A Natural History of the Starwhale

space_whale_by_ovitan-d8cc9en

Space Whale, by OvitaN – http://ovitan.deviantart.com/art/Space-Whale-504456863

Whales, those magnificent leviathans of the deep, have an uncanny knack for ending up in space. Science fiction is flooded with stories of starwhales–sometimes entirely new creatures that happen to resemble terran cetaceans in either behavior or appearance, sometimes evolved leviathans from our own world, and occasionally hapless, confused, ordinary whales. This is no fluke. Space is big, whales are big, so why shouldn’t there be whales in space?

Science fiction loves its tropes, and particularly loves comparing space to the golden age of maritime exploration, to the point where starships sometimes have sails. And then, of course, there’s The Narrative. You know, the one where a captain is consumed by obsession and revenge to hunt some semi-mythical mcguffin. If you’re going to do Moby-Dick-in-Space, you better have a starwhale. SciFi loves the Moby Schtick.

Starship UK, from Doctor Who.

Starship UK, from Doctor Who.

So what is a starwhale, and why is it different from other giant space creatures like the exogorth of Empire Strikes Back? Like terran whales, star whales are intelligent creatures that often exhibit some form of emotion. Unlike other space monsters, they often act with a purpose that goes beyond “eat space people, wreck ship”. Nowhere is this more clearly highlighted than in the Doctor Who episode The Beast Below, in which the Doctor encounters the last living starwhale, now supporting the remnants of the British Empire on its back. In the story, the whale endures tremendous suffering in order to protect ‘the children’, and chooses to stay even after being freed from its captors.

Giant whales providing the backbone for mysterious islands traces its roots back to the ancient Greeks, at least in the Western canon. Aspidochelon was a sea monster said to resemble either a turtle or a whale, with a craggy back the carried sandy beaches and sometimes even trees and jungles. Sailors who wandered ashore would find their ships crushed as they were pulled down into the deep. Later incarnations of the whale-as-island made explicit its connection to Satan, the ultimate deceiver. And, of course, Herman Melville makes explicit the modern civilization rests on the back, or, more accurately, the oil, of the whale.

Interestingly, starwhales are, at worst chaotic neutral, but more often lawful good. Their connection to the devil abandoned back on Earth.

The Star Trek universe is resplendent with starwhales, from numerous Enterprises have encountered numerous starwhales, from benign travelers passing through to confused infants looking to the ship for survival, to aggressive bulls threatened by incursion into their territory. Bull sperm whales were documented by early Earth whalers as solitary, especially aggressive male whales, some of which had tasted the bite of many harpoons and continued to charge. It was a bull sperm whale the sunk the Essex, the inspiration for Moby Dick. Read More

What Leonard Nimoy and Spock meant to me as a Jewish conservation biologist

Earlier today, the New York Times reported that actor Leonard Nimoy had died at the age of 83. Coming just two days after the death of Genie Clark, this means that I’ve lost two of my childhood heroes in one week. I’ve already briefly written about what Genie meant to me and to my friends here and here and am quoted here, but Leonard Nimoy’s impact on me  is a little harder to explain. I hope our readers will indulge me in an unusually personal post.

I’ve been a big fan of science fiction, something I’ve always loved sharing with my mother, since I was a kid. A world where science and intellect and technology, not brute force, are used to solve problems holds obvious appeal. To a kid who grew up struggling with some anti-Jewish discrimination, the diversity featured on shows like Star Trek was inspiring. People that were different didn’t have to hide their differences and lay low and try to avoid standing out in a crowd of people different from you, like I did. Not only did the main characters not tease and attack each other because they were different, but this behavior was actively portrayed as a problem on several episodes. The Federation wasn’t successful despite including different cultures and religions and even species, they were successful because of it.  The environmental conservation message in Star Trek plotlines like “the Voyage Home” made a budding young conservation biologist relate to it even more.

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To boldly go SCUBA diving where no one has gone SCUBA diving before: Meet the Roddenberry Dive Team

The influence that Star Trek has had on our society, from cell phones to the name of the first space shuttle orbiter to providing hope of a better future to victims of ethnic cleansing, has been well documented. However, what does Star Trek have to do with saving the oceans? As it turns out, quite a lot, and I’m not just talking about the plot of Star Trek IV (in which Kirk and company have to go back in time to rescue a whale whose species was driven extinct by human exploitation).

Star Trek is fundamentally about curiosity, exploration, and respect for all forms of life. This can be found from the Enterprise’s stated mission (“to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no one has gone before*) to the Vulcan code of IDIC (Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations), and you’d be hard-pressed to find a popular television series that portrays scientists better. The ideals of Star Trek have quite a bit to do with saving the oceans, and I’m not the only one who thinks so.

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