Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hi, my name is Robert Lambin. This is the Monster Fact,
Speaker 2: a short form series from Stuff to Blow Your Mind,
Speaker 2: focusing in on mythical creatures, ideas and monsters in time.
Speaker 2: And this is going to be yet another omnibus episode,
Speaker 2: collecting four previous related Monster Fact entries. These are going
Speaker 2: to cover my recent journey into the Star Trek universe,
Speaker 2: so I hope you enjoy these. Let's go ahead and
Speaker 2: kick things off with the Andrians. In this episode, I'd
Speaker 2: like to begin a series on various aliens and creatures
Speaker 2: from the Star Trek universe. Now, first of all, I
Speaker 2: will be the first to admit that I am not
Speaker 2: an expert in Trek lore, but I very fondly remember
Speaker 2: as a kid in the nineties watching reruns of Star
Speaker 2: Trek the Next Generation every weeknight at nine PM. So
Speaker 2: fondly remember a book that I had to special order
Speaker 2: from the local bookstore, Star Trek The Worlds of the Federation,
Speaker 2: written and illustrated by Laura Johnson writing as Shane Johnson.
Speaker 2: This was an encyclopedic collection of alien profiles. Think of
Speaker 2: it as a monster manual. If you will, covering thirty
Speaker 2: two different Federation member alien species, as well as a
Speaker 2: number of neutral and hostile aliens. This was a nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty nine publication, so it's far from current and is
Speaker 2: not considered part of current Trek canon, and I'm to
Speaker 2: understand some Trek writers took issue with some of the entries. Still,
Speaker 2: it's a book that meant a lot to me as
Speaker 2: a young Treky, and I suspect it meant a lot
Speaker 2: to others from this time period as well, So I'm
Speaker 2: going to go ahead and cite it along with some
Speaker 2: other sources, with the caveat that again, it's not canon
Speaker 2: much in the same way I cited the Dune Encyclopedia
Speaker 2: in some of my Dune related entries. With all of
Speaker 2: that in mind, let's turn to the Andrians. These blueskin,
Speaker 2: white haired, antinny equipped aliens are iconic original series aliens,
Speaker 2: but they were rather exotic for me, as they're virtually
Speaker 2: absent from both Star Trek the Next Generation and Star
Speaker 2: Trek Deep Space nine, which constituted my prime Trek viewing.
Speaker 2: The reasoning for their absence, according to the excellent Memory Alpha,
Speaker 2: was largely twofold. First of all, Trek creator Gene Roddenberry
Speaker 2: preferred that many original series aliens be avoided in favor
Speaker 2: of new ones on the next generation. Secondly, the makeup
Speaker 2: was allegedly difficult to get right and avoid looking silly.
Speaker 2: They overcame these hurdles and subsequent shows, and in the
Speaker 2: current Star Trek Strange New World series, which I'm enjoying
Speaker 2: quite a bit, we encounter an albinos subspecies of Andrians
Speaker 2: known as the Nar, as well as an Andrian Special
Speaker 2: Forces officer, and neither of these aliens looks remotely silly.
Speaker 2: But let's come back to the biology of the Andorians.
Speaker 2: The worlds the Federation describes them as a mix of
Speaker 2: mammalian and reptilian features, with both an endoskeleton and a
Speaker 2: limited exoskeleton, and the antennae are described as enhancing otherwise
Speaker 2: colorblind vision with a quote complex matrix of light sensitive
Speaker 2: cones in addition to auditory functions. All of this together
Speaker 2: would amount to an enhanced sense of sight and smell.
Speaker 2: Fair enough obvious sense organs do sense organ things. Antenna
Speaker 2: in terrestrial organisms remember very greatly, and depending on the species,
Speaker 2: may utilize senses of touch, air, motion, heat, vibration, smell
Speaker 2: or taste. But again, the Worlds of the Federation came
Speaker 2: out in nineteen eighty nine before A particular nineteen ninety
Speaker 2: three episode of the Next Generation shed a great deal
Speaker 2: of canonical light on the biology of Star Trek. The
Speaker 2: episode titled The Chase, which I specifically remember from my childhood,
Speaker 2: revealed the reason so many Star Trek alien species are
Speaker 2: humanoid and resemble each other, often with minor alters to
Speaker 2: facial and cranial features. All of this via a revelation
Speaker 2: of ancient intentional pan spermia via a single advanced progenitor
Speaker 2: humanoid species. In other words, all of these Trek species
Speaker 2: look similar not because they're all humans in makeup, but
Speaker 2: rather because a single ancestor species spread their own DNA
Speaker 2: among the various worlds to seed them. I've always found
Speaker 2: this to be a clever way of addressing the seeming
Speaker 2: lack of biological diversity in many of the core Tract civilizations.
Speaker 2: Now you might reasonably wonder, okay, fine, but realistically, would
Speaker 2: these distantly related species still look so similar to each other? Well?
Speaker 2: Susan and Robert Jenkins explore this question in their book
Speaker 2: The Biology of Star Trek, published in nineteen ninety eight.
Speaker 2: They point out that based on what we know about evolution,
Speaker 2: it's not at all unreasonable. The evolutionary clock runs slowly,
Speaker 2: they write, and it has a built in bias against
Speaker 2: major overhauls. Because speciation is brought about by multiple random
Speaker 2: changes in DNA, and the changes must allow the organism
Speaker 2: to survive and reproduce, small changes are favored over large ones.
Speaker 2: Small changes are less likely to compromise the tested survivability
Speaker 2: of the original. Given this constraint, two species that start
Speaker 2: out alike remain similar over a rather long time, even
Speaker 2: under different sets of environmental pressures. They add that particular
Speaker 2: environmental pressures would of course have their impact, and a
Speaker 2: trend towards facial symmetry would likely stay in place. They
Speaker 2: go into greater detail in this great book about not
Speaker 2: only the speculative biology of all of this, but also
Speaker 2: the connections between human facial cues and the way we
Speaker 2: imagine the facial features of treks aliens, and they do
Speaker 2: get around to considering the Andrians. They point out that
Speaker 2: while nothing resembling a human with antennae exists in the
Speaker 2: natural world, we of course do have mammalion species with
Speaker 2: enhanced whiskers, and I would point out that we have
Speaker 2: other things like the unique robosis of the star No's
Speaker 2: mole and the twin feelers of the tentacled snake to
Speaker 2: get into the reptile world. For the Andrians, however, they
Speaker 2: propose an interesting notion. Perhaps the Andorian home world contains
Speaker 2: multiple atmospheric variations, and this results in various microclimates, requiring
Speaker 2: enhanced sensation of atmospheric content, temperature, and pressure for any
Speaker 2: species that regularly travels outside of a narrow region or microclimate.
Speaker 2: They even go so far as to discuss how tissues
Speaker 2: in human embryos might develop into antennae under the right
Speaker 2: survival pressures. Quote. Human embryos have several segments called embryonic
Speaker 2: pharyngeal arches in what will become the head and the neck.
Speaker 2: They supply the developing tissue for jaws and some neck organs.
Speaker 2: In fish, However, the pharyngeal arches develop into gills because
Speaker 2: these structures have been adapted for very different purposes. They
Speaker 2: might evolve to provide the organ substrate for the nervous
Speaker 2: tissue in an antenna like organ. More broadly, they point
Speaker 2: out that added sense organs could potentially detect any number
Speaker 2: of factors in a given environment, provided there was an
Speaker 2: evolutionary incentive to do so. Memory Alpha provides little canonical
Speaker 2: data on all of this, as far as I could tell,
Speaker 2: but it does point out that we know that Andrian
Speaker 2: antenna can be moved independently via voluntary muscle control, that
Speaker 2: they regenerate if they are injured or blasted off, and
Speaker 2: they also seem to play a role in balance and
Speaker 2: gesticulation and of course therefore communication. I think all this
Speaker 2: is quite reasonable. Now, coming back to Star Trek's Strange
Speaker 2: New Worlds, the Enar character Himmer in that show is
Speaker 2: depicted as having been born sightless, but is more than
Speaker 2: able to make up for his lack of sight in
Speaker 2: part due to his other senses as a member of
Speaker 2: an antennae equipped and Dorian subspecies. All right, Next up
Speaker 2: the Trouble with Triples, we discuss the various creatures of
Speaker 2: the Star Trek universe, without of course considering the tribles
Speaker 2: of Iota geminorum for a world home to an abundance
Speaker 2: of carnivorous reptiles in addition to the vaguely mammalian Trible
Speaker 2: which seems to serve as a basic prey species for
Speaker 2: all the space lizards. The Triple is, of course, a small,
Speaker 2: furry creature with no discernible limbs or features. Really, its
Speaker 2: only means of defending itself, at least against humanoids, is
Speaker 2: to basically tranquilize the humanoid with a gentle cooing effect.
Speaker 2: The trouble with Tribles, of course, is their incredible rate
Speaker 2: of reproduction. They are even reportedly born already pregnant, and
Speaker 2: can quickly overrun any given ecosystem or starship that they
Speaker 2: are introduced into. In their natural habitat, they eat and
Speaker 2: reproduce as quickly as possible, but their numbers are kept
Speaker 2: in check, presumably by their many voracious predators. But on
Speaker 2: a Federation star ship, yes, this is where the trouble occurs.
Speaker 2: With no predators, plentiful food, and a crew overcome by
Speaker 2: their adorable cuteness, their population very quickly spirals out of control.
Speaker 2: The creatures debuted in a nineteen sixty seven episode of
Speaker 2: the original Star Trek series, but the Grimlins franchise of
Speaker 2: the eighties and nineties treads on similar ground. Adorable fur
Speaker 2: babies that get entirely out of hand, due to a
Speaker 2: mix of ineptitude, human vulnerability to cuteness, and a reproductive
Speaker 2: system clearly evolved for different parameters. I've speculated elsewhere that
Speaker 2: maguai might depend on a desert, if not an extraterrestrial
Speaker 2: environment for their biology to make sense and likewise unsuftible
Speaker 2: your mind. We've talked about the role of cuteness both
Speaker 2: among humans and cuteness between humans and non human animals.
Speaker 2: It is a potent force that manipulates this. For the Triple,
Speaker 2: the stabilizing factor is the severity of its ecosystem. On
Speaker 2: the Triple home world, triples presumably die in vast numbers,
Speaker 2: and their prolific reproduction rate merely allows them to keep up.
Speaker 2: We see variations of this in the natural world here
Speaker 2: on Earth as well. In general, we see the basic
Speaker 2: quality quantity tradeoff. In practice, some organisms err on the
Speaker 2: side of producing few high quality offspring, while others simply
Speaker 2: produce offspring in vast numbers. The predators can't eat all
Speaker 2: of them, and a select few survive to reproduce as adults.
Speaker 2: In sea turtles, for example, somewhere on the order of
Speaker 2: two out of a thousand eggs actually makes it to adulthood,
Speaker 2: surviving the gamut of consumers along the way. We can
Speaker 2: also think of the triple in terms of predator satiation,
Speaker 2: by which prey briefly and periodically occur at such high
Speaker 2: population densities that the predators can't possibly eat them all.
Speaker 2: Periodical cicadas, which many of you will be experiencing yet
Speaker 2: again this year, are an example of this. So it
Speaker 2: would seem possible that tripe might work in a similar manner,
Speaker 2: periodically reproducing in such numbers that they simply overwhelm their
Speaker 2: many reptilian predators. Now, given that tribles are vaguely mammals,
Speaker 2: we might also compare them to such prolific terrestrial warm
Speaker 2: bloods as the European rabbit, infamous for its own rapid
Speaker 2: reproduction rate. According to the Texas Invasive Species Institute, an
Speaker 2: eighteen fifty nine introduction of a mere twenty four European
Speaker 2: rabbits into Australia led to a population of more than
Speaker 2: six hundred million in less than a century. The tribles
Speaker 2: ultimately are a fantastic commentary on what can happen when
Speaker 2: a species is artificially transplanted from one ecosystem into another. Now,
Speaker 2: how long would it take tribles to overrun the starship Enterprise. Well,
Speaker 2: that is a question that you have to throw some
Speaker 2: math at. And in twenty twenty student researchers at the
Speaker 2: University of Leicester made science headlines with a paper in
Speaker 2: the journal Physics Special Topics. Their answer four point z
Speaker 2: five days. All right, Next up the Seti Eels. In
Speaker 2: a rare case of synchronicity with the news cycle, which
Speaker 2: is all about brain worms of late, I decided to
Speaker 2: devote this Trek themed episode to the dreaded Seti eels
Speaker 2: of SETI Alpha five. You will, of course remember them
Speaker 2: from the nineteen eighty two film Star Trek two, The
Speaker 2: Wrath of Khan, in which thowd twentieth century eugenics war
Speaker 2: 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 Seti 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 to Chekhov, though the reason
Speaker 2: is uncertain. Was it responding to danger, had it lost
Speaker 2: control of its host? Was it in fact leaving the
Speaker 2: host in order to continue its life cycle. We don't
Speaker 2: know any of these answers, in part because Captain Kirk
Speaker 2: instantly vaporizes the escaping eel, turning once more to the
Speaker 2: non canonical Star Trek. The Worlds of the Federation, written
Speaker 2: and illustrated by Laura Johnson, written as Shane Johnson back
Speaker 2: in nineteen eighty nine, the author largely shares what we
Speaker 2: already know from the movie. Adult SETI, one of the
Speaker 2: few native species to survive on the planet, grow to
Speaker 2: lengths of fourteen inches and carry their young in tissue
Speaker 2: or armor folds on their backs until such time as
Speaker 2: they leave the parent for a host organism in life
Speaker 2: signs the biology of Star Trek. Susan and Robert Jenkins
Speaker 2: briefly discuss the Seti eel in context with other neural
Speaker 2: parasites and symbians of the Trek universe, and there are
Speaker 2: several classifying The possession we see with the Seti eel
Speaker 2: is a kind of quote co conscious mind control, with
Speaker 2: the hosts made helpless by the superseding power of the parasite. Presumably,
Speaker 2: the whole reason for subduing the host organism is to
Speaker 2: keep it from interfering with the larva's occupation of set organism,
Speaker 2: and we might assume that the Seti eel also eats
Speaker 2: the tissue that it presumably burrows through to reach the
Speaker 2: cerebral cortex. The mind control aspect of this fictional parasitic
Speaker 2: scenario is, of course vary, in keeping with numerous examples
Speaker 2: from the natural terrestrial world, including various parasitoid wasps, flatworms,
Speaker 2: hair worms, protozoans, fungi, and more. In broad strokes, we
Speaker 2: see parasites that alter host behavior to help complete their
Speaker 2: own life cycle. This may mean mere survival or positioning
Speaker 2: of the host in such a way that a desirable
Speaker 2: new host will consume the current host Now with the
Speaker 2: SETI eel, we certainly see the former survival, but not
Speaker 2: so much the latter eel controlled humans don't seem to
Speaker 2: do anything other than obey fellow humans, though one could
Speaker 2: make a case that this alone might lead to say,
Speaker 2: uninfected human being either being expelled, which would at least
Speaker 2: be a choice. You can imagine scenarios in which this
Speaker 2: would put the current host organism in a position to, say,
Speaker 2: be near water, or near another organism that it needs
Speaker 2: to enter, perhaps some sort of a predator. Or you
Speaker 2: could also make the argument that well, okay, a human
Speaker 2: that is so easily controlled by fellow humans is going
Speaker 2: to remain in close proximity with humans, and perhaps it
Speaker 2: just needs to enter a new host organism once it's
Speaker 2: done munching and constricting inside that individual skull. Either way,
Speaker 2: we also have to acknowledge that humanoids, and remember in
Speaker 2: the Trek universe, most or all humanoid species are very
Speaker 2: distantly related to each other. Humanoids might not be the
Speaker 2: desired vector for the parasite, and in the world of
Speaker 2: actual terrestrial parasite studies, we do see dangerous results from
Speaker 2: parasites winding up either in the wrong host or the
Speaker 2: wrong part of the right host. Now. I've long found
Speaker 2: this one of the more horrifying aspects of sci fi
Speaker 2: space horror, and particularly sci fi space related body horror,
Speaker 2: human interactions with hostile biology that simply didn't evolve to
Speaker 2: deal with human beings. The xenomorphic threats of the Alien
Speaker 2: film franchise are great examples of this. Of course, on
Speaker 2: one hand, the creatures we see in the films are
Speaker 2: highly adaptive and make use of host DNA in the
Speaker 2: acquisition of their adult forms. They have evolved and or
Speaker 2: been engineered to make quick study and use of new bodies.
Speaker 2: But the other horrifying way to think about it is
Speaker 2: that here is a creature that is truly an alien
Speaker 2: within the host body. It doesn't know what it's doing
Speaker 2: in there, and much like the scene in twenty twelve's
Speaker 2: Prometheus with the robotic surgery pod, this combination of high
Speaker 2: skill and lower context for the target body runs the
Speaker 2: risk of heading into very grizzly territory. Still, we don't
Speaker 2: have to invoke Alien to make the SETI eel terrifying.
Speaker 2: The implantation scene in Wrath of Khan remains one of
Speaker 2: the greatest moments of space horror in a franchise we
Speaker 2: don't generally associate with it. And finally, we're going to
Speaker 2: learn about the Horta. In today's episode. I'm going to
Speaker 2: round out this initial batch of Star Trek selections, and
Speaker 2: I'm going to go with a listener suggestion from one
Speaker 2: of our mini gems, the Horta of Janus six. As
Speaker 2: we learn in the original Trek episode The Devil in
Speaker 2: the Dark, the horta is a large, subterranean heap shaped
Speaker 2: organism entirely silicone based rather than carbon based. It tunnels
Speaker 2: through the rock via powerful acidic secretions, which it can
Speaker 2: also use defensively. Exceedingly long lived, the entire population of
Speaker 2: horta dies out every sixty thousand years, with the exception
Speaker 2: of a single mother horta, which tends to the spherical
Speaker 2: eggs that will produce the next generation of this amazing species.
Speaker 2: While the Horta are reclusive and ultimately peaceful, they can
Speaker 2: prove lethal in confrontations, such as the one with a
Speaker 2: federation mining colony in the Devil in the Dark, which
Speaker 2: ultimately required the intervention of a Vulcan mind meld. In
Speaker 2: the non canonical Star Trek, the Worlds of the Federation
Speaker 2: by Laura Johnson written as Shane Johnson from nineteen eighty nine.
Speaker 2: We learned that the miners and Horta would eventually work
Speaker 2: together on Janus six following this reconciliation. Now, I distinctly
Speaker 2: remember watching this episode of the classic Star Trek as
Speaker 2: a kid, and I remember enjoying the alien monster based
Speaker 2: suspense and its thought provoking treatment of interaction between intelligent
Speaker 2: but radically different alien species, and looking back on it now,
Speaker 2: it certainly has that Star Trek optimism that is often
Speaker 2: lacking in our modern sci fi. It's no surprise that
Speaker 2: this one is often held up as one of the
Speaker 2: best original Star Trek episodes. In Life Signs the Biology
Speaker 2: of Star Trek Susan and Robert Jenkins, the authors here
Speaker 2: discuss the singular nature of the whole in Trek. The
Speaker 2: Federation was apparently not accustomed to the presence of silicon
Speaker 2: based life, and had therefore missed the Horta's presence on
Speaker 2: Genus six in their scans. Entirely later on in tracks,
Speaker 2: similar mistakes were made with the microbrains of Valara three
Speaker 2: and the space born crystalline entity. This all underlies a
Speaker 2: known challenge in astrobiology, we ultimately have only one model
Speaker 2: of life upon which to base our observations, and it
Speaker 2: happens to be earthlife. We're told that Janus six never
Speaker 2: developed carbon based life beyond a few spore producing plants
Speaker 2: as well as some algae, but it did boast minerals
Speaker 2: and heavy metals, and the authors stress that while silicon
Speaker 2: based reactions occur much more slowly compared to carbon based reactions,
Speaker 2: a planet like Janus six might in theory have the
Speaker 2: minerals to catalyze the chemical reactions needed for a silicon
Speaker 2: based life. Now, in the larger realm of science fiction,
Speaker 2: silicon based organisms are not uncommon. The alien xenomorph is
Speaker 2: sometimes described as silicone based, or at least partially silicone based,
Speaker 2: and there are numerous ways this is explained to factor
Speaker 2: in with their carbon based bodies. Other examples include the
Speaker 2: Kaiju of Pacific Rim, the Exogoths of Star Wars, and
Speaker 2: the Eastern island headed Lithodia Rexians of Marvel Comics. However,
Speaker 2: as outlined by Charles Q. Choi in the space dot
Speaker 2: Com article, silicon based life may be more than just
Speaker 2: science fiction from twenty seventeen various experts speculate that silicon
Speaker 2: based or silicone encompassing life is very possible. Silicone and
Speaker 2: carbon are similar in many ways. Silicon is one of
Speaker 2: the most common elements in the universe, and chemists have
Speaker 2: artificially synthesized organosilicone molecules composed of both silicone and carbon.
Speaker 2: So by some estimations, silicon based life of some sort
Speaker 2: may be out there somewhere, whether we know of it
Speaker 2: or not. Back to Trek, the Jinkins stress that the
Speaker 2: Horta might actually reproduce and reason too much like a
Speaker 2: carbon based organism in this episode of Anything, But then again,
Speaker 2: this is where science and philosophy butt heads. Star Trek
Speaker 2: is ultimately about the hope, if not the reality, of
Speaker 2: making contact, settling differences, and figuring out how to move forward,
Speaker 2: both as an interstellar community within the fiction and as
Speaker 2: a terrestrial species here on Earth in reality. As much
Speaker 2: as I love my various nihilistic sci fi visions and
Speaker 2: various examples of space horror, I feel more and more
Speaker 2: like I need the Star Trek vision in my life.
Speaker 2: As in aside, I'll mention that there's actually an underground
Speaker 2: geographic positioning technology here on Earth, named after the Star
Speaker 2: Trek Horta. It is of course a backronym which stands
Speaker 2: for Honeywell or Retrieval and Tunneling AID. All right, there
Speaker 2: you have it. I hope you enjoyed this. So I
Speaker 2: keep doing these omnibus episodes because it's a better way
Speaker 2: to do like a rerun essentially on a Wednesday. And
Speaker 2: I've also heard from some listeners that they prefer to
Speaker 2: listen to these short form episodes batched together into a
Speaker 2: longer omnibus series. So I'm going to keep doing this
Speaker 2: as long as it remains popular. As long as the
Speaker 2: folks seem to enjoy them, I enjoy putting them together.
Speaker 2: If you have recommendations for other Star Trek creatures you'd
Speaker 2: like for me to cover in a future series of
Speaker 2: Star Trek episodes, or if you have suggestions related to
Speaker 2: other you know franchises, comic books, movies, literary settings of
Speaker 2: folkloric traditions, mythologies, and more, write in I would love
Speaker 2: to hear from you. As always, you can email us
Speaker 2: at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
Speaker 1: Stuffed Blow your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For more
Speaker 1: podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or
Speaker 1: wherever you listen to your favorite shows.