The Monstrefact: Alien, Part 3 – Trilobite & Deacon

In this episode of STBYM’s The Monstrefact, Robert discusses the so-called Trilobite and Deacon creatures from the “Alien” universe… 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
Hi, my name is Robert Lamb and this is the
Monster Fact, a short form series from Stuff to Blow
Your Mind focusing on mythical creatures, ideas, and monsters in time.
In the previous episode, in this special alien themed Monster
Fact series, we discussed Agent A zero thirty nine fifty

(00:32):
nine x point ninety one slash fifteen. The Black Goo,
a powerful evolutionary accelerant created by the Engineers and deployed
as both the creator and destroyer of worlds. We consider
the various ways that it worked itself through a host,
spawning zombie like abominations in the process. As witnessed in

(00:53):
the film Prometheus, a mixture of pathogen infected hosts can
lead to truly straining forms. The android David infected Human
Crew made Holloway with a mere drop of the Black Goo.
The infected Holloway then impregnated his partner, doctor Elizabeth Shaw,
who then employed appalling medpod to surgically remove the resulting

(01:16):
squid like embryo before it could burst out of her
on its own. Left to its own devices, the resulting
creature rapidly grew into an enormous seven tentacled monster sometimes
referred to as the trilobite. The creature has virtually nothing
in common with the prehistoric arthropod of the same name,
which we previously discussed un stuffable your mind. If anything,

(01:38):
the creature looks more like an octopus. They'll find very
few seven armed organisms in the natural world. The seven
armed sea star comes to mind, but we also have
to consider the so called seven armed octopus. Some call
it the septipus or the blob octopus, but Halifron atlanticus

(01:59):
actually does does have eight arms. It's just that the
male's hectocotylus or specialized fertilization arm, remains coiled away in
a sack beneath the right eye, thus giving the creature
the appearance of having only seven arms, at least in
the males. But back to the monster, we quickly learn

(02:19):
that the alien trilobite is merely an intermediate stage in
the creature's overall life cycle. When the trilobite overpowers a
surviving engineer, incapacitates the host and implants its own embryo orally,
the tentacled monster then covers the host's body in a
posture that the Alien RPG from Free League Publishing describes

(02:41):
as a protective posture. There's already a lot to unpack here.
I don't want to get two ahead of ourselves, but
the creature here is essentially more of a body hugger
than a face hugger, though it still depends on oral
injection of its embryo. It also feels as if the
trilobite form developed expressly for the purpose of infect larger
than human prey, did its juvenile forms somehow detect the

(03:04):
presence of a much larger engineer in its midst and
morph into a form capable of taking one down. It's unknown, however,
we do know that the black goop pathogen seems to
ultimately result in more stabilized xenomorphic creatures with distinct life cycles,
and we can suppose that these stabilized forms in life
cycles are informed by environment and host survivability. Certainly, engineers

(03:29):
or rogue android scientists might manipulate this development, but it
seems to be a typical pattern. But the resulting creatures,
as we'll discuss, remain highly adaptive to host availability. But
I will go ahead and speculate, and I'm sure others
have speculated along these exact lines as well, that the
trilobite is a specialized engineer nabber, and that Holloway and

(03:50):
Shaw's genetic contributions were marginal at best. The android David,
in his Covenant recordings at least mentions in passing that
the engineers are perfect carriers and perfect mothers. We're also
to understand that the engineers are genetically somewhat similar human beings.
But perhaps there is something else about the Elder race's
biology that draws the pathogens and creatures of their own creation.

(04:15):
I wonder if it might have to do with the
various other biotechnological alterations that the engineers have made to
themselves or are made via their suits. And of course,
in Prometheus's closing moments, we see the trillabte crumpled and
dead and watch a juvenile xenomorphic organism emerge from the
engineer's body. It has indeed grown quite large in the

(04:38):
giant body of its hosts. The alien RPG describes the
gestation as effectively hollowing out the host creature's body, reducing
it to little more than a husk. The new form,
dubbed the Deacon, emerges as a more typical bipedal eye
list xenomorphic creature with an elongated head, though lacking a
tail and various other key features associated with its kin.

(05:02):
It boats protrucible jaws like that of the deep sea
goblin shark, and its nickname derives from the sharp point
on the end of its head, which resembles the pointed
miter worn by some Christian clergy. The creature uses this
point to violently rip its way out of the host body.
In this regard, we might reasonably compare the deacon's headspike

(05:23):
to the egg tooth, a temporary sharp protrusion that various birds, reptiles,
and monotremes use to penetrate their own eggshell and break
free spiders, too, are known to develop an egg tooth
like spike to aid in their hatching. The Deacon's spike
would seem necessary as it has to emerge not only
from the body of the engineer, but also through its

(05:44):
biomechanical spacesuit, which again may to varying degrees, be biologically
integrated with the engineer. Just as birds quickly lose their
egg teeth, it's possible that the deacon loses its key
feature as it develops into its no doubt gigantic adult forms. However,
we have no idea what this form might look like.
Perhaps its full development puts in more in line with

(06:06):
other xenomorphic forms, only on a scale devoted to prey
on giant humanoid hosts. We also have no idea what
the Deacon's life cycle would consist of in whole, but
we might assume that it would resemble that of a
stabilized xenomorphic life cycle, which we'll discuss in the weeks ahead,
only with larger eggs that produce a body hugging embryo depositor.

(06:28):
The engineers might know for certain, but fortunately humans remain
in the dark. Tune in for additional episodes of The
Monster Fact each week. Our Alien series will continue next
week with a look at the neomorph before getting into
the traditional xenomorphic life cycle. Write in with your own observations, readings,
and thoughts. Thanks as always to the excellent JJ Possway

(06:51):
for producing this show. Email us at contact at stufftable
your mind dot com.

Speaker 1 (07:05):
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