Hello all and welcome to the Star Trek Bestiary series, where I throw all the creatures and
monsters of Star Trek that don’t really fit elsewhere.
If my sound quality sounds funky, it’s because my microphone stand broke; seriously, my setup
is flying apart at the seams.
This video is looking at a strange and predatory creature about which not much was known.
The so-called “Murder Planet”.
Now, the name was bestowed it by its discoverers, who were a bunch of children so it doesn’t
have a technical term to describe it better and is kind of a misleading name.
We don’t know for certain that it was actually a planet, a being within the planet, or something
that lived on the surface, although it is far more likely to be merely a growth across
the planet itself.
Nevertheless, there are some interesting lore suggestions that I could not leave alone,
but before that, its breakdown.
Will start with its location, and straight away you’ll see why this is intriguing as
it is a seemingly habitable M-class planet located in the Hirogen system.
The Hirogen are a species of nomadic hunters who have long since abandoned their home planet
and spread out among the stars searching for more and more prey, ever new creatures to
hunt.
This self-imposed dispersal was so wide-reaching, and they had been at it for so long, that
it was ultimately going to drive them to extinction unless they could unify once more around a
central location to rebuild their population.
The planet itself had all the hallmarks of a standard M class planet, from size, to Earth
like gravity and an oxygen nitrogen atmosphere.
The only real danger on first observation was slightly elevated levels of Thoron radiation,
which can pose transporter and sensor hazards.
However, the danger soon began to manifest itself.
The planet, or at least a large area where the USS Protostar had landed was home to a
plant-based creature composed of sub-surface vines.
These vines spanned over the entire distance traversed by the crew and possessed a shared
consciousness.
The creature was actively hostile and wished to consume all fauna it encountered.
These vines could quite easily erupt from the ground to snare and consume its prey,
but they could only move in bursts of speed, requiring the prey to close into to proximity
to be captured first.
This was accomplished by a combination of telepathic manipulation and forming physical
lures.
The creature would read the surface thoughts and desires of its prey and raise some of
its vines above ground to form a proxy lure in that form.
The final details and believability were created using the same telepathy, granting the lure
a life-like appearance, fuelled by the prey’s own wants.
When it was close enough, it would either strike with its vines, or slowly ensnare the
captivated prey.
It has the ability manipulate its surrounding terrain on a grand scale, shifting the land,
forests and even mountains around to prevent its prey from wandering too far.
This, again suggests at its scale and it could also create acid rain to dissolve its food.
Perhaps it did this through the releasing of some type of substance into the air?
Should it’s quarry prove too elusive however, it was quite capable of drawing on their fears
too, and manifesting them in an attempt to further herd them to exhaustion, or simply
battle its prey into submission.
Now, whether or not the location of this hostile Planet was a deliberate and considered choice
or merely a reference to a random delta quadrant species in the show is a moot point for this,
because it prompts some interesting theories.
The Hirogen have continued to spread out across the Delta Quadrant to their detriment, yet
never returned to their home planet, and now we have a potential reason why beyond their
love of the hunt.
This organism has grown throughout their former home world in their absence, or perhaps even
been the prompting factor in them leaving.
With the scale of manipulation that this creature had, it’s quite possible that any structures
across the planet were also destroyed or pulled down by the Vines, and its terraforming abilities.
If this creature is native to their home planet, then it could explain why they branched out
it search of greater prey as this superorganism spread over their planet, and consumed all
animal life in its path.
This would have forced the species off-world in an attempt to hunt, and begun their obsession
with their nomadic hunter’s lifestyle.
They could have fought it back several times and it was susceptible to fire, but as it
is a plant, it probably held limited interest as quarry to them.
Perhaps, with the abilities it displayed, it was even engineered by the Hirogen to provide
sport and make the hunting biome even more dangerous.
It could also be that this being is not native to the planet, and in fact drifted there and
seeded itself from elsewhere Now, this is all obviously speculation but
I thought it a worth mentioning.
The so called Murder Planet was not explored further, for the obvious reason and the crew
of the Protostar were ill-equipped to do much else other than flee.
The choice of the Hirogen system in the show might have been done with no correlation to
the Hirogen themselves, but it has created this interesting scenario in my mind I thought
to share.
Thanks for watching this quick lore video on this very violent verdant vegetable and
until the next one, I’ve been Ric, thanks again and goodbye!