real world fear of what they don’t quite understand. In an ironic but hardly unexpected contrast for the era, the filmmakers turn to and lionize the ones whose main tasks are to monitor the region for (usually) terrestrial threats and to deal destruction and death when the situation calls for it – or even when told not to take the offensive in the particular case of this film.
These “regular Joes” are the kind our popular culture likes to measure by the “test” of who you would want to have a beer with. Whether you would want to drink beer or any other kind of liquid with either these airmen or Dr. Carrington and his cadre of scientists depends upon what kind of conversation topics and activities you prefer.
The other social hierarchy test portrayed in The Thing is who would prefer whom as a relationship partner. As the film takes place in late 1950, this naturally involves the designated Alpha Male (Captain Hendry) and the most prominent woman in the film, in this case Nikki Nicholson, who as a “bonus” happens to be Dr. Carrington’s secretary in terms of adding an extra layer of dramatic tension. Whole scenes are dedicated to establishing that the two have a form of romantic past together and will definitely upgrade to a serious relationship in the near future once this annoying ordeal with the asexually reproducing alien menace is over.
Ms. Nicholson shows definite signs of sympathy and respect for her work boss, as she constantly has to remind an increasingly frustrated Hendry that Dr. Carrington’s continually stubborn and life-threatening actions are due to his being both overexcited by the presence of an actual living ETI and very tired from lack of sleep over this major scientific discovery. However, in standard Hollywood tradition, it is made quite clear who is going to end up with whom by the time the film credits roll, though the scientist shows no non-work-related interest in Nikki or anyone else, from this planet at least.
One last point on this topic: I was made to wonder if there was originally going to be more of a romantic rivalry between Captain Hendry and Dr. Carrington over Nikki Nicholson when I read the following introductory description of the head scientist from the 1950 draft script:
“At a large flat-topped table in the room sits Dr. Arthur Carrington. He is a man of 43 with an alert, cheerful face. He is good looking, well built, soft spoken. His dominant characteristic is a smile that seems never to leave his lips. It is present always on his face like an extra feature. He is a genius of science and a man whose brain is focused like a microscope on the secrets of nature. But the intensity of his preoccupation with science is not to be heard in the easy tones of his voice. It will be seen in the things he does, in his point of view – but never in his manner. Outwardly, he seems only a good looking man full of child-like enthusiasm for a task and with a soothing, amiable way for his fellow man.”
…
“Captain Henry stands silently in the doorway, his eyes moodily on his scientific rival. The doctor is studying the indicator dials of a complex instrument on the table. Bill Stone greets the arrivals.”
The final result for Dr. Carrington created a character who was indeed a rival for Captain Hendry, but in a manner rather different from the usual thematic pattern.
Putting Things in Perspective
Just as the appearance and actions of the alien did with the airmen at the research station, the rapid pace of science and technology after the Second World War frightened the general public, many of whom did not really understand such concepts as nuclear physics, except to focus on the fact that one version of it could annihilate the world in large enough quantities with little warning.
They also often understood the practitioners of science even less, except for what they saw portrayed in their entertainment media. The Thing did its level best to make Dr. Carrington the catch-all example of scientists as a whole through a somewhat distorted and not entirely cloudless cultural lens.
Had The Thing been produced after October of 1957, when the Soviet Union lobbed the first artificial satellite into Earth orbit called Sputnik 1, then Dr. Carrington may have instead been turned into the true hero of the story.
That 184-pound silver ball with four radio whip antennae trailing off its sides shocked Americans into the realization that if the USSR could make an object circle the entire planet over and over with one of their rockets, then they could just as easily deliver a nuclear bomb to any part of the United States in a manner of minutes using the same technology.
American authorities at multiple levels felt it had fallen behind in educating its citizens in the sciences and technology, particularly in regards to space. Almost immediately an overhaul of the nation’s education system began with an emphasis on those subjects to close up what they perceived to be a serious gap with and lag behind the Soviet (and therefore Communist) system.
Thus my prediction that had The Thing been produced after 1957, Dr. Carrington’s high scientific knowledge and enthusiasm would have gone from being a suspicious hindrance and danger to the group to become the very qualities that literally save the day. In the actual 1951 film, he did mention multiple times how science was the only real tool that could “defeat” the alien visitor, at least in terms of understanding and communicating with the being to hopefully avoid the outcome that ultimately unfolded.
As will be discussed in more detail later on, even though Dr. Carrington would fail to sway the alien with his preferred methods, the scientific knowledge he and his colleagues did provide from their examination of the extraterrestrial did give the airmen the knowledge they needed to bring down their adversary after their more traditional weapons fell short due to the alien’s unconventional physiology.
The Thing itself may also have been turned into a more sympathetic character if the film had been released once the Space Age had begun in earnest, rather than a largely inhuman antagonist. One example of this theme was given early on in this essay with the 1953 science fiction film It Came from Outer Space. Another example comes from a 1967 episode of the original Star Trek television series titled “The Devil in the Dark”. The ETI in this case is a being called a Horta, a large silicon-based organism that is essentially a living rock.
In a future interstellar society called the United Federation of Planets (UFP), there exists far below the surface of an alien planet in its territory labeled Janus 6 a being that calls itself a Horta. This decidedly non-humanoid life form looks like a large blob of molten lava and can move through solid rock with ease thanks to a highly corrosive acid it produces from its body.
As we learn early on, this Horta has been attacking and killing dozens of the human residents of a Federation mining colony stationed on Janus 6 without seeming provocation. The being’s physical appearance and behavior has left the miners convinced that it is nothing less or more than a dangerous monster acting on instinct towards the humans which cannot possibly be reasoned with. Therefore, the creature must be exterminated before the mining facility has to be abandoned, losing access to the planet’s great stores of valuable mineral resources for the greater Federation.
Starfleet, the quasi-military organization that conducts both exploration and defense for the UFP, is called upon to stop this threat and save the miners and their operation. At first the officers of the starship assigned to handle this situation, the USS Enterprise, are led to similar thoughts about the native life form when they encounter it deep in the planet’s dim caverns. They too think the Horta is a purely destructive force that needs to be eliminated before they are all killed by it.
However, a series of events convinces the starship officers that this “living rock” is actually a highly intelligent and sensitive being. Eventually direct communications are established with the Horta. They learn that this alien is a mother who was defending her eggs, which are the thousands of silicon nodules found by the miners throughout the vast network of tunnels and chambers far beneath the surface of Janus 6. These spherical objects were being casually destroyed by the humans during their mining operations, as they did not recognize the nodules as the biological product of an ancient and highly intelligent organism – the last of its kind, in fact.
The mother Horta naturally viewed these strange alien bipedal creatures invading her world and killing her unborn children as monsters and acted accordingly.
An understanding is reached between the two species: The young Hortas who later hatched from those surviving nodules would help the human miners find all sorts of mineral deposits and with much greater efficiency, ensuring both the survival of the Horta and the continuation of the UFP colony and its importance to the galactic civilization that spawned it. Both sides also learned to tolerate and accept each other despite their initial mutually visceral reactions to the other’s wildly different physiologies.
This famous episode of the Star Trek series and many other entries from that franchise add further examples to the premise that when it comes to humanity encountering the unknown Other, the situation does not automatically have to turn into an Us-Versus-Them battle for survival with only one winner arising from the conflict. Most often it is when one of the groups make a genuine attempt to understand and communicate with the other that a non-lethal resolution has a chance to happen, while not sacrificing the entertainment demands for action and drama in the process. Writing such stories also gives our species one more roleplay example to practice with and learn from for the day when humanity finally does meet with real beings from other worlds.
Now That We’ve Got Them Just Where They Want Us
“Right, now that we’ve got them just where they want us.” – Captain James T. Kirk, quoted in Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979)
You have read throughout this essay that The Thing from Another World was biased towards its alien (and potential ETI in general) being hostile and threatening not only to the hapless crew at the remote Arctic research station, but all life on Earth. So how did a small collection of military men and scientists, who before encountering the crashed alien starship and its lone occupant would have considered the idea of beings from other worlds to be science fiction at best, if they contemplated the concept at all, suddenly become experts on the motives of such a life form? In particular, one that the humans had destroyed its vessel through their hurried ignorance of the ship’s composition and was clearly in no mood to convey any information about itself or its actions to such comparatively primitive and violent creatures.
The answer would seem to come from human intuition, which in the case of the film’s characters, the non-scientists had the upper hand on. The airmen, being trained in the ways of military thinking and having participated in combat in World War Two just half a decade earlier were suspicious of the alien from the moment they learned that the “aircraft” the research scientists detected showed unusual flight behavior.
This was the early height of the Cold War. The airmen would have been stationed in Alaska as part of the United States presence to monitor the relatively nearby Soviet Union across the Bering Strait. They would also be there to dissuade their geopolitical rival from deciding to occupy such close American territory (Alaska had been part of the United States since its purchase from Russia in 1867, but it would not become an official state until 1959) or engage in even more elevated military actions on a larger scale.
The Korean War was also underway when The Thing took place: There is no mention of that conflict or that these men were directly involved with it. However, this early major “police action” of the Cold War heightened real world fears that things could expand beyond the Korean peninsula and trigger a nuclear response. Assuming this event was also occurring in the reality of the film, our military characters would be on alert to respond to any type of activity deemed suspicious – at least the terrestrial kind.
As noted earlier, the soldiers assigned to guard the alien while it is still in the block of ice are terrified of its appearance, with its “crazy hands and no hair” – although if the filmmakers had been able to make the alien look more like the description of the Thing in the founding 1938 story, they might have really had something to be terrified of. They can only assume anything which they see as frighteningly ugly is therefore also automatically dangerous with evil intentions.
Image: Dr. Carrington and his fellow scientists of Polar Expedition 6 studying how the Thing reproduces in the greenhouse of the Arctic research station.
Once the alien has responded to being shot by the guards and attacked by the sled dogs and then it is discovered that it uses blood for nourishment and can reproduce asexually via seed pods, it is Dr. Carrington’s secretary, Nikki Nicholson, who voices a theory as to why the alien has come to Earth in the first place.
Nikki has this discussion with her boss, which has been taken from the 1950 draft script as it adds some useful details which were left out in the final film version.
Nikki: “You’re not thinking of what’s happening in the greenhouse. You saw what one of them can do! Well, just imagine if there are a thousand, or a hundred thousand!
Carrington: “I have imagined it.”
Nikki: “And you won’t do anything?”
Carrington: “I’m doing all that can be done, Nikki – discovering its secrets.”
Nikki: “I know! And that’s quite wonderful. But what if that ship came here not just to visit the earth, but to conquer it! To start growing some kind of a horrible army. And turn the human race into – into food for it! And kill the whole world.”
Carrington: “There are many things threatening to kill our world, Nikki. New stars and comets shooting through space. Atmospheric changes. A sudden cooling of the sun. And even human wars – that may release deadly global gases.”
Nikki: “But those are theories, Arthur! This is an enemy – near us – and – ”
Carrington: “There are no enemies in science. There are only phenomena to study. We are studying one.”
Nikki: “You’re not afraid?”
Carrington: “I’d be a traitor to human reason if I allowed my fears to destroy what has come to us – or let anyone else destroy it. I want you to believe in my way, Nikki – the way of the mind.”
In the dialogue where Dr. Carrington is describing other possible threats to humanity, he is more on target than they probably knew in 1950. We now know better than ever how dangerous a rogue comet or planetoid could be to Earth if one impacted our planet (the idea of one wiping out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago did not gain wide scientific acceptance until the early 1980s). Climate change and industrial pollution have certainly played a role in causing major changes to Earth’s atmosphere, not to mention the rest of our planet. If nothing else, it would be difficult for Nikki to casually cast off the idea of human wars creating deadly gasses and other weaponry that could threaten our species as just a theory, in both her time period and ours.
This dialogue also lends credence that while Nikki may be right about the alien at the research station being a real and immediate threat at least to them, in the wider context of the whole debate about the intentions of any actual ETI, natural objects in nearby space and certain real humans on Earth have much higher chances of causing disaster and death for us than beings for whom there is still no solid evidence of their existence, let alone their intentions.
In regards to Nikki’s declaration that the alien has come here to create “some kind of a horrible army” and use terrestrial life as a source of food, her response undoubtedly came from the fact that the alien can and did reproduce rather rapidly by producing seed pods from its body, then feeding the developing young inside them with human and dog blood.
The film bends us to think that Nikki’s speculation is the true intent of the alien. To take a page from Dr. Carrington calling upon real terrestrial examples of plant life that can seem to behave like animals, it could also be that the crash-landed and stranded alien might have been trying to preserve, if not its actual self, then its genetic material.
This scenario reminded me of an event that I personally witnessed when I once went salmon fishing with my family. I discovered that male salmon, when caught and pulled out of the water, do something which rather surprised me: The males shoot out a stream of sperm in what can only be described as a last ditch attempt to carry on its genes, desperate and hopeless as this gesture may otherwise seem (the things they do not tell you in most nature documentaries).
This action is very likely not a conscious response in the fish’s case, but rather an automatic survival reaction similar to the famous fight-or-flee response to danger. Perhaps the alien was doing something similar, even though of course it would have been aware of its purpose in producing seed pods. Highly intelligent and advanced or not, the alien still had basic instincts like all living creatures and acted upon them – with the survival of itself and its species no doubt being on the forefront of its list of important activities to conduct.
You could say this too is just speculation, but then again so is Nikki’s, lacking any direct confirmation or denial from the alien itself. Dr. Carrington was not wrong when he said communication is key to understanding.
Nikki, the lone major woman character in The Thing (there was one woman scientist at the research station, the wife of Dr. Chapman, but her role was small) had yet another collection of expressed thoughts in regards not just to their alien “visitor” but about the idea of ETI coming to Earth in general.
This conversation comes from the released film when the alien is still considered to be a dead specimen frozen in that block of ice:
Nikki: “What does that boogeyman in ice really mean?”
Hendry: “I don’t know, Nikki.”
Nikki: “Well, does it mean that we’ll have visitors from other planets dropping in on us? Do we have to return the call, or… Oh, jeepers.”
Hendry: “I know. Yesterday I’d said it was crazy.”
Nikki: “I’d say it’s crazy now.”
Hendry: “Forget it. Tomorrow it’ll all seem different.”
Nikki’s facial expressions and gestures during this scene make it clear that she is not very enamored of the idea that extraterrestrial beings may now be coming to Earth on a regular basis and that humanity might actually have to talk to and associate with them. The very idea itself is not one she or her companion Hendry ever took seriously until they personally found that alien ship and its living occupant in the ice. It is safe to say that these two and the rest of the non-scientists at the station have little interest in ever joining any type of Galactic Club, should one exist.
The scene itself seems mild, an almost casual conversation about a subject that would have been esoteric if not outright embarrassing for our two characters just the day before. That it is such a simple, short, and straightforward “evaluation” of the idea of ETI contact only makes it that much more palatable to the audience, who are continually conditioned to root for the “alien-is-bad” line of reasoning and its mouthpieces.
It is also interesting to note that it is Nikki who first comes up with the idea of how to dispatch the alien after bullets and even cruder methods have failed. While she and the airmen are speculating on how to stop their unwanted guest, someone asks what does one do with a vegetable. Nikki responds with: “Boil it. Stew it. Bake it. Fry it.”
This idea spark leads the men to attempt to burn it to death by dousing it in kerosene then setting it aflame. When that effort fails (in a scene that quite frankly looks like it had the potential to turn deadly for the cast and production crew in real life), they then try an electrical trap, which does succeed.
Image: The Thing as it is about to walk into what the human protagonists hope will be a successful trap to stop it from turning them all into dinner.
No one outside of Dr. Carrington even ventures the idea of communicating with the alien in any way; they only want the creature killed or otherwise destroyed by some method of brute force. The airmen did make some earlier vague suggestions about confining the alien after it escaped the ice block, which is what their superior officers wanted to be done with it, but even capturing the alien alive goes out the window once the danger of the situation escalates.
Another piece of speculation on the alien and its motives that was in the 1950 script draft but removed completely for the final film were its reasons for landing at the North Pole as opposed to anywhere else on Earth.
The scientists first speculate that the alien came from a world that was generally colder than Earth with a thinner atmosphere based on such things as its seeming lack of ears for hearing sounds (they guess that the being “receives magnetic impressions” rather than hearing and seeing as humans do, even though it definitely has eyes that appear and act like ours) and the way it can survive out in the Arctic snow storm even after it has been presumably injured multiple times and with only a thin type of coverall on its body. Also, in the final makeup form of the Thing, the being definitely has human-shaped ears located on either side of its head.
Then they and Captain Hendry come up with some ideas as to why the alien would choose to land in the frigid and desolate Arctic, presuming it did not arrive there by accident due to some technical issues with its ship:
Voorhees: “It ran out into the cold. I think our surmise that it requires a cold temperature is correct.”
Laurenz: “Obviously. That’s why the saucer tried to land in our Polar regions. They corresponded to the conditions of its own planet.”
Hendry: “There might be another reason. Its passengers could have wanted to keep their arrival secret.”
Note how the scientists are thinking about the alien’s motives based on its physiological needs first, as if it were here only to explore. Captain Hendry is thinking in terms of its strategic motives for conquering the planet. Of course the scientists could argue that the alien would want to remain hidden from humans in order to study us without causing any disruption, just like human scientists study animals in the wild using blinds and other means of camouflage in order to witness and record the true behaviors of their subjects.
On the other hand, the remote Arctic may not be the best place if the alien wanted to find a large quantity and cross-section of humanity. For that matter, the alien (and any cohorts aboard that spaceship) could have stayed in Earth orbit and monitored us remotely if exoanthropology were among its motives.
As The Thing takes place and was made years before the first human-made satellites were sent into space, attempting to watch our activities from hundreds of miles above our planet’s surface or more may not have been taken into serious consideration at the time, being thought of as too remote to learn anything useful.
In addition, the idea of sending unmanned vessels using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to explore space and other worlds, instead of ships with living, organic crews, would have been another fairly novel concept at the time. Yes, by 1951 several nations were using unmanned V-2 rockets captured from Nazi Germany at the end of World War Two to carry cameras and other basic instruments on brief forays to the edge of space. However, the idea of “marrying” a complex computer with a launch vehicle would have been difficult at best: A typical “thinking machine” circa 1950 was very expensive, had weight ranges measured in the tons, and filled up a large room. Miniaturizing computer technologies to fit inside a spacecraft on top of a rocket were another concept that would have to wait for the real Space Age to begin on Earth.
Of course the alien may have detected the electromagnetic signals (radio, television, and radar) being leaked from our civilization as a motive for coming to Earth. His species may also have been able to detect our planet’s multitude of biological life signs, which could be accomplished as far away as their home world using an advanced form of spectroscopy.
While we know the plot scales are tipped in favor of a malevolent reason for the alien being on Earth, the previous examples show it could still have come here for purely scientific exploration, its landing near the North Pole an accident as much as a planned place to study us without disturbing the natives.
Dr. Carrington may have taken the more rational and peaceful approach towards the alien, but that did not mean he was without his own biases. As we have seen multiple times over, the lead scientist insisted that because the alien arrived on Earth via a starship, it was therefore much more knowledgeable about science and technology and therefore it must be automatically wiser – with the implicit addition that the being was therefore also more ethical and moral. In addition, Dr. Carrington was rather swept away by the fact that the alien did not reproduce via “messy” sex. For him this was yet another sign that the alien came from a superior species.
As we have seen on Earth, a technologically advanced human society does not automatically indicate a kinder and gentler populace. As history has shown, it often means that the nation or culture with the better technology is simply more efficient at subduing and even wiping out any opposition. Either that or subjugating less powerful and sophisticated groups for their land, resources, and other items that might increase their position.
Even for species that do not possess any real technology, a higher-functioning brain does not therefore mean they will be necessarily more ethical or even just “nicer”. Dolphins are among the most intelligent creatures on Earth, with brains perhaps comparable to humans. Yet certain types often behave within their own species and others in ways that, were they members of human society, would immediately label them criminals.
This analysis does lead into questions of how one can (or should) judge a non-human species by human standards of behavior, especially when even humanity is often divided on what is considered to be moral and ethical, good and bad. If the alien in The Thing did come here to propagate its species on a new world, how is it different from all the organisms on Earth that have competed with other terrestrial creatures for dominance on this planet since their first microbial ancestors appeared over four billion years ago?
Imagine a situation where Earth was becoming uninhabitable for its native organisms: Would it be considered wrong for humanity to seek out another world in the Milky Way galaxy to continue ourselves and whatever other terrestrial life forms they could bring with them? What if they found a suitable world to colonize that was already occupied by its own flora and fauna, including species deemed intelligent enough to compare to humanity? What if the natives of that planet did not want any new neighbors, yet our species’ survival depended upon settling their world? Who would be in the right: The original occupiers of this planet? The would-be human colonists? Or the species that may end up best dominating that globe?
Suppose the alien in The Thing came to Earth because their world could no longer support them? Would they have any less of a right to inhabit our planet to survive than we would if we needed their world to sustain our species? Even if a species had deliberately wrecked their own world through neglect, greed, or war so that their only other choice was extinction?
Evolution is often thought of by the rule of survival of the fittest. If the species of the alien in The Thing is more suited for surviving in this Universe than humanity – and its ability to withstand extreme environmental conditions and various trauma that would dispatch a typical human in short order was witnessed multiple times – does its kind deserve to overtake the stars?
Humanity has certainly considered itself the predominant life form of Earth for ages, even to the point of proclaiming our species was divinely ordained to rule over the planet and utilize its other organisms and resources as it sees fit, since they were presumably placed there specifically for humanity. It is hardly impossible to imagine that such an egocentric view might not be unique to our species across the stars, as dominating cultures rarely think less of themselves as a whole or tend to shy away from gaining more territory and power when the opportunity arises.
If the plot situation in The Thing from Another World had been reversed, where a team of Terran military personnel found themselves on a starship that crash-landed on the world of the alien from the film: Who would the audience be rooting for as the humans undoubtedly would do their very best -indeed, whatever they had to do, if necessary – to survive on a world where the life forms would very likely react to their presence in a manner quite similar to how they reacted to the alien, especially once it had been revived and free in the Arctic research station?
Furthermore, if these humans went so far as to attempt to secure their survival by becoming the new dominant species on that alien planet, either subjugating the natives or snuffing them out, would not many consider them to be brave and audacious heroes, especially back in the era of The Thing‘s first release. These humans would see the military men as warriors protecting and preserving the galaxy from dangerous aliens for our species.
That was certainly the theme in the 1997 film Starship Troopers, where a future fascist humanity is on a quest to rid the Milky Way of a nonhumanoid alien species they derisively nickname the Bugs. The few public calls to consider the situation from the Bugs’ point of view, including the possibility that we may have invaded their celestial territory first and thus their hostile response, are quickly dismissed and quelled. The leader of the Terran Federation, Sky Marshall Diennes, brings home the government’s position during a broadcast speech: “We must meet this threat with our courage, our valor, indeed with our very lives to ensure that human civilization, not insect, dominates this galaxy NOW AND ALWAYS!”
Here was Manifest Destiny taken to a stellar level. The film brings up the possibility that instead of an ETI civilization being the conquering aggressors bent on dominating the galaxy so often seen in science fiction, it could be humanity which becomes the “alien” invaders to be feared and despised by other societies across the stars.
This leads to another pertinent issue that was also tipped in favor of the human characters: Who and what would be considered either good or evil, or are these largely human judgement values that become increasingly parochial when compared on a literally cosmic scale? We naturally gravitate towards the idea that if something is beneficial to our species it is therefore good, whereas anything harmful is deemed bad or worse.
However, then how does one define something like a virus, which might be deadly to humans, yet we know that they act as they do with neither purposeful ill intent nor even a consciousness. They exist to make copies of themselves, just like virtually all known species do, just on a much more rudimentary – although certainly highly efficient – level.
Now take this perspective to a galactic scale: What if humanity or other similar types of intelligent biological life forms that may attempt to colonize the Milky Way galaxy are perceived by ETI of a very different makeup or are similar to a Kardashev Type 3 civilization, one that spans and utilizes the resources of an entire stellar island like the Milky Way, just as we generally look upon viruses.
We would not tend to see our interstellar expansion as a spreading disease because we have yet to become fully and truly conscious as a culture of the literally much wider picture. After all, humanity and the single planet it currently occupies at present are virtually microscopic in comparison to the rest of the Cosmos. Yet such a lack of cosmic awareness may not spare us from the more advanced ETI’s response to what they may well see as a form of virus infecting their society’s “body”.
Recall the quote at the beginning of this section from the 1979 science fiction film Star Trek: The Motion Picture: That first cinematic installment of the Star Trek franchise dealt with the mostly-human crew of the starship Enterprise encountering a vast alien being calling itself V’Ger. This ETI hailed from (though not originally) a planet occupied by “living machines”, also known as Artilects, or artificial intellects.
As a result, V’Ger perceived the Enterprise as a fellow living being, albeit much smaller and far less sophisticated, whereas the multiple organic creatures it found inside the vessel were labeled as “carbon units” and therefore were “not true lifeforms” so far as V’Ger was concerned. The artificial alien further thought these carbon units were actually infesting the starship like a disease, keeping it from properly functioning and undoubtedly a threat to its overall existence.
Obviously the scenario with V’Ger is a fictional one, but how often have humans dispatched other organisms they do not consider to be their equals – which is just about everything else on this planet – not only with little to no consideration, but also with the thinking that their duty to remove creatures they consider to be harmful or worse to their fellow humans.
For that matter, how often have humans committed acts of genocide against other human beings, often due to little more than minor differences in appearances and customs? There is usually a justification made for such aggressions; even slim ones can be enough to behave in ways that on an individual scale would be considered nothing less than assault and murder.
Image: The human denizens trapped in the Arctic research station prepare for their final confrontation with the Thing.
Now imagine how contemporary humanity might respond to beings that are truly alien to our world in virtually every way, and vice versa. The results may well be what we have seen in The Thing, with fear and aggression winning out over reason, logic, and overtures of peace, or at least neutrality.
At the end of The Thing, with the alien threat safely eliminated, we find the reporter Ned “Scotty” Scott finally able to broadcast his incredible story to the outside world via radio. Here he beseeches his listeners to tell “everybody wherever they are: Watch the skies everywhere. Keep looking. Keep watching the skies!”
While one can appreciate this warning from the reporter in the context of his reality’s encounter with an ETI, one may also imagine the heightened levels of paranoia and fear that will now be growing in that human society over anything foreign appearing in Earth’s skies. Authorities will be flooded with reports of unidentified flying objects beyond the already voluminous amounts of such sightings that already existed at the time: Some sighting stories will be legitimate and useful additions to the UFO database, but many more will be either misidentifications or outright hoaxes. Throw in a Cold War that was also a hot one in certain parts of the globe, and it will likely be only a matter of time before someone shoots down a non-hostile terrestrial aircraft, mistaking it for yet another alien invader.
Then there is the possibility that the next visitors to Earth will be either peaceful or at least neutral explorers, or have other motives for traveling here that may either benefit humanity or cause no real harm, if nothing else. All that may change and become a self-fulfilling prophecy if the military panics and attacks them without provocation. Or civilians could fall victim to a mob mentality and conduct equivalent harm on anyone who is not a terrestrial native, or at least attempt to cause their demise. This attitude could even extend to other humans who show any form of support or even sympathy for those do not come from Earth.
This is why we should not and cannot leave the “discussion” about alien life and its possible motivations to science fiction media, be it from over half a century ago or now. I have often said that the general public gets its “education” about the world and various concepts from the films, television programs, and written works produced by our cultures. They often tend to take these messages to heart, whether they are accurate or not.
Some try to dismiss such media as merely harmless entertainment designed purely for profit – “it’s just a movie,” as they like to say. Yet if one is presented with a work that involves thousands of people and multiple industries to create, costs many millions of dollars to produce, and has numerous deliberate messages implanted throughout for its audiences, then it is most definitely not mere entertainment.
The Thing from Another World falls squarely into this category, despite looking like a more-or-less typical monster horror film of its day. That The Thing does look so “harmless” on its surface makes the fact that it is so biased against rational science over a more warlike stance all the more problematic. How many could honestly walk away from this film and not sympathize and side with the protective and friendly airmen over the emotionally aloof Dr. Carrington and his cold logic, even though most of his scientist colleagues at the research station did not share his fanatical attitude towards the alien, no matter where your preferences usually lie?
This is why the professional science community needs to really ramp up both their science education and outreach with the general public on the subject of alien life and the possibilities for and consequences of contact. While we cannot know how, when, where, or exactly why this event may occur one day, we can at least attempt to prepare ourselves and our species.
Being armed with knowledge and not just weapons may make all the difference, especially since it is just as plausible that our first real experience with an ETI may not resemble what Hollywood and other science fiction works have come up with – which in many cases is a good thing for our species, seeing how often they focus on malevolent aliens.
Should the science community fall short in providing the public and non-scientific authorities with guidance in this arena if a contact scenario goes awry due to the actions or inactions of either parties, scientists may find themselves being thought of and reacted to in the same way the airmen and the film audience did with Dr. Carrington.
The science community also needs to work together and push for improved methods to detect extraterrestrial life in all its possible forms. This means both an increase in SETI and METI efforts and exploring other star systems directly with interstellar vehicles. Breakthrough Starshot has made notable opening efforts in all of these areas, bringing awareness, respectability, and proper funding to fields that were often treated as either mere academic exercises or ridicule by much of the professional community.
Nevertheless, we need to be cautious about any singular organization being representative of the whole arena. Until the late 1990s, most American SETI efforts were dominated largely by radio astronomers with only token responses allowed from other fields, including ones that should have been equally as prominent considering the subject matters involved.
As a result, SETI projects in those otherwise pioneering days were focused on listening for radio transmissions from beings dwelling on Earthlike exoplanets circling yellow dwarf stars. Interstellar travel was largely dismissed as either very difficult or impossible to achieve, discrediting the concept of UFOs as alien vessels in the process. In other words, they were looking for versions of ourselves, even though other authorities and other nations involved in the SETI effort, like the Soviet Union, said that the evolutionary odds of alien beings resembling and behaving like us were slim.
Hollywood went on to reinforce this notion of aliens either appearing or at least acting like humans, often if for no other reason than the early science fiction films and television series could neither afford nor do expensive and elaborate nonhumanoid costumes and makeup.
For the fascinating and often otherwise untold history of SETI and astrobiology, please read this online thesis by Mark A. Sheridan:
Throughout most of the events in The Thing, Dr. Carrington has been made to come across either as a naive fool at best (he and his fellow scientists were described as acting “like kids drooling over a new fire engine” in their initial reactions to the alien) or tantamount to working with the Thing against the best interest of his own species.
Even near the end, when the airmen had set up a way to electrocute the alien into oblivion, Dr. Carrington attempted to stop them by shutting off the station’s generator powering the trap and threatening them all with a revolver if they tried to turn it on again. The scientist was quickly subdued and hustled into another room for his own safety as much as theirs.
Then the unexpected occurs: Just as the alien is walking towards the airmen, brandishing a long wooden board as a weapon for the final standoff, Dr. Carrington suddenly emerges from behind them, bursting through the group and running straight towards the alien!
The scientist moves right up to the alien and stares into its face. Probably as astonished as the airmen are by this brazen act, the intruder stands still long enough to hear Dr. Carrington plead the following directly to it:
“I’m your friend. I have no weapons. I’m your friend. You’re wiser than I. You must understand what I’m trying to tell you. Don’t go farther. They’ll kill you. They think you’ll harm us. But I want to know you, to help you. Believe that. You’re wiser than anything on Earth. Use that intelligence. Look and know what I’m telling you. I’m not your enemy. I’m a scientist who’s trying – ”
Whether the alien truly understood anything Dr. Carrington was saying to it is debatable. However, it may not have mattered, as the alien decides it has had enough of this babbling member of a race that has done nothing but try to kill it: With one swing of its arm, the alien violently knocks the scientist across the corridor, where Dr. Carrington lands on the floor unconscious.
The Thing continues on its menacing path. As the alien steps into the trap, the airmen now give their own “speech” to the intruder: Thousands of volts of electricity, which burn into the being from three different angles. Screaming and flailing about, the alien slowly shrinks until it is nothing but a pile of smoldering ash. The research station – and humanity – are saved from the menace from outer space. This time.
Image: The Thing meets its shocking end at the hands of the United States Air Force.
After this it is clear that the airmen and the reporter now have a new level of respect for Dr. Carrington that before was only inclined towards his higher education and intellect compared to theirs, along with his prestigious reputation in the scientific community. Right or wrong, the scientist had proven that he was willing to put his own life on the line for what he believed in, doing something none of the others would have dared to attempt unless cornered – and certainly not unarmed!
When Scotty is giving his news report to the listening world via Anchorage, he informs his audience that “Dr. Carrington, leader of the scientific expedition, is recovering from wounds from the battle.” The scientist had received “a broken collarbone and a headache” from his one and only direct meeting with the alien. Captain Hendry gave his tacit approval by quietly responding with “Good for you” to Scotty.
This is a strong contrast to what the filmmakers had originally planned for Dr. Carrington’s final scenes. In the 1950 draft script, the climactic action and dialog largely parallels the released cut, including Dr. Carrington running up to the alien unarmed and attempting to appeal to the being’s presumably superior and therefore better nature.
However, when he pleads “I’m not your enemy – I’m a scientist – a scientist!” the following occurs:
“The Creature has paused before Carrington’s tirade as if studying him. Now, without haste, it lifts one arm, and flicks its hand at Carrington’s throat. Carrington falls to the floor almost decapitated, his last words still gurgling in his throat. The Creature steps over Carrington’s corpse and enters the tunnel. It advances five or six steps.”
In the draft script, the alien is destroyed by the electrical trap, disintegrating in essentially the same manner as it would be shown on screen. The surviving humans’ reactions regarding Dr. Carrington, however, are something rather different:
Nikki: “Dr. Carrington – what happened to him?”
Hendry: (quietly) “He’s dead.”
Skeely (Scotty the reporter): (to Henry. Kneeling over Carrington’s remains) “A clean sweep, Captain. Both monsters are dead.”
In this earlier version, Dr. Carrington is killed outright by the alien, and rather gruesomely at that. Instead of being considered brave and therefore receiving a degree of new understanding, respect, and forgiveness for his previous actions and words, the scientist (and by proxy his profession and field) is lumped in with the alien as just another type of dangerous and non-human creature in need of destruction by the brave, relatable, and very human American airmen.
Not only does this alternate turn of events leave an unpleasant feeling, especially if you were not anti-science, anti-rational, and anti-ethical to begin with, but it removes any chance of even a glimmer that The Thing was not entirely on the side of the military and their warrior stance. I will even go so far as to say that had those scenes of and about the demise of Dr. Carrington been filmed and left in the final cut, they would have diminished the opportunity for The Thing to rise above being a straightforward Grade B horror flick.
Thankfully, someone decided that Dr. Carrington was not a monster, at least certainly neither a real nor metaphorical one. As a result, not only did they give the scientist a chance to show that he was a brave and determined warrior in his own way, but also that there was at least some room for more than one viewpoint when it comes to encountering the unknown.
Dr. Carrington’s on screen life may also have been saved because the graphic nature of his initially planned demise may have been deemed too brutal for 1950 audiences. Or that they did not have the special effects budget for it. Or both.
That The Thing left the door open a bit for the scientific angle of humanity dealing with alien life is good. Science is going to be at on the front lines in any event when the day comes that our world does discover extraterrestrial beings, no matter what fashion that historic occasion takes. Civilian and military authorities, and certainly the general populace, will be turning to science and its practitioners for answers to satisfy their curiosity, but even more so to alleviate their fears.
Should the alien(s) turn out to be hostile or otherwise nonbeneficial to the welfare of life on Earth, science will be necessary to provide solutions on how to deal with the threat(s). In The Thing, it was the scientific examination of the alien’s severed arm by the research station scientists that determined the physical makeup of the being and ultimately how to defeat it. The scientists also helped the airmen and reporter overcome their incredulousness at the concept of an intelligent plant capable of conceiving, building, and flying a starship.
This is why in the end it made sense that the chief scientist would be the one to confront the Thing from another world directly, and in a manner decidedly different from the quite predictable ones the airmen had set up for the being. There had to be at least some balance and fair play at some point; otherwise, what the 1950 film draft wanted would have left all of the human characters no more redeemable than the alien who was made to be a monster from the start.
Here is a what-if thought: What if the alien had really listened to Dr. Carrington and heeded his words, stopping his attack on the station personnel? Would the airmen have also stood down? Would the alien have waited for the authorities to arrive and gone with them, probably to be intensely questioned and examined before being detained indefinitely?
In light of what we already know about The Thing, these alternative scenarios all seem rather unlikely, but they are interesting to ponder just the same. If they did happen, we would have had a very different film, perhaps even a sequel at that. Even more importantly, we would have had a form of roleplay for the possibility of dealing with an actual ETI coming to Earth to learn from our species and vice versa, something science fiction can be rather good at, when its various authors can remember to keep at least some legitimate science in their plots. We might also have had a relatively rare chance for an early example of truly thoughtful and even literate science fiction cinema, from a Hollywood “monster” movie no less.
Doesn’t Every Alien Drive a Flying Saucer?
The Thing from Another World reflects another perception of alien life that evolved in the post-World War Two and early Cold War era: The surge of reports on Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs), also known as flying saucers. The latter term came from comments made by Kenneth Arnold, the man who is credited with the first modern era UFO sighting in 1947.
After that landmark and widely-publicized event, sightings of strange craft seen moving about the sky and even more elaborate related stories increased exponentially. It soon became accepted on a cultural level that these objects were the vessels of highly intelligent alien visitors coming to Earth to study and interact with humanity, despite having primarily just eyewitness accounts for evidence.
There were so many UFO sightings in those days, in fact, that the USAF set up a department to document and study this phenomenon. What would one day become best known as Project Bluebook, which lasted from 1952 until 1969, originated as Project Sign in 1947 and then evolved into Project Grudge just two years later.
Project Sign’s final estimate on the UFO phenomenon was officially stated as inconclusive, although it had initially determined that these objects were real and likely extraterrestrial in origin. Air Force officials rejected those first claims on the basis of a lack of physical evidence and dissolved Sign. Its replacement study, Project Grudge, determined that most reported UFOs were either hoaxes or misunderstood natural phenomenon, although they admitted a certain percentage could not be explained conclusively.
Image: The moment the humans realize the crashed “aircraft” was not a product of their species.
The time period that events in The Thing take place – November 2 and 3, 1950 – put them smack in the middle of the Project Grudge era. There is a scene when the alien has first been found in the Arctic ice and the airmen are putting it aboard their airplane that one of them informs Captain Hendry – with full irony given their current situation – that a recent bulletin from the Department of Defense (DoD) declared that…
“The Air Force has discontinued investigating and evaluating reported flying saucers on the basis that there is no evidence.”
“The Air Force said that all evidence indicates that the reports of unidentified flying objects are the result of:
“One: Misinterpretation of various conventional objects. Second: A mild form of mass hysteria. Third: That they’re jokes.”
Dramatically, this sets up the audience to react based on the general public’s tendency to be suspicious of and often outright reject certain declarations from those figures in authority. Even the airmen, who are trained to obey their military superiors, make more than a few disparaging remarks about the capabilities of their higher ranking officers and the Air Force organization in general throughout the film. The airmen also have a level of disdain for the authority of science, particularly with Dr. Carrington as their chief representative science scapegoat.
This attitude ties in with the earlier theme in this essay about the built-in biases of the film regarding science’s take on alien life and how the response from the military in the form of our airmen heroes is made to be the “right” one. It is a reflection of our base fears of the unknown and how our more instinctual emotions take over and tell us how to respond to them.
The scene is also very likely an ironic comment on what happened when the film’s co-producer, Howard Hawks, asked the Air Force for assistance in making The Thing. They were turned down, as the head officials felt that their public cooperation with the film would contradict the military branch’s official stand on UFOs, which thanks to Project Grudge meant that they were anything but spacecraft from other worlds with alien occupants, friendly or otherwise.
These aspects of ourselves have not changed despite progress in other areas of science, technology, and cultural awareness since The Thing was released. The film also shows how the cinema can both reflect and influence our thinking and that such media are more than “just a movie.”
As for the film’s comment that the USAF no longer had any interest in UFOs and related phenomenon, the truth in our reality is that they continued to investigate them officially through 1969 with the aforementioned Project Bluebook.
The original intent of this study was to determine just what UFOs were and why they were acting as they were reported. The Air Force also wanted to know if these objects posed any threat to the United States. There was also an underlying motive that if some of these things were actual vessels of some sort, be they of Soviet origin or elsewhere, that the continual study or even acquisition of one of them could be a boon to our knowledge in the fields of technology, engineering, and physics – with perhaps some biology thrown in as a bonus.
Project Bluebook would eventually conclude the following:
1. No UFO reported, investigated, and evaluated by the Air Force was ever an indication of threat to our national security.
2. There was no evidence submitted to or discovered by the Air Force that sightings categorized as “unidentified” represented technological developments or principles beyond the range of modern scientific knowledge.
3. There was no evidence indicating that sightings categorized as “unidentified” were extraterrestrial vehicles.
If you think these statements from the USAF made in 1969 ended the public interest in UFOs or the view that they are the vehicles of alien visitors from beyond Earth, guess again. The plot elements of an alien being arriving on Earth in a flying saucer-shaped interstellar spacecraft certainly did not stop with The Thing, as both the real UFO phenomenon and this genre of science fiction both fed off each other and grew. Whether it helped or clouded the issues surrounding extraterrestrial intelligences and their motives can be debated, but they are a prominent part of the equation for human thinking on the subject nonetheless.
Image: The only real glimpse we get of the Thing’s mode of interstellar transportation, before the starship is inadvertently destroyed during its recovery effort.
The Thing from Another World was certainly not the only science fiction film influenced by the growing UFO phenomenon in that era. Just five months after The Thing was delivered to theaters, another effort called The Day the Earth Stood Still made its debut.
This film involved a humanoid alien named Klaatu and his robot “companion” Gort, who came to Earth in a silvery flying saucer starcraft, landing on a baseball field in Washington, D.C.. Like The Thing, the alien was shot by a panicky human soldier shortly upon leaving his vessel. However, this time a bloodbath did not promptly commence and Klaatu was promptly taken to Walter Reed General Hospital as it was known until 1951 to recover.
The Day the Earth Stood Still further veered away from its predecessor when it is revealed why Klaatu and Gort were sent to our planet: They are part of “an organization for the mutual protection of all planets – and for the complete elimination of aggression. A sort of United Nations on the Planetary level….” This is quoted from the revised final draft of the film dated February 21, 1951.
This interstellar organization has devised a system of sophisticated robots such as Gort which patrol the galaxy and respond decisively to any barbaric societies that might take their aggressive ways into space. Humanity has been recognized as one of these potentially dangerous species, thus Klaatu’s mission to Earth to warn its primate inhabitants that while they do not care what humans might do to each other or their home planet so long as they stay there, if we “threaten to extend your violence, this Earth of yours will be reduced to a burned-out cinder.”
Klaatu leaves humanity with these words:
“Your choice is simple. Join us and live in peace. Or pursue your present course – and face obliteration. We will be waiting for your answer. The decision rests with you.”
This time it is not the aliens who are the aggressors, except in potential self-defense, but the humans who have not ended their tribal warlike ways and now possess the ability to send nuclear weapons into space. Whereas The Thing was primarily a cheerleader for the American side of the Cold War and its warrior caste, The Day the Earth Stood Still is a blatant warning to stop the very real concept of Mutually Assured Destruction, or MAD, before it is too late.
That The Thing was more successful at the box office in 1951 in terms of financial earnings perhaps speaks more to the desire of general moviegoers to prefer what was perceived as relatively light entertainment compared to a film with a bigger production budget, a more sophisticated plot, and an Important Message to Humanity, rather than suspect the public would want warfare over peace. Or so one may hope.
Yet another counterexample of a science fiction film from the 1950s with a flying saucer starship was Forbidden Planet, released in 1956.
This time the flying saucer belongs not to the expected aliens of either malevolent or benevolent stripes but to humans of the 23rd Century as their interstellar vehicle of choice to explore and patrol the Milky Way galaxy at the behest of the United Planets. However, the intended good and bad guys of the film are more in line with the characters in The Thing: The crew of the hyperdriven starship designated just C-57D consists of a military style hierarchy on a rescue mission to Altair 4 to retrieve some research scientists presumably stranded on that remote alien world twenty years ago. There they encounter only one surviving scientist, a fellow named Dr. Morbius, his daughter, Alta, and their robot servant, Robby.
Morbius has found the still-functioning technological remains of an ancient and long-extinct civilization which called themselves the Krell. Far more advanced in virtually every way than even this future human society, the scientist refuses to relinquish control of all that he has learned from the Krell to any members of his fellow species, as he considers the rest of humanity neither ready for nor worthy of such superior knowledge.
Tensions mount as the scientist increasingly rejects the standing orders of the United Planets officers to bring back to Earth any survivors from Altair 4. They also have the unexpected complication of dealing with a strange and powerful alien technology and the need to report this discovery to their superiors.
Ultimately, the situation goes sour when Dr. Morbius unconsciously uses the Krell technology against the C-57D crew to force them to leave the planet or else. The alien instrumentality turns Morbius’ subconscious primitive thoughts into a deadly material reality, producing a literal monster from the id portion of his brain that kills several crewmen and threatens to destroy them all. The human warriors are forced to defeat Morbius and his godlike powers at the cost of almost everything, including the very planet of the Krell itself.
As with The Thing, the heroes and “good guys” in Forbidden Planet are the exclusively white, male, and American officers and crew of the C-57D. Anyone and anything else that does not fall into lockstep with these men and their ideals is labeled naive and delusional at best and a dire threat at worst. This includes the Krell, who destroyed themselves when they allowed their quest for knowledge and power to go unchecked. The starship’s captain, J. J. Adams, even “gets the girl”, Alta, in the end as his “reward”, just like Captain Hendry and Nikki in The Thing.
If you want to learn much more about Forbidden Planet, please read my two-part essay on Centauri Dreams starting here:
As an interesting comparison, the starship that the Thing arrived in from the original short story “Who Goes There?” resembles an unadorned submarine rather than the flying saucer design from the 1951 film and its much later cinematic remakes.
“Something came down out of space, a ship. We saw it there in the blue ice, a thing like a submarine without a conning tower or directive vanes. 280 feet long and 45 feet in diameter at its thickest.”
Campbell’s story was published nine years before the modern UFO “flying saucer” era. If you look at the science fiction artwork and story descriptions of spaceships in the decades before 1947, such vessels often had much in common with real aquatic submersibles. This makes sense in that a submarine and its crew traveling through the ocean has definite parallels with a manned spaceship moving through space. Submarines would have been the closest vessel type to a spaceship for those artists and authors to have a comparison with in the pre-Cold War and Space Age eras.
It is interesting to see how a cultural mindset on a particular subject can change almost wholesale, and in such a relatively short period of time.
What About Those Other Things?
You may have noticed that I have given little mention of the other film versions of The Thing in this essay. This is largely due to the fact that while the 1982 version has become rightly praised on multiple fronts, not the least of which includes the fact that it follows the original 1938 science fiction story much more closely than the 1951 film when it came to the design and actions of the alien, director John Carpenter’s vision is not nearly as focused on the deeper themes found in its cinematic predecessor and inspiration.
In essence, Carpenter’s take on The Thing is largely a successful horror film with a shapeshifting alien creature as the protagonist whose primary motivation appears to be sheer survival. The human characters trapped with it in the isolated Antarctica research station are far more focused on not being absorbed and taken over by this truly monstrous intruder and their growing paranoia over who is actually the alien in disguise.
As for the 2011 film “prequel”, it is mostly an inferior copy of its 1982 predecessor. The only real difference in terms of items and information from the other films is that the prequel created the interior of the alien’s starcraft and gives its own explanation why the vessel impacted on Earth: The ship belonged to an advanced nonhumanoid ETI species that was exploring the Milky Way galaxy to collect biological specimens for later scientific study.
One of the organisms they found and took onboard during their expedition was the Thing, which eventually broke free of its containment unit and attacked the ship’s crew while they were in the vicinity of Earth. In an attempt to destroy the alien, the ship was deliberately crashed into the planet’s southern polar continent, obviously without success.
For those of you who may still want to salvage these later cinematic takes on The Thing from the pit of straight horror entertainment with an attempt at speculation on the further motives of the alien, you are in luck.
Just one year before The Thing prequel was released into theaters, Canadian science fiction author Peter Watts took on the task of giving us the alien’s perspective on its existence and its encounters with the handful of human and canine residents of Antarctica. Titled “The Things” and both published and made into a podcast in 2010, we learn that the Thing is not some mindless feeding monster, but was instead…
“…so much more, before the crash. I was an explorer, an ambassador, a missionary. I spread across the cosmos, met countless worlds, took communion: the fit reshaped the unfit and the whole universe bootstrapped upwards in joyful, infinitesimal increments. I was a soldier, at war with entropy itself. I was the very hand by which Creation perfects itself.
“So much wisdom I had. So much experience. Now I cannot remember all the things I knew. I can only remember that I once knew them.”
The Thing soon learns from its initial encounters with these strange terrestrial creatures that they actively do not like and do not want to be “communed” with, for they are individual and largely independent entities with minds confined to one localized area of their bodies rather than throughout every cell of their beings like the Thing. This leaves the alien “ambassador” both shocked and repulsed by these “thinking cancers” as it first labels humans.
Having barely escaped being destroyed at the research station after its numerous efforts to commune with the dogs and humans there and now trapped on Earth in an ice-laden wasteland, the alien eventually empathizes with its attackers and the lonely and lifespan-limiting fate that evolution has dealt them, which it now refers to as “the things”.
As The Thing buries itself in the polar ice for preservation to await release by future discoverers, the being determines its new purpose is to bring the wondrous uplifting qualities of communing to all terrestrial organisms, for their benefit.
The alien in Watts’ story is based on the being from the 1982 film and is of course entirely from his own imagination: We are never given such a perspective in the Carpenter film. Just like the USAF airmen in the 1951 version, the men of the Antarctic research station only want to kill the alien: They have no desire to communicate with it (they would likely consider it pointless anyway) and they do not want to understand the intruder beyond acquiring the knowledge of how to eradicate it.
This is especially ironic in that about half of the men in the cast are portraying scientists. At one point a young assistant biologist named Fuchs protests the destruction of several organic samples of the alien on scientific grounds, but is quickly overruled. Most of the dialogue in the 1982 version is often too colloquial and clipped to contribute any real substance to the discussions regarding ETI for this essay.
In terms of science, primarily what one could take from the Carpenter film is to add one more cultural data point that most human beings placed in lethal danger by unknown forces will respond with paranoia and hostility that will easily turn into a mob mentality if they are facing such a threat as a group.
This lack of internal revelation is disappointing, as it would have added some very interesting and unexpected layers to the Thing, rising it and the plot above the purely horrific monster we were given. Exploring these depths might also have added some substance to the real world debate about whether or not to contact ETI and how to deal with alien life once it is found, as that type of science fiction often does.
This is why the 1951 cinematic version has more intellectual value and depth in certain respects despite dovetailing from the original Campbell story in key places and having the least emphasis on special effects for the alien due to budget and special effects technology constraints. Even with the built-in bias towards the alien being a threat to all Earth life, the opposing viewpoints shown between the scientists and the military genuinely contribute to the popular-level scientific debate found in The Thing from Another World.
You may read “The Things” story in full at either of these following Web sites, or listen to the audio/podcast versions, if you prefer:
“I hate war, for it spoils conversation.” – Bernard Le Bovier De Fontenelle (1657 – 1757), French author and member of the French Academy who wrote one of the first popular accounts about alien life and the heliocentric theory: Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds, first published in 1686.
You may read the 1803 English edition online here:
“Nothing can be more destructive to ambition, and the passion for conquest, than the true system of astronomy. What a poor thing is even the whole globe in comparison of the infinite extent of nature!”
We shall one day see if such a grand perspective does indeed stem the aggressive sides of intelligent species both on this world and beyond.
References
The following hyperlinks take you to places of information for your further appreciation of the film The Thing from Another World. You will find several other reference links throughout the essay. These links were functional at the time of this essay’s publication.
Here is the 1938 science fiction story that started it all…
Although the author of “Who Goes There?” was listed in the August, 1938 issue of the magazine Astounding Science Fiction as Don A. Stuart, his real name was John W. Campbell, Jr., who had just become the publication’s managing editor. Campbell is considered to be one of the primary shapers of modern science fiction, with a heavy emphasis on the science aspect of the genre. This is evident throughout the story, with lots of real science tidbits on a variety of subjects thrown in along the journey.
In this story, the alien had crash-landed its starship on Antarctica roughly twenty million years ago and became frozen in the surrounding ice, not the day before as in the 1951 film. Both versions have the Thing’s vessel being destroyed accidentally when its human discoverers attempt to remove it from the ice using thermite bombs.
After the Thing is found and brought to the research station for study, some of the characters in Campbell’s work actually take the time to debate whether the alien could be dangerous/evil or not. They initially conclude that a human cannot adequately judge the expressions and features of a truly alien being to determine its thoughts and emotional states.
Other characters immediately assume upon first seeing the creature that it is evil and full of hatred and fury based on the baleful gaze it projects from its three red eyes, which are surrounded by blue wormlike tentacles on its head and over its body, like the snakes of Medusa from ancient Greek mythology. They also determined at one point that the alien evolved on “a hotter planet that circled a brighter, bluer sun they came.”
Of course it turns out that the alien is very hostile and apparently hate-filled. It is also telepathic and can project thoughts to others. Once it escapes from the block of ice it was encased in, the being has no qualms completely taking over (and therefore killing) any terrestrial life forms it comes across down to the cellular level. When the Thing is finally destroyed, the survivors discover the alien had gotten quite far in building an atomic-powered anti-gravity device that would have allowed it to escape beyond Antarctica.
In 2018, a box of manuscripts donated by Campbell to Harvard University were found to include a much longer version of this story titled Frozen Hell. A very successful Kickstarter campaign made it possible for this novel to be published, first digitally as an E-book in January of 2019 with a later goal of hardcopy printed versions.
This is a straight transcript of the released 1951 film. Sadly none of the dialog is labeled in terms of who said what and there are no stage directions:
A Web page celebrating the sixtieth anniversary of the release of The Thing from Another World in 2011. A nice plot summary and lots of good stills and behind the scenes images:
Although this Web site is mainly focused on the later film versions of The Thing, in particular the John Carpenter version from 1982, some information may be found on the 1951 film. This includes the complete August 29, 1950 draft script:
If you want to read a detailed yet fascinating yet anything-but-dry analysis of alien life in all its potential forms, behaviors, and motivations that uses science fiction characters as its jumping off points, you cannot do much better than this Web site:
Most of us fortunate enough to see 2001: A Space Odyssey in a theater when it was released never dreamed it would spawn a strange ‘twin.’ But as Larry Klaes explains in the essay that follows, Dark Star was to emerge as a telling satire on the themes of the Kubrick film. Originating in the ideas of USC film students John Carpenter and Dan O’Bannon, Dark Star likewise plays into the screenplay for 1979’s Alien in ways that have to be seen to be believed. Larry is quite a fan of the film, and explains how and why socially relevant screenplays like these would soon be swamped by blockbuster hits crammed with special effects (think Star Wars). But that orange ‘beach ball’ still has a place in film history. Read on.
By Larry Klaes
Science fiction has certainly played an important role in inspiring and influencing humanity’s future directions. The father of American rocketry, Robert H. Goddard, was moved to imagine sending a vessel to the planet Mars as a young man in 1899 after reading The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells published just a few years earlier. From that spark developed a life-long dedicated pursuit of space exploration by Goddard, whose work in turn influenced others which eventually led to real rockets carrying real spaceships to the Red Planet and far beyond.
Conversely, science fiction also reflects the era it is created in. This can be seen in the changing depictions of the future during the Twentieth Century. While there are always exceptions, up into the 1960s the future was most often shown as a wonderful utopia, extrapolating from the real scientific and technological progress made in the preceding decades and centuries. Destination Moon (1950) had a contemporary near-future with a nuclear-powered rocket taking the first men to Earth’s natural satellite. Six years later, Forbidden Planet assumed the 23rd Century will have humanity working together to explore and colonize other worlds across the galaxy in faster-than-light (FTL) starships.
On television, Walt Disney presented an amazing future in full animated color with series such as Man in Space (1955-1959) and Magic Highway, USA (1958). The Jetsons (1962-1963) gently spoofed many future tropes such as flying cars, robot maids, pushbutton conveniences, and vacations on the Moon while simultaneously reinforcing the preconceived notions of its contemporary audiences that its depictions of society in the year 2062 were going to become an overall accurate one by then.
The belief in a “shiny, happy” future, thanks to science and technology, was also heavily supported by World’s Fairs, especially the ones held in New York City in 1939 and 1964-1965 and Seattle in 1962. There visitors not only got to see the “wonders of tomorrow” but also interact with them, cementing their realities. That each fair had a time capsule meant for some distant epoch (the New York ones are to be opened together in the year 6939, five thousand years hence, which is roughly how long human civilization had already existed) showed their makers’ faith that not only would our species still exist in the far future, but they would also be capable of finding, opening, and appreciating these preserved gifts from their undoubtedly less sophisticated ancestors.
Even when 2001: A Space Odyssey came along in 1968 in the midst of major social and cultural changes throughout the United States and abroad – and 1968 was a particularly dramatic year in that regard – the film still contained many trappings of the technological utopia, in no small part due to co-screen writer Arthur C. Clarke and the numerous real space experts they consulted in the making of 2001.
Clarke was one of the leading authors from science fiction’s “golden” era, which most often depicted space travel as a wondrous marvel in itself. Not only was voyaging into outer space considered something noble, it was also a major objective humanity was expected to strive for in its relentless pursuit of progress and new frontiers to conquer. Space had become especially important since most of Earth’s surface had already been considered “conquered” by our civilization, with the exception of the planet’s vast oceans of water: They were still largely unknown, particularly the sea bottom, which lay in total darkness under miles of crushing pressure from all that salt water.
Produced and released on the advent of the first manned lunar expeditions, 2001 predicted that the next three decades of the Space Age would have sleek space planes making regular trips to huge wheeled space stations in Earth orbit (with Hilton Hotels and Howard Johnson’s restaurants), sophisticated bases on the Moon, and nuclear-powered spacecraft operated by a “thinking” artificial intelligence (AI) carrying astronauts all the way to the gas giant planet Jupiter (or Saturn in the film novelization by Clarke).
However, if one looked more closely at this rosy and exciting depiction of our space future, there were some definite shadows among all that sunshine. The first “astronauts” we meet in 2001 are not the macho test pilots contemporary audiences were well accustomed to by the end of the first decade of the Space Age, but more often than not were bureaucrats and businessmen. For them, a journey to the Moon to inspect a mysterious alien artifact found there was treated more like a standard terrestrial corporate trip than an exciting scientific adventure.
As for that mission to Jupiter, its real objective was to examine an even larger alien artifact orbiting that distant world, which the one dug up on the lunar surface had sent a signal to. The original planetary science mission of the USS Discovery had been co-opted by the governing authorities, who not only placed three operatives aboard the spaceship in suspended animation to secretly deal with the visitor from another star system, but also instructed the ship’s main computer, HAL 9000, to keep the true mission goals from the remaining two “awake” human crew members. In effect, they caused HAL to lie to his fellow astronauts, which created an ultimately fatal conflict for the AI, who was programmed to record and relay all information fully and accurately and could not deal with the contradictions.
Even the first act in 2001 contained a foreshadowing of the direction humanity would one day head in. When the hominid named Moonwatcher, who had learned to hunt and kill in order to survive thanks to the lessons from an alien device that resembled a large black monolith, flung his weapon – an animal bone – towards the sky in a combination of triumph and ecstatic joy, the bone symbolically turned into a spaceship circling Earth. While it was not made explicit in the film at director Stanley Kubrick’s insistence, that first satellite shown was in fact a nuclear weapons platform, along with several others from various nations later shown in that same scene. Then, at the end of the film, when Discovery astronaut David Bowman is transformed by the Monolith ETI into an evolved human called a Starchild who subsequently appears above Earth, the novelization adds that several nations reacted by launching nuclear missiles at the new being. Starchild responded to the attack by deflecting and then detonating the missiles in space with its profound mental powers.
Considered to be not only one of the best science fiction films ever made but also a watershed both for the genre and the cinema overall, 2001: A Space Odyssey was the epitome of the Golden Era of SF films. It combined state-of-the-art production and special effects technologies with a well-written and deep multilevel plot. 2001 also had a very large budget for a science fiction film of its day: Ten million dollars in total, or the equivalent of over 71 million dollars in 2017 currency.
2001 made an important cultural shift in how space exploration was depicted across the entertainment and literary industries which has lasted to the present day. In addition, because the film was so serious and profound in its intent and messages, 2001 also invoked (or perhaps provoked) various satirical imitators. Among the best of those imitators was Dark Star, released into mainstream theaters in 1974, a film with a contrastingly very low budget by any era’s standards which managed to utilize its rather cheap effects and production values to its advantage when it came to telling its story and amusing its audiences. However, while it remains one of the best deliberate 2001 cinematic parodies to date, Dark Star also strongly reflects the general attitude of its era towards space exploration and humanity’s place in the Cosmos, which contrasted and conflicted with the earlier far more positive Manifest Destiny and overall faith in the benefits and progress of science and technology.
As a parody of 2001, Dark Star focused on the less glamorous and appealing aspects of life aboard a long-term deep space mission. 2001 had its share of space ennui on display, but this was certainly not its overriding focus. In the end, 2001 ultimately remained a part of the utopian space vision of the future, whereas Dark Star firmly belongs to the world where manned flights to the Moon ended in 1972 with no definite future plans in sight. There were certainly no serious efforts aimed at building a lunar base or sending a manned mission to Jupiter or any other world in the Sol system. There were two types of space stations in Earth orbit in the early 1970s – the American Skylab and the Soviet Salyut – but both were relatively small experimental hollow cylinders housing only a few astronauts and cosmonauts, respectively, for a matter of months at most. Neither stations were literal jumping off points to the Moon or any other celestial destinations.
On Earth, the major social issues of the late Twentieth Century such as war, racism, poverty, starvation, and class inequality were erupting everywhere, often in violent demonstrations, with those in power no longer able to fully suppress or control those most affected by society’s problems. It seemed rather than technology and science being the saviors of humanity as once touted, they were becoming increasingly responsible for our species’ potential demise by making it easier to harm and kill one another in multiple ways as never before.
In the midst of all this growing unrest, space felt like something remote and unrelated to the lives of the average citizen. Putting humans on the Moon with Project Apollo, once done as a way to display and foster Cold War national pride and geopolitical prestige on a grand scale, was instead being perceived as an extravagant waste of money and resources just so a few elite white military types could bring home some lunar rocks for a small group of scientists. Many thought the space agency received a disproportionate share of federal funding for this “esoteric” pursuit, though in truth the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) took but a small fraction of the government pie compared to most other agencies, a situation that remains to this day.
Many science fiction films of the Golden Era turned their focus away from space and looked inward at these societal problems. Some of the better known examples of this were Soylent Green, The Omega Man, Rollerball, A Clockwork Orange, Solaris, THX-1138, A Boy and His Dog, Zardoz, and the Planet of the Apes franchise. When space was mentioned in these films, it was generally in a negative light, either being aloof from helping with the dysfunctional human problems on the planet or interfering with potential solutions to the highlighted problem. To quote a character labeled Tramp in A Clockwork Orange: “What sort of a world is it at all? Men on the Moon, and men spinning around the Earth, and there’s not no attention paid to earthly law and order no more!”
When space was the focus in these SF films, it was largely there to further the theme that all solutions were to be found by returning to Earth in both the literal and cultural sense. Silent Running (1972) was among the most blatant films on this theme: Humanity had despoiled its home planet so badly through misuse and mismanagement that all remaining plants and animals were preserved in deep space inside biodomes attached to converted freighters. Instead of portraying space as the “savior” of what was left of Earth’s biosphere, the film emphasized that the Final Frontier was a temporary solution at most and certainly not a permanent place for the native organisms of the third world from Sol, including and especially humanity.
Tonight’s Themes for Discussion
Dark Star is indeed a satire, with the occasional venture into outright farce. Being a comedy of sorts does not let it off the hook in regards to having and making some serious and consequential points, even if it does contain an alien that is clearly made from a plastic beach ball with feet from a Halloween costume and produces fart noises, perhaps the basest tool of all humor.
Dark Star is also very existential in nature: The mission to deliberately destroy “unstable” planets is presented as absurd, the crew strive mightily to maintain their individuality in the face of their Sisyphean task, and then there is that wonderful discussion between Doolittle and Bomb 20 about whether or not anything exists outside one’s self, with literally explosive results. Carpenter even described Dark Star as “Waiting for Godot in space,” the 1953 minimalist play by Samuel Beckett about two vagabonds waiting by a dead tree for someone named Godot who never arrives.
So what does this all mean in terms of humanity expanding into space? Does it matter than one film skewers the concept, especially if that film is not well known or appreciated outside of science fiction circles to this very day? Does the message of a film have to affect all of its audience in order to be effective, or just enough of the people who can have an influence on the target of that message? Is there a “Sell by” date for such a film, even one with such seemingly timeless themes?
Did Dark Star contribute to the overall lackluster space efforts of the 1970s after the spectacular achievements and plans of the previous decades? Or did it just reflect the counterculture attitudes of the era? What does it benefit to say that manned space missions might consist of little more than boring and thankless tasks, as well as dangerous and even deadly?
Does Dark Star still have a point in regards to space exploration and colonization 43 years later? Or have times and attitudes changed in regards to space now that governments and their militaries are no longer the sole providers of access to the Final Frontier? Or perhaps Dark Star was showing us the proper way to expand into space without quite realizing it….
Our Story So Far…
This section presents to you my full plot summary of Dark Star. Therefore, I recommend that you watch the film first before following this essay any further in case you have not treated yourself in this manner already, or if you have seen this film but it has been a while since your last viewing and would like a refresher. Dark Star is available on disc and also on YouTube in its theatrical version unedited and unmodified. I have provided the hyperlink to the latter in the “References” section at the end of this piece should you decide to go that viewing route.
According to the opening narration from an early film script version which did not end up in the theatrical release, Dark Star takes place in the middle of the 22nd Century, with several sources pinpointing the year as 2150. Humanity has explored and colonized the Sol system and is now heading out into the wider Milky Way galaxy in what are described as “huge hyperdrive starships: Computer-driven, self-supporting, closed-system spacecraft that travel at mind-staggering post-light velocities. Man has begun to spread among the stars. Enormous ships embark with generations of colonists searching the depths of space for new earths, new homes, new beginnings.”
As may be expected when venturing into unknown realms like outer space, there are dangers in the universe of Dark Star. However, the potential cosmic threat to the human colonists expanding across the galaxy are not the usual marauding aliens but rather unstable exoplanets. Apparently there are enough alien worlds with orbits unsteady enough to one day send them plunging into their primary suns, smash into a moon or other planet, or fling them out of their systems entirely to languish in the bitter cold and dark of the interstellar void that an entire agency has been formed to deal with this problem.
Called the Advance Exploration Corps (AEC), these “special breed of [men]” comb the depths of space in faster-than-light (FTL) scoutships carrying clusters of “chain-reaction bomb[s], otherwise known as an Exponential Thermostellar Device.” Equipped with “sophisticated thought and speech mechanisms, to allow them to make executive decisions in the event of a crisis situation,” these special weapons of massive destruction are capable of obliterating the entirety of an unstable globe, “whose existence poses a threat to the peaceful colonists that follow.”
We meet up with one of these scoutships of the AEC called Dark Star (ADC 2239-5531), now in the twentieth year of their mission to “[open] up the farthest frontiers of space.” The crew of the Dark Star is in the process of removing yet another obstacle in humanity’s path of interstellar colonization. Just before we watch these men prepare Bomb Number 19 for its singular destiny, we learn via a transmission from Earth that the ship has recently suffered a loss with the accidental death of its leader, Commander Powell, who was electrocuted by a technical fault with his own command chair.
Once Bomb 19 has successfully and cheerfully completed its task of destroying an unnamed unstable exoplanet, the crew winds down a bit until their next bomb run, this time in the Veil Nebula system. Throughout the story, the audience bears witness to the distinct personalities of each of these men, who are in fact slowly falling apart in parallel with various ship systems after two decades in space. Lieutenant Doolittle, now in charge of the Dark Star, would much rather be back home in Malibu, California, surfing the waves of the Pacific Ocean. Sergeant Pinback constantly attempts to boost the crew’s morale, but only succeeds in making them increasingly resentful and dismissive of him. Boiler appears to be the most content with his job, even gleeful at some points. Talby prefers to spend most of his time in the observation dome at the top of the ship, watching the stars drift by and hoping one day to encounter the mysterious Phoenix Asteroids which he says circle the Universe once every 12.3 trillion years, glowing “with all the colors of the rainbow.”
The crew’s relaxation time is abruptly interrupted by the rather sensual female voice of the ship’s Computer warning them about an approaching asteroid storm that “appears to be bound together by an electromagnetic energy vortex” similar to the one they encountered two years prior. As the Computer’s defensive circuits were destroyed by that previous storm, the crew has to manually activate all of the ship’s defensive systems – within 35 seconds.
The crew succeeds in placing a protective force field around the Dark Star just before plunging through the asteroid storm, but one stray energy bolt breaches the field and hits the Emergency Airlock at the ship’s stern, damaging Communications Laser Number 17 located inside it, which we later learn “monitors the jettison primer on the bomb drop mechanism.” This causes Bomb Number 20 to receive a very premature operational signal to drop and lowers itself out of the bomb bay during the storm. The Computer informs Bomb 20 that the order was a technical error: Bomb 20 complies and returns to the bomb bay. The Computer attempts to discover the exact source of the problem, but the damaged laser has temporarily inactivated the Computer’s damage tracer circuits.
Later on, Pinback has to go feed the ship’s “mascot”, an alien creature they found while visiting the Magellanic Cloud. The alien, about half as tall as Pinback, resembles a large orange beach ball with two clawed feet. As Pinback is sweeping up the alien’s living area, the creature attacks him and escapes into the depths of the ship. Pinback gives chase, only to be outmaneuvered by the alien and ending up stuck in the ship’s elevator shaft, first hanging from the bottom of the elevator car and later wedged tight in the emergency access hatch in the floor of the elevator itself. Pinback eventually escapes his predicament, but only after he accidentally activates the hatch’s explosive bolts while methodically pressing buttons on the elevator control panel urgently seeking help.
While Pinback is thus preoccupied, the alien roams about the Dark Star, making its way to the damaged communications laser and inadvertently creating even further problems with it. This event causes Bomb 20 to prematurely receive the drop order again and makes ready for its run. Once more the Computer has to convince Bomb 20 not to drop yet, although this time it takes more effort to dissuade the bomb, who states that ignoring the signal to drop runs counter to its programming. Bomb 20 reluctantly returns to the ship’s bomb bay, but declares that “this is the last time” it will ignore the drop signal.
Doolittle and Talby are up in the dome, sharing their dreams about what they would prefer to be doing with their lives. As Doolittle waxes nostalgic about his surf board, Talby receives a general alert about the communications malfunction on his panel readout and informs Doolittle, who merely tells him not to worry about it, that they will “find out what it is when it goes bad.”
Being more concerned about the malfunction than his commander, Talby heads to the Computer Room to determine exactly what the problem is and repair it. Eventually the malfunction is pinpointed to the communications laser damaged earlier. Talby puts on a starsuit and heads down to the Emergency Airlock with a tool kit, informing Doolittle of his plans to fix the laser.
Pinback eventually finds the alien and attempts to render it unconscious with a dart from an anesthetic gun, but instead ends up killing the creature, which reacts to the dart’s impact by explosively releasing gas from its body and flying about the room before landing on the floor completely deflated. Pinback tries to inform Doolittle and Boiler about his battle with the alien as they go to eat lunch, asking how the creature could have been alive “if it was just filled with gas?” Pinback’s companions ignore him as they focus on their meal, which is labeled “ham” but looks instead like packets of multicolored liquid.
Undaunted, Pinback tries to engage the men in a lunchtime discussion about how he isn’t really Sergeant Pinback, but rather a starship Fuel Maintenance Technician named Bill Froug who was mistaken for Pinback after the real astronaut went crazy just before the launch of the Dark Star and jumped “stark naked” into a vat of liquid fuel which Froug was maintaining. Froug attempted to rescue Pinback from the vat by putting on his starsuit for protection and diving in after him, but a member of the launch crew appeared and mistook Froug for Pinback, hurrying him aboard the ship. Froug did not know how to operate the suit’s helmet radio, rendering him unable to explain what had just happened or who he really was.
Doolittle and Boiler barely react to Pinback’s story, except to acknowledge to each other that Pinback had already told them about this four years earlier. We later see Pinback reviewing his personal video diary in private, which confirms his story about being Bill Froug and gives us further examples of how Pinback thinks he has “something of value to contribute to this mission if [the rest of the crew] would only recognize it,” which they clearly do not.
At last the Dark Star arrives at the unstable planet in the Veil Nebula system. As Doolittle, Boiler, and Pinback prepare for this latest bomb run, Talby is in the airlock about to fix Communications Laser Number 17. Talby radios Doolittle in an effort to tell the lieutenant to hold off on dropping Bomb 20 until he can solve the laser issue, but Doolittle is too busy to be bothered and cuts off their communications.
Talby activates the laser’s test mode, making two bright red beams of light shoot across the room. As he attempts to adjust the “cue switch” in the laser mechanism, Talby inadvertently steps into the path of the lasers, becoming temporarily blinded by them and falling to the floor unconscious. His actions create even further damage to both the ship’s Computer and the laser, disrupting the signal that would jettison Bomb 20 away from the ship and towards the target planet.
The rest of the crew discover this rather critical problem when they attempt to drop Bomb 20, which remains attached to the Dark Star – yet still intends to detonate in just over fourteen minutes! Doolittle tries to order the bomb to disarm and return to the bomb bay, but Bomb 20 refuses and states that it will detonate at its programmed time regardless. The damaged Computer is unable to resolve this dilemma, saying that the best it can do is to confine the bomb’s explosion to a radius of one mile using automatic dampers.
Doolittle realizes he has but one final option: To ask Commander Powell what to do.
While Commander Powell was indeed electrocuted by his chair, the crew had placed their leader into a Cryogenic Freezer Compartment in the ship’s Freezer Room, where he remains alive and conscious in a state of “absolute zero,” although Powell’s memory is starting to fade and he is hurt that the crew only visits him when there is a problem they cannot solve themselves.
Talking to Powell through a microphone, Doolittle is able to explain the current situation after some initial difficulty, such as Powell unexpectedly asking Doolittle how a certain Major League baseball team from Los Angeles is doing. “They broke up, they disbanded over fifteen years ago!” replies Doolittle about the Dodgers. “Ah… pity, pity…” says Powell in turn.
Powell initially offers a technical suggestion to stop Bomb 20, the “azimuth clutch,” but Doolittle informs his former captain that it has already been tried without success. The commander then tells Doolittle to talk to the bomb to teach it phenomenology, a field of study which involves the conscious mind and how it relates to the world around it through direct experience.
With just six minutes left before Bomb 20 detonates, Doolittle dons a starsuit with a jetpack and goes outside the ship to speak with the bomb face-to-face, in a fashion. As the two float in space together high above the alien planet, the lieutenant first asks Bomb 20 how it knows it actually exists, to which it replies that this state of being is “intuitively obvious.” Doolittle counters that “intuition is no proof. What concrete evidence do you have that you exist?” Bomb 20 offers the phrase “I think, therefore I am,” made famous by the 17th Century French philosopher René Descartes. Bomb 20 then adds that its collection of various sensors reveal the existence of the outside world to it.
Doolittle explains that Bomb 20’s sensory data “is merely a stream of electrical impulses which stimulate your computing center.” The bomb realizes that since all it knows about the exterior world is what it receives from its electrical connections, it therefore does not “know what the outside universe is like at all, for certain.”
As Bomb 20 now realizes what it thinks it knows about existence may not actually be true, Doolittle moves to the next level of their discussion:
Doolittle: “Now bomb, consider this next question, very carefully. What is your one purpose in life?”
Bomb 20: “To explode, of course.”
Doolittle: “And you can only do it once, right?”
Bomb 20: “That is correct.”
Doolittle: “And you wouldn’t want to explode on the basis of false data, would you?”
Bomb 20: “Of course not.”
Doolittle: “Well then, you’ve already admitted that you have no real proof of the existence of the outside universe.”
Bomb 20: “Yes, well…”
Doolittle: “So you have no absolute proof that Sergeant Pinback ordered you to detonate.”
Bomb 20: “I recall distinctly the detonation order. My memory is good on matters like these.”
Doolittle: “Yes, of course you remember it, but… But all you’re remembering is merely a series of electrical impulses which you now realize have no real definite connection with, with outside reality.”
Bomb 20: “True, but since this is so, I have no proof that you are really telling me all this.”
Doolittle: “That’s all beside the point. I mean, the concept is valid, no matter where it originates.”
Bomb 20: “Hmmm…”
Doolittle: “So if you detonate in…”
Bomb 20: “…9 seconds.”
Doolittle: “You could be doing so on the basis of false data.”
Bomb 20: “I have no proof that it was false data.”
Doolittle: “You have no proof that it was correct data!”
Bomb 20: “I must think on this further.”
To Doolittle’s immense relief, Bomb 20 rises back up into the Dark Star’s bomb bay. While Doolittle and Bomb 20 were having their philosophical discussion, Boiler had the idea to use the ship’s laser rifle to shoot off the support pins holding the bomb so it would drop away. Pinback strongly disagreed with Boiler’s idea, telling him he was a bad shot and would probably end up hitting Bomb 20 instead and setting it off. The two men wrestled and fought for control of the rifle throughout the ship until the Computer informed them that the bomb had returned to its holding area.
As Boiler and Pinback returned to their stations to disarm Bomb 20, Doolittle radios Pinback to ask if he could blow the seal on the hatch to the Emergency Airlock so he can reenter the ship faster than going through the Dorsal Lock he originally emerged from for his spacewalk to Bomb 20. Pinback complies, unaware that Talby is still in the airlock. The sudden release of air from that compartment as the hatch is opened sends Talby shooting out and away from the ship like a rocket, where he tumbles through space without a jetpack to help him return to the Dark Star. Doolittle witnesses this and informs Pinback that he is going off to rescue Talby.
Pinback contacts Bomb 20, telling it to prepare to receive new orders. Bomb 20 replies that the sergeant is “false data.” As the bomb now views everything outside of itself as a lie and a distraction, it thinks the only thing that truly exists is itself. Bomb 20 begins to paraphrase the first lines from the biblical Genesis:
“In the beginning there was darkness, and the darkness was without form and void. And in addition to the darkness, there was also me. And I moved upon the face of the darkness. And I saw that I was alone…. Let there be light.”
A blinding white light suddenly fills the screen. Bomb 20 has detonated, destroying the Dark Star and instantly killing Boiler and Pinback. Commander Powell survives, still encased in a block of ice, tumbling off into the void wondering aloud what had just happened. Doolittle and Talby are pushed away from each other by the explosion in opposite directions (despite Doolittle being on the verge of reaching Talby just before Bomb 20 went off). Doolittle finds himself heading towards the planet they had planned to destroy, with Talby noting that when the lieutenant hits the atmosphere, he will “start to burn. What a beautiful way to die… as a falling star.”
Talby drifts into the Phoenix Asteroids, which just happen to be coming by at that very moment, and is carried off to circle the Universe with them “forever.” Doolittle notices debris from the remains of the Dark Star flying past him. Grabbing a long metal ladder, Doolittle declares “I think I’ve figured out a way” and rides the debris like a surfboard into the planet’s atmosphere. For a brief moment, Doolittle does become a falling star before winking out of existence, while the theme song from the opening credits, “Benson, Arizona,” plays one more time.
As a Film…
Dark Star was one science fiction film I eagerly recall wanting to see after reading about its clever ending with the intelligent talking bomb that thought it was God. I finally had my chance in college with a course examining various science fiction novels and films. I was not disappointed. Dark Star was definitely one of the favorites of the class, which was no small feat as it was shown among other classic and often more renowned cinema of the genre. Then again, Dark Star was most often popular with the college crowds in general, hitting on themes that rose above the usual ones for most mainstream films and being just quirky and “hip” enough to gain its reputation on the college circuit. When I first saw the film, the scene where Doolittle convinced Bomb 20 that nothing existed outside of itself resonated, as in that same semester I had taken an introductory philosophy course which began with that very subject – Cartesian doubt, that is, not talking a literal smart bomb out of blowing up.
Dark Star originated as a project by two University of Southern California (USC) film students, John Carpenter and Dan O’Bannon, who worked on it from 1970 to 1972. O’Bannon played Sergeant Pinback in addition to his other roles and script writer and editor. The film was edited and expanded into its feature length version for release two years later. It was often reported that mainstream audiences did not tend to “get” Dark Star, especially the fact that it was a dark satire on 2001: A Space Odyssey. This is often one of the defining features of most SF films of the Golden Era, aiming above the average audience’s heads and being more widely appreciated only later. Dark Star’s obviously low budget – approximately $60,000, or just over 313K in 2017 dollars – no doubt added to the generally negative viewer response.
Carpenter would go on to have a very successful Hollywood career with some other science fiction films such as Starman (1987) and They Live (1988), but would mostly be known for his groundbreaking work in horror cinema. O’Bannon took his Dark Star scenes with the alien beach ball and greatly expanded upon them into the screenplay for Alien (1979), a very successful SF film (and later a whole franchise) about a very hostile alien creature that gets aboard a commercial starship in deep space and starts killing the hapless crew.
As a science fiction film, I consider Dark Star to still be among the smartest and best of its kind, even over four decades after its general release. This speaks well of the film, but it may also be due to the fact that just three years after Dark Star’s public debut, the first member of the Star Wars franchise arrived on the big screen and culturally body slammed Golden Era type SF films to the sidelines, from which it has yet to fully recover. Smart SF cinema with socially relevant commentary which took precedence over flashy and expensive special effects, already dancing on the margins of Hollywood, was submerged by the arrival of its simpler brethren, which – most importantly for its Tinseltown bosses – generated far more revenue.
Dark Star had a story and message to tell: It wasn’t worried about trying to be everything to everyone like so many mainstream films are today, largely because you have to generate double your film budget from ticket sales in the opening days just to break even. In fact the original incarnations of this film were even more esoteric: The filmmakers had an early scene where the starship crew went to bed after a bomb run and the film literally spent the next five minutes showing the men in their makeshift quarters just sleeping and snoring in the dark! This may not have been quite in the same running in terms of duration with Andy Warhol’s experimental eight-hour film from 1964 titled Empire, where a single camera was aimed at the Empire State Building in New York City and left running, but they are cinematically spiritual brethren.
The famous – or infamous, depending on your point of view – inexpensive practical special effects of Dark Star not only did not detract from the story, they actually added to the film’s charm and in most cases looked pretty good, especially when you realize how many SF films in the post-Star Wars era have spent several hundred million dollars to achieve a similar appearance using complex computer graphics, yet they often lack both a deep, intelligent plot and genuine heart in comparison. These are just the key points of the many strong reasons why a remake of Dark Star would not only be unworkable but tantamount to a cultural crime. It is also fun figuring out exactly what was used to make the various props: The cupcake/muffin tin on the front of Talby’s starsuit and the Styrofoam packing material for its backpack, the inverted ice cube trays lit from beneath serving as control panel buttons in the bomb drop control room, the alien that looks like an inflated beach ball because it is an inflated beach ball, and the use of Major Matt Mason action figures as models for certain scenes with Doolittle and Talby in space, which the full-size starsuit designs were based on.
There is even symbolic meaning with some of the special effect choices. The AI bombs look like long-haul truck trailers because they were made from model trailer trucks. This in turn is symbolic of how the scoutship crew is portrayed, not as the brave and noble astronauts exploring the Universe for science and daring adventure as NASA presented to the world, but as a bunch of regular guys just doing the equivalent of an Earth-bound blue-collar job, an occupation that feels unglamorous, pointless, and never-ending, yet they are committed to seeing the task to its completion, if there really is an end point.
Dark Star’s sound effects were rather unique and distinctive: They manage to be serious enough with a flavoring of genre tweak, just like the overall film in general. Playing on the use of electronic music as the presumed sound of the future going back to Forbidden Planet in 1956, the main soundtrack for Dark Star can be seen in the same light as the sounds effects, as both a genuine tribute and an ironic comment on one of the key elements in many science fiction films and television series of its day right to the present. Even more ironic is that the film which Dark Star chiefly satirizes, 2001, actually broke the mold when it came to science fiction cinematic soundtracks, making effective and now legendary use of several classical orchestral pieces: Kubrick deliberately eschewed a more traditional score composed just for it. John Carpenter himself created the Dark Star soundtrack using a modular synthesizer. He also wrote the music for “Benson, Arizona” which played during the opening and closing credit titles.
The humor certainly worked on multiple levels throughout Dark Star: It was smart to have the cast play their roles straight for the most part, even though this idea probably contributed to those audiences who didn’t seem to get the jokes. Science fiction is usually not seen as part of the comedy genre unless it is deliberately and obviously made absurd at slapstick and cartoonish levels. The marketing verbiage of Dark Star often emphasized the film’s comedic aspects (“The Ultimate Cosmic Comedy!”), but it is questionable just how much of that got across to some audiences. I also wonder if other promotional advertising phrases such as “The Spaced Out Odyssey” and “Bombed out in space with a spaced out bomb!” actually helped or only confused and ultimately disappointed early viewers who were expecting a wacky, light, and even psychedelic romp with a bunch of hippy types who would use lots of recreational drugs.
To its everlasting credit, Dark Star did not take the easy and more marketable route, nor did any of the characters ever resort to using drugs or even drink alcohol, which frankly would not have been out of place in a film from the early 1970s. Boiler did smoke a cigar and Pinback held an unlit cigarette briefly when they were relaxing in their makeshift sleeping quarters, but that was the extent. As for the cast often being regarded as hippies, those reviewers are undoubtedly referring to their head and facial hair styles, which were typical for many young white American males of that era, hippy or otherwise.
Like the contemporary attitude on exploring and colonizing space, short hair and a shorn face on a man were considered either to be a relic of an earlier era and/or an indication of a conservative and even militaristic bent, which did not go over well with the counterculture generation. Note the deliberate contrast of the clean-cut military official in the opening scene of Dark Star: He helped to make it obvious who the filmmakers wanted us to root for and who we were to distrust. Of course Doolittle talking about California surfing, Talby getting all mystical about the legendary Phoenix Asteroids, and Commander Powell’s sometimes rambling conversation did play their roles in this perception of the main characters being futuristic descendants of the late 20th Century counterculture.
The quality of the acting was rather well done for the most part, especially considering that the cast were not exactly veterans of the craft and that Dark Star had begun as an even lower budget college film school project. The scenes with the scoutship suddenly stopping when it came out of hyperspace are always amusing, as are the voices and dialogues of Bombs 19 and 20.
On the other hand, the scenes with Pinback and his struggles with the ship’s elevator were often a bit too farcical and went on much too long for my taste; they were clearly meant to pad out the film for mainstream release. Nevertheless, they are now part of the overall film and history of Dark Star, and life carries on. On the plus side, the reason Pinback ended up in this predicament in the first place, his encounter with the alien beach ball mascot, was eventually expanded by Dan O’Bannon into the first and very successful Alien film, which spawned an entire franchise that is now an integral part of our entertainment culture and still churning out films and other products. While I think most of the later films of this franchise were a downgrade in terms of story quality, the entire Alien franchise to date still retains the underlying theme and messages from Dark Star, rendering them a notch above most cinematic SF. Dark Star has also influenced other science fiction media and even some real life events, including the British SF comedy television series Red Dwarf.
Now let’s get down to business….
Same Ship, Different Day
Had Dark Star included the opening narration as written in an earlier script version and presented next, viewers would have found themselves on familiar SF ground:
“It is the mid-22nd Century. Mankind has explored the boundaries of his own solar system, and now he reaches out to the endless interstellar distances of the Universe. He moves away from his own small planetary system in huge hyperdrive starships: Computer-driven, self-supporting, closed-system spacecraft that travel at mind-staggering post-light velocities. Man has begun to spread among the stars. Enormous ships embark with generations of colonists searching the depths of space for new earths, new homes, new beginnings.
“Far in advance of these colony ships goes a new pioneer: The scouts, the pathfinders, a special breed of man who has dedicated his life to blazing the trail through the most distant, unexplored galaxies, opening up the farthest frontiers of space. These are the men of the Advance Exploration Corps. The task they face is one of unbelievable isolation and loneliness. So far from home that Earth is no longer even a point of light in the sky, they must comb the Universe for those unstable planets whose existence poses a threat to the peaceful colonists that follow. They must find these rogue planets — and destroy them. Among these commandos are the men of the scoutship Dark Star.”
This is a well-worn utopian future scenario that goes back to early modern science fiction: Humanity expands into space after conquering all the frontiers on Earth as part of its Manifest Destiny. Once they have settled the Sol system, they look outward to the stars, develop an FTL method of interstellar propulsion, and start exploring and colonizing the rest of the Milky Way galaxy. Adventures ensue and usually humanity dominates the scene despite the odds.
Dark Star throws in a twist on this trope by having an entire space agency devoted to the complete removal of alien planets deemed unsafe for potential colonists by using highly sophisticated and insanely powerful bombs with AI brains to ensure that the task is accomplished. It might have been a lot easier and cheaper to just continually update everyone’s star charts about the state of exoplanets across the galaxy, or even place a beacon satellite in those planets’ version of geosynchronous orbit as an extra layer of warning for any visitors, but then such actions would not be nearly as compelling plot-wise – or as absurd.
Destroying entire worlds in such an utter and violent manner makes two statements: That humans are a dangerous and violent species who will not change their base behaviors and actions even when they reach the stars. The other point being made here is that those in power in such a future will be no different than the rulers we have now, promising a shining future for all while justifying the current sacrifices of certain “undesirable” people and places in the name of progress, safety, and survival.
In our world, governments use their military soldiers to make these often ultimate sacrifices while pushing their particular agendas, which are usually about grabbing territory and resources from rival powers. These soldiers are projected and lauded as brave heroes protecting their homes and families from some terrible enemy, when more often than not they are treated as pawns in a global game of chess.
This cultural viewpoint was certainly well in force when Dark Star was being put together: The Cold War was into its fourth decade, with the threat of nuclear annihilation always seeming to be but the push of a button from becoming a reality. One branch of that era was the Vietnam War, which had done much to jumpstart the counterculture movement and was bitterly argued about and rebelled against on college campuses across America. It does not take much effort to see the analogies with the planet-destroying bombs carried by the Dark Star and the “soldiers” of the AEC carrying out their tasks at the behest of unseen authorities whose only real concern is that their objectives are met.
It is indeed quite the irony to call these interstellar scouts the Advance Exploration Corps when they only explore the galaxy to find planets to blow up as part of an expansionist agenda, not to study for the sake of scientific knowledge. In fact we get no indication that human civilization is doing much of anything in regards to space other than spreading itself to every available alien world for the sake of expanding. Science and technology exist largely to serve this plan, not as any means in themselves. When the ship’s sensors detect a new star right after Bomb 19 destroys its assigned unstable exoplanet, a red dwarf with a system of eight planets, Doolittle inquires if any of these worlds are “any good?” Pinback knows exactly what Doolittle is looking for and replies with “Naah. All stable.”
There are some definite parallels between the mission of the Dark Star and the early Space Age, especially the race to put a “man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth” as President John F. Kennedy first declared before the United States Congress in 1961. While Project Apollo was often touted as humanity finally putting into physical form its ancient desire to reach Earth’s celestial companion and wrest its secrets for science, the main reason such an extraordinary effort took place so soon after the first artificial satellite was placed into orbit had far more to do with Cold War geopolitical posturing than pure science and adventure. Even the start of the Space Age in 1957 was officially declared as part of the International Geophysical Year (IGY), but only the most politically naive would have swallowed that claim whole as the real reason Sputnik 1 was circling Earth and beeping its presence to anyone with the proper radio receiver.
The origins of the Space Age itself, despite numerous statements and propaganda to the contrary, were no more “pure” than the real reasons Europeans began venturing to the New Worlds of North and South America. Rulers and politicians then as now, and no doubt into the future, only bankrolled such ventures if there were new lands and riches to be gained. Note how Apollo faded away not long after the United States “won” the Moon race, even though there was still so much of that world to explore for science, and how not a single human being has set foot there again since. Even the number of lunar robotic missions dropped off dramatically after Project Apollo, as many of them were primarily meant as support for the manned conquest of our celestial neighbor. There has been an increase in automated explorers to the Moon in the last decade, but the earlier vision of manned lunar colonies, industrial mining complexes, radio telescopes on the lunar farside, and even vacation hotels remain just visions for now.
Is this what might happen how and when we become a deep spacefaring society? Will we be exploring primarily to serve our expansionist drive? Note how the exoplanet “Holy Grail” for astronomers are alien worlds that most resemble our Earth. The purpose in humanity’s hunt for them is to see if they contain life, since we know our planet best when it comes to which celestial bodies might support organisms.
However, there is also often an underlying theme, especially in popular works on this subject, that these same worlds might be ideal for colonizing some day. At the same time, these writers and often the scientists, engineers, and even managerial and political leaders behind such plans never address (or at least not very loudly) several pertinent issues: If these Earthlike alien worlds can and do support native life, these organisms and their atmospheres may not be compatible with terrestrial life. If this life also happens to be highly intelligent and civilized, then we will be dealing with a whole different range of situations which will complicate any colonization plans, to put it mildly.
It is also ironic that when humans consider the possibility that advanced ETI may have their own ambitions about colonizing the galaxy, they usually do so with the fear that such beings may not be interesting in sharing or otherwise cooperating with us when it comes to our home world and solar system. Yet of course should we wish to colonize an already occupied world or system, such actions are seen as the need for survival, healthy competition, and even an opportunity to “uplift” the natives on the wonders of being human.
Of course all these ideas and concerns remain academic in a world where interstellar vessels of any type are not only conjectural but riddled with significant show-stoppers, be they slower or faster than light speed. Sixty years after the launch of Sputnik 1, humanity has yet to colonize any worlds in their home solar system, let alone those circling another star, or have explorers spend even two years at one shot in low Earth orbit. Methods for robotic interstellar travel and exploration and searching for extraterrestrial intelligences (SETI) are finally starting to be taken seriously, thanks to Breakthrough Initiatives, but how long this effort will last remains to be seen. As with so many other things in our society, support and funding are at the whims of those in power.
It is quite obvious in Dark Star that if the crew of the film’s scoutship represents the thoughts and feelings of the other AEC scoutships spending years scouring the galaxy for unstable planets to destroy, then we have a bunch of workers for humanity’s interstellar civilization ranging from bored to annoyed to indifferent to hostile. Then add on the fact that these folks are in the possession of multiple devices that can individually vaporize an entire world aboard ships that are slowly falling apart with apparently little support from home beyond some hollow rhetoric.
This should make one wonder how many other jobs there are in this interstellar society which have become drudgery for those having to do such work and what effects they are having on them and those people and places around them.
The reactions of Lieutenant Doolittle are a prime example of what can happen to any person who is oppressed even in ways that are not consciously deliberate by others, but societal neglect for the individual in the striving for the “greater good” such as an interstellar colonization effort.
We hear Doolittle plainly state early on that he does not want them to look for “any of that intelligent life stuff. Find me something I can blow up!” when Boiler says there is “a 95% probability of intelligent life in the Horsehead Nebula sector” as they search for their next unstable planet to remove. When they detect a new star, a red dwarf with eight planets, Doolittle only cares if any of them are unstable and has no interest at all in naming the alien sun when Pinback suggests they give it one.
“Commander Powell would have named it,” Pinback replies petulantly. “Commander Powell is dead,” retorts Doolittle, shutting down their brief debate.
Dark Star’s new leader also has nothing but contempt for the beach ball alien they found in the “Magellanic Cloud” and took aboard, nor does he care if there is any intelligent life at their next target in the Veil Nebula. All this is played for laughs on the surface and it does have the desired effect, but one does not have to look too hard to see a man on the verge of becoming even less human than the machines that supposedly serve his purposes, or perhaps suffer an even worse fate.
When we look at the character of Doolittle throughout the film, we do not get the impression of a man who is either cruel or unintelligent. He does seem to care about others and his fondest desire is to go home to Earth and surf. Doolittle even plays a musical instrument of his own design in his off-hours as a way to relieve stress and hold on to his individuality and humanity in the face of an indifferent society and Universe. He is the Everyman for the film audience to relate to, which has its good and bad points in terms of how the viewing public is led to think about space travel and utilization. For Dark Star is certainly no recruiting poster for the space program, and watching the one character who most people would want to relate to show clear indifference to and contempt with the wider Universe does have an effect on the thinking process of its viewing public, even if subconsciously.
Doolittle also clings to the hope that he and the rest of the ship’s crew can go home once they have completed their mission. When Talby tells him how much he enjoys sitting up in the observation dome watching the Cosmos pass by, Doolittle tells Talby he will have “plenty of time later on for staring around.” For Doolittle, the only things he truly misses and wants are “the waves and my board more than anything.” Doolittle would even settle for just having his surfboard with him on the ship so he could wax it once in a while.
Although Doolittle and Talby are roughly equal in terms of intelligence and social standing – which is why they are respectively in charge of the more important areas of the scoutship and their mission – they seem at first glance to have very different ideas and desires about what matters: Talby wants to see the literal Universe and ultimately become a part of the mystical Phoenix Asteroids, while Doolittle wants to go home to Malibu and ride the ocean waves on his surfboard. Of course they are really not that different when you listen to how they talk about their respective dreams, it’s only that Talby’s is a macro vision on a truly cosmic scale, while Doolittle embodies a micro vision confined to one particular place on Earth.
Contrast this with the other two truly living characters of Dark Star, Boiler and Pinback, both of whom represent the so-called “working class.” Boiler appears to be the most content with his situation aboard the ship, or at least the one with the least angst about it all. He relishes blowing up alien planets for the sake of destroying things. We hear no deep, intellectual musings from Boiler, nor even any exterior dreams he might have. No doubt the authorities who sent out these missions would love to have entire crews comprised of Boilers.
Ironically, because Dark Star’s mission is one of bureaucracy and physical labor of a sort and not directly for science and expanding human knowledge, Boiler may have been the one with the best solution to the crisis with Bomb 20 when he suddenly considers getting the Exponential Thermostellar Device away from the ship by using their laser rifle to shoot out the support pins holding Bomb 20 in place, where he says it will fall away and then the crew could presumably hyperdrive to safety in time. It is a seemingly practical and direction solution, if not nearly as entertaining as using Cartesian philosophy to stop Bomb 20 from exploding while still attached to the ship.
However, I do have to wonder how and if the bomb would just “drop away” from the ship if its support pins were removed due to the fact that they were in space, specifically in orbit about a planet. In such a microgravity environment, the bomb would only fall away from the Dark Star if it were also pushed after being separated from the pins which held it to the ship. Perhaps the violent act of shooting off the pins would create such a repulsive force, but would it be enough to get Bomb 20 far enough away for them to survive the impending explosion?
Presumably Boiler would have also needed time to put on a starsuit, since the bomb bay doors were open and exposing the hold to outer space, although putting on such outfits in the mid-22nd Century are apparently a fast and relatively trivial procedure. After all, Pinback was able to quickly don one when he had his one and only encounter with the real Sergeant Pinback, who jumped into a vat of liquid fuel. In comparison, contemporary astronauts and cosmonauts embarking on an extravehicular activity (EVA) or “spacewalk” outside the International Space Station (ISS) require up to two hours to put on their spacesuits and ensure that all is secure before placing themselves in the vacuum of space.
Pinback also strongly expressed concerns that Boiler would miss the support pins and instead shoot Bomb 20, causing it to prematurely detonate. “You’re a bad shot! You’ll hit the bomb! Doolittle’s talking to the bomb…. He’ll save us, you can’t do that!” Pinback shouted at Boiler when the latter declared his intentions. “You don’t know what you are doing!” he later added. Whether Pinback’s concerns about Boiler’s skills as a marksman were justified or he was only expressing his own fears combined with an automatic deference to any and all authority figures along with the potential loss of his only home are subject to debate. One also has to suspect that these thermostellar bombs have a number of features designed to prevent premature detonation from various sources such as a hit from a weaponized laser beam, seeing as they are so incredibly powerful and therefore extremely dangerous. Of course in at least one known case there are some fatal gaps in the system.
Now had Boiler been able to successfully implement his plan, would Bomb 20 have remained on its original countdown schedule even as it presumably fell away from the Dark Star? Might the sudden release of the bomb from the ship cause it to automatically detonate? Or was there a safeguard in place for such a situation? And would there have been enough time for Doolittle to get back into the scoutship, seeing as he had been focused on talking to Bomb 20 and was unaware of the rest of the crew’s own plans?
Of all the crewmen aboard the Dark Star, perhaps the one who had the most to gain both socially and individually by being there was Sergeant Pinback, or rather the person who ended up taking his name and place aboard the ship, Fuel Maintenance Technician Bill Froug. As Pinback explained (several times) to his crewmates, astronaut candidates had to score 700 points on the SAREs for the Officer Corps and he only achieved a 58. Froug was subsequently placed on “liquid fuel maintenance on the launch pad,” where he no doubt might have remained indefinitely until his fateful encounter with the real Pinback.
Although one might wonder how Froug was accepted by the rest of the Dark Star crew at first, assuming they would have trained together and therefore have known each other quite well as real astronauts do for a space mission, Pinback obviously did well enough to eventually learn his counterpart’s role aboard the ship. Perhaps as part of the plot joke and also a reflection on their growing apathy, the rest of the crew did not seem to care much that Froug had taken the place of the real Sergeant Pinback.
Considering that the real Pinback had gone apparently insane and committed suicide by jumping “stark naked” into the vat of rocket fuel that Froug was maintaining, I wonder if he had shown earlier signs of mental instability at least to his crewmates? Did the other men rather callously figure that Froug would make an acceptable if not better Pinback replacement, assuming they had any say in the matter at all once the scoutship headed off into the wider galaxy?
As for the original Sergeant Pinback, was his final act in life the only “sane” response to a mission as insane and absurd as spending decades obliterating whole planets with intelligent bombs just because they might one day become unstable for a permanent human colony to settle upon? Perhaps that is what truly concerned the other crewmembers and they felt it was best to ignore what had happened, lest they too take Pinback’s societal escape route.
Is it better to be alive even in a soulless technologically-dominated society with an equally soulless and ultimately absurd profession in the hope that one day either you or your children will break this cycle to enjoy more meaningful lives? As the narrator proclaimed in the unused beginning of Dark Star, the stated purpose of humanity expanding into the Milky Way galaxy is to find “new earths, new homes, new beginnings,” with the underlying message that better lives will follow with a new mailing address and a change of scenery.
On the surface, Pinback’s efforts to maintain crew morale and order should seem to be of benefit to the overall well-being of the ship almost as important as having enough consumables. However, Pinback is not only woefully inadequate at his self-proclaimed role, it is plainly obvious to his colleagues that Pinback tries to uplift them primarily to improve his own social standing among the crew. He and they know his being aboard the Dark Star was an accident, one that benefits Pinback in one respect, but his social and intellectual limitations ensure that his time with the AEC will be the highlight of what would soon become his truncated life. Ultimately, the best role Pinback can serve is as a suck-up and yes-man to those in authority, the ones who sent them all into the void to spend decades blowing up unfavorable alien worlds. So it becomes little wonder that the rest of the surviving crew resents and disrespects Pinback as much and as often as they do.
When Froug/Pinback complains in his video diary (a prop made from an 8-track tape and a microfiche reader) that the real Sergeant Pinback’s uniforms do not fit him and “the underwear is too loose,” it is not just a comment that the real Pinback was a man physically larger than himself: Pinback/Froug is also revealing that he is literally unfit for the mission, that he cannot metaphorically fit in the man’s shoes or anything else for that matter. Of course in case anyone misses this observation, Pinback/Froug immediately adds to his underwear comment that “I do not belong on this mission and I want to return to Earth.”
Further revelations as to how Pinback’s subsequently overinflated view of himself and his conformist role on the ship follow as we review his video diary, which we learn is programmed to automatically censor curse words and obscene gestures:
“Doolittle says he’s assuming command of this ship [upon the death of Commander Powell] and I say that’s …. I say that he’s exceeding his authority. Because I’m the only one with any objectivity on this ship and I should be the one to assume command! I’m filing a report on this to Headquarters, this is a lot of ….”
“This mission has fallen apart since Commander Powell died! Doolittle treats me like an idiot! Talby thinks he’s so smart. And Boiler punches me in the arm when no one is looking! I’m tired of being treated like an old washrag!”
“I do not like the men on this space ship. They are uncouth and fail to appreciate my better qualities. I have something of value to contribute to this mission if they would only recognize it. Today over lunch I tried to improve morale and build a sense of comradery among the men by holding a humorous round robin discussion of the early days of the mission. My overtures were brutally rejected. These men do not want a happy ship. They are deeply sick and try to compensate by making me feel miserable. Last week was my birthday. Nobody even said Happy Birthday to me. Someday this tape will be played and then they’ll feel sorry.”
Carpenter and O’Bannon played with the image of the space explorer as demigod, cultivated from the earliest days of the Space Age as part of the Cold War agenda to show that the men (and just one woman in the beginning) of their respective superpowers were the finest of what each nation (and ideology) had to offer. This image was still mostly in place when Dark Star premiered: The memories of Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, Vostok, Voskhod, and Soyuz were still quite strong, with Apollo and Soyuz continuing with their post-lunar application projects. In essence, astronauts and cosmonauts remained part of that societal image of an elite group of modern-day heroes vaulting themselves into a vast, ancient, and mysterious realm full of wondrous marvels and dangers.
The idea of these space adventurers becoming just regular working Joes doing a job like the majority of the adult population was relegated to a future era when space travel would be considered routine, such as the then-upcoming Space Transportation System (STS), or Space Shuttle program, NASA was promising (but never quite happened as the future turned out). So watching a group of guys who are supposed to be amazing interstellar explorers flying across the galaxy at superlight speeds in the name of science and adventure instead act like a bored, tired, and cranky construction gang who have been at their demolition jobs for too long is simultaneously amusing and concerning for those who thought what they saw on Star Trek and what NASA had been claiming for years were the real blueprints for the future.
The public may have known in their hearts that human beings will remain what makes them human at their cores no matter what they accomplish and where they may go, especially into a realm like space, but they also hoped – fueled by the aforementioned propaganda – that somehow their species would be transformed for the better on multiple levels, yet somehow remain physically the same while also retaining recognizable behavior traits, morals, and goals. Instead, Dark Star told them that humans will be humans, warts and all, no matter where they go or how fast they can get there, so long as the cultural and biological trappings that brought us to where we are now remain essentially the same. If you really do want superheroes in the Final Frontier, then they are going to have to become radically transformed beyond the shiny toys and ships that the comfort food of lesser science fiction stories depict our space future as.
“I thought you were cute”: Aliens in Dark Star
As a general rule, if your science fiction film has aliens in its plot and is a notch above the usual Grade B melodrama, the beings or creatures representing nonterrestrial life forms serve as more than just monstrous villains, if they serve that purpose at all. They can stand in for everything from representing various human social issues to virtual deities and forces of nature, much like the White Whale in Herman Melville’s great novel, Moby Dick, or the alien ocean in Stanislaw Lem’s Solaris. Sometimes they are only hinted at and never directly seen, but can still have a major influence on the story. See Forbidden Planet, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and Contact as three prime examples of cinematic ETI who let their technologies be their representatives.
In the case of Dark Star, the aliens on display are a parody of the creatures often found in the lesser grade SF I mentioned. According to a review article on the film written by John Fleming for the December, 1978 issue of Starburst: Science Fantasy in Television, Cinema and Comics (Volume 1, Number 5), which described itself as “Britain’s only media science fiction magazine,” apparently blowing up unstable planets was not the scoutship’s only assignment:
“Part of the original idea was that the crew’s mission included a search for intelligent life. There was to have been a specimen room in the ship: a ‘psychedelic zoo’ with hundreds of bizarre creatures (rather like those which appeared later in the Star Wars canteen). But the cost was too high and the idea was cut back to the one ‘beachball with claws’.”
Yet, with just a little more observing, the aliens which did survive the production’s budget cuts are more than just a genre joke and a way to stretch out the film’s running time.
Did I say aliens plural? Yes I did. Everyone who has seen Dark Star cannot help but remember the beach ball alien taken from the “Magellanic Cloud,” but there was a second known extraterrestrial species aboard the scoutship. When Pinback has to feed the ship’s “mascot” and clean up its makeshift living area in a converted storage room, we see that the beach ball is not alone. Floating behind a translucent wall in the background are four glowing, multicolored creatures of unknown name and origin. Looking like hexagonal-shaped spoked wheels, these aliens silently gravitate towards Pinback, who only responds with an agitated “Get away!” and shoos them off with a gesture. The aliens quickly return to Pinback when he becomes preoccupied with the beach ball alien, who first ignores and then completely forgets about them when the mascot goes on the attack after rejecting its dinner and then escapes into the bowels of the vessel.
We never learn anything of substance about these mysterious creatures, nor are they seen again for the rest of the film. Presumably they were killed when the Dark Star is destroyed by the premature detonation of Bomb 20. On the surface, they serve as an atmospheric filler to the scene, which is appropriate in one respect as the beach ball alien went from existing only in that brief disparaging mention by Doolittle in an early script to eventually have numerous memorable scenes to pad the film with enough running time to be acceptable for wide theatrical release.
Nevertheless, the hexagonal aliens do present the audience with a few tidbits of information about the Dark Star universe: They are proof that some rather exotic extraterrestrial organisms exist and were probably different and interesting enough to the crew that they warranted being brought aboard – no small matter considering the general attitude towards aliens by the men. I wonder if there is a rule that AEC crews are obliged to collect interesting specimens they come across while conducting their main mission? Were these particular aliens rescued from a world that warranted removal under their parameters? Or did Pinback or another crewmember just happen to think they were “cute” like the beach ball alien, or maybe even just “pretty”? Personally I find them to be much more aesthetically pleasing than the beach ball, but far less comically expressive.
As I pondered on whether the hexagonal aliens were truly intelligent or not – the human crew did not seem to think so, seeing as they were in a cage of sorts in a rather dark storage room, though I hesitate to consider them as experts on the subject – another thought occurred to me: These little wagon wheels from some unknown corner of the galaxy reminded me of the Phoenix Asteroids, which we see near the very end of the film looking as Talby first described them, “glow[ing] with all the colors of the rainbow. Nobody knows why. They just glow as they drift around the Universe.” Even the early script version describes the Phoenix Asteroids as “frost-like shapes, expanding and glowing and spinning, slowly refracting all the colors of the spectrum with a cold glow.” Those four little aliens also have a shape similar to frost and snowflakes.
Of course they very likely are not members of the actual Phoenix Asteroids, if for no other reason than Talby would certainly not have allowed them to be kept in such lowly conditions. However, they do share some characteristics, including the question of their being actually “alive” and whether or not they are conscious entities. At the least no one can accuse Dark Star of presenting cinematic aliens which merely resemble humans with mildly exotic prosthetics, a. k. a. actors in rubber suits.
All in all, the hexagonal aliens are pretty intriguing for a collection of “characters” that had no speaking roles and only a few minutes of screen time where they never moved more than a few feet on the set.
As for the beach ball alien, while it may have been initially conceived as a relatively rough joke and time filler, the reluctantly labeled mascot of the Dark Star actually fits in very well with the film being existential in its nature in terms of the absurdity of existence. A thing with the appearance of a large orange balloon with big clawed feet and emits sounds reminiscent of fart noises that is not only alive but smart enough to outwit a human, albeit that human is Pinback. The creature consumes food (and presumably expels bodily waste), has a favorite toy (a rubber mouse), displays curiosity, knows how to use tools and turn them into weapons (the alien effectively turned a broom into a club on Pinback), and even has what could be considered a personality by displaying a range of emotions and reactions despite the lack of anything resembling a face.
Not everyone aboard the scoutship shared such enthusiasm for this extraterrestrial life form, however. Doolittle called it “a damn mindless vegetable [that] looked like a limp balloon. Fourteen light years for a vegetable that went squawk and let a fart when you touch it!” Even Pinback eventually referred to the alien as a “worthless piece of garbage” after it had pushed Pinback to his emotional limits.
When Pinback accidentally dispatches the alien with an anesthetic gun, it is revealed that beneath its orange skin, the creature contained only some form of gas. As a being composed of numerous biological organs among other anatomical features, Pinback naturally asks “how could it live if it was just filled with gas?”
Could creatures exist in the Universe which are little more than a ball of gas? Or glowing, floating hexagons for that matter? Some scientists have speculated that life could evolve from gas and dust in interstellar space, forming helical structures and combining into the fourth state of matter called plasma. At the high end of this hypothetical scale, British astrophysicist Fred Hoyle imagined an ancient, massive, and intelligent version of such a being encountering the Sol system in his 1957 science fiction novel The Black Cloud.
In the case of the beach ball alien, the creature clearly evolved on a planet and not in deep space, but seeing how little we know of the various states of extraterrestrial life at present, it cannot be declared impossible. From the perspective of an ETI with a very different evolution than ours, terrestrial organisms might seem just as improbable to them, possibly even to the point that humans would not be seen as intelligent or even alive by their definition of the word. Hoyle’s intelligent interstellar cloud did not imagine that conscious life could exist on planets until it encountered humanity.
Since existentialism declares the mere existence of reality as fundamentally absurd, the existence of bipedal beings flying around the galaxy blowing up planets they don’t approve of or an orange bag of flatulent gas are not only no less absurd, but therefore no less improbable as a reality by this logic. It certainly gives one both the inspiration and cause to want to seek out these possibilities and also makes us keep an open mind in the process.
In regards to our attitudes on extraterrestrial life, Dark Star does bring up the concerning possibility that as we expand into the galaxy and working and living in space become routine, we may lose that wonder and curiosity about other beings, or only show interest in those life forms which entertain us and/or prove useful to our species in some way. Note how just over two decades ago, the discovery of any exoplanets generated headlines and major excitement across the professional and cultural board. Nowadays, with thousands of confirmed alien worlds, only ones which are considered to be exceptionally bizarre, or relatively close to the Sol system, or appear to be Earthlike – or some combination of all three – warrant public announcement and further attention.
The crew of the scoutship Dark Star, focused on their mission of destruction under the guise of progress and salvation and distracted by such things as the socially destabilizing death of their former commander, the ever increasing number of ship systems failing, and their desire to be anywhere but stuck inside that claustrophobic environment with each other, have become desensitized to such otherwise exciting concepts as alien beings.
Granted, Talby has retained his sense of cosmic wonder, but he also uses this to create an emotional and physical detachment and sometimes barrier from the rest of the crew in order to cope with his current situation. Subsequently, Talby’s behavior keeps his coworkers from becoming either positively influenced by his enthusiasm or retaining whatever similar thoughts and feelings they may have had at the start of the mission. Pinback outwardly appears to be the one crewmember who is very enthusiastic over alien life and new stars, but when he becomes stressed, Pinback instead shows how they are just another way to benefit his standing among his immediate social order, usually to ill effect.
The dominant attitude among the crew in regards to alien life belongs to Doolittle. We have already seen what he thinks of the beach ball alien, which interestingly had been found by Commander Powell while pursuing a “99 plus probability of intelligent life in the Magellanic Cloud.” He chastises Boiler when he mentions “a 95% probability of intelligent life in the Horsehead Nebula sector,” declaring it a “damn wild goose chase is what it is!” When Pinback later asks Doolittle if they might find “real intelligent life” at the location of their next bombing run in the Veil Nebula, the current commander replies as he has done before on this subject: “Who cares?”
We know that Doolittle responds as he does mostly from his growing frustration with the mission and longing to be back on Earth surfing. Note how his reaction to Commander Powell’s pursuit of intelligent life in the Magellanic Cloud hints at disappointment when they did not find something more interesting and advanced. However, if someone as intelligent and otherwise thoughtful as Doolittle has been reduced to visible indifference over alien life from decades of routine and worse, one can only imagine how the rest of his interstellar-wide society has become.
For example, those “unstable” exoplanets the AEC are assigned to “comb the universe for… whose existence poses a threat to the peaceful colonists that follow.” The indication is that by the term “unstable” they are referring to planets whose orbits about their primary stars will somehow go wildly out of order, making them unsuitable places for humans to live upon.
Of the two alien worlds we see during the film, we only get to hear why the one in the Veil Nebula sector has been targeted for demolition: “Definite 99% plus probability that the planet will deviate from her normal orbit in another 12,000 rotations. It’ll spiral in toward its sun and… eventual supernova.” Both planets look quite similar, being Earthlike globes with a distinct reddish color. Are they reddish due primarily to the mineral composition of their surfaces dominating the landscape, such as with the planet Mars? Or is this color from plant life that reflects red light, unlike terrestrial flora which reflects green and yellow? We the audience are never given answers to these questions.
While we may assume the AEC ships are forbidden from destroying planets harboring intelligent life, how do they define and determine what is a sentient being as opposed to, say, a wild animal operating on instincts alone? Would an unstable planet full of the equivalent of sheep, fish, and trees be considered acceptable for removal? If an AEC mission found an unstable world with a native society of conscious (as in intellectually aware) beings living there, would they be obligated to warn them and assist with any evacuations? Or does the priority of establishing human colonies across the galaxy override all other considerations? These are just some of the numerous questions regarding the intentions of human expansion into space and the reactions to encountering alien life, intelligent and otherwise. With an interstellar civilization that resolves the “issue” of planets that may one day endanger human colonists by completely wiping them out of existence, the answers are fraught with unsettling possibilities.
It is an interesting and appropriate place to note one more time that although aliens were not the big focus of Dark Star, especially in its earlier versions, the beach ball “mascot” ironically became the direct inspiration for a screenplay by Dan O’Bannon about a deadly and decidedly unamusing nonterrestrial creature that gets aboard an interstellar commercial ship and wreaks havoc with the crew.
The society of Alien, which was greatly expanded upon in its other aspects of the franchise, undoubtedly has parallels to the culture in Dark Star, with a massive and impersonal bureaucracy where corporations and governments are essentially interchangeable and space is a vast commodity explored primarily for what it has to offer materially to human civilization. The people who do the grunt work for them are the antithesis of the noble and brave astronauts of the early Space Age to the point they can even be considered expendable by those in charge.
There are two other connections between Dark Star and the first Alien film. Both involve the continent of Antarctica as a base of operations: When the Dark Star receives an incoming message at the start of the film, it comes from “Earth Base, Mission Control, McMurdo Sound, Antarctica.” As for Alien, when the crew of the Nostromo are revived from suspended animation, they attempt to contact “Antarctica traffic control,” only to learn they are far from Earth as The Company had awoken them early to investigate what they said was a distress call coming from a nearby alien world.
Conceptual artist Ron Cobb, who initially designed the utilitarian look of the scoutship Dark Star on a napkin while dining at an International House of Pancakes, later became the artist for the first two Alien films. Greg Jean made the actual ship model used for filming out of fiberglass.
Caution: Thermostellar Device
There can be an argument made that a science fiction film is a success in one form or another if it has an appealing robot or some kind of automated mechanism in its cast that displays a distinct personality. Robby the Robot from Forbidden Planet is among the most famous contenders in this category. Star Wars’ R2-D2 and C-3PO are well known even to those who are not followers of either the genre or the franchise. The AI computer of 2001: A Space Odyssey, HAL 9000, is by far the most memorable being in the film. The large alien robot Gort from The Day the Earth Stood Still is simultaneously impressive and frightening with its ability to convey great power and destruction without saying a word. The AI called Colossus from The Forbin Project is unforgettable as it carries out humanity’s orders to take control of the world’s nuclear missile arsenals to their logical conclusion. Anyone who has ever seen Silent Running remembers Huey, Dewey, and Louie, the mechanical maintainers of the spaceship Valley Forge carrying some of the last of Earth’s biota for preservation: If a robot can be called adorable, then they definitely qualify for the label.
Not to be left out, Dark Star has its own contenders for this category, even though they are the size and appearance of a contemporary tractor truck trailer, emit funny-sounding voices, and exist only to destroy entire planets on the behalf of the AEC.
Officially designated as Exponential Thermostellar Devices, the crew refers to them colloquially as Bombs often followed by their designation numbers, which are painted in big black digits on their sides. Dark Star carries 27 of these devices, based on a glimpse at the scoutship’s deck plans during the scene where Talby is using the Computer to search for the technical problem with the communications system.
The early script version of the film explains how these devices operate in classic science fiction technobabble:
“This is a chain-reaction bomb, otherwise known as an Exponential Thermostellar Device. Its own destructive power is small, barely enough to vaporize twelve city blocks. However, when it explodes in contact with an object the size of a planet, it starts a chain-reaction in the very matter of that planet, turning it into a giant reactor which destroys itself in one staggering thermal flash.
“These bombs are equipped with sophisticated thought and speech mechanisms, to allow them to make executive decisions in the event of a crisis situation. These judgment centers are controlled by a fail-safe mechanism.”
Since the Bombs are essentially immobile metal structures, it is their voices and the perceived personalities from their speaking that makes them seem appealing. As that same early script says: “When the bomb speaks, it has the prim, fussy voice of a minor civil servant.”
Probably the best part of Dark Star was the scene when Doolittle tries to talk Bomb 20 out of detonating while still attached to the ship. The film is summed up to perfection here: The simultaneously humorous and intelligent dialogue (“This is fun!” says Bomb 20), the absurdity of the whole situation which still makes sense in the context of the film’s universe, and the scene’s conclusion, where Bomb 20 thinks being the only thing that exists means it must be God and therefore has to start reality from scratch in Biblical fashion, thus ironically fulfilling its one programmed purpose.
There is a darker subtext to these thermostellar devices, one which I think may have evaded many viewers as they remained amused and a bit shocked by the existence of Dark Star’s version of seemingly cute science fiction robots: These were weapons that could annihilate entire planets in one shot. They made contemporary nuclear weapons look like firecrackers while at the same time representing them.
Yes, I know you know that part: It would have been hard to ignore even I had not already brought up this fact multiple times. But do you see what these bombs really mean and represent? While we only see them being used to destroy “unstable” planets – and by unstable they mean those that would apparently careen out of their solar orbits one day – would that be their only purpose? Is that why these thermostellar devices were developed in the first place, just to keep future colonists safe from settling down on the wrong planet? I think not. They would also serve the same purpose that their less destructive forbearers did in the Cold War: To deter the enemies of the state from thinking about attacking them. Perhaps the ruling body of this future interstellar does not even have to say or do anything overtly about this, for anyone who thinks can realize how easily if an inhabited world decides to rebel or otherwise cause problems for those at the top, a thermostellar device could wind up “accidentally” mistaking their planet for an unstable one.
This is also the likely and seemingly initially absurd reason that these bombs would be given AI with quirky personalities and voices. Someone may have wanted to make sure that the humans who flew the missions and were in effect in possession of such destructive forces did not commandeer a scoutship and go on their own form of bombing run. That is what bomb AI and ship’s computers were there for, to ensure that no human crewmember goes rogue with such power. The main computer probably even guarded against the scoutship becoming a daunting weapon itself, for with its FTL capabilities, if the vessel should impact a planet’s surface, an entire world could be sterilized of life just from the kinetic energy, no bombs required.
I even questioned why any person needed to be aboard when in fact the artificial intelligences could handle the situation more efficiently and without the potential for a mental or emotional breakdown. Perhaps it was similar to the reason there were men manning the nuclear missile launch bunkers: Flawed as they can be, a human presence provides some psychological comfort to other humans in the face of such potential for utter destruction.
It feels almost contradictory in regards to a film that on the surface seems so lighthearted, even silly sometimes. Nevertheless, if you take a serious look at the society of Dark Star, you realize these bombs must have multiple reasons for existing. During the Cold War, nuclear bombs were sometimes sold as being the answer to solving many of civilization’s problems: Making sea harbors, removing mountains to clear land for highways, stopping hurricanes, melting the polar ice caps to warm up the climate, and even sending humanity to the planets and stars with Project Orion. Walt Disney even made an entire television program in 1957 devoted to the positive side of nuclear power titled Our Friend the Atom, which you can watch here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDcjW1XSXN0 , or enjoy a colorful review of the program’s companion book here: https://www.brainpickings.org/2013/02/18/our-friend-the-atom-disney/ .
Of course none of these ideas dissuaded most people from the real reason nuclear bombs were made in the first place, first as weapons of aggression and then deterrence. Thus for the thermostellar devices in Dark Star, it is quite feasible that their origins were not due to a strong concern for the safety and comfort of future space colonists. This is also why there is no coincidence that the scoutship crew was shown both in the film and in promotional images at their posts much like those military personnel who manned the nuclear missile bunkers where they were prepared to launch their designated weapons at any given time.
Dark Star also makes a tie-in to another satirical film about nuclear annihilation, Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 classic, Dr. Strangelove, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. The label on the Dark Star’s cargo, CAUTION: THERMOSTELLAR DEVICE, is borrowed from a similar warning message painted on the front of the two nuclear bombs aboard the B-52 bomber in the film: NUCLEAR WARHEAD HANDLE WITH CARE. As with the rest of the film, the ironic humor on the surface barely hides the genuine concern and warning about the truly deadly natures of both types of instruments. That is the interesting duality and coping mechanism of human nature: To laugh in the face of what should be a terrible situation. Sometimes it is the only effective weapon we possess as we confront a seemingly absurd and meaningless Cosmos.
The Astronomical Follies
One aspect of science fiction that Dark Star did have genuine fun with is the way that the genre involving interstellar travel often has starships flitting about the Universe exploring celestial places that are relatively well-known but not necessarily the best locations for finding worlds with native life forms, intelligent or otherwise, at least by the standards of current science.
To give a well-known example, many of the planetary systems either depicted or at least discussed in Star Trek had suns with familiar stellar names that real astronomers had already determined would not have been conducive to organisms of all but perhaps the hardiest and therefore simpler kinds. Of course that never stopped our fictional explorers from going there at physics-defying velocities and finding whole civilizations of beings who looked and acted a lot like them, inhabiting otherwise alien planets that bore a strong resemblance to Sol 3, particularly regions of Southern California.
As the crew of the Dark Star conducted their cosmic business, they either visited or mentioned a number of places which do exist, yet contain elements that probably will not be found when our descendants do travel to them one day. They are as follows:
The Horsehead Nebula, which Boiler reported as having “a 95% probability of intelligent life,” much to Doolittle’s displeasure, is a dark nebula in the constellation of Orion the Hunter relatively near its Belt. Located about 1,500 light years from Earth, this nebula is a star forming region of gas and dust that from our perspective resembles the head of a horse. Since any stars or exoplanets in this section of space would be very young and therefore still forming, it is unlikely that intelligent beings dwell there, unless they happened to be visiting from elsewhere in their own starships. In addition, since young solar systems are places of chaos and destruction as they contain many worlds where only a relative few will survive multiple collisions with each other, it would be much too soon to determine which objects are unstable and otherwise unsuitable for human colonization.
At the other end of the cosmic timescale, the Veil Nebula – the target system for Bomb 20 and the final destination of the Dark Star – is a supernova remnant in the constellation of Cygnus the Swan, approximately 1,470 light years from the Sol system. Although among the very first exoplanets ever discovered were ones circling what was left of an exploded star, a pulsar, these worlds were also bathed in highly lethal radiation on top of already having been rendered quite unfriendly to anything like terrestrial life. The Veil Nebula would probably not be a great place to set up a colony or two, regardless of the instability of any planets there. It is also unlikely that a planet crashing into a star would cause it to supernova.
Early on in the film, we learned that the beach ball alien “mascot” came from what Doolittle said was the “Magellanic Cloud,” and that Commander Powell had taken the scoutship “fourteen light years for a vegetable that went squawk and let a fart when you touch it.”
Now perhaps by the year 2150, humanity will have designated a particular celestial object in the Milky Way galaxy the “Magellanic Cloud,” but in our time and place there are already two Magellanic Clouds, and they are not clouds of any sort but two satellite galaxies of our galaxy visible only from Earth’s Southern Hemisphere. The Large Magellanic Cloud, or LMC, is approximately 160,000 light years from our stellar island, while the Small Magellanic Cloud, or SMC, is even more distant at around 200,000 light years away. Maybe there are creatures residing in either one or both of our Milky Way neighbors which look like a “damn mindless vegetable… like a limp balloon,” but it is going to take a bit more than traveling fourteen light years to get there, even with a hyperdriven starship.
Even when the crew was attempting to take a break at one point in their makeshift sleeping quarters, a former Food Storage Locker (the original sleeping quarters somehow blew up, a recurring trend with the Dark Star), they could not entirely escape a bit of astronomy. For their listening enjoyment, the Computer chose that “perennial favorite” by “Martin Segundo and the Scintilla Strings” called When Twilight Falls on NGC 891. The crew was subsequently subjected to what can be charitably described as elevator music as we got to watch Doolittle play a game of solitaire, Boiler repeatedly stab a switchblade between the spread fingers of his right hand, and Pinback conduct yet another unsuccessful attempt to socially engage his coworkers.
NGC 891 is a real place: An unbarred spiral galaxy perhaps 30 million light years distant situated in the constellation of Andromeda. Discovered on October 6, 1784, by the famous British astronomer William Herschel, who had also found the planet Uranus just three years earlier, NGC 891 resembles our Milky Way galaxy if we could see it from the outside edge-on. The astronomical issue with the song is that twilight cannot fall on an entire galaxy, be it NGC 891 or any other such island of suns, unless whoever wrote this music had some other meaning in mind.
Asteroids do strange things in Dark Star that we in the early 21st Century are unfamiliar with. The swarms of space rocks which the scoutship has encountered at least twice during its twenty-year mission are bound together by what the Computer refers to as an “electromagnetic energy vortex.” Why the ship simply did not maneuver around these asteroid fields, having a great deal of room being in interstellar space plus the ability to move faster than light, after all, was never explained. However, they do follow in the tradition of many early science fiction stories involving space travel where wandering celestial rocks were taken rather seriously as potential safety threats to the heroes of their various plots.
As for the Phoenix Asteroids, assuming they are asteroids as we define the term, Talby and some others apparently know that they “circle the Universe once every 12.3 trillion years.” They also have the ability to “glow with all the colors of the rainbow,” generating their own light rather than reflecting it from, say, a nearby star like the asteroids we are generally familiar with.
Seeing as the age of the known observable Universe is currently determined by astronomers to be but a mere 13.8 billion years old, it is curious how they came to the number 12.3 trillion, or how the Phoenix Asteroids are able to exist for a time period magnitudes beyond the actual present age of the entire Universe. Even when Dark Star did its wide release premiere in 1974, the Universe was generally thought to be no older than 20 billion years, tops – although those who still accepted the Steady State theory of the continual creation of matter assumed a much longer age for the Cosmos: Infinite, to be precise.
Oh, I suppose you could say that the Phoenix Asteroids will circle the entire Universe in 12.3 trillion years’ time and Talby just didn’t explain that part to Doolittle. The Universe as a whole should still be around by then and for eons after that, although the Sol system and Earth will have essentially vanished ages before that time as a cosmic comparison. I also have to wonder if whoever determined their travel time period took into account that the Universe is also continually expanding, which would mean that the Phoenix Asteroids would probably have to take even longer for one circuit of existence. You know, it is almost as if the filmmakers merely picked a very large number at random and just dropped it into the script.
Interstellar distances and physics do not escape being contradictory to reality as well. When the officer from Mission Control contacts the Dark Star crew in the film’s opening scene, he tells them:
“Hi Guys. Glad we got your message. You’ll be interested to hear it was broadcast live, all over Earth. In Prime Time. Got good reviews in the trades. The time lag on these messages is getting longer. We gather from the ten-year delay that you are approximately eighteen parsecs away. Drop us a line more often, okay?”
Now maybe they use some kind of subspace communications ala Star Trek or perhaps a futuristic version of quantum entanglement, but nevertheless one parsec equals 3.26 light years, which in turn translates into 31 trillion kilometers or 19 trillion miles. Therefore 18 parsecs is 58.7 light years. So I am not quite sure how that officer made his measurements.
Later on, Doolittle’s conversation with Talby in the observation dome contains this bit of information:
“We’ve been in space for twenty years now, right? And we’ve only aged three years, so there’ll be plenty of time later on for staring around.”
Now time really does slow way down for those aboard a starship moving at high relativistic velocities: Just ask Albert Einstein. However, since the Dark Star often moves at FTL speeds and we are privy to only a rather small part of their mission, we do not quite know how the crew only ended up aging three years out of twenty or how going faster than the speed of light might affect a biological being’s aging process. In addition, nothing was ever explained about how the scoutship’s hyperdrive works, which is certainly nothing unusual in the science fiction stories which contains this method of interstellar propulsion.
Canaries in the Coal Sack
As John Carpenter stated earlier, he and Dan O’Bannon originally envisioned Dark Star as Waiting for Godot in outer space, only in this case Godot is Commander Powell, the ship’s more-or-less dead captain. As Carpenter explained in Starburst magazine:
“We used this concept of having the men constantly referring to Powell and giving the audience the idea that this man was somehow the reason behind their mission, a guiding force.”
The universe of Dark Star, and certainly that one confining area we got to see of it, merits its existential nature: The mission is downright absurd and both the crew and the scoutship are slowly breaking down from years of neglect, routine, and the overall loss of the one person who seemed to keep it all together. The crew is trying to find and create personal meaning and purpose in their existence to counter the seemingly endless pointlessness of their occupation and their wider reality. One wonders if once they run out of Bombs (I counted a total of 27 Thermostellar Devices in the bomb bay according to the diagram of the Dark Star seen when Talby is looking for that technical problem in the main Computer room, with 19 of the bombs marked as dropped), will the crew be allowed to return to Earth as they believe will happen? Or, like the World War 2 bombers in Joseph Heller’s dark satirical novel Catch-22 (1961), will the number of bombing runs be forever increased every time they reach their quota?
The absurdity reaches one of its peaks with the existence of the conscious and articulate Bombs, who even seem more upbeat than the humans, for they have a definite purpose to focus on which they believe will make for a better future, despite the fact that it also means their demise.
However, the crew’s efforts are ultimately an exercise in navel-gazing: Doolittle only found satisfaction and a sense of self-determination when he turned a hunk of metal from the destroyed scoutship into a makeshift surfboard, turning his inevitable demise “as a falling star” over that unstable exoplanet into “a beautiful way to die,” as Talby noted. Even Talby, the only one who shows any definitive interest in being in space, ultimately wants to meet and merge with the mysterious Phoenix Asteroids, who apparently spend the eons just drifting around the Universe passively observing it. They also seem to have the ability to maintain a human being in their sphere of influence indefinitely – or at least we assume and hope so for Talby’s sake.
While we are glad these characters, who we are supposed to like and root for in cinematic fashion, found a sense of escape and personal control over what seemed like a Sisyphean situation, they actually did little in terms of the cause of colonizing the galaxy. Yes, their mission was to remove alien worlds that could have meant doom for future colonists, thus potentially saving future generations, but they were still acts of destruction. Perhaps these worlds were cosmically doomed one way or the other, but the parameters for their both their statuses and fates were so narrowly focused. There appeared to be no considered alternatives for these planets, especially ones that might have saved them. The actions of the AEC rendered these alien places just as pointless in their existences as the ship’s crew felt about their lives.
All the crew had left was whatever means they could find to give themselves a sense of purpose and meaning, though in most cases – including the real Sergeant Pinback as I mentioned earlier – their efforts became the ultimate sacrifice to their beings. Even the two crew members whom we presume did survive the destruction of the Dark Star, Talby and Commander Powell, inherited fates where their ultimate outcomes both for themselves and their species remained uncertain.
If we compare Dark Star to other subsets of the science fiction genre involving interstellar exploration and colonization, such as the always popular Star Trek franchise, the 1974 film is certainly not what we would call a supporter of humanity venturing into space. It was part of that time when science fiction was both literate and commented on various social issues. They were and are important in a world that was undergoing radical change in certain sectors but the mainstream avenues of communication and entertainment were still under the control of the establishment. Science fiction was and still is a way to get out important messages to the public that can both elude those forces which would want to censor them and simultaneously lessen any chances of offending those in the target audience by replacing humans and places on Earth with imaginary aliens and faraway planets.
At first glance, the only messages which Dark Star appears to provide are that manned space exploration is long, boring, dangerous, a hazard to the rest of the galaxy, often silly, and ultimately just plain pointless. Humanity would be better off surfing in comparison, for at least they would feel open and free on their home world, rather than stuck inside some cramped metal vessel drifting in the vast emptiness, denying existence to various alien globes.
Yet if one looks past the overall negative and certainly nihilistic attitude of Dark Star, we can still come away with several more positive messages from the film in regards to interstellar exploration and colonization:
Dark Star can be taken as a warning about how humanity should not conduct ourselves in deep space, assuming we do send our physical human selves out into the Final Frontier.
We can use Dark Star as a template from which to consider better ways to reach and conduct ourselves into the galaxy, either in person or if we send machine proxies, or perhaps even avatars, either biological or technological.
We must take into account that some people may have actually found or will find the way the crew of the Dark Star was depicted as appealing, especially those individuals who may be willing to endure and make certain sacrifices as the price for being able to live and work in space. Characters like Boiler and Pinback had mindsets about their mission which the AEC no doubt found preferable to the more esoteric attitudes of Doolittle and Talby, whose mindsets were not always on the mission, or most often reluctantly when they were on duty. The mission of the Dark Star gave Boiler and Pinback a sense of purpose that suited them to the tasks at hand. They professed no real interest or need for the desires of their other coworkers. They will also be preferable to employers and governing bodies so long as training and taking care of a human remains overall cheaper and less complex than developing and maintaining a machine for a similar purpose.
We must also remember that Dark Star, like so many other science fiction films and stories have assumed that humans in the coming centuries will be pretty much like we are now in the fundamental ways. Sometimes this is due to a lack of understanding, budget, or caring on the part of the filmmakers to better predict how humanity might be and behave in various future scenarios. Other times the makers wanted to make specific points while simultaneously increasing film revenue and this was best served by having human characters who were relatable to contemporary audiences.
Should human civilization continue to progress and expand beyond its home world, our species will change on multiple levels out of sheer necessity at the very least just to keep up. The changes could be radical or virtually cosmetic, but individual humanity’s long desire to improve itself mentally and physically will only increase as technology and bioengineering make such things even easier and safer to accomplish. If we do follow such trends to their logical conclusion, our descendants and/or their creations could be unrecognizable to us beyond any past advances. These changes could include adapting ourselves to live and work directly in open space without the need for protective gear or suits. The same could happen when we colonize other worlds, especially if it is easier and quicker than terraforming an alien planet or moon.
What if There’s Everything?
Science fiction is undergoing yet another change. During Dark Star’s era, which I refer to as the Golden Age of the genre, the good and even great science fiction films tended to be quite literate and filled with social commentary. However, this was often at the expense of science and space utilization: A response to the previous decades of these icons of civilization as the saviors and guideposts of our future. A happy future thanks to fancy technology was looked upon as a dystopian trap at worst and a naive, antiquated fantasy at best. Dark Star can be ranked as among the epitome of that generation of filmmakers who saw progress and science as harboring more dangers than benefits, with nuclear weapons being the top example of their fears.
With the passing of over four decades since the release of Dark Star, we have seen scores of films, television series, and stories all focused on the end of civilization. They range from Orwellian-type dystopian nightmares to barbarian societies struggling to survive in a world wrecked by nuclear war. Even the films that were otherwise either real or realistic space events tended to focus on their disaster aspects rather than adventure and exploration (Marooned and Apollo 13 are two that quickly come to mind).
Then we have had the other extreme with both space fantasies and outright fantasies. Mix all this in with a real world that is now undergoing a merge of all that the Golden Age displayed and warned about while showing how few really understood or even saw what the cinema and literature was saying, and it is little wonder that as people once again turn to the movies for comfort, reassurance, and information, the desire for that shiny, happy future once mocked as being “retro” is finding new life amongst the nihilism and darkness. There are other reasons, of course, such as a frightening general lack of education designed to both appreciate and learn from films like Dark Star, but society is now in a new “tipping point,” where our knowledge and technology could either doom us or literally uplift us to the stars. Little wonder that most people would want the latter.
One of the vanguards of this new optimistic future, the diametrical opposite to Dark Star, is Disney’s Tomorrowland, released in 2015. Although an imperfect film and not a box office blockbuster, Tomorrowland unabashedly roots for and displays with no hesitation that “retro” future to make it both plausible and desirable once again. This includes a future where interstellar travel is the highlight of humanity’s best and greatest accomplishments and not a place either of empty, soul-crushing darkness or filled with malevolent creatures bent on our destruction.
The following dialogue from the film between our main character as a child and her parents sums up perfectly the resurgence of this positive attitude towards the future and the reason for it:
Eddie Newton: “Why do you love the stars so much, Casey?”
Young Casey Newton: “Because I wanna go there.”
Eddie Newton: “But it’s so far away.”
Jenny Newton: “It’ll take a long time. A real long time. What if you get all the way up there and there’s nothing?”
Young Casey Newton: “What if there’s everything?”
The other sign that our culture is now looking for a more hopeful future is the resurgence of that poster child for a better and brighter tomorrow, Star Trek. With its winning formula of combining a positive future with commentary on contemporary society, the franchise has been making a comeback over the past decade. Even though these newer films and television series show more than a few scars from the past decades dominated by those space fantasies and dystopias, the underlying desire for a reality where our technology and alien neighbors are our friends still comes through them.
A new series that both parodies and pays heartfelt tribute to Star Trek called The Orville has become increasingly popular for the very aspects that Dark Star and its brethren mocked. Ironically, in many key respects it is even more like the original Star Trek series, which ran from 1966 to 1969, than the actual members of that franchise.
It is for the best that Dark Star should become a relic of its era rather than a prediction of our future, or lack thereof, and not just because the plot involves using smart weapons of major mass destruction and rebellious aliens that look like beach balls. It is understood that Dark Star was one type of response to the real dangers and pitfalls of its era which was socially and intellectually acceptable to its intended audiences. The film remains among the smartest and most entertaining members of its genre and it does provide certain lessons when it comes to how we should go about expanding into the wider Milky Way galaxy, even if they are mostly inferred cautions and warnings rather than direct solutions.
One thing which remains with human society is that problems and troubles continue. However, we need to take a different tack in how we deal with them than we did in 1974. This is due not only to the fact that some issues have changed while others remain stubbornly the same, but that current society requires another style of approach in being guided towards the right ideas and goals.
Most importantly, people today need much more positive reinforcement and definitive directions since they have not only so many more choices than four decades ago, but also so many new avenues of information to glean from: However, not all of these sources are truly useful and in certain cases are actually misleading and even detrimental.
As for Dark Star in this respect, the “messages” of Doolittle’s California surfing and Talby’s merging with the Phoenix Asteroids seems a bit too much like the famous counterculture slogan and mantra “Turn on, tune in, drop out” of psychologist, author, and “drug guru” Timothy Leary. They may bring a measure of contentment on an individual level, but their usefulness for a larger society that wants to reach for the stars is well open to debate.
On the other hand, if we view the existential actions of the crewmen who did survive the demise of the Dark Star when they take charge of their destinies to various degrees to seek out wider more positive messages, we can make some hopeful inferences.
Doolittle did get to fulfill his dream of surfing one last time by riding that piece of semi surfboard-shaped debris from the scoutship wreckage into the unstable planet’s atmosphere, burning up like a falling star as Talby had said. While I will not even seriously consider the possibility of his surviving such an event or that his few remaining ashes could somehow be reconstituted, it doesn’t hurt to speculate if there were any intelligent life on the planet that could witness his meteoric entry and somehow be inspired by it or otherwise moved to do something that would develop them evolutionarily?
Or perhaps some of the Dark Star’s debris that hit the planet survived atmospheric friction to the surface where it might have affected conditions there, such as radiation spawning a positive mutation in nearby organisms or the ship’s metal being useful to the natives somehow. In the last case I am thinking of large iron meteorites which impacted on Earth in ancient times and the peoples of those eras turned them into tools and in certain cases objects of worship. Of course this may be all for naught if the planet is going to collide with its star in roughly 13,000 years as predicted, unless another mission discovers this world, perhaps searching for the Dark Star.
Talby certainly has some hope as a star farer when he joined with the Phoenix Asteroids, but will he do anything with them or just float around the Universe once every 12.3 trillion years passively observing things? As I said before, we don’t know how Talby knows what he knows about these objects, or how those folks he learned about them got their information on the subject. Perhaps they will evolve him such as when David Bowman was transformed into the Starchild in 2001: A Space Odyssey, or he might achieve some kind of enlightenment in the process of floating around in the Universe. In the adaptation novel by Alan Dean Foster, when Talby was about to tell Doolittle “one last thing,” he had apparently learned the true nature of the Phoenix Asteroids and was going to inform the Lieutenant before he went out of radio range.
Then there is Commander Powell, who was frozen in a block of ice (liquid nitrogen?) at absolute zero (which is impossible to achieve exactly, but no matter here) after his accidental “death”, yet his situation kept him preserved and alive even though he was deep inside the Dark Star when Bomb 20 detonated. Powell’s memory was fading during his time on ice, but he was still aware and smart enough to communicate with Doolittle usefully about fixing Bomb 20.
As Doolittle watched Commander Powell tumble off into space after the explosion, he noted how “the skipper always was lucky.” Perhaps that luck would extend into Powell being pushed fast enough to escape the Veil Nebula system into interstellar space. Even if Powell remained “stuck” drifting in that alien solar system, the point is he is now in deep space probably further preserved by the surrounding cold and awaiting discovery. It is then possible that the Commander may one day be found and revived by either an advanced ETI or future humanity having spread into the galaxy as planned.
This is what happened with Frank Poole in the 1997 SF novel 3001: The Final Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke. A similar situation happened in the 1985 novel Contact by Carl Sagan when the philanthropist S. R. Hadden purposely leaves the Sol system in his own spaceship to naturally freeze himself via the cold of deep space into suspended animation, with the hope that one day in the distant future he would be found and awoken by either ETI or the spacefaring descendants of humanity.
Ironically Commander Powell may indeed have been the luckiest crewmember of the scoutship Dark Star after all, cheating death twice on his way to some form of immortality.
Films, plays, and other works like Dark Star are designed to make you think and question the nature of existence. This is what the film did for interstellar exploration and colonization, even if its intent was not altogether a positive one in terms of viewing them as part of humanity’s destiny. Sometimes we need to stare right into the face of what could be and could go wrong with such ventures, especially one like expanding into the Final Frontier with all of its inherent dangers, not all of them external. We can then make our own future based on the levels of our understanding and courage to the places beyond Earth.
References
As with my research when I wrote my essay on Forbidden Planet, I came across some very interesting information and other items about Dark Star that I want to share to round out everyone’s enjoyment of this 1974 classic.
Here is the entire mainstream release version of the film online, courtesy of YouTube, complete and unedited (except for the posters on the far wall of the crew’s makeshift sleeping quarters, which are blurred out for obvious reasons):
In reviewing the film for this essay, I happened to notice for the first time that Commander Powell’s bunk in the crew’s makeshift quarters is covered with his medals and white officer’s cap as a military-style tribute to the man by his companions. In the scene where we first enter their quarters, Powell’s bed is in the lower right corner next to Doolittle’s, covered with a green spread. The commander’s medals form a line down the mattress with his cap placed on his pillow. It is clear that no one has touched the former captain’s bunk since his passing and that Powell’s accidental death took place sometime after their original sleeping quarters exploded.
The last 8 minutes and 15 seconds of Dark Star. Note the designation on the toilet that floats past Doolittle after Bomb 20 turns the scoutship into so much scrap metal:
This is an early version of the film script. Most of it matches with the version released to theaters in 1974. The exceptions are as follows: Several bits of useful background narration which have been reproduced in this essay; no scenes at all with either the beach ball or hexagonal aliens other than Doolittle’s early mention of the first creature; the opening message from Mission Control was originally located in the middle of the film, with the officer adding a warning about a potential critical ship system failure; Pinback never tells his story about actually being Bill Froug, nor is there the scene where he later plays back and records in his video diary; and there was a lot more swearing:
Here is the transcript of the entire final film. Note that none of the lines indicate who said what, nor are there any scene descriptions or directions:
Not only do you get to see and hear most of the principal players in the making of the film, you get to learn the fascinating historical backstory on how Dark Star came to be. You also get to see what Doolittle looks like over three decades later, where he is still recording ship’s logs, apparently.
I do recommend the Dark Star review article written by John Fleming for the December, 1978 issue ofStarburst: Science Fantasy in Television, Cinema and Comics (Volume 1, Number 5). The entire issue is online in PDF format here:
The article contains a detailed history of how Dark Star came to be, a fairly in-depth interview with John Carpenter, and a “full-colour giant poster”, which oddly enough is referred to as just a “mini-poster” on the actual poster itself, which depicts the scene where Doolittle converses with Commander Powell. This includes many interesting comments on early production ideas for the film. For example, Dark Star had numerous other title names before settling on what it has been called ever since, including The Centaur. “It was not until well into production that both ship and film became Dark Star.”
Then there is this quote on how the film’s ending was originally conceived:
“According to production designer/editor/special effects man/co-scripter/star Dan O’Bannon, the original, unfilmed ending featured a bomb which got stuck in the bomb-bay and could not be dropped … ‘So the captain goes outside with a crowbar to try to lever it out of the bomb-bay. One of the other men goes crazy and comes outside with a raygun and threatens to blast it. He fires it, the bomb blows up, the two men are tossed away into space and one of them becomes a shooting star as he goes into the Earth’s atmosphere and burns up. The ending was copped from Ray Bradbury’s story Kaleidoscope’ (part of the author’s 1951 short story collection titled The Illustrated Man). The ending of the finished film is even more outlandish.”
As this issue of Starburst magazine is fully presented, you will also get the bonus of seeing the state of cinematic science fiction in the immediate post-Star Wars aftermath. There are pieces on such classics as Superman: The Movie and an interview with Douglas Trumbull, the special effects giant behind 2001: A Space Odyssey, Silent Running, and many other films. Then there are the articles about several other contemporary science fiction films: Reading about them will soon make it clear why they are little known or remembered today.
Here is another interview with John Carpenter online from 2008 courtesy of Sci-fi-online.com:
This is the audiobook of the Alan Dean Foster novelization of Dark Star first published in 1974. It provides much in the way of extra background detail, especially on the main characters and what they were thinking throughout the story. However, unless I am told otherwise, this is Foster’s adaptation (interpretation) of the people, aliens, machines, and events in the film, not the filmmakers:
This next link takes you to images of a detailed model of the scoutship Dark Star, courtesy of Starship Modelers. They have continued the error, copied by many others who have also reproduced the vessel in art, of the first four digits of the registration number on the hull as 2238, when it is actually 2239. I can see how it could be a bit difficult to distinguish the 9 correctly, but if you watch the scene where the Dark Star first moves across the screen early on in the film, the full registration number is clear: ADC 2239-5531.
This is also a good time to ask why the registration letters were shown as ADC and not AEC, to presumably indicate the Advance Exploration Corps. Could the letter D stand for either Demolition or Destruction? How about the friendlier-sounding Dissolution?
A note on the page says this model has been unavailable for purchase since 2014:
Quoting from the above linked article, the LP record includes the following items: “Incidental music, sound effects, John Carpenter’s synth experimentations, dialogue excerpts, and vintage interferences extracted directly from the film roll are split into two tracks, one on each side of 12?, as per the original release. The package also features a beach-ball alien 7? (red with a yellow label circled in black) pressed with three additional tracks, endless loops of sound effects from the movie, and a hidden bonus track.
“Housed within ‘slick thermosteller striggering packaging with a brand new artwork and invisible hyperdrive electronics,’ the record is limited to 500 copies.”
Eduardo Bendek’s ACEsat, conceived at NASA Ames by Bendek and Ruslan Belikov, seemed to change the paradigm for planet discovery around the nearest stellar system. The beauty of Alpha Centauri is that the two primary stars present large habitable zones as seen from Earth, simply because the system is so close to us. The downside, in terms of G-class Centauri A and K-class Centauri B, is that their binary nature makes filtering out starlight a major challenge.
Image: The Alpha Centauri system. The combined light of Centauri A (G-class) and Centauri B (K-class) appears here as a single overwhelmingly bright ‘star.’ Proxima Centauri can be seen circled at bottom right. Credit: European Southern Observatory.
If we attack the problem from the ground, ever bigger instruments seem called for, like the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope in conjunction with the VISIR instrument (VLT Imager and Spectrometer for mid-Infrared) that Breakthrough Initiatives is now working with the ESO to enhance. Or perhaps one of the extremely large telescopes now in the works, like the Thirty Meter Telescope in Hawaii, or the Giant Magellan Telescope in Chile.
And if we did this from space, surely it would be an expensive platform. Except that ACEsat wasn’t expensive, nor was it large. It was designed to do just one thing and do it well.
While NASA turned down Bendek and Belikov’s idea for Small Explorer funding, the striking thing is that it would have fit that category’s definition. ACEsat was designed as a 30 to 45 cm space telescope (you can see a Belikov presentation on the instrument here, or for that matter, read Ashley Baldwin’s ACEsat: Alpha Centauri and Direct Imaging). The small instrument now being proposed by an initiative called Project Blue builds on many of the ACEsat concepts. It would run perhaps $50 million even though the original ACEsat was a $175 million design.
In other words, compared to the $8 billion James Webb Space Telescope, Project Blue’s instrument is almost inexpensive enough to be a rounding error. A privately funded initiative out of the Boldly Go Institute, in partnership with the SETI Institute, Mission Centaur, and UMass Lowell, the telescope shows its pedigree both in its low cost and big scientific return. It seems the ACEsat concept is just too good to go away.
So now we have Project Blue, which is all about seeing the blue of an Earth-like world around one or even both of the Sun-like stars of the Alpha Centauri system. No one discounts the value of the planet already discovered around Proxima Centauri, but the project hopes to find an Earth 2.0, a rocky planet in a habitable zone orbit around a star like our own. That would mean no tidal locking, no small red dwarf primary, and a year measured in months rather than days.
Image: An Earth-like planet around one of the primary Alpha Centauri stars, as simulated by Project Blue.
The project’s new Indiegogo campaign has been set up to raise $175,000 to help establish mission requirements, including the design of an initial system architecture to which computer simulations can be applied by way of testing ideas and simulating outcomes. The launch goal of 2021 is ambitious indeed, as is the low $50 million budget profile, but the project’s backers believe their work can leverage advances in the small satellite industry and imaging systems to pull it off. An explicit goal is to engage the public while tapping the original NASA work.
The project’s connection to NASA is in the form of a cooperative agreement explained on the Indiegogo site:
The BoldlyGo Institute and NASA have signed a Space Act Agreement to cooperate on Project Blue, a mission to search for potentially habitable Earth-size planets in the Alpha Centauri system using a specially designed space telescope. The agreement allows NASA employees – scientists and engineers – to interact with the Project Blue team through its mission development phases to help review mission design plans and to share scientific results on Alpha Centauri and exoplanets along with the latest technology tests being undertaken at NASA facilities. The agreement also calls for the raw and processed data from Project Blue to be made available to NASA within one year of its acquisition on orbit via a publicly accessible online data archive. The Project Blue team has been planning such an archive for broadly sharing the data with the global astronomical community and for enabling citizen scientist participation.
And I notice that Eduardo Bendek is among the ranks of an advisory committee (available here) that includes the likes of exoplanet hunters Olivier Guyon, Debra Fischer, Jim Kasting and Maggie Turnbull. But have a look at the advisor page; every one of these scientists is playing a significant role in our discovery and evaluation of new exoplanetary systems.
Thus we can say that ACEsat lives on in this new incarnation that will benefit from the input of its original designers. The spacecraft would spend two years in low Earth orbit accumulating thousands of images with the help of an onboard coronagraph to remove light from the twin stars, along with a deformable mirror, low-order wavefront sensors, and control algorithms to manage incoming light, enhancing image contrast with software processing methods.
Unlike the major observatories we’re soon to be launching — not just the James Webb Space Telescope but the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) — the Project Blue observatory will be dedicated to a single target, with no other observational duties.
A photograph of an Earth-like planet 40 trillion kilometers away gives us a sense of the changes in scale that have occurred since Voyager 1’s ‘pale blue dot’ photograph. But we already knew that Earth was inhabited. Now, gaining spectral information about a blue and green world around a nearby star would allow us to determine whether biosignature gases could be found in its atmosphere, potential signs of life that would mark a breakthrough in our science. The degree of public involvement assumed in the project makes the quest all the more tantalizing.
In which Larry Klaes concludes his analysis of Forbidden Planet, the still revered science fiction classic from the 1950s. If you ever had any questions about this film, Larry is your man, and note the full complement of online resources at the end of the essay.
by Larry Klaes
Space Madness
Adams: “How have the men stood the voyage?”
Doc: “About average. A few cases of space-blues – a little epidemic of claustro during the seventh month. But nobody’s had to have shock therapy except the Cook.”
Adams: “Yes, I could taste it in the chow.”
The above was yet another bit of dialogue from the indispensable 1954 version of the Forbidden Planet film script which did not survive to the 1956 release. The Captain and the ship’s doctor were discussing the psychological state of the C-57D crew after their year-long journey from Earth Base just before landing on Altair 4. I presume this was largely done for the knowledge benefit of the viewing audience – either that or Adams is surprisingly unaware of how his own men have been feeling and behaving overall after spending 378 straight days together in the confines of a vessel where everyone could be no more than several dozen yards apart at most.
Nevertheless, this snippet of conversation gives us some valuable insights into how the makers of FP thought men might respond to and deal with long duration voyages in deep space, just a few years before humans began real ventures into the Final Frontier. We also learn a little cultural lingo which always adds to the richness of a society new to us, both fictional and real. Doc’s psychological terms being used in the colloquial sense were not just a way to explain the mental and emotional status of the crew to Captain Adams, they also showed that in their 23rd Century, enough manned deep space missions had occurred to incorporate these terms into the general language and no doubt an entire school of study for them. For these reasons alone I find it unfortunate that Doc’s descriptions did not make the final film edit.
Keeping in step with the attitudes of the time when FP was made, men serving aboard naval vessels and other places where long periods of relative isolation and other hardships would be encountered were expected to be endured with manly stoicism for the good of the group and by extension the nation they serve. Of course for centuries even the toughest military services recognized that the people serving in them had certain essential physiological needs which could only be ignored at the peril to one and all.
One need which did get mentioned in FP and more than once was the desire for “shore leave”, for which leaving the confines of the ship was only the initial step. This is why the viewing adults in even a 1950s audience did not require a detailed explanation for Adams’ following outburst when he learned that Altaira had been engaging in what she merely considered to be “healthy stimulation” (hugging and kissing) with some members of the C-57D crew: In fact she had just been caught with Lt. Farman in this very scenario.
“It so happens that I’m in command of nineteen competitively selected super-perfect physical specimens with an average age of 24.6 years who have been locked up in hyperspace for 378 days! It would have served you right if I hadn’t have… and he…. Get out of here before I have you run out of the area under guard… and then I’ll put more guards on the guards!”
For crews of the last century or so serving aboard a vessel, whether it be on the water, deep under the ocean surface, or even in space, no matter how isolating their situation may otherwise be, they know that a break or rescue is typically only a matter of hours to a few days away should a need for escape become necessary. The Apollo astronauts knew that Earth was only three days travel away and even though our planet was reduced enough in apparent size to where Apollo 11 mission commander Neil Armstrong famously said he could cover our entire globe with a single gloved thumb while standing on the lunar surface, Earth was still visible as a solid blue and white spherical body in the black sky, providing some psychological comfort for those pioneering explorers.
Such will not be the case for those men and women who travel further into the Sol system. For example, at Mars, Earth will be seven months to over one year’s travel time with chemically-fueled rockets, depending upon where the two planets are situated in their respective solar orbits should the need to return arise. Earth will appear as just a bright bluish “star” from the Red Planet, with its shape and basic details only visible through a telescope. At the edge of our planetary neighborhood, humanity’s home world will appear as a “pale blue dot”, made famous by the Family Portrait images the Voyager 1 space probe took from 3.7 billion miles out in 1990.
On interstellar voyages, even the nearest star systems will be years away from Sol, assuming a vessel can travel at 99 percent of the speed of light, which is on the highest end of STL velocities. A more reasonable travel time for starships with currently conceived STL propulsion will likely measure in the decades, again for the nearest of suns. Earth will be all but invisible to the astronauts on these interstellar missions.
Although Sol will remain a very bright star as viewed from the Alpha Centauri system (about 0.5 apparent magnitude, or equivalent to the planet Saturn and, by chance, Altair as they are seen from Earth), our star’s unaided visibility will cease at a distance of approximately 65 light years. Long before then, however, Sol will have become just one of the multitudes of background lights that make up the Milky Way galaxy.
Can human passengers on interstellar missions or even long interplanetary ones for that matter deal without being on Earth or even seeing the planet for long periods of time? Or will the circumstances of civilization be different enough by the time we can send humans on voyages to other star systems that it is presumptuous to think people will call Earth or any solid world home? They may have been born and raised elsewhere in the Sol system so that they no more view Earth as home than do many people think of the birth nation of their ancestors as home.
Although as usual we get very little concrete information from FP itself as to how the main characters relate to Earth, we do have several strong clues that, despite humanity colonizing the Sol system and several other star systems, the third world from Sol remains their primary cultural and psychological focus. We have already seen how Cook views alien planets, which for him lack certain basic amenities such as beer and pool parlors. When the crew first disembarks from the ship upon landing on Altair 4, Doc gasps in admiration to “look at the color of that sky,” which happens to be a deep green. Farman replies that he will “still take blue.” Doc, who has already expressed his fondness for this alien planet back in orbit when he remarked aloud that “the Lord sure makes some beautiful worlds,” replies to his fellow officer that he thinks “a man could get used to this and grow to love it.” We are also privy to a brief conversation between two cruiser guards on night watch later in the film, who remark at how “funny” it is “to see two moons in the sky,” and then say how funny it is “how quick a guy gets used to it.”
These seem like rather odd things to say for members of a society and profession where one might rightly assume they have seen numerous alien worlds both in person and via various media, places that would often challenge the notion of what a typical nonterrestrial body should be like. Instead they show how much Earth is still indeed the main base of operations for the United Planets and human society, as well as home at least to the crew of the C-57D. This says a lot about the general attitude both of a culture that has been getting around deep space and back in literally short order for the last several centuries and the makers and viewers of a film from an era just before the dawn of the Space Age when the celestial realm would become something far more up close and personal.
Even though the crew of the C-57D had some issues with their year-long journey cooped up in a metal ship flying across the galaxy, they did have the advantage of going at speeds much faster than light, so that even a frontier system like Altair (which apparently only gets visited once every twenty years) is a long but not unbearable journey, not one that takes up a decent fraction of a person’s average life span. In the days before mechanically powered marine ships, sailing vessels could take months to a year or more to reach distant points across Earth’s oceans. The people making those voyages usually accepted these travel times as part of the process, since most trips before the advent of modern industrial methods of transportation just about anywhere were seldom fast affairs.
In addition to the tremendous velocities afforded to the interstellar travelers of this 23rd Century, another factor of physics that is often skipped in science fiction plots is the amazing ability of space crews not having to float about their ships, unlike those astronauts and cosmonauts in our reality, thanks to something called artificial gravity. Now we are not referring to the type of artificial gravity where a ship spins on its axis and centrifugal force pushes the crew against the interiors walls, effectively turning them into floors. Clearly the C-57D does not employ this method, as the crew walks around inside the cruiser as if they were on Earth. In addition, the ship is not nearly wide enough for the equivalent of one Earth gravity to take place if it were spun like a top for that purpose.
Instead the C-57D employs what is very probably a gravity generator, a mechanical method of producing gravity that, like the ship’s hyperdrive system, defies the laws of physics for the convenience of not having the actors float about the ship on wires or other potentially cheesy-looking special effects methods. Also, like most FTL propulsion engines, the details of the gravity generator are never revealed, and Earth-bound viewers often do not even think about this situation, for the vast majority have spent their entire lives being naturally pulled towards the center of a massive planet on a regular basis. Sometimes the hypothetical particles known as gravitons are employed for the generators; however, since they are as problematic as negative matter is for warp drives, they fare no better when it comes to providing another real-world solution to real-world interstellar travelers.
Even though the C-57D mission was planned as a two-year journey, a quick jaunt compared to an interstellar mission using a vessel that could “only” attain 99 percent light speed (approximately 34 years for a trip from Earth to Altair and back, assuming a rather short stay in the target system), there was still the potential for mental health issues when it comes to a group of humans (all of the same gender at that) kept enclosed in a military-style ship of limited size for months on end. Especially when there is nowhere to stop along the way, the exterior environment is almost instantly fatal if exposed to without proper protection, and the alien world they are being sent to is potentially dangerous, seeing as the first manned expedition to explore Altair 4 was never heard from again.
So how did the crew of the C-57D maintain their work skills and ethics, composure, and even their overall sanity? Once again these questions may not ultimately matter for a piece of celluloid entertainment, but they certainly will be very important for real human crews being flung into the galaxy one day, especially since there is no guarantee that those early missions – or perhaps even the later ones – will have the luxury of some form of FTL propulsion to shorten the travel times.
As with most other aspects of life aboard the C-57D, we do not see or even hear much about what the crew did to pass the time during their jaunt to Altair 4. Keeping in mind the era in which FP was made, we can assume there were supplies of playing cards, various board games like chess and checkers, and even a library. In the 1954 script version, Cook said he took some of Doc’s shock therapy treatments “for the entertainment of it!” Had FP been made in more recent eras, the crew probably would have spent their off-duty time watching films, playing video games, and immersing themselves in the various worlds of virtual reality (VR) devices. Had the cruiser been bigger in size and power, they might even have enjoyed the same kind of holodecks that became so ubiquitous in later versions of the Star Trek franchise.
One real world place to glean some ideas about serving aboard a United Planets cruiser in deep space are modern day naval submarines. This Web site on life and duty in a real nuclear submarine from those who served aboard those vessels offers some very relevant and generally fascinating insights:
Regarding recreation time, one veteran had this to say via the site above:
“To clarify more on that last point, while there are exceptions (I have met many athletes in the submarine service) there is a larger representation of people who tend to prefer indoor activities. The most popular hobbies of submariners tend to be books, video games, board/card games, movies (both obscure and mainstream) and learning (many submariners take distance learning courses or learn new languages or tradeskills).”
Of course we have also had real humans being sent into space since 1961. While in terms of distance no one has yet gone further than the Moon and back – and the last of those missions were in 1972 – we have been experimenting with long-duration space stays almost since the beginning, although they still remain in low Earth orbit decades later.
In 2012, I wrote a review of a NASA History Program Office book titled Psychology of Space Exploration: Contemporary Research in Historical Perspective (NASA SP-2011-4411), edited by Douglas A. Vakoch, which was subsequently published on Centauri Dreams: https://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=24523
The book naturally offered numerous insights into the various behaviors of astronauts and cosmonauts over the decades both in space and back on Earth and how attitudes and techniques into psychological selection and management changed: Space missions went from being crewed with primarily male military officers confined in very small vessels ranging from days to weeks, to mixed gender environments aboard comparatively roomier space stations enduring several months to over a year in space, with all but the Apollo lunar missions remaining in Earth orbit. These missions, while certainly helpful to space medicine and providing some key insights into the time when we send humans to Mars and other worlds in our Sol system, are also still lacking important data in regards to living in various space environments for years at a time, perhaps for an entire lifetime and never once setting foot on Earth.
Meanwhile, as for how real astronauts tend to spend their leisure time at present, allow me to quote from my book review article:
“Regarding this view of the shrinking Earth from deep space, the multiple authors of Chapter 4 noted that ISS [International Space Station] astronauts took 84.5 percent of the photographs during the mission inspired by their motivation and choices. Most of these images were of our planet moving over 200 miles below their feet. The authors noted how much of an emotional uplift it was for the astronauts to image Earth in their own time and in their own way.
“The chapter authors also had this to say about what an expedition to Mars might encounter:
“As we begin to plan for interplanetary missions, it is important to consider what types of activities could be substituted. Perhaps the crewmembers best suited to a Mars transit are those individuals who can get a boost to psychological well-being from scientific observations and astronomical imaging. Replacements for the challenge of mastering 800-millimeter photography could also be identified. As humans head beyond low-Earth orbit, crewmembers looking at Earth will only see a pale-blue dot, and then, someday in the far future, they will be too far away to view Earth at all.”
I wonder if the crew of the C-57D conducted any astronomical activities while in transit, or even if they could if hyperspace travel might somehow “mess” with the view outside. Or if they were any more interested in space science than a typical submariner is in marine biology or oceanography (with apologies to those who are into the subject). Again, things might be very different with a crew on a long STL-speed interstellar mission in many ways, including the strong possibility that any humans on such a voyage will not be quite like the humans of the late 20th or early 21st Centuries thanks in no small part to biotechnology and genetic engineering.
Here are some other factors that would likely have an effect on the psychology of the star cruiser crew in FP that I have pondered if anyone ever considered:
The primary mission of the C-57D as stated by Adams early on in the film was to search for survivors of the Bellerophon expedition and return them to Earth. Now while it was probably assumed that after two decades the full complement of that mission* may not still be alive, even if nothing had gone dramatically wrong during all those years, there was still a good chance that at least a handful of people would have survived and be capable of going back to Earth.
* Footnote: The exact number of people on the Bellerophon expedition was never outright declared in FP. However, based on a scene description mention in the 1954 script of the number of headstones marking the burial sites of the Bellerophon crew and my own headcount of the headstones briefly shown in the film, along with adding the last three crew members who were aboard the Bellerophon trying to escape and were vaporized in the process by the Monster from the Id and presumably not buried like the rest, my estimate comes to around twenty people. Their ship was never shown or even described, but I have a feeling it was similar in size, design, and function to the C-57D, if perhaps a bit less advanced in certain areas being two decades older. If this is the case, then it would make sense that the two starships’ crew numbers would be roughly the same, even though not every person would have a matching job title since the Bellerophon was a science mission and the C-57D carried a military-style rescue party.
Was the C-57D truly ready both psychologically and physically to support more people in terms of room and supplies? As stated before, while there are plenty of areas on that ship which we never saw and whose purposes remain only educated guesses for the viewing audience, the cruiser was still physically limited and certainly no luxury craft.
The trained crew might be able to handle such hardships and privations, but what about the Bellerophon survivors, most of whom were apparently scientists and would have spent the last twenty years of their lives on an alien planet that from all appearances, save the underground Krell facilities, seems pretty desolate.
Would they want to leave after all this time despite the apparent harshness of their situation? After all, living for two straight decades in one place, even one that was less than ideal, might have had an effect on them. Playing a ‘what-if” scenario, what if they had decided as a group at some point to abandon their primary mission and remain on Altair 4, deliberately cutting off radio contact with Earth? Morbius said he and his wife had a special love for that world and voluntarily chose to stay. He even made several comments both in the film and the 1954 script about how crowded and dirty he found Earth and his overall resistance to ever leaving Altair 4 even for a brief time was plain.
The C-57D crew was, rather surprisingly, not prepared both for Morbius’ reaction and the discovery of the Krell technology, as Adams admitted as much and had to make a special radio call home for further instructions. They had been focused on the primary goal of their mission, to find out what happened to the Bellerophon expedition and rescue any survivors. This has led me to wonder why it took twenty years for the UP to mount a rescue operation for a mission for which they knew nothing of its fate, including if anyone was still alive to be saved. Unless having starships zip around the galaxy is an everyday occurrence for the UP, the stated C-57D mission seems like an extravagance just to see if anyone survived the Bellerophon mission.
Perhaps an automated probe with artificial intelligence (AI) would have been sufficient for the task, sparing the extra expense and resources of a human crew. However, not only would this have not worked in terms of providing human characters and the resultant drama for an entertainment film, the very concept of sending robotic machines to explore space was still a rather new one at the time, even though rockets had been sent high above Earth housing only basic instrumentation on suborbital jaunts. The state of technology in the 1950s, especially computers, was such that exploration and other types of reconnaissance were still the domain of manned vessels, even when it came to first expeditions into unknown realms.
If the cruiser crew had found no one alive on Altair 4, only some human remains, would they have transported them back to Earth or buried them on the planet? If the former, I wonder how having dead bodies aboard the cruiser for the year-long journey home would have affected the crew psychologically?
This train of thought has also led me to wonder if someone, perhaps the organization that created and funded the initial expedition to Altair 4, somehow already knew about the existence of the Krell and their amazing technology and sent the Bellerophon as a scientific scouting mission to study and claim the technology for themselves. Otherwise why send a language expert like Morbius unless someone knew there would be an alien culture on Altair 4 to decipher? Unless the United Planets sends primarily altruistic science missions to explore alien worlds and their potential inhabitants using a preplanned range of experts from various relevant disciplines as a matter of principle. They are supposed to be an enlightened future society advanced and enriched on multiple levels, so it is not impossible.
The UP may also have a priority to investigate any exoplanets that resemble Earth, just as current astronomers in our reality are focused on sifting through the data from such satellites as Kepler to find worlds similar to our home planet, with the ultimate goal down the road to send probe missions to investigate them further to evaluate their potential for human colonization. Altair 4 is similar to Earth, although it is slightly less massive and therefore has a lighter gravity, has a higher oxygen content in its atmosphere, and two large circling moons. There is that tricky business with the star Altair itself, which is not a fairly stable and long-lived yellow dwarf type like our Sol at least in our Universe, but that is for a further analysis later on.
However, in a film whose main theme throughout is how basic human nature remains no matter how sophisticated our civilization becomes, I cannot help but wonder what other motives may have been involved. Perhaps I have been influenced by the plot of the first film of the Alien franchise from 1979, where an interstellar commercial towing ship named Nostromo, on its way back to Earth, is redirected by its owners, simply known as The Company, to investigate what appears to be a distress signal coming from some remote alien planet. The ship’s crew come to learn the hard way that the signal was not a call for help but a warning from a derelict alien vessel housing a vast collection of large eggs containing deadly creatures. One of these encased xenomorphs, as they are later called, attacks and infects a crewman, uses him as an incubator, and eventually transforms into an even more dangerous version that attacks the rest of the crew and kills all but one of them.
It is eventually revealed that The Company actually knew what was in that alien derelict thanks to the crashed ship’s warning transmission and used the conveniently nearby Nostromo and its crew to involuntarily bring home a sample creature for study by its bioweapons division. Although the Alien franchise is of course fictional, it is not hard to imagine a real future human society that continues to behave in certain familiar if less than noble ways despite having an interstellar level society with high technology and knowledge.
Another factor that was definitely not anticipated in advance of the C-57D mission to Altair 4 was Commander Adams bringing back a woman he met and fell in love with while on that planet, accompanied by her robot servant/nanny made from advanced alien technology. In particular a young woman who until quite recently had spent her entire and rather idyllic life on that distant alien world with her father as the only other human being she had ever directly known. By the end of the film, Altaira will have witnessed the death of her beloved parent at the hands of a manifestation from the very alien civilization he had devoted the last twenty years of his life to studying.
Within 24 hours, that traumatic event will be surpassed by Altaira having a virtual front-row seat to the complete obliteration of her home world, including presumably most of what she once owned and all of her pets.
In the very last scenes of the released film version, we observe Adams holding an understandably distraught Altaira and trying to comfort her by declaring how one day the human race will reach the advanced levels of the Krell thanks to men like her father, whose “name will shine again like a beacon in the galaxy.” Then Adams feels the need to throw in a comment about how this event will teach humanity not to play God – maybe not the best time to alternately praise and admonish Morbius right to his daughter’s face. Adams makes this final point even more pointedly in the 1954 script version of his little speech:
“Alta, nothing is ever really lost. There’s a ladder that reaches from the primeval slime up to the stars, and beyond. In about a million years the human race will have climbed up to that rung where the Krell stood in their great moment of triumph and disaster. And then your father’s name will stand like a milestone in the galaxy – warning Man to remember that he is after all not a god.”
What did not make the final version of Forbidden Planet is what came next: A wedding ceremony.
Yes, no sooner had the C-57D gotten out of range of the destructive blast of Altair 4 and all that meant to poor Altaira than Alpha Male Adams makes crewman Bosun (like Cook, another member of the ship who is only referred to by his job title) the temporary Acting Captain of the ship so that he may perform the wedding – and quickly too, as the cruiser will be going into hyperspace in a matter of minutes and everyone needs to be in those special chambers for protection; you know, the ones we saw at the beginning of the film when the C-57D was about to decelerate out of hyperspace into the Altair system that look an awful lot like what would become the matter transporters on Star Trek a decade later.
Not only is this scene fully described in the 1954 script but it was apparently filmed as well, for there is a published still shot of the moment complete with Cook holding a wedding cake! Perhaps the reason this ending of FP did not make the final cut was due to the filmmakers ultimately realizing how incongruous this event felt after everything that had just transpired, just like the scripted scene with Cook acquiring a chimpanzee “girlfriend” for comic effect. Plus they had to get in that final message about humanity not going past its cosmic paygrade (playing God), but that belongs to a later discussion. Despite all this, having Altaira marry Adams aboard the star cruiser would have made for an interesting parallel to her father and mother’s wedding, which also took place aboard a starship while in transit, with the ceremony being performed by the Bellerophon‘s skipper.
The most likely reason for this wedding being considered to close out FP has to do with the era this film is from: A cinematic couple could not be shown or even implied to be living together if they were not lawfully married. Adams and Altaira would have had little choice but to be in close proximity to each other on the year-long journey back to Earth aboard that confining star cruiser deep in the middle of interstellar space. Add the fact of how much they clearly desired each other throughout most of FP and the only recourse to maintain propriety was to have them tie the knot ASAP. The producers were also probably considering the fact that since FP is definitely science fiction, complete with a robot and spaceships and ray guns, it would undoubtedly attract a lot of impressionable young children who would witness Adams and Altaira flying off into the Final Frontier together to “live in sin.” Of course if there was some kind of matrimonial ceremony aboard the C-57D, we the audience of all ages were never shown it, leaving everyone in a state of potential moral ambiguity.
So even if we assume that Adams and Altaira became legal husband and wife, complete with wedding cake, there would still be issues between them and the rest of the crew to contend with. Would they have any real privacy in this their first year together as a couple? I know on nuclear submarines that the officers get to have their own private quarters while the enlisted crew sleep in shared bunk beds, but as far as we know there is no such luxury aboard the C-57D, probably because the folks in charge only considered an all-male crew (including any Bellerophon survivors?). Maybe there is a partition stored somewhere that the officers use to divide themselves from the rest while sleeping and such. Or perhaps some sections of the interior can be modified into their own rooms complete with walls, assuming there is enough free space to do so. Either solution, however, will only be of limited benefit both psychologically and socially.
We also have to consider all the other issues Altaira would be going through: Until a few days ago, she had known only one human being her entire life, her father Dr. Edward Morbius, and lived virtually unrestricted in a beautiful home with few needs and wants. Now all that was gone and in a traumatic manner at that. Plus she had never been intimate with a man, a point that was made numerous times, although often alluded to rather than stated outright (and in some cases removed from the final film print). Altaira may be a highly intelligent woman, but she is also a human being and a rather young one at that: This sudden and dramatic shift in her life could be emotionally and psychologically damaging to her, despite the contemporary implication that now she has a husband everything will be fine.
Altaira may also come to subconsciously blame and despise the C-57D crew, especially her new partner Adams, for the death of her father and the destruction of her home world. Altaira may have had a self-educated intellectual understanding of human nature and general biology, but in many other respects she was indeed the innocent virgin the film portrayed her as, especially social interactions. If there was one thing pounded home in Forbidden Planet it is the volatile and uncontrollable power of the human subconscious. Even Morbius with his high intelligence and disciplined mind could not control his inner primal beast, and although he had an advanced alien technology at his disposal to dramatically enhance his subconscious desires, Altaira could still wreak her own kind of havoc on herself and others without the need for Krell instrumentalities. While this is not the kind of outcome the film would want to have happen to the survivors of Altair 4, our reality often lacks the luxury of preordained happy endings.
One may hope for her sake that Adams has more sensitivity and understanding for his new bride than most of the other males displayed towards Altaira in the film. Of course Robby will also be there for the long journey and that may help; however, what the United Planets authorities may ultimately do with such a technological prize once they arrive on Earth could mean that Altaira might lose her one remaining positive connection to her past, creating even more trauma.
I also want to note that the C-57D returns to Earth with five fewer initial crewmembers that it left with: This number includes three of its four officers, whom Adams was close with to varying levels, especially Doc, the ship’s lone physician and perhaps only real intellectual. This may be a quasi-military group modeled on a mid-Twentieth Century image of manhood, but losing comrades after spending a long period of time together on a continual basis certainly heightened the emotional bond, even for a bunch of macho males who would be reticent to admit such a thing publicly. That they also died in such dramatic and often terrible fashion on an alien planet where they did not seem entirely prepared for who and what they encountered will no doubt only add to the emotional backlash (I go so far as to say they may have post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, from this) once they are on the long journey home where aside from their duties they are going to have a lot of time to think about what took place – and without their only medical doctor to boot.
These things will need to be considered as much as possible once real star voyages start happening, for we do not know who or what is out there. Even if the galaxy is relatively benign the journey itself has obstacles and issues that will not fade away once the end credits roll.
The Krell: The Alien as Object Lesson
For a science fiction film involving an FTL starship that is part of an interstellar federation on a mission to a distant exoplanet, Forbidden Planet has one particularly atypical aspect for its genre: There is only one ETI species ever discussed and our main characters never get to either meet in person or even see an actual representative of these aliens, only what is left of their technology and records, which are presented to them through a fellow human to boot. While this is not unique for SF, focusing on just one alien species shows that the Krell are in this film, whatever form they may take, for a serious reason and not just window dressing to make things more exotic a la Star Wars or Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets.
As stated earlier in the sections on the C-57D, there are indications in the released version of FP that the members of the United Planets neither contain anyone who is not a human from Earth nor are they currently aware of any ETI in the galaxy. That this future humanity has never met an alien intelligence before is made explicit in the 1954 script by Commander Adams just before they land on Altair 4.
Thus the discovery of the alien species who called themselves the Krell is not just supposed to be a surprise for the film audience but certainly for the crew of the C-57D and by proxy the United Planets, whose mission as we know was primarily focused on rescuing any survivors from the starship Bellerophon, which was sent to Altair 4 twenty years prior, and not making First Contact. That being said, the possibility of an encounter with an ETI was very likely among the crew’s orders and there is probably even some kind of general protocol in anticipation of such an event, although despite that one brief and informal conversation between the three main officers from the 1954 script, it does not seem to have been something they had even considered in a big way, let alone done any official planning for. Of course what we later come to learn and see about the Krell probably would have jarred even a well-prepared First Contact team, if such a thing even exists in the UP.
No human of that 23rd Century ever met a living member of the Krell, for they have been extinct for the last two thousand centuries, roughly around the time that anatomically modern humans, Homo sapiens, made their first appearance on Earth. According to Dr. Morbius, from whom we learn the majority of what we in the viewing audience do know about these aliens, the Krell left no images or even descriptions of their physical appearance, although Morbius tweaks our imaginations when he suggests to Adams and Doc Ostrow that they consider the standard shape of the wide, five-sided archways (counting the floor as one side) found throughout the underground Krell facility “in comparison to one of our functionally-designed human doorways.”
Morbius claimed that “no record of their physical nature has survived,” but does he really know that for certain? Did he check through every document and manuscript the Krell ever made? Morbius even said that he had spent every day of the last two decades “painfully picking up a few of the least difficult fragments of their knowledge.”
Now from a story angle, I do not have a real issue with the details of the physical appearance of the Krell remaining unknown to all but the Krell themselves. Some of the best cinematic science fiction also kept their aliens’ true appearances unavailable to human eyes, such as 2001: A Space Odyssey and Contact. This tactic not only heightens the imaginations, drama, and tension of the audience, it spares such films from the potential for displaying aliens that could end up looking more ridiculous than awe-inspiring or fearsome, especially in those pre-CGI days.
My real complaint with the lack of a visible Krell is the plausibility level of Morbius’ claim that there are no records of any image of an actual member of that species. The Krell were organic beings to the very end of their existence, we know this much. So even if we throw in the possibility that their species had some kind of cultural or psychological taboo about showing themselves either in photographic images or through art, would not the Krell still have a need for medical knowledge about their species? Would this not require multiple detailed images and diagrams of their bodies?
This lead me to question if Morbius truly knew if the subject of his intense study left no records of what they looked like. If you had access to an alien database, wouldn’t one of the first things you would do with it is to find out what the beings who created this database looked like if you didn’t already know? Even if you did not understand their language and the amount of information was vast, you could still look for any representations that showed the ETI themselves. For someone as scientifically curious, fascinated, and ultimately obsessed about the Krell as Morbius is, I find it hard to believe he would not have been combing the alien database from day one for anything that could be an actual Krell.
As it turns out, Morbius may indeed have given into to that curiosity impulse, but his own words reveal that there was probably far too much information for any one human being, even one who was mentally enhanced by Krell technology as he was, to search through and digest in one average lifetime.
When Morbius gives Adams and Doc a tour of the Krell laboratory, he shows them a large desk with a screen built into its flat surface, saying: “On this screen may be projected the total scientific knowledge of the Krell, from its primitive beginnings to the day of its annihilation – a sheer bulk surpassing many million earthly libraries.” [Emphasis added.] Doc then inquires if Morbius is able to read the Krell “hieroglyphics”, to which Morbius responds: “A little. It’s my profession.”
A few moments later, Morbius adds: “I’ve come here every day now for two decades, painfully picking up a few of the least difficult fragments of their knowledge.”
There were two additional comments made by Morbius that did not survive from the 1954 script which further reveal just how big the Krell library was and how Morbius was incapable of absorbing more than a fraction of its ancient intellectual bulk:
“But still I am like an illiterate savage, wandering at random through some stupendous scientific institute, and comprehending not a thousandth part of all the piled-up wonders.”
And then there is this:
“But I do not even know the storage place of all those ancient tons of microfilm.”
Would an alien culture a million years ahead of 23rd Century humanity be using microfilm? If so, then that screen on the laboratory desk is essentially just a large microfiche reader: The way Morbius was shown operating the device, it certainly seems to handle like such a reader. If Forbidden Planet were produced today, that screen would have been the monitor/display for a Krell database computer, no doubt swimming with exotic CGI images. However, in the 1950s, computers generally communicated their data to their operators through blinking lights, punch cards, and paper printouts. Computer monitors would not really take off until the 1970s. Recall that even in the science fiction film Fantastic Voyage, made one full decade after FP, the nuclear-powered submarine Proteus that took a miniaturized crew through a human body utilized rather simplistic paper charts as navigational maps of the person’s interior. A selected chart was transferred to the sub’s pilot via the vintage overhead projector method to be displayed on his small view screen as a guide.
Of course Morbius may have been trying to describe this aspect of Krell technology using a term that would be familiar to the C-57D officers, but again, one would think that microfilm would be deeply antiquated technology for residents of an era where FTL starships and ray guns are available. Then again, too, there is nothing like having the advantage of six decades of hindsight to comment on the film’s technology.
I also have to wonder if there is a “search” feature on this Krell database reader, whatever its true design may be. Because otherwise trying to find particular information from a library bigger than millions of terrestrial versions manually would be virtually impossible. It would also further solidify my point that Morbius could not have seen every bit of Krell knowledge and therefore the possibility that images of the Krell remains (or remained) buried somewhere in that virtual ocean of data.
Nevertheless, even without that database, there were a few other clues that revealed a bit more about the physical state of the Krell. There was this bit of stage description from the 1954 script when Morbius and the UP cruiser officers first enter the Krell “electro-physics laboratory”:
“…all the seats are exceptionally low and wide, with four separate arm-rests set at right angles on each side.”
One of these laboratory sections with the seating meant for beings other than human was the device Morbius called the “plastic educator”, which would become crucial to the bizarre and frightening events happening on Altair 4. Morbius tells the officers how he often plays with this instrument for relaxation, although he sometimes wished he had “been blessed with multiple arms and legs.” The resident Krell expert also points out that the educator’s three-pronged headset “was designed for something much bulkier than [his] human cranium.”
In addition, the long walkways seen amongst the Krell machinery were quite wide and the guard rails along their sides were lower than would be considered safe for an average human. Yet Morbius still pressed the two officers to look over these ramp railings to peer down at the miles-deep ventilation shaft they stood in, tweaking at their instinctive fear of such a drop.
Then there is this fascinating stage direction from the 1954 script, made just after Morbius told Adams and Doc to use the shape of the Krell archways as a guide to imagining what its makers probably looked like:
“The officers turn, and stare at the tunnel-mouth. Abstractedly, the Doc picks up a pencil. TRUCK IN slightly to give a glimpse over his shoulder as he sketches – first, the outline of a common doorway, with a one-line diagram of a man standing in it — then the Krell arch, with the suggestion of a crab-like or spider-like creature framed in it. But before the sketch is complete, the Doc’s hand impulsively crumples the paper in revulsion.”
With Doc being perhaps the most mature and thoughtful member of the C-57D crew, as well as probably the most intellectual, I found it a bit surprising that he of all of them would be so xenophobic as depicted above with his visceral reaction to a rough speculative drawing of the Krell – which he had just made! Then again, scholarly intelligence is no guarantee against prejudice.
I did wonder if Doc was having a subconscious reaction from that earlier discussion between Adams, Farman, and himself aboard the C-57D as to whether the Bellerophon crew had encountered intelligent natives on Altair 4 and thus the reason they had not been heard from in the last two decades. Adams considered that in general aliens could be “anything from archangels to man-eating spiders. Or a combination of both,” in response to Doc asking if “aliens would necessarily be hostile?” This same scene is where Adams had just revealed to the audience that humanity had never encountered an alien race before, thus all the members of the United Planets originate from Earth regardless of what worlds they may have since been dwelling on.
The key flaw with my theory, however, is that this particular dialogue does not exist in the 1954 script, obviously appearing instead only in a later rewrite and even being filmed, only to be dropped from FP’s released cinematic version. My guess is that this scene was initially conceived to give the audience some extra fuel to fire their imaginings and fears about the Krell, with Doc’s reaction being the icing on the proverbial cake. It was probably removed from the script largely due to pacing and perhaps even being overkill, although it would have provided one more avenue towards understanding the Krell. In any event, I found Morbius’ succinct referral to the Krell tunnel archways for reference quite sufficient to spark my imagination on the subject while leaving plenty of room left for individual interpretation.
For all these hints and speculations, there is, in fact, a physical description of the Krell. It was revealed in a detailed article on the film from a 1979 issue of Cinefantastique magazine (Volume 8, Number 2 and 3) titled “Making Forbidden Planet” by Frederick S. Clarke and Steve Rubin. In this piece, the film’s cinematographer, George Folsey, stated the following:
“The Krell were originally frog-like in nature with two long legs and a big tail. They were never shown, but it was indicated in the original screenplay that the [smooth] ramps between the steps were designed to accommodate their dragging tail.”
Personally, while I could imagine the Krell as looking rather like squatting frogs, the long legs don’t quite jive with the image that otherwise conjures up based on the other evidence in their laboratory. As for their big, dragging tails, they may have been added to the Krell anatomy as a symbolic indicator of their primeval nature, which they forgot about as they evolved and advanced, yet were never quite gone even though they literally tried to put their past behind them.
However, note that Folsey says both “originally” and “original screenplay” in terms of the Krell design. Perhaps their appearance was modified in later renditions, at least in the minds of the filmmakers. Otherwise it would have made for a tight squeeze in that little shuttle car the Krell used to get around their underground complex, although as we saw, three fully grown humans could fit inside it without discomfort.
I also saw no smooth ramps between the stairs in any filmed depictions of the Krell lab, adding to my theory that the aliens’ initial description as long-legged “frogs” with long, dragging tails had been changed. Perhaps Doc’s rough sketch from the 1954 script reflects the later visions of the Krell by the filmmakers. It would not surprise me, however, if they never fully rendered the physical appearance of the Krell even in their minds and left the details up to everyone’s imaginations.
Same Song, Different Day?
When Adams and Doc came to pay Morbius an uninvited call at his home to determine just who – or what – had managed to sabotage the C-57D‘s communications system, they ended up learning about the former residents of Altair 4, the advanced alien species known as the Krell.
Morbius provided the officers (and the audience) with the following introduction to these mysterious beings:
“In times long past, this planet was the home of a mighty and noble race of beings which called themselves the Krell. Ethically, as well as technologically, they were a million years ahead of humankind. For, in unlocking the mysteries of nature, they had conquered even their baser selves.
“And, when in the course of eons, they had abolished sickness and insanity and crime and all injustice, they turned, still with high benevolence, outward toward space.
“Long before the dawn of man’s history, they had walked our Earth, and brought back many biological specimens. The heights they had reached!
“But then, seemingly on the threshold of some supreme accomplishment which was to have crowned their entire history, this all-but-divine race perished in a single night.
“In the two thousand centuries [200,000 years] since that unexplained catastrophe, even their cloud-piercing towers of glass and porcelain and adamantine steel have crumbled back into the soil of Altair IV and nothing, absolutely nothing, remains aboveground.”
My first question from Morbius’ little lecture was, how did he know that the Krell were one million years ahead of humanity in both ethics and technology? With what form of measurement was he able to compare what should be two very different species evolving on different worlds light years apart? Did Morbius have some special insight into the directions a civilization’s technology could go? Or was it really just an elaborate educated guess, for it is doubtful that even the Krell had built a time machine for Morbius to see their future with. He also lacked any other ETI societies to make comparisons with, so far as we know.
I also question Morbius’ claims on the Krell being ethically superior. While we must take his word that this “all-but-divine” race “had abolished sickness and insanity and crime and all injustice,” we cannot forget that the Krell were not human. This means that even if they did happen to share certain cultural traits with the tailless apes of Sol 3 and were indeed superior to humanity in certain ethical aspects, they may have also behaved in ways and held beliefs that we would have found to be wrong to and for our species, perhaps even inadvertently offensive and dangerous. As we have seen with our own selves since prehistory, being technologically sophisticated does not always create or mean an equivalent ethical superiority. Using the example of the nuclear bomb, it can sometimes merely indicate a more efficient and much deadlier way to conduct the same type of barbaric actions against perceived enemies as our warring tribal ancestors did with stones and spears.
Look at all the differences with our own species throughout history to the present, where different cultures, often separated by mere geography on the same planet, hold views and conduct themselves in ways considered both shocking and intolerable to others. At the same time these various societies most often look upon themselves as the correct way to be human, often even superior to the rest of their species and their world. Now imagine comparing two sentient races whose only real aspect in common is belonging to the same galaxy.
So how is it that not only does Morbius assume the path that the Krell took in their long yet suddenly abruptly ending existence is the same one we will take into the far future, but that Captain John “J. J.” Adams with his unenhanced brain also concurs with such thinking via his little speech to Altaira at the end of the film?
At the most fundamental level, the Krell exist to serve the purpose that aliens so often do in science fiction: As parallels to humanity so that “safe” comparisons can be made to teach important lessons without offending anyone. Perhaps this is yet another reason why we never get to see what the Krell actually looked like: Their actions, as relayed through members of the human race, mattered more in making the various societal points of the film. By not showing their outright physical selves, the Krell become more relatable to us despite being aliens in so many other respects and we accept the main moral of the story – which in this case is a seemingly contradictory message to continually strive to achieve greatness, but only so far or you will be stomped down by a higher power who is apparently not big on sharing with others.
It is certainly no accident that the starship which brought Morbius to Altair 4 was named the Bellerophon, after a demigod of Greek mythology who despite many great achievements and honors wanted to join the gods residing on Mount Olympus. Bellerophon attempted this by riding the winged horse Pegasus towards the divine dwelling place, but the chief deity Zeus quite literally knocked this son of Poseidon off his high horse and sent him plunging back to Earth. Crippled from the fall and ostracized by society for his defiant act, Bellerophon spent the rest of his days wandering alone in misery, serving as a reminder to what would happen to any mortal (or even a half-mortal) who dared to be a god. A human could strive and improve themselves as far and as much as they want, just so long as they did not attempt to cross that all important class/societal/species line – even if for no better reason than the gods were not big on sharing, especially with beings they considered to be lower than themselves.
This same attitude was prevalent with another classic of science fiction cinema titled The Day the Earth Stood Still, released into theaters just five years before FP. In this story case the advanced ETI who apparently dominate the Milky Way galaxy sent a representative named Klaatu to Earth via a flying saucer type starship to warn humanity that if they took their warlike ways into the Galactic Country Club – now that our species had both nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them long distances, including into space — then by the laws of Klaatu’s realm they would have no choice but to exterminate humanity with giant silvery robots toting death rays from their faceplates. Klaatu even told a group of human representatives at the climax of the film that the ETI did not care what humans did to themselves on their own planet, which included annihilating each other, just so long as they did not try to bring their primitive primal ways into the Club and start soiling the cosmic carpeting.
Once again humanity has to follow very strict rules and regulations laid down by others made long ago if they ever want to even think about being part of the heavens and sharing in all those presumed riches and powers. All this must transpire even though neither the Greek gods nor the deity-ish ETI of TDTESS are flawless beings themselves and in the latter case were once just as mortal as the humans they threatened with destruction. In fact, Klaatu’s group had to give over the policing of their interstellar society to a collection of powerful machines of their own making because they knew no one (presumably organic and therefore primal) species could be trusted with the literal keys to the kingdom of the heavens. In essence these ETI made their own gods with science and technology instead of trying to become deities directly, which explains why they were not destroyed and can now go about acting like they are the ones in charge of the galaxy.
There are two things that need to be accepted about Forbidden Planet: One is that there is no way an American film made in the 1950s, especially one produced by a major studio and already on both corporate and cultural thin ice by daring to be a big-budgeted version of a genre normally relegated to the cinematic equivalent of steerage class, would ever say or do anything other than declare that mortal men (and aliens) must never try to become like the supernatural Judeo-Christian God or they will face divine justice as a result.
The other is that the filmmakers (and many scientists of the era) probably did assume that all intelligent organic beings follow parallel evolutionary paths, even if they came from very different primal seas – and they also tended to assume that life everywhere began in some form of liquid water. This assumption of a literally universal parallel development of biological life forms starting as single-celled creatures on a planet and naturally aiming from there towards the wider Universe is reflected in Adams’ 1954 script version of his final speech to Alta (and we the audience): “There’s a ladder that reaches from the primeval slime up to the stars, and beyond. In about a million years the human race will have climbed up to that rung where the Krell stood in their great moment of triumph and disaster.”
So the Krell developed their technology and culture in a similar course to humanity’s, even though they did this ages ago on an alien planet and were only roughly humanoid looking, based on the scraps of information we have about their physiology.
Humanity, in turn, will follow a similar path set by the Krell, even though it will lead to ruin unless we stop that progress before it reaches the God Level (and then do what? But that question is usually avoided.)
So why keep striving if we cannot reach our full potentials? Should every intelligent species have a preset braking plan for their distant descendants? Would it work even if they did attempt such a thing? While it was nice of Adams to attempt to make Altaira feel better about losing her father by saying that the name and accomplishments of Morbius will “shine again like a beacon in the galaxy” one million years into the future, there is of course no real way to know if such a thing will happen, especially as microfilm will only last about 500 years, at least the silver halide version used by humans (the Krell must have found a much better composition and storage methods for all the tons of microfilm that Morbius said they placed all their knowledge upon, as he found it readable over 200,000 years later).
Yes I am being somewhat facetious based on my bemusement that the highly advanced Krell would be using microfilm as an information storage medium for their vast library, but the real point Adams made at the end of his speech – and of course from the overall film – is that organic intelligent beings will never really lose their primal animal (and therefore barbaric and beastly) selves from which they sprang so otherwise long ago. Worse, should the higher areas of the brain – the Ego and Superego as first defined by Sigmund Freud in 1923 – lose their dominance and control over the Id portion, utter chaos, destruction, and even death will prevail, especially if these beings happen to build one of those devices that can transform their very thoughts into physical manifestations to any point across the world they happen to be residing upon at that moment. Not even the Krell could escape this seemingly ironclad fate, despite having had long ago “abolished sickness and insanity and crime and all injustice,” something even 23rd Century humankind certainly had yet to achieve.
What disturbs me even more about this concept was that the Krell apparently thought that not only had they defeated their nasty Id, but they even forgot about it as the centuries passed and became even more “mighty and noble”, again quoting our resident Krell expert, Dr. Morbius. Is it possible that living for eons in a highly sophisticated technological civilization, yet still remaining organic and presumably still doing basic organic things like eating food and reproducing to the very end – plus their planet Altair 4 must have had a biosphere full of lower organic creatures that exhibited widespread primal behaviors on a regular basis – made the Krell not only forgetful of their distant, primitive ancestors but also brought about a sense of hubris, which is always a showstopper as far as the gods are concerned when it comes to mortals.
If I believe anything as to why the Krell failed to anticipate what turning their very thoughts into physical, active forms unchecked could cause, it is that one million years of “shining sanity” (quoting Morbius yet again) created a combination of disassociation from the thoughts and feelings of all “lower” life forms and, yes, a sense of cultural superiority that nothing they could accomplish would ever fail or end up hurting them.
This reminds me of what happened with the technologically advanced Martians in the classic SF novel The War of the Worlds, written by British author H. G. Wells and first published in serial form in 1896. The invading aliens from Sol 4 had the superior minds and weaponry, yet they were ultimately defeated “by the putrefactive and disease bacteria against which their systems were unprepared; slain as the red weed was being slain; slain, after all man’s devices had failed, by the humblest things that God, in his wisdom, has put upon this earth.” Not only might a truly foreign invader fall victim to the disease microorganisms of another world, but Wells declares that “there are no bacteria in Mars, and directly these invaders arrived, directly they drank and fed, our microscopic allies began to work their overthrow.”
As an admittedly lifelong resident of Earth, I find it hard to imagine any world where organic creatures naturally evolved that their own versions of microorganisms would not exist or ever become extinct without all the other native “higher” organisms dying off as well, for that matter. Not only are single-celled creatures the most ancient and abundant of all known lifeforms on our planet, they are also the most hardy and durable of all organisms. In addition, while some microbe species are indeed deadly, many others are not just beneficial to Earth life, including humans, but actually essential to our overall functioning. I suspect this was Wells’ version of the otherwise sophisticated Martians “forgetting” their primitive ancestral roots to their ultimate detriment, just as the Krell either forgot or ignored their own primal Monsters from the Id and paid the price for their lack of acknowledgement.
Going back to the theme of this section, that aliens most often serve as metaphors for humanity, it is most likely that the final (and ultimately fatal) Krell achievement is a couched symbol for that biggest of all the bogeyman of the Cold War era: Nuclear weapons and the civilization-ending destruction they could cause if unleashed. It may be hard to imagine this now, but in the first few decades of the Cold War, there were many – including politicians, the military, engineers, and scientists – who thought that a nuclear war could be conducted strategically so that one side could still win while taking “acceptable” losses of human life.
When General Buck Turgidson declared as much in the 1964 political satire film Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb with his infamous quote that the United States of America would suffer “no more than 10 to 20 million killed, tops! Uh, depending on the breaks,” during a nuclear exchange with the Soviet Union, this was not just part of the overall black comedy that was this masterpiece by Stanley Kubrick: It was a reflection on actual contemporary studies of nuclear war where experts calculated how much the nation could lose in terms of infrastructure and population and continue to function to the point of defeating the enemy and declaring victory. The psychological and sociological factors of such massive genocide were pushed to the side, even though it did not take an expert to figure out those would be the overwhelmingly prevailing reactions in a nuclear conflict.
This parallels Morbius and Adams’ comprehension of what the Krell had done to themselves: The scientist with his artificially enhanced brain could not (and would not) accept that his beloved superior ETI had developed a device that was their undoing because they had failed to realize what it could (and did) unleash. Meanwhile, the commander of the C-57D, whom Morbius had earlier mocked about not needing brains to run a starship, “just a good loud voice,” figured out (with some clues from an enhanced Doc Ostrow) just what happens when anyone, even beings with otherwise high intellects and enlightened ethics, obtain a power that cannot be controlled.
Of course I must add that in regards to the Cold War strategy mentioned above, it was operated by a combination of various disciplines who were focused on conducting a nuclear war they could win in some sense. They were aware of what would happen to American society and its citizens, but their primary goal was to defeat the Soviets, thus General Turgidson’s seemingly dispassionate comment on the number of human deaths that could be sustained by the United States without ultimate defeat.
As discussed earlier in this essay, Forbidden Planet premiered during the time of communist “witch hunts” in America, where government officials were diligently rooting out citizens considered to be supporters of the primary political system of the Soviet Union and its Eastern Bloc partners. Hollywood was certainly not immune to this purge, where a film that even gave the impression of criticizing American policies could spell serious trouble for a production and those involved with it. Therefore it was prudent to hide such sentiments so that only the more thoughtful and presumably less hostile members of the audience would comprehend what was really being said in the film. That FP was clearly a science fiction film provided additional cover, as many in the culture of the time, including Hollywood executives, saw the genre as “kids’ stuff” and therefore harmless and lacking in deeper meanings. Star Trek would take advantage of this situation a decade later when American television networks were still generally uncomfortable with series which portrayed serious social themes, especially political ones.
Perhaps as a final “cover” for the real message in Forbidden Planet, it is ironic to note that the heroes of the film are neither the enlightened aliens of Altair 4 nor the augmented scientist determined to protect the knowledge and accomplishments of the Krell, but the military officers and enlisted men of the space cruiser C-57D. They are the ones who bravely venture across the stars to a remote alien planet, stop an ego-driven scientist, rescue a damsel in distress (not necessarily from her perspective, however), encounter and (inadvertently) defeat a powerful and dangerous alien technology that could have destroyed interstellar civilization, and brought home a lovable and technologically valuable robot as a bonus.
This attitude was even more explicitly in the 1951 SF film The Thing from Another World: It is the military men of the United States Air Force (USAF) and not the scientists who save the day from yet another advanced ETI bent on destroying humanity. In fact the main scientist in The Thing, Dr. Carrington, puts every human life in jeopardy in his well-meaning attempts to reason with the alien and even save it, despite the being’s obvious hostile intentions. Carrington had made the assumption that because the ETI had come to Earth in a starship, its more advanced knowledge and technology automatically made it morally superior as well, when in fact the alien saw the natives primarily as a food source and aid in reproduction as a prelude to a presumed full-on planetary conquest.
Summation: It is a hostile Universe out there and only American courage and can-do attitude (via the military in various forms) can save the day, along with the logical extension of our Manifest Destiny into the Cosmos. Scientists are sometimes well-meaning nerds who either do not see the bigger picture or see too far beyond the needs and wants of the human tribe and must be kept in line. Star Trek carried on this theme with its numerous franchises, sometimes blatantly so, especially in the original series. If nothing else this projection keeps you safe and profitable in Hollywood. Whether it would work in the real wider galaxy or not is another matter.
Chariots of the Krell
During his initial impromptu lecture about the Krell, Morbius revealed yet another interesting tidbit about his favorite aliens:
“Long before the dawn of man’s history, they had walked our Earth, and brought back many biological specimens. The heights they had reached!”
Adams: “I see. That explains the tiger and the deer.”
So the Krell were once deep space explorers themselves, which makes sense if you follow the aforementioned reasoning that all intelligent beings would follow parallel development paths that naturally include going to the stars. We are never told just how far they penetrated into the Milky Way galaxy, nor how many other worlds besides Earth they visited, but it would only be logical to assume they explored numerous star systems and did so with vessels capable of FTL velocities. It would also be logical to assume that Earth was not the only place where the Krell came back with native specimens, yet we neither see nor are even told of any nonterrestrial creatures roaming around Altair 4, so we are again left in the dark regarding any alien life forms besides the Krell, past or present.
Which leads to the next question: What happened to all the native flora and fauna of Altair 4? I have serious doubts that none ever existed on that planet except for the Krell, yet outside of Morbius’ home and yard the alien globe seems pretty desolate. Even from orbit Altair 4 appears rather bland and devoid of abundant life, with all due apologies to Doc Ostrow’s aesthetic opinions on the planet. There are some rather exotic trees and other plants just outside the home, but beyond that and the region around the landing site of the C-57D, the terrain appears to be mostly barren dessert, punctuated only by boulders, jagged mountains, deep crevices, and the occasional scrub brush (and just maybe a few wild radishes).
So how is it that Altair 4 has an atmosphere 4.7 percent richer in oxygen than Earth if there is so relatively little life present? Clearly Morbius, Altaira, and the rather few animal and plants around their home could not be generating enough of the element to create such an abundance. We know that on Earth, oxygen did not make an appearance until life began generating it en masse as a waste byproduct. Therefore there must be life elsewhere across the planet, even if it is relatively lower forms. Otherwise we would have to assume that when the Krell let loose with the manifestations from their Ids, they exterminated much of the surrounding plants and animals in their murderous rages as well. We do know from the numerous global extinction events which have taken place several times in Earth’s long history that some organisms managed to survive no matter how bad the (natural) destruction was, flourishing again over time. So we may presume that native organisms still exist in places all over Altair 4 that we never visited.
Evidence that some of the planet’s native creatures must have survived somewhere even if the Krell did not may be found in the very presence of the descendants of the animals brought back from Earth. It is never explained (or questioned) how these non-native organisms not only survived the day the Krell obliterated themselves (were they in some kind of protective zoo?) but then managed on their own to find nourishment and breed for the next 200,000 years until the United Planets starship Bellerophon showed up.
During the film we get to meet one tiger, a small herd of deer, and one monkey that likes to steal fruit. If some of the people involved in the production of FP had had their way, we would have also seen butterflies and bees in the garden – and one amorous female chimpanzee! During his guided tour of the underground Krell facility, Morbius also mentions a flock of migrating birds, while in the 1954 script Altaira was shown feeding several varieties of tropical bird species.
If one wonders why the Krell did not bring back some specimens of our distant human predecessors, the answer may be found in the 1954 version of the film script, where Morbius makes the off-hand remark that “evidently our own bestial primitive ancestors were beneath the notice of the Krell.”
This is a rather odd statement to make, as the other terrestrial animals and plants the Krell did take with them were clearly less sophisticated than even the first hominids. Presumably the Krell would have visited Earth less than one million years ago (and no later than about 200,000 years ago), when our ancestors were already well versed in utilizing fire, stone tools, and other qualities that should have distinguished them from the rest of the primates co-existing with the several human species of the period. Morbius also had an underlying contempt for his fellow humanity of the 23rd Century, so undoubtedly our even less advanced ancestors would only increase his ire on the subject. Note that Morbius used the word “evidently” in his comment, which indicates to me that he is actually making an assumption about the Krell’s real motivations for not collecting any humans, colored with his own prejudices.
If it did happen to be true that the Krell did not select any early humans for transportation and study, my guess is that the Krell recognized the humans they found as having the potential to evolve further just as they did and decided to leave them in their natural environment. Did they perhaps even have a hand in helping along our development as well, just as the Monolith ETI in 2001: A Space Odyssey deliberately guided our primitive ancestors in Africa over four million years ago to use tools for hunting and defense. We do not know and Dr. Morbius certainly seemed less than willing to pursue the subject. All we know is that no transplanted descendants of humanity made an appearance during the C-57D‘s brief time on Altair 4 and any such evidence of their ever existing was destroyed along with the planet.
Another set of questions left unanswered in regards to the Krellian era of deep space exploration: Did they ever set up any colonies as they roamed through the Milky Way as humanity did eons later? Or did all the Krell eventually return to Altair 4 for whatever reasons? Perhaps not all the Krell died out and their descendants live on an unknown number of alien worlds. Or maybe at least their technology remains if not the creators, waiting to be found. If so, will the events that transpired in Forbidden Planet repeat themselves, either at the hands of humanity or yet another intelligent starfaring species?
Arts and Crafts
Continuing with the FP theme that organic intelligences will follow similar evolutionary paths no matter what primordial seas they came from (and it is always a primordial sea) or what they end up looking like, I want to briefly discuss the cultural side of the Krell, for they did have one.
One place we think we see examples of Krell art is displayed throughout Morbius’ home. Now granted, it could be art he brought from Earth; however, there is a fair deal of it and many of the items would be rather bulky and unwieldly to carry on a starship where space is at a premium. Or perhaps Morbius and/or Altaira made this art themselves over the last two decades, inspired in part by what they saw of the remaining Krell civilization around them if not some actual art itself. Of course the simplest explanation is that what we see is indeed art made by the Krell long ago which the two human occupants of Altair 4 collected and placed around their house. However, there is at least one sculpture of a distinctly human figure that I doubt came from the Krell, so perhaps there is no one set answer here.
Among the mostly abstract art found in the home (assuming it is abstract), there are two sculptures which distinctly depict some species of fish. One in particular is displayed prominently in the courtyard before the entrance to the home. While they do not look exactly like terrestrial fish, they do possess similar physical features, which would indicate the concept of “form follows function” no matter what alien sea an aquatic creature might swim in.
For background details on the artwork in FP, check out this forum discussion with many useful images:
One form of art we know that the Krell pursued was music. Using a small cylindrical device on his study desk, Morbius played a sample which he said was composed half a million years ago. That this art occupies the main place where Morbius devoted the last twenty years of his life and work to indicates he listened to this distinctly alien music as much for personal enjoyment as cultural research.
Although there are certain differences, the Krell music we get to hear sounds very similar to the FP soundtrack. This is of course no coincidence since all the “electronic tonalities” of the film were produced by Bebe and Louis Barron. I even entertained the possibility that the entire soundtrack was actually Krell music. My imagination was certainly engaged as I wondered what kind of instruments those ancient Krell musicians used to make these sounds and what kind of meaning was behind their creation? Did they also have as much variety when it comes to music as humans certainly do? Sadly that moment in FP may have been the last time any sentient beings would ever hear Krell music again in the universe of the film.
As usual we have to take the word of Dr. Morbius that what he played in his study for the star cruiser officers was indeed music made by the Krell. I see no reason why he would lie in this matter: If anything Morbius probably played the music to win over Adams and Doc by showing the two humans that the Krell may have been alien, but they did share some things in common with humanity and any other intelligent races.
Just as scientists often assume that mathematics would be a literally universal language for communicating with ETI, music has also been seen as a potential way to bridge those inevitable linguistic, cultural, and physiological gaps between two alien species. The most famous example of this idea may be found on the golden Voyager Interstellar Records, launched with the twin Voyager deep space probes in 1977 to drift through the Milky Way galaxy indefinitely, with the hope that some sentient beings may one day find them and learn who sent these vessels into the void.
Of all the items engraved into the Golden Records to represent humanity and our world, the ones that occupy the most space on these discs are the examples of global music. The small team which made the Record did their best with rather limited time to give any recipients an idea of the incredible diversity of this human art form, although Western classical music did predominate based in part on the team’s view that works from that genre, especially by Johann Sebastian Bach, contain properties of a mathematical nature which were presumed to be appreciated by higher intellects.
Had the Krell still been alive to encounter one of the Voyager probes and that shiny Physical METI (Messaging to Extraterrestrial Intelligences) bolted to its side, would they have recognized the various tunes on the Golden Records as music? Or would it have seemed like incomprehensible noise to their equivalent of ears? If Morbius had not told us that what we were listening to was music made by the distant alien residents of Altair 4, would we have automatically assumed it was their acoustic art form? Conversely, what we often call and interpret as music or songs made by such terrestrial organisms as birds and humpback whales are really more straightforward methods of communication than any kind of art form, though we may not be entirely certain.
Yes, I am fully aware that music is utilized as a form of communication as often as it is a pure art form. The question remains, though, is it truly universal? Perhaps the first alien transmission discovered by a group conducting the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, or SETI, will not be the first one hundred prime numbers ala Contact, but music being played across the galaxy for the enjoyment of multiple civilizations. It is a scenario no less improbable than many other possibilities for finding other minds in the galaxy and beyond.
I also wondered if civilizations ever reach a point where they no longer need art and music? Is it possible for an intelligent species to evolve without ever having developed such culture? It is frustrating to ask such questions when we have but one example from a single world to go on so far. Granted the vast majority of human societies on Earth, no matter how different from one another, practice art and music as a rich part of their cultures. We also have numerous examples of fellow higher mammals such as orangutans and elephants who can paint once we give them the proper tools and teach them. However we are all still biologically related going back many millions of years and share Earth as our home world. What an ETI may become and do in a remote corner of the Milky Way is something we have yet to learn. We are still confined to playing out various scenarios with the aliens of our imaginations, such as the Krell.
Following that path, Morbius indicated that the Krell “in those final days before their annihilation… had been applying their entire racial energies to a new project, one which they actually seemed to hope might somehow free them once and for all from any dependence on physical instrumentalities.”
This would appear to indicate the Krell had ceased their cultural efforts to focus on their science and technology – and even those fields were likely narrowed down towards that singular purpose. Is this why Morbius was listening to their music from 300,000 years before the time the Krell became focused on their ultimate project, because their later music was either of a lesser quality or altogether nonexistent? Perhaps the Krell thought once they could create matter directly from their minds they could then go back to their arts and develop even more amazing cultural artifacts. Of course we will never know.
Will humanity follow the path of the Krell? Will they heed the warnings indirectly made by Dr. Edward Morbius or will they forget over time? What if our descendants remember but decide that they can avoid such pitfalls and try anyway? What if humans and all other organic intelligences discover that they can never fully escape their primal pasts? Will civilizations be content to advance only so far and then go into a form of self-enforced retirement? If they discover that the fate of the Krell cannot be avoided, what will they do then? Is there a non-organic solution? We shall discuss that last question further on.
This Planet Will Self-Destruct in 24 Hours…
In the dramatic ending of Forbidden Planet, Morbius finally confronts his primal self made real and pays the ultimate price for it. As he lays dying in the Krell laboratory surrounded by Adams and his daughter, Morbius tells the commander to turn a thin metal disc on a nearby machine. This action causes a plunger to rise from the floor, which Morbius then instructs Adams to push down upon, all without explaining why. Adams complies without question and the translucent disc around the plunger begins to silently and ominously pulse a glowing reddish color.
Only then does Adams, Altaira, and the audience learn why Morbius told the star cruiser captain to perform these actions: It is the activation device for a mechanism that will cause a chain reaction among the 9,200 Krell nuclear furnaces stationed far below, resulting in the utter destruction of Altair 4. The resulting explosion will be so destructive that Morbius tells Adams he must be 100 million miles away from the alien planet within one full Earth day to survive the coming cataclysm. Everything that was left of the once great Krell civilization will be destroyed, along with anyone or anything else that has not escaped Altair 4 by then. Although it is not openly stated, the planet’s two moons, a good chunk of interplanetary space, and any neighboring worlds that may happen to be in that blast radius will not be doing well afterwards, either.
Several pointed comments and questions come to mind about this event (ignoring for now those that only lead to answers involving dramatic film plot devices):
Why did the Krell even have such a self-destruct mechanism that could wipe out their entire planet and therefore civilization in one shot? Especially one that could not be reversed once set into motion.
Why was it so simple to activate? And by simple I mean lacking almost any decent safety features to avoid either an accidental or otherwise unwanted activation. The version in the 1954 script was an even simpler and therefore even less safe mechanism: A small and easily breakable switch box covering one simple switch that only needed to be flipped in the ON direction to activate the system. Even the self-destruct feature of the USS Enterprise on Star Trek involved a series of command codes that could be given only by senior officers which the starship’s main computer obeyed only after confirming them by their vocal patterns.
Why was the activation mechanism located in the Krell laboratory – and so close to the plastic educator which Morbius said the adult Krell used to educate their children with?
If the Krell were so high and mighty as Morbius said of them over and over, why did they feel the need to build something that would instantly obliterate everything they had spent so many thousands of centuries achieving? They seemed to be well beyond their warlike and other socially destructive pasts (forgetting their hidden Ids just waiting to be sprung for the moment), so we may assume they did not fear one faction of Krell wanting to wrest from or destroy the facility from another faction of their own species.
Were the Krell afraid of malicious beings from other worlds conquering them and taking their knowledge and technology? While one might assume that the Krell would have been more than capable of taking care of all kinds of threats, their evolved pacifist and intellectual natures might have left them vulnerable even to a less advanced species if their antagonists were aggressive enough. While we do know that the Krell did explore the galaxy and returned biological samples from Earth and most likely other worlds as well, we are left uninformed as to whether they encountered any other alien species in their travels, intelligent or otherwise. The exact political and exploration boundaries of the United Planets are also a mystery to us (although there is what appears to be a stellar navigation map seen at one of the C-57D‘s bridge control panels at the base of that beautiful navigation sphere, but it is so hard to see details on it), but as stated before, there are indications that the Krell are the first ETI they have ever discovered.
So we do not know how many alien societies there are (or were) in the Milky Way galaxy of the FP universe and if any of them would warrant the Krell preferring that their whole civilization be destroyed rather than end up in the clutches of an undesirable species. This may also explain why the mechanism was made powerful enough to destroy everything within a 100 million mile radius of Altair 4: To take out approaching enemy space vessels and also ensure that none attempting to retreat could escape.
While I do not pretend to be privy to all of the thought processes of a highly evolved alien species that died out 200,000 years ago, this exceedingly destructive self-destruct mechanism feels out of place for a society that disavowed violence and other “low-brow” behaviors millennia ago – and I am not just referring to the rather peculiar and quite unsafe location and setup of the activation instrumentation. This is why I have to wonder if it was Morbius and not the Krell who set up the self-destruct mechanism in the lab.
Morbius would certainly have the motivation to do this, having clearly expressed his deep-seated concerns about the dangers of the 23rd Century human race getting ahold of Krell technology and wisdom. Combine this with his obsessive feelings about the Krell and his subconscious willing to kill for them multiple times and it does not require too much of a mental effort to imagine that Morbius might prefer that no one have access to this alien civilization if he could not be the sole arbiter of the focus of his two decades of research. That the activation mechanism is in the laboratory so close to where he worked every day and was rather simple to operate are yet more motivations for my suspicions. Add on to all this Morbius’ heightened intelligence thanks to the Krell, which allowed him to perform such technical feats as the construction of the sophisticated Robby in the first few months of his arrival at Altair 4, and it only strengthens my theory.
The one problem with my idea is that the filmmakers want us to naturally assume that it was the Krell who built that self-destruct mechanism and not to think too deeply about the motivations for its existence, for it really is a plot device. I will also concede that rigging up 9,200 alien nuclear reactors to explode at once may have been too much even for an intellectually enhanced Morbius, even with twenty years’ worth of time on his hands. Perhaps along with the obvious technological complexities, the Krell had set up too many safeguards as part of the general operation of these machines to be bypassed by one human… unless Robby assisted him somehow, but we saw no evidence that the robot was involved with Morbius’ work on the Krell, except to relieve the doctor of having to perform mundane daily tasks that would have taken time away from his research on the alien civilization.
As to the inevitable question whether the Krell facility could actually wipe out all of Altair 4 (and a huge chunk of interplanetary space around it), the answer is probably not. To completely destroy Earth, which is comparable in mass and presumably composition to the Krell home world, one would need all the energy output of Sol for eight whole days to do the job right. So while the explosion would certainly make one heck of a radioactive mess out of the Krell facility, it would not vaporize the entire planet, unless the Krell had added certain advanced technological features and/or elements to enhance the destructive effect.
Bonus Note: The 1979 science fiction film Alien made a visual tribute to the Krell self-destruct mechanism aboard the commercial towing vessel Nostromo. Their version, called the Emergency Destruction System, had four plungers, not just one. Unlike the Krell system, the one on this starship came with both operation and safety instructions, along with warning lights and klaxon sounds, plus a chance to reverse the destruct sequence once activated up until the last five minutes. Should one still find themselves aboard the Nostromo when the ship’s nuclear core detonates, to quote one character about the results: “We won’t need no rocket to fly through space.”
They even have a plausible reason for the existence of such a capability with their starship: The spacefaring human society of the Alien franchise is no utopia, as witnessed by the actions of greedy and ruthless corporations and the need for Colonial Marines. Since such a large and relatively fast vessel could make itself a target for hijacking for its cargo or be turned into a weapon, there might be a need in that universe to keep the Nostromo out of unfriendly hands, even to such drastic measures as its complete destruction. Or if a very hostile alien creature gets onboard thanks to management’s indifference to the well-being of its employees and you have to go to extremes to get rid of it.
Why Altair?
There is one final question I have (for now) about the world of the Krell: Why did the makers of Forbidden Planet choose the star system of Altair as the main setting for the story? I have not yet found a direct answer, such as from production notes or comments in an interview by either one of the screenplay authors, a producer, or even one of the actors. However, the evidence leans towards Altair being chosen as the film’s primary location mainly from a combination of historical familiarity, literary tradition, and a measure of convenience over scientific accuracy.
In terms of physical and historical parameters, choosing Altair as the film’s destination makes sense: Altair is among the brightest and closest stars visible in Earth’s night sky from our planet’s northern hemisphere, numbering twelfth in the apparent stellar magnitude ranking and a mere 16.7 light years distant, respectively. Altair is one of the main components of the large and rather well-known triumvirate asterism known as the Summer Triangle, with Vega and Deneb being the other two members of that particular stellar group. Altair is also the dominant star in one of the oldest constellations recorded in human history, Aquila the Eagle. Designated Alpha Aquilae by modern astronomers, Altair is an Arabic phrase that means both “the flying eagle” or just “bird”. Altair also has the advantages of being a short, easy to spell, and a pleasant-sounding name at least for Western ears, compared to stars with actual names such as Fomalhaut, Betelgeuse, and Zubeneschamali.
Although we have certainly learned a fair deal more about Altair than was known to astronomers when FP was released in 1956, even six decades ago scientists would have known that this sun was probably not the best of choices for hosting a planet that harbored advanced intelligent life, at least the kind we humans are used to. On the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram of stellar classes, Altair is labeled as a spectral type Class A star, A7V to be exact (Earth’s star Sol is G2V, a yellow dwarf). This makes Altair a blue-white dwarf sun that is younger, hotter, and more massive than our own: With an age estimated to be about one billion years old, Altair probably has only another billion years at most in its current state on the main sequence scale of stellar evolution.
In comparison, Sol has existed for about 4.6 billion years and will last more-or-less in its current form for roughly another five billion years before our star exhausts the hydrogen in its core and starts to fuse helium in a shell surrounding that core. Sol will become an expanding red giant star, where it will either envelop Earth entirely or at the very least turn our beleaguered planet into a sterilized ball of molten slag.
Biological life on Earth, although appearing relatively soon after our planet formed and cooled enough to develop and support organisms (perhaps just over four billion years ago), began to see more complex (multicellular) life forms evolve only about 542 million years ago during what is known as both the Cambrian Explosion and Cambrian Radiation. Humanity’s earliest ancestors did not come upon the scene until a mere seven million years ago, and our technological civilization has only been around for the last few thousand years, a comparative blink of the cosmic eye.
Now while it is granted we are currently aware of just one world inhabited with organic beings, since Earth is all we have to go on scientifically at the moment, we must note that it took a very, very long time for terrestrial organisms to evolve from microbes to something smart enough to build a civilization and make motion pictures about spaceships traveling to alien worlds – about four billion years, in fact. Seeing as Altair is expected to last just half that time as a star overall, we may presume that if Altair has planets circling it (although searches conducted since the late 1990s have yet to reveal any), then if they are capable of supporting life, such creatures may not be very far along on the evolution scale – certainly nothing as sophisticated as the Krell, at least. In addition, we must throw into the pot that Altair emits more radiation and heat than does Sol, which cannot be taken lightly when it comes to the development of biological organisms. So, unless we are in for a big surprise about organic evolution elsewhere, it is not out of the question to question the validity of the Altair system being a place for native advanced intelligent species.
In the decades since the premiere of Forbidden Planet, some interesting new facts have been revealed about the star Altair. Sadly, none of this data does much to improve the prospects for either the Krell or beings like them to exist in reality there.
Along with the above-mentioned fact that no exoworlds have yet been found around Altair – which does not mean that none exist, only that our current methods of detecting planets in other solar systems have yet to find any there – astronomers have determined that this big ball of luminous gas rotates incredibly fast: Altair makes one spin of its axis in just nine hours, compared to over 25 days for our Sol at its equator. This velocity flattens Altair’s shape into an oblate spheroid; in fact, were the star spinning just ten percent faster, Altair would tear itself apart!
Between 2006 and 2007, Altair became the first main sequence star besides Sol to have its photosphere (the equivalent of a stellar surface) directly imaged. Not unexpectedly, the Altair of our reality does not match what was shown on the main view plate of the C-57D when the star cruiser first arrived in the Altair system: A red-orange and decidedly spherical sun.
This is yet another area where the Star Trek franchise modeled itself after FP, consciously or otherwise, for many of the stars used as system locations were often based on real suns in the galactic vicinity of Earth generally familiar to public (as well as relatively easy to pronounce). As most of the stars visible from our planet with unaided vision are also giant and supergiant suns – either incredibly hot stars with very short lives or very ancient and bloated gas balls that have devastated any worlds they once possessed and are now on their way out, to die either as pale shadows of their former glory or to exit in a violent manner known as a supernova – they too are considered no more suitable to harbor advanced intelligent beings than Altair is. Nevertheless, that did not stop the series writers from placing very Earthlike planets full of often humanoid ETI around those very suns, with no obvious ill effects to either the native inhabitants or their otherworldly visitors.
Fans of Star Trek and, to be fair, many other science fiction series which take place in deep space, tend to either ignore or dismiss the true states of these distant suns, being more interested in the actions and fates of the main characters. When on that uncommon occasion that someone, usually an astronomer, has called them out in regards to these flagrant disregards of stellar physics, the response has often been to either collectively shrug their shoulders or to come up with an elaborate kluge to keep such star systems largely intact and functioning for future stories.
It is interesting to note that in the Star Trek universe, the Altair system does not play a prominent role either in their stories or the main governing body, the United Federation of Planets (UFP), despite scattered mentions of multiple inhabited worlds and the system’s stated strategic importance to the UFP. Was this due to Roddenberry’s influence regarding his aforementioned aversion about giving too much public credit to Forbidden Planet for being the inspiration and structural basis of the series? Despite this seeming slight, Altair 4 and even the Krell did receive actual mentions in Star Trek Maps, published by Bantam Books in 1980.
You can learn more about the Altair system in the Star Trek realm via the encyclopedic Memory Alpha Web site here:
A related side note: The FP film audience does get a brief glimpse of one other celestial member of the Altair system, the first planet. This is the world we see blocking the light and heat of the star when the C-57D first decelerates into the system. Filmed but removed scenes had Adams complaining to Farman about cutting their arrival too close to Altair and having to use the bulk of this first planet as a natural shield to keep their starship from overheating. One bit that did survive editing in relation to this event is where Doc comments that “…this ship arranges its own eclipses” while he and the crew watch Altair 1 cover its primary star on the main view plate.
We never learn anything else about this sibling to Altair 4 or even get a good glimpse of its surface other than in silhouette, except that in being the first world in the Altair system and therefore so close to its sun, it is probably quite similar to the planet Mercury: Rocky, cratered, roasting hot in the daytime and freezing on the night side, a barren place in every sense of the word. Though one should note that in 1956, some astronomers were holding out hope that a “twilight zone” along the day-night terminator of Mercury could have been just right temperature-wise for supporting some kind of life. The fact that Mercury does not keep one hemisphere facing Sol as once thought, just as our Moon does with Earth, but instead rotates on its axis once every 59 days and thus dashing the twilight zone theory, would not be known until planetary radar revealed the truth in 1965. It should also be noted in the first story treatment from 1952 that Mercury was the original location where most of the film’s action took place.
A Myth is as Good as a Mile
Another reason I came to conclude that Altair was chosen over other stars for FP chiefly due to my aforementioned combined explanations of “historical familiarity, literary tradition, and a measure of convenience” arose from my research into the mythology of Altair and its constellation of Aquila the Eagle. I originally assumed that my investigation in this realm would be a fruitful one, as the film had already made use of characters from several Greco-Roman stories, some which would not even be immediately familiar to a modern audience. Instead I came away from my classical excursion feeling rather ambiguous about either Altair or Aquila having a deep mythological purpose for the story’s symbolism.
To the ancient Greeks and Romans, Aquila was the thunderbird, the creature that carried and recovered the thunderbolts which Zeus (Jupiter), the chief god, flung at his enemies and otherwise hurled to get his points across to the mortal world. I suppose one could make an analogy between this description and the Krell displeasing the deities by daring to become like them, but I cannot say I was fully “feeling it” as a source of inspiration for the film’s writers. When it came to other aspects of Altair and Aquila from antiquity, including stories from beyond the Mediterranean region, any deliberate symbolic connections seemed even more tenuous.
That being said, I am allowing myself the following indulgence that while it may have no direct connection between Altair and FP, there is still the possibility that the literary excerpts I present next have added their contributions to that star’s place in our collective consciousness which would eventually lead to Altair being the chosen celestial destination in the film. That I am also a sincere admirer of this author, natural philosopher, and early sociologist only added to the joy of this discovery.
In his best known work, Walden; or, Life in the Woods, first published in 1854, Henry David Thoreau wrote the following about the place he spent over two years of his life as a multilayered social experiment. From Chapter 2, “Where I Lived, and What I Lived For”:
“Both place and time were changed, and I dwelt nearer to those parts of the universe and to those eras in history which had most attracted me. Where I lived was as far off as many a region viewed nightly by astronomers. We are wont to imagine rare and delectable places in some remote and more celestial corner of the system, behind the constellation of Cassiopeia’s Chair, far from noise and disturbance. I discovered that my house actually had its site in such a withdrawn, but forever new and unprofaned, part of the universe. If it were worth the while to settle in those parts near to the Pleiades or the Hyades, to Aldebaran or Altair, then I was really there, or at an equal remoteness from the life which I had left behind, dwindled and twinkling with as fine a ray to my nearest neighbor, and to be seen only in moonless nights by him.”
Just one chapter earlier in Walden, Thoreau had speculated on extraterrestrial life and alien worlds. It does not take much effort to see the connections with the main concepts in Forbidden Planet, though written over one century apart:
“We might try our lives by a thousand simple tests; as, for instance, that the same sun which ripens my beans illumines at once a system of earths like ours. If I had remembered this it would have prevented some mistakes. This was not the light in which I hoed them. The stars are the apexes of what wonderful triangles! What distant and different beings in the various mansions of the universe are contemplating the same one at the same moment! Nature and human life are as various as our several constitutions. Who shall say what prospect life offers to another? Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other’s eyes for an instant? We should live in all the ages of the world in an hour; ay, in all the worlds of the ages. History, Poetry, Mythology!—I know of no reading of another’s experience so startling and informing as this would be.”
“A Useful Enough Toy”
The main theme of the 1968 science fiction film 2001: A Space Odyssey was the evolution of the human species over four million years with some crucial assistance along the way by a very advanced yet unseen ETI. These aliens conducted their eugenics program via a mechanical proxy in the form of a large and mysterious black monolith.
We watch humanity evolve from a primitive hominid barely surviving on the African plains, who is taught to use tools both for taking down animals for food and forcing rival hominid groups from their territory, to a thriving spacefaring species that can send a manned mission all the way to Jupiter with a nuclear-powered vessel. Aboard that sophisticated spacecraft bound for the gas giant planet, appropriately named Discovery, we meet the ship’s six crewmembers: Five human astronauts and one artificial intelligence (AI) named HAL 9000.
Although we learn that HAL can actually think, monitors and controls nearly every aspect of the spaceship, and can even handle the entire mission on his own in the event that his organic counterparts become unable to, the humans don’t really see HAL as a true and equal member of the team, despite several public comments by them to the contrary. To them, HAL is just another mechanical component of the overall vessel they are riding in through interplanetary space. Granted, they recognize that HAL is a very sophisticated machine unlike anything else aboard Discovery – one they can hold varied conversations and play chess with, among other abilities – but the computer’s physical lack of resemblance to a human form keeps the astronauts from truly accepting HAL as a fellow intelligent being, thanks to their millions of years of hardwired biological programming about anything that is not a mammalian biped.
On the other hand, HAL 9000 sees himself as a vitally important and devoted member of the crew and the mission, who at the same time serves as the constant caretaker of the humans, doing such mundane tasks as adjusting the tanning table when one of them using it asks him to. HAL says as much in the film during a remote news interview when the reporter asks him if “despite your enormous intellect, are you ever frustrated by your dependence on people to carry out your actions?”
To which HAL replies:
“Not in the slightest bit. I enjoy working with people. I have a stimulating relationship with Dr. Poole and Dr. Bowman. My mission responsibilities range over the entire operation of the ship so I am constantly occupied. I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all, I think, that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.”
HAL is so dedicated to the mission, in fact, that when he determines the astronauts want to shut him down over a technical error he made, HAL responds by terminating almost all of the crew in a combined act of self-preservation and saving the mission. We also learn from the novelization written by Arthur C. Clarke and the 1984 film sequel, 2010: The Year We Make Contact, that the humans who organized the space mission ordered HAL to keep certain aspects a secret from the two astronauts who were awake during the voyage, while the other three crewmen were in artificial hibernation and fully aware of the true purpose for Discovery venturing all the way to Jupiter: To investigate a giant alien artifact circling the planet, a one mile-long version of the Monolith called the Stargate. This created a conflict within HAL, who was programmed to conduct all actions accurately and report all data truthfully, which resulted in HAL becoming neurotic, paranoid, and ultimately a danger. This situation forced the sole surviving human crewmember, Dave Bowman, to disconnect HAL’s higher brain functions, leaving only the AI’s “unconscious” ability to run the Discovery systems intact.
HAL 9000 would become the cinematic poster child for humanity’s primal fear of anything which even hinted at being both alien and truly intelligent, especially if such an entity were perceived as somehow superior to humans. It was one thing to have supernatural deities who were more powerful and aware – people had been used to that concept for many thousands of years and their “image” and proclamations could be controlled by those in authority – but it was another thing entirely to have beings with similar potential who could exist right alongside with humans whom no one had any real authority over. Human history had shown many times what happened when one group with some form of advancement over another group encountered one another: The group at a disadvantage most often ended up either assimilated or exterminated. If a collection of humans could do this, then certainly a more sophisticated intelligence could do the same if not worse.
2001 stacked the deck against HAL two-fold: Not only was he made into the villain of the plot, HAL (and by default all other terrestrial AI) was also denied any real possibility of being the true inheritor of intelligence emerging from Earth. For it was clear from the start that the Monolith ETI were focused solely on the evolutionary development of the hairy little organic creatures they found in the desert wastes of Africa four million years ago and only those biological beings which directly emerged – gave physical birth to over the generations – from those distant ancestors.
One could easily argue that humanity also gave birth to AI as they did physically create these intelligent machines, until we realize this truth: 2001: A Space Odyssey was made by and for the enlightenment and entertainment of human beings, so they get to be the focus and the heroes of the film. This is why the Monolith aliens, despite being described in the novelization as once having had their own machine stage of evolution, stick with uplifting those tailless primates to the end of the film and not the remarkable artificial intelligence that for all intents and purposes was the brain of the USS Discovery, which would make the interplanetary ship its body.
This reaction to HAL 9000 and his “kind” reflects another aspect of human thinking, one that has only marginally improved at best on a cultural level in the nearly half-century since 2001 arrived in theaters: The recognition of intelligence and consciousness only in beings that resemble one’s self. This trait has an ancient evolutionary purpose, for a species naturally wants to interact, protect, and mate with members of its own kind. To conduct similar behavior with beings of other species would be a waste of time, resources, and genetics.
There are precedents for this in regards to the alien both in fiction and real life. The Dutch mathematician and scientist Christiaan Huygens wrote a remarkable work about intelligent life on other worlds titled Cosmotheoros, completed in 1695 but not published into English until 1698. Huygens imagined the physiology of alien beings and concluded they would have to resemble humans in shape and function at the least in order to be rational, civilized creatures. While it was certainly a major step forward in intellectual thought to produce a combined scholarly and popular level work on ETI, Huygens’ ideas were limited by his time and place, which has always been the case.
Huygens’ biased views are reflected right up to modern era SETI, which has spent the majority of its nearly six decades of existence searching for aliens who are transmitting via radio waves for scientific or at least altruistic purposes while dwelling on terrestrial type worlds circling yellow dwarf suns; in other words, versions of humanity. Only in the most recent decades has mainstream SETI moved beyond sporadic and token non-radio efforts to find other civilizations at different wavelengths and with alternative instrumentation. You can read the details about this paradigm in the 2009 work titled SETI: A Critical History by Mark A. Sheridan online here:
Our attitudes towards non-human intelligences are also reflected in our treatment of cetaceans over the centuries. These highly intelligent and social beings had the “misfortune” of looking and acting like fish, which led humans historically to ignore their minds to focus on taking advantage of what their bodies had to offer society on dry land. Only recently have the majority of nations finally stopped hunting whales and dolphins for consumer goods and food, although a few cultures are still participating in what can only be looked upon as an act of barbarism.
In fiction there are a multitude of examples, but to choose one, check out the reverse attitude in Star Trek: The Motion Picture, released in 1979. That story involves a dramatic encounter with a highly advanced and massive machine intelligence which calls itself V’Ger and views the human and humanoid crew of the Starship Enterprise not as “true” life forms but what it calls “carbon units”. V’Ger sees only the Enterprise as a fellow living intelligent being, if much smaller and less sophisticated, while the carbon units are a mere infestation of the ship, which in a gesture of interstellar goodwill V’Ger wants to remove from the Enterprise in the same manner that a person calls an exterminator when they discover cockroaches in their home.
Is V’Ger’s reaction one we might expect in our reality from such a species so different from humanity in so many respects? That even highly evolved alien minds which are far more adept and experienced with existence on a truly cosmic scale may ignore, avoid, or remove anything that does not compare to them? Perhaps they might maintain a formal degree of understanding, ethics, and even respect for other intelligences of all stripes, but they may no more want to engage with us than we do with a typical plant and for similar reasons. Or maybe they would want to interact with us, but only as the equivalent of either pets or laboratory animals. Once more, however, we must rely on the organisms of a singular planet as our source of nonfictional information, while we await the day that reveals whether others exist elsewhere or not.
As for the organic starship crew, it takes them a while to grasp that V’Ger is not another inorganic vessel with a living crew inside it, but an actual conscious being in itself, evolved from a late 20th Century deep space probe from Earth named Voyager 6 with lots of initial help from an unnamed alien race of living machines. This is understandable to a degree because the majority of ETI in the Star Trek universe are generally some variation of humanoid who also tend to behave in ways similar to the natives of Sol 3.
Returning to Forbidden Planet, we find its cinematic star, Robby the Robot, with a status among the humans in the film similar to many of his fictional artificial counterparts. Robby is multitalented: Conversant in 188 human languages, operates a ground vehicle at high speeds without danger either to himself or his passengers, can prepare just about any kind of meal, lifts objects weighing many tons with one arm, possesses the ability to analyze and reproduce items as varied as precious gems, dresses, and alcohol, and eventually navigates a star cruiser through interstellar space all the way to Earth. Despite all this and more, his creator Dr. Morbius only sees Robby as “a useful enough toy” and tells the officers of the C-57D not to “attribute feeling to him, gentlemen. Robby is simply a tool. Tremendously strong, of course. He could quite easily topple this house off its foundation.”
As for Morbius’ daughter, Altaira, while she clearly appreciates and adores Robby as a nanny and nursemaid, perhaps even a surrogate mother, it is also obvious that she too ultimately sees the robot as just another mechanical device whose primary existence is to serve their human masters’ every need and whim. Apparently looking even somewhat human – Robby has a torso with two arms and two legs attached to it, plus a type of head on top – is not enough to earn some humans’ respect or their intellectual appreciation.
Morbius claims he built Robby in his first few months on Altair 4, his first act after being unintentionally “brain boosted” by the Krell plastic educator. Robby may have been put together by a pair of human hands, but his technology is definitely alien: Adams exclaims to Morbius that “this robot of yours is beyond the combined resources of all Earth’s physical science.”
While I can understand that Krell technology would surpass anything the human civilization of the 23rd Century had to offer, I would be rather surprised if robots were not part of that future landscape for humanity even if they could not match Robby in abilities. Yet we saw no such independent mechanical devices aboard the C-57D, not even to do the dirty work such as laundry duty, handling the ship’s radioactive drive core, or being sent out onto the surface of Altair 4 ahead of the human crew to scout for dangerous native creatures and any other hazards that might arise from the sudden provocation of foreign visitors.
For that matter, why did we see no examples of robots moving about in the Krell facility, or just being there at all such as in storage? Did the Krell ever build or need such mechanical devices? Would they have looked and functioned like Robby? Do beings who are said to be a million years ahead of human civilization have no need for robots? Was that in fact the goal of the Krell when they tried to create matter from pure thought, so that they would no longer need robots or any equivalent type of machines to serve them? Or did any existing Krell robots end up being collateral damage when their creators inadvertently unleashed their Ids upon their world? That Morbius was able to construct Robby from studying the Krell records shows that these ETI at least had the ability to build their own robots, though this should be surprising to no one. One also has to wonder if the Krell had developed their own version of AI and whatever became of them if so? Or why the Krell never had their own phases of becoming cyborgs or outright machines, so far as we know?
Robots were certainly part of the conceptual and story landscape in mid-Twentieth Century ideas of the future. Robby’s prominent presence in FP as representing one of the many classical mainstays of science fiction placed in this film is proof of this: Just look whose visage dominates nearly every poster that advertised FP, excluding the image of whom I presume to be Altaira (but with a much longer hair style) lying unconscious across a sinister-looking Robby’s arms (which never happened in the film). Yet both in the onscreen culture of FP’s society and the contemporary mindset of the people who made the film, humans are still required (and perhaps also preferred and trusted) to operate a starship, despite all the extra resources and accommodations required to maintain even a small collection of human crew compared to a purely mechanically run space vessel.
This attitude prevailed in FP‘s successor, Star Trek, to the point where whole episodes throughout the franchise revolved around the perceived dangers of letting an AI take the place of a human (or otherwise organic) captain and their crew when it came to being in control of an interstellar craft. Whenever an AI showed up in the series, especially one made by aliens, you were almost guaranteed that trouble would soon result if not already present in the situation. Only the brave, plucky, and ingenious humans with their independent thinking could save the day, no matter how much smarter or more powerful the AI antagonist might be in comparison.
If you study the real space literature and plans of the pre-Sputnik era that FP came from, exploring other worlds starting with the nearest ones in our Sol system almost always involved large expeditions involving multiple big ships with dozens of human crewmembers, almost always all male. One big part of the reason for these logistics is that while naturally the ability to physically reach those distant celestial bodies would require strictly mechanical methods and devices, the internal equipment for such things as guidance and scientific observation would need trained humans at the controls. Machines were seen as being limited when it came to complex tasks, both in terms of physical operations and intellectual comprehension, which was largely true in the 1950s.
The emergence of the Space Age would in fact bring about the development of smaller and more efficient computers, eliminating the need for large human tenders and often any direct human interaction at all. FP just happened to be caught in the transitional period between machines and ships that required the presence of many people to function and ones where a human was aboard mostly for the sake of their presence as a living representative of the species.
Perhaps we can sympathize better with the mindset of the folks living during the era FP arrived in the film houses as we enter the next stage of robotics and computers, where the concept of road vehicles driving themselves is rapidly becoming a societal reality and AI sophistication is replacing humans in tasks once thought exclusively for the beings who created them. A car that can operate on its own is still a rather foreign and even concerning concept to most people, yet in just a few decades, having a human directing an automobile or truck may be seen as both an old-fashioned novelty and even unnecessarily dangerous.
So too with this idea of a starship needing large numbers of people to run it properly. Just as humanity’s first direct explorers to the Moon and planets of our Sol system were mechanical proxies, the real plans for our first interstellar vessels involve just sophisticated technologies, including and especially AI. The idea of having to accommodate even one human being aboard these pioneering vessels is not even seriously considered.
Even the technology levels for these star probe plans have been greatly reduced: When the British Interplanetary Society (BIS) conceived of the Daedalus interstellar explorer in the 1970s, they envisioned a monster fusion-powered probe weighing 54,000 tons and dwarfing a Saturn 5 rocket. By comparison, the current Breakthrough Starshot design of the Breakthrough Initiatives effort is considering a swarm of very small but highly sophisticated probes called StarChips pushed by powerful laser beams to spread themselves throughout a target star system and report back on the alien realm they have encountered.
One of the last scenes in Forbidden Planet has the reveal that not everything on Altair 4 was lost once Morbius had Adams activate the global self-destruct mechanism in the Krell laboratory. The camera pulls back to show Robby sitting at the cruiser’s astrogator station, the one once occupied by the late “hotshot” pilot Lt. Jerry Farman. Robby is flanked by a number of the surviving crewmen, all of whom are beaming at the robot. Even Adams remarks out loud to no one in particular that Robby is “quite an astrogator,” to which Robby replies that his new job is “a genuine privilege, Commander.” Adams then orders Robby to activate the main view plate, so everyone on board can watch the ultimate demise of the planet they just escaped from.
The filmmakers undoubtedly wanted these scenes to serve two main purposes: The most important reason was to reassure the audience that everyone’s favorite character from FP did not end up vaporized along with the rest of Altair 4. The other purpose was to ensure that the crew would be able to find their way home despite losing their original astrogator with a replacement pilot who would obey Adams’ every command without question or hesitation and certainly never even consider such actions as coming out of hyperspace a bit too close to a star or trying to steal his future wife.
What the makers of FP perhaps did not give much formal thought to was what would happen with Robby once the C-57D returned to Earth Base. Morbius may have wanted the technology and knowledge of the Krell kept from humanity, except for the bits and pieces he wanted to dole out at his discretion, but in just over one year’s time they would be receiving a walking and talking example from that very civilization. What would the United Planets authorities do with this “gift” from a species one million years ahead of humanity, a unique specimen from a now otherwise non-existent alien society – assuming the Krell did not leave colonies or at least their technology on other worlds during their era of interstellar space exploration?
One possibility I cannot imagine happening is that Altaira would get to keep her lifelong surrogate parent and servant. Robby would be far too valuable to the authorities to remain in the possession of any private individual, regardless of their past history. Undoubtedly the UP would want to thoroughly study Robby while simultaneously ensuring that no one would be able to either steal or destroy him.
Would the UP want to duplicate Robby and install his copies on all of their star cruisers to serve multiple tasks aboard their ships? Would they also want Robby’s matter duplication abilities? In addition, assuming Robby is made of that same nearly impervious dark Krell grade steel we saw easily absorbing Adams’ blaster beams, I am sure the UP equivalent of the military-industrial complex would love to copy that. Assuming Robby’s data storage capacity is also made from Krell technology, might he also have all the knowledge of the alien race in his data banks? Even if the latter case was not the case, the authorities may still have enough from Robby to set them on the path that Adams “predicted” in his final speech to Alta (and the audience) and which Morbius feared that humanity would eventually become as advanced as the Krell – and also fail to learn from their fatal mistake? Or would they be able to avoid that pitfall since they are aware and have the Krell themselves as the example?
Now what about Robby himself? Would he have any say in how the UP might treat him? Does he have rights? Judging this world based on its 1950s ideology, I cannot imagine that Robby would be seen as an individual with the same rights as a human being, even though in many respects he is superior to a human. There were instances when Robby seemed to express human emotions and therefore have a consciousness and feelings, but it could also be argued that Morbius programmed those reactions into Robby for certain situations to make him more relatable to him and especially Altaira.
When Morbius was first describing his creation to the C-57D officers, he did state the following – another interesting and informative tidbit about the world of FP which sadly never made it from the 1954 script into the released film version:
“From the viewpoint of sheer engineering, he might better have been simply a sphere, with multiple appendages – but Man has a weakness for making things in his own image. In this case, there’s even an automatic courtesy adjustment – you’ll notice how he invariably rotates his top section toward the person he addresses. Totally non-functional of course – actually he sees, hears, feels simultaneously in all directions.”
Note that Morbius includes the word “feels” among Robby’s abilities. Did Morbius mean that Robby can feel as in the tactile sense such as being able to feel physical pain? Or was he referring to emotions? Or both? Did Morbius program these in along with Robby’s other clearly created senses? Whether the doctor meant physical or emotional feelings or both states, this would mean that Robby can be hurt in the same ways that a human can. Therefore calling Robby a “toy” and a “tool”, along with telling Adams and company not to attribute any feelings (sympathies) for the robot such as when Robby almost stuck his arm into a disintegrator beam at Morbius’ command, contradicts such evidence and if nothing else shows how much Morbius has drifted away from his own humanity over the years. Feelings would also imply a conscious awareness at some level, whether programmed or not. This would further elevate Robby’s status as a sentient being with rights.
Robby also seems bound by the Three Laws of Robotics, created by science fiction author Isaac Asimov in the early 1940s. One of the first robot stories Asimov wrote involved a robot named Robbie who served as a nursemaid to a young girl. The laws state that a robot may never harm a human, but it can preserve itself so long as its actions do not conflict with the rule about humans being safe first. Asimov was quite pleased to see his Three Laws being utilized by Robby in its first appearance on the big screen. Although they never said the word “positronic” in the film, I speculate that Robby’s brain, or central processing unit (CPU), was also based on the mechanism Asimov gave to the robots in his fiction which helped them achieve a form of consciousness. In the series Star Trek: The Next Generation, the android Data was definitively described as having a positronic brain.
As we saw in Forbidden Planet, Robby was unable to harm a human being, be it Commander Adams with his own blaster when Morbius gave him a direct order to do so as a demonstration of how safe the robot was, or Morbius himself in the form of the Monster from the Id when Robby realized who the manifestation really was.
We also saw how ready Robby was to destroy his own arm when Morbius commanded the robot to place his appendage in the household disintegrator beam as part of another demonstration of Robby’s unswerving obedience.
So if the UP authorities commanded Robby to allow them to study him, which would probably include being dismantled in the process, at least temporarily, would Robby have complied? Very likely, I would say. One would also hope that when the UP was through with him – and assuming they did not permanently damage him in the process – they would allow Robby a level of freedom or some form of usefulness, rather than say store him away or keep him permanently dismantled. Perhaps Robby would eventually be reunited with Altaira (and by default Adams) to resume their past roles. It would be very interesting to see if Robby was one day either given or somehow achieved true consciousness (assuming he does not already possess it – refer to my remarks above about his feelings) and how he would react to being in the human world.
Robby the Pure
As we have seen, the big focus in the plot of Forbidden Planet was how both organic species, humanity and the Krell – and by extension any and all other biological beings in the Universe – were tainted from ever becoming true “pure” beings (and what exactly is this pure state?) due to their similar primal biological pasts. So long as you originated from a “lesser” species, no matter how long ago that was or how much you had risen above that lowly creature over the generations, you could never really escape your past or the fate it tied you to. At some point the primal beasts from the Id would either catch up with you and destroy your race, especially if you tried to attain Godhood, or you would have to deliberately cease your development, risking stagnation and perhaps ending up extinct in any event.
Assuming all life in the Universe began as a simple organic form on a planet or moon (and yes this is the only method we have proof actually happened for now), how can any such ETI ever hope to achieve a “perfect” state where they become so “good” that even the primal animal ancestors still residing somewhere deep within their mind organs and their equivalent of DNA can be either wrestled into permanent submission or removed altogether?
To state the following case one more time, the reason that intelligent species either fail like the Krell or could fail like humanity after generations of evolutionary, intellectual, cultural, and technological progress is that eventually they tried to become like God, or gods, or some form of supernatural deity or similar beings. Although this viewpoint was certainly not restricted to just one era, for the American culture of the 1950s to attempt such a goal was downright blasphemy, to be punished by the Judeo-Christian God either directly or through some ironic and indirect but still effective means. The Krell forgot they were once some microbes in a little pond on Altair 4, though no fault of their own since no one asks to be created, and paid for this with the extermination of their entire species. This despite having become such noble, intelligent beings who clearly had nothing but the best intentions with their further progression plans.
Meanwhile, humanity may have been far behind the Krell in every way, but they still had the potential to become just like the Krell in the far future, as Commander Adams simultaneously lauded and warned in his final speech of the film. With just a little introspection, one can see the analogy of the biblical Garden of Eden story being played out in Forbidden Planet, complete with an innocent but ultimately tempting Eve in a literal garden. The price for Altaira’s personal and humanity’s cultural loss of innocence was the expulsion of all from Altair 4 with no apparent way to ever return.
So what is an intelligent species to do if they want to expand themselves biologically, physically, and ethically? In reality are there real boundaries one cannot cross? If we play by the rules of the Forbidden Planet universe for now, how can humanity or any ETI ever escape their fate? If no organic being can hope to evolve past a certain point, then who or what can?
There is one intelligent “species” in their world who did not have a direct biological origin, unless you want to count having been put together by an organic creature. That being, the only one of his kind (for now) was not terribly well respected as a fellow intelligence by most of the humans he encountered, yet in the end it is Robby the Robot who turns out to be the most pure in terms a lack of ambition or other vices. Yet Robby is also ideally suited to be the very one who can evolve and progress throughout the galaxy and beyond, having no dangerous Id.
A team of Robbys would make ideal space explorers: No fear, a complete and tireless focus on the mission, no need for large amounts of consumables and other resources on an interstellar voyage, an in-depth and accurate return of science and starship engineering data on a continual basis, no concerns about being tempted to misuse any alien cultures and technologies they may come upon (I wonder what the Krell machinery would have produced from Robby’s electronic mind, if anything at all?), and no outright threat to the wider galaxy unless they encountered an ETI which could threaten them or especially humanity. Undoubtedly the space transportation vessels themselves could be made even more efficient for speed and science as they would not require all the extra resources and safety measures needed with a crew of human astronauts. They would also be able to go in regions of deep space where no organic human could ever safely go, thus allowing new knowledge about the Cosmos to be learned.
As we have seen, our first real interstellar craft will almost certainly be artificial throughout, with their AI brains being the only crew and perhaps some robots for tending the vessel: The BIS Daedalus star probe was designed to have semi-intelligent robots called Wardens for maintenance and repair tasks. Unless we want to deliberately send humans into the galaxy for colonization purposes, there would be no real need for a human crew on a starship despite all these decades of science fiction stories displaying otherwise. They may make for entertaining and relatable stories for their human audience, but in reality it would make genuine scientific exploration of deep space much more difficult, time-consuming, and expensive.
Of course if humans do want to explore space in person rather than by machine proxy, no mere set of logical parameters or advice is going to stop such missions from occurring. In fact I predict it likely that the first group of humans to leave the Sol system will probably be part of some kind of religious order or perhaps a very wealthy individual and their followers in a hollowed-out planetoid or comet turned into a WorldShip, or multigenerational starship, seeking freedom from an increasingly crowded interplanetary situation as humans expand into our planetary neighborhood – just as religious minorities sailed from Old Europe to the New World to worship as they saw fit. Those ocean journeys were no less perilous for these ancestors than an interstellar voyage will be for our descendants, and no more of a deterrent for a group of people with a fixed goal, or nothing else to lose.
While I certainly understand the enjoyment and thrill of the thought that one day humanity will be plying the stars just like they did in Forbidden Planet and Star Trek, the reality may be rather different than imagined, and not just because FTL propulsion may not be possible. Among those factors are that our children will not be like us in so many ways. The point and focus should always be that we achieve the goal of exploring the galaxy and beyond by the most plausible means at our disposal, ones that we study and work for rather than wait for someone or something else to achieve them for us. The means to this end may not be an actual Robby the Robot, but I would not be surprised if some form of our favorite FP character is the one aboard our real interstellar vessels. Then we can see if there is some kind of cultural “barrier” ready to stop us or if we end up being the ones making the rules of our evolution and progress.
Let Me Sum Up…
It is a credit to all those who participated in the making of Forbidden Planet that it has stood up so well after over half a century and all that has passed in the science fiction genre since this landmark film first appeared in theaters. This is in spite of some of the crasser elements and certain stereotypes of the era permeating their way into the final product.
As I have shown numerous times here, FP’s overall quality remains intact, along with its excellent acting and engaging story. The film also manages to address some very big issues, including ones that the filmmakers probably did not even fully realize. FP was a bridge between the era of profound optimism about humanity’s future and the coming age of science fiction cinema that began to address and question various social issues and our true place in the Cosmos. As FP was a film which had something for everyone when it came to the genre, it even played a role in science fiction’s reversion back to simpler concepts with the arrival of Star Wars in 1977. While we have yet to “recover” from that cinematic simplification four decades ago, thankfully there has been a growing resurgence of “smart” SF films and television series, which have also served to highlight not only FP’s rightful place among their direct ancestors, but how much that cinematic classic has held its own after all this time.
When FP premiered in 1956, humanity had not yet placed even one artificial object into Earth orbit, let alone sent a crewed FTL star vessel to another solar system. That I have so thoroughly critiqued the film and mined it for various ideas related to the prospects for real interstellar travel and humanity’s role in a wider reality, with the result that I have an even greater appreciation for FP than I thought already possible, speaks very well of this work of art.
All that being said, it is also high time that we as a spacefaring species start to move on from the foundations laid down by FP and greatly expanded upon by Star Trek and others. Like such landmark stories as From the Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne and The First Men in the Moon by H. G. Wells written two centuries ago, they have served as both useful guideposts and excellent inspirations for reaching space in reality. However, we now know that Verne’s method of sending humans to Earth’s natural satellite – a hollow projectile placed at the bottom of a 900-foot long buried cannon filled with guncotton – would never have worked and to pursue it would have only crushed any crew unlucky enough to have been in that projectile. Wells’ method of manned lunar travel would have been even less successful, as he employed an entirely imaginary anti-gravity substance called cavorite. Had we kept hoping that someday someone would discover or invent cavorite, we would still be talking about sending humans to the Moon in the future, or into space at all.
We need to realize that unless there is some radical change in our understanding of the laws of physics or a major technological development, humanity probably will not be cruising through the galaxy as depicted by FP, ST, and so many other science fiction stories, visual and written. Even more certain is that our species will not remain as it is now if we survive the next few centuries. Not only will our culture be radically different but human physiology will change thanks to everything from cosmetic surgery to genetic engineering to cybernetic implants. While it is understandable from a cinematic sense why science fiction films like FP tend to depict contemporary humans in an otherwise futuristic setting with radically different technology, they give a false impression of (and hopes for) a world of tomorrow that may instead only lead to a dead end.
The issue is that despite having known since Nicholas Copernicus (and Aristarchus of Samos if you want to get really academic) that our Earth is but one of a collection of planets circling the Sun (and by extension every star is a sun with a potential for worlds of their own orbiting them), the vast majority of humanity has never physically left our planet (and of them less than two dozen have gone further than low Earth orbit). For many the whole Universe may as well be whatever patch of land they currently reside upon. Granted we know more than our ancestors, have access to news and information on levels unseen before the advent of the Internet, and can get around Earth easier and faster than ever before. However, we remain largely a one-planet society divided by hundreds of nations and many smaller tribes within those boundaries. Combine this with a limited education for far too many and a culture that rewards physical prowess, material possession, and immediate gratification over a wide-ranging knowledge for current and future generations, and the results are a mostly inward-looking culture that sees such subjects as astronomy and exobiology as esoteric at most, despite knowing on some intellectual level that we and our planet are all part of a much literally bigger picture.
This is why science fiction often remains labeled as “kids’ stuff” (just like dinosaurs and other fields of real science even though they are highly involved disciplines requiring mature and educated adult minds to create and coordinate) even though certain films and literature are as sophisticated as anything else in these genres. Paradoxically, despite this often prevalent view on space and science fiction – with the two often being combined into one confused unit – how it is depicted on the large and small screen is what the general public thinks will truly happen one day.
The difference between now and in the era of Forbidden Planet is that the view of the future in the 1950s was a generally positive one: Look at how FP assumes that humanity will be united as one, that colonizing the planets is a natural step in our progress as a civilization, and exploring the stars is the ultimate and logical extension of our need to expand and found new frontiers. Current views of the future have been tinged by forty years and more of a more cynical view of human destiny: The Cold War and a greater awareness of the environment led people to initially use science fiction as a warning about what could happen should our technology and impulses get out of hand.
Unfortunately, as often happens, these ideas became a means unto themselves: The public focused more on the messenger than the message and became immersed and often lost in the trappings of these dystopias to the point that many viewed their depictions of the future as the accurate ones. FP and Star Trek‘s visions seemed naïve by comparison. Meanwhile this public forgot their main lesson: The future is in our hands. We can create the kind of tomorrow that we want, one that could work for everyone and literally convey us to the stars. Whether we are mature enough yet to become our own salvation or if someone or something else will step in to carry the mantle of terrestrial intelligence into the Cosmos remains to be seen.
“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.”
— Antoine de Saint-Exupery, author of The Little Prince
References
During my research for this essay I came across many useful and interesting items about Forbidden Planet which I incorporated into my work. Some I have already embedded throughout the essay itself at appropriate places, but others I wanted to showcase here in this section for your own edification. Note that all of the following hyperlinks were working at the time this essay was first published.
Thanks to the Internet and Dailymotion in particular, you can watch Forbidden Planet online here in two parts, uncut and unmodified:
Although much about the United Planets Cruiser C-57D remained a mystery to the film audience, that has never stopped certain talented individuals from speculating on what the unseen parts of the star cruiser look like and what purposes they served.
Here are three YouTube 3D tours of the C-57D which take us on speculative visits of all of the ship’s interior, especially those areas we never got to see. There are of course differences in each conceptual design, but they are well thought out just the same in their efforts to be logical within the boundaries of the cruiser as shown in the film.
Here is a PDF file about the paint scheme for a very detailed physical model of the C-57D, which also names and describes the interior features of the starship:
I discovered that the very last home designed by the famous architect Frank Lloyd Wright in 1959 (but not actually built until 1967) was inspired by Morbius’ house on Altair 4. This article further describes the Norman Lykes House in Phoenix, Arizona, along with a number of photographs of it. No word if Wright added a Krell laboratory to it.
This is the indispensable September of 1954 version of the FP script which I am forever grateful that someone put online. So many small and large details were in this version that I wish had been left in with the final product. My essay on the film would have been less informative without this script. Now if someone knows where to find the first script draft made in 1952, when Forbidden Planet was being called Fatal Planet and took place on the planet Mercury in the distant future year of 1976, or any other script versions for that matter, I would be most grateful.
Here are some semi-vintage magazine articles about FP now online in all their glory. This one is from the short-lived publication Science Fantasy Film Classics from 1977:
This is the Cinefantastique article on FP from 1979 which contains the original physical description of the Krell. Lots of production notes, diagrams, and artwork, too:
The first three parts of the above blog piece have a collection of publicity stills, or lobby cards, from the film, many of them focusing on Altaira and Robby.
This great Web site analyzes science fiction cinematic and television series technology, especially how practical the designs are in a realistic sense. Forbidden Planet was given a thorough treatment, which also gives us a chance to see the various props and sets in detail:
Some more “evidence” that FP influenced Gene Roddenberry when making Star Trek. Based on the following diagram from the USS Enterprise Officer’s Manual (1980) by Geoffrey Mandel, note how if you take away the secondary hull and the warp nacelles of the starship Enterprise, you basically have the C-57D saucer:
Although it was never shown in the original ST series due to budget restraints, it was known that the main hull of the Enterprise could separate from the rest of the ship, capable of landing on an alien planet. Instead that crew had to settle for the transporter and the occasional shuttlecraft. Later series franchises did show their Federation vessels doing what the original series only wished it could do.
There is a very nice set of blueprints of the FP starship titled Cruiser C-57D Ship’s Information Booklet, made by Shane Johnson with technical approval by modeler Dave Merriman, published by the Noron Group in 1983. Not only does this set show every part of the cruiser inside and out, but adds some wonderful touches about the operation and culture of the ship and the United Planets, respectively. If they are not canon to the film, they should be. This blueprint set is a must-have for any real FP fans, as they say. I could not find any decent reproductions of the set online to link here, but there should be.
Finally, here is a radio play version of Forbidden Planet from Australia made in 1959. It closely matches the 1956 film script:
Have a look at Jupiter as seen by the Juno spacecraft on its third close pass. A view as complex as the one below reminds us how images can be manipulated to bring out detail. This happens so frequently in astronomical images that it’s easy to forget this view is not necessarily what the human eye would see, and we always have to check to find out how a given image was processed. In this case, we’re looking at the work of a ‘citizen scientist,’ one Eric Jorgensen, who enhanced a JunoCam image to highlight the cloud movement.
Image: This amateur-processed image was taken on Dec. 11, 2016, at 1227 EST (1727 UTC), as NASA’s Juno spacecraft performed its third close flyby of Jupiter. At the time the image was taken, the spacecraft was about 24,400 kilometers from the gas giant planet. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Eric Jorgensen.
The image shows a region of Jupiter southeast of what is known as the ‘pearl,’ one of eight rotating storms at 40 degrees south latitude on the planet, a region of vast and roiling turbulence. Citizen science efforts like Planet Hunters, SETI@Home and Galaxy Zoo have brought private individuals into contact with scientific data and fostered interest in a wide range of sciences, with Planet Hunters rising to particular visibility thanks to its work with Boyajian’s Star and the still mysterious light curves observed there.
The Juno mission is delving into this realm with the announcement that on the spacecraft’s February 2 pass of Jupiter, the public will have had a voice in the selection of targets for the imaging team. As JPL notes in this news release, JunoCam will begin taking pictures as Juno approaches Jupiter’s north pole. Scientists have to keep an eye on onboard storage limitations as they consider which images to collect with JunoCam. Each close pass (‘perijove’) happens in a 2-hour window as the spacecraft goes from the north pole of the giant planet to the south pole, with JunoCam imaging a circumscribed strip of territory.
The voting for the February 2 flyby is still open, but the process repeats: Each orbit will have a voting page, and each perijove on Juno’s 53-day orbit will have space for two polar images within which the public can participate in prioritizing particular points of interest, in accordance with the science goals the mission is trying to meet. Several pages at the voting site will be devoted to unique points of interest that will be within range of JunoCam’s field of view during the next close approach. Raw images will then be made available for processing.
“The pictures JunoCam can take depict a narrow swath of territory the spacecraft flies over, so the points of interest imaged can provide a great amount of detail,” said Juno co-investigator Candy Hansen, (Planetary Science Institute). “They play a vital role in helping the Juno science team establish what is going on in Jupiter’s atmosphere at any moment. We are looking forward to seeing what people from outside the science team think is important.”
Bear in mind that JunoCam was included on the mission because, working in color and visible light, it could offer a wide field of view that would, among other things, spur public interest and involvement. So it’s not surprising to see this citizen science angle being brought forward, offering engagement not just from amateur scientists but students worldwide. Building public support is also a key component in keeping up the pressure for better space funding.
The February 2 flyby makes its closest approach to Jupiter at 0758 EST (1258 UTC), with the spacecraft about 4300 kilometers above the cloud tops. We’ll see Jupiter up close once again through a spacecraft’s lens, translated for us into images that mimic what we would see with our own eyes before we get to work processing them. If you’re interested in having a say on future JunoCam targets, click here for information on how to get involved.
Image: Jupiter’s south pole as seen during perijove 3, in an image processed by Julien Potier (Planetario Silvia Torres Castilleja, Ags, Mexico), rotated, cropped to get rid of yellowish band, processed with RGB levels, brightness, contrast and HDR Toning.
In Centauri Dreams, Paul Gilster looks at peer-reviewed research on deep space exploration, with an eye toward interstellar possibilities. For many years this site coordinated its efforts with the Tau Zero Foundation. It now serves as an independent forum for deep space news and ideas. In the logo above, the leftmost star is Alpha Centauri, a triple system closer than any other star, and a primary target for early interstellar probes. To its right is Beta Centauri (not a part of the Alpha Centauri system), with Beta, Gamma, Delta and Epsilon Crucis, stars in the Southern Cross, visible at the far right (image courtesy of Marco Lorenzi).
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