Speaker 1: Hey, Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 2: And I am Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday. We're heading
Speaker 2: into the vault for an older episode of the show.
Speaker 2: This was a Halloween episode we did called Anthology of Horror,
Speaker 2: Volume nine, one of our long running series of Halloween
Speaker 2: season episodes where we look at anthology TV series and
Speaker 2: various things like that. I think in this one I
Speaker 2: ended up talking about an episode of cole Check The Nightstalker.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, it's a pretty fun one. I believe this
Speaker 1: is going to be This will have been our last
Speaker 1: Anthology of Horror episode, but there's going to be a
Speaker 1: spiritual successor to this series starting in just the next
Speaker 1: couple of weeks, or next week or this week. We're
Speaker 1: recording these intros ahead of time so we can get
Speaker 1: a little lost in the time flow.
Speaker 2: Oh by the way, this episode originally published October thirty first,
Speaker 2: twenty twenty three. Hope you enjoy.
Speaker 3: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. This is
Speaker 1: Ruthless Rob Lamb.
Speaker 2: And this is Corrosive Joseph McCormick and Happy Halloween.
Speaker 1: That's right, we're continuing our Halloween tradition this year, or
Speaker 1: it's been our Halloween tradition for several years now. Anthology
Speaker 1: of Horror this is where we take We each take
Speaker 1: an episode of a TV anthology series or something related
Speaker 1: to this tradition, such as in the case of Joe's
Speaker 1: selection this year, kind of like a Monster of the
Speaker 1: Week episode, which which still close enough for our work,
Speaker 1: and then we spend some science or contemplation out of it.
Speaker 1: Before we switched over and started doing horror and sci
Speaker 1: fi anthologies, we did the same treatment with creepy pastas
Speaker 1: in the past. So that's what we do in this series,
Speaker 1: take a little horror, a little sci fi, and spin
Speaker 1: it out, squeeze it out, and see what kind of
Speaker 1: science we can get out of it. However, I think
Speaker 1: this is likely the final installment of Anthology of Horror.
Speaker 1: Here on stuff to blow your mind, and mainly because
Speaker 1: ever since we started doing Weird House Cinema, the premise
Speaker 1: has felt like a little bit redundant, like we get
Speaker 1: to talk about a weird movie every week, so maybe,
Speaker 1: at least in my case, it feels a little less
Speaker 1: special to have this Horror Anthology episode we do every year,
Speaker 1: and we've also covered a lot of great selections already,
Speaker 1: So I don't know if listeners out there have strong
Speaker 1: feelings about this right end, and we will consider now.
Speaker 2: I know you suggested that this would be Anthology of
Speaker 2: Horror the Final Chapter, but if we're going by Friday
Speaker 2: the thirteenth sequel naming conventions, that would have actually been
Speaker 2: the fourth Anthology of Horror episode we did, which was
Speaker 2: many years ago. Now this is the ninth, is that correct?
Speaker 2: Which would that would put us in Jason Goes to
Speaker 2: Hell territory? So this really should be Anthology of Horror
Speaker 2: Part nine Robin, Joe go to Hell.
Speaker 1: Okay, well, hopefully we can deliver Jason Goes to Hell
Speaker 1: quality level or above in this episode. All right, Joe,
Speaker 1: what do you have for us? I teased it a
Speaker 1: little bit, but what is your selection for this year?
Speaker 2: Okay? So, not too long ago, on some episode or other,
Speaker 2: it came up that I had never seen any of
Speaker 2: the classic American TV series Colchak The Night Stalker, which
Speaker 2: was originally broadcast on ABC in nineteen seventy four. I
Speaker 2: think it ran seventy four to seventy five only for
Speaker 2: one season, though I think there are around twenty episodes
Speaker 2: or so. And my ignorance of this show was so
Speaker 2: deep that I didn't even realize it had a supernatural element.
Speaker 2: I thought, I guess this was just based on the name.
Speaker 2: I thought it was some kind of gritty crime show.
Speaker 2: I think because I night Stalker. I thought about that
Speaker 2: serial killer and I was like, okay, it's like a
Speaker 2: serial killer show. But no, no, no, it's so much
Speaker 2: more delightful than that. This show is essentially a precursor
Speaker 2: to The X Files, where instead of FBI agents Malter
Speaker 2: and Scully, we have a fast talking, rascally Chicago newspaper
Speaker 2: reporter named Carl Kolchak played by Darren McGavin, whom I
Speaker 2: knew primarily as the dad, the guy who gets his
Speaker 2: son a BB gun in a Christmas story.
Speaker 1: Well, and of course that's a tremendous role by Darren
Speaker 1: McGavin there as well, So if you only know him
Speaker 1: for one role, like that's a good one to know
Speaker 1: him from. You know, it was in tons of stuff.
Speaker 1: But yeah, he's great in this, as I'll mention in
Speaker 1: a bit, I think he's he's he's really holding the
Speaker 1: show up on his shoulders.
Speaker 2: Now, I think any episode of Kolchak the night Stalker
Speaker 2: would count as an anthology entry because it had a
Speaker 2: monster of the Week format. In each new kaper Cha
Speaker 2: would begin by reporting on some weird crime, usually a
Speaker 2: murder that baffles the narrow minded police detectives. Ah, you know,
Speaker 2: the victim's teeth were all painted blue. What could this mean?
Speaker 2: And eventually we discover it means that the deaths were
Speaker 2: caused by a shape shifting wear tiger or something.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the plot that you encounter in these episodes, it's
Speaker 1: gonna be very formulaic. I think I watched a bunch
Speaker 1: of these back in the nineties on either Sci Fi
Speaker 1: or any probably sci Fi, and I remember liking it.
Speaker 1: And one thing I also strongly remember about it is
Speaker 1: it being kind of a cross generational hit. I have
Speaker 1: vague memories that like, both my dad and my granddad
Speaker 1: would be like cool with this show being on, because
Speaker 1: you know, kids in the nineties we wanted to watch monsters,
Speaker 1: or I wanted to watch monsters anyway. But the rest
Speaker 1: of the show has a very traditional episodic gum shoe
Speaker 1: feel to it. You know, it feels very classic television
Speaker 1: in that regard. It's very much a product of its age,
Speaker 1: but with this strange supernatural twist to it. And then
Speaker 1: at the center of this you have just an incredibly fun,
Speaker 1: fast talking and charismatic performance by Darren McGavin, and you
Speaker 1: just can't help but love him. You can't help but
Speaker 1: follow him, and you want to see what he does next.
Speaker 1: And it doesn't matter if you're here for the monsters
Speaker 1: or you didn't know monsters were going to occur, You're
Speaker 1: gonna stick around and see where this goes.
Speaker 2: Yes, the force of the main character's personality is really
Speaker 2: the anchor of the show. And now I haven't seen
Speaker 2: the whole series. I've only seen this one episode now
Speaker 2: and then read about some others, but I'm going to
Speaker 2: be watching more. I think it is interesting to compare
Speaker 2: the dynamics of Kolchak to the show that it is
Speaker 2: explicitly acknowledged to have inspired The X Files. I know,
Speaker 2: I think Chris Carter has said Kulchak was an inspiration
Speaker 2: on The X Files. So the X Files, the investigations
Speaker 2: there are that the tone of them is largely based
Speaker 2: on the tension between Molder the believer and Scully the skeptic,
Speaker 2: whereas in Colchak there's just one investigator, so there are
Speaker 2: not two characters to bounce ideas off each other and
Speaker 2: act as foils for one another. It all has to
Speaker 2: be there inside Darren McGavin, and there is a similar
Speaker 2: tension within him, but it's different. It's not like part
Speaker 2: of him is an idealistic true believer who just wants
Speaker 2: aliens to be real, and another part is ruthlessly seeking
Speaker 2: out hard evidence instead. I think the tension is between
Speaker 2: Coolchak's personality versus his observations. So it seems to me
Speaker 2: that the tension is that Kolchak is naturally a wily, sardonic,
Speaker 2: no nonsense personality. He talks like a just the facts
Speaker 2: kind of newsman, and he makes wry jokes about anything
Speaker 2: that sounds unusual, not just monsters, but unfamiliar science concepts,
Speaker 2: Like he makes jokes about the idea of rim sleep.
Speaker 2: You know, there's like a guy in this episode who's
Speaker 2: undergoing rim sleep, a scientist says, and he's like, oh,
Speaker 2: is he remming right now? And there's like an inflection
Speaker 2: on that that makes it sound funny, And then he
Speaker 2: has the same kind of jokes about anything that's outside
Speaker 2: of a very grounded, working class kind of scope of life.
Speaker 2: So he makes jokes about the impossibility of pronouncing the
Speaker 2: scientific names of plants, or about French food items, you know,
Speaker 2: stuff like that. And yet at the same time he
Speaker 2: puts the clues together and he does end up believing
Speaker 2: that the murders are supernatural in nature, and then has
Speaker 2: to convince other people. He has to convince his boss
Speaker 2: at the newspaper, the police whatever, that it really was
Speaker 2: a monster again this time, and not this other poor
Speaker 2: guy who's being falsely accused of the crime.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think that's a good summary of the energy here.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like Molder and Scully kind of have
Speaker 1: like an forgive me if I if I'm not doing
Speaker 1: justice to musical genres. They have kind of a shoegaze vibe,
Speaker 1: and I feel like, I feel like Coulhak is jazz,
Speaker 1: you know. Anyway, A couple of quick notes just about
Speaker 1: people involved in this series. The main character was created
Speaker 1: by Jeff Rice in his novel The Cool Track Papers,
Speaker 1: and this was adapted before it was published into the
Speaker 1: original nineteen seventy three TV movie That Kicked It All. Off.
Speaker 1: It concerned vampire murders, and I think that's where we
Speaker 1: get the night stalker thing. Also of note is that
Speaker 1: this episode is directed by Gordon Hessler, who lived nineteen
Speaker 1: twenty five through twenty fourteen. He directed nineteen seventy Scream
Speaker 1: and Scream Again, which we talked about in Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 1: M okay, And as far as the cast goes, you know,
Speaker 1: if this were a weird House would go deeper. But
Speaker 1: I will point out that we have the prolific Keenan Wynn,
Speaker 1: who lived nineteen sixteen through nineteen eighty six, playing Captain
Speaker 1: what mad Dog Joe in this and it's a pretty
Speaker 1: fun role.
Speaker 2: Yes, what do I know him from? I mean he
Speaker 2: was in a lot of things. You probably know him
Speaker 2: from Doctor Strangelove.
Speaker 1: I think he was in Tarantula. I don't know, have
Speaker 1: my notes in front of me, but he was very prolific.
Speaker 1: He was in a lot of stuff.
Speaker 2: But another big guest star in this movie, though you
Speaker 2: don't see his face, it's covered by some fibrous material,
Speaker 2: is Richard Keel, the guy who played Jaws in the
Speaker 2: James Bond series.
Speaker 1: Ah, he's just doing a basic big man monster role
Speaker 1: in this.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, he's ega. He's a soggy ega in So,
Speaker 2: to summarize the episode, it's called the Spanish Moss Murders,
Speaker 2: and it starts with Kolchak intercepting a call in his
Speaker 2: police radio to the scene of a murder in a
Speaker 2: fancy French restaurant. He makes some joke about the wine
Speaker 2: cellar of this restaurant having more than being worth more
Speaker 2: than the entire gross domestic product of Paraguay, which I
Speaker 2: looked that up and that would make it worth like
Speaker 2: billions of dollars at the time, So I think that's
Speaker 2: a little bit of an exaggeration. But anyway, the head
Speaker 2: chef of this restaurant has been slain right in the
Speaker 2: middle of the restaurant kitchen. His body's lying there on
Speaker 2: the floor between the prep tables and all that. And
Speaker 2: not only has he been killed, but his body was
Speaker 2: found in a particularly gruesome state, with its chest cavity
Speaker 2: crushed like a beer can. On top of that, there
Speaker 2: is some kind of weird, wet vegetable matter scattered around
Speaker 2: the crime scene, described by one character as quote green glop,
Speaker 2: and the police sagely conclude that the plant matter must
Speaker 2: be salad. They were in a restaurant after all.
Speaker 1: All right, solid police work, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think Rob you've seen more Culchak than me.
Speaker 2: Is this a theme that like the police don't know
Speaker 2: what they're doing and Colchak has to be the one
Speaker 2: to figure everything out.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I vaguely remember this being the case. You know,
Speaker 1: it's like you need an outside thinker because you know
Speaker 1: the police they're doing they're doing a good job. They're
Speaker 1: you know, they're not incompetent in this show, but they're
Speaker 1: used to dealing with normal crimes. Yeah, cold Shack's expertise
Speaker 1: comes into play when we're dealing with supernatural crimes.
Speaker 2: So Colchak is on the case. Through some crafty investigation
Speaker 2: involving trickery and trespassing, Colchack starts to piece together a
Speaker 2: perplexing set of facts connecting a number of different crimes.
Speaker 2: Together people all crushed or killed by severe blunt force
Speaker 2: trauma to the thorax, all with the same green glop
Speaker 2: found around their bodies, and after a visit to a
Speaker 2: local botanical garden, Kolchak is able to ascertain the origin
Speaker 2: of the green glop. It is Spanish moss, which only grows.
Speaker 2: He is told in hot and humid conditions nowhere around
Speaker 2: Chicago outside of a greenhouse. And I have to make
Speaker 2: a little observation. Spanish moss is not like usually wet
Speaker 2: and soggy. So I think I don't know how much
Speaker 2: experience the writers here had with actual Spanish moss, which
Speaker 2: is consistently described in this more like they're talking about algae.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, that is weird, isn't it. Yeah maybe they
Speaker 1: just hadn't been really exposed to it. But yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't think of Spanish moss as being humid and wet
Speaker 1: and drippy and gloppy and so forth.
Speaker 2: It's actually rather dry and crispy. In fact, famously, I
Speaker 2: know I was reading about there was one huge historical
Speaker 2: fire that was started when some Spanish moss caught fire.
Speaker 2: It was the Great Fire of nineteen oh one in Jacksonville, Florida,
Speaker 2: which a huge fire that was started outside a factory
Speaker 2: that was putting stuffing inside of upholstery for furniture, I think,
Speaker 2: and the stuffing they were using was Spanish moss. There
Speaker 2: were piles of it that I guess were sitting there
Speaker 2: to dry or sitting out ready to be stuffed into things,
Speaker 2: some of it caught fire and it caused this giant conflagration. Anyway,
Speaker 2: back to Colchak, investigation of one victim leads him to
Speaker 2: the victim's workplace, a university sleep laboratory, where the professor
Speaker 2: and his assistants are running an experimental treatment on a
Speaker 2: man with severe narcolepsy by keeping him in an induced coma.
Speaker 2: Colchak learns that the murder victim was an assistant in
Speaker 2: the last who was known for her clumsiness, one time,
Speaker 2: nearly waking up their test subject when she knocked over
Speaker 2: some apparatus in the room. Beyond that, other murder victims
Speaker 2: seem to have some connection to a social group of
Speaker 2: Cajun street musicians who are all originally from Louisiana Bayou
Speaker 2: Country and have moved up to the Chicago area. Kolchak
Speaker 2: learns from one of their associates the story of a
Speaker 2: bogeyman figure from Bayou folklore known as Paramoulfay, or the
Speaker 2: evil Father. All the Kajuns would joke to each other,
Speaker 2: you better watch out or Paramoufay is going to get you,
Speaker 2: and the stories go that Para Malfay has lived in
Speaker 2: the swamp since long before the Cajuns arrived. He's wet,
Speaker 2: he's covered in rot and festooned with Spanish moss from
Speaker 2: head to toe. Mothers warn their children that if they
Speaker 2: get out of line, paramoul Fay will squeeze the life
Speaker 2: right out of them, and the only way to beat
Speaker 2: him is to stab him with a steak from a
Speaker 2: bayou gum tree. Kolchak gets another piece of the puzzle.
Speaker 2: A prime suspect emerges in several of the murders, a
Speaker 2: man named Languis who is known to have a grudge
Speaker 2: against several of the victims, but he has a rock
Speaker 2: solid alibi. He is the man who has been in
Speaker 2: an induced coma in the sleep laboratory, so he's being
Speaker 2: monitored twenty four to seven. There's no way he could
Speaker 2: have done the murders because he never left the lab
Speaker 2: he's been asleep. Finally, Coolchak pieces it all together. He
Speaker 2: discovers the truth. The murders are being carried out by
Speaker 2: the sleeping man, but not physically. He is dreaming people
Speaker 2: to death. His experimental coma is preventing him from dreaming normally.
Speaker 2: I guess the drug regimen that the scientists are giving
Speaker 2: him is doing something to his ability to dream, and
Speaker 2: so his dreams are escaping his mind and becoming a
Speaker 2: physical entity in the form of the swamp monster paramou.
Speaker 1: Fay sleep dream manifestation kind of a toolpa.
Speaker 2: Exactly, and in the form of the bay U boogeyman
Speaker 2: covered in Spanish moss that this sleep subject grew up
Speaker 2: hearing about. So I guess presumably the monster in this
Speaker 2: story could have been anything. It could have been whatever
Speaker 2: it was that this man had in his mind. But
Speaker 2: because this is the folklore he knows, it assumes this form.
Speaker 2: It's kind of like Wes Craven's New Nightmare. You know,
Speaker 2: there's an entity that could take any form. The form
Speaker 2: it takes is the form you imagine, So it becomes
Speaker 2: Freddy Krueger.
Speaker 1: Yeah, or of course reminds one of Gozer as well,
Speaker 1: choose the form of the destructor. Yes.
Speaker 2: So Kolchak explains his theory to the police commander in
Speaker 2: the sleep lab, to Mad Dog Captain mad Dog Keenan
Speaker 2: Winn here, and the professor is ordered to wake up
Speaker 2: the test subject in order to stop the mayhem. But
Speaker 2: it doesn't work. Langua will not wake up, and instead
Speaker 2: he dies Coolchak thinks that, well, that's tragic, but now
Speaker 2: at least the trouble is over, until he discovers water
Speaker 2: and Spanish moss in his desk drawers. He thinks that
Speaker 2: there's like that the ceiling. The plumbing in the ceiling
Speaker 2: is leaking, and that's why there's water everywhere. But nope,
Speaker 2: Paramoufay has been stalking around his desk in the newspaper office,
Speaker 2: and this seems to mean that Paramoufay has escaped his host.
Speaker 2: Even though the dreamer is dead, the dream lives on independently,
Speaker 2: and now the dream knows the reporter is on to him.
Speaker 2: In the end, Coolchak has to confront the monster by
Speaker 2: tracking it to the sewers and staking it with a
Speaker 2: Bayou gum tree branch that he stole from the botanical garden.
Speaker 2: The sewer confrontation, I feel like, is a little anti
Speaker 2: climactic for me because you never get a great, great
Speaker 2: look at the monster. He's kind of a big, shaggy
Speaker 2: vegetable sasquatch played by Richard Keel.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean the lighting's pretty good, so it's not unforgiving,
Speaker 1: but yeah, it's a bit dark, and I mean it's
Speaker 1: obviously not the most robust monster costume ever committed to film.
Speaker 2: But I love the concept of the monster, even if
Speaker 2: it's not the most impressive looking thing I've ever seen.
Speaker 2: The idea of this shaggy creature dreamed into existence and
Speaker 2: covered head to toe in Spanish moss, just a shambling
Speaker 2: mess of plant matter.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it's a It's an admirable plot. It
Speaker 1: all fit, all the pieces fit together, and then at
Speaker 1: the same time it feels wild and weird enough that
Speaker 1: it could have been a symbol via like an improv
Speaker 1: theater audience shout out plot elements, like all right, what
Speaker 1: do we have? Okay here, I hear rim sleep, I
Speaker 1: hear Cajun boogeyman, I hear French cuisine. Okay, let's put
Speaker 1: all this together now.
Speaker 2: I was really hoping to discover that Paramolfa would be
Speaker 2: a real piece of Bayou lore that I could dig into,
Speaker 2: but alas I came up shore on this, all the
Speaker 2: sources I could find that looked solid at all seem
Speaker 2: to trace back to the Culchak episode. There are some
Speaker 2: websites that claim paramol Fay is an independent folk tale,
Speaker 2: but they don't cite any sources and they're just kind
Speaker 2: of websites, so I don't know. I couldn't find anything
Speaker 2: that looks solid that says this is an actual story
Speaker 2: that goes anywhere back further than the TV show. So
Speaker 2: I can't say for certain, but I will say my
Speaker 2: best judgment is it looks to me like this creature
Speaker 2: was invented for the show, though I think it may
Speaker 2: be based on existing folk beliefs. There are many monsters
Speaker 2: of the swamp. One example that it could be based
Speaker 2: on would be like the rugaroo, sort of a Francophone
Speaker 2: American werewolf legend.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think the rugaru connection is pretty solid here. Which,
Speaker 1: by the way, if you ever go to the zoo,
Speaker 1: the Audubon Zoo down in New Orleans, they have one
Speaker 1: on display. That's a lot of fun. But yeah, I
Speaker 1: feel like vay connection to that creature, like maybe that
Speaker 1: was even the original concept, and they're like, we have
Speaker 1: another episode that has a werewolf in it. Let's go
Speaker 1: a different direction here. I didn't do an exhaustive search.
Speaker 1: It seems like you went a lot deeper, but I
Speaker 1: did crack open Carol Rose's books and see if she
Speaker 1: had any mention. The only the closest thing she mentions
Speaker 1: is a different supernatural father, and that's Pierre Futard or
Speaker 1: Father Spanker, which is a French kind of uger character
Speaker 1: that's also a monstrous Christmas kind of crampiest creature that's
Speaker 1: a counterpart to Father Christmas. So she doesn't listen any
Speaker 1: kind of you know, swamp Spanish moss creature. So I
Speaker 1: think you're right. I think it's an invention for the show,
Speaker 1: but a fun invention and one that feels like it
Speaker 1: could be real enough. So there you go.
Speaker 2: Yes, Now, what about the monstrous qualities of Spanish moss itself?
Speaker 2: I wanted to get a bit into this. Here. A
Speaker 2: funny thing about Spanish moss. Most scientific sources will acknowledge
Speaker 2: this right at the top, is that it is neither
Speaker 2: Spanish nor is it moss, which is pretty funny, but
Speaker 2: I'll deal with those one at a time. So regarding moss,
Speaker 2: the species name of Spanish moss is Telanzia eucinioides, and
Speaker 2: it's taxonomized within the flowering plant family Bromeliacee, also known
Speaker 2: as the bromeliads, along with the pineapple plants. So Spanish
Speaker 2: moss is a cousin to the pineapple, and I feel
Speaker 2: like you can almost see it, Like if you get
Speaker 2: up real close to Spanish moss and you look at
Speaker 2: the weird curling stalks and leaves that kind of remind
Speaker 2: me of pineapple leaves in a strange way. They're obviously
Speaker 2: much smaller, but you can almost see the family resemblance.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm looking at some close up pictures right now,
Speaker 1: and yeah, I can lean into that.
Speaker 2: True mosses, of course, are more distantly related. They belong
Speaker 2: to a division of non vascular, non flowering plants called bryophytes.
Speaker 2: Spanish moss is not a moss at all. It's also
Speaker 2: not Spanish. It is native to north, South, and Central America.
Speaker 2: So in the United States it's only found in the South,
Speaker 2: along the Gulf Coast and up the East coast to
Speaker 2: around Virginia. Chicago is no place for a Spanish moss
Speaker 2: man to thrive.
Speaker 1: Yeah, when I think Spanish moss, I always instantly think Savannah, Georgia,
Speaker 1: because we have some some beautiful examples of it there,
Speaker 1: especially in the out there in amid the tombstones.
Speaker 2: Yeah, in North America, it's going to be especially in
Speaker 2: like coastal areas around the American South. But if it's
Speaker 2: not Spanish in origin, why is it called Spanish moss.
Speaker 2: You know, a lot of things just have like a
Speaker 2: country name applied to them and they're not from that
Speaker 2: country at all, and this is one of those cases.
Speaker 2: The origin story that I've seen most attested here is
Speaker 2: that the naming convention comes from early French explorers in
Speaker 2: the Americas who thought that the plant looked like the
Speaker 2: big beards of Spanish conquistadors, so they called the plant
Speaker 2: Spanish beard.
Speaker 1: Well, I think that's another reason that one might lean
Speaker 1: into creating a monster based on it, right, because it's
Speaker 1: already compared to a part of a person's look in
Speaker 1: general features.
Speaker 2: That's true. I want to get back to that in
Speaker 2: a minute now. An interesting thing that makes Spanish moss
Speaker 2: different as a plant is that it is an epiphyte,
Speaker 2: which means an organism that grows on other plants. Epi
Speaker 2: means on top of fight means plant, So it's an epiphyte.
Speaker 2: If you've ever seen it in the wild before, you've
Speaker 2: probably seen it hanging off of the limbs of trees,
Speaker 2: especially trees like live oak and cyprus. Now you might
Speaker 2: assume just by looking at it dangling off of tree
Speaker 2: limbs the way it does, that Spanish moss is a
Speaker 2: parasite killing the tree that hosts it. And you also
Speaker 2: might remember the botanical body horror that we talked about
Speaker 2: in our episodes on missletoe from several years back. In
Speaker 2: that case, one that is totally going Cronenberg on its
Speaker 2: host plant, that seems not to be the case with
Speaker 2: Spanish moss. A lot of sources flatly state that it
Speaker 2: is just not parasitic at all. It does no harm
Speaker 2: to the tree. According to this opinion, it would probably
Speaker 2: be best considered a commensal organism. So in this case,
Speaker 2: the idea would be Spanish moss benefits the tree is unaffected. However,
Speaker 2: it seems to me like the exact symbiotic equation is
Speaker 2: perhaps debatable, and some sources say Spanish moss might have
Speaker 2: a mild negative effect on the host tree, possibly just
Speaker 2: by blocking sun from reaching some of its lower leaves
Speaker 2: or something like that. But it's not like drilling into
Speaker 2: the host tree and sucking it, sucking nutrients out of
Speaker 2: its sucking water out of its vascular system and stuff
Speaker 2: like that the way that mistletoe does so. According to
Speaker 2: most sources. At least, Spanish moss is probably not a parasite.
Speaker 2: It certainly not an obligate parasite, though it seems to
Speaker 2: prefer trees. I think you can see it sometimes growing
Speaker 2: on other substrates, even inanimate ones. And it does not
Speaker 2: leach sustenance directly from its host tree. So if it
Speaker 2: doesn't act like a vampire to the host tree, and
Speaker 2: it doesn't have roots going into the ground, how does
Speaker 2: it get its water and mineral nutrients which plants need. Well,
Speaker 2: it gets these things from the air. Spanish moss is
Speaker 2: an air plant, so it absorbs moisture from the air
Speaker 2: using little scales on its leaves called trichomes. So when
Speaker 2: rainfalls or when fog swirls, when mists rises off the ground,
Speaker 2: the Spanish moss will be there waiting to get its cut.
Speaker 2: And as this tangled, shaggy collection of hair like leaves,
Speaker 2: these fibers, all winding together, it does have a very
Speaker 2: uncanny appearance. It can form these ghostly drooping masses like
Speaker 2: the wispy hair of a witch, or like old bits
Speaker 2: of cobweb tangled up in the branches. But if you
Speaker 2: look close, the structure is interesting. Rob, I've got some
Speaker 2: pictures for you to examine here. People at home, you
Speaker 2: might want to look up close ups of Spanish moss,
Speaker 2: especially to see the tri combes. If you see magnified images,
Speaker 2: like through a microscope, you can see all these little
Speaker 2: these little scales lifting up like flaps off of the
Speaker 2: surface of the leaves.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, it's very intricate.
Speaker 2: And these scales are what the plant uses to trap
Speaker 2: moisture from the air. However, that means that in order
Speaker 2: to survive, the Spanish moss does need what will at
Speaker 2: least at some point be a warm, sunny, humid environment. So,
Speaker 2: as Colchak discovered, you're not going to find it growing
Speaker 2: around Chicago, except maybe in a steamy sewer, though I
Speaker 2: guess there it wouldn't have access to the sun. But
Speaker 2: during cold and dry times it can apparently go dormant,
Speaker 2: so it can kind of like keep the water that
Speaker 2: it has stored just kind of close up and then
Speaker 2: wade out dry times. But it will eventually need favorable
Speaker 2: conditions to come back. And the tricombes are also used
Speaker 2: to trap mineral and chemical nutrients that the plant needs.
Speaker 2: Those can be dissolved in the water that it absorbs
Speaker 2: or it can. I've read also that it can sort
Speaker 2: of like just catch debris from the air. It can
Speaker 2: catch dust, bird droppings, whatever, and try to make use
Speaker 2: of that for its nutrients. Now, because Spanish moss has
Speaker 2: to survive by trapping whatever water vapor is in the
Speaker 2: air for some monstrous flavor, we can call this breathing fog.
Speaker 2: Because it has to breathe fog. You might imagine that
Speaker 2: water is precious to it. What little it can get
Speaker 2: must be preserved. But plants also need to breathe in
Speaker 2: a way in order to perform photosynthesis. In order to
Speaker 2: power their metabolism, they have to exchange gases with the atmosphere,
Speaker 2: taking in carbon dioxide and water and then using sunlight
Speaker 2: to power that chemical reaction that generates the carbohydrates for
Speaker 2: the plant, and then of course oxygen as a waste product,
Speaker 2: which is useful to us. But breathing exchanging gases with
Speaker 2: the atmosphere can be dangerous when you are living on
Speaker 2: a razor's edge of hydration when you have to get
Speaker 2: all of your water out of the air itself, and
Speaker 2: specifically the danger comes when a plant opens the little
Speaker 2: holes in its leaves called stomata to absorb CO two
Speaker 2: from the atmosphere. When it opens up like that, it
Speaker 2: can lose moisture through those little openings, especially under a
Speaker 2: hot sun, so Spanish moss uses a specially evolved type
Speaker 2: of photosynthesis to avoid this. It's called crass eulacian acid
Speaker 2: metabolism photosynthesis usually CAM photosynthesis for short, and this is
Speaker 2: an adaptation found in plants that survive in especially arid conditions.
Speaker 2: Under this regime photosynthesis, it actually has two phases. There's
Speaker 2: a day cycle and a night cycle. So during the day,
Speaker 2: when the environment is hot and dry, the plant keeps
Speaker 2: its stomata closed so it doesn't lose water through the
Speaker 2: holes under the burning sun. But nighttime is the right time.
Speaker 2: When the sun goes down, the stomata open up and
Speaker 2: they absorb CO two and you specially adapted structure chemical
Speaker 2: structures in their cells to fix the CO two and
Speaker 2: store it until daytime. Then when the sun comes back up,
Speaker 2: the stomata close once again and the plant cells release
Speaker 2: the stored CO two harvested during the night for photosynthesis
Speaker 2: to take place under the sunlight. So you could argue
Speaker 2: that Spanish moss feeds by night and then closes the
Speaker 2: coffin lid to digest during the cursed daylight.
Speaker 1: Ooh, very nice. That's seasonally appropriate right there.
Speaker 2: So actually, I think Spanish moss is the perfect thing
Speaker 2: to cover the body of a monster that roams in
Speaker 2: the nighttime.
Speaker 1: Though.
Speaker 2: You know, something that just occurred to me about the
Speaker 2: episode is how come the monster in Kolchak always attacks
Speaker 2: in the night. The guy is sleeping all day in
Speaker 2: all night, so shouldn't he sometimes be dreaming it during
Speaker 2: the daytime.
Speaker 1: Unless he's aware of how cam photosynthesis works. You know,
Speaker 1: it's a shame they didn't go into all this in
Speaker 1: the episode, because Darren McGavin could have been like, cam photosynthesis?
Speaker 1: Is it camming right now?
Speaker 4: That is what he'd say. Okay, Rob, are you ready
Speaker 4: for yours?
Speaker 1: Yeah? For mine. You know, if you've listened to the show,
Speaker 1: and if you've listened to Weird House Cinema, you probably
Speaker 1: know that I have a soft spot for the nineteen
Speaker 1: nineties Outer Limits revival. They produced a ton of episodes,
Speaker 1: more episodes of this than the original Outer Limits series.
Speaker 1: I think they were all filmed in Canada, often used
Speaker 1: very Canadian crew and very Canadian casts, and of course
Speaker 1: often dealt with you know, it was a science fiction series,
Speaker 1: so it's more likely to involve elements that we can
Speaker 1: discuss here on the show, as opposed to shows like
Speaker 1: Night Gallery or Tales from the Crypt.
Speaker 2: What little of the nineties Outer Limits I've seen is
Speaker 2: mostly stuff that you've referred me to, but by large
Speaker 2: I'm impressed, Like, well, it's a mix of things. The
Speaker 2: episodes don't always look the most amazing, but of the
Speaker 2: stuff I've seen, typically the writing and the acting is
Speaker 2: quite solid.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Typically, if you're just going in blind on a
Speaker 1: nineties Outer Limits episode, you can expect it to be
Speaker 1: well acted, overly serious, with a mix of solid practical effects.
Speaker 1: Usually there's some nice sets, like this is a show
Speaker 1: that really had to think and rethink how to create
Speaker 1: a spaceship or alien hallway multiple times per season, and
Speaker 1: they generally did a pretty good job. The digital effects, though,
Speaker 1: ye are generally not that great to look at.
Speaker 2: I'm going to say regarding the sets, it has a quality.
Speaker 2: I don't know exactly what this is I'm noticing, but
Speaker 2: it looks like other TV shows made in Canada in
Speaker 2: the nineties, Like the sets remind me of the sets
Speaker 2: from Are You Afraid of the Dark. The Nickelodeon horror
Speaker 2: TV show with you Know shot in Canada in the nineties.
Speaker 2: A lot of things shot in Canada in the nineties
Speaker 2: look like this to me, film nerds out there, tell
Speaker 2: me what is it? I'm noticing? What is that nineties
Speaker 2: Canada look?
Speaker 1: Yeah, and if memory serves I may be wrong in this.
Speaker 1: I think they filmed all these in and also around Toronto.
Speaker 1: So you know, anytime you need like an urban environment,
Speaker 1: you need some skyscrapers or what have you, there's a
Speaker 1: certain mix of buildings that are going to be considered
Speaker 1: for those shots. But an your right, Yeah, I love
Speaker 1: the nineties Outer Limits. The lesser episodes are often going
Speaker 1: to have a weaker message or more ham fisted men,
Speaker 1: and the opening and closing narration can also be a
Speaker 1: bit hammy, as it tries to like compose a really
Speaker 1: grandiose idea for this episode that is sometimes present and
Speaker 1: sometimes feels kind of tacked on.
Speaker 2: I agree. I thought with this episode in particular, it
Speaker 2: might have been better without any of the narration, because
Speaker 2: I feel like the narration just tried to put an
Speaker 2: overly simplistic spin on what was actually a morally complex episode.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like, I feel like the ending to this one,
Speaker 1: they nailed the landing, there's no need to say, and
Speaker 1: the plane landed successfully and like, no, we just watched it.
Speaker 1: It just didn't. So the episode that I selected is
Speaker 1: from the seventh season of The Outer Limits. I believe
Speaker 1: this is actually from two thousand and one. It is
Speaker 1: titled Think Like a Dinosaur.
Speaker 2: You might really expect the episodes going in a different
Speaker 2: direction than it does based on that title.
Speaker 1: Yeah you think you think, I don't know, walk like
Speaker 1: an Egyptian or I don't know, do the dinosaur. We'll
Speaker 1: get into what the title means. But it's based on
Speaker 1: the nineteen ninety six Hugo winning novel lette of the
Speaker 1: same name by James Patrick Kelly. It was directed by
Speaker 1: Jorge Montesi and it stars Enrico Colintoni. This is an actor,
Speaker 1: by the way, who played Veronica Mar's dad on Veronica
Speaker 1: Mars and he also played the character of Mathisar in
Speaker 1: Galaxy Quest. It also stars Linnea Sharples.
Speaker 2: I would say Enrico Colantoni is especially good in this.
Speaker 2: I've liked him in everything I've seen him, and you know,
Speaker 2: he's great and Veronica Mars and all that, but he
Speaker 2: really is the heart of this episode and his performance
Speaker 2: holds it down.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, Maybe not on the same level as holding
Speaker 1: it together as as Darren mcavan, but still solid, solid
Speaker 1: performance that grounds the episode. Oh I should also point
Speaker 1: out if you want to watch this episode, lucky you,
Speaker 1: because if you get Prime, this show is back on Prime.
Speaker 1: It was on Prime like early in the pandemic, and
Speaker 1: I watched a number of episodes like virtually with some friends.
Speaker 1: We would do it every Monday night, and then it
Speaker 1: vanished and we had to like watch it via like
Speaker 1: scrambled versions on Daily Motion I think, and like sometimes
Speaker 1: where they had it was completely the footage was backwards
Speaker 1: or mirrored, so that all the text was weird I think,
Speaker 1: so that like it couldn't be detected by bots or something,
Speaker 1: I don't know, and the quality was suspect. But now
Speaker 1: it's back on Prime. The quality is as good as
Speaker 1: it's going to get for the nineties outer limits, maybe
Speaker 1: even too good considering some of the effects.
Speaker 2: Okay, tell us the plot.
Speaker 1: All right, So what we have here is a good
Speaker 1: old fashioned teleportation horror yarn, one of my favorite sub
Speaker 1: subgenres of horror so in the story, this is what
Speaker 1: the scenario in the future a technologically advanced reptilian alien
Speaker 1: species called the Hanen, but dubbed dinos by humans. They
Speaker 1: facilitate a form of teleportation that has allowed human beings
Speaker 1: to travel to new worlds and explore the wider waters
Speaker 1: of the galaxy. Now, the process here is very clinical,
Speaker 1: presented as something it can do undergoing anesthesia, and many
Speaker 1: humans seem to feel a great deal of anxiety about
Speaker 1: the process, anxiety that the emotionless, pacifist dinos do not share.
Speaker 1: So the dinos carry out most of the process, but
Speaker 1: a human supervisor has to hit the final switch. Because
Speaker 1: the system works by scanning a comatose individual at point A,
Speaker 1: sending the information of that individual to point B, where
Speaker 1: the machine over there recreates an exact duplicate of them,
Speaker 1: and at this point there are two of the individual
Speaker 1: with identical bodies and identical brains, identical memories. It then
Speaker 1: falls to the human supervisor at point A to hit
Speaker 1: the switch that incinerates the common toast individual, the original individual,
Speaker 1: the one who is doing the quote unquote traveling. This
Speaker 1: termination of the original individual at point A is called
Speaker 1: balancing the equation.
Speaker 2: Now, I should note that they explain the experience of
Speaker 2: the what they call the jumper in this story as
Speaker 2: as being continuous. So they say that you close your
Speaker 2: eyes here at the jumping station, and then you open
Speaker 2: them on this wonderful planet that you're being transported to,
Speaker 2: so that they suggest that it's just going to be
Speaker 2: like being here and then being there.
Speaker 1: Right. But as we'll see, like deep down, everybody knows
Speaker 1: what this means. And you know, I should point out
Speaker 1: and we'll get into this more in a bit, but
Speaker 1: I mentioned anesthesia. Anesthesia seems to be like a common
Speaker 1: reference point or starting point for fantastic interpretations of this,
Speaker 1: and it's also involved in sort of the wider philosophical
Speaker 1: contemplation here. You know, what does it mean when my
Speaker 1: consciousness chane? What does it mean when my consciousness seems
Speaker 1: to cease for an amount of time? You know, it's
Speaker 1: that weird experience of suddenly, oh, whatever happened happened, and
Speaker 1: I'm suddenly awake again after the fact, I'm conscious again
Speaker 1: after the fact. And so you see this reflected in
Speaker 1: other treatments of teleportation, in say Stephen King's The Jaunt,
Speaker 1: or also you see it referenced in like cryo sleep
Speaker 1: scenarios and other science fiction.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So anyway, that's the setup, the sort of technological world
Speaker 1: building setup for the episode. The plot concerns essentially three characters.
Speaker 1: You have Enrico Colintoni's Michael Burr. He's the human supervisor
Speaker 1: at the lunar jump station. He's the one who hits
Speaker 1: that incineration switch. Then you have LINEA. Sharple's Kamala Shastri
Speaker 1: it is pronounced Kamala in this episode, who has arrived
Speaker 1: at the lunar station to jump to distant world which
Speaker 1: she's going to study an alien civilization. And then you
Speaker 1: have David James Lewis playing this character Will Carson, who
Speaker 1: it takes a little bit to figure out what he's
Speaker 1: there for, but he's a replacement tech who is actually
Speaker 1: a psychological observer sent by the company to make sure
Speaker 1: that Burr can handle the job.
Speaker 2: Because a lot is writing on Burr doing his job correctly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because the Dinos are like, this is great, this
Speaker 1: is this technology is wonderful. It's going to change everything
Speaker 1: you do. It's going to ensure the long term survival
Speaker 1: of the human race. But you've got to prove to
Speaker 1: us that you're able to handle this. The dinos refer
Speaker 1: to humans as weepies because they see them as is
Speaker 1: way too emotional. They make a big deal out of
Speaker 1: this whole destroy yourself at point A to travel to
Speaker 1: point B, and they do not want to continue with
Speaker 1: it if humans cannot handle it. So in this scenario again,
Speaker 1: Kamala Shastri traveling to a distant point in the gall
Speaker 1: or whatever. It seems like everything is going to going
Speaker 1: as plan. She's a little nervous, but she's up for it.
Speaker 1: But then during the procedure, the transmission is interrupted. Reconstitution
Speaker 1: at point B cannot be confirmed, so the jumper at
Speaker 1: point A cannot be incinerated. So Kamala wakes up screaming
Speaker 1: still at point A, and essentially we're unsure if her
Speaker 1: double has awoken at point B. And she is traumatized
Speaker 1: by the pain and terror she felt in the jump chamber,
Speaker 1: and Burr is there. He tries to reassure and you know,
Speaker 1: said some kind words, is very compassionate, but she's like,
Speaker 1: I don't think I can go through it again, and
Speaker 1: he assures her, you don't have to, you know, don't
Speaker 1: don't worry. You don't have to worry about it then
Speaker 1: if you don't want to give it a second try.
Speaker 1: This is entirely voluntary. But at this point even Burr's
Speaker 1: commitment to teleportation technology is put to a severe test
Speaker 1: when the Dynos confirm that Kamala has arrived at Point Be.
Speaker 1: They tell him and Carson insists as well, that now
Speaker 1: he has to balance the equation by killing the original Kamala.
Speaker 1: So he struggles with the ethics of this, but goes
Speaker 1: forward with it by convincing her to simply go through
Speaker 1: with the teleportation. It's like, you've got to get back
Speaker 1: in there. You've got to continue your mission, with the
Speaker 1: idea being that she won't be scanned and transmitted this time.
Speaker 1: She doesn't know this, She'll just be incinerated, and that
Speaker 1: will balance the equation. That will only be one Kamala,
Speaker 1: and she's on this distant planet exploring this new civilization.
Speaker 1: And at this point he almost pulls it off, but
Speaker 1: she gets cold feet again and the truth comes out,
Speaker 1: and so now Burr is under even more pressure to
Speaker 1: balance the equation, and there is no way around the
Speaker 1: fact that he's contemplating just cold blooded murder. And being
Speaker 1: asked to kill her, and she knows that that is
Speaker 1: the scenario as well. And what's at stake here is
Speaker 1: like the continuation, like you said, of the entire teleportation,
Speaker 1: the advancement and continuing survival of the human species. So
Speaker 1: a lot of pressure is put on him at this moment.
Speaker 2: There's a background scenario that they discuss, which is that
Speaker 2: humans have destroyed the environment of Earth, that Earth is
Speaker 2: close to uninhabitable at this point. Humans have polluted the
Speaker 2: environment so much and that in order to have a
Speaker 2: chance at survival, they're going to have to be able
Speaker 2: to teleport en mass to these unspoiled worlds. But the Hanen,
Speaker 2: like you said, they're unwilling to let humans do this
Speaker 2: unless they prove that they can handle the technology that
Speaker 2: they can quote balance the equation.
Speaker 1: Now, at this point, my summary is not going to
Speaker 1: really do it. It's going to sound a lot more
Speaker 1: rushed because this is a part of the episode that
Speaker 1: I think really depends heavily on the performances. But this
Speaker 1: is what happens. We see Berg grab a cool looking
Speaker 1: sci fi gun from a safe, something that you might
Speaker 1: see in time coop or something, and we think he's
Speaker 1: going to go killer at this point, but when he
Speaker 1: runs runs into her in the complex, he tells her
Speaker 1: that he's arranging to have her smuggled safely back to
Speaker 1: Earth on a routine shuttle, so that seems to be
Speaker 1: in motion, and then he's confronted by Carson and he
Speaker 1: knocks Carson out, So yeah, it seems like, all right,
Speaker 1: he's gone rogue. He's doing the moral right thing here
Speaker 1: for the individual. Maybe not for the greater good, but
Speaker 1: for the individual. And then he leads her to an
Speaker 1: air lock. But then he has this change of heart.
Speaker 1: We see flashes back to this background information about him
Speaker 1: having lost his family, lost his wife, and he has
Speaker 1: a change of heart and instead he blasts her out
Speaker 1: the air lock. Clearly this was not an easy choice
Speaker 1: for him to make. He's just emotionally destroyed by this.
Speaker 1: Two years later we see him once more. He's still
Speaker 1: apparently the supervisor there at the lunar Teleportation station, and
Speaker 1: the teleporter is being used and it's receiving somebody. Who
Speaker 1: is it. Well, it's Kamala on her return to the
Speaker 1: lunar station from her studies on that distant planet, and
Speaker 1: she greets him warmly, telling him Hey, you were my
Speaker 1: jump supervisor. Don't you remember remember me? You were so
Speaker 1: nice to me, you were so comforting, And he says
Speaker 1: flat late, no, that was somebody else.
Speaker 2: And then the narrator comes in with some I think
Speaker 2: over overly simplified, kind of hammy summary of everything we
Speaker 2: just saw.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. When I was watching these episodes with with
Speaker 1: some with some friends, we would always make fun of
Speaker 1: the ending narration, especially if the episode was a bit
Speaker 1: bad or confusing, because you knew he'd come in and
Speaker 1: try and wrap it up with a tight little boat.
Speaker 2: Now, I think there are a lot of really interesting
Speaker 2: things about this episode, and it raises a lot of
Speaker 2: the great questions about about teleportation as a technology, if
Speaker 2: you were to imagine something like it actually existed. Some
Speaker 2: of the same questions applied to the idea of like
Speaker 2: mind uploading or you know, transfer consciousness to a machine
Speaker 2: substrate or something like that. I think one of the
Speaker 2: really interesting things in this episode is that the essential
Speaker 2: thing that Burr has to do has not changed. In
Speaker 2: both cases. He is supposed to destroy the body of
Speaker 2: the jumper at the origin point while they while they
Speaker 2: go on living at the destination point. The only thing
Speaker 2: that has changed is that in this scenario, the jumper
Speaker 2: at the departure point has had time to wake up
Speaker 2: and become conscious of the fact that they're still here.
Speaker 2: But otherwise it's the same. So there's something where like,
Speaker 2: it doesn't feel like murder if they knew what was
Speaker 2: going to happen going in and they're destroyed instantaneously at
Speaker 2: the departure point as long you know, they understand, they
Speaker 2: get to live on at the destination. But something about
Speaker 2: the fact that she has had several seconds of being
Speaker 2: awake now and she's like, well, now that I'm here,
Speaker 2: I don't want to die at this place. That changes
Speaker 2: the equation. And I think that's interesting because it plays
Speaker 2: with our intuitions about what would or would not be
Speaker 2: murder in a strange scenario like this.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, yeah, it's just this level of it certainly reminds
Speaker 1: one of various sort of moral thought experiments where it's like, Okay,
Speaker 1: you're going to flip the switch and you're going to
Speaker 1: save the human race, but somebody that you don't really
Speaker 1: see or know in another room's going to die. And
Speaker 1: then if they're okay with that, well, okay, here's a
Speaker 1: different version of the scenario, etc.
Speaker 2: Though I guess it also raises these some questions about
Speaker 2: like where is consciousness located and is it possible for
Speaker 2: consciousness to be continuously transferred if that concept even makes sense,
Speaker 2: because again the jumpers talk about the idea that well,
Speaker 2: they don't mind that their body is going to be
Speaker 2: destroyed at the departure point because they're just going to
Speaker 2: close their eyes and wake up on this other planet.
Speaker 2: They seem to have confidence that their consciousness will continue
Speaker 2: in some way. But what does that mean?
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know, in this we can't help but
Speaker 1: think of the think in the anesthesia example, you know,
Speaker 1: and really like sort of like just everyday ideas of like, well,
Speaker 1: am I the same person want to wake up in
Speaker 1: the morning, that sort of thing, you know, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: comparisons between sleep and death. That, as we've discussed in
Speaker 1: the show, go you know, back into the earliest times
Speaker 1: during which humans were able to contemplate these things. And
Speaker 1: and that brings us, I think to the dinosaurs, the dinos,
Speaker 1: the hanins, because that's another element of the plot here
Speaker 1: that we don't you kind of have to come back
Speaker 1: and think about it more yourself, because they don't get
Speaker 1: into it as much, at least in the episode, is like,
Speaker 1: what is the thought process of these of these dinos
Speaker 1: who are again presented as being like dinosaur creatures, but
Speaker 1: they're not. They're not depicted as being like completely quote
Speaker 1: unquote cold blooded, Like they're not cruel. They're just caught calculating,
Speaker 1: and it seems like they have made the decision and
Speaker 1: don't seem to put a lot of effort into it
Speaker 1: really that hey, you know, when one teleports, one is
Speaker 1: going to destroy a version of themselves and recreate a
Speaker 1: new one to carry out a particular task or goal,
Speaker 1: et cetera. And they don't think it's a big deal.
Speaker 1: And so I was thinking a little bit like, well,
Speaker 1: what would that mean, Where does that come from? How
Speaker 1: much of that would be cultural? Because you can imagine
Speaker 1: a scenario even with humans, where if they're regularly undergoing
Speaker 1: this kind of teleportation, you would maybe have a lot
Speaker 1: of cultural ideas surrounding it, maybe even religious ideas surrounding
Speaker 1: it about the nature of the self and the soul
Speaker 1: and how that has continued through this technological leap. But
Speaker 1: also maybe there's something about the Hanans that, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe they're more use social where the sacrifice doesn't mean
Speaker 1: as much because the individual doesn't mean as much, and
Speaker 1: that's just part of their just genetic program.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, it's interesting. They are portrayed as mostly
Speaker 2: benevolent but just not swayed by emotional considerations. And so
Speaker 2: I think their point of view is that they're not
Speaker 2: harming the jumper by killing them here because they're already
Speaker 2: alive somewhere else. So it doesn't matter what the jumper
Speaker 2: at the destination at the departure point actually wants, Like
Speaker 2: if they wake up and say, no, don't kill me,
Speaker 2: it's like that is just not of importance. You know,
Speaker 2: they're fine, they're somewhere else now, and so this is
Speaker 2: just sort of like a mistake to be cleaned up.
Speaker 2: Whereas the human point of view is, oh, now there's
Speaker 2: a person in front of me who wants to live,
Speaker 2: and that that is extremely important. Like the fact that
Speaker 2: this person is conscious and they want to live gives
Speaker 2: them just as much right to live as the person
Speaker 2: at the destination point. And the dinosaurs don't see it
Speaker 2: that way. They're like, well, no, this is the way
Speaker 2: it works, and you know, she as long as she's fine.
Speaker 2: They're what the one that's here doesn't matter anymore.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they don't. Again, they don't understand it. They kind
Speaker 1: of mock at the human emotion in this respect, calling
Speaker 1: us wheepies. You can imagine memes they might create, like,
Speaker 1: oh no, a weepee accidentally made two sandwiches and now
Speaker 1: it's sad, that sort of thing. But I should also
Speaker 1: mention they made the strange choice in this episode to
Speaker 1: have the Hanens speak in an almost unintelligible monster voice. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: like though the monster the dino will be talking, you
Speaker 1: just can't understand it. You have to run it back
Speaker 1: to figure out what it's squawking about. Yeah, to jump
Speaker 1: the chain back.
Speaker 2: It's kind of crypt Keeper.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like crypt Keeper, sketchy, but but harder to understand.
Speaker 2: Well, Also, they established that they're getting the humans are
Speaker 2: hearing the Hanaen through a real time translation device, so
Speaker 2: it's like translating their sort of squawks and language into
Speaker 2: English for the jump operators. But hold on a second,
Speaker 2: why does it make them sound like the crypt Keeper.
Speaker 2: If it's doing that anyway, shouldn't the machine and just
Speaker 2: give them the kind of the serie voice.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're like, it's it's set to cryptkeeper. We don't
Speaker 1: know how to change it back to Angela Lansbury. This
Speaker 1: is just what we have to use now. Of course,
Speaker 1: the central treatment of the whole episode has to do
Speaker 1: with this, this idea of teleportation, the recreation of the self,
Speaker 1: and and and the I guess it's not even really
Speaker 1: a question about like the continuation of the soul like
Speaker 1: it at Herd. Here it seems to be clear that
Speaker 1: someone is dying and then a new person is being created.
Speaker 1: And I really wasn't aware of this until I started
Speaker 1: researching this episode. But it turns out this entire central
Speaker 1: premise lines up with the work of Derek Parfitt, a
Speaker 1: British philosopher who specialized in personal identity, among other subjects.
Speaker 2: Parfit's come up on the show before. We may have
Speaker 2: talked about him, Was it in our episode on astronomical suffering?
Speaker 1: Maybe? I think so. Yeah. He he wrote about a
Speaker 1: number of topics, so it's it's not like he's not
Speaker 1: like a one idea guy, and he's very influential. So
Speaker 1: he lived nineteen forty two through twenty seventeen, and in
Speaker 1: his nineteen eighty seven book Reasons and Persons he explores
Speaker 1: exactly this scenario, and I'm unsure if Kelly, the author
Speaker 1: of Think Like a Ninosaur, based his fiction on this,
Speaker 1: or if, as with swamp Thing and swamp Man, we
Speaker 1: have an uncertain case with a possibility of independent development
Speaker 1: in different fields.
Speaker 2: Swamp Man being another philosophical thought experiment about the idea
Speaker 2: that like, if your body was destroyed by lightning and
Speaker 2: then recreated out of different molecules by a lightning strike
Speaker 2: and a swamp like, what relation would that other you
Speaker 2: have to the original you?
Speaker 1: Right? Right? So again Parfitt's book Reasons and Persons, in
Speaker 1: chapter ten, what we Believe Ourselves to Be, he presents
Speaker 1: a thought experiment in which he is commuting to work
Speaker 1: on Mars via a machine called a tele transporter, in
Speaker 1: which the subject loses consciousness and wakes up a moment later,
Speaker 1: or seems to wake up a moment later at their destination.
Speaker 1: In reality, however, it's explained really an hour takes. An
Speaker 1: hour passes in between losing consciousness and reawakening. The original
Speaker 1: body is scanned, recorded in every detail, and destroyed. Traveling
Speaker 1: at light speed, the information takes three minutes to reach Mars,
Speaker 1: and then using that information that had been sent the
Speaker 1: replicator machine on Mars creates a new brain and a
Speaker 1: new body out of new matter. So then Parfitt goes
Speaker 1: on to layout a scenario that involves interruption and accidental
Speaker 1: duplication without destruction of the original. The added wrinkle is
Speaker 1: that while the machine fail able to destroy the original
Speaker 1: body and brain, it also inflicted a heart condition that
Speaker 1: will be fatal in like forty days. Also in the
Speaker 1: thought experiment, the scanning is supposed to destroy the individual
Speaker 1: as part of the process. It's not like there's this
Speaker 1: switch that you hit for incineration. It's like all part
Speaker 1: of the process.
Speaker 2: So it's not a separate decision that an operator has
Speaker 2: to make.
Speaker 1: Right, right, And it makes more sense, I guess in
Speaker 1: the fictional treatment, he writes quote simple teletransportation, as just
Speaker 1: described is a common feature in science fiction, and it
Speaker 1: is believed by some readers of this fiction merely to
Speaker 1: be the fastest way of traveling. They believe that my
Speaker 1: replica would be me. Other science fiction readers and some
Speaker 1: of the characters in this fiction take a different view.
Speaker 1: They believe that when I press the green button, I die.
Speaker 1: My replica is someone else who has been made to
Speaker 1: be exactly like me. So he uses the thought experiment
Speaker 1: to discuss what he calls two kinds of sameness, qualitative
Speaker 1: identity and numerical identity. So the scanner and replicator produce
Speaker 1: a double that is qualitatively identical but not numerically identical.
Speaker 1: In other words, the two are otherwise the same, but
Speaker 1: they are not literally the same person in a physical sense. Again,
Speaker 1: like new matter was used to make, no, there's no
Speaker 1: physical connection between these two beings.
Speaker 2: It's kind of like how you can have two copies
Speaker 2: of the same book that are at the same time
Speaker 2: the same book, but they're also two different objects.
Speaker 1: Right. Likewise, though, he points out that numerically identical individuals
Speaker 1: can also become qualitatively different. Quote, though our chief concern
Speaker 1: is our numerical identity, psychological changes matter. Indeed, on one view,
Speaker 1: certain kinds of qualitative change destroy numerical identity. If certain
Speaker 1: things happen to me, the truth might not be that
Speaker 1: I become a very different person. The truth might be
Speaker 1: that I cease to exist, that the resulting person is
Speaker 1: someone else.
Speaker 2: And in fact, the strange thing is that our bodies
Speaker 2: and minds are constantly undergoing physical change, and yet we
Speaker 2: have the conscious experience of it seeming to be that
Speaker 2: life is continuous. It just feels like you were the
Speaker 2: same person you have been your whole life, but physically
Speaker 2: you're always changing.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, physically at a cellular level, things are changing
Speaker 1: where we're not exactly the same matter that we were
Speaker 1: years back, and then major events, as he's pointing out,
Speaker 1: have a huge impact on us. The episode closes with
Speaker 1: this idea as well, which I thought was right, thought
Speaker 1: was really nice. The Kamala, who is beamed back to
Speaker 1: the lunar base is one numerically different. This is the
Speaker 1: third version of her in the story that we don't
Speaker 1: see the second, the one that's on that other planet.
Speaker 1: This is all due of course to the scanner destroyer
Speaker 1: replicator technology, but she also seems to be qualitatively different
Speaker 1: as her as her experienced studying an alien civilization has
Speaker 1: greatly impacted her. There's even a new tattoo on her
Speaker 1: and a different hairstyle to sort of drive this home visually.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Meanwhile, Burr is numerically identical to the man she knew
Speaker 1: before that she met before, but it seems that he
Speaker 1: is qualitatively different as well, forever changed by the horrendous
Speaker 1: series of events that he went through, namely the murder
Speaker 1: he committed to keep the teleportation machines running. And and
Speaker 1: of course she is completely oblivious to this because the
Speaker 1: version of Kamala that she is did not witness any
Speaker 1: of this and was not the one murdered. And so
Speaker 1: that final line just hits nicely. He's like, no, that
Speaker 1: was someone else, Like that was a that was a
Speaker 1: different me before I was changed by what happened.
Speaker 2: I think this raises another interesting philosophical question, kind of
Speaker 2: a moral philosophical question, which is, imagine that the error
Speaker 2: scenario had never happened. You know, you never had the
Speaker 2: scene where he has to hunt down a jumper with
Speaker 2: a gun and blow them out of the airlock. It
Speaker 2: like murder them in a very explicit way, and he
Speaker 2: was still just pressing the button to incinerate the body.
Speaker 2: Is there anything morally wrong going on there? If we
Speaker 2: assume that everything that the characters assume is true, so
Speaker 2: assume that it is basically painless, that the conscious experience
Speaker 2: of the person undergoing it is that they close their
Speaker 2: eyes here and they wake up at the destination point.
Speaker 2: There's not actually like a person to suffer or to
Speaker 2: be denied life or whatever, that there's just a continuous
Speaker 2: conscious experience and all of that. Is there anything morally
Speaker 2: wrong with what you're doing by pressing the button to
Speaker 2: incinerate the person at the departure point? I don't know.
Speaker 2: I think that's a really interesting question to ask, because
Speaker 2: you could say, even if nobody is suffering and the
Speaker 2: person who's jumping gets to continue to live, so in
Speaker 2: whatever normal way we would think about it, they're not
Speaker 2: being murdered, you'd still have to wonder if there is
Speaker 2: some kind of subtle moral violence going on just by
Speaker 2: the repeated pressing of a button to destroy a human
Speaker 2: body like that, Like, is that conditioning the person who
Speaker 2: has to do the button pushing in a way that
Speaker 2: degrades them morally in some way?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah, It's a rich field for thought here. And
Speaker 1: to be clear, Parfitt goes into a great more detail
Speaker 1: in the book and of course uses this thought experiment
Speaker 1: as a leaping off point to discuss identity and self
Speaker 1: at great length. Though it all, it's all very very
Speaker 1: readable and absorbable, so I do recommend picking that up.
Speaker 1: And I did not not have time to seek out
Speaker 1: and read the original novel. Lette think like a dinosaur.
Speaker 1: But I understand, of course it's quite good as well,
Speaker 1: and I'd be interested to hear from anyone out there
Speaker 1: who has read it and can compare it to the
Speaker 1: outer limits adaptation. And of course, yeah, in terms of
Speaker 1: human consciousness and identity. You know, we could easily go
Speaker 1: on and on here, but I thought I might close out.
Speaker 1: I was reminded of a brief mention from an article
Speaker 1: that we reference in our shadow episodes. Do we actually
Speaker 1: see shadows? On Jay Store Daily? By Roy Sorensen. He
Speaker 1: writes the optics of the Chinese moists focused on shadows
Speaker 1: rather than light. They defend the literal truth of Chiang
Speaker 1: Xu's aphromism, the shadow of a flying bird never moves,
Speaker 1: for shadows last only an instant. The Chinese dialectician Kung
Speaker 1: Sun Lung three twenty five through two fifty PCE appears
Speaker 1: to have extended the objection to the bird. At each moment,
Speaker 1: the bird is where it is and so is not traveling.
Speaker 1: Since the bird is always at rest, the bird no
Speaker 1: more move than its shadow.
Speaker 2: I guess to try to map that onto our questions
Speaker 2: about teleportation and human consciousness, you know, would consciousness survive
Speaker 2: the body being destroyed in one place and recreated exactly
Speaker 2: in another. Uh, you could maybe take the view that
Speaker 2: consciousness is not continuous anyway, that that is merely an
Speaker 2: illusion and there are only instants of consciousness that are
Speaker 2: that are mistakenly thinking that something is traceable from one
Speaker 2: moment to the next, and in fact there is not.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely, I don't know.
Speaker 2: If I buy that, but that's an interesting way of
Speaker 2: seeing it.
Speaker 1: Well that I guess that's one of the great things
Speaker 1: about this about it, about this particular quandary, but also
Speaker 1: questions about consciousness in general, is that there's I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess there's some wrong answers out there, but you
Speaker 1: can generalize and say there are no wrong answers like this.
Speaker 1: These are all just thought experiments and ideas that that
Speaker 1: tease at the reality and make us sort of turn
Speaker 1: our perceptions on their head and reconsider what they are
Speaker 1: and what we are. Well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think a lot of the thought experiments about
Speaker 2: consciousness they don't necessarily provide evidence to help us discover
Speaker 2: the true nature and origin of consciousness. They don't always
Speaker 2: help us discover what consciousness really objectively is, but they
Speaker 2: do help us better understand our intuitions about consciousness, which
Speaker 2: are often quite vague, and these thought experiments can make
Speaker 2: them clearer. Yeah, anyway, good Outer Limits episode.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I recommend checking out. It's one of my favorites.
Speaker 1: It's one of my wife's favorites. I think she she'd
Speaker 1: seen it before our I did years ago, and she
Speaker 1: always brings it up as an episode worth watching. So
Speaker 1: I would agree. Not all of the Outer Limits episodes
Speaker 1: are necessarily worth watching. Again, there are some weak ones,
Speaker 1: but this one's a strong one, all right. And on
Speaker 1: that note, we're going to go ahead and close up
Speaker 1: Anthology of Horror volume nine. Thanks for listening, joining us
Speaker 1: on this quest, and we'd love to hear from everyone
Speaker 1: out there. If you have thoughts about the episodes in particular,
Speaker 1: or the show's in particular that we discussed here, ride in,
Speaker 1: and if you have thoughts about the subject matter that
Speaker 1: we discussed about consciousness and the self, about Spanish moss
Speaker 1: and different interpretations of it right in, we would love
Speaker 1: to hear from you. Just a reminder that stuff to
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