Hello all!
Ric here today with another Star Trek bestiary!
This video is on one of the largest creatures I’ve covered and for that matter, one of
the largest encountered by Starfleet.
Additionally, if this video a little short, I’m in the midst of moving house and is
not the one I had planned.
Short notice.
Anyway, in 2268, the USS Enterprise was investigating the loss of both an entire planet and the
all Vulcan USS Intrepid in the Gamma 7A system.
As they closed in on the system from Starbase 6, they discovered a void in space, an area
of seeming darkness that was impenetrable to sensors, reading only as negative energy.
This dark zone also acted to interfere with communications systems, even by being in its
proximity, preventing both probe telemetry and signals from Starfleet reaching the Enterprise.
Once they braved the field, they found at its centre a giant single-celled organism,
termed the space amoeba, the only one encountered by the Federation to date, although it was
preparing to divide.
This creature was an estimated 11,000 miles in diameter, which for comparison, is 39 percent
larger than the Earth, quite capable of engulfing a planet it seems, not that it would need
to.
The creature seemed to lack any sentience or signs of higher brain function, on account
of it not having a brain.
The field of negative energy it emitted was a strange phenomenon that in effect acted
to neutralise energy and was dangerous to not only ship systems but organic life.
Exactly how it moved through the vacuum of space was unknown, certainly it didn’t move
in the same way as regular bacteria with flagellum, which would serve no purpose in this environment.
However with such a great mass at its disposal, it is entirely possible it simply jettisons
some of its internal energy or matter from a vacuole to then propel itself in the opposite
direction.
It could however manipulate the negative energy field to draw objects towards it.
It displayed no faster than light capabilities such as warp, although it must have been able
to traverse the void with some speed as it was located beyond the confines of the Gamma
7A (the solar system) when the crew met it, having already visited the once-inhabited
system.
It more or less takes light 5 and a half hours to reach Pluto from Sol, so for the Amoeba
to clear a system completely, it must be travelling at speeds relative to at least a moderate
factor of impulse.
The mass of the cell was indeed protoplasm, the catch all term for the jelly-mass of a
cell, so it was an organic entity.
It was made from cytoplasm, possessed a nucleus and had a full set of over 40 chromosomes.
The fact it was classified as an amoeba, suggests that it could alter its structure and protoplasm
to form pseudopods, temporary appendages to reach out that deal 1d6+3 bludgeoning damage,
wait wrong franchise.
Pseudopods are generally used for both locomotion, meaningless in space, and for drawing in nutrients,
we can see such structures along one edge of the amoeba.
What it feeds on is a mystery too, however traces of debris and waste was found clinging
to its outer edges, suggesting that it simply envelopes a source of nutrition and dissolves
it, consuming the raw energies and any required matter from its acquired food before flushing
out the waste.
After all, its simple proximity already renders most lifeforms dead, so it’s not like it
has to actively hunt.
Despite its internal layout and image matching that of a single-celled lifeform, the Space
Amoeba is very different in several aspects that are vital to its simple survival in the
vacuum of space.
Such differences include the massive negative energy generation potential to such an extent
that it shrouds the surrounding space in its field.
I would suspect that this is what provides it some measure of protection against the
cosmic background radiation.
Additionally, it must consume something other than water and nutrients to survive, as neither
of these are exactly plentiful in space.
As an amoeba, it lacked a cell membrane yet was impervious to exploding due to the lack
of atmosphere, and was referred to having a membrane in several instances anyway.
Although its scale would suggest it exerted its own gravitational pull which probably
aided in holding it together.
Alongside its negative energy field, it released a substance that could only really be described
as anti-life matter by the scientists on the Enterprise.
This permeated the field and made for an additional layer of toxicity to life.
It is quite possible that these are effectively waste products of whatever the amoeba’s
conversion process is, after all it too is alive, and something called anti-life matter
is not exactly conducive to health.
The Space Amoeba was destroyed in its encounter with the Enterprise who deployed an antimatter
device straight into its nucleus, ending the creature’s existence.
It was seen as a last ditch effort to remove a threat that they first tried to understand
and study.
Thanks to Spock and McCoy, the Federation did at least get a lot of information in this
creature, so technically in-universe most of these questions could be answered.
In apocrypha, the game Shattered Universe, which I have a copy of somewhere I think,
the Amoeba was encountered in 2293 in the Mirror Universe too, further towards Romulan
space, but also destroyed.
The amoeba’s origin is still a mystery, whether it evolved to be the way it is or
was engineered.
It could perhaps have been a far smaller creature originally, maybe even a microorganism, judging
by its simplicity that grew to such incomprehensible size.
But in that case the question is how?
Exposure to some strange energy, a forgotten prank by Q?
We have seen one other instance of a microorganism mutating to enter into the macro scale, the
aptly named Macrovirus, which I have already covered, here.
Perhaps we are looking at some mutated end result of a similar process, a freak occurrence.
Spock postulated it was an extra-galactic entity, but he really had little to base that
on.
The creature was preparing itself for cell division, reproduction when it was destroyed,
which would suggest that the creature had reached its maximum mass before mitosis.
From here, it would have split itself in two, beginning with the nuclei before everything
else was split between it and its clone.
As no other such lifeforms have ever been encountered, I see only two possibilities.
The rate of reproduction is either so infrequent that it takes centuries, millennia even to
reach the scale needed to divide, or that it came into existence very recently.
Far sooner than it’s scale would suggest.
If the being suddenly came into existence, however that happened, it might also explain
why it was able to descend onto the Gamma 7A so suddenly, wiping out billions of lives
on the inhabited planet in the system.
If this is the case, then it would suggest that the Enterprise narrowly prevented a disaster
of literal galactic scale.
To be fair, with the exponential rate of cell division, they certainly did prevent this.
Whether it took a hundred thousand years, or a hundred days, if left to divide, the
resulting amoeba’s negative energy field would have surely flooded the galaxy, wiping
out all life.
In the real world, the largest technical amoebas we have are Xenophyophorea, which are technically
a single celled organism, that has multiple nuclei and lives on the ocean floor.
Species of these have been recorded at 20 cm in diameter.
Although these are pretty much their own category, it does show that simple single-cell life
does not always need to be microscopic.
However, when we are dealing with something twice the size of some planets, then things
get kind of absurd.
The protoplasm alone would most likely disseminate in a vacuum eventually, even with its sheer
mass as its lacks a solid enough core to maintain integrity.
But then we have the whole concept of its strange energy fields that could probably
do who knows what.
A big point of it appearance was that it was beyond anything encountered, and they struggled
to understand it.
Either way, I think this is one of the most fascinating creatures in Trek, mostly because
of the scale of the threat it represents, and the complete lack of ability to negotiate
with it or anything.
It has no intelligence, it is just a cell, doing what it is biologically programmed to
do but its very presence is quite simply an antithesis to all life.
Such a creation has elements of cosmic horror which I dig and personally, the implication
that there could be more of these is terrifying.
Fortunately, none have been found.
For now.
I’ve been Ric, thanks for watching this breakdown on the Giant Space Amoeba from Star
Trek.
I’ll see you next time for another lore video and until then, thanks again and goodbye!