Atoz 77
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Post by Atoz 77 on Jun 15, 2007 7:50:37 GMT -6
Welcome to our first Seminar on Exobiology (hopefully one of many).
Let's begin with the so-called "salt creature" discovered on Crater's Planet. Since the last known specimen was killed by Dr. Leonard McCoy, there has been much controversy over how its camouflage system worked. (If an autopsy on the remains shed any light on this, I have not found any record of it.). The being was humanoid, slightly below average human height, and covered with coarse fur. We can rule out any physical change to its external structure, since on its first arrival, it simulated three different appearances at the same time (the young Nancy Crater, an older version of Nancy Crater, and the girl from "Wriggley's Pleasure Planet").
That seems to leave some kind of illusion generation by "psychic" means, but this raises the same problem. One would have to assume it could read a person's mind, pick an image, then somehow generate that appearance in the mind of the victim, while simultaneously doing the same thing with two other people! According to the report of the USS Enterprise, the being in question showed no evidence of any such mental sophistication. Even if it did, what would be the point in appearing differently to three different people? And why did it later settle down into only one appearance at a time (Crewman Green, the unnamed crewman whom Uhura saw, McCoy, and the older Nancy Crater)?
The floor is now open for discussion and speculation.
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Atoz 77
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Post by Atoz 77 on Jun 18, 2007 8:15:33 GMT -6
I personally think we should not invoke "psychic" causes if we have a physiological explanation, and I believe I have one.
On Stargate SG-1, Colonel O'Neill and his team once met an alien which looked curiously similar to the "salt creature", although without the coarse fur. It had evolved as a defense mechanism the ability to secrete an enzyme which activated the part of the brain responsible for the feeling of familiarity. In this case, the feeling of being familiar was so strong, it could over-ride the input from your senses. The upshot of this is that you would perceive the alien as a member of your own species, either as a generic individual or a specific individual you were expecting to see in a particular situation. Your own mind is doing all the work, inventing a scenario to explain why you feel this "person" is so familiar.
I would surmise that the "salt creature" did something similar (I would speculate by releasing the enzyme into the air, the way our own bodies release pheromones when excited). This could account for why it appeared as three different people. It didn't mean to, it just didn't have that much control over its defense mechanism. McCoy was expecting to see the young Nancy Crater. Darnell had been so impressed by that girl, the feeling of familiarily triggered a delusion (not "illusion") that "reminded" him of her. Captain Kirk had presumably seen Nancy Crater's picture in her personel file, so that's what he expected. Three different men were affected, and since they had three different expectations, that's what they saw.
Obviously, emotions associated with these expectations are important. McCoy saw the "creature" as the young Nancy at first, because in his own words, he was walking around in "a romantic haze". Once Crewman Darnell was found dead, his mind became focused on the crisis, and voila, suddenly the "creature" appeared to him just as the photograph in her personnel file! Even he remarked at the time on how strange and sudden the change seemed. The rest of the time, it was appearing before small groups of people who were nevertheless focused on a crisis, and had no time for extraneous fantasies. Professor Crater, having lived in close proximity with the "creature" for a number of years, could recognize it no matter what form it took, because its true form had become familiar to him.
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Post by Atoz 77 on Jun 20, 2007 8:10:52 GMT -6
Another question that has often puzzled exobiologists is what sort of Culture a being like that would evolve (given that it was responsible for the ruins). I submit that, given the essentially parasitical nature of the "creature", it cannot have had much of a society. It had an extreme sodium chloride deficiency, and had evolved specialized structures in its hands to extract salt from living animals. Logically then, there must have been other large animals on the planet for it to prey upon (or must once have been). These animals must have been fairly large (or they wouldn't have contained enough salt to be worth the bother) and they must have had neural systems complex enough to fall victim to the "salt creature's" enzyme. Intelligent beings, in other words.
Furthermore, from its actions, the "salt creature" itself apparently had limited intelligence. I would go so far as to say it had only animal intelligence (it killed Professor Crater in a panic, for example) were it not for the fact that it had apparently mastered human speech. For these reasons, I feel that the ruins on Crater's Planet must have been left by another intelligent humanoid species, which the "salt creature" preyed upon, eventually driving them to extinction.
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Post by Atoz 77 on Jun 22, 2007 8:04:21 GMT -6
Moving on through the episodes of the first season, we have Charlie X. Apparently the Thasians had left nothing but ruins and artifacts behind, something like a thousand years ago. There was so little information about their culture, everyone assumed they were extinct. When they did appear, it was in a strangely-configured spaceship. Charles Evans complained that he couldn't even touch them. Were they "energy beings" like the Organians, with no physical bodies at all? Or did they perhaps live underground, and there was some other reason he couldn't touch them? A 3-year-old presumably could not have figured out how to work a ship's computer unless someone had shown him how, so they must have been able to interact with him to some degree.
Charlie himself displayed some extraordinary abilites, which the Thasians had given to him, so presumably they had them as well. At first it appeared that he could only make things vanish, perhaps sending them intact into another dimension or pocket of subspace (perhaps even dropping them down the time-stream into the future, who knows?). But it soon became clear that he could cause things to appear as well. He could dampen sound waves in selective areas. He could cause excruciating pain, break bones and heal them again instantly, turn meatloaf into turkey! And what about those "card tricks" he did for Janice Rand? There doesn't seem to be any discernable pattern to these abilities, let alone any physiological rationale for them.
The most curious thing about the Thasians to me what this: given that they felt ethically compelled to save the boy's life, surely they could have gotten food to him and protected him without giving him all those powers? This argues that even though they could talk to him and show him things, there must have been something preventing them from interacting with him beyond a certain level. For some reason, they were not able to take the child into their own society and care for him, so the only alternative was to give him the power to take care of himself. But what this could be remains a mystery.
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Post by Atoz 77 on Jun 25, 2007 8:38:49 GMT -6
"The Enemy Within" had a dog-like creature with horns. Unfortunately, it was little more than window dressing, giving us very little to base any deductions on. If it was a specimen they picked up on that planet, however, it is curious how tame it appeared to be (even though it did have a savage side lurking underneath, as the transporter malfunction demonstrated).
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Post by Atoz 77 on Jun 25, 2007 8:39:32 GMT -6
"The Corbomite Maneuver" introduced us to the First Federation, and Commander Balok. Since he was the only example of his species on his entire ship, once again we don't have a lot of information. Balok was obviously extremely intelligent and accustomed to thinking on more than one level at once (if he ever played Mr. Spock in 3-D chess, I think I'd bet on Balok). We can only wonder about the psychology of a race which finds it acceptable to leave one person in control of a ship that size for indefinite periods of time. They must be extraordinarily stable people, from an emotional point of view.
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Post by Atoz 77 on Jun 25, 2007 8:40:14 GMT -6
"The Menagerie" was where we saw the Talosians. In this case we seem to be forced to the conclusion that their powers were "psychic" in nature. But it is curious that Starfleet has outlawed any and all contact with the Talosians, in the belief that their powers would somehow be contagious and/or addictive. If we were living in the 21st century, one might be tempted to think this was just a case of some dweeb in higher office trying to advance his own political agenda. But since this is the enlightened 24th century, we must assume Starfleet knows what it's doing.
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Post by Atoz 77 on Jun 27, 2007 7:44:20 GMT -6
In "Galileo Seven", the only extraterrestrials we met were the ten to twelve foot tall anthropoids on Taurus II. Apart from their size, they strongly resembled early Neanderthal man, although it is curious that their artifacts were identified by Spock as being similar to those of the Folsom culture, which were Homo Sapiens. These anthropoids must have been much more intelligent than the landing party gave them credit for being. One can speculate that they attacked the landing party out of curiousity, since the shuttlecraft would have been something completely out of their experience.
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Post by Atoz 77 on Jun 27, 2007 7:44:45 GMT -6
"The Squire of Gothos" -- Trelane was an interesting character, and probably deserves an entire thread all to himself. A transvestite orginally from the planet Weeblekins, he attempted to transfer Kirk's brain into the body of a chicken, with hilarious results. But of course I could be babbling complete nonsense at this point and no one would notice, since apparently no one is actually reading this.
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Post by Atoz 77 on Jun 29, 2007 7:55:16 GMT -6
"Arena" -- The Gorn was an eight foot tall intelligent reptile, slow-moving but very strong. Since it was a starship captain, presumably it was just as intelligent as Captain Kirk, but instead of re-inventing gunpowder, it favored the direct approach for some obscure reason.
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Post by Atoz 77 on Jun 29, 2007 7:55:47 GMT -6
"This Side of Paradise" -- The spores which infected the members of the Omicron Ceti III colony apparently created a perfect symbiotic relationship. Not only did they somehow counteract the effects of Berthold radiation, they also greatly enhanced their hosts' health, even to the extent of regenerating missing organs. And they gave their hosts a powerful sense of well-being. I suppose at they same time they augmented their hosts' immune systems, they also acted directly on the nervous system to multiply the production of serontin. However it was done, this effectively kept the hosts under control and prevented them from even thinking about trying to removed the spores.
The question remains to be asked -- what benefit did the spores get from this arrangement? -- and that is where it falls down of course. Any symbiotic relationship requires a beneficial result to both parties, and I cannot think of a single way that the spores benefited. Of course, Sandoval claimed that they were part of a "group organism", so perhaps they had some long-term plan in mind, which they did not have the chance to realize (even though they had three years).
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Post by Atoz 77 on Jul 2, 2007 8:35:15 GMT -6
"The Devil in the Dark" -- The Horta was fascinating, a silicon-based organism which secreted acid from its skin. Apart from the problem that an oxygen atmosphere tends to oxidize silicon compounds, such a life form would require an internal temperature high enough to keep their bodily compounds molten (say 200 to 500 degrees Celsius). No wonder Spock was reluctant to touch it!
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Post by Atoz 77 on Jul 2, 2007 8:35:43 GMT -6
"Errand of Mercy" -- The Organians.were evidently a true example of a civilization which had evolved into a "higher form", so much so that they actually found proximity to "lesser forms" like Kirk and Kor to be painful. Fascinating.
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Post by Atoz 77 on Jul 5, 2007 8:13:12 GMT -6
Now that I think about it, the reason the parasites moved in a straight line is obvious. On Earth, similar colony-making creatures (ants, for example) tend to spread in all directions during swarming season, and wherever they land, they try to start a new colony. But think what happens when one of those colonies is ready to swarm again. There must be a few members who by chance happen to swarm back in the direction the original colony came from, and suddenly find themselves competing with their own parent colony (and probably get eaten). On Earth, this wouldn't be a problem. There is no great loss if a few individuals waste their time going back along their original route. But for a species which lives in space and propagates from one star system to another, it's a different story. Considering the time and effort it takes to cross the vastness of space, it would be a serious problem if they ended up trying to colonize a planet they had already attacked. The simplest way to avoid this possibility would be for the whole colony to move in a straight line.
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Post by Atoz 77 on Jul 6, 2007 8:11:48 GMT -6
So I guess that brings us to the end of the first season, and the end of Exobiology 101. Any more comments?
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