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The Visitors
Let me describe a scenario to you. A tracked vehicle is travelling across the surface of Mars on a mission of exploration. Inside are three men, one is an officer with the rank of Captain the other two are his foot soldiers, for want of a better description. Despite the otherworldly location, their journey is tedious and they say little. Then they drive into yet another large and desolate Martian crater. At that point, something fantastic happens. An alien city materialises in front of them. Its appearance is ethereal, fabulous and mysterious. Mysterious is the keyword here. Inexplicably they hear a voice, deep, unhuman, as though representing a gestalt consciousness welcoming the Earthmen and offering friendship.
So what is the reaction of these humans visitors to the offer? The realisation that they have encountered a very technologically advanced civilisation makes them go, to use the vernacular, bat-shit crazy. Maybe this shouldn’t surprise us. Despite the many surveys that seem to suggest that people are prepared for contact with an alien species it is unlikely that any human meeting the ‘other’ wouldn’t freak out to some extent. What isn’t so plausible is that their vehicle is so beweaponed that they can launch such a devastating attack on this city that they destroy it.
Except, that it isn’t destroyed. This is a species that uses destruction to create. We soon learn that they can recreate any person, animal or object but first the original has to be destroyed. The recreation is then in thrall to their creators.
Let’s put aside for a moment the vexed question of why a vehicle surveying an alien, seemingly uninhabited, planet should be carrying these weapons. What happens next is that the alien city regenerates itself in seconds. (Is any of this sounding familiar yet?) The regeneration seems magical, as any sufficiently advanced technology would do to a technologically inferior species. So all this attack has achieved is to demonstrate aggressive intent and now the voice vows vengeance not just on the men in the vehicle but against all of humanity.
In case you haven’t recognised it yet this is the opening scene from Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons. This was a children’s series created by Gerry and Sylvia Anderson but to dismiss it as merely such is to belie some of its remarkable aspects. The aliens encountered on Mars, the eponymous Mysterons, think as aliens. They are not merely distorted reflections of ourselves. Their desire to retaliate against all of humanity for the actions of three individuals makes far more sense if we consider them as a race with a gestalt consciousness. From their perspective, no individual can act without the approval of the rest. The individual may be an unfathomable alien concept to them. Then there is the way they wage war on humans. They begin what we would recognise today as a terror campaign against Earth. The humans they select, kill and recreate become the equivalent of suicide bombers and in some cases are used in exactly that way.
Let’s return to the vexed question of why you would equip a vehicle exploring Mars with so many destructive weapons? What if it wasn’t just a scientific expedition at all, just posing as one? The three men on board didn’t react as scientists, they reacted as soldiers. They reacted as soldiers who had been briefed to expect something hostile and dangerous. A potential threat to humanity that needed to be investigated and possibly destroyed. So with all the probes and robots that had been sent to Mars something had been noticed that needed investigation. So a black-ops mission was set-up and sent to Mars.
When we transpose some of these ideas into current times we see Mars could be the middle east or central Asia. The alien mind can be a different religion or culture and individuals being destroyed to be recreated are those poor souls turned into suicide bombers. Suddenly it doesn’t seem such a children’s series anymore. What is so surprising is that this series was produced way back in in 1967.
So what is the reaction of these humans visitors to the offer? The realisation that they have encountered a very technologically advanced civilisation makes them go, to use the vernacular, bat-shit crazy. Maybe this shouldn’t surprise us. Despite the many surveys that seem to suggest that people are prepared for contact with an alien species it is unlikely that any human meeting the ‘other’ wouldn’t freak out to some extent. What isn’t so plausible is that their vehicle is so beweaponed that they can launch such a devastating attack on this city that they destroy it.
Except, that it isn’t destroyed. This is a species that uses destruction to create. We soon learn that they can recreate any person, animal or object but first the original has to be destroyed. The recreation is then in thrall to their creators.
Let’s put aside for a moment the vexed question of why a vehicle surveying an alien, seemingly uninhabited, planet should be carrying these weapons. What happens next is that the alien city regenerates itself in seconds. (Is any of this sounding familiar yet?) The regeneration seems magical, as any sufficiently advanced technology would do to a technologically inferior species. So all this attack has achieved is to demonstrate aggressive intent and now the voice vows vengeance not just on the men in the vehicle but against all of humanity.
In case you haven’t recognised it yet this is the opening scene from Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons. This was a children’s series created by Gerry and Sylvia Anderson but to dismiss it as merely such is to belie some of its remarkable aspects. The aliens encountered on Mars, the eponymous Mysterons, think as aliens. They are not merely distorted reflections of ourselves. Their desire to retaliate against all of humanity for the actions of three individuals makes far more sense if we consider them as a race with a gestalt consciousness. From their perspective, no individual can act without the approval of the rest. The individual may be an unfathomable alien concept to them. Then there is the way they wage war on humans. They begin what we would recognise today as a terror campaign against Earth. The humans they select, kill and recreate become the equivalent of suicide bombers and in some cases are used in exactly that way.
Let’s return to the vexed question of why you would equip a vehicle exploring Mars with so many destructive weapons? What if it wasn’t just a scientific expedition at all, just posing as one? The three men on board didn’t react as scientists, they reacted as soldiers. They reacted as soldiers who had been briefed to expect something hostile and dangerous. A potential threat to humanity that needed to be investigated and possibly destroyed. So with all the probes and robots that had been sent to Mars something had been noticed that needed investigation. So a black-ops mission was set-up and sent to Mars.
When we transpose some of these ideas into current times we see Mars could be the middle east or central Asia. The alien mind can be a different religion or culture and individuals being destroyed to be recreated are those poor souls turned into suicide bombers. Suddenly it doesn’t seem such a children’s series anymore. What is so surprising is that this series was produced way back in in 1967.
Connecting Who: Artificial Beings – Blog 1
First Published on Wordpress 22nd February 2017
I have often noticed how the theme of science and culture crops up in artistic performances. An example is The Imperial Ice Stars production of Cinderella On Ice. I should make it clear that this isn’t at all like the Disney version of the story but something that is rich in metaphors and symbolism. In this version Cinderella’s father is a clock-maker, he is a man of science and logic and he understands the universe as a form of clockwork mechanism. This is in itself an idea that dates back to the Enlightenment and in fact his occupation seems to be a metaphor for the science of the Enlightenment. So when a Gypsy fortune teller (the equivalent to the Fairy Godmother in the Disney version) arrives in town he dismisses her and her crystal ball as just so much nonsense. It is science verses mysticism and science deals with it by denying its relevance. However, the Gypsy has a powerful influence on all the clocks on the town, one that the clockmaker and his assistants seem unable to correct. This is because it outside their understanding, beyond the paradigm by which they define the world.
When Cinderella disappears inside the “thirteenth hour” after midnight she seems lost forever. It is only when the Clock-maker and the Gypsy work together that the error in time is corrected and Cinderella is recovered in order that the story can have its usual happy ending. In its own way it reminded me of some of the themes of Stanisław Lem’s novel Solaris in which he argues that it cannot be left to science to try and understand the universe. To do so would be to see it fail and so be reduced to just naming and cataloguing things as a substitute for understanding.
Another interesting example is Mozart’s opera The Magic Flute, which depicts the triumph of reason and logic, ‘masculine’ virtues over the superstitious and emotional ‘feminine’ faults. There are so many messages and metaphors in this work that you could write a book about it (in fact I’m sure they have). The aspect that I find particularly interesting is its reflection of the ambitions of the Enlightenment to understand the mechanism of man and the universe so that, in the words of the opera, it could make "the Earth a heavenly kingdom, and mortals like the gods." And this summed up what many believed the Enlightenment would lead to. You could ‘improve’ man to be a better being. Remove emotion, animal desires and just leave rational logic behind and you would have the perfect being wouldn’t you?
The dangers of separating man from his emotional side were highlighted at the time by Jonathan Swift. Swift satires and parodies the products of the Enlightenment, the foolish theological theories and scientific experiments, in Part III of Gulliver’s Travels and follows these with a representation of a utopia peopled by such perfect beings, the horse like Houyhnhnms. Anyone who has ever watched Doctor Who will also have seen a further example of ‘perfect’ beings. They were called the Cybermen and were cold logical beings that had once been human beings, turned by science and driven by a need for survival into machine like cyborgs. In many ways they are the ideal that the Enlightenment was striving for, the triumph of science and reason over emotion and superstition. But to remain human, and perhaps to understand the universe more fully, we will need to retain our inner Yahoo.
When Cinderella disappears inside the “thirteenth hour” after midnight she seems lost forever. It is only when the Clock-maker and the Gypsy work together that the error in time is corrected and Cinderella is recovered in order that the story can have its usual happy ending. In its own way it reminded me of some of the themes of Stanisław Lem’s novel Solaris in which he argues that it cannot be left to science to try and understand the universe. To do so would be to see it fail and so be reduced to just naming and cataloguing things as a substitute for understanding.
Another interesting example is Mozart’s opera The Magic Flute, which depicts the triumph of reason and logic, ‘masculine’ virtues over the superstitious and emotional ‘feminine’ faults. There are so many messages and metaphors in this work that you could write a book about it (in fact I’m sure they have). The aspect that I find particularly interesting is its reflection of the ambitions of the Enlightenment to understand the mechanism of man and the universe so that, in the words of the opera, it could make "the Earth a heavenly kingdom, and mortals like the gods." And this summed up what many believed the Enlightenment would lead to. You could ‘improve’ man to be a better being. Remove emotion, animal desires and just leave rational logic behind and you would have the perfect being wouldn’t you?
The dangers of separating man from his emotional side were highlighted at the time by Jonathan Swift. Swift satires and parodies the products of the Enlightenment, the foolish theological theories and scientific experiments, in Part III of Gulliver’s Travels and follows these with a representation of a utopia peopled by such perfect beings, the horse like Houyhnhnms. Anyone who has ever watched Doctor Who will also have seen a further example of ‘perfect’ beings. They were called the Cybermen and were cold logical beings that had once been human beings, turned by science and driven by a need for survival into machine like cyborgs. In many ways they are the ideal that the Enlightenment was striving for, the triumph of science and reason over emotion and superstition. But to remain human, and perhaps to understand the universe more fully, we will need to retain our inner Yahoo.
Connecting Who: Artificial Beings – Blog 2
First Published on The Difference Engine and on Wordpress 02 March 2017
Resistance is Useful!
On the theme of Alien Invasion, Tomorrow’s Worlds’ Dominic Sandbrook mentioned the Doctor Who classic story from 1964, The Dalek Invasion of Earth. This wasn’t so much an invasion story as an alien occupation story. The occupying Dalek forces were ineffectively taken on by a ragged and disparate resistance groups using ineffective weapons ingenuity and often futile courage. Very little is mentioned about the actual invasion, other than that the Daleks had initially used biological weapons on their assault on Earth, which so drastically reduced the human population that no effective opposition to the Dalek invaders could be mounted. The greatest clue to how desperate this period must have been is an emergency regulations poster proclaiming that “IT IS FORBIDDEN TO DUMP BODIES INTO THE RIVER.” This one poster is enough to tell us that there is something seriously wrong in this future London that the TARDIS has arrived. As Dominic Sandbrook points out, this is London under the Nazi’s, still a chilling nightmare, so soon after the war, to many who would have watched the series at that time. This is explicetly emphasised by the Daleks giving each other Nazi salutes as they trundled across Trafalgar Square. Well known, and loved, locations under the control of an alien and hostile culture is a very distressing image and can be seen as a battle lost, a people conquered. In many ways an invasion story is preferable. It is a crises, a threat to overcome (and it usually is), a triumph for the indomitable spirit of humanity. A post apocalyptic tale of life under the alien conqueror is harder to swallow.
Another story of conquered Earth and the human survivors’ almost futile resistance is the US TV series Falling Skies. The human resistance has formed itself into the 2nd Massachusetts regiment, in the style of the Continental Army of the American War of Independence. The parallels are drawn of a rag tag army fighting the super power by the regiments second in command, former History Professor Tom Mason. This view is countered by a cynical ex-con John Pope who more realistically compares their plight to that of the Native Americans faced with the arrival of European settlers.
The aliens we see at first are green-skinned six-legged beings known as "Skitters". These are assisted by heavily armed humanoid shaped robots known as Mechs. The incongruity of an alien species not designing its robots on its own body structure is remarked on during the first season of the series and it is eventually revealed that the real masters of Skitters and Mechs, and orchestrators of the invasion, are a humanoid alien species known as the Overlords, or "Espheni." It seems as though the Skitters are an engineered species, adapted to serve the needs of the Esheni. Together with the Mechs they form, it seems, a biological robot/mechanical robot combination.
Human children between the ages of 8 and 18 are actively hunted and captured by the invaders and then have obedience device, known as a "harness," fitted onto their spines. This then inserts itself into their spinal column and begins a process of biologically altering them, possibly in a similar way to the Skitters. All of this hints back to one of the themes of H. G. Wells’ War of the Worlds; the displacement of humanity from the top of the evolutionary pile to that of a lower order animal to be exploited in the way that we might exploit horses or dogs.
On the theme of Alien Invasion, Tomorrow’s Worlds’ Dominic Sandbrook mentioned the Doctor Who classic story from 1964, The Dalek Invasion of Earth. This wasn’t so much an invasion story as an alien occupation story. The occupying Dalek forces were ineffectively taken on by a ragged and disparate resistance groups using ineffective weapons ingenuity and often futile courage. Very little is mentioned about the actual invasion, other than that the Daleks had initially used biological weapons on their assault on Earth, which so drastically reduced the human population that no effective opposition to the Dalek invaders could be mounted. The greatest clue to how desperate this period must have been is an emergency regulations poster proclaiming that “IT IS FORBIDDEN TO DUMP BODIES INTO THE RIVER.” This one poster is enough to tell us that there is something seriously wrong in this future London that the TARDIS has arrived. As Dominic Sandbrook points out, this is London under the Nazi’s, still a chilling nightmare, so soon after the war, to many who would have watched the series at that time. This is explicetly emphasised by the Daleks giving each other Nazi salutes as they trundled across Trafalgar Square. Well known, and loved, locations under the control of an alien and hostile culture is a very distressing image and can be seen as a battle lost, a people conquered. In many ways an invasion story is preferable. It is a crises, a threat to overcome (and it usually is), a triumph for the indomitable spirit of humanity. A post apocalyptic tale of life under the alien conqueror is harder to swallow.
Another story of conquered Earth and the human survivors’ almost futile resistance is the US TV series Falling Skies. The human resistance has formed itself into the 2nd Massachusetts regiment, in the style of the Continental Army of the American War of Independence. The parallels are drawn of a rag tag army fighting the super power by the regiments second in command, former History Professor Tom Mason. This view is countered by a cynical ex-con John Pope who more realistically compares their plight to that of the Native Americans faced with the arrival of European settlers.
The aliens we see at first are green-skinned six-legged beings known as "Skitters". These are assisted by heavily armed humanoid shaped robots known as Mechs. The incongruity of an alien species not designing its robots on its own body structure is remarked on during the first season of the series and it is eventually revealed that the real masters of Skitters and Mechs, and orchestrators of the invasion, are a humanoid alien species known as the Overlords, or "Espheni." It seems as though the Skitters are an engineered species, adapted to serve the needs of the Esheni. Together with the Mechs they form, it seems, a biological robot/mechanical robot combination.
Human children between the ages of 8 and 18 are actively hunted and captured by the invaders and then have obedience device, known as a "harness," fitted onto their spines. This then inserts itself into their spinal column and begins a process of biologically altering them, possibly in a similar way to the Skitters. All of this hints back to one of the themes of H. G. Wells’ War of the Worlds; the displacement of humanity from the top of the evolutionary pile to that of a lower order animal to be exploited in the way that we might exploit horses or dogs.