Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hi, my name is Robert Lamb and this is the
Speaker 2: Monster Fact, a short form series from Stuff to Blow
Speaker 2: Your Mind focusing on mythical creatures, ideas, and monsters in time.
Speaker 2: In a rare case of synchronicity with the news Cycle,
Speaker 2: which is all about brain worms of late, I decided
Speaker 2: to devote this Trek themed episode to the dreaded Seti
Speaker 2: eels of Seti Alpha ve. You will, of course remember
Speaker 2: them from the nineteen eighty two film Star Trek two,
Speaker 2: The Wrath of Khan, in which thawd twentieth century eugenics
Speaker 2: war tyrant Khan Noonan Singh, played by the superb Ricardo Montaban,
Speaker 2: uses larval Seti eels to torture and control two Enterprise
Speaker 2: crew members in his quest for vengeance. We also learned
Speaker 2: that set eels, native to the harsh world Singh was
Speaker 2: exiled to by Starfleet, killed many of Khan's people, including
Speaker 2: his wife. The setiworm is a burrowing desert creature, but
Speaker 2: its larva, we're told by Singh, crawl in through the
Speaker 2: ear canals of host creatures to wrap themselves around the
Speaker 2: cerebral cortex, rendering the host organism highly susceptible to suggestion.
Speaker 2: Madness and death follow as the eel grows, unless the
Speaker 2: eel is removed or leaves of its own accord. The
Speaker 2: latter occurs with First Officer Chekhov, though the reason is uncertain.
Speaker 2: Was it responding to danger, had it lost control of
Speaker 2: its host? Was it in fact leaving the host in
Speaker 2: order to continue its life cycle. We don't know any
Speaker 2: of these answers, in part because Captain Kirk instantly vaporizes
Speaker 2: the escaping eel, turning once more to the non canonical
Speaker 2: Star Trek. The Worlds of the Federation, written and illustrated
Speaker 2: by Laura Johnson, written as Shane Johnson in nineteen eighty nine,
Speaker 2: the author largely shares what we already know from the movie.
Speaker 2: Adult Seti eels, one of the few native species to
Speaker 2: survive on the planet, grow to lengths of fourteen inches
Speaker 2: and carry their young in tissue or armor folds on
Speaker 2: their backs until such time as they leave the parent
Speaker 2: for a host organism. In Life Signs the Biology of
Speaker 2: Star Trek, Susan and Robert Jenkins briefly discuss the Seti
Speaker 2: eel in context with other neural parasites and symbians of
Speaker 2: the Trek universe, and there are several classifying. The possession
Speaker 2: we see with the Seti eel is a kind of
Speaker 2: quote co conscious mind control, with the hosts made helpless
Speaker 2: by the superseding power of the parasite. Presumably, the whole
Speaker 2: reason for subduing the host organism is to keep it
Speaker 2: from interfering with the larva's occupation of set organism, and
Speaker 2: we might assume that the Seti eel also eats the
Speaker 2: tissue that it presumably burrows through to reach the cerebral cortex.
Speaker 2: Mind control aspect of this fictional parasitic scenario is of
Speaker 2: course vary, in keeping with numerous examples from the natural
Speaker 2: terrestrial world, including various parasitoid wasps, flatworms, hair worms, protozoans, fungi,
Speaker 2: and more. In broad strokes, we see parasites that alter
Speaker 2: host behavior to help complete their own life cycle. This
Speaker 2: may mean mere survival or positioning of the host in
Speaker 2: such a way that a desirable new host will consume
Speaker 2: the current host. Now with the Seti eel, we certainly
Speaker 2: see the former survival, but not so much The latter
Speaker 2: eel controlled humans don't seem to do anything other than
Speaker 2: obey fellow humans. Though one could make a case that
Speaker 2: this alone might lead to say, uninfected human being either
Speaker 2: being expelled, which would at least be a choice, and
Speaker 2: you can imagine scenarios in which this would put the
Speaker 2: current host organism in a position to, say, be near water,
Speaker 2: or near another organism that it needs to enter, perhaps
Speaker 2: some sort of a predator. Or you could also make
Speaker 2: the argument that well, okay, a human that is so
Speaker 2: easily controlled by fellow humans is going to remain in
Speaker 2: close proximity with humans, and perhaps it just needs to
Speaker 2: enter a new host organism once it's done munching and
Speaker 2: constricting inside that individual skull. Either way, we also have
Speaker 2: to acknowledge that humanoids, and remember in the Trek universe,
Speaker 2: most or all humanoid species are very distantly related to
Speaker 2: each other, humanoids might not be the desired vector for
Speaker 2: the parasite, and in the world of actual terrestrial parasite studies,
Speaker 2: we do see dangerous results from parasites winding up either
Speaker 2: in the wrong host or the wrong part of the
Speaker 2: right host. Now, I've long found this one of the
Speaker 2: more horrifying aspects of sci fi space horror and particularly
Speaker 2: sci fi space related body a human interactions with hostile
Speaker 2: biology that simply didn't evolve to deal with human beings.
Speaker 2: The xenomorphic threats of the Alien film franchise are great
Speaker 2: examples of this. Of course, on one hand, the creatures
Speaker 2: we see in the films are highly adaptive and make
Speaker 2: use of host DNA in the acquisition of their adult forms.
Speaker 2: They have evolved and or been engineered to make quick
Speaker 2: study and use of new bodies. But the other horrifying
Speaker 2: way to think about it is that here is a
Speaker 2: creature that is truly an alien within the host body.
Speaker 2: It doesn't know what it's doing in there, and much
Speaker 2: like the scene in twenty twelve's Prometheus with the robotic
Speaker 2: surgery pod, this combination of high skill and lower context
Speaker 2: for the target body runs the risk of heading into
Speaker 2: very grizzly territory. Still, we don't have to invoke alien
Speaker 2: to make the seti eel terrifying. The implantation scene in
Speaker 2: Wrath of Khan remains one of the latest moments of
Speaker 2: space horror in a franchise we don't generally associate with it.
Speaker 2: Tune in for additional episodes of the Monster fact the
Speaker 2: artifact or anomalius stupendium. Each week I'm going to try
Speaker 2: and press on with at least one more trek selection,
Speaker 2: so please send in your recommendations. As always, you can
Speaker 2: email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind
Speaker 2: dot com.
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