The Monstrefact: The Hammerpedes of “Prometheus”

In this episode of STBYM’s The Monstrefact, Robert discusses the serpentine hammerpedes from 2012 film “Prometheus.”

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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 Lammin. This is the Monster Fact,
a short form series from Stuff to Blow Your Mind
focusing on mythical creatures, ideas and monsters in time. I'm
returning this week to the alien Universe, specifically to one
of the minor creatures from the twenty twelve film of Prometheus,

(00:33):
just to refresh. The film follows a high tech exploration
expedition to the distant planet LV two twenty three to
investigate the possibility of an ancient interplanetary civilization responsible for
seeding life on Earth. Guess what they find it? But
the crew of the Prometheus, including directed Panspermia zelots propped

(00:55):
up by a longevity hungry CEO, get more than they
bargain for when they encounter Engineer Ruins and the deadly
alien pathogen agent A zero thirty nine to fifty nine
x point ninety one slash fifteen, or as we commonly
refer to it, the black Goo. As I discussed in
last year's multi part series on the Creatures of the

(01:15):
Alien Universe, the black Goo can be thought of as
a biological AI that reprograms everything it touches, perhaps following
specific instructions, general directions, or maybe it's just left entirely
to its own generative impulses. Whatever the case, it weaponizes
organic life and spreads rapidly through an ecosystem, producing in

(01:38):
its extremes deadly strains of xenomorphic life. I already discuss
some of the forms this winds up taking in Prometheus,
but one of the earliest we see in the film
is that of the so called hammer pede. The missions
woefully inept biologist Milburn initially interprets the organism as reptilian,
and it is indeed an elongated, limbless creature that we

(02:00):
might well compare to a serpent, though I get a
strong hagfish vibe as well as an eagle vibe from
the creature. More on that in a second. Its nickname
ham Repede apparently refers to earlier creature designs for the
film that more closely resembled a centipede or a millipede.
The origin of this creature, however, in the film, is

(02:21):
heavily implied to be some manner of worms like earth worms,
either tracked in by the Prometheus crew or found in
the soil of planet LV two twenty three. In either case,
the black goo exposure rapidly evolves the worms into slithering
creatures with a hooded head that it once mirrors a
cobra and maybe a human hand, throwing up a pair

(02:43):
of devil horns that sort of thing. Its expansive mouth
displays four fangs, one at each point of the compass.
It also boasts impressive regenerative powers. Now, when Milburn approaches
the creature, it latches onto his arm, constricts it, and
then breaks the underlying bones. Geologist Feftfield attempts to cut

(03:03):
him free, but the creature bleeds potent acid, as xenomorphic
organisms often do. Finally, it breaches Melbourne's suit, injures his helmet,
and in a rather shocking scene, lodges itself in the
victim's mouth. The same hammerpeede, or maybe a different one,
is later seen emerging from his corpse. Now, the Free

(03:23):
League Alien RPG in the supplement Building Better World provides
additional information or possible insight into what's going on here,
stating that after suffocating the victim, the hammerpede will quote
rearrange your internal organs to create a personal corpse den
for themselves. Now what does that mean? They don't go
into a lot of detail. We have to speculate. Does

(03:45):
it mean that it's going to carry out reproduction inside
the victim? Is it eating the flesh of the victim inside?
This rearranging organs certainly raises a number of questions, And
of course that's what I like about the description allows
the gameplay to maybe decide what exactly is happening here.
So let's get into the potential science here now. Comparing

(04:07):
the hammer peede morph to natural world organisms, we of
course find little in the way of a direct match. Generally,
creatures attempt to avoid entering the mouths of larger creatures.
We do have some notable exceptions cleaner species. For example,
we talked about this on Stuffed to blow your mind before,
where you'll have say a smaller fish or aquatic organism

(04:29):
that'll enter the mouth of a much bigger organism in
order to consume say debris or even parasites in some
cases that sort of thing. But that is not what's
going on with the hammerpeed. It also doesn't seem to
be attempting to enter a potential host like a parasite
would for starters. It ends up killing the victim. In

(04:51):
the process, it suffocates the victim by lodging itself in
the esophagus. A parasite generally has nothing to gain from
a dead host about the The only way you could
apply this and have it make sense here is if
the hammer pede is really looking to get down the
throat of a much larger creature and would otherwise be
able to gain access. And there might be a case

(05:12):
to be made here comparing the large size of the
engineers to much smaller human beings. But still there's some
potential problems in trying to make that all work the
mental gymnastics involved. Now we do encounter organisms that defensively
make themselves difficult meals capable of clogging and esophagus and choking,
it would be predator, but again not what we're seeing

(05:35):
here exactly. While the hammerped's method of suffocation is unique
or seems to be unique, plenty of terrestrial predators employs
suffocation via more time tested methods, such as crushing the
throat of a prey species. We see this with cats
and various canids for example. Also we see, of course

(05:56):
constriction in some snakes, but constrictors can also cause cardiac arrests,
so it's not strictly suffocation. Now, coming back to the
comparison to the hagfish, these marine scavengers will often enter
the carcasses of large animals to consume them from the
inside out, and they will enter through various ways various

(06:16):
natural openings, including the mouth, say on a large shark
or a whale. They'll also bore through the flesh, so
they're open to various entry points. Interestingly enough, a would
be predator of the hagfish might find itself suffocating when
the creature emits a defensive galt of slime to choke
its attacker. So again, no super close Earth analogs here,

(06:39):
but the hammer Pede nicely invokes distorted, aggressive reflections of
the natural world while also featuring core alien themes of
bodily invasion. Tune in for additional episodes of The Monster Fact,
the Artifact, or Anomalius to Pendium each week here in
the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast feed as All Ways.

(07:00):
You can email us at contact at stuff that Blow
your Mind dot com.

Speaker 1 (07:13):
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