Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hi, my name is Robert Lham, 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: We recently finished an eight part look at many of
Speaker 2: the various creatures from the alien universe here on The
Speaker 2: Monster Fact. We did that mostly leading up to the
Speaker 2: debut of the twenty twenty four film Alien Romulus, and
Speaker 2: now we're busting out the omnibus episode of The Monster
Speaker 2: Fact Alien Episodes that lines up with the video on
Speaker 2: demand release of the film. So I hope you enjoy
Speaker 2: these episodes if you listen to them previously or if
Speaker 2: you are listening to them for the first time. The
Speaker 2: omnibus episodes of The Monster Fact are all about taking
Speaker 2: the previous shorts and stitching them together Frankenstein style into
Speaker 2: one long episode. I understand some of you prefer to
Speaker 2: listen to these episodes in that format, and so this
Speaker 2: is for you. Without further ado, let's jump right in,
Speaker 2: beginning with part one. The Engineers in this episode will
Speaker 2: begin a multi installment exploration of the various strange forms
Speaker 2: found in the Alien universe. I previously wrote about xenomorph
Speaker 2: biology in the article how the Alien Xenomorph Works back
Speaker 2: in twenty twelve for the website how Stuff Works. That
Speaker 2: article is still there in full, accompanied by illustrations authorized
Speaker 2: by the hr Giger Museum, and as I work up
Speaker 2: to various considerations of how natural world biology is reflected
Speaker 2: in or matches up to the xenomorph, I'll likely draw
Speaker 2: on some of the same ideas, but I also plan
Speaker 2: to touch on various additional natural world and mythological connections,
Speaker 2: as well as such sources as the twenty seventeen film
Speaker 2: Alien Covenant and the excellent Alien RPG source books from
Speaker 2: Free League Publishing. I want to add the caveat that
Speaker 2: I am not setting out to wrangle all the lore
Speaker 2: here or to provide you with a one hundred percent
Speaker 2: canonical take on everything. You have no shortage of wikis
Speaker 2: and lore videos for that. The Monster Fact Journey will
Speaker 2: touch on a lot of the same themes and information,
Speaker 2: but will also reflect my own thoughts and obsessions as
Speaker 2: a fan. With all that in mind, let's start at
Speaker 2: the beginning with the Enigmatic Engineers, an elder race of
Speaker 2: spacefaring humanoids. The Engineers have largely vanished from the portion
Speaker 2: of the galaxy traversed by twenty second century terans. It
Speaker 2: is unknown what they call themselves, but accounts whisper the
Speaker 2: names Malakak and Ossians, While informal names such as space
Speaker 2: jockeys and universal pilots also abound. The term engineer, used
Speaker 2: by doctor Ilizzabeth's Shaw of the Doomed Prometheus expedition, has
Speaker 2: stuck in the few circles allowed to know of them. Pale,
Speaker 2: hairless giants of uncanny statuesque perfection. The engineers are thought
Speaker 2: to have worn modest clothing on their home worlds, but
Speaker 2: donned more exotic, biomechanical space suits during their interstellar voyages.
Speaker 2: Suits that seemingly melded with their bodies, fused with their organs,
Speaker 2: and via their strange helms, gave them the outer appearance
Speaker 2: of a trunked elephantic head. They were or are, masters
Speaker 2: of not only interstellar travel, but also biotechnology, able to
Speaker 2: generate new forms of life, program genetics, master evolutionary process
Speaker 2: augment their own bodies, and craft terrifying bioweapons beyond the
Speaker 2: scope of even the most advanced whalen Utani weapon lab
Speaker 2: within the wrecked Juggernaut found on planet LV four T
Speaker 2: one twenty six crew members from the Nostromo encountered the
Speaker 2: long dead remains of a very large engineer, with evidence
Speaker 2: of an explosive emergence from its chest, as well as
Speaker 2: thousands of eggs. Prior to this, the crew of the
Speaker 2: Prometheus encountered even more artifacts of the engineers, and even
Speaker 2: a lone living specimen preserved in some advanced form of
Speaker 2: suspended animation. The android David, one of the few survivors
Speaker 2: of that mission, went on to study their works more exhaustively,
Speaker 2: decimating one of their inhabited worlds in the process. As such,
Speaker 2: we have much more to go on than the crew
Speaker 2: of the Nostroma, but much about the engineers remains clouded
Speaker 2: in mystery. Members of their species seemingly seated the planet
Speaker 2: Earth with life long ago, and as such are our progenitors,
Speaker 2: and then much later members of their species seem to
Speaker 2: decide to end that life instead. The rationale for either
Speaker 2: impulse is a matter of debate, but we find many
Speaker 2: ideas in the realities of human nature and our own
Speaker 2: impulses to murder and create. We know from various engineer
Speaker 2: artworks that they held their own form in high regard,
Speaker 2: perhaps even worshiping themselves or deities dreampt of in their
Speaker 2: own image. But they also held strange and dangerous forms
Speaker 2: of life in seemingly high regard as well, forms that
Speaker 2: resemble the xenomorphic creature spawned from their biotechnology. Did they
Speaker 2: use their advanced understanding of life to create life forms
Speaker 2: that reflected their dark beliefs? Did they harness the raw
Speaker 2: biological power of some pre existing life form? We simply
Speaker 2: don't know. The Alien RPG source book ruminates on these
Speaker 2: questions as well as others. Is there indeed a single
Speaker 2: engineer species and or culture or many? Are there? Different breeds?
Speaker 2: Are there different casts? Is the space jockey individual found
Speaker 2: on LV four to twenty six merely a large specimen,
Speaker 2: a subspecies or something else? Again, all this is shrouded
Speaker 2: and delicious mystery, as it should be. The engineers are
Speaker 2: often invoked as gods, demi gods, or, indeed, as the
Speaker 2: invocation of Prometheus implies, Titans. The Titans of Greek mythology were,
Speaker 2: of course, the pre Olympic gods cast down by Zeus
Speaker 2: in the Epic War known as the Titanomachi. Afterwards, the
Speaker 2: gods imprisoned many of the Titans in Tartarus, while others
Speaker 2: remained free. The individual nature of the Titans varied from
Speaker 2: brutal Chronos to the culture bearing tricks, to Prometheus, who
Speaker 2: in some tellings created human beings but is also credited
Speaker 2: with giving them the gift of fire or fire technology.
Speaker 2: This is a common trope in many different cultures, so
Speaker 2: even in invoking the Engineers as Titans, a certain mystery remains.
Speaker 2: Are they are creators? Are benefactors, cruel former masters of
Speaker 2: the cosmos? Maybe all of the above. In the film Prometheus,
Speaker 2: the Ers are explored in a manner clearly partially inspired
Speaker 2: by the pseudoscientific ancient astronaut hypothesis, and I personally think
Speaker 2: science fiction is the right place to deploy these concepts.
Speaker 2: While the idea that aliens visited the Earth in ancient
Speaker 2: or prehistoric times carries no weight in serious consideration of history, mythology,
Speaker 2: or science. Please see our past Stuffable Your Mind episodes
Speaker 2: for more on this. It's all fair game. In a
Speaker 2: twisting tale of futuristic fictional space horror, the Engineers provide
Speaker 2: us with a great Elder race for the alien universe,
Speaker 2: shrouded in mystery, ultimately unknowable and untrustworthy. In the films
Speaker 2: that follow the life of the Android David, they also
Speaker 2: serve as a fitting contemplation point for humanity's own place
Speaker 2: in the universe as a creator of artificial life and
Speaker 2: an expansionist terraforming civilization in decline. Look on their works,
Speaker 2: Ye Mighty and Despair. All right, now, let's move on
Speaker 2: to Part two, The Black Goo. In the previous episode
Speaker 2: of The Monster Fact, we began our alien series with
Speaker 2: a look at the mysterious Engineers. Today we'll turn to
Speaker 2: this Elder race's most dangerous creation, a highly volatile genetic
Speaker 2: accelerant classified by human researchers as Agent A zero thirty
Speaker 2: nine fifty nine x point ninety one dash fifteen. In
Speaker 2: its purest form, this so called black goo does in
Speaker 2: fact resemble a viscous tar like material or liquid. Human
Speaker 2: explorers first discovered the substance amid the ruins of an
Speaker 2: engineer outpost on the planet designated LV two twenty three.
Speaker 2: They found the gou and coretets of glass like vials
Speaker 2: secured in steatide ampules or urns. The engineers had secured
Speaker 2: it there like a precious tread me, like the remains
Speaker 2: of the dead, like a devastating bioweapon, the pinnacle of
Speaker 2: the engineer's advanced biotechnology. We can even think of agent
Speaker 2: A zero thirty nine to fifty nine x point ninety
Speaker 2: one slash fifteen as a kind of biological AI that
Speaker 2: reprograms everything it touches, perhaps following specific instructions, general directions,
Speaker 2: or left entirely to its own generative impulses. As revealed
Speaker 2: in the film's Prometheus and Alien Covenant, and as discussed
Speaker 2: in Freely Publishing's Alien RPG, the black Goo aggressively recodes DNA,
Speaker 2: rapidly transforming individual organisms, species, and entire ecosystems. When exposed
Speaker 2: to the atmosphere, it atomizes and spreads as an aerosol,
Speaker 2: but may also be further manipulated in liquid form if
Speaker 2: handled with proper expertise. High level exposure to the substance
Speaker 2: generally spells instant death for organic beings. Select engineers are
Speaker 2: to have ritualistically ingested the substance in its pure, concentrated
Speaker 2: liquid form to seed new worlds, allowing the black good
Speaker 2: to rapidly break down their bodies and spend new life
Speaker 2: forms out of the genetic pieces. Likewise, when weaponized, aerial
Speaker 2: bombardments of the steatide ampules quickly laid waste to entire populations,
Speaker 2: finally twisting the life forms at the peripheries of the
Speaker 2: attack into dangerous new creatures. At lower exposure levels, the
Speaker 2: Black Goose steadily mutates human beings into zombie like forms
Speaker 2: known as abominations, noted for their increasingly aggressive behavior, enhance strength,
Speaker 2: elongated limbs, and swelling craniums. They are also able to
Speaker 2: pass on their rampage in genetics through different infection routes,
Speaker 2: as we'll explore in the next episode. It's impossible to
Speaker 2: know exactly how the engineers regarded the Black Good, but
Speaker 2: we might best understand it, like many forms of technology,
Speaker 2: as having tremendous potential to destroy or create. It can
Speaker 2: enable the seating of whole new worlds with the divergent
Speaker 2: genes of a single donor. But it can also be
Speaker 2: a weapon of terrifying power, wiping out most life on
Speaker 2: a world and reprogramming the surviving biome into aggressive monstrosities
Speaker 2: that steadily grind all life to its end. But let's
Speaker 2: set aside metaphors and interpretations, and consider a few additional
Speaker 2: takes on black goo. With all of these extraterrestrial horrors
Speaker 2: now running through your brain, you might find it a
Speaker 2: bit unnerving to realize that here on Earth, outside of
Speaker 2: the Sci Fi horrors of the alien franchise, we actually
Speaker 2: do have to contend with strange black goo within the
Speaker 2: buried creations of ancient civilizations. As Kate Fulcher reported for
Speaker 2: the British Museum back in twenty twenty, the goo in
Speaker 2: question here would have been poured warm into the caskets
Speaker 2: of mummified individuals, effectively cementing their linen wrapped mummy cases
Speaker 2: into the encasing casket. Museum scientists analyzed more than one
Speaker 2: hundred samples of the now long dried goo and determine
Speaker 2: that while the exact ingredients varied, the main components tended
Speaker 2: to be plant oil, animal fat, tree resin, beeswax, and bitumen,
Speaker 2: a viscous or solid form of petroleum. Egyptian black goo
Speaker 2: was reserved for royalty and those rich enough to afford
Speaker 2: the very best in their funerary preparations. We've even found
Speaker 2: the stuff on the golden mask of Tuton common According
Speaker 2: to fulcher. Its pitch black color was associated with mythic
Speaker 2: osiris and concepts of rebirth and regeneration. It's clear that
Speaker 2: a certain amount of Egyptomania went into conceptions of the engineers.
Speaker 2: It even goes all the way back to artist hr
Speaker 2: Giger's late seventies concept art for Alien, which includes a
Speaker 2: hieroglyphic inspired alien life cycle tableau. Look it up, and
Speaker 2: it makes sense in later ruminations of the franchise that
Speaker 2: filmmakers might have found inspiration in the real life black
Speaker 2: Goo of Egyptology. It's rather fitting, after all, given that
Speaker 2: the ancient Egyptians seemed to have viewed the journey into
Speaker 2: the next life as something cosmic and transformative. The sarcophagus
Speaker 2: in many ways like a cryo chamber, and monstrous entities
Speaker 2: like Ahmet awaiting the passage of the dead. Black Goo has,
Speaker 2: of course another larger life in sci fi in general,
Speaker 2: sometimes as a catch all name for just black inky evil,
Speaker 2: or other times more specifically as a self replicating meta
Speaker 2: material graphene oxide. Jason Kahey profiled the notion in a
Speaker 2: twenty twenty two article for Wired Magazine, drawing on sci
Speaker 2: fi usages of the stuff on TV's Westworld and TV's Severance,
Speaker 2: and if we go wider than that, he points out,
Speaker 2: we see dangerous black goos in the original X Files
Speaker 2: as well as in Miyazaki's Spirited Away. Elsewhere, We've watched
Speaker 2: it drip onto Gary Olben's head in The Fifth Element,
Speaker 2: and Yes, the low budget nineteen eighty five alien knockoff
Speaker 2: Creature features a scene in which the leaks from an
Speaker 2: alien tube shortly before a monster breaks out of it.
Speaker 2: What is Marvel's Venom but a slightly more stylish black goo,
Speaker 2: and the Sorcerer egg Shin and Big Trouble in Little
Speaker 2: China warned us, matter of factly, not of oil, but
Speaker 2: of the black blood of the earth. The examples are endless,
Speaker 2: though they often betray a Western prevalence for the negative
Speaker 2: connotations of the color black, which dates back through the
Speaker 2: Middle Ages and into humoral theory with its black bile.
Speaker 2: But black also represented power in secrecy during this time
Speaker 2: period as well. Colors are in the end multipurpose, culturally
Speaker 2: dependent and based on context. The color black may be
Speaker 2: invoked to convey everything from darkness and mystery to beauty
Speaker 2: and power, and when we combine all of that with gooiness. Well, visually,
Speaker 2: there just seems to be something otherworldly about black goo,
Speaker 2: and so it's the perfect visual manifestation of the underlying
Speaker 2: power in the alien universe of anti blood and anti seed,
Speaker 2: as dark as the spaces between the stars. Up next
Speaker 2: Part three, Trilobide and Deacon. In the previous episode, in
Speaker 2: this special alien themed monster fact series, we discussed Agent
Speaker 2: A zero thirty nine to fifty nine x point ninety
Speaker 2: one slash fifteen. The Black Goo, a powerful evolutionary accelerant
Speaker 2: created by the Engineers and deployed as both the creator
Speaker 2: and destroyer of worlds. We consider the various ways that
Speaker 2: it worked itself through a host, spawning zombie like abominations
Speaker 2: in the process. As witnessed in the film Prometheus, a
Speaker 2: mixture of pathogen infected hosts can lead to truly strange forms.
Speaker 2: The android David infected the human crew made Holloway with
Speaker 2: a mere drop of the black Goo. The infected Holloway
Speaker 2: then impregnated his partner, doctor Elizabeth Shaw, who then employed
Speaker 2: appalling medpod to surgically remove the resulting squid like embryo
Speaker 2: before it could burst out of her on its own.
Speaker 2: Left to its own devices. The resulting creature rapidly grew
Speaker 2: into an enormous, seven tentacled monster, sometimes referred to as
Speaker 2: the trilobite. The creature has virtually nothing in common with
Speaker 2: the prehistoric arthropod of the same name, which we previously
Speaker 2: discussed on Stufftable your Mind. If anything, the creature looks
Speaker 2: more like an octopus. They will find very few seven
Speaker 2: armed organisms in the natural world. The seven arm sea
Speaker 2: star comes to mind, but we also have to consider
Speaker 2: the so called seven armed octopus. Some call it the
Speaker 2: septipus or the blob octopus, but Halifron atlanticus actually does
Speaker 2: have eight arms. It's just that the males hectocotylus, or
Speaker 2: specialized fertilization arm, remains coiled away in a sack beneath
Speaker 2: the right eye, thus giving the creature the appearance of
Speaker 2: having only seven arms, at least in the males. But
Speaker 2: back to the monster, we quickly learn that the alien
Speaker 2: trilobite is merely an intermediate stage in the creature's overall
Speaker 2: life cycle. When the trilobite overpowers a surviving engineer, incapacitates
Speaker 2: the host and implants its own embryo, orally, the tentacled
Speaker 2: monster then covers the host's body in a posture that
Speaker 2: the Alien RPG from Free League Publishing describes as a
Speaker 2: protective posture. There's already a lot to unpack here. I
Speaker 2: don't want to get too ahead of ourselves, but the
Speaker 2: creature here is essentially more of a body hugger than
Speaker 2: a face hugger, though it still depends on oral injection
Speaker 2: of its embryo. It also feels as if the trilobite
Speaker 2: form developed expressly for the purpose of infecting larger than
Speaker 2: human prey, that its juvenile form somehow detect the presence
Speaker 2: of a much larger engineer in its midst and morph
Speaker 2: into a form capable of taking one down. It's unknown, however,
Speaker 2: we do know that the black goop pathogen seems to
Speaker 2: ultimately result in more stabilized xenomorphic creatures with distinct life cycles,
Speaker 2: and we can suppose that these stabilized forms in life
Speaker 2: cycles are informed by environment and host survivability. Certainly, engineers
Speaker 2: or rogue android scientists might manipulate this development, but it
Speaker 2: seems to be a typical pattern. But the resulting creatures,
Speaker 2: as we'll discuss, remain highly adaptive to host availability. But
Speaker 2: I will go ahead and speculate, and I'm sure others
Speaker 2: have speculated along these exact lines as well, that the
Speaker 2: Trilobyte is a specialized engineer naver, and that Holloway and
Speaker 2: Shaw's genetic contributions were marginal at best. The android David
Speaker 2: in his covenant recordings at least mentions in passing that
Speaker 2: the engineers are perfect carriers and perfect mothers. We're also
Speaker 2: to understand that the engineers are genetically somewhat similar human beings.
Speaker 2: But perhaps there is something else about the Elder race's
Speaker 2: biology that draws the pathogens and creatures of their own creation.
Speaker 2: I wonder if it might have to do with the
Speaker 2: various other biotechnological alterations that the engineers have made to
Speaker 2: themselves or are made via their suits. And of course,
Speaker 2: in Prometheus's closing moments, we see the Trillabite crumpled and
Speaker 2: dead and watch a juvenile's xenomorphic organism emerge from the
Speaker 2: engineer's body. It has indeed grown quite large in the
Speaker 2: giant body of its hosts. The alien RPG describes the
Speaker 2: gestation as effectively hollowing out the host creature's body, reducing
Speaker 2: it to little more than a husk. The new form,
Speaker 2: dubbed the Deacon, emerges as a more typical bipedal eye
Speaker 2: list xenomorphic creature with an elongated head, though lacking a
Speaker 2: tail and various other key features associated with its kin.
Speaker 2: It boasts protrucible jaws like that of the deep sea
Speaker 2: goblin shark, and its nickname derives from the sharp point
Speaker 2: on the end of its head, which resembles the pointed
Speaker 2: miter worn by some Christian clergy. The creature uses this
Speaker 2: point to violently rip its way out of the host body.
Speaker 2: In this regard, we might reasonably compare the Deacon's headspike
Speaker 2: to the egg tooth, a temporary sharp protrusion that various birds, reptiles,
Speaker 2: and monotremes use to penetrate their own eggshell and break
Speaker 2: free spiders, too, are known to develop an egg tooth
Speaker 2: like spike to aid in their hatching. The Deacon's spike
Speaker 2: would seem necessary as it has to emerge not only
Speaker 2: from the body of the engineer, but also through its
Speaker 2: biomechanical spacesuit, which again may to varying degrees, be biologically
Speaker 2: integrated with the engineer. Just as birds quickly lose their
Speaker 2: egg teeth. It's possible that the Deacon loses its key
Speaker 2: feature as it develops into its no doubt gigantic adult form. However,
Speaker 2: we have no idea what this form might look like.
Speaker 2: Perhaps its full development puts in more in line with
Speaker 2: other xenomorphic forms, only on a scale devoted to prey
Speaker 2: on giant humanoid hosts. We also have no idea what
Speaker 2: the Deacon's life cycle would consist of in whole, but
Speaker 2: we might assume that it would resemble that of a
Speaker 2: stabilized xenomorphic life cycle, which we'll discuss in the weeks ahead,
Speaker 2: only with larger eggs that produce a body hugging embryo depositor.
Speaker 2: The engineers might know for certain, but fortunately humans remain
Speaker 2: in the dark. Now it's time for part four, the
Speaker 2: neomorph our journey through the alien universe. This time brings
Speaker 2: us to the mysterious planet for the rotting paradise of
Speaker 2: Alien Covenant. Once an occupied world of the Engineers, the
Speaker 2: planet suffered a mass extinction event at the hands of
Speaker 2: the rogue android David. Descending from the sky in a
Speaker 2: stolen Engineer starship, he unleashed a devastating bombardment of the
Speaker 2: skeetide ampules eradicating most non botanical non fungal life with
Speaker 2: the dreaded evolutionary accelerant agent a zero slash thirty nine
Speaker 2: fifty nine x dot ninety one slash fifteen. But as
Speaker 2: we've explored already, the black goo doesn't destroy everything in
Speaker 2: such incidents. No, it also creates new dangerous organisms to
Speaker 2: prowl the lifeless borders of devastation, and it tends to
Speaker 2: find its way back to the basic form of a
Speaker 2: xenomorphic predator, in this case working its way up from
Speaker 2: fungal and possibly insect life. The neomorph begins as a
Speaker 2: fungal growth that produces small pods or egg sacs, which
Speaker 2: release a swarm of moats upon disturbance. These moats are
Speaker 2: able to move through the air by their own volition,
Speaker 2: sometimes synchronizing in murmurations to zero in on a potential
Speaker 2: host organism's vulnerable orifices. The moats are often compared to
Speaker 2: plant pollen, though of course pollend on vectors such as
Speaker 2: wind or other organisms to move from one plant to
Speaker 2: the next. We might instead be tempted to compare these
Speaker 2: moats to fairy flies or fairy wasps. The smallest known
Speaker 2: flying organisms. As pointed out by Julius Klarr in a
Speaker 2: twenty twenty four article for The Sierra Club, fairy wasp
Speaker 2: body length can measure as little as zero point one
Speaker 2: three nine millimeters, equal to the thickness of a human hair,
Speaker 2: so it's not out of the question for something so
Speaker 2: small to be capable of powered and deliberate flight. According
Speaker 2: to Freely Publishing's Alien RPG source books, the neomorph moats
Speaker 2: make their way into a host body, where they deliver
Speaker 2: microscopic amounts of the black goo to the host's blood stream,
Speaker 2: and then the moats die. In the blood the evolutionary
Speaker 2: accelerant mutates white blood cells, forming a tumor like mass
Speaker 2: that rapidly develops into an embryo, referred to as a
Speaker 2: blood burster. When this small quadruped is ready to emerge
Speaker 2: from i'm the host, it bursts out through whatever part
Speaker 2: of the anatomy is most accessible the mouth, the back,
Speaker 2: even an eye socket. It depends in large part on
Speaker 2: where the tumor develops. If it survives, the bloodbuster rapidly
Speaker 2: develops into a neomorph. These medium size pales xenomorphic predators
Speaker 2: boast goblin shark like protrusible jaws much like the deacon
Speaker 2: that we previously discussed, along with a whipping spike tail
Speaker 2: in a cluster of dorsal spikes, which as a blood burster,
Speaker 2: aids in its emergence. Let's talk a bit more about
Speaker 2: those goblin shark jaws. Though the deep sea mitsucarina o
Speaker 2: stony isn't alone in having protrusible jaws. Shark jaws are
Speaker 2: not attached to the organism's cartilage skull and move as
Speaker 2: separate parts, allowing for varying degrees of protrusion when attacking prey.
Speaker 2: The goblin shark nearly boasts the most extreme jaw protrusion known,
Speaker 2: both in terms of reach and speed. According to a
Speaker 2: twenty sixteen article by Nakaya at All published in Scientific Reports,
Speaker 2: the jaw sling shots forward at a maximum velocity of
Speaker 2: three point one meters per second to eight point six
Speaker 2: to nine point four percent of the total length of
Speaker 2: the shark. They cited the phylogenetic evidence that suggests the
Speaker 2: adaptation involved in response to their food poor deep sea
Speaker 2: environment and is a possible trade off for the loss
Speaker 2: of strong swimming ability. It might not be able to
Speaker 2: catch desired prey in an all out pursuit, but if
Speaker 2: they get close enough, their jaw length can make up
Speaker 2: the difference. As seen in Alien covenant, Neomorphs can act
Speaker 2: as both pack hunters and solitary stalkers. While they may
Speaker 2: enter prolonged states of hibernation, they're ultimately short lived and
Speaker 2: don't seem to engage in any form of host recurement
Speaker 2: or parasitic reproduction while alive. When they die or are killed,
Speaker 2: their corpses simply produce more sporesas ready to release more
Speaker 2: black moats when a potential host ventures near. Now, in
Speaker 2: the natural world, we certainly have organisms that die after reproduction,
Speaker 2: what we call simularity. These organisms reproduce but a single
Speaker 2: time and then die. The Pacific salmon are a great
Speaker 2: example of this, along with certain insects and molluscs. The
Speaker 2: neo morph, however, would seem to reproduce through death, which
Speaker 2: is of course a fitting xenomorphic and gigresque twist on
Speaker 2: everything it kills, it dies, and through its death it
Speaker 2: ideally spreads more of those moats that will produce new
Speaker 2: blood bursters, and new neomorphs, presumably until all life on
Speaker 2: a world is reduced to just a few hibernating xenos
Speaker 2: and their weighting fungal eggsacts, we might reasonably compare it
Speaker 2: to various pathogens that spread via contact with dead hosts.
Speaker 2: How are you ready for Part five? Let's look at
Speaker 2: the xenomorph egg. In the original nineteen seventy nine film Alien,
Speaker 2: the crew of the Nostromo discovered thousands of strange rubbery eggs,
Speaker 2: each between two and three feet in hide or point
Speaker 2: six two point nine meters in height, aboard a derelict
Speaker 2: engineer spacecraft. As I originally discussed in the article how
Speaker 2: the Alien xenomorph Works back in twenty twelve for the
Speaker 2: website How Stuff Works, the first stop in interpreting this
Speaker 2: strange stage of the alien life cycle is to approach
Speaker 2: it as an egg. That is to say, we have
Speaker 2: to compare it to the amniotic eggs of birds, reptiles,
Speaker 2: and amphibians, which protect and nourish the organism inside during
Speaker 2: its early development. The xenomorph egg certainly contains and protects
Speaker 2: an organism the face hugger stage of the xenomorph life cycle.
Speaker 2: No matter what the external environmental conditions might be, The
Speaker 2: egg seems to keep the face hugger moist alive and
Speaker 2: possibly at the appropriate temperature, within a vat of fleshy
Speaker 2: pulpy material that we might compare to the yolk or
Speaker 2: dudoplasm that serves this purpose in terrestrial eggs. But the
Speaker 2: Zeno egg seemingly evolved to not only protect a developing organism,
Speaker 2: but to preserve it in a state of readiness. As
Speaker 2: we'll discuss in the next episode, the face hugger absolutely
Speaker 2: depends on host availability, and the egg patiently awaits delivery
Speaker 2: too or discovery by suitable hosts. And this is where
Speaker 2: we consider another possibility, one explored by the alien RPG
Speaker 2: from Freely Publishing. Perhaps it's not merely an egg, but
Speaker 2: a full blown stage of the alien life cycle, an
Speaker 2: ovomorph and an organism in and of itself. Consider the
Speaker 2: face hugger doesn't hatch or burst from the egg like
Speaker 2: a natural world hatchling. Instead, it's the ovomorph that opens
Speaker 2: its four dorsal petals or lips and allows the face
Speaker 2: hugger to spring forth. Perhaps indeed, it is the egg
Speaker 2: that initially senses nearby prey and not the face hugger.
Speaker 2: We might also look to the ropey tendrils that seem
Speaker 2: to protrude from the bases of these eggs. Are these
Speaker 2: merely secreted resin strands to bind the eggs in place
Speaker 2: against environmental stress or gravitational changes, or are they tentacles
Speaker 2: that may help sense interlopers. Are they in fact roots
Speaker 2: that seek nourishment to sustain their hidden organic payloads. Finally,
Speaker 2: in the phantasmagorical concept art of dark surrealist hr Giger,
Speaker 2: the eggs dorsal openings are sometimes manifested as a single slit,
Speaker 2: implying not hatching but live birth. Ah. But there is
Speaker 2: more mystery to consider here concerning the ovomorph, as seen
Speaker 2: in alternate cuts of Ridley Scott's Alien and is embraced
Speaker 2: in the Alien RPG source book. There are two known
Speaker 2: ways to wind up with the xenom. A hive queen
Speaker 2: may deposit the eggs in great number, as we see
Speaker 2: in James Cameron's Aliens, or a living host may develop
Speaker 2: into a xenomorphag Here's how it allegedly works. A lone
Speaker 2: xenomorph drone such as the titular creature in the original Alien,
Speaker 2: collects hosts, incapacitates them, cocoons their bodies with resin secretions,
Speaker 2: and then uses a barb on its tail, perhaps a
Speaker 2: form of ovipositor, to inject them with enzymes, hormones, and
Speaker 2: perhaps some derivative of the black Good. The unfortunate host
Speaker 2: then slowly transforms into a swollen ovomorph themselves, complete with
Speaker 2: a face hugger, drifting dreaming in its semi translucent depths.
Speaker 2: With enough time and enough available hosts, the new egg
Speaker 2: may birth a whole new hive of xenomorphic world consuming horror.
Speaker 2: What comes out of the xenomorphag wine the face hugger.
Speaker 2: Of course, it's time for part six. In our look
Speaker 2: at the xenomorph life cycle, we finally come to the
Speaker 2: horrifying face hugger. This is the creature that emerges from
Speaker 2: the traditional xenomorph egg aggressively attaches itself to the face
Speaker 2: of a human host, implants an embryo in the comatose
Speaker 2: host organism, and then dies. The embryo, of course, develops
Speaker 2: into a standard xenomorph, which we'll explore in the next episode.
Speaker 2: There are a few different ways to look at the
Speaker 2: basics of the face hugger. On one level, we can
Speaker 2: ground it in the dark surrealism of hr Giger another
Speaker 2: twist on sexual reproduction, Freudian death drive, and physiology. But
Speaker 2: just as we previously face the question of whether the
Speaker 2: xenomorph egg is an organism in and of itself, we
Speaker 2: must also consider this with the face hugger to some degree.
Speaker 2: In HowStuffWorks dot COM's How the Alien xenomorph Works from
Speaker 2: twenty twelve, I explored the idea that the face hugger
Speaker 2: might not constitute a true organism at all, but would
Speaker 2: rather be a delivery system for the embryo. No more
Speaker 2: an organism than a sperm cell is an organism, and
Speaker 2: of course this alone is a comparison worth considering. A
Speaker 2: human sperm cell is not a human being, but it
Speaker 2: does metabolize sugar to produce energy, grow and move on
Speaker 2: its own to reach the egg as part of human reproduction.
Speaker 2: But anyway, back in twenty twelve, the face hugger also
Speaker 2: brought to my mind at any rate, the male argonaut
Speaker 2: or paper nautilus, which has a detachable spermatophore filled arm
Speaker 2: called a hectocoutilus that it leaves with its mate. So
Speaker 2: if the xenomorphic could be considered an organism, we might
Speaker 2: consider the face hugger to be its hectocoutilyus of sorts,
Speaker 2: only one that moves on its own to seek how
Speaker 2: the host. However, there's an important point to be made here,
Speaker 2: and one that I don't think is properly reflected in
Speaker 2: that twenty twelve How Stuff Works article I wrote. A
Speaker 2: hectocodulus is not free swimming like a sperm cell. Some
Speaker 2: creatures of the hectocodulus use it as a sex organ
Speaker 2: that remains attached. In others, such as with the argonaut,
Speaker 2: it detaches and the male manually leaves it, with the
Speaker 2: female leaving it inside a special cavity in her mantle.
Speaker 2: In the Free League Alien RPG, the authors present three
Speaker 2: rival theories concerning the face hugger. The first, in line
Speaker 2: with what we've been discussing, is that it deposits an
Speaker 2: embryo of some sort, thus making it another morph of
Speaker 2: the same species. The second idea is that it deposits
Speaker 2: not an embryo, but a cancerous growth that mutates into
Speaker 2: a chessbuster. This, I would imagine puts it more in
Speaker 2: line with the concept of the black goo in the
Speaker 2: alien universe. The third premises of the face hugger is
Speaker 2: its own species in a symbiotic relationship with the prime
Speaker 2: xenomorph species, and that it injects bacteria into the host
Speaker 2: that leads to the development of the chess burster. Part
Speaker 2: of the confusion here is due to the fact that
Speaker 2: the developing embryo or chess burster inside the host takes
Speaker 2: on at least some of the host's genetics, be it
Speaker 2: the chessbuster we see emerge from the quadruped host in
Speaker 2: Alien three, or if we're considering Ash's comments in the
Speaker 2: original Alien, that the xenomorph that emerges from Nostromo Executive
Speaker 2: Officer Caine is essentially quote Cain's son. And even this
Speaker 2: is not entirely outside the boundaries of the natural world,
Speaker 2: as recent studies have shown that horsehair worms steal genes
Speaker 2: from host organisms in order to control their behavior, and
Speaker 2: we see plenty of other examples of horizontal gene transfer,
Speaker 2: the non sexual transfer of genetic information between genomes. But
Speaker 2: let's get back to the face hugger itself. I turned
Speaker 2: to the paper science Fiction The Biology of the Alien
Speaker 2: in Alien by Armand im Curis and Mona Wi Leo,
Speaker 2: published just last year in the Portland Press. They classify
Speaker 2: the face hugger as a quote hoxt attack larval stage
Speaker 2: and conclude that quote unattacking larva injecting the next larval
Speaker 2: stage is realistic for earthling parasites. For a natural world
Speaker 2: example of something related, they turn to Seculina Carcini, the
Speaker 2: crab hacker barnacle, one of the parasitic Rhizocephala crab castrator barnacles.
Speaker 2: One of the organism's early motes, is a specialized juvenile
Speaker 2: form known as a kentragon, which boasts only the antennuals
Speaker 2: necessary to attach to its crab host, and is otherwise
Speaker 2: a living hypodermic needle that exists only to inject a
Speaker 2: cell mass known as a vermagon into the crab, and
Speaker 2: the vermagon is described here by the authors as microscopic
Speaker 2: and worm like. The injected vermigon then proceeds to grow
Speaker 2: like roots through the host organism, branching through its organs,
Speaker 2: leaving it unable to reproduce and completely control its physiology
Speaker 2: and behavior. Absolutely fascinating and another example of how the
Speaker 2: natural world is always willing to match even our most
Speaker 2: bizarre sci fi and fantasy inventions. We might well think
Speaker 2: of the face hugger as a kind of kentragon and
Speaker 2: its reproductive payload as a vermigon. And indeed, the vermigon's
Speaker 2: role in the natural world is to grow and establish
Speaker 2: the adult form of the organism within the body of
Speaker 2: the hosts. Only in the case of the xenomorph, that
Speaker 2: final form must burst free. As we'll discuss in the
Speaker 2: next Monster Fact episode. Ooh, Finally, part seven, let's look
Speaker 2: at the adult xenomorph. Thus far in the Alien Monster
Speaker 2: Fact series, we've discussed everything from the mysterious engineers and
Speaker 2: their black goo, to the xenomorph ag and the face
Speaker 2: hugger that emerges from it. As we all know, the
Speaker 2: next phase in the alien life cycle is the violent
Speaker 2: eruption of the free living chest burster, which swiftly grows
Speaker 2: to become an adult xenomorph, sometimes referred to as a
Speaker 2: stage four xenomorph or simply a drone or warrior in
Speaker 2: science fiction. The Biology of the Alien in Alien by
Speaker 2: Armand im Kurus and Mono why Law, published just last
Speaker 2: year in the Portland Press. The authors describe the xenomorph's
Speaker 2: parasitic development inside the host as lining up with natural
Speaker 2: world coinobiant parasitoids, parasites that attack hosts that then continue
Speaker 2: feeding and growing during the parasitism. Because, of course, we
Speaker 2: see this in the original nineteen seventy nine film Alien,
Speaker 2: when Caine's face hugger falls away, he awakens and acts
Speaker 2: like his old self again. He chats and jokes with
Speaker 2: his crewmates. He enjoys a meal and prepares to carry
Speaker 2: on his ship duties before the creature inside him violently emerges.
Speaker 2: Corros and Low compared this to various parasitoid wasps, horsehair worms,
Speaker 2: and the Cortescep's fungus. In general, we're dealing with examples
Speaker 2: where the doomed host organism continues to behave as usual,
Speaker 2: sometimes even feeding, but also acting in a manner to
Speaker 2: benefit the parasite. Corticeps infected ants climb to a high
Speaker 2: point and release spores. Horse hair worm infected crickets seek
Speaker 2: out water to drown in, enabling the spawn inside them
Speaker 2: to burst free into their desired watery habitat and swim
Speaker 2: off in search of a mate. The growth of such
Speaker 2: parasites is amazing, consuming host tissues to the developing organism
Speaker 2: is almost as large as the host in some cases, converting.
Speaker 2: According to Chris and Low, upwards of quote seventy percent
Speaker 2: of the host tissues into parasitoid biomass and up to
Speaker 2: ninety percent of its nitrogen, mostly to build parasitoid protein.
Speaker 2: In twenty twelve article how the Alien xenomorph Works for HowStuffWorks,
Speaker 2: dot com I pointed to some grizzly natural world examples
Speaker 2: of this sort of thing, including the parasitic wasp cotesiaglomerata,
Speaker 2: which may pump up to sixty eggs into a single caterpillar,
Speaker 2: which may ultimately account for thirty percent of the host
Speaker 2: organism's body weight. The hatching larvae drink the host organism's
Speaker 2: fluids but avoid vital organs. Other organisms, such as the
Speaker 2: Dinocampus cosinella wasp, seem to reprogram the host to protect
Speaker 2: the emergent larvae. And here's another interesting wrinkle to this.
Speaker 2: Parasitic wasp larvae seem to use a virus mimicking poison
Speaker 2: to shut down a host's immune system, allowing their growing
Speaker 2: spawn to develop inside the host unopposed. In a matter
Speaker 2: of hours, perhaps aided by the consumption of additional biomass
Speaker 2: and even metals, the xenomorph chest burster develops into a
Speaker 2: full grown adult, standing a good eight feet or two
Speaker 2: point four meters in height, glistening and black, the bipedal
Speaker 2: xenomorph boasts a number of features that indeed make it
Speaker 2: worthy of the moniker perfect organism. It seems to benefit
Speaker 2: from a dual skeletal system, both indo and exo, as
Speaker 2: well as caustic blood that burns anything that might injure it.
Speaker 2: They're fast, They're stealthy. They attack with vicious claws, spiked tail,
Speaker 2: razor sharp teeth, and a secondary jaw that launches piston
Speaker 2: like to puncture prey, often compared to the pharanngial jaws
Speaker 2: of the moraeel. Yet while the eel uses this adaptation
Speaker 2: to pull in prey, the xenomorph seems chiefly concerned with
Speaker 2: killing and subduing its prey, either for transformation into an
Speaker 2: ovomorph or in preparation for a xenomorph. Queen's eggs alone,
Speaker 2: an adult xenomorph betrays cunning and a fair amount of
Speaker 2: vicarious learning and problem solving, and within a high context,
Speaker 2: they may benefit from emergent intelligence or some manner of
Speaker 2: hive mind. They have even been observed to exploit human technology,
Speaker 2: at least to a limited degree. To quote the android Ash,
Speaker 2: we are left with a survivor, unclouded by conscience, remorse,
Speaker 2: or delusions of morality. It may constitute the ultimate creation
Speaker 2: of the Engineers, or that of the rogue android David.
Speaker 2: It may also be the true form of a creature
Speaker 2: that inspired the Engineers in their biotechnological pursuits, still dominant
Speaker 2: in the dark reaches of the galaxy, or resurrected via
Speaker 2: the mad research of a demented, vengeful mind. We don't know,
Speaker 2: We may never know, and it seems entirely likely that
Speaker 2: we should never have left the Earth to begin with.
Speaker 2: And finally getting into spoiler territory for alien Romulus, let
Speaker 2: us consider the offspring and other hybrids. First and foremost,
Speaker 2: we have to remember that even the ror xenomorph life
Speaker 2: cycle is one of horrific and deadly hybridity. The adult
Speaker 2: Xenomorph is inherently a combination of alien and host DNA
Speaker 2: agent A zero slash thirty nine to fifty nine x
Speaker 2: point ninety one slash fifteen. The black Goo works as
Speaker 2: an evolutionary accelerant on most biological modes of life in
Speaker 2: the series, pushing them into stranger, more hostile, and more
Speaker 2: durable forms. So most of the individual forms and lifestyle
Speaker 2: stages we've discussed so far can be thought of as
Speaker 2: the most likely forms and morphs of xenomorphic life, but
Speaker 2: many other paths are possible. This is especially true when
Speaker 2: human engineer or android scientific manipulation changes the shape of
Speaker 2: things to come. In nineteen ninety seven's Alien Resurrection, set
Speaker 2: two hundred years after the events of Alien three in
Speaker 2: the year twenty three eighty one, we encounter United Cisdum's
Speaker 2: military scientists who have not only created numerous clones of
Speaker 2: long dead Ellen Ripley, but also the xenomorph queen that
Speaker 2: was growing inside her at the moment of her death.
Speaker 2: Their results are numerous Ripley clones with varying degrees of
Speaker 2: xenomorphic biology, as well as an alien queen with human
Speaker 2: reproductive physiology. The latter situation results in the birth of
Speaker 2: a monstrous newborn hybrid, a pale humanoid xenomorph with various
Speaker 2: human features and a complex emotional state. Much earlier in
Speaker 2: the Alien timeline and more recently at our cinemas, we
Speaker 2: witness the birth of the offspring hybrid in Alien Romulus.
Speaker 2: We get to this creature via various missteps. First of all,
Speaker 2: whilean Utani scientists managed to isolate the black goo from
Speaker 2: the remains of the original nostromo xenomorph, then they attempt
Speaker 2: to engineer it into a control biohacking agent that alters
Speaker 2: human physiology to make them more resilient offworld colonists. A
Speaker 2: futurist common that we've discussed on stuff to blow your
Speaker 2: mind before. Instead of terraforming other worlds into something more
Speaker 2: like Earth, what if we altered ourselves to better fit
Speaker 2: those worlds, or at least met them halfway. So give
Speaker 2: it up to Waylan Newtani. Solid concept. Their execution, however,
Speaker 2: falls tragically short of perfection. In their vanity, they attempted
Speaker 2: to harness the biotechnological might of the engineers, and the
Speaker 2: violent trajectory of the black goo could not be contained.
Speaker 2: We see footage of the supposedly successful resurrection of a
Speaker 2: dead laborat via the formula let's call it gray Goo,
Speaker 2: only to later see the disastrous mutations that the specimen experienced.
Speaker 2: Now unaware of the latter complications, the characters and Romulus
Speaker 2: take off with the gray Goose samples, and sure enough,
Speaker 2: one of them k eventually injects it into their own
Speaker 2: system to bounce back from an injury. The gray Goo
Speaker 2: appears to work here, at least initially. However, the formula
Speaker 2: affects K's pregnancy, resulting in the rapid birth and development
Speaker 2: of a fast growing alien zeno hybrid referred to as
Speaker 2: the Offspring, a towering, misshapen monster with elements of xenomorphic
Speaker 2: human and engineer features. Now, I wasn't sure exactly how
Speaker 2: I felt about this creature design at first, but it
Speaker 2: has grown on me and I've seen that it clearly
Speaker 2: freaked out and revolted plenty of viewers, So it's very
Speaker 2: much serving its purpose in the film. So I eagerly
Speaker 2: await revisiting this creature when Romulus is released into our
Speaker 2: homes later this month. Now, the Romulus scientists were far
Speaker 2: from the first to experiment with the black goo and
Speaker 2: charge its effects on various organisms. The engineers, of course,
Speaker 2: pioneered this science and the rogue android. David experimented exhaustively
Speaker 2: on the flora and fauna of an engineer home world,
Speaker 2: before presumably moving on to more human centric experimentations on
Speaker 2: the far flung world of Aura Guy six. In David's notes,
Speaker 2: and drawings from the Engineer World and Covenant, we see
Speaker 2: exhaustive and increasingly nightmarish records of the Black Goose effects
Speaker 2: on native species, as well as his own manipulation and
Speaker 2: proposed alterations of human and engineer physiology with the accelerant
Speaker 2: and altered strains of xenomorphic life. Interestingly enough, one of
Speaker 2: these images depicts a creature with the head of an
Speaker 2: engineer and the body of a xenomorph. It would seem
Speaker 2: that David's twisted imagination, if not his unwholesome experiments, prophesied
Speaker 2: the romulus offspring decades earlier. You'll see this illustration, by
Speaker 2: the way, in the compiled volume David's Drawings, published in
Speaker 2: splendid hardback, alongside a softback booklet about the artists Matt
Speaker 2: Hatton and Dame Hallett, who created the drawings, and the
Speaker 2: notes that litter the set of David's laboratory in the film.
Speaker 2: The main book is a beautiful, haunting volume, and the
Speaker 2: accompanying booklet provides wonderful insight into the vis visual design
Speaker 2: process of the film. Now, the Extended Alien Universe contains
Speaker 2: numerous additional hybrid complications. The Alien RPG from Freely Publishing
Speaker 2: includes several of these related to the creation of the
Speaker 2: twenty six Dracona strain, a black goo based vaccine similar
Speaker 2: to what we see in Romulus, intended in this case
Speaker 2: to halt the development of a xenomorphic embryo in the
Speaker 2: human body. In the module Destroyer of Worlds, we see
Speaker 2: one complication in which the black goo derivative is introduced
Speaker 2: into the body of a human already impregnated by a
Speaker 2: face hugger. The accelerant, they write, serves as a genetic bridge,
Speaker 2: resequencing the DNA of human host and xenomorphic embryo into
Speaker 2: a single organism, essentially turning the human into a xenomorph
Speaker 2: from the inside out. The resulting body burster resembles a
Speaker 2: normal adult xenomorph, but with the skull of the human
Speaker 2: host embedded in the creature's cranial dome. This concept, in essence,
Speaker 2: originates in William Gibson's unproduced screenplay for Alien three, and
Speaker 2: plays on some early hr Giger suit designs for the
Speaker 2: original Alien. It's a fitting and horrific concept that Alien
Speaker 2: filmmakers should certainly come back to in the future. All Right,
Speaker 2: that's it for this monster fact omnibus episode dealing with
Speaker 2: the alien series. Now, some of you might be asking yourself, well,
Speaker 2: why didn't we talk about the Queen. Why didn't we
Speaker 2: talk about Well, maybe one or two other creatures that
Speaker 2: pop up in the series. Well, maybe we'll come back
Speaker 2: and look at them in the future. But this, for
Speaker 2: the most part concludes the journey. So, as always, I'd
Speaker 2: love to hear from everyone out there. If you have thoughts, opinions,
Speaker 2: or additional analysis on anything that we teased out here,
Speaker 2: write in I would love to hear from you. Thanks
Speaker 2: to the wonderful Apossway for producing these episodes and then
Speaker 2: stitching them all together into this final form, And if
Speaker 2: you want to get in touch with us, you can
Speaker 2: email us at contact at Stuffdblow your Mind dot com.
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
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Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.