Strange Old Worlds

Interior art for "The Pillows".
On Eschaton. "Toots" the hexapod (right).

Back in April, I read the stories that were assembled by Groff Conklin in his anthology called Great Science Fiction by Scientists. Having recently been underwhelmed by the aliens in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, I began searching for interesting aliens in old science fiction stories from the pulp magazines. Having seen mention of interesting aliens to be found in "The Pillows", a 1950 short story by Margaret St. Clair, I was led to Conklin's 1951 anthology Possible Worlds of Science Fiction. Here in this blog post, I'm going to mine Possible Worlds in search of interesting aliens.

 #1. The End is Near. There, in the image to the right, is the icy asteroid Eschaton. Poor Toots the hexapod hates being taken to Eschaton where he helps find the mysterious native lifeform known as the Pillows. The Pillows, about the size of sand dollars, are warm and cuddly, sort of like Tribbles, yet, paradoxically, they also seem like rocks.

cover art by Fred Gambino

The Pillows of Eschaton would be much more interesting if 1) there was some way to account for their existence and if 2) St. Clair provided an account of how the Pillows were discovered by the intrepid explorers of Interplanetary Novelty Company. However, at the start of the story, the mining of Pillows is in full swing and nobody at Interplanetary Novelties asks questions about the magical ability of the Pillows to maintain a constant temperature of 44°C... even when they are found stacked like mineral deposits under the frozen surface of Eschaton.

 Mr. Science. Nobody, that is, except Kent from the laboratory. He has experimented on Pillows in the lab where they don't stay hot, but instead always cool down to room temperature when under scientific observation. Puzzled both by the inexplicable thermodynamics of the Pillows and the unquestioning attitude of all the other Company employees (who robotically say, "Oh well, they're just novelties," when asked about the Pillows), now Kent is off to Eschaton to see for himself the origin of the Pillows. 

Spock telepathically links to the Horta.

 Truffle Hunting. Soon after arriving on Eschaton, the crew of the spaceship Tryphe has soon stuffed all cargo compartments full of a million newly-mined Pillows and they are ready to return to Earth. Strangely, while on Eschaton, the crew of the S.S. Tryphe found a dead scientist, frozen solid. When Kent asks if there will be an investigation into the man's death, nobody seems interested. In fact, while on Eschaton and mining Pillows, the entire crew seems to exist in a hypnotic daze, unconcerned about anything. Only Toots the hexapod complains (continually) while being used as a Pillow detector and Kent, as a scientist, can't stop wondering about the many unexplained mysteries of the Pillows.

Alien Invasion. Yes, "The Pillows" is an alien invasion story. The Pillows have telepathic powers in addition to their ability to withstand an atom blaster and defy the laws of thermodynamics. 

 Figure 0. In the Ekcolir Reality.
Original cover art by Earle Bergey
and Rudolph Belarski.

I've long been puzzled by Asimov's Solarians who had been genetically engineered so as to have "transducer lobes" which gave them the magical ability to gather geothermal energy and use that collected energy to power their robots (see Foundation and Earth). I wonder if Asimov was influenced by St. Clair's story about "Pillows". The Pillows remind me of the Horta from Star Trek. The ancient Greeks, who had no understanding of the cellular and molecular basis of life, developed the idea that living things could spontaneously generate inside mineral deposits. I wonder if either St. Clair or Gene Coon (who is credited with creating the Horta) had any significant science education. Apparently not, so they both went right ahead and created complex fictional creatures "living" inside solid rock. I put "living" in quotes because nobody has ever caught the Pillows reproducing. Spock was able to communicate telepathically with the Horta, illustrating the utility of keeping a few telepathic Vulcans around while you explore the galaxy.

Oona the modern housewife.

St. Clair depicted the Pillows as being rock-like lumps, but with the magical ability to not only control human thought patterns, but also the ability to quickly freeze into a lump of ice any human who started suspecting that the Pillows were taking control of human minds.

I like to imagine that in another Reality, the Ekcolir Reality (Figure 0), there were many female science fiction story writers who had a strong science education and who wrote somewhat different stories than their analogues in our Reality. Two of St. Clair's early science fiction stories (published in 1947) were her first two Oona and Jick tales. In those fine days before viagra, in order to put some zip into her husband Jick, Oona buys and deploys a Henderson's Vitalizer (see "The Soma Racks"). 

St. Clair's autobiographical blurb in 1947. (mss.)

And in "Super Whost", Oona gets suckered into buying 10 large packages of Super Whost™ in an attempt to enter a contest and win a prize. However, Super Whost is chronometrized carbohydrate, which means it only lasts a short time on the shelf before disintegrating. Ah, the travails of the housewife of the future. I'm not going to complain about the silliness of the Oona and Jick stories or "The Pillows". Writing for her introduction to readers in the March 1947 issue of Startling Stories, St. Clair emphasized the fact that she had fun writing her Sci Fi stories.

interior art for "Not Final!"

 #2. Sometimes you just have to laugh. To justify not judging St. Clair's Sci Fi stories too harshly, we need look no further than Isaac Asimov's 1941 story "Not Final!" that was originally published in the October 1941 issue of Astounding Science-Fiction and also collected by Conklin in Possible Worlds of Science Fiction. 

As I've previously discussed in this blog, when Asimov began writing Sci Fi, he adopted the standard idea that every planet in the Solar System would be found to have human-like creatures living there. For "Not Final!", Asimov imagined life on the "surface" of Jupiter. "Not Final!" gets off to a bad start with interior art by William Kolliker showing two people on the surface of Ganymede (average temperature -160C) wearing what looks like scuba diving equipment. But relax; Asimov assures his readers that these protective suits worn on Ganymede are electrically heated.

A force field generator being tested (see).

 Force fields. Last year, I blogged about Asimov's 1951 story called "Breeds There a Man... ?" in which Earthlings developed a force field that was designed to provide protection against nuclear bombs. I have to wonder if Asimov was influenced by "The Pillows" when he wrote "Breeds There a Man... ?". For "Not Final!", Asimov imagined that there were lifeforms living "on"  Jupiter who would only be able to travel through outer space if they could devise a super-strong spaceship hull able to contain the extremely high pressure gas that they normally lived in.

Moon Tobacco!

Asimov expected his readers in 1941 to accept the idea that the surface of Ganymede was covered with plants. Now, Asimov grew up in New York City, so it is no surprise that he knew nothing about agriculture, but his idea that the nitrogen-fixing plants of Ganymede were harvested and shipped to Earth as fertilizer is a tad hard to swallow. Asimov was fixated on tobacco, and he insisted that tobacco grown on Ganymede "has terrestrial tobacco beat hollow". I suppose each tobacco plant growing on the surface of Ganymede was also electrically heated.

 The Jovian Problem. In "Not Final!", the Evil™ people of Jupiter are intent on ruling the Solar System. As Asimov put it: "They intend to destroy us. That's all we know and all we need to know!" Never mind that everything known about the people of Jupiter comes from a few snippets of coded signals exchanged between humans on Ganymede and the unseen alien life-form on Jupiter. 

"Men, if you can get this stove pipe to work
then I'll let you take off those silly hats."

The entire scenario in "Not Final!" is quite similar to the "plot" that was used in "Balance of Terror"; we've never seen the Evil™ enemy, but we must kill them before they kill us! Until now, the Jovians have been trapped on Jupiter because no material exists that would make spaceship walls hard enough to prevent a Jovian spaceship from exploding. This assumes that the Jovians (who have atomic power) are too stupid to make a robotic spaceship that would not need to contain a high-pressure atmosphere like that on the "surface" of Jupiter. In any case, what if the Jovians make a SuperDuper™ force field that can hold their spaceships together?

Possible Worlds

 Strengthen the Force Field, Hal. Hard at work in his laboratory on Ganymede is Dr. Prosser, exploring the upper limits for force field strength. He concludes that it will be impossible to make a force field that is strong enough to allow the Jovians to send spacecraft off Jupiter and into outer space. Prosser insists that his theoretical analysis of the upper limit for force field strength is the final word on the issue. But just then, Hal Tuttle arrives at Ganymede in the newly constructed spaceship Transparent that uses force fields for walls, not metal. Hal has found a way to make force fields as strong as you want, so Prosser's claimed solution to the Jovian problem is NOT FINAL. In a sense, Asimov's "Not Final!" is little more than a technological gizmo story. At the same time, it is also a silly alien invasion story and we readers are forced to conclude that eventually the Evil™ Jovian's will be able to make powerful force fields, travel off of Jupiter and go to war with the humans of Earth. 😱

hard luck force field? Figure 1.

Eventually, Asimov began giving serious thought to the planetary conditions that would allow for life and he stopped writing science fiction stories about intelligent natives on Mars, Venus and Jupiter. But if Asimov must be forgiven for silly stories about biologically impossible fictional lifeforms, then I must also hold my nose and accept Margaret St. Clair's "Pillows" of Eschaton.

 #3. No, that's not really a force field saving the life of Magnus Ridolph in Jack Vance's story "Hard Luck Diggings" (Figure 1). Since I've previously discussed all of Vance's stories that feature galactic trouble-shooter Magnus Ridolph, I'll not say very much here in this blog post about "Hard Luck Diggings" and its inclusion in Conklin's Possible Worlds of Science Fiction. 

brainy Talosian

I will say that Vance was one Sci Fi author who was not restricted to depicting intelligent aliens as being like Earthly animals. Vance had starring roles for plants in several of his stories. If you imagine intelligence to be a magical substance that is present in some lifeforms, then why not imagine intelligent plants? 

However, in my case, as a biologist, I do object to Sci Fi story tellers who imagine intelligent lifeforms randomly appearing in the form of assorted plants, rocks and even nebulae. Intelligence depends on information processing and information processing requires some kind of physical memory storage system. The brains of animals are the best such information storage and processing systems that evolved on Earth. There is no reason to suppose that plants, rocks or nebulae would ever become intelligent. After centuries of crafting magical fantasy stories about talking animals and sentient broomsticks, many misguided folks have brought magical fantasy aliens into their science fiction tales. 😖

Before departing from the October 1941 issue of Astounding Science-Fiction, I must comment on "Manic Perverse" by Winston K. Marks. Having read Asimov's story about force fields in that issue I felt obligated to investigate the Marks "force fields", one preventing suicide and another preventing murder.

 Figure 2. The brain field of man!

Shown to the right (Figure 2) is the "explanation" for human immortality in the futuristic world of "Manic Perverse". According to Marks, the human brain produces an electrostatic field that can be modulated by microwaves. The insurance company that controls the future planet Earth has put in place the "apandemic field" which constantly and automatically prevents brain synapses from functioning to support suicidal thought. 

I've previously commented on the pseudo-science "theory" that brains have "thought vibrations" that might be controlled or guided by an external, machine-generated wave. Mary Wright envisioned a "thought transmitter" that could place good, healthy socialist thoughts into people's brains. 

cover art by Virgil Finlay

When imagining his planet-wide thought-control "field", Winston Marks was not quite as ambitious as was Wright. Winston's futuristic microwave transmitters were specifically tuned so as to prevent just a few specific thought patterns, leading to practical immortality for the people of Earth. 

One of the more bizarre plot elements in "Manic Perverse" was the idea that the upper atmosphere somehow creates an impenetrable barrier for humans, apparently trapping Humanity on Earth. When every other science fiction story teller was enthusiastically writing stories about space travel, I'm tempted to label Winston Marks as being manic perverse when he decided to write and publish a science fiction story suggesting that space travel is impossible due to a Sciensy™ barrier at the top of the atmosphere.

cover art by Boris Vallejo

 #4. Vega. Should we question Conklin's decision to include in Possible Worlds the story "Second Night of Summer" by James H. Schmitz? As described here, "Second Night of Summer" is part of a series of stories called Agents of Vega and it could be argued that Conklin should have anthologize the first story in the Vega series rather than "Second Night of Summer". The first story, "Agent of Vega" has the distinct advantage of starting out like a James Bond movie. In place of James Bond as a secret agent on Earth, "Agent of Vega" features Zone Agent Iliff, who ranges the galaxy dealing with threats to King and Country.

For "Agent of Vega", the equivalent of the "Bond girl" is a beautiful alien named Pagadan (see the image to the right for the hyper-sexual 1982 version of Pagadan). Pagadan looks quite human, but she is a Lannai with impressive telepathic abilities. I would not be surprised to learn that Gene Roddenberry based his character Spock on Pagadan and the Lannai.

1949 interior art by Quackenbush

Schmitz had the Confederacy of Vega, but Roddenberry had the Federation of Planets for Star Trek. 

I'd be interested to know how much Jack Vance was influenced by Schmitz's agents of Vega. Was Vance's character Ifness named in honor of Zone Agent Iliff?

Iliff and Pagadan stumble upon a devious alien invasion: an alien force, the Evil™ Ceetal. Originated from beyond our galaxy, the Ceetal are in the process of infiltrating hundreds of worlds in our galaxy and using their great mental powers to take control of the helpless populations of entire star systems.

a cubical Quizzer

The human Agents of Vega are not helpless when confronted by the Ceetal. Humans have various HiTek™ devices such as the Quizzer (image to the right) which can probe into the minds of criminals and assorted evil-doers. Also in use are a Vegan mind-lock™ and a telepath transmitter that agents like Iliff can use to keep in contact with Confederacy H.Q. even across vast interstellar distances. If you like space opera gadgets then you'll like all of the robots, shields, tractor beams and other devices deployed by Iliff.

However, poor Pagadan gets deployed like any other piece of equipment and ends up being subjected to a form of telepathic psychological torture. She is mentally abused and assaulted until she is almost broken, but in the end she has helped Iliff defeat the Evil™ Ceetal. I don't enjoy Schmidtz's brand of contrived story which seems aimed at putting beautiful women or children in harms way in order to generate "thrills".

text from "Second Night of Summer"

 Trickster from Treebel. I really have to wonder how much "Second Night of Summer" influenced the writing of Jack Vance. The setting for "Second Night of Summer" is shown in the text snippet to the left on this page. This sounds exactly like the galactic setting for many Vance stories such as his Durdane series. In 1968, Vance even provided a blurb that was printed on the back of one of Schmitz's novels, so we have reason to believe that Vance was reading at least some of the works of Schmitz.

Grandma and alien side-kicks

In addition to the secret agent "Grandma" (she's human), "Second Night of Summer" features a talking alien "rhinocerine pony" from the planet Treebel and a telepathic pet lortel (see the small, monkey-like creature on Grandma's shoulder in the image to the right).  

It would be interesting to know when Schmitz wrote "Second Night of Summer". Maybe this story was written before "Agent of Vega" but could not be sold to Campbell. Maybe with the proliferation of new Sci Fi magazines such as Galaxy in the 1950s, "Second Night of Summer" finally got published long after it was written.

In any case, Grandma uses her ability to control the emotional state of her pony and thus trick some alien invaders and lure them into a trap.

agent Trigger Argee

Grandma's mission on the back-water world called "Noorhut" is as much concerned with recruiting into the secret service a young boy, Grimp, as it is the typical space opera task of defeating Evil Alien Invaders™, the Halpa.

Not all of Schmitz's secret galactic agents had to be sexy young women like Pagadan, Trigger Agree or Telzey Amberdon. She's no spring chicken, but Grandma has the right stuff; she ruthlessly eliminates all the alien invaders on Noorhut by efficiently incinerating them. "Second Night of Summer" features the same sort of "plot" that was used in "Balance of Terror"; humans have been at war with the Halpa for a thousand years, and so when the Halpa begin their latest incursion on Noorhut, the defenders of the galaxy, including Grandma, expect the worst, and are prepared for it. At the end of the story, Grandma is expecting Grimp to take over her duties in the not too distant future, after she retires.

Grandma cooks the Halpa

 Home Cooking With Grandma. A critical part of Grandma's preparations for defeating the Evil Alien Invaders™ is positioning the young boy Grimp where he can be used as a kind of biological detection device which identifies the precise time when Grandma should incinerating the aliens. The Halpa are sneaking into Noorhut via some mysterious extra-dimensional portal that must be slammed shut at just the right moment because... plot. Since Grimp sleeps through the massacre of the Halpa, "Second Night of Summer" is probably the least offensive of the Schmitz "psi powers" stories that was available for Groff Conklin to anthologize.

image source

 #5. Another story that was collected in Possible Worlds is "Proof", originally published by Hal Clement in 1942. I've previously commented extensively on "Proof" back in January of this year, so I won't say more here about Clement's imagined lifeforms composed of neutronium.

 #6. Also in Possible Worlds is "Contagion" by Katherine MacLean. I previously discussed "Contagion" and since it does not include any aliens, I'll move on.

 #7. One more story in Possible Worlds that I've previously discussed is "Limiting Factor" by Clifford D. Simak. "Limiting Factor" fails to provide a first contact story with aliens, but it is a type of alien archeology story featuring the remnants of an alien culture that seem to consist almost entirely of a gigantic computer system. Sadly, the age of computer miniaturization eventually undermined Simak's vision of planet-scale computers.

Grandma (upper left), the lortel (bottom right)

 Of these first 7 stories (#1-7, above) from Possible Worlds, which provides readers with the most interesting aliens? I'm strongly attracted to Simak's mysterious aliens who seemed to have a fetish for building computers (#7), but sadly we readers never get to meet those long-extinct computer-savy aliens. 😖

The killer plant-like aliens of "Hard-Luck Diggings" (#3, above on this page), Asimov's high-pressure Jovians in "Not Final!" (#2), Clement's neutronium aliens in "Proof" (#5) and the telepathic rock creatures in "The Pillows" by Margaret St. Clair (#1) all strike me as biological absurdities.

original cover art by Bob Eggleton

I'll give Vance a break: maybe his aliens only look like plants. However, Vance's murderous plant-like aliens win no awards from me. 

 A Second Chance for Vega. The armor-plated "pony" from Treebel gets far more lines of dialogue, but I'm most intrigued by the alien lortel who is given to Grimp by the scheming Grandma in "Second Night of Summer". The lortel is telepathic, and as Grimp's companion the alien lortel will be able to test and develop Grimp's telepathic abilities, preparing him to eventually become an interstellar agent of Vega. I don't know if Schmitz ever provided a fictional science explanation for telepathy in his stories, but I get the idea that Schmitz adopted the assumption that humans have some latent telepathic abilities that can be developed with practice and amplified by technology. After reading "Second Night of Summer", I'd like another story expanding on the telepathic abilities of the lortel.

genetically engineered telepath
Should you bring a knife
to a telepathy fight?

Towards the end of "The Lion Game", Schmitz hinted that Telzey is a genetic mutant with telepathic abilities similar to the Alattas, a telepathic human variant that arose through genetic engineering.

green aliens helping Telzey

Included in "The Lion Game" (an amusing review) are quite a few alien species, but many of them do not have telepathic abilities and they are forced to act like slaves of telepaths. For the cover of the August 1971 Analog Science Fiction, Kelly Freas illustrated one such type of "telepathic puppet" alien; these two green-skinned aliens are helping care for Telzey after she has been assaulted by a crazed Evil Telepath™. With Schmitz's focus on "psi powers", any aliens who lack telepathic abilities don't get much attention in the story. 😒

Figure 3. Let's torture Telzey...

I only skimmed through most of "The Lion Game" because I was not entertained by the disgusting child abuse that is offered up by Schmitz (see Figure 3). In the image shown to the right, that's a crazed Evil Telepath™ (one of these genetically-engineered giant telepaths is referred to as "Bozo the Beast" in the story) viciously assaulting poor 15-year-old Telzey after she has been used as bait by the scheming Klayung, a high-ranking executive of the Psychology Service. 

Telzey falls into a trap that has been laid for her and she then spends most of the story trying to survive. The whole contorted plot of "The Lion Game" seems designed by Schmitz as an excuse to heap abuse on Telzey, with our heroine ultimately "enjoying" a bath in the blood of the top "beast" in the story. 😝

Thriller - 1961

 SIHA. As I go through the stories from Possible Worlds of Science Fiction I'm going to be watching for television shows and films that were based on the works of story writers like Margaret St. Clair. SIHA is my annual Search for Interesting Hollywood Aliens. 

First example; in the July 1950 issue of Weird Tales was the Greek mythology story "Mrs. Hawk", short and sweet as spiced doughnuts, clocking in at only 4 pages. Later, television had the rather bloated one-hour-long Thriller episode "The Remarkable Mrs. Hawk".

interior art by Vincent Napoli

Ever since I saw "Who Mourns for Adonais?", I've liked the idea of "ancient astronauts", alien visitors to Earth during the far past. In Star Trek, we were asked to believe that figures from Greek mythology such as Zeus, Athena, Aphrodite, Hera, Hermes, and Artemis might have been alien visitors to Earth. If so, then why not also Circe? 

Having been published in Weird Tales, "Mrs. Hawk" seems like fantasy, but maybe in an alternate Reality the story would have been written as science fiction with a technological explanation for how to quickly and dramatically transform the physical appearance of Mrs. Hawk's victims... and even better, a reason may have been provided for her apparent immortality.

Mickey and Austin before Scully and Mulder.

 Probe. Speaking of alternate Realities, it is an amusing fantasy to imagine that Isaac Asimov actually helped write "Plan 10 from Outer Space". Asimov is listed by IMDB as a writer for this episode of Probe, but I'm skeptical. More about the show here. I love the idea that a prolific author such as Asimov or Truman Smith III might have been "fed" story ideas by an alien being, or his time-traveling copy.

Lost TV shows of the past: "Pictures Don't Lie" by Katherine MacLean for Out of This World. (original story) and "Beach Head" by Clifford D. Simak for Out of the Unknown (original 1951 story).

Beach Head

 What, no Aliens?: "Research Alpha" by James H. Schmitz was filmed as a 1998 episode of Welcome to Pardox.

Honorable Mention: NBC radio "The Potters of Firsk" - Dimension X

Related Reading: the 2022 SIHA

Next: more stories from Possible Worlds...

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New Aliens

Original cover art by Paul Orban
The Warp Bomb of Kiley 279

I'm going to kick off the 2022 SIHA (Search for Interesting Hollywood Aliens) by watching the first season of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds and asking: are there any new aliens and are they interesting? 🧠

Unlikely Alien Obsessions. One of the worst things about the original Star Trek was the many aliens who either looked exactly like Earthlings or who were made to look "alien" by the makeup artist simply adding a freaky latex bump on their face. Sadly, the "new" aliens in episode 1 of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds fall into this dismal category. Well, was there anything interesting about the aliens from Kiley 279? The writers for Strange New Worlds ask us to believe that right in the middle of making First Contact with aliens, the Kiley can be distracted by launching into a discussion of sports. Maybe the Kiley are even more obsessed with sports than we humans. Episode rating: 💣💣💣💣 4 warp bombs... no interesting aliens... Kiley 279 is a boring Earth clone. 👎

Can I interest you in
a "reptilian" Deleb?

 Ancient Comet (A.K.A. M'hanit). How ancient? So ancient that M'hanit has been careening through the galaxy since before the star of the Shepherds first burned in the sky. 

Strange new world? The "new world" in episode 2 is Persephone III, which sadly gets very little screen time and nary a visit from the crew of Enterprise. 😞 However, by the end of the episode, things are looking brighter for the desiccated residents of Persephone III, the "reptilian" Deleb. And not because M'hanit is going to crash into Persephone III and put the long-suffering Deleb out of their misery...

"Finally, some water!"
Celebrating Frank Kelly Freas
1922-2022 (image source)

 The Gift of H₂O. A chunk of M'hanit breaks off and brings badly-needed water to the previously bone-dry and sparsely populated Persephone III. You can tell it is magical water because it begins to rain on Persephone III without the need for clouds that would otherwise obscure the expensive CGI view of the comet as seen from the planet's surface. 

How Dry I Am. Yes, I have sympathy for "poor" suffering television shows that need to quickly create a visual depiction of some Sci Fi plot element. However, I suffer when television shows seem to care more about selecting the correct color for uniforms or a character's hair style than they care about depicting actual elements of the plot in the Sci Fi show.

The Arbiter disco light and music show on M'hanit.

Sadly, we don't get to learn much about the Arbiters, but we do get to experience their light 🎇 and music 🎵 show. I love the idea of space aliens who have been kicking around the galaxy since long before the human species ever existed. Sadly, I think Mr. Q and the Q Continuum have become something of a mind virus that ruined this Sci Fi theme for the Star Trek fictional universe. Just pull out your phaser and fire. Just pull out an "ancient alien" and endow them with magical powers...

The Blues Shepherds

 Holy plot holes, Batman! It is awfully nice of the Shepherds to spend centuries guarding the comet M'hanit because who knows when some trigger-happy Federation starship captain is going to show up and blast the comet into rubble or otherwise interfere with its mission? 

They're on a mission from God. Sadly, the Shepherds have forgotten why they started guarding the comet. However, that does not matter because this episode is not about aliens, it is about Uhura and her amazing ability to learn alien languages and her nagging uncertainty about Starfleet as a career. Because on a show about New Worlds, the angst of young Earth women is more important than aliens from other planets. QED.

Captain Shepherd

 Ancient Aliens. I'm a huge fan of Sci Fi stories that feature ancient aliens who have been around for billions of years. Let's assume that the Arbiters of the comet M'hanit originated as biological entities a billion years ago and then they transformed themselves into some artificial life-form that we humans might not even recognize. Let's also assume that these Arbiters wanted to help other more primitive life-forms to grow and develop in the galaxy, so they equipped a bunch of comets with Hi Tek Arbiter Light and Music Show Jukeboxes™ and sent them cruising through the galaxy, collecting assorted religious fanatics like the Shepherds to serve as their helpers. 

Spock logically explains Pike's new
hairstyle to the Enterprise crew:
"Sometimes you just have to laugh."

 The first two automobiles in Kansas. Imagine the first two automobiles in Kansas getting into a car accident. For this Star Trek episode, we are asked to believe that a couple hundred years ago, the Shepherds were induced to guard the comet M'hanit as it followed its crash course to planet Persephone III. The Shepherds literally do not care if all life on Persephone III will be destroyed when the comet hits the planet. Fuck the reptilian Deleb! But fear not, because along comes Captain Pike and his merry crew including cadet Uhura who can sing along with the Arbiter Light and Music Show Jukebox and save the Deleb from destruction. And viewers are told that the super advanced Arbiters had predicted this rosy outcome from the beginning, including Spock's ability to magically fly a shuttle into the core of the comet where he uses magic heat rays to melt off part of the comet and provide needed water to the Delebs. Ah, yes, the Holy Arbiters work in mysterious ways... sort of like Pike's hair-stylist. Episode rating: 👎 throw-away aliens; this episode is all about Uhura.

an Illyrian

 Hetemit IX. I've been delaying discussion of aliens who are members of Starfleet because I was expecting to be dealing with swarms of more interesting aliens on New Worlds, but episode three forces my hand. Hetemit IX once had a colony of Illyrians, but now it is unpopulated, apparently because of harsh "ion storms" that periodically strike the planet. 

 Continuity. Episode 1 showed that Starfleet routinely uses genetic engineering and alters the DNA of Starfleet officers. In episode 3, we learn that Starfleet does not accept Illyrians as members because the Illyrians are dedicated genetic engineers. That makes perfect sense, right?

ion storm approaching... red alert!

 

 I'm fine with all the vegetable sex toys, but be careful
where you put those creepy antennae, Mr. Hemmer!

Then we find out that the second in command on the Enterprise is an Illyrian. Yes, with all of their SuperDuper™ technology, Starfleet can't recognize an alien Illyrian who joins Starfleet. Makes sense, right?

Rules are made to be broken. The story so far: Captain Pike has violated the Prime Directive and now he is ready to defy the rule against allowing Illyrians in Starfleet. Also in episode 3, we learn that the ship's doctor almost got the entire crew killed because he has been secretly keeping his terminally ill daughter inside the medical transporter's pattern buffer. Just DON'T ASK how nobody else noticed what happened to his daughter.

Spock and Pike are saved by
 the ghosts (plasma creatures)

 Telepathy. In episode 3, we get some screen time for Lieutenant Hemmer, chief engineer aboard the Enterprise. Hemmer is an Aenar from Andoria, which means he's blind, but who needs to see when you have telepathy? Even with his telepathic powers, Hemmer does not notice little things like the second in command on the Enterprise being an Illyrian or the chief medical officer secretly keeping his daughter inside the teleportation buffer: because... Aenar ethics... "they had a rule never to read the minds of others without their consent".

Plasma Beings. I have no idea what a Star Trek ion storm is and neither do the Strange New Worlds writers, but in episode 3, we learn that there are "plasma creatures" (are these the titular "ghosts"?) who live inside the ion storms that sometimes effect Hetemit IX. The plasma creatures save the lives of Kirk and Spock after they stupidly allow themselves to get trapped on Hetemit IX during an ion storm.

CGI light infection (image source)

 Fantasy Science. In the original Star Trek, we had water from a planet that contained a "complex chain of molecules that affect humanoids like alcohol". Viewers are told in episode 3 of Strange New Worlds that the teleporters of the Enterprise automatically screen out any such foreign material... except when... plot. In episode 3, we are told that the "contagion" from Hetemit IX travels "through light waves" when it spreads from person to person. The writers made up a convoluted plot about an energy drain causing the teleportation filters not to work when the Away Team returns to Enterprise, but even later, all the Hi Tek™ medical equipment on the ship still can't detect this magical "contagion". Eventually, a magic antidote is found (at the last possible moment), just as for the TOS episode "The Naked Time". Episode rating: ☀☀☀☀ 4 death rays... the Illyrians are not new, Una is too human to be interesting and the "science" in this episode is so absurd that it can damage young minds. 😫😡

More Gorn on the way 😖. Figure 1.

 More useless reptilians. Last year (see this blog post), I comment on Fredric Brown's 1944 story "Arena". In the Star Trek episode called "Arena", Kirk battled a Gorn. For Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, just when I was ready to celebrate the lack of Klingons and Romulans, they drag the Gorn out of retirement. Question: the show is called New Worlds, so why must we recycle old aliens? Answer: episode 4 is not about aliens, not even the Gorn... it is about Lieutenant La'an Noonien-Singh and her traumatic childhood memories of the Gorn. But are the Gorn interesting aliens? No.

Please don't turn this into a horror show.

 A Race to the Bottom? When dealing with Hollywood, one always has to wonder how long it will take a new science fiction show to sink to the bottom of the barrel. Bring together a bunch of Hollywood writers with no interesting ideas about space aliens, and soon enough they will simply trot out some Evil Alien™ species to battle against the Federation (such as the Borg or the Jem'Hadar). 

Star Trek Mired in Darkness. What about Strange New Worlds writer Davy Perez? If Perez wants to make changes to the Gorn, then why not make interesting changes? Why revert to the tired Evil Alien™ plot? If Perez wants to write horror stories and has nothing interesting for viewers then he has the power to inflict "Tribbles with teeth" on Star Trek fans. No, thank you. Episode rating: please take your sterotypical ALL EVIL™ Gorn and return to Discovery. 👎🙈🙉⛔

Figure 2. Star Trek SLT; Spock's Love Triangle... will Spock go to the Dark Side?   r Chapel(θ) + ir T'Pring(θ) = re^iθ

a R'ongovian

R'ongovian solar sailship

Technically, Episode 5 ("Spock Amok") failed to deliver a new world, but it was still a breath of fresh air after the Gorn episode (Figure 1, above). Viewers are provided with a look at a R'ongovian spaceship using a solar sail, but the action takes place at Starbase 1. We never get to see R'ongovia. 👎

Don't think too much, Spock.

 Different Stripes. The R'ongovians almost get lost in this episode while Spock engages in hi-jinks: swaping bodies with T'Pring. The R'ongovian culture is somewhat interesting... almost the opposites of the Gorn, the R'ongovians are highly empathic. Captain Pike finally wins the trust of the R'ongovians by demonstrating that he can express complete sympathy for the feelings of the R'ongovians who are in a tight spot, their world inconveniently located between the parts of the galaxy controlled by the Romulans, Klingons and the Federation. 

Really delivering on that "strange new world" idea

If you were entertained by Enterprise Bingo then check out this video. Sadly, none of the cast members of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds who are shown in that video seem to be rabid fans of Star Trek. 😞 However...

Trekkie?

futuristic phone sex
New spinoff show:
Spock's Women.

I don't want to see Star Trek: Strange New Worlds turn into some sort of soap opera about Spock's sex life. Although, I might get into Vulcan sex if it is strange sex with some interesting aliens on new worlds. Episode rating: 1 brain and 1 heart 🧠💘. This episode is mostly about Spock, not the more interesting R'ongovians. 😒

If not Spock then how about the Captain? If not Spock's sex life, then how about an episode about one of the Captain's women? What are the odds that any "new world" we visit for Strange New Worlds is ruled by one of Pike's old girl friends? In the Star Trek universe, maybe 70 - 80%. Here's the setup: the most important cargo known to Majalis is being carried through space in a defenseless shuttle. The shuttle comes under attack by a space-cruiser, one with relatively weak weapons.

🧠 Brain? What is Brain? 🧠
A scene from TOS "Spock's Brain"

 The Cloud City of Majalis. Yes, it is a dangerous galaxy out there. At any given time, while the Enterprise is mapping space, you are likely to receive a distress signal from someone like Harry Mudd Pike's old Majalan flame, Alora. Why Alora is gallivanting through space with the next "First Servant" is never explained... because... plot. 

 Fantasy Medicine. The offending space-cruiser is destroyed by Enterprise, but not before the Majalan shuttle is also destroyed in the attack. However, the shuttle's passengers are safely teleported aboard Enterprise. Lest you think that Majalis is some backwoods primitive world, viewers are quickly informed that there is no disease among the Majalans. They use magical "quantum bio-implants"™ that correct any damage to a person's body at the molecular level.

Mind Control.

 Mystery. This episode keeps viewers guessing, but not in a good way. We wonder: is this Strange New Worlds episode a rehash of "The Cloud Minders" (see Trek 39) or "Spock's Brain" (see Trek 32) with maybe some of this TOS episode sprinkled in? The super technologically advanced Majalans have to use a child's brain to keep their floating city floating. This so disgusts Pike that he jumps out of Alora's bed and returns to Enterprise. But all is not lost. The ship's doctor has obtained clues for how to use "quantum bio-implants" to treat his terminally ill daughter.

Still waiting to reach the frontier...

I wonder how much Robin Wasserman had to do with the tone of both "Spock Amok" (above, Figure 2) and "Lift Us Where Suffering Cannot Reach". Wasserman has some science fiction writing experience outside of Hollywood, which is a good thing. 👍

Episode rating: 3 brains 🧠🧠🧠. I fear that episode 6 might be as close as we come this season to actually visiting a new world of the unexplored galactic frontier and meeting interesting new aliens... although Majalis did not seem all that strange given its similarity to Ardana and let's also not forget: Pike had previously made contact with Alora.  😟 The whole "we run our city with a human brain" plot was stupid in 1968 and it is even worse in zombie resurrection mode, here in 2022. 

 The Call of Duty.
Spock and Chapel demonstrate that
they have no feelings for each other

 Astounding Asteroids. In "The Serene Squall", viewers are subjected to another absurd Hollywood asteroid belt, but there is no new world and no new aliens. For Episode 7, we get a brief glimpse of Spock's brother, Sybok who is living at a criminal rehabilitation center where T'Pring is stationed. Sybok's friend, Angel the pirate, tries to spring Sybok from the rehabilitation center by engineering a swap of Spock for Sybok, but the pirate-planned prisoner swap fails when Spock kisses Chapel.

I suppose Captain Angel was designed to be a Mudd-like character for the new century. Instead of "Mudd's Women" we got "Angel's Vulcans".  The writers are struggling to deliver Strange New Worlds, so they might start a spin-off series called Strange New Pirates.

Episode 7: Angel's Vulcans.

 Pirate Perfidy. I suppose it is inevitable that both Angel and Sybok will return in future episodes of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds because the writers don't seem interested in exploring new worlds... they'd rather engineer excuses and invent contorted plots that allow the show runners to show Spock kissing someone. Episode rating: 👎, no new world, no new aliens and too much icky gruel 🥗.

new uniforms!

In Episode 8, "The Elysian Kingdom", there is no new world, but we did get one new alien. Sadly, this alien is yet another disembodied fantasy alien who resides inside a nebula. 👻 Success: Debra finally liberated Rukiya from the teleportation buffer. Episode rating: 👎, silly fantasy alien with magical telepathic powers. Poor Hemmer. 😟 Will he recover?

Buckley (right)

 Spock +1 hug, Hemmer -∞. Ever since episode 4, I've been dreading the return of the Gorn. However, I held my nose and watched the stupid Gorn episode "All Those Who Wander". In order to make this disgustingly bloody episode, they magically made the Gorn undetectable by scanners. And the Gorn are also magically shielded from Hemmer's telepathy. Poor Hemmer dies in this episode because... plot. Spock and Chapel managed to sneak in one long hug. The new alien in this episode was "Buckley" who did nothing except act as an incubator for some baby Gorn. Episode rating: 👎, I'm not interested in magical fantasy horror show Gorn. Alien body count: -1 red-shirted engineer, -1 blue disposable alien and who even counts all the dead Gorn?

"I'm Pike's number one." ... "No, I am."

 The Search for Quality. Episode 10 had no new worlds and no new aliens; rating 👎. 

I was a fool to imagine that we could get through a season of Star Trek without having to deal with either Klingons or Romulans.  😔 

I suppose the one alien (besides Spock) who we can expect to see in Season 2 of Strange New Worlds is Una, who Pike promised to protect, but who is arrested at the end of this episode. Most of the other "new" aliens from Season 1 (such as the Deleb) were as disposable as a random red-shirt. 

Maybe since the writers have no interest in new worlds and interesting aliens, this series will be all about time travel and they'll start calling it Star Trek: Dr. Who Me Too.

Mudd's mysterious time crystal

 Magic vs. Science. I've been investigating the science advisors for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds and trying to imagine how viewers are supposed to accept show elements such as time crystals as having a place in the Star Trek universe.

Alien time travel technology.

  Time Travel. How does time travel work according to the writers of Star Trek? Growing up with the original Star Trek, I got comfortable imagining that maybe time travel technology was something that only super advanced aliens would understand and use within the Star Trek universe. However, writers for Star Trek have not been able to resist the temptation to make time travel technology available to primitive humans. Are "time crystals" technology or magic?

Kellam and a research assistant.

 Science Advisors. Some of the "fact checking" for Star Trek was done by people such as Kellam de Forest (he graduated from Yale with a degree in history) and Joan Pearce. Apparently, it was either Joan (working for de Forest Research) or Pete Sloman who realized that Gene Coon's script about the Gorn was very similar to Fredrick Brown's previously published story "Arena" (Figure 1, above). 

Harvey Lynn (educated in science and engineering) was apparently the first person with a science background who was called upon by Gene Roddenberry to provide advice for Star Trek story telling.

Other folks with science backgrounds who helped shape the science content of Star Trek include Andre Bormanis and Jesco von Puttkamer.

The Crystal Invaders

 Magic Crystals in Science Fiction. Long before science fiction existed as a literary genre, some people were obsessed with crystals and through the centuries there was much written about the magical properties of crystals. My favorite author, Jack Vance, sometimes included crystals in his stories (for example, see his 1952 story "Sabotage on Sulfur Planet"). The cover art for "The Crystal Invaders" (image to the left) well illustrates how to use crystals to sell fiction.

A famous use of crystals in Hollywood is in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull where the titular crystal skulls of aliens look cool on screen and channel amazing powers. In the Star Trek fictional universe, dilithium crystals are what make possible faster than light space travel. As a measure of the popularity of crystals in Star Trek, see this list. There is no task too small or too large for a crystal, including the enigmatic "impulse deflection crystal".

cover art by Terry Pastor

One of the "science consultants" listed here is Isaac Asimov, who was proclaimed to be a "Special Science Consultant" for Star Trek when Roddenberry was seeking support for the sentient computer theme in the first Star Trek film. I read Gregory Benford's novel Timescape, but I could not finish his novel Foundation's Fear. I often have trouble accepting the fantasy biology that is dreamed up by physicists. It often bodes well for Sci Fi television shows when they use scientists and published science fiction authors as consultants. Writing in 1996, Benford commented that Star Trek, "... now depends on writers who seem rather proud of their ignorance of written..." science fiction. I would say: it is a miracle that Roddenberry was able to go as far as he did in bringing science fiction with a hint of science to the boob tube.

sure, that makes sense

 Erin Macdonald was a science consultant for the first season of Strange New Worlds and I have to wonder what she thinks about time crystals. It would have been fun to watch Erin read the script for episode 3 of SNW. Did she shrug and say, "Oh, a disease spread by light waves... sounds good to me."

However, time crystals were introduced back in 2017, before Macdonald started working on Star Trek as an "technical consultant". Anthony Maranville was listed as both a technical consultant (or less grandly, as a "researcher") for the episode "The Red Angel" and as a writer. That season 2 episode of Discovery featured the idea that time travel had previously been developed by both Klingons and Section 31. "In an effort to ground the show's science fiction in actual science, he regularly consults with scientists and physicists."

will the Suliban return in SNW?

I have the feeling that during the time when Discovery was developed under the "guidance" of people like Kurtzman, Fuller, Harberts and Berg, there may have been essentially no consultation with science advisors. It seems that Fuller and other people associated with the show felt free to make up silly "future science" such as the "spore drive" and there was apparently nobody there with any knowledge of science to keep the show from becoming a type of science fantasy that is low on the science.

Is it possible to make sense of time travel as depicted in the Star Trek fictional universe or is trying to do so simply a fool's errand? I'm in complete sympathy with story tellers who cannot resist constructing stories about time travel, but I'd like to believe that Star Trek is science fiction where everything happens for a reason, by using future technology, not because of magical fantasy.

Time Travel? Don't ask questions...

It may be that some Star Trek writers grew up watching shows about the "Temporal Cold war" and then later felt a need to "explain" time travel using magical "time crystals". Maybe time travelers from the far future make sure that nobody in the primitive times of the star-ship Enterprise can understand and control time travel technology because primitive humans wielding time travel technology would only mess up the future. 

As depicted in "A Quality of Mercy", Pike is given a "time crystal" that allows him to magically see the future, allowing him to change his own behavior and prevent a devastating war with the Romulans. But how does time travel by means of a time crystal work?

magical fantasy

 Magic Time. I can't explain what type of time travel it is that they were trying to depict in the final episode of season 1 SNM SNW. Was the consciousness of Pike "projected" into the future and placed into his future body? Nobody in the future seemed to notice any change in Pike's physical appearance. Was Pike's "trip to the future" only an illusion or dream? None of this was made clear, so I suppose, as is usual in Hollywood, we viewers are not supposed to ask questions. This might be an application of Clarke's 3rd law: time travel seems like magic to we primitive Earthlings.

"There’s new aliens almost every week." -Henry Alonso Myers

Spoiler: the horse works for Section 31.

 New? That comment from co-show-runner Myers (above) suggests that he must count retread aliens such as Romulans as being "new". What about my hopeful search for interesting new aliens in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds? Dreaming up interesting new aliens does not seem to be a concern for the writers of this television show. 😖 However, we did get a scene in Season 1 with Pike riding a horse. Is that supposed to satisfy our desire to explore a new frontier?

Related Reading: the chemistry of time travel

Next: the "possible worlds" of pulp Sci Fi

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