Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hi, my name is Robert Lamb and this is The
Speaker 2: Monster Fact, a short form series from Stuff to Blow
Speaker 2: Your Mind focusing on mythical creatures, ideas, and monsters in time.
Speaker 2: When I wrapped up the last Monster Fact episode concerning
Speaker 2: the alien universe, I mentioned that I'd be back with
Speaker 2: at least one more installment. That is, provided alien Romulus
Speaker 2: gave us anything new to ponder, and it certainly did so.
Speaker 2: Here we are once more going to discuss the many
Speaker 2: strange and horrifying ways that xenobiology can interact with human
Speaker 2: physiology in this series. Fair warning, this episode is going
Speaker 2: to feature spoilers for Romulus, as well as other alien
Speaker 2: films and bits of related media. First and foremost, we
Speaker 2: have to remember that even the cores morph life cycle
Speaker 2: is one of horrific and deadly hybridity. The adult xenomorph
Speaker 2: is inherently a combination of alien and host DNA agent
Speaker 2: A zero slash thirty nine to fifty nine x point
Speaker 2: ninety one slash fifteen. The black goo works as an
Speaker 2: evolutionary accelerant on most biological modes of life. In the series,
Speaker 2: pushing them into stranger, more hostile, and more durable forms.
Speaker 2: So most of the individual forms and lifestyle stages we've
Speaker 2: discussed so far can be thought of as the most
Speaker 2: likely forms and morphs of xenomorphic life, but many other
Speaker 2: paths are possible. This is especially true when human engineer
Speaker 2: or android scientific manipulation changes the shape of things to come.
Speaker 2: In nineteen ninety seven's Alien Resurrection, set two hundred years
Speaker 2: after the events of Alien three in the year twenty
Speaker 2: three eighty one, we encounter United Systems military scientists who
Speaker 2: have not only created numerous clones of long dead Ellen Ripley,
Speaker 2: but also the xenomorph queen that was growing inside her
Speaker 2: at the moment of her death. Their results are numerous
Speaker 2: Ripley clones with varying degrees of xenomorphic biology, as well
Speaker 2: as an alien queen with human reproductive physiology. The latter
Speaker 2: situation results in the birth of a monstrous newborn hybrid,
Speaker 2: a pale humanoid xenomorph with various human features and a
Speaker 2: complex emotional state. Much earlier in the Alien timeline and
Speaker 2: more recently at our cinemas, we witness the birth of
Speaker 2: the offspring hybrid in Alien Romulus We get to this
Speaker 2: creature via various missteps. First of all, whalen Utani scientists
Speaker 2: managed to isolate the black goo from the remains of
Speaker 2: the original Nostromo xenomorph. Then they attempt to engineer it
Speaker 2: into a control biohacking agent that alters human physiology to
Speaker 2: make them more resilient. Offworld colonists a futurist concept that
Speaker 2: we've discussed unstuff to blow your mind before. Instead of
Speaker 2: terraforming other worlds into something more like Earth, what if
Speaker 2: we altered ourselves to better fit those worlds, or at
Speaker 2: least met them halfway. So give it up to wayaly
Speaker 2: Utani solid concept. Their execution, however, falls tragically short of perfection.
Speaker 2: In their vanity, they attempted to harness the biotechnological might
Speaker 2: of the engineers, and the violent trajectory of the black
Speaker 2: Goo could not be contained. We see footage of the
Speaker 2: supposedly successful resurrection of a dead lab rat via the
Speaker 2: formula let's call it gray Goo, only to later see
Speaker 2: the disastrous mutations that the specimen experienced. Now unaware of
Speaker 2: the latter complications, the characters in Romulus take off with
Speaker 2: the gray goose samples and sure enough one of them,
Speaker 2: K eventually injects it into their own system to bounce
Speaker 2: back from an injury. The gray Goo appears to work here,
Speaker 2: at least initially. However, the formula affects K's pregnancy, resulting
Speaker 2: in the rapid earth and development of a fast growing
Speaker 2: alien zeno hybrid referred to as the Offspring, a towering,
Speaker 2: misshapen monster with elements of xenomorph human and engineer features. Now,
Speaker 2: I wasn't sure exactly how I felt about this creature
Speaker 2: design at first, but it has grown on me, and
Speaker 2: I've seen that it clearly freaked out and revolted plenty
Speaker 2: of viewers, so it's very much serving its purpose in
Speaker 2: the film. So I eagerly await revisiting this creature when
Speaker 2: Romulus is released into our homes later this month. Now,
Speaker 2: the Romulus scientists we're far from the first to experiment
Speaker 2: with the black goo and charge its effects on various organisms.
Speaker 2: The engineers, of course, pioneered this science, and the rogue
Speaker 2: android David experimented exhaustively on the flora and fauna of
Speaker 2: an engineer home world, before presumably moving on to more
Speaker 2: human centric experimentations on the far flung world of our
Speaker 2: Guy six. In David's Notes and Drawings from the Engineer
Speaker 2: World and Covenant, we see exhaustive and increasingly nightmarish records
Speaker 2: of the black Goose effects on native species, as well
Speaker 2: as his own manipulation and proposed alterations of human and
Speaker 2: engineer physiology with the accelerant and altered strains of xenomorphic life.
Speaker 2: Interestingly enough, one of these images depicts a creature with
Speaker 2: the head of an engineer and the body of a xenomorph.
Speaker 2: It would seem that David's twisted imagination, if not his
Speaker 2: unwholesome experiments, prophesied the romulus offspring decades earlier. You'll see
Speaker 2: this illustration, by the way, in the compiled volume David's Drawings,
Speaker 2: published in splendid hardback, alongside a softback booklet about the
Speaker 2: artists Matt Hatton and Dame Hallett, who created the drawings
Speaker 2: and the notes that litter the set of David's laboratory
Speaker 2: in the film. The main book is a beautiful, haunting volume,
Speaker 2: and the accompanying booklet provides wonderful insight into the visual
Speaker 2: design process of the film. Now, the Extended Alien Universe
Speaker 2: contains numerous additional hybrid complications. The Alien RPG from Freely
Speaker 2: Publishing includes several of these related to the creation of
Speaker 2: the twenty six Dracona strain, a black goo based vaccine
Speaker 2: similar to what we see in Romulus, intended in this
Speaker 2: case to halt the development of a xenomorphic embryo in
Speaker 2: the human body. In the module Destroyer of Worlds, we
Speaker 2: see one complication in which the black goo derivative is
Speaker 2: introduced into the body of a human already impregnated by
Speaker 2: a face hugger. The accelerant, they write, serves as a
Speaker 2: genetic bridge, resequencing the DNA of human host and xenomorphic
Speaker 2: embryo into a single organism, essentially turning the human into
Speaker 2: a xenomorph from the inside out. The resulting body burster
Speaker 2: resembles a normal adult xenomorph, but with the skull of
Speaker 2: the human host embedded in the creature's cranial dome. This concept,
Speaker 2: in essence, originates in William Gibson's unproduced screenplay for Alien three,
Speaker 2: and plays on some early hr Giger suit designs for
Speaker 2: the original Alien. It's a fitting and horrific concept that
Speaker 2: Alien filmmakers should certainly come back to in the future,
Speaker 2: all right, that's it for this episode. Tune in for
Speaker 2: additional installments of The Monster Fact, The Artifact, or Anomalogus
Speaker 2: Dupendium each week. We'll run an omnibus of the Alien
Speaker 2: episodes later this month, and as always, you can email
Speaker 2: us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
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