Star Wars versus The Thing

[DudeGuyMan]

Saw that mediocre Thing prequel this past weekend and it made me wonder.

Let's say it's twenty years before Phantom Menace. It's the height of the Old Republic, there are lots of Jedi around, and Palpy isn't an issue yet. By act of thread some ordinary slob from one of the middle-class sections of Coruscant is infected with Thing cells and becomes a Thing ala the John Carpenter movie. He's on vacation and the wife and kids are out of town for the week, so he's got lots of time to transform and for this first Thing to get acclimated without risk of discovery. He then sets out to assimilate the galaxy.

Is the Star Wars galaxy utterly buttfucked or can it get through this? This is obviously an infinitely more difficult scenario than Earth found itself in during the film, where the Thing was forced by circumstance into being isolated in an inhospitable environment, alongside trained scientists, for a prolonged period of time in very tight quarters. Here it could probably slip into the Coruscant underworld and eat half the biosphere before anyone important knows anything is up.

[Elheru Aran]

Hmm, this is a little more challenging than I thought it would be.

Star Wars, however, has rather more firepower available to them than the mooks in the Antarctic. This is before TPM, so they can deploy Jedi to discern who's a Thing or not. I can't see Thing parasites taking thermal detonator explosions very well...

Edit to note that I don't think it'd necessarily be easy. The Thing can hide very well, and it's entirely possible it could just decide to split up itself and send itself off-planet in as many directions as possible. It's quite possible that a Thing could find its way out to some fairly well populated but distant world and take it over, then try to claim recognition by the Republic as a species of its own. Of course, then it runs the risk of being BDZ'd...

One thing we never really learn though, what is the Thing's motivation beside simple survival? Does it have plans? Does it have anything to achieve beside feeding itself and making it from day to day? Is it even intelligent enough to do anything beside take over bodies and hide within them, and what does it get out of that?

[Metahive]

It depends on whether assimilated beings disturb the Force in some way. If the Thing can assimilate midichlorians too then you might end up with a parasite who utterly escapes the notice of the Jedi or the Sith. All it then takes is the Thing infecting the water or food supplies of major population centers to maximize its chances of success.

[CrateriaA]

You run the risk of the Thing getting off world. Within a few years you could be seeing huge numbers of Things spreading all across the galaxy. Again, the Jedi and the local forces have to work together to stop the creature from spreading.

[Bakustra]

There are upwards of a trillion sapient residents on Coruscant for the Thing to convert, as well as an unknown but smaller number of nonsapients. There are perhaps ten thousand Jedi, only a small fraction of which are likely to be on Coruscant at any given time. By the point that the Thing's conversions start to become noticeable, they will generally have the manpower advantage, unless we presume that readily-available portable bioscanners can detect Things from a distance. Then, too, there is an incredible amount of traffic that departs the planet daily- if the Thing can slip by, it can start converting on other planets. To put it simply, even soldiers go off duty and take leave. Without a simple way to detect the Thing at a distance (the short-range test in the movie is too labor-intensive compared to its ability to convert people), the Thing can build up numbers until it's ready to take over the planet and rebuild it in its preferred image. There are only a handful of Jedi, and they can be overwhelmed and worn down by the sheer numbers the Thing is likely to be able to bring to bear.

Of course, the motive of the original Thing was simply to convert enough biomass for it to become intelligent enough to build a spaceship home. If we go by this motivation, then it will simply convert until it's intelligent enough to start searching for a home. But that's not as fun for a scenario.

One thing we never really learn though, what is the Thing's motivation beside simple survival? Does it have plans? Does it have anything to achieve beside feeding itself and making it from day to day? Is it even intelligent enough to do anything beside take over bodies and hide within them, and what does it get out of that?

The Thing is an alien that crash-landed on the Earth millions of years ago and got frozen into the ice. Its goal is heavily implied in the movie with the spaceship that the Blair Thing was building- to get back to its home planet. Its goal in assimilating bodies is to become smarter- the more cells, the more intelligent. That's why the test works- the blood sample is too stupid to play dumb, and so reacts instinctively to the threat. With that, we can see that its goal is to assimilate enough people to be able to build a functioning spaceship. So while the Earth as a whole might not have been in danger, the crew had no way of knowing that and in any case the Thing attacked first.

[Dr Roberts]

I'm sure at least one council member would sense it as soon as it arrived.

[Bakustra]

I'm sure at least one council member would sense it as soon as it arrived.

Like they sensed Palpatine, Maul, and Dooku on Coruscant, or Kenobi sensed Vader orbiting Tatooine? I don't think that the Jedi have demonstrated such fine telepathic detection ever.

[DudeGuyMan]

I always sort of thought that the vehicle the Thing was building was meant to get it to civilization. The idea of it building an interstellar vehicle in the basement out of helicopter parts always strained credulity for me, and the fact that it's saucer shaped doesn't really mean anything. In any case, our Thing wants to eat the Star Wars galaxy because that makes for a more entertaining thread.

I assume a Jedi could detect a Thing at close enough quarters, by it's strange thoughts, a lack of Force presence if it can't have midichlorians, whatever. There also have to be bioscanners that could detect a Thing. Problem is, how often does Joe Schmoe on his way to the sports bar to watch Lazerball see either of those? If the Thing decides it's going to buy a spaceship, then fuck off into the wilderness and eat the entire biosphere on a dozen different worlds before trying to mess with the smart people with guns, what do you do? It's smart enough to build a spaceship, it has to be smart enough to think of any plan we can, and once it eats a Star Wars citizen or two it'll know that universe better than any of us do.

I mean I hate to sound like I made this thread just to pointlessly Thing-wank, but the more I think about it, the more I don't know how any society can survive being blindsided by it. I mean, firepower, who cares? They're not that hard to kill once you force them into the open anyway. Large scale and fast and readily available transportation are probably actually disadvantages.

[lordofchange13]

It will turn out just like it did in halo: The repulic are slow to use millitary for on a biothreat beyound quarintine, so when the Flood/Thing creatures become known to the galaxy at large this is what will happen. And the quartine is on the capital world of the entire government, if the Thing's don't kill the republic civil war will.

[Simon_Jester]

The Thing is an alien that crash-landed on the Earth millions of years ago and got frozen into the ice. Its goal is heavily implied in the movie with the spaceship that the Blair Thing was building- to get back to its home planet. Its goal in assimilating bodies is to become smarter- the more cells, the more intelligent. That's why the test works- the blood sample is too stupid to play dumb, and so reacts instinctively to the threat. With that, we can see that its goal is to assimilate enough people to be able to build a functioning spaceship. So while the Earth as a whole might not have been in danger, the crew had no way of knowing that and in any case the Thing attacked first.

In the original novel it was building a hover-device to get away from Antarctica and into more populated parts of the world. There wasn't really any sign that the creature was more intelligent when it assimilated more biomass in the original, either- its blood would jump away from a hot wire not because it's especially stupid, but because living creatures instinctively flinch when you stab them with hot bits of metal.

The quote in the original was "the flesh does not obey!" A piece of a Thing-converted organism is itself an independent organism, and so you can check whether a piece of an organism has a life of its own or not as an easy way of testing for Thing-conversion.

[Oni Koneko Damien]

Meant to post this earlier, but the internet died on me...

Hmm, this is a little more challenging than I thought it would be.

Star Wars, however, has rather more firepower available to them than the mooks in the Antarctic. This is before TPM, so they can deploy Jedi to discern who's a Thing or not. I can't see Thing parasites taking thermal detonator explosions very well...

Firepower isn't a problem, though. Even the limited supplies the Antarctic research team had was more than enough to take it out. The biggest problem will be identification and containment. The question really is: How good is The Thing at mimicking other life-forms on a biological, rather than behavioural level? The only thing we know for sure that works at identifying it is harming an isolated cellular sample, we don't know if Star Wars has the technology to scan and identify those infected by The Thing. Theoretically the Jedi could try to use their own abilities, but even that's arguable as in the movie, it's implied that even those infected don't know they're The Thing until it sees an opportunity to take someone else over.

From the scenario, I'd say at the very least, Coruscant and a number of other planets are completely boned. The Thing seems to combine it's host's intelligence with its own instinctual cunning and vague memories of previous hosts (hence the attempted re-construction of the flying saucer by Mr. Brimley.) The infected will, at first, know well enough to stay far away from medical facilities and scanners if those indeed pose the threat of detection. I see a majority of Coruscant's underworld getting taken over before anyone in power even realizes something's wrong, and during that, any number of the infected hopping ship to dozens, hundreds of other worlds.

Once the Republic knows there's a threat, and gets some idea at the most crude methods of identification, it really depends on how totalitarian they're willing to get to identify the infected. If the Jedi can actually sense the infected, that's all well and good but they will likely be restricted to the most sensitive areas and travel-bottlenecks simply because there's a limited number of Jedi available. Other than that, if the Republic is willing to impose total martial law, they could completely shut down travel between all Republic worlds except for a few bottlenecks where everyone has a blood-sample drawn and tested before proceeding.

Even then I'd expect complete sterilization of Coruscant and any number of other worlds far too infected to save. Not to mention how rapidly The Thing could spread through the more lawless regions of the galaxy undetected. At the very least, I'd predict that if non-Thing lifeforms won, they would be left with a small fraction of their original population, the remains of a very crippled Republic, completely decimated non-aligned systems, and at the very least hundreds, if not thousands of sterilized planets.

Of course this raises other questions too: If The Thing keeps its host's intelligence, would those infected be willing to work together and use their military technology? It's bad enough having The Thing take people over in private, but imagine if The Thing made a huge unified army out of the Hutts' empire, every non-Republic force, and whatever chunk of Republic hardware the infected managed to take from Coruscant and every other Republic world it had a foothold in. We know The Thing likes to keep subtle when it's at a disadvantage in a group, but what about when it feels in a position to incorporate more life through military force rather than isolated attacks?

Another matter: What happens when The Thing takes over a Jedi? Does it get force abilities? Would it be able to transmit these to subsequent hosts?

I assume a Jedi could detect a Thing at close enough quarters, by it's strange thoughts, a lack of Force presence if it can't have midichlorians, whatever.

I don't think it was ever made clear, but it's possible the 'hosts' that The Thing impersonates don't even know they're not 'human' (or whatever SW species got taken over in that instance) until The Thing senses an opportunity to take over another, or a threat severe enough to blow its cover. So it's possible that a Thing under cover won't even show up on a mind-scan. As for midichlorians, since The Thing hasn't shown any traits that separate it from other biological life (within sci-fi bounds anyways), I think the onus of proof would be to demonstrate why it can't have midichlorians unlike all other biological life in the SW galaxy.

I mean I hate to sound like I made this thread just to pointlessly Thing-wank, but the more I think about it, the more I don't know how any society can survive being blindsided by it. I mean, firepower, who cares? They're not that hard to kill once you force them into the open anyway. Large scale and fast and readily available transportation are probably actually disadvantages.

The thing about The Thing (heh) is it's built to subvert the whole more-firepower-is-better assumption. The Thing is a near perfect imposter of whatever it assimilates, thus its firepower at hand and technological capability will always perfectly scale with whatever society it's spreading through. In a sense The Thing takes several themes prevalent in zombie stories and hones them to near perfection: Something that infects you, takes you over and turns you into another copy of itself. Except in this case there is almost no way to tell it happened and the new copy is just as capable as what it's impersonating.

As for the flying saucer it was building. I agree that it was hoping to use it to get to more populated areas. Since it hadn't assimilated any human aircraft engineers/technicians/pilots (good thing it never got to MacReady!), it had no idea how to build or operate human aircraft. But obviously it retained the knowledge of the alien hosts it had infected before, and thus it was trying to build a flight-worthy craft with their knowledge base.

[Thinktank]

The SW Galaxy is 'F'd in the 'A' by the "Thing". The incredibly fast transportation abilities in SW give it the very capacity that hinders it the most. Hyperdrive craft would allow it to spread in way that would make The Flood positively pouting with envy. When the TFAW (Thing From Another World) assimilates another lifeform it is a cell by cell perfected copy. Odds are the victim doesn't know they are infected at first, and their subconcious mind is where it's malign nature hides to control it's new minion. When a single being can travel literally from one side of the galaxy to the other in less than a few months... The TFAW would make the 'Vong look like a grumpy tourist in comparisson

[Dr Roberts]

I'm sure at least one council member would sense it as soon as it arrived.

Like they sensed Palpatine, Maul, and Dooku on Coruscant, or Kenobi sensed Vader orbiting Tatooine? I don't think that the Jedi have demonstrated such fine telepathic detection ever.

Yes but that was Palpatine using the force to hide himself and his apprentice. The thing can't use the force

[Shroom Man 777]

Quantify how the Thing, which is in essence just a shifting puddle of Shoggothian tissue, will read any differently in the Force than all the teeming trillions of meatbags crawling around in Coruscant or wherever? Particularly if the Thing doesn't even think like normal creatures, and when it's primary directive is to "spread" or "reproduce", which means its emotion or whatever will probably be read by a Force user as no different from a million other horny honeymoon goers visiting Coruscant to try the antigravity fuckshacks?

Now, the Thing assimilating a Force sensitive person or absorbalizing some midichlorianoids. Ooooh.

[Molyneux]

Quantify how the Thing, which is in essence just a shifting puddle of Shoggothian tissue, will read any differently in the Force than all the teeming trillions of meatbags crawling around in Coruscant or wherever? Particularly if the Thing doesn't even think like normal creatures, and when it's primary directive is to "spread" or "reproduce", which means its emotion or whatever will probably be read by a Force user as no different from a million other horny honeymoon goers visiting Coruscant to try the antigravity fuckshacks?

Now, the Thing assimilating a Force sensitive person or absorbalizing some midichlorianoids. Ooooh.

I would seriously hope that this couldn't happen. If so, it'd certainly make things a hell of a lot harder for the non-Thing critters out there.

[Alerik the Fortunate]

On Earth the mere fact that the Thing arrived from off planet immediately put it under scrutiny, since Earth doesn't have interstellar traffic at all (that anyone is aware of). In the Star Wars universe, most planets have substantial trans-galactic commerce, so people don't bat an eye when unusually weird beings show up on a planet unless they arrive in large numbers, heavily armed, with belligerent demands. Behavioral quirks in new visitors (who will likely be of different species, since the Thing can convert all kinds of life forms, and would probably help itself to a cosmopolitan buffet of hosts on Coruscant) will not be noticed until many, if not most worlds have a sizable Thing infestation. It's quite likely that only highly secure military facilities and perhaps some Jedi strongholds will be entirely unaffected before knowledge of the outbreak surfaces.

[DudeGuyMan]

The question really is: How good is The Thing at mimicking other life-forms on a biological, rather than behavioural level?

It's heavily implied in the 1982 Thing (and shown explicitly in the current prequel, for what it's worth) that assimilated cells are indistinguishable from uninfected cells even under direct microscopic observation, except for when the former are actually attacking the latter. Hence that idea about mixing questionable blood with known human blood and observing the reaction, which Things in both movies took seriously enough to sabotage. A ranged detection device would need to be able to look at the genetic structure of cells from a distance in order to be effective, I think.

I'm trying to remember more about how the NR detected Vong infiltrators, but the fact that Vong infiltrators gave the NR so much grief doesn't do SW any favors. I remember Mara Jade running around some Mon Calamari floating city with a customized mouse droid that could detect disguised Vong at limited range, but it was something new, and I half-remember the detection method being body temperature or something lame like that.

I could turn my house upside down looking for the book, but does anyone else remember what I'm talking about?

EDIT: Wookieepedia has nothing more useful than "The droids included advanced search-and-identify programming that could penetrate ooglith masquers to sort civilians from Yuuzhan Vong" to say on the subject.

[Shroom Man 777]

How do Vong hide themselves? Is it as... thorough as the whole radical tissue and cellular mimicry of the Thing?

[DudeGuyMan]

Nah, the Vong just pull on living bodysuits that could alter their exterior appearance to look human.

[Shroom Man 777]

If they had trouble with that... well, may the Force be with them.

[Simon_Jester]

Firepower isn't a problem, though. Even the limited supplies the Antarctic research team had was more than enough to take it out. The biggest problem will be identification and containment. The question really is: How good is The Thing at mimicking other life-forms on a biological, rather than behavioural level? The only thing we know for sure that works at identifying it is harming an isolated cellular sample, we don't know if Star Wars has the technology to scan and identify those infected by The Thing. Theoretically the Jedi could try to use their own abilities, but even that's arguable as in the movie, it's implied that even those infected don't know they're The Thing until it sees an opportunity to take someone else over.

In the original novel, serum compatibility tests worked (the Thing found a way to foil their ability to perform the test, but they worked). You could probably devise, without too much trouble, a test that would work at least as well using modern medical hardware, let alone Star Wars equipment. The real problem is one of epidemiology- how do you implement something like that faster than the disease can spread?

Of course this raises other questions too: If The Thing keeps its host's intelligence, would those infected be willing to work together and use their military technology? It's bad enough having The Thing take people over in private, but imagine if The Thing made a huge unified army out of the Hutts' empire, every non-Republic force, and whatever chunk of Republic hardware the infected managed to take from Coruscant and every other Republic world it had a foothold in. We know The Thing likes to keep subtle when it's at a disadvantage in a group, but what about when it feels in a position to incorporate more life through military force rather than isolated attacks?

Star Wars weaponry generally doesn't leave viable lifeforms behind to assimilate, and it's going to be damned hard to compel people at gunpoint to submit to Thing infection. I don't know whether they'd bother trying that- though they'd certainly be likely to use weapons to protect Thing-dominated worlds against counterattacks.

I assume a Jedi could detect a Thing at close enough quarters, by it's strange thoughts, a lack of Force presence if it can't have midichlorians, whatever.

I don't think it was ever made clear, but it's possible the 'hosts' that The Thing impersonates don't even know they're not 'human' (or whatever SW species got taken over in that instance) until The Thing senses an opportunity to take over another, or a threat severe enough to blow its cover. So it's possible that a Thing under cover won't even show up on a mind-scan.

I keep referencing the original story Who Goes There? because it's the only depiction I've seen, and because Campbell was scientifically literate enough to provide a pretty coherent description of how the creature operates.

In the story, the Thing is actually telepathic, able to send and receive the 'right' thoughts to assuage suspicion and read the minds of victims so it can impersonate them convincingly. Dogs can sense a Thing-infected dog and attack instinctively. I don't know how relevant this is, of course, since everyone here seems to be using the movie-Thing as a baseline.

Quantify how the Thing, which is in essence just a shifting puddle of Shoggothian tissue, will read any differently in the Force than all the teeming trillions of meatbags crawling around in Coruscant or wherever? Particularly if the Thing doesn't even think like normal creatures, and when it's primary directive is to "spread" or "reproduce", which means its emotion or whatever will probably be read by a Force user as no different from a million other horny honeymoon goers visiting Coruscant to try the antigravity fuckshacks?

Well, the Thing is more single-minded, I would argue- even horny honeymoon-goers have things on their brain other than "propagate the species," and they don't think in terms of infecting other people and turning them into copies of themselves.

[Lord of the Abyss]

Of course this raises other questions too: If The Thing keeps its host's intelligence, would those infected be willing to work together and use their military technology? It's bad enough having The Thing take people over in private, but imagine if The Thing made a huge unified army out of the Hutts' empire, every non-Republic force, and whatever chunk of Republic hardware the infected managed to take from Coruscant and every other Republic world it had a foothold in. We know The Thing likes to keep subtle when it's at a disadvantage in a group, but what about when it feels in a position to incorporate more life through military force rather than isolated attacks?

Star Wars weaponry generally doesn't leave viable lifeforms behind to assimilate, and it's going to be damned hard to compel people at gunpoint to submit to Thing infection.

"Set blasters to stun". Smaller blasters at least can be used to disable rather than kill. There are also the stokhli spray sticks the Noghri were fond of.

[Cesario]

I'm sure at least one council member would sense it as soon as it arrived.

Like they sensed Palpatine, Maul, and Dooku on Coruscant, or Kenobi sensed Vader orbiting Tatooine? I don't think that the Jedi have demonstrated such fine telepathic detection ever.

Yes but that was Palpatine using the force to hide himself and his apprentice. The thing can't use the force

Can you point to the force user obscuring things in this instance:

"Don't try to frighten us with your sorcerous ways, Lord Vader. Your sad devotion to that ancient Jedi religion has not helped you conjure up the stolen data tapes, or given you enough clairvoyance to find the rebels' hidden fortress... "

Star Wars weaponry generally doesn't leave viable lifeforms behind to assimilate, and it's going to be damned hard to compel people at gunpoint to submit to Thing infection. I don't know whether they'd bother trying that- though they'd certainly be likely to use weapons to protect Thing-dominated worlds against counterattacks.

Star Wars weaponry has a stun setting. They don't use it much, being Star Wars, but it does exist, and that is a terrifying prospect when we're dealing with the Thing.

[DudeGuyMan]

I'd buy the notion that a Jedi could sense a Thing at close-quarters since it's thoughts/emotions have to be pretty weird even by Star Wars standards, but the Jedi are not going to be sitting in their temple having tea when suddenly they leap up, pile into a shuttle, fly halfway around the globe, and chop the head off a few Things to nip the crisis in the bud. They've never displayed anything like that level of prescience.

Barring some new and exciting counter-argument, I'm going to pronounce SW boned in this particular scenario and propose one a bit more fair:

The Death Star has just set out from the shipyard for it's maiden voyage when Blort Weebox, Imperial Toilet Scrubber 3rd Class, becomes a fully-formed and passable Thing by act of thread. He then sets out to assimilate the rest of the DS. Rather than having the entire galaxy to fuck around in unsupervised, the Thing is now confined to a tightly controlled military environment. Additionally, Vader is on board and just got a really strong premonition in the Force amounting to "SOME BAD SHIT IS GONNA GO DOWN, WATCH EVERYONE REAL CLOSE!" Nothing terribly specific, though.

Can Vader and the Death Star make it through?

[Oni Koneko Damien]

Star Wars weaponry generally doesn't leave viable lifeforms behind to assimilate, and it's going to be damned hard to compel people at gunpoint to submit to Thing infection.

Well first off they don't have to convince them to submit, all they have to do is show up with overwhelming firepower, disarm the survivors, group them in a confined space and take over their bodies at their leisure.

Secondly, this assumes that everyone in the galaxy is perfectly educated on The Thing and knows what it's goals are and what it's capable of. The Thing thrives on ignorance and paranoia and naturally moves to keep its true nature under cover. Most of the time, the victims probably wouldn't even know they're getting attacked by the infected until they're already disarmed and contained. Hell, I could easily see the infected posing as Republic relief forces and only dropping the facade when it's too late to fight back.

The Thing is an incredibly scary piece of work.