Decipher SciFi

Who Goes There? short story. Previous adaptations: The Thing From Another World (1951) · Horror Express (1972) · The Thing (2011)

British and Norwegian missions. Cultures and approaches.

Conditions. Connectivity. Boredom. Whiskey, cigars, and shoe leather.

You need a certain kinda Dr MacGyver badass for this job. Spinal self-diagnosis, etc. Wilford Brimley diabeetus.

Cae and Ryan understand these things, and explain them to us. We mostly get it.

So many questions. Where did it come from? How does it work? The nature of the creature. Is it intelligent?

If you were The Thing, could you know you were The Thing? Would The Thing know it was The Thing? Self interest in all cases. Group interests in all cases.

If I can’t win, neither can you. The doctor was the only one acting rightly. Best plan: destroy the base and kill everyone, just in case. Sexual tests as alternatives to blood…

I am being Blair. I escape out the back as the world comes in through the front.

Theatrical vs “The Version You’ve Never Seen.”

Devils, demons, pazuzu, deception. How do people get possessed? Different theories.

Supernatural detective work. Priest losing his faith.

The Catholics. The Rite of Exorcism. Bureaucracy. Serious vs loosey-goosey exorcisms.

Occam’s razor. Science.

Tradition. Latin as the language of ancient evil. Ecclesiastical latin.

Medicine -> fringe medicine -> call a priest!

The ways this movie is timelessly excellent and scary. Parenting.

Demons might not be the best at planning, OR we might be inconsequential nothings to them, OR creating a rift between god and his people is their job.

Security in researching highly contagious zombie viruses. Animal liberation.

Viruses, parasites, R0, monkeys. Infection rates. Bloodborne illness.

Zombie taxonomy. Do these count as zombies? A disgreement. Fainting goats.

CDC recommendations. Weapon choice. Get on a boat.

Cillian Murphy’s wiener. Playing God.

We love Keanu. But that accent! Oy vey. And standing across from Gary Oldman, no less.

Vlad history lesson. Spikes in the butt. Motivations.

Promiscuity, puritanism. Syphilis. Bloooood.

How to vampire.

Maasi blood drinking. Blood preparations in various world cuisines. Blood fetishes?

In the period and place.

Adam West, pre-Batman. An impressive entrance and an early, unfortunate exit.

Surprisingly reasonable space tech and portrayal of mars! For the time.

Commonalities. Scientific accuracy with the knowledge of the time.

Bowser fireballs. Atmosphere.

Galileo, albido mapping, canali, Percivall Lowell, modern missions.

How to explore a new planet

Water, underwater sausage plants, red vines, air, atmosphere. Ice caps, aurora, vulcanism.

Exploration and enslaving people. Friday, Friday. Gotta get down on Friday. Culture and intelligence.

Jerky Charlton Heston. 99.999995% the speed of light. Time dilation.

Settle? Explore? Three men and one women on a colonization mission. Charlton Heston is a bad person.

Exploding moons, broken moons, moon impacts. Callbacks: Cowboy Bebop, Seveneves, Deep Impact

Biology of speech. Cognitive speech development. Language evolution.

Octopuses, corvids, elephants, various apes. Mostly chimps. Tool use, language. Moving the goalposts.

Cowboy Bebop the series, Yoko Kanno, style points.

Shades of Firefly.

Shades of Seveneves and Deep Impact. Meteor impacts are becoming a recurring theme!

Biodomes, marscrete, martian soil, regolith, constructive impacts. Terraforming. Biodomes.

China! Weather control before and after the Beijing Olympics. Cold and warm cloud seeding. Chemicals. Super-frozen, uncrystallized. water.

People. Computers. Computer vision. KIC 8462852.

Extinction level events. Dinosaur impact. Impactor scales.

Meteors, meteorites, meteors, comets, asteroids.

Gentle (nuclear bombs), and less gentle (gravity tug) methods of redirecting impactors.

Tunguska, dinosaur impact. The difference between a small number of large impacts and a large number of small ones.

Floods, atmospheric disruption, a world aflame from the heat of a million impactors.

Short story “Farewell to the Master” by Harry Bates. Cold War paranoia. 50s.

Humanoid and otherwise. Sex with aliens? Alien life from Mars, Venus, or maybe even moons of Jupiter.

Everybody smokes. Letting your kid go around town with strange men. Independent women of the 50s. More smoking.

Emray Klaatu naruat macro proval brarato lukto denso implikit yavo tarri axell plakatio baringa degas.

Gort’s real concerns. Who is the real master? Open source space police operating systems.

The atomic energy scene in the 50s. Great power and great responsibility.

Whoever carries the biggest stick seems to be right.

Why 2063? World War 3. Population. Booming warp drive economy.

Defensive strategies. Best weapons for fighting the borg: bats or sneakers?

“Borgigins.” Transhumanism. Definitions of evolution.

Like ants! And maybe bees a little. But mostly ants! Comm techs. Bee-dance grammar.

Alcubbiere drives, distorting space-time. Antimatter is expensive!