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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 2: Hi, my name is Robert Lamb and this is the

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Speaker 2: Monster Fact, a short form series from Stuff to Blow

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Speaker 2: Your Mind focusing on mythical creatures, ideas, and monsters in time.

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Speaker 2: In a rare case of synchronicity with the news Cycle,

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Speaker 2: which is all about brain worms of late, I decided

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Speaker 2: to devote this Trek themed episode to the dreaded Seti

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Speaker 2: eels of Seti Alpha ve. You will, of course remember

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Speaker 2: them from the nineteen eighty two film Star Trek two,

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Speaker 2: The Wrath of Khan, in which thawd twentieth century eugenics

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Speaker 2: war tyrant Khan Noonan Singh, played by the superb Ricardo Montaban,

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Speaker 2: uses larval Seti eels to torture and control two Enterprise

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Speaker 2: crew members in his quest for vengeance. We also learned

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Speaker 2: that set eels, native to the harsh world Singh was

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Speaker 2: exiled to by Starfleet, killed many of Khan's people, including

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Speaker 2: his wife. The setiworm is a burrowing desert creature, but

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Speaker 2: its larva, we're told by Singh, crawl in through the

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Speaker 2: ear canals of host creatures to wrap themselves around the

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Speaker 2: cerebral cortex, rendering the host organism highly susceptible to suggestion.

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Speaker 2: Madness and death follow as the eel grows, unless the

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Speaker 2: eel is removed or leaves of its own accord. The

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Speaker 2: latter occurs with First Officer Chekhov, though the reason is uncertain.

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Speaker 2: Was it responding to danger, had it lost control of

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Speaker 2: its host? Was it in fact leaving the host in

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Speaker 2: order to continue its life cycle. We don't know any

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Speaker 2: of these answers, in part because Captain Kirk instantly vaporizes

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Speaker 2: the escaping eel, turning once more to the non canonical

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Speaker 2: Star Trek. The Worlds of the Federation, written and illustrated

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Speaker 2: by Laura Johnson, written as Shane Johnson in nineteen eighty nine,

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Speaker 2: the author largely shares what we already know from the movie.

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Speaker 2: Adult Seti eels, one of the few native species to

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Speaker 2: survive on the planet, grow to lengths of fourteen inches

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Speaker 2: and carry their young in tissue or armor folds on

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Speaker 2: their backs until such time as they leave the parent

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Speaker 2: for a host organism. In Life Signs the Biology of

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Speaker 2: Star Trek, Susan and Robert Jenkins briefly discuss the Seti

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Speaker 2: eel in context with other neural parasites and symbians of

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Speaker 2: the Trek universe, and there are several classifying. The possession

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Speaker 2: we see with the Seti eel is a kind of

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Speaker 2: quote co conscious mind control, with the hosts made helpless

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Speaker 2: by the superseding power of the parasite. Presumably, the whole

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Speaker 2: reason for subduing the host organism is to keep it

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Speaker 2: from interfering with the larva's occupation of set organism, and

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Speaker 2: we might assume that the Seti eel also eats the

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Speaker 2: tissue that it presumably burrows through to reach the cerebral cortex.

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Speaker 2: Mind control aspect of this fictional parasitic scenario is of

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Speaker 2: course vary, in keeping with numerous examples from the natural

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Speaker 2: terrestrial world, including various parasitoid wasps, flatworms, hair worms, protozoans, fungi,

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Speaker 2: and more. In broad strokes, we see parasites that alter

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Speaker 2: host behavior to help complete their own life cycle. This

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Speaker 2: may mean mere survival or positioning of the host in

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Speaker 2: such a way that a desirable new host will consume

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Speaker 2: the current host. Now with the Seti eel, we certainly

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Speaker 2: see the former survival, but not so much The latter

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Speaker 2: eel controlled humans don't seem to do anything other than

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Speaker 2: obey fellow humans. Though one could make a case that

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Speaker 2: this alone might lead to say, uninfected human being either

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Speaker 2: being expelled, which would at least be a choice, and

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Speaker 2: you can imagine scenarios in which this would put the

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Speaker 2: current host organism in a position to, say, be near water,

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Speaker 2: or near another organism that it needs to enter, perhaps

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Speaker 2: some sort of a predator. Or you could also make

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Speaker 2: the argument that well, okay, a human that is so

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Speaker 2: easily controlled by fellow humans is going to remain in

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Speaker 2: close proximity with humans, and perhaps it just needs to

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Speaker 2: enter a new host organism once it's done munching and

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Speaker 2: constricting inside that individual skull. Either way, we also have

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Speaker 2: to acknowledge that humanoids, and remember in the Trek universe,

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Speaker 2: most or all humanoid species are very distantly related to

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Speaker 2: each other, humanoids might not be the desired vector for

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Speaker 2: the parasite, and in the world of actual terrestrial parasite studies,

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Speaker 2: we do see dangerous results from parasites winding up either

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Speaker 2: in the wrong host or the wrong part of the

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Speaker 2: right host. Now, I've long found this one of the

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Speaker 2: more horrifying aspects of sci fi space horror and particularly

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Speaker 2: sci fi space related body a human interactions with hostile

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Speaker 2: biology that simply didn't evolve to deal with human beings.

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Speaker 2: The xenomorphic threats of the Alien film franchise are great

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Speaker 2: examples of this. Of course, on one hand, the creatures

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Speaker 2: we see in the films are highly adaptive and make

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Speaker 2: use of host DNA in the acquisition of their adult forms.

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Speaker 2: They have evolved and or been engineered to make quick

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Speaker 2: study and use of new bodies. But the other horrifying

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Speaker 2: way to think about it is that here is a

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Speaker 2: creature that is truly an alien within the host body.

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Speaker 2: It doesn't know what it's doing in there, and much

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Speaker 2: like the scene in twenty twelve's Prometheus with the robotic

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Speaker 2: surgery pod, this combination of high skill and lower context

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Speaker 2: for the target body runs the risk of heading into

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Speaker 2: very grizzly territory. Still, we don't have to invoke alien

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Speaker 2: to make the seti eel terrifying. The implantation scene in

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Speaker 2: Wrath of Khan remains one of the latest moments of

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Speaker 2: space horror in a franchise we don't generally associate with it.

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Speaker 2: Tune in for additional episodes of the Monster fact the

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Speaker 2: artifact or anomalius stupendium. Each week I'm going to try

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Speaker 2: and press on with at least one more trek selection,

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Speaker 2: so please send in your recommendations. As always, you can

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Speaker 2: email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind

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Speaker 2: dot com.

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