Creating Our Own Final Frontier: Part Two

In which Larry Klaes concludes his analysis of Forbidden Planet, the still revered science fiction classic from the 1950s. If you ever had any questions about this film, Larry is your man, and note the full complement of online resources at the end of the essay.

by Larry Klaes

Space Madness

Adams: “How have the men stood the voyage?” Doc: “About average. A few cases of space-blues – a little epidemic of claustro during the seventh month. But nobody’s had to have shock therapy except the Cook.” Adams: “Yes, I could taste it in the chow.”

The above was yet another bit of dialogue from the indispensable 1954 version of the Forbidden Planet film script which did not survive to the 1956 release. The Captain and the ship’s doctor were discussing the psychological state of the C-57D crew after their year-long journey from Earth Base just before landing on Altair 4. I presume this was largely done for the knowledge benefit of the viewing audience – either that or Adams is surprisingly unaware of how his own men have been feeling and behaving overall after spending 378 straight days together in the confines of a vessel where everyone could be no more than several dozen yards apart at most.

Nevertheless, this snippet of conversation gives us some valuable insights into how the makers of FP thought men might respond to and deal with long duration voyages in deep space, just a few years before humans began real ventures into the Final Frontier. We also learn a little cultural lingo which always adds to the richness of a society new to us, both fictional and real. Doc’s psychological terms being used in the colloquial sense were not just a way to explain the mental and emotional status of the crew to Captain Adams, they also showed that in their 23rd Century, enough manned deep space missions had occurred to incorporate these terms into the general language and no doubt an entire school of study for them. For these reasons alone I find it unfortunate that Doc’s descriptions did not make the final film edit.

Keeping in step with the attitudes of the time when FP was made, men serving aboard naval vessels and other places where long periods of relative isolation and other hardships would be encountered were expected to be endured with manly stoicism for the good of the group and by extension the nation they serve. Of course for centuries even the toughest military services recognized that the people serving in them had certain essential physiological needs which could only be ignored at the peril to one and all.

One need which did get mentioned in FP and more than once was the desire for “shore leave”, for which leaving the confines of the ship was only the initial step. This is why the viewing adults in even a 1950s audience did not require a detailed explanation for Adams’ following outburst when he learned that Altaira had been engaging in what she merely considered to be “healthy stimulation” (hugging and kissing) with some members of the C-57D crew: In fact she had just been caught with Lt. Farman in this very scenario.

“It so happens that I’m in command of nineteen competitively selected super-perfect physical specimens with an average age of 24.6 years who have been locked up in hyperspace for 378 days! It would have served you right if I hadn’t have… and he…. Get out of here before I have you run out of the area under guard… and then I’ll put more guards on the guards!”

For crews of the last century or so serving aboard a vessel, whether it be on the water, deep under the ocean surface, or even in space, no matter how isolating their situation may otherwise be, they know that a break or rescue is typically only a matter of hours to a few days away should a need for escape become necessary. The Apollo astronauts knew that Earth was only three days travel away and even though our planet was reduced enough in apparent size to where Apollo 11 mission commander Neil Armstrong famously said he could cover our entire globe with a single gloved thumb while standing on the lunar surface, Earth was still visible as a solid blue and white spherical body in the black sky, providing some psychological comfort for those pioneering explorers.

Such will not be the case for those men and women who travel further into the Sol system. For example, at Mars, Earth will be seven months to over one year’s travel time with chemically-fueled rockets, depending upon where the two planets are situated in their respective solar orbits should the need to return arise. Earth will appear as just a bright bluish “star” from the Red Planet, with its shape and basic details only visible through a telescope. At the edge of our planetary neighborhood, humanity’s home world will appear as a “pale blue dot”, made famous by the Family Portrait images the Voyager 1 space probe took from 3.7 billion miles out in 1990.

On interstellar voyages, even the nearest star systems will be years away from Sol, assuming a vessel can travel at 99 percent of the speed of light, which is on the highest end of STL velocities. A more reasonable travel time for starships with currently conceived STL propulsion will likely measure in the decades, again for the nearest of suns. Earth will be all but invisible to the astronauts on these interstellar missions.

Although Sol will remain a very bright star as viewed from the Alpha Centauri system (about 0.5 apparent magnitude, or equivalent to the planet Saturn and, by chance, Altair as they are seen from Earth), our star’s unaided visibility will cease at a distance of approximately 65 light years. Long before then, however, Sol will have become just one of the multitudes of background lights that make up the Milky Way galaxy.

Can human passengers on interstellar missions or even long interplanetary ones for that matter deal without being on Earth or even seeing the planet for long periods of time? Or will the circumstances of civilization be different enough by the time we can send humans on voyages to other star systems that it is presumptuous to think people will call Earth or any solid world home? They may have been born and raised elsewhere in the Sol system so that they no more view Earth as home than do many people think of the birth nation of their ancestors as home.

Although as usual we get very little concrete information from FP itself as to how the main characters relate to Earth, we do have several strong clues that, despite humanity colonizing the Sol system and several other star systems, the third world from Sol remains their primary cultural and psychological focus. We have already seen how Cook views alien planets, which for him lack certain basic amenities such as beer and pool parlors. When the crew first disembarks from the ship upon landing on Altair 4, Doc gasps in admiration to “look at the color of that sky,” which happens to be a deep green. Farman replies that he will “still take blue.” Doc, who has already expressed his fondness for this alien planet back in orbit when he remarked aloud that “the Lord sure makes some beautiful worlds,” replies to his fellow officer that he thinks “a man could get used to this and grow to love it.” We are also privy to a brief conversation between two cruiser guards on night watch later in the film, who remark at how “funny” it is “to see two moons in the sky,” and then say how funny it is “how quick a guy gets used to it.”

These seem like rather odd things to say for members of a society and profession where one might rightly assume they have seen numerous alien worlds both in person and via various media, places that would often challenge the notion of what a typical nonterrestrial body should be like. Instead they show how much Earth is still indeed the main base of operations for the United Planets and human society, as well as home at least to the crew of the C-57D. This says a lot about the general attitude both of a culture that has been getting around deep space and back in literally short order for the last several centuries and the makers and viewers of a film from an era just before the dawn of the Space Age when the celestial realm would become something far more up close and personal.

Even though the crew of the C-57D had some issues with their year-long journey cooped up in a metal ship flying across the galaxy, they did have the advantage of going at speeds much faster than light, so that even a frontier system like Altair (which apparently only gets visited once every twenty years) is a long but not unbearable journey, not one that takes up a decent fraction of a person’s average life span. In the days before mechanically powered marine ships, sailing vessels could take months to a year or more to reach distant points across Earth’s oceans. The people making those voyages usually accepted these travel times as part of the process, since most trips before the advent of modern industrial methods of transportation just about anywhere were seldom fast affairs.

In addition to the tremendous velocities afforded to the interstellar travelers of this 23rd Century, another factor of physics that is often skipped in science fiction plots is the amazing ability of space crews not having to float about their ships, unlike those astronauts and cosmonauts in our reality, thanks to something called artificial gravity. Now we are not referring to the type of artificial gravity where a ship spins on its axis and centrifugal force pushes the crew against the interiors walls, effectively turning them into floors. Clearly the C-57D does not employ this method, as the crew walks around inside the cruiser as if they were on Earth. In addition, the ship is not nearly wide enough for the equivalent of one Earth gravity to take place if it were spun like a top for that purpose.

Instead the C-57D employs what is very probably a gravity generator, a mechanical method of producing gravity that, like the ship’s hyperdrive system, defies the laws of physics for the convenience of not having the actors float about the ship on wires or other potentially cheesy-looking special effects methods. Also, like most FTL propulsion engines, the details of the gravity generator are never revealed, and Earth-bound viewers often do not even think about this situation, for the vast majority have spent their entire lives being naturally pulled towards the center of a massive planet on a regular basis. Sometimes the hypothetical particles known as gravitons are employed for the generators; however, since they are as problematic as negative matter is for warp drives, they fare no better when it comes to providing another real-world solution to real-world interstellar travelers.

Even though the C-57D mission was planned as a two-year journey, a quick jaunt compared to an interstellar mission using a vessel that could “only” attain 99 percent light speed (approximately 34 years for a trip from Earth to Altair and back, assuming a rather short stay in the target system), there was still the potential for mental health issues when it comes to a group of humans (all of the same gender at that) kept enclosed in a military-style ship of limited size for months on end. Especially when there is nowhere to stop along the way, the exterior environment is almost instantly fatal if exposed to without proper protection, and the alien world they are being sent to is potentially dangerous, seeing as the first manned expedition to explore Altair 4 was never heard from again.

So how did the crew of the C-57D maintain their work skills and ethics, composure, and even their overall sanity? Once again these questions may not ultimately matter for a piece of celluloid entertainment, but they certainly will be very important for real human crews being flung into the galaxy one day, especially since there is no guarantee that those early missions – or perhaps even the later ones – will have the luxury of some form of FTL propulsion to shorten the travel times.

As with most other aspects of life aboard the C-57D, we do not see or even hear much about what the crew did to pass the time during their jaunt to Altair 4. Keeping in mind the era in which FP was made, we can assume there were supplies of playing cards, various board games like chess and checkers, and even a library. In the 1954 script version, Cook said he took some of Doc’s shock therapy treatments “for the entertainment of it!” Had FP been made in more recent eras, the crew probably would have spent their off-duty time watching films, playing video games, and immersing themselves in the various worlds of virtual reality (VR) devices. Had the cruiser been bigger in size and power, they might even have enjoyed the same kind of holodecks that became so ubiquitous in later versions of the Star Trek franchise.

One real world place to glean some ideas about serving aboard a United Planets cruiser in deep space are modern day naval submarines. This Web site on life and duty in a real nuclear submarine from those who served aboard those vessels offers some very relevant and generally fascinating insights:

https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-psychological-and-physiological-effects-of-being-on-a-long-cruise-in-a-nuclear-submarine

Regarding recreation time, one veteran had this to say via the site above:

“To clarify more on that last point, while there are exceptions (I have met many athletes in the submarine service) there is a larger representation of people who tend to prefer indoor activities. The most popular hobbies of submariners tend to be books, video games, board/card games, movies (both obscure and mainstream) and learning (many submariners take distance learning courses or learn new languages or tradeskills).”

Of course we have also had real humans being sent into space since 1961. While in terms of distance no one has yet gone further than the Moon and back – and the last of those missions were in 1972 – we have been experimenting with long-duration space stays almost since the beginning, although they still remain in low Earth orbit decades later.

In 2012, I wrote a review of a NASA History Program Office book titled Psychology of Space Exploration: Contemporary Research in Historical Perspective (NASA SP-2011-4411), edited by Douglas A. Vakoch, which was subsequently published on Centauri Dreams: https://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=24523

The book naturally offered numerous insights into the various behaviors of astronauts and cosmonauts over the decades both in space and back on Earth and how attitudes and techniques into psychological selection and management changed: Space missions went from being crewed with primarily male military officers confined in very small vessels ranging from days to weeks, to mixed gender environments aboard comparatively roomier space stations enduring several months to over a year in space, with all but the Apollo lunar missions remaining in Earth orbit. These missions, while certainly helpful to space medicine and providing some key insights into the time when we send humans to Mars and other worlds in our Sol system, are also still lacking important data in regards to living in various space environments for years at a time, perhaps for an entire lifetime and never once setting foot on Earth.

Meanwhile, as for how real astronauts tend to spend their leisure time at present, allow me to quote from my book review article:

“Regarding this view of the shrinking Earth from deep space, the multiple authors of Chapter 4 noted that ISS [International Space Station] astronauts took 84.5 percent of the photographs during the mission inspired by their motivation and choices. Most of these images were of our planet moving over 200 miles below their feet. The authors noted how much of an emotional uplift it was for the astronauts to image Earth in their own time and in their own way. “The chapter authors also had this to say about what an expedition to Mars might encounter: “As we begin to plan for interplanetary missions, it is important to consider what types of activities could be substituted. Perhaps the crewmembers best suited to a Mars transit are those individuals who can get a boost to psychological well-being from scientific observations and astronomical imaging. Replacements for the challenge of mastering 800-millimeter photography could also be identified. As humans head beyond low-Earth orbit, crewmembers looking at Earth will only see a pale-blue dot, and then, someday in the far future, they will be too far away to view Earth at all.”

I wonder if the crew of the C-57D conducted any astronomical activities while in transit, or even if they could if hyperspace travel might somehow “mess” with the view outside. Or if they were any more interested in space science than a typical submariner is in marine biology or oceanography (with apologies to those who are into the subject). Again, things might be very different with a crew on a long STL-speed interstellar mission in many ways, including the strong possibility that any humans on such a voyage will not be quite like the humans of the late 20th or early 21st Centuries thanks in no small part to biotechnology and genetic engineering.

Here are some other factors that would likely have an effect on the psychology of the star cruiser crew in FP that I have pondered if anyone ever considered:

The primary mission of the C-57D as stated by Adams early on in the film was to search for survivors of the Bellerophon expedition and return them to Earth. Now while it was probably assumed that after two decades the full complement of that mission* may not still be alive, even if nothing had gone dramatically wrong during all those years, there was still a good chance that at least a handful of people would have survived and be capable of going back to Earth.

* Footnote: The exact number of people on the Bellerophon expedition was never outright declared in FP. However, based on a scene description mention in the 1954 script of the number of headstones marking the burial sites of the Bellerophon crew and my own headcount of the headstones briefly shown in the film, along with adding the last three crew members who were aboard the Bellerophon trying to escape and were vaporized in the process by the Monster from the Id and presumably not buried like the rest, my estimate comes to around twenty people. Their ship was never shown or even described, but I have a feeling it was similar in size, design, and function to the C-57D, if perhaps a bit less advanced in certain areas being two decades older. If this is the case, then it would make sense that the two starships’ crew numbers would be roughly the same, even though not every person would have a matching job title since the Bellerophon was a science mission and the C-57D carried a military-style rescue party.

Was the C-57D truly ready both psychologically and physically to support more people in terms of room and supplies? As stated before, while there are plenty of areas on that ship which we never saw and whose purposes remain only educated guesses for the viewing audience, the cruiser was still physically limited and certainly no luxury craft.

The trained crew might be able to handle such hardships and privations, but what about the Bellerophon survivors, most of whom were apparently scientists and would have spent the last twenty years of their lives on an alien planet that from all appearances, save the underground Krell facilities, seems pretty desolate.

Would they want to leave after all this time despite the apparent harshness of their situation? After all, living for two straight decades in one place, even one that was less than ideal, might have had an effect on them. Playing a ‘what-if” scenario, what if they had decided as a group at some point to abandon their primary mission and remain on Altair 4, deliberately cutting off radio contact with Earth? Morbius said he and his wife had a special love for that world and voluntarily chose to stay. He even made several comments both in the film and the 1954 script about how crowded and dirty he found Earth and his overall resistance to ever leaving Altair 4 even for a brief time was plain.

The C-57D crew was, rather surprisingly, not prepared both for Morbius’ reaction and the discovery of the Krell technology, as Adams admitted as much and had to make a special radio call home for further instructions. They had been focused on the primary goal of their mission, to find out what happened to the Bellerophon expedition and rescue any survivors. This has led me to wonder why it took twenty years for the UP to mount a rescue operation for a mission for which they knew nothing of its fate, including if anyone was still alive to be saved. Unless having starships zip around the galaxy is an everyday occurrence for the UP, the stated C-57D mission seems like an extravagance just to see if anyone survived the Bellerophon mission.

Perhaps an automated probe with artificial intelligence (AI) would have been sufficient for the task, sparing the extra expense and resources of a human crew. However, not only would this have not worked in terms of providing human characters and the resultant drama for an entertainment film, the very concept of sending robotic machines to explore space was still a rather new one at the time, even though rockets had been sent high above Earth housing only basic instrumentation on suborbital jaunts. The state of technology in the 1950s, especially computers, was such that exploration and other types of reconnaissance were still the domain of manned vessels, even when it came to first expeditions into unknown realms.

If the cruiser crew had found no one alive on Altair 4, only some human remains, would they have transported them back to Earth or buried them on the planet? If the former, I wonder how having dead bodies aboard the cruiser for the year-long journey home would have affected the crew psychologically?

This train of thought has also led me to wonder if someone, perhaps the organization that created and funded the initial expedition to Altair 4, somehow already knew about the existence of the Krell and their amazing technology and sent the Bellerophon as a scientific scouting mission to study and claim the technology for themselves. Otherwise why send a language expert like Morbius unless someone knew there would be an alien culture on Altair 4 to decipher? Unless the United Planets sends primarily altruistic science missions to explore alien worlds and their potential inhabitants using a preplanned range of experts from various relevant disciplines as a matter of principle. They are supposed to be an enlightened future society advanced and enriched on multiple levels, so it is not impossible.

The UP may also have a priority to investigate any exoplanets that resemble Earth, just as current astronomers in our reality are focused on sifting through the data from such satellites as Kepler to find worlds similar to our home planet, with the ultimate goal down the road to send probe missions to investigate them further to evaluate their potential for human colonization. Altair 4 is similar to Earth, although it is slightly less massive and therefore has a lighter gravity, has a higher oxygen content in its atmosphere, and two large circling moons. There is that tricky business with the star Altair itself, which is not a fairly stable and long-lived yellow dwarf type like our Sol at least in our Universe, but that is for a further analysis later on.

However, in a film whose main theme throughout is how basic human nature remains no matter how sophisticated our civilization becomes, I cannot help but wonder what other motives may have been involved. Perhaps I have been influenced by the plot of the first film of the Alien franchise from 1979, where an interstellar commercial towing ship named Nostromo, on its way back to Earth, is redirected by its owners, simply known as The Company, to investigate what appears to be a distress signal coming from some remote alien planet. The ship’s crew come to learn the hard way that the signal was not a call for help but a warning from a derelict alien vessel housing a vast collection of large eggs containing deadly creatures. One of these encased xenomorphs, as they are later called, attacks and infects a crewman, uses him as an incubator, and eventually transforms into an even more dangerous version that attacks the rest of the crew and kills all but one of them.

It is eventually revealed that The Company actually knew what was in that alien derelict thanks to the crashed ship’s warning transmission and used the conveniently nearby Nostromo and its crew to involuntarily bring home a sample creature for study by its bioweapons division. Although the Alien franchise is of course fictional, it is not hard to imagine a real future human society that continues to behave in certain familiar if less than noble ways despite having an interstellar level society with high technology and knowledge.

Another factor that was definitely not anticipated in advance of the C-57D mission to Altair 4 was Commander Adams bringing back a woman he met and fell in love with while on that planet, accompanied by her robot servant/nanny made from advanced alien technology. In particular a young woman who until quite recently had spent her entire and rather idyllic life on that distant alien world with her father as the only other human being she had ever directly known. By the end of the film, Altaira will have witnessed the death of her beloved parent at the hands of a manifestation from the very alien civilization he had devoted the last twenty years of his life to studying.

Within 24 hours, that traumatic event will be surpassed by Altaira having a virtual front-row seat to the complete obliteration of her home world, including presumably most of what she once owned and all of her pets.

In the very last scenes of the released film version, we observe Adams holding an understandably distraught Altaira and trying to comfort her by declaring how one day the human race will reach the advanced levels of the Krell thanks to men like her father, whose “name will shine again like a beacon in the galaxy.” Then Adams feels the need to throw in a comment about how this event will teach humanity not to play God – maybe not the best time to alternately praise and admonish Morbius right to his daughter’s face. Adams makes this final point even more pointedly in the 1954 script version of his little speech:

“Alta, nothing is ever really lost. There’s a ladder that reaches from the primeval slime up to the stars, and beyond. In about a million years the human race will have climbed up to that rung where the Krell stood in their great moment of triumph and disaster. And then your father’s name will stand like a milestone in the galaxy – warning Man to remember that he is after all not a god.”

What did not make the final version of Forbidden Planet is what came next: A wedding ceremony.

Yes, no sooner had the C-57D gotten out of range of the destructive blast of Altair 4 and all that meant to poor Altaira than Alpha Male Adams makes crewman Bosun (like Cook, another member of the ship who is only referred to by his job title) the temporary Acting Captain of the ship so that he may perform the wedding – and quickly too, as the cruiser will be going into hyperspace in a matter of minutes and everyone needs to be in those special chambers for protection; you know, the ones we saw at the beginning of the film when the C-57D was about to decelerate out of hyperspace into the Altair system that look an awful lot like what would become the matter transporters on Star Trek a decade later.

Not only is this scene fully described in the 1954 script but it was apparently filmed as well, for there is a published still shot of the moment complete with Cook holding a wedding cake! Perhaps the reason this ending of FP did not make the final cut was due to the filmmakers ultimately realizing how incongruous this event felt after everything that had just transpired, just like the scripted scene with Cook acquiring a chimpanzee “girlfriend” for comic effect. Plus they had to get in that final message about humanity not going past its cosmic paygrade (playing God), but that belongs to a later discussion. Despite all this, having Altaira marry Adams aboard the star cruiser would have made for an interesting parallel to her father and mother’s wedding, which also took place aboard a starship while in transit, with the ceremony being performed by the Bellerophon’s skipper.

The most likely reason for this wedding being considered to close out FP has to do with the era this film is from: A cinematic couple could not be shown or even implied to be living together if they were not lawfully married. Adams and Altaira would have had little choice but to be in close proximity to each other on the year-long journey back to Earth aboard that confining star cruiser deep in the middle of interstellar space. Add the fact of how much they clearly desired each other throughout most of FP and the only recourse to maintain propriety was to have them tie the knot ASAP. The producers were also probably considering the fact that since FP is definitely science fiction, complete with a robot and spaceships and ray guns, it would undoubtedly attract a lot of impressionable young children who would witness Adams and Altaira flying off into the Final Frontier together to “live in sin.” Of course if there was some kind of matrimonial ceremony aboard the C-57D, we the audience of all ages were never shown it, leaving everyone in a state of potential moral ambiguity.

So even if we assume that Adams and Altaira became legal husband and wife, complete with wedding cake, there would still be issues between them and the rest of the crew to contend with. Would they have any real privacy in this their first year together as a couple? I know on nuclear submarines that the officers get to have their own private quarters while the enlisted crew sleep in shared bunk beds, but as far as we know there is no such luxury aboard the C-57D, probably because the folks in charge only considered an all-male crew (including any Bellerophon survivors?). Maybe there is a partition stored somewhere that the officers use to divide themselves from the rest while sleeping and such. Or perhaps some sections of the interior can be modified into their own rooms complete with walls, assuming there is enough free space to do so. Either solution, however, will only be of limited benefit both psychologically and socially.

We also have to consider all the other issues Altaira would be going through: Until a few days ago, she had known only one human being her entire life, her father Dr. Edward Morbius, and lived virtually unrestricted in a beautiful home with few needs and wants. Now all that was gone and in a traumatic manner at that. Plus she had never been intimate with a man, a point that was made numerous times, although often alluded to rather than stated outright (and in some cases removed from the final film print). Altaira may be a highly intelligent woman, but she is also a human being and a rather young one at that: This sudden and dramatic shift in her life could be emotionally and psychologically damaging to her, despite the contemporary implication that now she has a husband everything will be fine.

Altaira may also come to subconsciously blame and despise the C-57D crew, especially her new partner Adams, for the death of her father and the destruction of her home world. Altaira may have had a self-educated intellectual understanding of human nature and general biology, but in many other respects she was indeed the innocent virgin the film portrayed her as, especially social interactions. If there was one thing pounded home in Forbidden Planet it is the volatile and uncontrollable power of the human subconscious. Even Morbius with his high intelligence and disciplined mind could not control his inner primal beast, and although he had an advanced alien technology at his disposal to dramatically enhance his subconscious desires, Altaira could still wreak her own kind of havoc on herself and others without the need for Krell instrumentalities. While this is not the kind of outcome the film would want to have happen to the survivors of Altair 4, our reality often lacks the luxury of preordained happy endings.

One may hope for her sake that Adams has more sensitivity and understanding for his new bride than most of the other males displayed towards Altaira in the film. Of course Robby will also be there for the long journey and that may help; however, what the United Planets authorities may ultimately do with such a technological prize once they arrive on Earth could mean that Altaira might lose her one remaining positive connection to her past, creating even more trauma.

I also want to note that the C-57D returns to Earth with five fewer initial crewmembers that it left with: This number includes three of its four officers, whom Adams was close with to varying levels, especially Doc, the ship’s lone physician and perhaps only real intellectual. This may be a quasi-military group modeled on a mid-Twentieth Century image of manhood, but losing comrades after spending a long period of time together on a continual basis certainly heightened the emotional bond, even for a bunch of macho males who would be reticent to admit such a thing publicly. That they also died in such dramatic and often terrible fashion on an alien planet where they did not seem entirely prepared for who and what they encountered will no doubt only add to the emotional backlash (I go so far as to say they may have post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, from this) once they are on the long journey home where aside from their duties they are going to have a lot of time to think about what took place – and without their only medical doctor to boot.

These things will need to be considered as much as possible once real star voyages start happening, for we do not know who or what is out there. Even if the galaxy is relatively benign the journey itself has obstacles and issues that will not fade away once the end credits roll.

The Krell: The Alien as Object Lesson

For a science fiction film involving an FTL starship that is part of an interstellar federation on a mission to a distant exoplanet, Forbidden Planet has one particularly atypical aspect for its genre: There is only one ETI species ever discussed and our main characters never get to either meet in person or even see an actual representative of these aliens, only what is left of their technology and records, which are presented to them through a fellow human to boot. While this is not unique for SF, focusing on just one alien species shows that the Krell are in this film, whatever form they may take, for a serious reason and not just window dressing to make things more exotic a la Star Wars or Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets.

As stated earlier in the sections on the C-57D, there are indications in the released version of FP that the members of the United Planets neither contain anyone who is not a human from Earth nor are they currently aware of any ETI in the galaxy. That this future humanity has never met an alien intelligence before is made explicit in the 1954 script by Commander Adams just before they land on Altair 4.

Thus the discovery of the alien species who called themselves the Krell is not just supposed to be a surprise for the film audience but certainly for the crew of the C-57D and by proxy the United Planets, whose mission as we know was primarily focused on rescuing any survivors from the starship Bellerophon, which was sent to Altair 4 twenty years prior, and not making First Contact. That being said, the possibility of an encounter with an ETI was very likely among the crew’s orders and there is probably even some kind of general protocol in anticipation of such an event, although despite that one brief and informal conversation between the three main officers from the 1954 script, it does not seem to have been something they had even considered in a big way, let alone done any official planning for. Of course what we later come to learn and see about the Krell probably would have jarred even a well-prepared First Contact team, if such a thing even exists in the UP.

No human of that 23rd Century ever met a living member of the Krell, for they have been extinct for the last two thousand centuries, roughly around the time that anatomically modern humans, Homo sapiens, made their first appearance on Earth. According to Dr. Morbius, from whom we learn the majority of what we in the viewing audience do know about these aliens, the Krell left no images or even descriptions of their physical appearance, although Morbius tweaks our imaginations when he suggests to Adams and Doc Ostrow that they consider the standard shape of the wide, five-sided archways (counting the floor as one side) found throughout the underground Krell facility “in comparison to one of our functionally-designed human doorways.”

Morbius claimed that “no record of their physical nature has survived,” but does he really know that for certain? Did he check through every document and manuscript the Krell ever made? Morbius even said that he had spent every day of the last two decades “painfully picking up a few of the least difficult fragments of their knowledge.”

Now from a story angle, I do not have a real issue with the details of the physical appearance of the Krell remaining unknown to all but the Krell themselves. Some of the best cinematic science fiction also kept their aliens’ true appearances unavailable to human eyes, such as 2001: A Space Odyssey and Contact. This tactic not only heightens the imaginations, drama, and tension of the audience, it spares such films from the potential for displaying aliens that could end up looking more ridiculous than awe-inspiring or fearsome, especially in those pre-CGI days.

My real complaint with the lack of a visible Krell is the plausibility level of Morbius’ claim that there are no records of any image of an actual member of that species. The Krell were organic beings to the very end of their existence, we know this much. So even if we throw in the possibility that their species had some kind of cultural or psychological taboo about showing themselves either in photographic images or through art, would not the Krell still have a need for medical knowledge about their species? Would this not require multiple detailed images and diagrams of their bodies?

This lead me to question if Morbius truly knew if the subject of his intense study left no records of what they looked like. If you had access to an alien database, wouldn’t one of the first things you would do with it is to find out what the beings who created this database looked like if you didn’t already know? Even if you did not understand their language and the amount of information was vast, you could still look for any representations that showed the ETI themselves. For someone as scientifically curious, fascinated, and ultimately obsessed about the Krell as Morbius is, I find it hard to believe he would not have been combing the alien database from day one for anything that could be an actual Krell.

As it turns out, Morbius may indeed have given into to that curiosity impulse, but his own words reveal that there was probably far too much information for any one human being, even one who was mentally enhanced by Krell technology as he was, to search through and digest in one average lifetime.

When Morbius gives Adams and Doc a tour of the Krell laboratory, he shows them a large desk with a screen built into its flat surface, saying: “On this screen may be projected the total scientific knowledge of the Krell, from its primitive beginnings to the day of its annihilation – a sheer bulk surpassing many million earthly libraries.” [Emphasis added.] Doc then inquires if Morbius is able to read the Krell “hieroglyphics”, to which Morbius responds: “A little. It’s my profession.”

A few moments later, Morbius adds: “I’ve come here every day now for two decades, painfully picking up a few of the least difficult fragments of their knowledge.”

There were two additional comments made by Morbius that did not survive from the 1954 script which further reveal just how big the Krell library was and how Morbius was incapable of absorbing more than a fraction of its ancient intellectual bulk:

“But still I am like an illiterate savage, wandering at random through some stupendous scientific institute, and comprehending not a thousandth part of all the piled-up wonders.”

And then there is this:

“But I do not even know the storage place of all those ancient tons of microfilm.”

Would an alien culture a million years ahead of 23rd Century humanity be using microfilm? If so, then that screen on the laboratory desk is essentially just a large microfiche reader: The way Morbius was shown operating the device, it certainly seems to handle like such a reader. If Forbidden Planet were produced today, that screen would have been the monitor/display for a Krell database computer, no doubt swimming with exotic CGI images. However, in the 1950s, computers generally communicated their data to their operators through blinking lights, punch cards, and paper printouts. Computer monitors would not really take off until the 1970s. Recall that even in the science fiction film Fantastic Voyage, made one full decade after FP, the nuclear-powered submarine Proteus that took a miniaturized crew through a human body utilized rather simplistic paper charts as navigational maps of the person’s interior. A selected chart was transferred to the sub’s pilot via the vintage overhead projector method to be displayed on his small view screen as a guide.

Of course Morbius may have been trying to describe this aspect of Krell technology using a term that would be familiar to the C-57D officers, but again, one would think that microfilm would be deeply antiquated technology for residents of an era where FTL starships and ray guns are available. Then again, too, there is nothing like having the advantage of six decades of hindsight to comment on the film’s technology.

I also have to wonder if there is a “search” feature on this Krell database reader, whatever its true design may be. Because otherwise trying to find particular information from a library bigger than millions of terrestrial versions manually would be virtually impossible. It would also further solidify my point that Morbius could not have seen every bit of Krell knowledge and therefore the possibility that images of the Krell remains (or remained) buried somewhere in that virtual ocean of data.

Nevertheless, even without that database, there were a few other clues that revealed a bit more about the physical state of the Krell. There was this bit of stage description from the 1954 script when Morbius and the UP cruiser officers first enter the Krell “electro-physics laboratory”:

“…all the seats are exceptionally low and wide, with four separate arm-rests set at right angles on each side.”

One of these laboratory sections with the seating meant for beings other than human was the device Morbius called the “plastic educator”, which would become crucial to the bizarre and frightening events happening on Altair 4. Morbius tells the officers how he often plays with this instrument for relaxation, although he sometimes wished he had “been blessed with multiple arms and legs.” The resident Krell expert also points out that the educator’s three-pronged headset “was designed for something much bulkier than [his] human cranium.”

In addition, the long walkways seen amongst the Krell machinery were quite wide and the guard rails along their sides were lower than would be considered safe for an average human. Yet Morbius still pressed the two officers to look over these ramp railings to peer down at the miles-deep ventilation shaft they stood in, tweaking at their instinctive fear of such a drop.

Then there is this fascinating stage direction from the 1954 script, made just after Morbius told Adams and Doc to use the shape of the Krell archways as a guide to imagining what its makers probably looked like:

“The officers turn, and stare at the tunnel-mouth. Abstractedly, the Doc picks up a pencil. TRUCK IN slightly to give a glimpse over his shoulder as he sketches – first, the outline of a common doorway, with a one-line diagram of a man standing in it — then the Krell arch, with the suggestion of a crab-like or spider-like creature framed in it. But before the sketch is complete, the Doc’s hand impulsively crumples the paper in revulsion.”

With Doc being perhaps the most mature and thoughtful member of the C-57D crew, as well as probably the most intellectual, I found it a bit surprising that he of all of them would be so xenophobic as depicted above with his visceral reaction to a rough speculative drawing of the Krell – which he had just made! Then again, scholarly intelligence is no guarantee against prejudice.

I did wonder if Doc was having a subconscious reaction from that earlier discussion between Adams, Farman, and himself aboard the C-57D as to whether the Bellerophon crew had encountered intelligent natives on Altair 4 and thus the reason they had not been heard from in the last two decades. Adams considered that in general aliens could be “anything from archangels to man-eating spiders. Or a combination of both,” in response to Doc asking if “aliens would necessarily be hostile?” This same scene is where Adams had just revealed to the audience that humanity had never encountered an alien race before, thus all the members of the United Planets originate from Earth regardless of what worlds they may have since been dwelling on.

The key flaw with my theory, however, is that this particular dialogue does not exist in the 1954 script, obviously appearing instead only in a later rewrite and even being filmed, only to be dropped from FP’s released cinematic version. My guess is that this scene was initially conceived to give the audience some extra fuel to fire their imaginings and fears about the Krell, with Doc’s reaction being the icing on the proverbial cake. It was probably removed from the script largely due to pacing and perhaps even being overkill, although it would have provided one more avenue towards understanding the Krell. In any event, I found Morbius’ succinct referral to the Krell tunnel archways for reference quite sufficient to spark my imagination on the subject while leaving plenty of room left for individual interpretation.

For all these hints and speculations, there is, in fact, a physical description of the Krell. It was revealed in a detailed article on the film from a 1979 issue of Cinefantastique magazine (Volume 8, Number 2 and 3) titled “Making Forbidden Planet” by Frederick S. Clarke and Steve Rubin. In this piece, the film’s cinematographer, George Folsey, stated the following:

“The Krell were originally frog-like in nature with two long legs and a big tail. They were never shown, but it was indicated in the original screenplay that the [smooth] ramps between the steps were designed to accommodate their dragging tail.”

Personally, while I could imagine the Krell as looking rather like squatting frogs, the long legs don’t quite jive with the image that otherwise conjures up based on the other evidence in their laboratory. As for their big, dragging tails, they may have been added to the Krell anatomy as a symbolic indicator of their primeval nature, which they forgot about as they evolved and advanced, yet were never quite gone even though they literally tried to put their past behind them.

However, note that Folsey says both “originally” and “original screenplay” in terms of the Krell design. Perhaps their appearance was modified in later renditions, at least in the minds of the filmmakers. Otherwise it would have made for a tight squeeze in that little shuttle car the Krell used to get around their underground complex, although as we saw, three fully grown humans could fit inside it without discomfort.

I also saw no smooth ramps between the stairs in any filmed depictions of the Krell lab, adding to my theory that the aliens’ initial description as long-legged “frogs” with long, dragging tails had been changed. Perhaps Doc’s rough sketch from the 1954 script reflects the later visions of the Krell by the filmmakers. It would not surprise me, however, if they never fully rendered the physical appearance of the Krell even in their minds and left the details up to everyone’s imaginations.

Same Song, Different Day?

When Adams and Doc came to pay Morbius an uninvited call at his home to determine just who – or what – had managed to sabotage the C-57D’s communications system, they ended up learning about the former residents of Altair 4, the advanced alien species known as the Krell.

Morbius provided the officers (and the audience) with the following introduction to these mysterious beings:

“In times long past, this planet was the home of a mighty and noble race of beings which called themselves the Krell. Ethically, as well as technologically, they were a million years ahead of humankind. For, in unlocking the mysteries of nature, they had conquered even their baser selves. “And, when in the course of eons, they had abolished sickness and insanity and crime and all injustice, they turned, still with high benevolence, outward toward space. “Long before the dawn of man’s history, they had walked our Earth, and brought back many biological specimens. The heights they had reached! “But then, seemingly on the threshold of some supreme accomplishment which was to have crowned their entire history, this all-but-divine race perished in a single night. “In the two thousand centuries [200,000 years] since that unexplained catastrophe, even their cloud-piercing towers of glass and porcelain and adamantine steel have crumbled back into the soil of Altair IV and nothing, absolutely nothing, remains aboveground.”

My first question from Morbius’ little lecture was, how did he know that the Krell were one million years ahead of humanity in both ethics and technology? With what form of measurement was he able to compare what should be two very different species evolving on different worlds light years apart? Did Morbius have some special insight into the directions a civilization’s technology could go? Or was it really just an elaborate educated guess, for it is doubtful that even the Krell had built a time machine for Morbius to see their future with. He also lacked any other ETI societies to make comparisons with, so far as we know.

I also question Morbius’ claims on the Krell being ethically superior. While we must take his word that this “all-but-divine” race “had abolished sickness and insanity and crime and all injustice,” we cannot forget that the Krell were not human. This means that even if they did happen to share certain cultural traits with the tailless apes of Sol 3 and were indeed superior to humanity in certain ethical aspects, they may have also behaved in ways and held beliefs that we would have found to be wrong to and for our species, perhaps even inadvertently offensive and dangerous. As we have seen with our own selves since prehistory, being technologically sophisticated does not always create or mean an equivalent ethical superiority. Using the example of the nuclear bomb, it can sometimes merely indicate a more efficient and much deadlier way to conduct the same type of barbaric actions against perceived enemies as our warring tribal ancestors did with stones and spears.

Look at all the differences with our own species throughout history to the present, where different cultures, often separated by mere geography on the same planet, hold views and conduct themselves in ways considered both shocking and intolerable to others. At the same time these various societies most often look upon themselves as the correct way to be human, often even superior to the rest of their species and their world. Now imagine comparing two sentient races whose only real aspect in common is belonging to the same galaxy.

So how is it that not only does Morbius assume the path that the Krell took in their long yet suddenly abruptly ending existence is the same one we will take into the far future, but that Captain John “J. J.” Adams with his unenhanced brain also concurs with such thinking via his little speech to Altaira at the end of the film?

At the most fundamental level, the Krell exist to serve the purpose that aliens so often do in science fiction: As parallels to humanity so that “safe” comparisons can be made to teach important lessons without offending anyone. Perhaps this is yet another reason why we never get to see what the Krell actually looked like: Their actions, as relayed through members of the human race, mattered more in making the various societal points of the film. By not showing their outright physical selves, the Krell become more relatable to us despite being aliens in so many other respects and we accept the main moral of the story – which in this case is a seemingly contradictory message to continually strive to achieve greatness, but only so far or you will be stomped down by a higher power who is apparently not big on sharing with others.

It is certainly no accident that the starship which brought Morbius to Altair 4 was named the Bellerophon, after a demigod of Greek mythology who despite many great achievements and honors wanted to join the gods residing on Mount Olympus. Bellerophon attempted this by riding the winged horse Pegasus towards the divine dwelling place, but the chief deity Zeus quite literally knocked this son of Poseidon off his high horse and sent him plunging back to Earth. Crippled from the fall and ostracized by society for his defiant act, Bellerophon spent the rest of his days wandering alone in misery, serving as a reminder to what would happen to any mortal (or even a half-mortal) who dared to be a god. A human could strive and improve themselves as far and as much as they want, just so long as they did not attempt to cross that all important class/societal/species line – even if for no better reason than the gods were not big on sharing, especially with beings they considered to be lower than themselves.

This same attitude was prevalent with another classic of science fiction cinema titled The Day the Earth Stood Still, released into theaters just five years before FP. In this story case the advanced ETI who apparently dominate the Milky Way galaxy sent a representative named Klaatu to Earth via a flying saucer type starship to warn humanity that if they took their warlike ways into the Galactic Country Club – now that our species had both nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them long distances, including into space — then by the laws of Klaatu’s realm they would have no choice but to exterminate humanity with giant silvery robots toting death rays from their faceplates. Klaatu even told a group of human representatives at the climax of the film that the ETI did not care what humans did to themselves on their own planet, which included annihilating each other, just so long as they did not try to bring their primitive primal ways into the Club and start soiling the cosmic carpeting.

Once again humanity has to follow very strict rules and regulations laid down by others made long ago if they ever want to even think about being part of the heavens and sharing in all those presumed riches and powers. All this must transpire even though neither the Greek gods nor the deity-ish ETI of TDTESS are flawless beings themselves and in the latter case were once just as mortal as the humans they threatened with destruction. In fact, Klaatu’s group had to give over the policing of their interstellar society to a collection of powerful machines of their own making because they knew no one (presumably organic and therefore primal) species could be trusted with the literal keys to the kingdom of the heavens. In essence these ETI made their own gods with science and technology instead of trying to become deities directly, which explains why they were not destroyed and can now go about acting like they are the ones in charge of the galaxy.

There are two things that need to be accepted about Forbidden Planet: One is that there is no way an American film made in the 1950s, especially one produced by a major studio and already on both corporate and cultural thin ice by daring to be a big-budgeted version of a genre normally relegated to the cinematic equivalent of steerage class, would ever say or do anything other than declare that mortal men (and aliens) must never try to become like the supernatural Judeo-Christian God or they will face divine justice as a result.

The other is that the filmmakers (and many scientists of the era) probably did assume that all intelligent organic beings follow parallel evolutionary paths, even if they came from very different primal seas – and they also tended to assume that life everywhere began in some form of liquid water. This assumption of a literally universal parallel development of biological life forms starting as single-celled creatures on a planet and naturally aiming from there towards the wider Universe is reflected in Adams’ 1954 script version of his final speech to Alta (and we the audience): “There’s a ladder that reaches from the primeval slime up to the stars, and beyond. In about a million years the human race will have climbed up to that rung where the Krell stood in their great moment of triumph and disaster.”

So the Krell developed their technology and culture in a similar course to humanity’s, even though they did this ages ago on an alien planet and were only roughly humanoid looking, based on the scraps of information we have about their physiology.

Humanity, in turn, will follow a similar path set by the Krell, even though it will lead to ruin unless we stop that progress before it reaches the God Level (and then do what? But that question is usually avoided.)

So why keep striving if we cannot reach our full potentials? Should every intelligent species have a preset braking plan for their distant descendants? Would it work even if they did attempt such a thing? While it was nice of Adams to attempt to make Altaira feel better about losing her father by saying that the name and accomplishments of Morbius will “shine again like a beacon in the galaxy” one million years into the future, there is of course no real way to know if such a thing will happen, especially as microfilm will only last about 500 years, at least the silver halide version used by humans (the Krell must have found a much better composition and storage methods for all the tons of microfilm that Morbius said they placed all their knowledge upon, as he found it readable over 200,000 years later).

Yes I am being somewhat facetious based on my bemusement that the highly advanced Krell would be using microfilm as an information storage medium for their vast library, but the real point Adams made at the end of his speech – and of course from the overall film – is that organic intelligent beings will never really lose their primal animal (and therefore barbaric and beastly) selves from which they sprang so otherwise long ago. Worse, should the higher areas of the brain – the Ego and Superego as first defined by Sigmund Freud in 1923 – lose their dominance and control over the Id portion, utter chaos, destruction, and even death will prevail, especially if these beings happen to build one of those devices that can transform their very thoughts into physical manifestations to any point across the world they happen to be residing upon at that moment. Not even the Krell could escape this seemingly ironclad fate, despite having had long ago “abolished sickness and insanity and crime and all injustice,” something even 23rd Century humankind certainly had yet to achieve.

What disturbs me even more about this concept was that the Krell apparently thought that not only had they defeated their nasty Id, but they even forgot about it as the centuries passed and became even more “mighty and noble”, again quoting our resident Krell expert, Dr. Morbius. Is it possible that living for eons in a highly sophisticated technological civilization, yet still remaining organic and presumably still doing basic organic things like eating food and reproducing to the very end – plus their planet Altair 4 must have had a biosphere full of lower organic creatures that exhibited widespread primal behaviors on a regular basis – made the Krell not only forgetful of their distant, primitive ancestors but also brought about a sense of hubris, which is always a showstopper as far as the gods are concerned when it comes to mortals.

If I believe anything as to why the Krell failed to anticipate what turning their very thoughts into physical, active forms unchecked could cause, it is that one million years of “shining sanity” (quoting Morbius yet again) created a combination of disassociation from the thoughts and feelings of all “lower” life forms and, yes, a sense of cultural superiority that nothing they could accomplish would ever fail or end up hurting them.

This reminds me of what happened with the technologically advanced Martians in the classic SF novel The War of the Worlds, written by British author H. G. Wells and first published in serial form in 1896. The invading aliens from Sol 4 had the superior minds and weaponry, yet they were ultimately defeated “by the putrefactive and disease bacteria against which their systems were unprepared; slain as the red weed was being slain; slain, after all man’s devices had failed, by the humblest things that God, in his wisdom, has put upon this earth.” Not only might a truly foreign invader fall victim to the disease microorganisms of another world, but Wells declares that “there are no bacteria in Mars, and directly these invaders arrived, directly they drank and fed, our microscopic allies began to work their overthrow.”

As an admittedly lifelong resident of Earth, I find it hard to imagine any world where organic creatures naturally evolved that their own versions of microorganisms would not exist or ever become extinct without all the other native “higher” organisms dying off as well, for that matter. Not only are single-celled creatures the most ancient and abundant of all known lifeforms on our planet, they are also the most hardy and durable of all organisms. In addition, while some microbe species are indeed deadly, many others are not just beneficial to Earth life, including humans, but actually essential to our overall functioning. I suspect this was Wells’ version of the otherwise sophisticated Martians “forgetting” their primitive ancestral roots to their ultimate detriment, just as the Krell either forgot or ignored their own primal Monsters from the Id and paid the price for their lack of acknowledgement.

Going back to the theme of this section, that aliens most often serve as metaphors for humanity, it is most likely that the final (and ultimately fatal) Krell achievement is a couched symbol for that biggest of all the bogeyman of the Cold War era: Nuclear weapons and the civilization-ending destruction they could cause if unleashed. It may be hard to imagine this now, but in the first few decades of the Cold War, there were many – including politicians, the military, engineers, and scientists – who thought that a nuclear war could be conducted strategically so that one side could still win while taking “acceptable” losses of human life.

When General Buck Turgidson declared as much in the 1964 political satire film Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb with his infamous quote that the United States of America would suffer “no more than 10 to 20 million killed, tops! Uh, depending on the breaks,” during a nuclear exchange with the Soviet Union, this was not just part of the overall black comedy that was this masterpiece by Stanley Kubrick: It was a reflection on actual contemporary studies of nuclear war where experts calculated how much the nation could lose in terms of infrastructure and population and continue to function to the point of defeating the enemy and declaring victory. The psychological and sociological factors of such massive genocide were pushed to the side, even though it did not take an expert to figure out those would be the overwhelmingly prevailing reactions in a nuclear conflict.

This parallels Morbius and Adams’ comprehension of what the Krell had done to themselves: The scientist with his artificially enhanced brain could not (and would not) accept that his beloved superior ETI had developed a device that was their undoing because they had failed to realize what it could (and did) unleash. Meanwhile, the commander of the C-57D, whom Morbius had earlier mocked about not needing brains to run a starship, “just a good loud voice,” figured out (with some clues from an enhanced Doc Ostrow) just what happens when anyone, even beings with otherwise high intellects and enlightened ethics, obtain a power that cannot be controlled.

Of course I must add that in regards to the Cold War strategy mentioned above, it was operated by a combination of various disciplines who were focused on conducting a nuclear war they could win in some sense. They were aware of what would happen to American society and its citizens, but their primary goal was to defeat the Soviets, thus General Turgidson’s seemingly dispassionate comment on the number of human deaths that could be sustained by the United States without ultimate defeat.

As discussed earlier in this essay, Forbidden Planet premiered during the time of communist “witch hunts” in America, where government officials were diligently rooting out citizens considered to be supporters of the primary political system of the Soviet Union and its Eastern Bloc partners. Hollywood was certainly not immune to this purge, where a film that even gave the impression of criticizing American policies could spell serious trouble for a production and those involved with it. Therefore it was prudent to hide such sentiments so that only the more thoughtful and presumably less hostile members of the audience would comprehend what was really being said in the film. That FP was clearly a science fiction film provided additional cover, as many in the culture of the time, including Hollywood executives, saw the genre as “kids’ stuff” and therefore harmless and lacking in deeper meanings. Star Trek would take advantage of this situation a decade later when American television networks were still generally uncomfortable with series which portrayed serious social themes, especially political ones.

Perhaps as a final “cover” for the real message in Forbidden Planet, it is ironic to note that the heroes of the film are neither the enlightened aliens of Altair 4 nor the augmented scientist determined to protect the knowledge and accomplishments of the Krell, but the military officers and enlisted men of the space cruiser C-57D. They are the ones who bravely venture across the stars to a remote alien planet, stop an ego-driven scientist, rescue a damsel in distress (not necessarily from her perspective, however), encounter and (inadvertently) defeat a powerful and dangerous alien technology that could have destroyed interstellar civilization, and brought home a lovable and technologically valuable robot as a bonus.

This attitude was even more explicitly in the 1951 SF film The Thing from Another World: It is the military men of the United States Air Force (USAF) and not the scientists who save the day from yet another advanced ETI bent on destroying humanity. In fact the main scientist in The Thing, Dr. Carrington, puts every human life in jeopardy in his well-meaning attempts to reason with the alien and even save it, despite the being’s obvious hostile intentions. Carrington had made the assumption that because the ETI had come to Earth in a starship, its more advanced knowledge and technology automatically made it morally superior as well, when in fact the alien saw the natives primarily as a food source and aid in reproduction as a prelude to a presumed full-on planetary conquest.

Summation: It is a hostile Universe out there and only American courage and can-do attitude (via the military in various forms) can save the day, along with the logical extension of our Manifest Destiny into the Cosmos. Scientists are sometimes well-meaning nerds who either do not see the bigger picture or see too far beyond the needs and wants of the human tribe and must be kept in line. Star Trek carried on this theme with its numerous franchises, sometimes blatantly so, especially in the original series. If nothing else this projection keeps you safe and profitable in Hollywood. Whether it would work in the real wider galaxy or not is another matter.

Chariots of the Krell

During his initial impromptu lecture about the Krell, Morbius revealed yet another interesting tidbit about his favorite aliens:

“Long before the dawn of man’s history, they had walked our Earth, and brought back many biological specimens. The heights they had reached!” Adams: “I see. That explains the tiger and the deer.”

So the Krell were once deep space explorers themselves, which makes sense if you follow the aforementioned reasoning that all intelligent beings would follow parallel development paths that naturally include going to the stars. We are never told just how far they penetrated into the Milky Way galaxy, nor how many other worlds besides Earth they visited, but it would only be logical to assume they explored numerous star systems and did so with vessels capable of FTL velocities. It would also be logical to assume that Earth was not the only place where the Krell came back with native specimens, yet we neither see nor are even told of any nonterrestrial creatures roaming around Altair 4, so we are again left in the dark regarding any alien life forms besides the Krell, past or present.

Which leads to the next question: What happened to all the native flora and fauna of Altair 4? I have serious doubts that none ever existed on that planet except for the Krell, yet outside of Morbius’ home and yard the alien globe seems pretty desolate. Even from orbit Altair 4 appears rather bland and devoid of abundant life, with all due apologies to Doc Ostrow’s aesthetic opinions on the planet. There are some rather exotic trees and other plants just outside the home, but beyond that and the region around the landing site of the C-57D, the terrain appears to be mostly barren dessert, punctuated only by boulders, jagged mountains, deep crevices, and the occasional scrub brush (and just maybe a few wild radishes).

So how is it that Altair 4 has an atmosphere 4.7 percent richer in oxygen than Earth if there is so relatively little life present? Clearly Morbius, Altaira, and the rather few animal and plants around their home could not be generating enough of the element to create such an abundance. We know that on Earth, oxygen did not make an appearance until life began generating it en masse as a waste byproduct. Therefore there must be life elsewhere across the planet, even if it is relatively lower forms. Otherwise we would have to assume that when the Krell let loose with the manifestations from their Ids, they exterminated much of the surrounding plants and animals in their murderous rages as well. We do know from the numerous global extinction events which have taken place several times in Earth’s long history that some organisms managed to survive no matter how bad the (natural) destruction was, flourishing again over time. So we may presume that native organisms still exist in places all over Altair 4 that we never visited.

Evidence that some of the planet’s native creatures must have survived somewhere even if the Krell did not may be found in the very presence of the descendants of the animals brought back from Earth. It is never explained (or questioned) how these non-native organisms not only survived the day the Krell obliterated themselves (were they in some kind of protective zoo?) but then managed on their own to find nourishment and breed for the next 200,000 years until the United Planets starship Bellerophon showed up.

During the film we get to meet one tiger, a small herd of deer, and one monkey that likes to steal fruit. If some of the people involved in the production of FP had had their way, we would have also seen butterflies and bees in the garden – and one amorous female chimpanzee! During his guided tour of the underground Krell facility, Morbius also mentions a flock of migrating birds, while in the 1954 script Altaira was shown feeding several varieties of tropical bird species.

If one wonders why the Krell did not bring back some specimens of our distant human predecessors, the answer may be found in the 1954 version of the film script, where Morbius makes the off-hand remark that “evidently our own bestial primitive ancestors were beneath the notice of the Krell.”

This is a rather odd statement to make, as the other terrestrial animals and plants the Krell did take with them were clearly less sophisticated than even the first hominids. Presumably the Krell would have visited Earth less than one million years ago (and no later than about 200,000 years ago), when our ancestors were already well versed in utilizing fire, stone tools, and other qualities that should have distinguished them from the rest of the primates co-existing with the several human species of the period. Morbius also had an underlying contempt for his fellow humanity of the 23rd Century, so undoubtedly our even less advanced ancestors would only increase his ire on the subject. Note that Morbius used the word “evidently” in his comment, which indicates to me that he is actually making an assumption about the Krell’s real motivations for not collecting any humans, colored with his own prejudices.

If it did happen to be true that the Krell did not select any early humans for transportation and study, my guess is that the Krell recognized the humans they found as having the potential to evolve further just as they did and decided to leave them in their natural environment. Did they perhaps even have a hand in helping along our development as well, just as the Monolith ETI in 2001: A Space Odyssey deliberately guided our primitive ancestors in Africa over four million years ago to use tools for hunting and defense. We do not know and Dr. Morbius certainly seemed less than willing to pursue the subject. All we know is that no transplanted descendants of humanity made an appearance during the C-57D’s brief time on Altair 4 and any such evidence of their ever existing was destroyed along with the planet.

Another set of questions left unanswered in regards to the Krellian era of deep space exploration: Did they ever set up any colonies as they roamed through the Milky Way as humanity did eons later? Or did all the Krell eventually return to Altair 4 for whatever reasons? Perhaps not all the Krell died out and their descendants live on an unknown number of alien worlds. Or maybe at least their technology remains if not the creators, waiting to be found. If so, will the events that transpired in Forbidden Planet repeat themselves, either at the hands of humanity or yet another intelligent starfaring species?

Arts and Crafts

Continuing with the FP theme that organic intelligences will follow similar evolutionary paths no matter what primordial seas they came from (and it is always a primordial sea) or what they end up looking like, I want to briefly discuss the cultural side of the Krell, for they did have one.

One place we think we see examples of Krell art is displayed throughout Morbius’ home. Now granted, it could be art he brought from Earth; however, there is a fair deal of it and many of the items would be rather bulky and unwieldly to carry on a starship where space is at a premium. Or perhaps Morbius and/or Altaira made this art themselves over the last two decades, inspired in part by what they saw of the remaining Krell civilization around them if not some actual art itself. Of course the simplest explanation is that what we see is indeed art made by the Krell long ago which the two human occupants of Altair 4 collected and placed around their house. However, there is at least one sculpture of a distinctly human figure that I doubt came from the Krell, so perhaps there is no one set answer here.

Among the mostly abstract art found in the home (assuming it is abstract), there are two sculptures which distinctly depict some species of fish. One in particular is displayed prominently in the courtyard before the entrance to the home. While they do not look exactly like terrestrial fish, they do possess similar physical features, which would indicate the concept of “form follows function” no matter what alien sea an aquatic creature might swim in.

For background details on the artwork in FP, check out this forum discussion with many useful images:

http://monsterkidclassichorrorforum.yuku.com/reply/1141063/Forbidden-Planet%20-%20.WEmy8Hr4beM#.WYOX5U1vSM8

One form of art we know that the Krell pursued was music. Using a small cylindrical device on his study desk, Morbius played a sample which he said was composed half a million years ago. That this art occupies the main place where Morbius devoted the last twenty years of his life and work to indicates he listened to this distinctly alien music as much for personal enjoyment as cultural research.

You can listen to that sample here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNKhju6Pryg

Although there are certain differences, the Krell music we get to hear sounds very similar to the FP soundtrack. This is of course no coincidence since all the “electronic tonalities” of the film were produced by Bebe and Louis Barron. I even entertained the possibility that the entire soundtrack was actually Krell music. My imagination was certainly engaged as I wondered what kind of instruments those ancient Krell musicians used to make these sounds and what kind of meaning was behind their creation? Did they also have as much variety when it comes to music as humans certainly do? Sadly that moment in FP may have been the last time any sentient beings would ever hear Krell music again in the universe of the film.

As usual we have to take the word of Dr. Morbius that what he played in his study for the star cruiser officers was indeed music made by the Krell. I see no reason why he would lie in this matter: If anything Morbius probably played the music to win over Adams and Doc by showing the two humans that the Krell may have been alien, but they did share some things in common with humanity and any other intelligent races.

Just as scientists often assume that mathematics would be a literally universal language for communicating with ETI, music has also been seen as a potential way to bridge those inevitable linguistic, cultural, and physiological gaps between two alien species. The most famous example of this idea may be found on the golden Voyager Interstellar Records, launched with the twin Voyager deep space probes in 1977 to drift through the Milky Way galaxy indefinitely, with the hope that some sentient beings may one day find them and learn who sent these vessels into the void.

Of all the items engraved into the Golden Records to represent humanity and our world, the ones that occupy the most space on these discs are the examples of global music. The small team which made the Record did their best with rather limited time to give any recipients an idea of the incredible diversity of this human art form, although Western classical music did predominate based in part on the team’s view that works from that genre, especially by Johann Sebastian Bach, contain properties of a mathematical nature which were presumed to be appreciated by higher intellects.

Had the Krell still been alive to encounter one of the Voyager probes and that shiny Physical METI (Messaging to Extraterrestrial Intelligences) bolted to its side, would they have recognized the various tunes on the Golden Records as music? Or would it have seemed like incomprehensible noise to their equivalent of ears? If Morbius had not told us that what we were listening to was music made by the distant alien residents of Altair 4, would we have automatically assumed it was their acoustic art form? Conversely, what we often call and interpret as music or songs made by such terrestrial organisms as birds and humpback whales are really more straightforward methods of communication than any kind of art form, though we may not be entirely certain.

Yes, I am fully aware that music is utilized as a form of communication as often as it is a pure art form. The question remains, though, is it truly universal? Perhaps the first alien transmission discovered by a group conducting the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, or SETI, will not be the first one hundred prime numbers ala Contact, but music being played across the galaxy for the enjoyment of multiple civilizations. It is a scenario no less improbable than many other possibilities for finding other minds in the galaxy and beyond.

I also wondered if civilizations ever reach a point where they no longer need art and music? Is it possible for an intelligent species to evolve without ever having developed such culture? It is frustrating to ask such questions when we have but one example from a single world to go on so far. Granted the vast majority of human societies on Earth, no matter how different from one another, practice art and music as a rich part of their cultures. We also have numerous examples of fellow higher mammals such as orangutans and elephants who can paint once we give them the proper tools and teach them. However we are all still biologically related going back many millions of years and share Earth as our home world. What an ETI may become and do in a remote corner of the Milky Way is something we have yet to learn. We are still confined to playing out various scenarios with the aliens of our imaginations, such as the Krell.

Following that path, Morbius indicated that the Krell “in those final days before their annihilation… had been applying their entire racial energies to a new project, one which they actually seemed to hope might somehow free them once and for all from any dependence on physical instrumentalities.”

This would appear to indicate the Krell had ceased their cultural efforts to focus on their science and technology – and even those fields were likely narrowed down towards that singular purpose. Is this why Morbius was listening to their music from 300,000 years before the time the Krell became focused on their ultimate project, because their later music was either of a lesser quality or altogether nonexistent? Perhaps the Krell thought once they could create matter directly from their minds they could then go back to their arts and develop even more amazing cultural artifacts. Of course we will never know.

Will humanity follow the path of the Krell? Will they heed the warnings indirectly made by Dr. Edward Morbius or will they forget over time? What if our descendants remember but decide that they can avoid such pitfalls and try anyway? What if humans and all other organic intelligences discover that they can never fully escape their primal pasts? Will civilizations be content to advance only so far and then go into a form of self-enforced retirement? If they discover that the fate of the Krell cannot be avoided, what will they do then? Is there a non-organic solution? We shall discuss that last question further on.

This Planet Will Self-Destruct in 24 Hours…

In the dramatic ending of Forbidden Planet, Morbius finally confronts his primal self made real and pays the ultimate price for it. As he lays dying in the Krell laboratory surrounded by Adams and his daughter, Morbius tells the commander to turn a thin metal disc on a nearby machine. This action causes a plunger to rise from the floor, which Morbius then instructs Adams to push down upon, all without explaining why. Adams complies without question and the translucent disc around the plunger begins to silently and ominously pulse a glowing reddish color.

Only then does Adams, Altaira, and the audience learn why Morbius told the star cruiser captain to perform these actions: It is the activation device for a mechanism that will cause a chain reaction among the 9,200 Krell nuclear furnaces stationed far below, resulting in the utter destruction of Altair 4. The resulting explosion will be so destructive that Morbius tells Adams he must be 100 million miles away from the alien planet within one full Earth day to survive the coming cataclysm. Everything that was left of the once great Krell civilization will be destroyed, along with anyone or anything else that has not escaped Altair 4 by then. Although it is not openly stated, the planet’s two moons, a good chunk of interplanetary space, and any neighboring worlds that may happen to be in that blast radius will not be doing well afterwards, either.

Several pointed comments and questions come to mind about this event (ignoring for now those that only lead to answers involving dramatic film plot devices):

Why did the Krell even have such a self-destruct mechanism that could wipe out their entire planet and therefore civilization in one shot? Especially one that could not be reversed once set into motion.

Why was it so simple to activate? And by simple I mean lacking almost any decent safety features to avoid either an accidental or otherwise unwanted activation. The version in the 1954 script was an even simpler and therefore even less safe mechanism: A small and easily breakable switch box covering one simple switch that only needed to be flipped in the ON direction to activate the system. Even the self-destruct feature of the USS Enterprise on Star Trek involved a series of command codes that could be given only by senior officers which the starship’s main computer obeyed only after confirming them by their vocal patterns.

Why was the activation mechanism located in the Krell laboratory – and so close to the plastic educator which Morbius said the adult Krell used to educate their children with?

If the Krell were so high and mighty as Morbius said of them over and over, why did they feel the need to build something that would instantly obliterate everything they had spent so many thousands of centuries achieving? They seemed to be well beyond their warlike and other socially destructive pasts (forgetting their hidden Ids just waiting to be sprung for the moment), so we may assume they did not fear one faction of Krell wanting to wrest from or destroy the facility from another faction of their own species.

Were the Krell afraid of malicious beings from other worlds conquering them and taking their knowledge and technology? While one might assume that the Krell would have been more than capable of taking care of all kinds of threats, their evolved pacifist and intellectual natures might have left them vulnerable even to a less advanced species if their antagonists were aggressive enough. While we do know that the Krell did explore the galaxy and returned biological samples from Earth and most likely other worlds as well, we are left uninformed as to whether they encountered any other alien species in their travels, intelligent or otherwise. The exact political and exploration boundaries of the United Planets are also a mystery to us (although there is what appears to be a stellar navigation map seen at one of the C-57D’s bridge control panels at the base of that beautiful navigation sphere, but it is so hard to see details on it), but as stated before, there are indications that the Krell are the first ETI they have ever discovered.

So we do not know how many alien societies there are (or were) in the Milky Way galaxy of the FP universe and if any of them would warrant the Krell preferring that their whole civilization be destroyed rather than end up in the clutches of an undesirable species. This may also explain why the mechanism was made powerful enough to destroy everything within a 100 million mile radius of Altair 4: To take out approaching enemy space vessels and also ensure that none attempting to retreat could escape.

While I do not pretend to be privy to all of the thought processes of a highly evolved alien species that died out 200,000 years ago, this exceedingly destructive self-destruct mechanism feels out of place for a society that disavowed violence and other “low-brow” behaviors millennia ago – and I am not just referring to the rather peculiar and quite unsafe location and setup of the activation instrumentation. This is why I have to wonder if it was Morbius and not the Krell who set up the self-destruct mechanism in the lab.

Morbius would certainly have the motivation to do this, having clearly expressed his deep-seated concerns about the dangers of the 23rd Century human race getting ahold of Krell technology and wisdom. Combine this with his obsessive feelings about the Krell and his subconscious willing to kill for them multiple times and it does not require too much of a mental effort to imagine that Morbius might prefer that no one have access to this alien civilization if he could not be the sole arbiter of the focus of his two decades of research. That the activation mechanism is in the laboratory so close to where he worked every day and was rather simple to operate are yet more motivations for my suspicions. Add on to all this Morbius’ heightened intelligence thanks to the Krell, which allowed him to perform such technical feats as the construction of the sophisticated Robby in the first few months of his arrival at Altair 4, and it only strengthens my theory.

The one problem with my idea is that the filmmakers want us to naturally assume that it was the Krell who built that self-destruct mechanism and not to think too deeply about the motivations for its existence, for it really is a plot device. I will also concede that rigging up 9,200 alien nuclear reactors to explode at once may have been too much even for an intellectually enhanced Morbius, even with twenty years’ worth of time on his hands. Perhaps along with the obvious technological complexities, the Krell had set up too many safeguards as part of the general operation of these machines to be bypassed by one human… unless Robby assisted him somehow, but we saw no evidence that the robot was involved with Morbius’ work on the Krell, except to relieve the doctor of having to perform mundane daily tasks that would have taken time away from his research on the alien civilization.

As to the inevitable question whether the Krell facility could actually wipe out all of Altair 4 (and a huge chunk of interplanetary space around it), the answer is probably not. To completely destroy Earth, which is comparable in mass and presumably composition to the Krell home world, one would need all the energy output of Sol for eight whole days to do the job right. So while the explosion would certainly make one heck of a radioactive mess out of the Krell facility, it would not vaporize the entire planet, unless the Krell had added certain advanced technological features and/or elements to enhance the destructive effect.

Bonus Note: The 1979 science fiction film Alien made a visual tribute to the Krell self-destruct mechanism aboard the commercial towing vessel Nostromo. Their version, called the Emergency Destruction System, had four plungers, not just one. Unlike the Krell system, the one on this starship came with both operation and safety instructions, along with warning lights and klaxon sounds, plus a chance to reverse the destruct sequence once activated up until the last five minutes. Should one still find themselves aboard the Nostromo when the ship’s nuclear core detonates, to quote one character about the results: “We won’t need no rocket to fly through space.”

They even have a plausible reason for the existence of such a capability with their starship: The spacefaring human society of the Alien franchise is no utopia, as witnessed by the actions of greedy and ruthless corporations and the need for Colonial Marines. Since such a large and relatively fast vessel could make itself a target for hijacking for its cargo or be turned into a weapon, there might be a need in that universe to keep the Nostromo out of unfriendly hands, even to such drastic measures as its complete destruction. Or if a very hostile alien creature gets onboard thanks to management’s indifference to the well-being of its employees and you have to go to extremes to get rid of it.

Why Altair?

There is one final question I have (for now) about the world of the Krell: Why did the makers of Forbidden Planet choose the star system of Altair as the main setting for the story? I have not yet found a direct answer, such as from production notes or comments in an interview by either one of the screenplay authors, a producer, or even one of the actors. However, the evidence leans towards Altair being chosen as the film’s primary location mainly from a combination of historical familiarity, literary tradition, and a measure of convenience over scientific accuracy.

In terms of physical and historical parameters, choosing Altair as the film’s destination makes sense: Altair is among the brightest and closest stars visible in Earth’s night sky from our planet’s northern hemisphere, numbering twelfth in the apparent stellar magnitude ranking and a mere 16.7 light years distant, respectively. Altair is one of the main components of the large and rather well-known triumvirate asterism known as the Summer Triangle, with Vega and Deneb being the other two members of that particular stellar group. Altair is also the dominant star in one of the oldest constellations recorded in human history, Aquila the Eagle. Designated Alpha Aquilae by modern astronomers, Altair is an Arabic phrase that means both “the flying eagle” or just “bird”. Altair also has the advantages of being a short, easy to spell, and a pleasant-sounding name at least for Western ears, compared to stars with actual names such as Fomalhaut, Betelgeuse, and Zubeneschamali.

Although we have certainly learned a fair deal more about Altair than was known to astronomers when FP was released in 1956, even six decades ago scientists would have known that this sun was probably not the best of choices for hosting a planet that harbored advanced intelligent life, at least the kind we humans are used to. On the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram of stellar classes, Altair is labeled as a spectral type Class A star, A7V to be exact (Earth’s star Sol is G2V, a yellow dwarf). This makes Altair a blue-white dwarf sun that is younger, hotter, and more massive than our own: With an age estimated to be about one billion years old, Altair probably has only another billion years at most in its current state on the main sequence scale of stellar evolution.

In comparison, Sol has existed for about 4.6 billion years and will last more-or-less in its current form for roughly another five billion years before our star exhausts the hydrogen in its core and starts to fuse helium in a shell surrounding that core. Sol will become an expanding red giant star, where it will either envelop Earth entirely or at the very least turn our beleaguered planet into a sterilized ball of molten slag.

Biological life on Earth, although appearing relatively soon after our planet formed and cooled enough to develop and support organisms (perhaps just over four billion years ago), began to see more complex (multicellular) life forms evolve only about 542 million years ago during what is known as both the Cambrian Explosion and Cambrian Radiation. Humanity’s earliest ancestors did not come upon the scene until a mere seven million years ago, and our technological civilization has only been around for the last few thousand years, a comparative blink of the cosmic eye.

Now while it is granted we are currently aware of just one world inhabited with organic beings, since Earth is all we have to go on scientifically at the moment, we must note that it took a very, very long time for terrestrial organisms to evolve from microbes to something smart enough to build a civilization and make motion pictures about spaceships traveling to alien worlds – about four billion years, in fact. Seeing as Altair is expected to last just half that time as a star overall, we may presume that if Altair has planets circling it (although searches conducted since the late 1990s have yet to reveal any), then if they are capable of supporting life, such creatures may not be very far along on the evolution scale – certainly nothing as sophisticated as the Krell, at least. In addition, we must throw into the pot that Altair emits more radiation and heat than does Sol, which cannot be taken lightly when it comes to the development of biological organisms. So, unless we are in for a big surprise about organic evolution elsewhere, it is not out of the question to question the validity of the Altair system being a place for native advanced intelligent species.

In the decades since the premiere of Forbidden Planet, some interesting new facts have been revealed about the star Altair. Sadly, none of this data does much to improve the prospects for either the Krell or beings like them to exist in reality there.

Along with the above-mentioned fact that no exoworlds have yet been found around Altair – which does not mean that none exist, only that our current methods of detecting planets in other solar systems have yet to find any there – astronomers have determined that this big ball of luminous gas rotates incredibly fast: Altair makes one spin of its axis in just nine hours, compared to over 25 days for our Sol at its equator. This velocity flattens Altair’s shape into an oblate spheroid; in fact, were the star spinning just ten percent faster, Altair would tear itself apart!

Between 2006 and 2007, Altair became the first main sequence star besides Sol to have its photosphere (the equivalent of a stellar surface) directly imaged. Not unexpectedly, the Altair of our reality does not match what was shown on the main view plate of the C-57D when the star cruiser first arrived in the Altair system: A red-orange and decidedly spherical sun.

This is yet another area where the Star Trek franchise modeled itself after FP, consciously or otherwise, for many of the stars used as system locations were often based on real suns in the galactic vicinity of Earth generally familiar to public (as well as relatively easy to pronounce). As most of the stars visible from our planet with unaided vision are also giant and supergiant suns – either incredibly hot stars with very short lives or very ancient and bloated gas balls that have devastated any worlds they once possessed and are now on their way out, to die either as pale shadows of their former glory or to exit in a violent manner known as a supernova – they too are considered no more suitable to harbor advanced intelligent beings than Altair is. Nevertheless, that did 