"All These Worlds Are Yours Except Europa": A Look Back At "2010"

Editor's note: Here's another one I wrote back in -- you guessed it -- 2010. Though, as I point out, it was a rather inferior movie to "2001," there were many interesting bits to it that referenced myth, astronomy, and, of course, pop-culture syncs. This is going to need a 2012 follow-up on many of the points raised here, I think.

"2010" – the sequel to the classic Stanley Kubrick film "2001" – is a long boring movie. I'm not saying it's a bad movie. But it's like if you took the snail's pace of the Kubrick film but minus Kubrick's genius. Nevertheless, it contains quite a number of interesting ideas, such as "The Alien Savior Theory," "The Two Suns" theory, and a very deep connnection to "Star Trek III."
Spoilers!


The movie starts with a long boring talk between Dr. Floyd (played by Roy Scheider) and some Russian scientist. The gist is, the Russians want to find the ship that disappeared in "2001," and reactivate HAL. The ship/HAL is moored somewhere around Jupiter. The Russian scientist blames America for not sharing the Monolith with the rest of the world. Scheider's taut facial skin grimaces in sympathy.

Roy Scheider maintains this expression through the entire movie.

The film was made in 1984, so you can expect a fair amount of Cold War tension in "2010"; remember, this is the year "Red Dawn" came out. In fact, the film seems to be way more concerned with American/Russian relations than the Monolith, HAL, Dave Bowman, or space exploration. Throughout the film, you can almost hear Sting sing "Russians."

Can you guess who the "world leaders" are on this magazine cover?

Meanwhile, the scientist who created HAL, Dr. Chandra, talks to his new computer, SAL, about bringing HAL back. SAL is voiced by Candice Bergen (sort of doing her version of Charlie McCarthy) and seems to share HAL's passive-aggressive tendencies. Bob Balaban plays Dr. Chandra as a small nervous quiet man who successfully contains a great deal of unexpressed inner rage, which is a real stretch for him.

Now Dr. Floyd, Dr. Chandra, and a very low-key but still quite neurotic John Lithgow join a Russian team of scientists on a mission to Jupiter. The leader of the Russian mission is played by Helen Mirren, back when she was young and not an unusually sexy 60-year-old. The Russians don't trust the Americans and act robotic. It's up to the plucky Americans to get the Russians to smile.

Will Helen Mirren smile? Stay tuned!

At this point of the film, you might be wondering where the hell is HAL, Dave Bowman, the Monolith, the apes with their tools, the Starchild, and everything else. Instead, we are treated to verrrrry slow scenes onboard the ship going over procedure or the whole Americans trying to make the Russians smile thing. In one scene, you actually root for Lithgow's character to die, just for something exciting to happen.

Zzzzzz...

But lo! Dave Bowman mysteriously appears on his former wife's TV screen and brushes his mother's hair as a ghost. He talks of an exciting new thing happening that will change the world forever. Then: back to more space ship procedure and making the Russians smile. Mirren's character finally smiles. Yay.


Suddenly, Russia and America are at war. Dr. Floyd's team is recalled from the Russian ship. Then Dr. Floyd is contacted by the mysterious Dave Bowman via the reactivated HAL. We discover that the real reason HAL went crazy in the first movie is Because It's All The American Government's Fault. Bowman's appearance is the best scene in the entire film, because you are so lulled into a semi-comatose state by this point that seeing Bowman as The Old Guy and The Really Old Guy and the Starchild really wakes you up. Dr Floyd is told by Bowman to clear out in two days, because something really awesome is going to happen.

A whole bunch of Monoliths fly to Jupiter and the planet starts to eat itself. The Russian spaceship hightails it out of there, and HAL tragically sacrifices himself to save everyone. Jupiter turns into a small sun. A message beams out to all the people of Earth:

"ALL THESE WORLDS ARE YOURS EXCEPT EUROPA. ATTEMPT NO LANDING THERE. USE THEM TOGETHER. USE THEM IN PEACE."

Jupiter's moon Europa, meanwhile, is benefiting from the new heat source and is seen rapidly developing a lush rainforest-like landscape.

Now Earth has two suns, and its inhabitants are joined together in peace. The Russians have learned how to smile. The End.

Some points to absorb that might or might not have relevance:

The Aliens are here to bring about a New Age of peace...right?

1. The film features the classic "Alien Saviors" plotline. Aliens contact earth and offer world peace. Sometimes they engineer some sort of "crisis" or grand event to get our attention and realize that we are all citizens on planet earth. Right before I watched "2010," I viewed the old "To Serve Man" episode of "Twilight Zone." Similar plot, very different outcome. Are the aliens here to truly offer world peace and facilitate our evolution, or do they in the end want to simply eat us? Many science-fiction films struggle with this question.

There are many similarities between "2010" and "Star Trek III"

2. Europa turns into some sort of "Genesis" planet, a new Eden: much like the "Genesis" planet featured in Star Trek III: The Search For Spock" the same year. In both films, the war/tension between two groups/cultures (Russian/American, Klingon/Federation) is a main theme. In both films, there is a central iconic character who seemingly died in the previous movie but might be resurrected (Dave Bowman/Spock). Both films feature a New Eden planet artificially created to jumpstart life (Europa/Genesis). Both films feature the destruction of the famous ship from the previous/initial film (Discovery/Enterprise) – this destruction proceeds despite/to spite government officials back home. Lastly, Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry was very influenced by the work of "2001"/"2010" novel scribe Arthur C. Clarke.

3. The theme of "two suns" is also featured in "Star Wars" (the two suns of Tattoine).

"Star Wars"

"2010"

4. To relate some of these themes with "real life":

• The names of both the "2001"/"2010" ships (Discovery) and Star Trek's ship (Enterprise) were used as that of actual space shuttles. The Space Shuttle Discovery was launched the same year "2010" was released (1984).
• Scientists believe that with the oxygen in its atmosphere and likely underground cache of liquid water, Europa is a very good candidate for containing/sustaining extraterrestrial life.
• Scientists say that other Earth-like planets with two suns are likely.
• There are many conspiracy theories surrounding the emergence of a second sun in our solar system, 2012, "The End of the World," Jupiter igniting and turning into a sun, the Mayans, the aliens, kitchen sink, etc. It would take more research on my end to determine whether those theories are directly/indirectly inspired by the movie "2010," have pre-existed "2010," or whether there are common streams that both the conspiracy theorists and Arthur C. Clarke have been influenced by.
• There are also conspiracy theories floating around that this year (2010) will be the one where we are officially told that alien contact has been made with Earth ("disclosure"). This theory is linked with the movie's tagline "The Year We Make Contact."

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Star Trek's "The Cage" And "The Gods Of Eden"

Well, Netflix Instant is streaming the original Star Trek TV series -- and may I first say how impressed I am with how well these episodes hold up over time! I've watched them all several times over during the course of my life since early childhood, and they only get better for me.

In this post I'll be focusing on the Star Trek pilot "The Cage" -- which the network tossed back to creator Gene Roddenberry as being "too cerebral." (It's a miracle the original series was able to stay as long on the air as it did).

Heading the Enterprise in this episode is not Captain James T. Kirk but Captain Christopher Pike. Pike is played with equal-parts pathos and leading-man good looks by Jeffrey Hunter, an actor best known for portraying Jesus Christ in the movie "King of Kings." Joining Hunter is Majel Barett as the ultra-serious Number One, and Leonard Nimoy as a somewhat shaggier and rough-around-the-edges Mr. Spock. Certainly not the crew we're used to -- with not nearly the same chemistry -- but generally decent enough to help make this an enjoyable episode despite some of the more "primative" aspects of the pilot. (Think a really great episode of The Twilight Zone or The Outer Limits.)

Jesus Christ and Christopher Pike

"The Cage" focuses on a theme that the series will return to over and over again -- that of a superior alien race (or gods, or robots, or what have you) capturing human specimens to observe/enslave. The episode's antagonists, the large-headed Talosians, see humans as just another animal to keep and study in their menagerie of creatures. What they seek to do in this episode is breed Pike with their captive/"guest" Vina and basically create a slave race of humans to populate their planet -- a basic theme that runs through much of the "Ancient Astronaut" and Custodian theories regarding the origins of human life and culture on planet Earth.

"The Earth is a farm. We are someone else's property," succinctly wrote researcher Charles Fort early last century. The late Zecharia Sitchin claimed to have translated ancient Mesopotamian tablets that told a tale of a superior aliens, the Anunnaki, who cultivated humanity through genetic manipulation as a hybrid slave race to serve them. What is interesting is that Sitchin's theories dovetail right into the events in the Book of Genesis in the Bible -- specifically, the stories of Adam and Eve and Noah's Ark, both specificaly referenced in "The Cage." The so-called God/gods are, according to the theory, really these Annunaki extraterrestrials.

Building on the Ancient Astronaut research of Sitchin and "Chariots of the Gods" author Erich von Däniken, author William Bramley in his book "The Gods of Eden" posited that humanity are the "property" of extraterrestrials/gods he refers to as the "Custodial Society." As Fort also wrote, these superior beings see the Earth as just a farm, and humans no better than animals.

Seen in light of the Ancient Astronaut/Custodian hypothesis and its relation to myth/religion, the planet Pike lands on, Talos IV, is an Eden of sorts, run by the alien/gods known as the Talosians. The Talosians placate what are essentially their captives/zoo creatures through the use of highly believable telepathic illusions -- basically, virtual reality. As long as Pike and Vina choose to not look behind the curtain and accept these illusions, paradise is maintained. Attempts to pierce the veil, however -- to metaphorically eat from the Tree of Knowledge -- results in terrible mental pain. Just in case viewers miss the allusion to the Biblical tale, Vina repeatedly refers to her and Pike as being an "Adam and Eve" on Talos IV.

(It is interesting to note that von Däniken and other Ancient Astronaut theorists identify the Greek mythological figure Talos as being in reality some sort of extraterrestrial flying craft or weapon)

With their cold, emotionless, behavior, insatiable drive for observation and experiments, and telepathic abilities, the Talosians also bring to mind reported sightings/encounters with aliens. Indeed, the Talosians have the "typical alien look" down pat, with their large craniums and greyish-blue skin. They also bear an uncanny resemblance to the Guardians of the Universe from the Green Lantern comic books (which first appeared in 1960), a (mostly benevolent) alien race who also assumed a role of superiority over not just humans but the galaxy as a whole:

Interesting to note that Roddenberry, like Green Lantern Hal Jordan in the comic books, was an Air Force pilot.

The Talosians -- and many described/depicted aliens in general -- also look very similar to an extraterrestrial/extradimensional entity occultist Aleister Crowley reportedly channeled in 1918, around roughly the same period in which Fort was writing about human zoos, "Lam."

Crowley's channeled entity Lam, and a screenshot from "The Cage" of a sketch of a Talosian

Curiously, Roddenberry was apparently no stranger to channeled entities himself, having worked with an organization in 1975 called "Lab-9" who claimed to be in contact with a group of extraterrestrials called The Council Of Nine (who identified themselves as the figures upon which the ancient Egyptians based their gods). The story goes that Lab-9 hired Roddenberry to write a television script based on the "return" of The Nine, and the man based the main character on himself. When the task of revising the script went to his assistant, an additional in intriguing element was added to the story -- that Roddenberry's fictional alter-ego channeled his successful 1960s television show from The Nine!

One has to wonder if Roddenberry really did receive any sort of otherwordly inspiration for the TV show Star Trek, or at least tapped into some collective well of primal, mythological themes. At any rate, while the man was a self-described agnostic and humanist, and allegedly instructed the writers on the show not to refer to religious themes, "The Cage" is explicitly presented as a twisted Adam and Eve tale told with a heavy dose of alien interference. Its message? That humans prefer freedom above all other things, including life (you know, unless you are horribly disfigured in an accident because your silly alien rescuers/surgeons never saw a human before).

Actor Jeffrey Hunter chose not to return to Star Trek after the pilot, and his role was recast in a later pair of episodes based on that first show, entitled "The Menagerie." In "Menagerie" Christopher Pike is now horribly burned and paralyzed as a result of an accident on his ship, and Spock kidnaps him back to the planet of the Talosians in order that he might benefit from their illusion-creating abilities and live with Vina in a happy telepathically-induced Eden. Like the Biblical Eden, the two can live out their years in a perfect paradise, having no desire, given their true forms, to partake of anything from the Tree of Knowledge and thus break the spell.

Hunter died in 1969, after a series of strokes leading to a fall down a flight of stairs and subsequent brain hemorrhage.

Note: There are many other aspects to this episode that I could have covered here. The Talosians were also apparently very interested in breeding, and when Pike initially spurns Vina, the aliens beam in other female Enterprise crew members as substitutes. The question then becomes: what type of woman does ruggedly handsome protagonist Pike really want? The intelligent and serious Number One, the very young and nubile Yeoman Colt, or the sexual "animal" green-skinned Orion dancer? (a whole post could just be written on the symbology of green-skinned females in pop-culture and mythology)

Further, I've always been interested in the character of Christopher Pike -- while completely different from Kirk (who has more of a roguish charm and sense of humor), I can't help wondering "what might have been."

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