The Science of 'Prometheus'

and directed it. Yeah. So why are we talking about it? Well, everybody is talking about it in one way or another. And there there's a lot of talk about the science in this film because we've discussed the importance of fiction, the importance of science fiction before um, where we're creating these, uh, these fictional versions of what the future will be, that be like based on present technology, emerging technology, modern concerns, modern fears, modern hopes, and then you wrap that all

up into a nice package and consume it. And uh, Prometheus is one of, if not the biggest science fiction films to come out in um really, for my money, the biggest science fiction film to come out in a while I can't remember the last one that I really kind of got excited about and and and ultimately really got my my mind moving in a scientific way, saying, in the last ten years, can you think of anything and that's been quite on this scale? Yeah? Not not

not quiet No. Um. So we are going to jump in, uh, and we are going to discuss this film, but we want to let you know that we are going to have a clean divider between spoiler free and spoiler talk. So from now until the commercial break that we take, we promise to steer clear of any major spoilers anything that happens in the you know, the later portions of the film when once the plot gets moving and all that, and we're and we're can also save our opinions for

the most part for that section as well. After the commercial break, anything's game. So fair warning if you if you have seen it, you can listen to the whole thing, no worries. If you have not seen it and would like to watch it spoiler free, then when you come to the commercial break, pose it and come back after

you've been to the theater. So before we jump completely into it, let's uh, let's actually requain ourselves or if you have somehow missed that massive ad campaign um that they launched online and on TV and probably in the sky and in our skin for yeah and our dreams, then here's the taste of what the movie is is about, as much as we can convey in a purely audio environment. So so here you go. Here's a little clip from Prometheus. Please tell me you can read that. What are you doing?

I'm attempting to open the door. Wait, we don't know what's on the other side. Sorry, remarkably humor beautiful painting. It's a mural. Stop. Don't don't touch sorry, please, don't touch anything. Kay. Oh no, the mules are changing. I think we lived back to the others during the room

Charley David. What must they know? So that clip kind of introduces the mystery and intrigue that unfolds as we follow a crew of scientists and soldiers and explorers and mysterious corporate people as they travel to a just an exo planet in attempt to discover possibly the origins of life. That's right, it's a trillion dollar trip. Yes, right, this is uh not you know, some sort of weekend jaunt. It's taken them two years and I don't believe that's

a plot spoiler at all. There two years to too, it will take two years to arrive on this planet. And uh, they are aboard the U. S. S c SS Prometheus, which is a nuclear ion plasma engine fueled craft. Yeah, and it is. It is really pimped out because this whole venture in this film is is the product of of this Peter Whalen character, this Whaland Industries, and and this is a fictional congaboration of various, um, you know,

major tech company. So so think a little a little bit of Branson inversion Galactic thrown in here, you know, a little bit of Google, a little like any major company that's really on the um you know, on the cutting edge and the bleeding edge of technology. This is an amalgamation of the VAT. And what I like about this whaling character, to this Peter Whaland who's the head of this corporation, is that he does have this Branson like spirit in that he breaks all the rules. Right,

he's um, he's a pioneer. He is someone who lives life to the fullest and he's interested in in exploring every corner of the universe. And so I do think it's a very engaging character, and I think actually get that sense more from the promoes than the actual movie. Yeah, they did some virals where he's doing a Ted talk, I believe, and he's talking about, uh, you know, really just something of his philosophy on on science and human achievement.

And I was thinking too that for for me, this is the first time that something like that, this material, this media that is not the movie itself, has really enhanced my my enjoyment of the movie itself. Yeah, because generally it's just one off stuff that is aimed at getting in your theater, and they really were very interested in getting you thinking about the film in the world of the film prior to to you actually picking up

a ticket. And I love that they framed it in the Ted dot com talk, you know, because and one of the things they said actually is that they wanted when they were advertising for the film, that they wanted people to sort of engage on a different level and to perhaps even be introduced to Ted dot com itself if they never had listened to Ted dot com, which is great because Ted, of course, I feel like most of our listeners probably know Ted, and if you haven't

do check out the Ted Talks because it's it's amazing stuff. Each one is a is a you know, deals with mind blowing topics, generally around stuff that is that that will or can change the world for the better. So in eighteen minutes or less, Yeah, so Whaland Industries all this technology. Um. So, the the ship in the film and the characters in the film have a lot of really cool gadgets, a lot of really cool science and

this is about a hundred years in the future. And uh, and so we're gonna spend a lot of time in this podcast just talking taking it bit by bit, this little technology here, a little technology there, and discussing what we thought about it, how it lines up with things that we've discussed before on Stuff Toble your Mind. And and then we'll also in the later half of this podcast we'll also get into some of the cultural aspects um and you know, in some of the grosser goofy

stuff as well. First, I should point out that this was a science fiction film, a big blockbuster science fiction film, so there are certain problems that are always going to be present. For instance, magic gravity, magic artificial gravity of borda spaceship, UM, really, the only film I can think of that did not engage in magical unexplained gravity has been two thousand and one, where were they actually put some some forethought into what it would be like in

a weightless environment. How how you would you would simulate

gravity artificially through the use of rotation. Uh. You encounter some legitimate or at least pseudo scientific excuses for artificial gravity in hard science fiction, so specifically hard science fiction novels, but you get into the realm of big space movies and they tend to either give it, give it sort of a half explanation, or just don't explain it at all, or it's just assume that the years and somehow they've mastered h creating this this atmosphere where they're not floating

around heship like even Danny Boyle's Sunshine. Did you ever see that one? Didn't um Like they had Brian cox Um on board to to to give them science advice as they were filming it, and they still just went ahead and had artificial gravity and didn't explain it. And and some people were kind of like British science journalists. Uh Ajana Aja was was a bit perturbed by this and made kind of a stink about it. But it's just it's generally it's what you're gonna get with science

fiction films. Likewise, sound in space. The first Alien had sound in space. You encounter a little sound in space, and this one you see a spaceship traveling through the void. Somebody's gonna want to throw in the sound of thrusters. Someone's gonna want to throw in the sound of an

explosion if something blows up in space. Uh. The only exceptions to this rule really are two thousand and one and uh and also the Firefly TV show did a good job with this of keeping uh space soundless, but then they made the Serenity movie and uh and clearly you know, studio heads or whoever came in and said, this is nice, but if you're gonna have a battle in space, we want explosions. Well, and it is a big blockbuster. You can't really, I mean, you can't help

but expect that the audience. You're watching a blockbuster science fiction film, you go into it with those expectations. Anything else is just a bit silly. But two thousand and one, I will say, um that the absence of sound really just makes it that much more alienating and creepy and wonderful, and that's it's the granddaddy of all science fiction films

still still holds up today. A right, So we're gonna discuss more of the the actual technology that we've seen in the film, but first we need to talk a little bit about um. Sexuality in Alien specifically, and uh in panties actually factors into this as well. Okay, So the reason why you want to talk about Aliens and panties and space um is because Ridley Scott directed the

first Aliens Alien. Yes, that's part of the Aliens franchise, and although Prometheus is not directly related to Aliens really, Scott has said that it's part of the DNA of Alien. Yeah, and it was at least at some point in its development a prequel to Alien, and then to a certain extent still is yes, yeah there there there's definitely some themes that are explored in Alien, Alien one and some of the other ones as well as Prometheus. So let's

talk about the pantalonies. Yes. Well, okay, so if you you go all the way back to seventy nine, I was like a year old and uh, and Ridley Scott makes this film, and he really he in interviews, he's been very clear that he set out to make a slasher movie in space, a haunted house movie in space.

You have the alien spaceship, which is and the cramped claustrophobic um uh Nostromo's ship in the original film, and it's essentially a haunted house with a slasher aboard, only it's a spaceship and an alien and and in the three decades since that film came out, we've just layered multiple layers of criticism and interpretation and UH and fanboy fanaticism on top of that film and really built it up into this great intellectual thing to cirt extent. I mean,

we we've on one level. You can't help but create a lot of thought provoking content with this, because even if you're saying, I'm just going to create a slasher film, what is a slasher film? Well, you can get into a lot of interesting commentary and discussion on that on its own. There are people that argue that a slasher

film is essentially human sacrifice. That in the old days you had you had males that wanted to dominate society and to uh to counsel cancel out female power and to um combat the female science of birth, you bring about the male science of death. We've touched on this, I think a little bit in episodes in the past. So whereas women create with their bodies, men kill with

their hands and their weapons. And modern societies, of course, we're not really all about human sacrifice anymore, but we can still make movie after movie after movie in which females, typically females that are engaging in um stereotypically unethical behavior, are brutally murdered by a male figure. Okay, so what we're seeing as a moral code in a lot of these films. Yeah, So just even if you're making you're trying to make just a slasher film, there's a lot

of there's a lot of problematic area already there. On top of that, who you get to design your monster for this film? But hr Geeger, whose big deal is biomechanical designs of a typically sexual nature. Okay, when you say sexual nature, I think what you're primarily saying is that so many of his creations look like a fallust, yes, thallust or yes, everything looks like genitalia to a certain extent, stylized um hot leather genitalia is generally you say hot

leather genitalia. I don't know why hot leather. It's more like a cold anyway, cold leather genitalia, let's say. And uh, I mean that's the look of H. R. Geeker stuff. If you've you've seen it everywhere. And this is the mood that pervades the Prometheus for sure. Yeah, and um bills over into this Alien one and the other aliens. Yeah. So, um, but the panties, the panties getting back to panties, what

the panties have spawned? And when I say the panties, that we're talking about Sigourney Weaver's character in the panties in Alien one. Yeah, in in the original Alien film, she's you have this whole crew, mostly male crew, and one by one they're knocked out by this alien. Uh it's bursting. It's basically impregnates one man through the face and then burst out of his stomach. It and there's and you sent me a really interesting article about how

it's sort of there's themes of rape in there as well. Yeah, it's they're strong themes of of rape and sexual assault because the creature is essentially sexually assaulting each member and especially the male members. And uh, in the case of the one character impregnating him more or less with this violent uh, this violent vision of of pregnancy in which the thing then grows in his stomach like a gastro intestinal confusion of pregnancy, with this violent birth that kills

the mother slash father. Um. You know, so strong themes of this um. And then it just goes, of course, one by one, each character getting knocked off, and Ripley Sigourney Weever's character remains really strong. UM. You know, you

can really get behind her as this strong female character. UM. And then you have this scene towards the end of the film that of course made a strong impression on me when I watched it, UM as a like a not a not a one year with that as a as a you know, I'm I'm not going through puberty.

I watched Alien and there's this scene where oh, she's safe, she's finally gotten away, she's blown up the ship, and she decides, oh, now it's a good time to go ahead and strip down to my underwear and then get into my escape into my cryogenics pod and uh and just sail home a little does she know the alien is there watching her um and as she changes, so the camera becomes the voyer, right, and the alien is kind of the voyer because the alien is not really

attacking at first. He's just he or she is just kind of hanging back and she doesn't know he's there. And she's wearing really skimpy, simple underwear, but very skimpy. I think you said it like looked like she's wearing something a few sizes too small. Yeah, it looks like plumbers crack underwear. It's actually an underwear that I've never quite seen before. Maybe this exists out there and it's in the future right right, where apparently everybody has plumbers crack.

But it's not ugly, but it is very Yeah, it's not hyper sexualized, like she's not wearing like a G string or anything. But it is a very sexual scene because suddenly she's she's unclothed, she's vulnerable. The scenes are shot in a way too. It's no accident that it's a sexy scene and that and at any moment, this creature, this phallic, monstrous, uh sexual monster is going to attack her and then you know, and we just hope that

she has closed on by that point. Well, this has spawned the whole cottage industry within academia of trying to figure out what the panties mean. I mean, even probably more so than the Buffy verse, right, um, because it's it's problematic for people because they're analyzing it and they're like, all right, all the sexual content. Um, a really strong female character and like, I'm totally on board, and then

she strips under the panties and they're like deal breaker. Okay, So we're we're talking about all of this because after the commercial breaking and we get more into um some some spoilers there, this is going to be a larger part of our conversation then, but we wanted to go ahead and seat it now. Alright, so more more on the panties la. But but but in uh, in the sperit of seating, let's talk about this this other theme

that runs through Prometheus. Pants for me. Yes, So we've discussed pants fermia before, and specifically to the idea of exogenesis, which is the notion that life originated elsewhere in the universe and somehow found its way to the planet. Um. This is this is dealt with right at the beginning of Prometheus because you kick off the movie with this

tall pale um humanoid creature. Yeah, and he's apparently abandoned on this desolate world by a spaceship that takes off and then he uh, he drinks some sort of goop and then he melts in his DNA like just becomes this primordial gup that, uh, you get the idea is going to spawn life on this planet that the Earth, maybe another planet, we don't know. You see his body breakdown and like the DNA ulysses just sort of merging

with the water. Yeah, and uh, and so this is a fantastic idea of what exogenesis and to a certain extent, pants Fermia might consist of. It's kind of like to have a blender. You're throwing a little bit of pants Fermian exogenesis and then throwing a little Charito of the gods as well, Charito charoits of the gods of course, the book by Eric von Denkan. And this is where we could the idea that ancient astronauts visited Earth and

serve as the god figures of our mythologies. So while this with their technology and taught us to do things like baked bread and build pyramids, that sort of thing. Yeah, it was interesting to me because I've always thought of pantsopermia as being more like this tiny bit of bacteria,

and it is in the strictly scientific sense, right. So to see this this um, this sort of titan like human like creature, um like literally dissolve into DNA and then spread his his pantsopermia in that manner, was it was interesting. I mean, it's it's visually arresting. And I should say that if nothing this film is will knock your socks off. I mean, it is gorgeous, it's beautiful. You can't help but inhabit the minds of the characters

um in this movie. Yes, Scott a always been a faculous visual director, even films like Legend, which I don't think has I wasn't a huge fan of the plot line and legend or I'm not really sure that it's important though, because the legend was just such a stunning Yeah. Yeah, um, and that the devil in that it's just incredible. I think we've talked about that before, but um, he is, but he's anyway, So um, that's a whole other conversation.

So that is the opening sequence here for Prometheus. We see this happening, and it is a really interesting way to get into this idea of how did we actually come to exist here on Earth in the first place. Yeah, all right. Next on the list, suspended animation, crist status. This factors into all of the the Alien franchise films.

It was in the first one. They wake up from this quote unquote wake up from from this sleep, and the plot begins and uh, and we see some more thing, and that's the crew of the Prometheus have been traveling for two years and they've been asleep, h quote unquote asleep while David, the artificial human, the android of the ship, learns languages and plays basketball and comes his hair while watching Lawrence of Arabia, which is again another incredible scene

because you're trying to you know, you're sort of getting your bearings in the in the film, and it looks like he is the only person on the ship. And played by Michael Fassbender, of course. Yeah, and he is so good in this role. We'll talk more about the significance of David later. So we recently did an episode on Hibernation in which we discuss some of the some of what we know about suspended animation and and and

hibernation in ways that we could artificially instill it. And this is something that is of interest not only to DARPA and NASA, but also just uh actually, like I was gonna say, emergency room doctors. Yeah, you know, the ideas like, all right, something is wrong. Let us chill this out until we can actually treat it, or in more extreme cases, chill it out until we can actually find a cure for it. Right, Because if you have some sort of trauma, you're bleeding to death, you're losing

oxygen to your brain, can you suspend that? And that's what we're talking about suspended animation. So in that episode of the Hibernation episode, we discussed methods to use both chemical and thermal um techniques to put an animal under into a hibernative state where their metabolism cranks way down and and they're put into this not quite sleep phase, but something that that you could call suspended animation UM.

And then there's a there's actually another interesting guy, this guy Mark Roth, researcher at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, Washington, and uh, he's he's looked into a short term suspended animation a lot because again, this would be a way to stabilize patient center and trauma from injury.

Uh So, normally hydrogen sulfite is toxic, but Roth has working on this technique where you can use it to actually alter a million metabolism when it's applied in a cold environment, resulting in this suspended animation uh type situation. All right, so when you're in this suspended state, the body can better cope with deadly oxygen deprivation the results

from shock, massive blood loss, and heart attacks. So yeah, it's really cool because if you give someone hydrogen sulfide, which is what he did with animals, um, what it does is it knocks you out and it might cause the oxygen to not bind. So it's kind of like a game of musical chairs there, and that can manipulate

your metabolism. And he was actually inspired by this because there was a skier I want to say she was Swedish, but she was caught, um frozen to death for like five hours or something, and she came out of this

kind of suspended animation completely fine. And so that's kind of what got him to think about this idea of hydrogen sulfide, which we produce in tiny amounts in our own bodies and what would happen if you expanded that amount And it's not hard to sort of see that technology now being realized in the year twenty nine d three for two years, I don't know, but you know, the five hours now that we know has happened at

least accidentally or as a byproduct of an accident. Could that be extrapolated to two years maybe, but we know that that the foundation is there. Yeah, So I ultimately, I ultimately liked what they did with it, and this if for no other reason, they really made a point of making waking up from crime status kind of grows. People were throwing up all over the place. They're clearly they look like they're they're had. They have the worst

hangover imaginable. And uh, and we were when we were discussing hibernation and the artificial hibernation and the potential that it could be used for long term space travel. We brought that up that in science fiction films that they're a lot of times it's it's not this traumatic wake up. Uh. And we even put a call out to listeners as said, hey, if you've seen something we're waking up from suspended animation and science fiction film is actually traumatic, let us know.

And and in fact, one of our a couple of our listeners pointed out the film Pandorum, which which also featured people waking up in a very adult, physically disruptive state. So I liked what they did in this film with that. Yeah, that was very realistic. And again, all of this is about building a world that you can really believe in.

And yes that there are perhaps some holes in different places that we'll discuss later on, but really Scott does do such an amazing job of making you feel like you're inserted into this world that could happen in three possibly. Speaking of inserted, the next bit we're going to discuss is the Medpods seven twenty I, which is introduced early on in the film. You see it on the ship and we'll we'll discuss it a little more later, but I'm just you know, this thing is gonna be used.

It's like it's the can. It's like it's gonna go off. You know, it's going to factor into the plot if you introduce it in the way they introduce it, and it's uh, it's really snazzy. They introduced this cool um outline of the various parts as part of the Vieral marketing, and so it has comfortable limb restrates, a liquid spray and aesthetic, a laser scalpel, air tight operating shield, computer controlled robotic surgical arms, vital sign sensors, and an adjustable

titanium base. UM. Though we are told from the get go that it is UM, that it is a rare piece of technology in the future, that they're only like twelve of these things. Yeah, it's now today we do have we do not have bona fide robotic surgery where where a robot is carrying out medical procedures on a regular basis on its own. We have the Da Vinci system UM that continues to to show a lot of

promise and UH and generally robot assisted procedures. Where we have the bull's eye right now, the idea that let's let's work on robotic systems that can aid a surgeon in UH daring the surgery or telesurgery systems that can allow a surgeon to perform a procedure from the other side of the world, from another country, another city, remotely through robotic cans. And if we reach the point where we have robots working side by side with humans in

a surgical environment. We can create USI we can we can better adapt them to learn from their human surgeons, and eventually reach the point where we could have technology like we see in the movie where you have like an autonomous procedure or UM, something that you can program because because the idea when you're introduced to it, it's it's like a bead with a shell over it, and you climb into the bed, push whatever you need done, and it'll do it. It's like, oh, I mean my

tonsils out, Just punch it in. It's pretty brilliant, Press send and then lay back. Yeah, and we'll talk more about why it's brilliant and uh terrifying and wonderful a little bit later. But let's get to something um that borders sort of on what we've talked about, is brain

mapping or even brain memory storage. Yes, because as we mentioned, when we're on board the Prometheus at first, everyone is in crist status status and David is walking about doing this thing, combing his hair but also checking on the dreams of the individuals that are that are under in their in their crested spots, right, So he just places a hand on on their little pods and their information

comes up. So presumably the reason why he can UH check in on their dreams or check out their stats in general is just to make sure that they're okay

when they're in this state. UM. But it is very interesting because we've talked about how the National Science Foundation has, you know, I think there's last year awarded a half million dollar grant to the Universities of Central Florida at Orlando and Illinois at Chicago to explore how research researchers might use AI archiving and computer imaging to create digital lifelike versions of real people. You're talking about here is a backup system for your brain. Yeah, which is a

whole hunting. It's just the technology is just very barely touched on in this film. But you people can and have created entire science fiction and UH properties just based off of this this idea. UM. In the last couple of years we saw were signed to the University of California, Berkeley.

Um UH toyed around with reconstructing the internal quote unquote movie that plays in a person's head by using fm R I scans UH and having having patients look at or testas look at films and then watching what their brain is doing when they look at that, and then trying to match it up later and uh and yeah,

it's it's pretty interesting. It shows some promise for a potential future in which we could use um, really laser attentive fm ri I data to tell what's going on in a person's head to the point where we can actually get an idea of what they're envisioning. And it's extream that in Prometheus that they're playing the dreams, because that definitely serves the plot, right, so we can get

some exposition on the characters. But if you want to try to fit it into this this um this world that real Lea Scott has created, it would make sense that David would check can on those dreams and um, you know, but there would be something that you could administer if someone were saying having nightmares for hours on end or um that they just seemed unsettled, like all of these would sort of be clues to how the

person is actually doing in this state. And also a mega company like Whaland Industries, there's also the the scary idea that this enormous company is actually looking at my dreams, so you know, imagine if your employer could see your dreams, it would it would be weird, Like that time that I dreamt that our boss was getting married, Like who's marrying his wife again? Like they're reaffirming their vows and they were going to do it in the office. Like what if you saw it? What do you think? I

never knew about that drain? Oh I forget there was something else kind of weird about it, but that's the only thing I remember, um wiping from brain. So yeah, there's there's this idea that that this technology in would be in full use, that that you would have a backup of your that you would be able to monitor someone's streams along with their vital signs. All right, well we're gonna take a quick break here and when we come back, um, all bets are off and we will

spoil any and everything in the film. So uh pause, pause this podcast. If you have not seen it, go out and see it right now whatever you're doing, see in the theater or rent it whatever, and then come back and we will we will discuss what happened. All right, Well we're back and uh so, yeah, the rest of that movie happened, didn't it? Oh yeah, and this thing happened and then there was a fire and then boom and that was the end. Well, and so there you go.

Plot spoilers. Yeah, yeah, no, it's it's so much more involved than that. In fact, just this morning, Holly Fry of Pop Stuff and another editor, Chris opens Chain opens Chain. Uh, we're having a very heated discussion about the movie. Yeah, they were. It was very interesting. Um, I lingered, because you know, I have some of that I felt like the Devil's Advocate. I had some of the same perspective

of both of them. The audiences have been a little split over it because on one level, you have individuals who really came into this with lofty expectations. Uh. Like I said, that Original nine film, like we said earlier, has thirty years worth of of of of fan enthusiasm and cultural study and just it's become a part of

our culture, you know, in those three decades. And so you have this film that comes along, and it's a very ambitious film and uh and really sets out to to equal those thirty thirty years worth of um of ideas that have built on top of Alien and U. I mean I I really enjoyed it. I thought it was great, but that was interesting though. Is like for someone like myself who has seen Aliens three, you really enjoyed it or may not have seen Alien and Aliens the previous one I may or may not happen, but

it was a lost decade. I'm just kidding. Um, but we're gonna get like a whole bunch of emails now where people bet Julie you should see Alien. Well no, no, this is I mean, I mean obviously like this is something that's going to happen because through this whole process anyway, Um, it's been very interesting me to now go back and say, Okay, let's go and look at all the films it then, But you have been steeped in it. You've been steeped

in the mythology, wouldn't you say? Um, it's been a part of my life ever since I was old enough to watch the original Alien, probably on like a cable or something. And you have that Sigourney Weaver panties poster and you're I, I do not have in your office poster, but I definitely had it in my mind. Um as a young kid. I think that's scene probably influenced a lot of of young boys, and she was kind of like I was sending the other day, shoot that scene.

That was she was kind of the Barber Ella for for my generation. I see that. I see that, and I think it's probably a positive thing because even though she was in her in her underwear and how and even though that kind of erupts some feminist arguments for the film and in some cases, weirdly enough, is embraced by think some people say no, let's let's take the panties, and still she's ultimately power are less sexualized character than Barbara Ella. Yeah, yeah, Well, Richard Adam, the director of

Um of Barbara far different director than really Scott. But my point is that that we both have different experiences with with the franchise, and we both, I think, for the most part, really embraced this film, uh, and that it is visually spectacular and it does have so many different intriguing elements that will linger far after you've seen the movie. Yeah. I love the cosmology of it and the design of it. And and I should also point out that I am a total fan of sci fi horror,

like any horror that takes place in space. UM, I'm generally on board for it. Be it a be an alien, be a pandorum, be it be even even some thing like the Nightmare on the Nightmare Name Street. He hasn't gone into space yet, but the Friday where Jason is in space, Jason X right an awful but self aware to a certain extent. I even I even enjoyed that film, So you know, um, so again, I really had a great time. And uh and and I felt like it

it matched my expectations rather well. Yeah. And that's not to say again that it's not a flawed movie, because it is in some ways. I mean some well for me, I should say, like, you know, some of them. I've talked about some of the dialogue. Yeah, it's when the when the most relatable character in the film is an android or a squid monster, then then you know that maybe that's saying this is not the most character driven

motion picture out there. Um okay, but I think there's a reason for that, because I think that David is someone that you can project everything onto David being the android. Um, you know, how could you not. I mean, I've I fell in love with David. I thought that, you know, he's such an interesting character, and a lot of that has to do with Michael Fastbender in the way that he was so nuanced in his betrayal. Well, let's uh,

let's discuss him a little more. But first let's listen to a little clip of David interacting with one of his human crew members. Am I interrupting? I thought you might be running low? Put yourself a glass? Thank you? But I'm afraid it would be wasted on me. You think we wasted our time coming in, don't you? Your question depends on me understanding what do you hope to achieve by kind of have What we hope to achieve was to meet our makers, to get answers where they

even made us in the first place. Why do you think your people made me? We made you? Guess we could. Can you imagine how disappointing would be for you to hear the same thing from your creator? Huh? May I ask you something? Please do? How far would you go to get what you came all this way for your answers? What would you be willing to do? Anything? And everything?

So that was a wonderful little scene. As if everyone listening to this part has has either seen the film or doesn't care about spoilers, It's the scene where he is he's handing off an infected glass of champagne that's infected with the the goo to one of the jerky or members of the crew there. That's right to Halloway, right and the beloved though of the film's heroin. So it's kind of problematic for the viewer there because on one level you don't really like the dude, but he's

not evil. He's not like Paul Riser and Aliens, where you're like, God, this guy can't get an alien. It's bally fast enough. No, he's just not that self actualized. I mean, honestly, as a character, he's not that well drawn. And but he serves a purpose, right, He's very passionate about trying to find his make really um you know, human species maker. And he's terribly disappointed because at this point in the film he has not met his maker,

so to speak. And David's basically saying, oh, you're disappointed in not meeting your maker, while I met my maker every day of my life and is really no big deal, buddy. Yeah, that guy is a bummer. So and that's what I love about that um about that scene, and that's a really well written scene. I think because it does show this UM, this sort of complicated future where you have an android who has learned to sympathize, understands empathy, understands

these human emotions. And that's an interesting thing to think about with him, because he knows what empathy is, he understands empathy. He is maybe is he capable of actually he's capable of faking empathy for sure, but is he really empathetic? Well? And what makes him what's the difference between him an associopath? Right, and that he's programmed to do? Specifically discussed in the past, how in treating psychopaths you you teach them to pretend to be empathetic and UH

and to what extent is that solve problems? To which what extent does it create a new problems? And if your programmed to understand empathy and to exercise it to a certain degree, there's the whole school of thought you fake it until you make it, and through the process you make it. So on one level, and again this

is you know, this is projection. You can't help but think that David does have some sort of part of his UH schematics UM in his programming that does feel and that he does feel the slight that you hear in that scene where Holloway is being kind of a jerk to him and he's responding to it accordingly. M It's just a really nice, nicely um handled scene, I think.

And speaking of encounters with creators, of course, one of the ultimate scenes in the film is of course when you have the old Peter Whyland uh um, and he has he's he's strapped on his exoskeleton and he's walked in and David, his creation, is there beside him as they wake up. One of these engineers, one of these mysterious space jockeys uh that of course originally are are seen in passing as part of the set piece an

alien back in seventy nine. And now here's one alive and awake, standing in front of his creation and his creation's creation. Okay, so just to recap, Yeah, you've got Peter Whalen, right, who has funded the trillion dollar trip his creation and he's basically going, yes, he has been from Spurns, which as you said, makes um, David fetch my robotic pants and was like and you can tell he's like kind of annoyed by he's doing because he's

programmed to UM. But as you pointed out that where you're talking about our three generations of something, right, you've got the engineer, which is what they've been searching for, the the maker, right, this god like the god which yeah, which we find out we share a dent of our dna um through all sorts of different proceeds on the

processes on the ship. Uh. And it is a it is a very interesting scene because the engineer is not so happy to see what man has made or that's what it's inferred, and man has made David right, this eighth generation robot. Yeah, it's it comes out in the film that the the goop that they encounter that gives birth all these monsters, the that sexually destroy everything. Uh, that it is a like a form of weaponized evolution,

weaponized organism UM, bio warfare life. You have bio warfare intended to wipe out planet Earth, the idea of being Yeah, but you get the idea that there's something about humans that isn't they realized early on isn't gonna work. Um. And if it was two thousand years ago, then you know you can sort of maybe they're looking around, they're looking at ancient Rome, and they're like, you know, we checked in on them. They're not doing so hot. Let's go and clean that slate and do something new. But

that plan falls through. So that plan falls through. Two thousand years later, this guy wakes up. Not only was the job not done, not only are these humans still alive, but they have grown up, expanded out into the into the surrounding universe, and have created their own blasphemous little creatures, uh, created in their likeness beside them. So yeah, he's mad. That combined with two thousand years worth of of of

of wake up grumpiness, results in a homicidal rampage. So I read that Ridley Scott had intended these two thousand years ago thing, this thing, this point where the engineers had created this goo, to wipe out the earth because they were now mad with their creation, uh, to correspond with um Christ, and that the Christ figure might have even been an engineer himself. So that I want to see that that's sequel. We'll see. And now some people

will say, why wasn't that written in? And probably because not everything needs to be written into the well that was well, And then you start to look at some of the other themes going on, um, certainly birth and we'll get to that in a moment um. And the fact that this is all taking place on Christmas Day, so that kind of that certainly does yeah, because I can't think, why is this on Christmas Day? Who cares?

You know? Because they've got the Christmas tree out there. Um, And it does make the reading a little bit more interesting of what's going on. But again, you can throw a whole Jesus plot line into it. Yeah, it's it's pretty thick. Yeah, yeah, it gets really interesting. Uh and problematic too. And I think this is what is driving people a little bit crazy is that there are is so cramp packed with with all these ideas, some of

the wonderful, if not overly ambitious film. Yeah and uh and so some of it and there's things like I have no idea why that head blew up. It was a great from a horror movie perspective. It was great when they bring the helmeted head and then they were like, all right, reactivate the cellular tissue and they're like, let's do it, and then it blows up. I don't Maybe

a listener can explain that scene to me. To me, that was just the horror element of it, the element of surprise because here they've got you know, they've got an engineer's head that they found um in the pyramid on the extra planet and they're they're doing some studies on it. And so it was a little bit like, here's this giant man head, um, let's reanimate it and

see what happens. Let's talk a little bit about well, we should mention terraforming because in the in the film, uh, Whaland Industries, well not so much in the film, but in the viral material, there's a lot of talk about how Whaland Industries is really into terraforming of the world and setting up these colonial environments. Uh. And then we

encountered the technology of the engineers there. Everyone's able to take their helmets off once they're on board the inside the pyramid, and because there's some sort of terraforming taking

place there as well. And we've discussed terraforming before, and it's certainly something that is on on the minds of of the the loftier visions of human humanities future, the idea that we could change Mars into a sustainable environment, that we could colonize it for ourselves, and if we find an exoplanet that's either a little too hot or a little too cold, that we could even things out with this the wee bit of terraforming and maybe not

destroy everything, because a lot of times the terraforming terraforming technology is very similar to some of the more disastrous things that we could do to our own atmosphere, such as creating nuclear winter or or just drastic climate change. But so basically, you could choose an exoplanet, get there and do some experimentations either on the atmosphere there, or you could be creating some sort of uh BioWare warfare

agent in the form of coup. Yes, and yeah, because the coop is What's what I've found awesome about that is that it's it's more than just a bioweapon. Like it's more than just we've taken one organism and weaponized it, or taken a couple of organisms and weaponized it. It's kind of life itself weaponized, um, which is just a great sci fi idea, and it's but it's the kind of thing on a far lesser level that we humans are already doing. Um. Some bioterrorism is essentially let's take

some anthrax. Let's take something that that is dangerous in our environment and throw it at our enemy and maybe they'll catch it. And that's as ancient as you know siege environments in the Middle Ages, where somebody would take a bunch of dead bodies or a dead cow and catapulted into a besiege city to spread disease. But science

makes things, uh ever more problematic. So we have chimeric organisms life forms to contain the genes genes from a foreign species, uh, and we've we've actually toyed around with using this technology to uh do not only do some good stuff. For instance, we've been able to combine the common cold with polio in a way that sounds horrifying, but it actually may help us cure brain cancer. But we've also toyed around with ways to combine smallpox and

an threax into a single bioweapon. Or also, during nineties, the Soviet Union's Camera Project study the feasibility of combining small box and ebola into one supervirus. So it's an area that we've been looking into and it can potentially lead to very chilling um ramifications that could backfire on us,

as it apparently backfired on the engineers in this film. Well, yeah, that's the idea, is that the engineers on this exo planet were perhaps wiped out by their own creation, right, that this this creature that has spawned from the goo. And when I think it's really interesting about this, it's like, hey, let's let's not only just torch Earth, right, let's just

take out our creation altogether. But just in case anybody survives, let's throw some goop at them that, you know, if they interact with that, they're going to just date this horrible creature which will then uh kill them. Yeah. I mean, it's just's sort of like a you know, it's a very buttoned up program of annihilation. And then we end up with that scene in the in the in the robotic surgery pot the med pod, where the character of

Shaw right, yeah, yeah, she is. She ends up with the thing growing inside her is eventually like a squid monster of some kind and uh and she goes to use it and she's like, all right, I need to put in this procedure to remove this thing growing in me. And then she realizes that it's calibrated only for men um which which leads one of the more horror because the The idea of I need to go into this medical chamber and have this thing removed for me from

me is pretty terrifying in and of itself. But then to learn that the technology isn't even calibrated for females, that's just like an extra level of oh, don't do it all right. Then she has to go manual on it and program it's okay, fine, abdomba a surgery. There is a creature in my stomach, please take it out, essentially telling the program that and luckily those yeah yeah, um, or I think it's for an object or something like that, so it identifies it in that way. But it is

that whole scene is terrifying and interesting. And she doesn't say that she needs an abortion. She says she needs acessarian. That's what what she tells the computer and um And of course I'm I'm not going to go into that landscape because I really don't think that's what that scene was about. It was about, Hey, I'm just dating an alien and it's about to kill me and everybody else

on board. I gotta get it out. But it is a terrifying scene because you are you, You feel like you really inhabit the mind, or at least I did of Elizabeth Shaw, where you're trying to get this procedure done. You're inside the pod. You see your stomach basically about to burst open. And not only you know, are you about to undergo the surgery to remove this creature, but it's now going to hang over you a little clamp as you're trapped into this pot and you now must

extricate yourself from this situation. Yeah, and it's it's all. It's kind of one of it's like the it's like a sci fi version of the Cowboy scene where you know, the cowboy bites a bullet and uh and um and and performs his own surgery there by the campfire kind of thing. Um and then I also, here's just a little food for thought. Uh, to what extent is this scene toying around with some commentary on American healthcare. Here's

a here's a device. It's calibrated mostly for males, uh and uh, and a female is forced to navigate this slightly foreign system to make it work. I don't know, well, while she's having a virgin proof on Christmas Day. Yeah, yeah, which again another whole spin on this. But it is, it's it's it's uh. I think it's so nightmarish in such a wonderful scene because you really can get behind the technology and actually see at least not the alien part or the creature part coming out, but see this

um technology being used. Yeah. I think that's why it's so credible to me, like the scenes, I can really sort of say, yes that that could exist in another thing, another bit of technology that pops up exoskeletons. As we mentioned, Peter Whalen shows up super old. I think he's like a century old at this point. We're trying to figure that out. I mean we were saying like one hundred at the youngest today. I was making an argument that

he might be one forty today. I looked at the timeline for Whitland Industries and like they have his birthday on there, and he would be ninety nine or a hundred alright, So they went a little bit nuts on the old people makeup on him. The old people makeup is interesting because like Chekhov has had a rule with theater that if you have a young man in old man makeup, he will be made young again by the end of the film. And and from a sensible point

of view. Why have a young man play an old man when you could just get an old man to play an old man. Marthon Sido is out. They're old as heck and ready to act every day of his life. Get him in there, right, he'd be great for me. I was thinking about it more in the context of m Aubrey Gray. We've talked about him before. He is the bio gerontologist who says that, um, we can live to a thousand years old, and that the um in fact, there's we have the first person to live to five

hundred has already been born. And he does this. Um. He's created this theory through something called the longevity escape velocity, and this is this idea that you can maintain your body. We now have enough technology where we could do this

like sort of like a classic automobile. So when I saw whaland um, you know, with his crazy, uh, squished up old skin, I kept thinking, well, that doesn't seem kind of in line with what might be available in because already you see some women and men cruising around who are eighty nine years old with you know, baby fine skin, and they're hunched over in their old Schnell suits, and so I sort of expected to see some of more something like a more like the Uncanny Valley effect,

where you see that someone has been messed with on a tissue level and they would just look grotesque in

some way. Yeah, I guess I tried to sort of explain away the weirdness of old man makeup on younger man by sort of thinking out it in those terms like, well, he's probably had some some weird treatments at this point to sustain him to this to this level, and maybe that's why he would look kind of weird because maximum sido is an old man in a in a in our current age, what will old men look like, especially severely rich old men look like a century from now.

But well, maybe one too many chemical peles, that's what it looks like, honestly. But exo skeletons, though, he ends up betting on the exo skeleton so he can walk, And that is a very real technology we've discussed that the Japanese are particularly interested in because it's all about let's figure out ways to help older individuals continue to move about their lives, to give mobility by augmenting them

with mechanical kind of mechanical braces. Uh. In some cases things external robotic um build outs that will enable them to walk or get up and down from from in the bathroom easier, things of this nature. So we tell you to see that in the film. And um, yeah, because Japanese, the Japanese do have one of the largest aging populations, so it does make sense that they would be interested in that technology. But yeah, that was that was a nice little um point there in the movie.

Al Right, well, let's let's come back around two Panties again to close everything out. We were mentioning how and if you want to learn more about this whole panties thing, check out Woman the Other Alien and Alien, which was by an author by the name of Tom shown and appeared in Slate and he just really gets into the academic discussions of really Scott's Alien film. And this was published before Prometheus, so it doesn't get into that at all.

But yeah, he talks about how, you know, you had in with a pro panties camp and an anti panties camp when it came to academic discussion of Alien, and then then you had some commentary that came along that kind of attempted to bridge the two factions. It's true there was a professor Creed who actually tried to bridge that conversation by saying much has been written about the final scene in which Ripley addresses before the camera, on the grounds that it's voyeurism undermines her role as a

successful heroine. She wrote with an air of weary summary, Um, but what if Ripley in her panties signifies the acceptable form in shape of woman, the display of woman as reassuring and pleasurable sign Yeah, yeah, I don't know, um, but I did think it sort of casted Elizabeth Shawn into this question mark of of where she is in

this moral code of horror films. Yeah, because she she has sex in the film, but she has sex with her Is there her husband or boyfriend, anna other whatever, it's not morally subject the other character Clary's that they're on. Surely sure least they're on who has a who has a relationship there with or at least a brief relationship with ins elbows character the captain. Uh, that just kind of comes out of nowhere. But but it's again that that's one of those things that is serving the plot,

and so it doesn't always ring true. Yeah, but but yeah, she's not. The Shaw's character isn't tremendously sexualized in this film. Either. She does run around in or underwear at one point, which is just going to happen in an alien mythos film, but but it's not. It's not like hyperly sexual. Okay, So she is the one who has the faith, and so she also is the one who is birthing on Christmas Day, the virgin birth. Uh so there is this idea.

You know, we talked about the MacDonald horror complex sometimes subscribing women as either you know, um saintly and innocent or you know, um more like the Mary Magdalen um. And you do you come away from the film, at least I do, and feeling like there was she was embodying innocence to a certain degree. Yeah, yeah, I can

see that for sure. So it is Yeah, essentially there is no sort of voyeuristick take on Elizabeth saw this and so is that pro feminist or is that just really getting her to you know, again this realm where sometimes women just get reduced to this one thing. Yeah.

The monsters, for their part, remain hyper sexual U totally like hermaphrodites to a certain degree, right, some of them that seem phallic will listen become vagina like yeah, and uh, and that gets into the whole area of vagina dan tata and in phallic dentata if you want to know more about vagina dentata stuff. Mom never told you did a whole episode on this. So yeah, it's a reference to castration anxiety, which is just sort of perfect for a film like this, right, yeah, yeah that that like

that doesn't happen. I think that's one of the for with for a film in which so many people die so horribly, it's it's amazing they didn't go to that

that particular. Well, but though at the end there was there was some Legona Dantana going on, Oh yes, the squid monster that ends up taking out the engineer and face sexing and yeah yes, face sexing, yeah, which again falls light in line with the with the original ideas an alien where it's this weird like like it's it's sexual assault, but it's also falling back into what is apparently like a um like a childhood misconception about how sex may work and how babies work. The idea that

the baby is put in through the mouth. Um. So some of the this is how deep. A lot of the commentary for Alien goes where they really gets into into the biologic confusion of the piece. You know that actually not to relate fist my daughter, but I mean she's there, here's old and she didn't ask me the other day why I swallowed her. Oh well there you go. So and I was amazed. I thought, oh God, she thinks I swallowed her because you know, you could say

I was in your belly or whatever. Um. I did want to go quickly back to the creator thing because it's a huge theme of this movie is trying to find Um. It's not trying to find God per se. It's trying to find the answer to the question of why we are here? Who put us here? Um? Is there a reason for our being? Yeah? And it's um. And that's why this is sort of a movie that is I think so engaging, is because it is taking on this theme um and all that you do have

this person of faith in Elizabeth Shaw. Uh, you also are running against these other moments where there is a void. And one of the things that I thought was very um interesting is when Whyland meets his maker, right, the engineer, and um, he's sitting there dying afterward, and David's head has been ripped off his robot body and they're having a conversation and Whalen says to him, there's nothing, and David says, I know, have a good journey, Mr Whalen,

And so I thought, is this you know? That's that's I think part of the what the movie is trying to say too, is that there's always going to be the mystery. And you know, in the absence of answers there there's nothing. Um, and there may also be nothing even with the answers, because he did have his answer

to a certain degree. Uh, so interesting food for thought there, all right, Well, I would like to invite everyone to take that food for thought, allow it to crawl down your throat and uh and grow inside you into something something more, even more meaningful, to state that. Uh. If you have any gestation thoughts, um our thoughts from your gestation, yeah,

if you have a share them with us. Yeah, general thoughts about the technology in the movie, um, and the and the ideas in the movie and things we've discussed here. Let us know about those. Just fair warning. UM. If it's a spoilery discussion. We're we're not going to read any of that on the air. We'd still love to hear it, but it'll it'll end up just being for

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