More Intelligent Than It Looks

Themes of Creation, Evolution and Reproduction in Supernova

by Nic Ransome

[Companion piece to Galaxy Quest: What makes science fiction? Issue 10, May 2003.]

You might be excused for thinking that Supernova is merely a moderately efficient Sci-Fi B-movie with a troubled history and too many progenitors (both in the sense of film-makers and in the sense of previous Sci-Fi films from which it borrows). But buried beneath this unfortunate conflation of classic Sci-Fi plot devices are some fascinating themes orbiting around creation, evolution and reproduction. (And anyone who knows the work of the great Austrian conceptual artist H. R. Giger – who was involved in the genesis of the project – will immediately recognise these as his core thematic idioms.)

The story has dual narrative nodes: the psychopathic Karl Larson (Peter Facinelli) whom the crew discovers when answering an unusual “direct distress message” and the alien artefact that he brings on board with him. This artefact – both a portable big bang and a Trojan Horse of mind-bending proportions – also has a direct effect on those who come into contact with it. Karl, through immersing himself in the artefact, has effected a reversal in the ageing process and gained superhuman strength.

Giger’s influence is still perceptible in the ovo-phallic shape of the mysterious, throbbing objet trouvé; at one point Danika (Robin Tunney) is cut-off just before articulating what it most reminds her of.  If blue – as determined by Wilhelm Reich’s orgone research – is the colour of life, then the purple glow of the story’s extraterrestrial MacGuffin is life².

The first shot of the ship – the Nightingale – is a highly suggestive nose, but as the rest of the ship comes into view one’s expectations are skewed as an innovative, almost insectoid, body comes into view. It is a shame that the ship’s interiors never live up to the promise of this first encounter (although it is clear that the film has been cut with garden shears; ‘Director’s Cut‘ anyone?!).

Kaela (Angela Bassett) thinks she knows whom the distress call is from because Karl is her ex-lover, but it is not Karl who arrives on board; it is his son, Jason. Or so it appears. Kaela is not convinced and when she realises that Yerzy (Lou Diamond Phillips), who has also interacted with the artefact, is growing younger, she realises the truth.  Jason is at once father and son, negating reproduction itself and embodying a perverse parody of it. (Unlike Sphere, in which a similar artefact is touched with fingertips and then walked into, Yerzy tentatively slides first his hand, then his whole arm into the ovoid pod conjuring deliberate and forceful echoes of penetration, gynaecology and birth.)

Sweetie, the ship’s computer, and Kaela in turn discover, and then reveal, that the artefact is a “9^th dimensional bomb”, that will create a supernova in the solar system in which it is detonated. The explosion will have an intriguing paradoxical effect. Firstly it will destroy any race advanced enough to travel the huge distance to find it and bring it back to their home planet, rendering it, as Kaela says, a masterpiece of Darwinism in action. The survival of the most-advanced species (the bomb’s creators) and the destruction of all those species almost-but-not-quite intelligent enough to leave well alone (including our own) is the device’s ultimate aim.  Secondly it will replenish the finite base matter of creation at the edges of the infinitely expanding universe.

Karl/Jason comes over all poetic when he espouses the benefits of the bomb. “We are all stardust”, he says, echoing one of the pivotal sentiments of mystics, occultists, physicists and hippies everywhere. But in this scenario, the stardust created by the supernova – the carbon and other elements that are the building blocks of life – would of course be the by-product of the total annihilation of a solar system.

Nick (James Spader), the default Captain after Marley’s (Robert Forster) untimely demise, and Karl/Jason share a history, they have both been addicted to the fictional hallucinogen ‘Hazon’. Even a cursory exposure to cutting-edge consciousness research foregrounds the theory that one of the key ‘triggers’ of human evolution was extensive use of psychedelics (ideas best propounded in the work of Terence McKenna). So yet another thematic strand finds its way back to the core ideas of the film.

Karl/Jason’s altered state – perhaps brought about by the conjunction of his drug-fuelled pathology and his immersion in the purple field of the artefact – seems to suggest a backward evolutionary path, as his animal attributes become dominant. This is highlighted by his wolf-like yellow eyes – juxtapose with the shared blue eyes of the final scene – and sudden lack of eyebrows. In contrast, Nick, who has kicked his Hazon habit, follows a character arc that includes winning Kaela’s love and respect by convincing her that he has indeed dealt with his addiction.

Karl’s animalistic violence is presaged in Marley’s doctoral anthropology thesis. At the film’s outset (before he is euthanised) Marley avers that the banning of violence-as-entertainment (he is studying Tom & Jerry!) has denied necessary catharsis and created a vacuum in which violence can only be acted-out. His argument is not only prescient as far as the narrative goes but was perhaps also meant as something of a post-modern apology for the film itself (which had trouble getting a PG-13 rating in the States).  It is perhaps also another comment on the theme of evolution, suggesting that when a species attempts to rush its evolution through governmental edicts (or technology) that species is surely doomed.

The theme of reproduction centres on three very different couples and their fertility (all of which play against the entirely non-physical relationship between the crew’s seemingly asexual computer expert Benj (Wilson Cruz) and his beloved female-voiced ship’s computer Sweetie). Danika and Yerzy are obviously a couple of some standing (but not, as it turns out, long enough to successfully defend themselves against the later interjection of a third party). When Yerzy protests the hyperspace jump necessary to answer the distress call, he complains that last time around it screwed-up his bodily functions. Marley replies that there is one bodily function that is actually greatly enhanced: sex. This does in fact seem to be the case as we see Danika and Yerzy engaged in zero-gravity copulation soon after the jump.

Sexual fulfilment, however, soon gives way to procrastination about having a baby. We discover that as neither of them are genetically engineered they would be seen by the government as suitable applicants for a ‘Reproduction Licence’, something Yerzy has been trying to get hold of for a long time. Although not overtly stated, it is clear that it is Yerzy’s ability to reproduce that is controlled, as we know he has regular sex with Danika without her becoming pregnant. Any further progress or debate is made impossible by the arrival of Karl/Jason. Strike one.

The second couple comprises Karl/Jason and Danika again. Karl’s para-human qualities include telepathy; he tells Danika that though she wants to have a baby, she doesn’t know whether Yerzy is the right choice of father. He is, of course, spot on, always a good chat-up technique. He then proceeds to seduce her, impregnate her (he immediately knows she is pregnant, he can see it) and, when she turns on him, kill her in a brutally sudden and clinical fashion (he ejects her out an airlock). Strike two.

The third couple is Nick and Kaela. Nick is a burnt-out, cynical ex-airforce pilot; Kaela a burnt out, bitter research scientist. Their early differences over his drug-habit resolve as they grow closer together, until it is only Nick that can save Kaela from Karl/Jason.

After Karl/Jason and the bomb have been ejected from the ship in the denouement, Nick and Kaela risk their lives by sharing a single deep-space unit on the jump back home. Their mutual suitability is emphasised by the “2% genetic exchange” that occurs between them during their journey (they swap eyes – she gets one of his blue eyes, he gets one of her brown – a simple, yet stunning visual coup). More importantly, they exchange bodily fluids. (This has all been set-up at the start of the film when Marley is genetically fused to the glass of his faulty deep-space capsule). There are also specifically biological images – sperm, an egg – cut into the electrifying final jump sequence (a special effects extravaganza to rival the similar wormhole jump in Contact).

There is also strong alchemical imagery in the final sequence. Nick and Kaela (albedo and negredo; male and female) share a vessel (the glass deep-space capsule) that is subjected to the transmuting power of the space-folding jump and thereby become fused in the sacred marriage (the Hierosgamos or Mysterium Coniunctionis).

So it is the emotionally damaged, middle-aged protagonists (Nick the recovering drug-addict and Kaela, the cold, armoured, clinician) who claim the right to reproduction (and circumvent the state-control of fertility), rather than the ‘perfect specimens’ of Danika and Yerzy (and you do see their respective ‘perfect’ chests) or the psychopathically seductive eugenics of Karl/Jason (what would his offspring have been like?!).

One of the final images of the film is the orgone-blue glow of the earth – mirrored both in the glow of the matching blue eyes of the survivors and in the ‘glow’ that we know Kaela will soon have – she is pregnant. Strike three and a home run. The pair of have proved themselves to be members of a species both intelligent enough to see through the artefact's hidden agenda (from the outset Nick wants to jettison the object, before he even knows what it is) and emotionally evolved enough to find redemption in each other.