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 the previous episode, in this special alien themed Monster
Speaker 2: Fact series, we discussed Agent A zero thirty nine fifty
Speaker 2: nine x point ninety one slash fifteen. The Black Goo,
Speaker 2: a powerful evolutionary accelerant created by the Engineers and deployed
Speaker 2: as both the creator and destroyer of worlds. We consider
Speaker 2: the various ways that it worked itself through a host,
Speaker 2: spawning zombie like abominations in the process. As witnessed in
Speaker 2: the film Prometheus, a mixture of pathogen infected hosts can
Speaker 2: lead to truly straining forms. The android David infected Human
Speaker 2: Crew made Holloway with a mere drop of the Black Goo.
Speaker 2: The infected Holloway then impregnated his partner, doctor Elizabeth Shaw,
Speaker 2: who then employed appalling medpod to surgically remove the resulting
Speaker 2: squid like embryo before it could burst out of her
Speaker 2: on its own. Left to its own devices, the resulting
Speaker 2: creature rapidly grew into an enormous seven tentacled monster sometimes
Speaker 2: referred to as the trilobite. The creature has virtually nothing
Speaker 2: in common with the prehistoric arthropod of the same name,
Speaker 2: which we previously discussed un stuffable your mind. If anything,
Speaker 2: the creature looks more like an octopus. They'll find very
Speaker 2: few seven armed organisms in the natural world. The seven
Speaker 2: armed sea star comes to mind, but we also have
Speaker 2: to consider the so called seven armed octopus. Some call
Speaker 2: it the septipus or the blob octopus, but Halifron atlanticus
Speaker 2: actually does does have eight arms. It's just that the
Speaker 2: male's hectocotylus or specialized fertilization arm, remains coiled away in
Speaker 2: a sack beneath the right eye, thus giving the creature
Speaker 2: the appearance of having only seven arms, at least in
Speaker 2: the males. But back to the monster, we quickly learn
Speaker 2: that the alien trilobite is merely an intermediate stage in
Speaker 2: the creature's overall life cycle. When the trilobite overpowers a
Speaker 2: surviving engineer, incapacitates the host and implants its own embryo orally,
Speaker 2: the tentacled monster then covers the host's body in a
Speaker 2: posture that the Alien RPG from Free League Publishing describes
Speaker 2: as a protective posture. There's already a lot to unpack here.
Speaker 2: I don't want to get two ahead of ourselves, but
Speaker 2: the creature here is essentially more of a body hugger
Speaker 2: than a face hugger, though it still depends on oral
Speaker 2: injection of its embryo. It also feels as if the
Speaker 2: trilobite form developed expressly for the purpose of infect larger
Speaker 2: than human prey, did its juvenile forms somehow detect the
Speaker 2: presence of a much larger engineer in its midst and
Speaker 2: morph 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: trilobite is a specialized engineer nabber, 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 trillabte crumpled and
Speaker 2: dead and watch a juvenile 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 boats 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 forms. 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. Tune in for additional episodes of The
Speaker 2: Monster Fact each week. Our Alien series will continue next
Speaker 2: week with a look at the neomorph before getting into
Speaker 2: the traditional xenomorphic life cycle. Write in with your own observations, readings,
Speaker 2: and thoughts. Thanks as always to the excellent JJ Possway
Speaker 2: for producing this show. Email us at contact at stufftable
Speaker 2: your mind dot com.
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