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8 questions about the Morlocks I want answered!
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Robert (Butch) Day
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PostPosted: Sun Jul 29, 2018 7:57 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

It's all because of a Morlock advert:


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Custer
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PostPosted: Sun Jul 29, 2018 8:10 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Here's the Palace of Green Porcelain, as rendered in the Classics Illustrated version of The Time Machine:



"Lost museums, even those abandoned for millennia, have power. That’s one moral of perhaps the most striking lost museum, the one portrayed in H. G. Wells' Time Machine. The time traveller spots what he calls The Palace of Green Porcelain, a place different from any other building in that distant future. He visits, taking a long and difficult trek to find it, “seeking a refuge” from fear there, as well as weapons, and fire." Or at least that's what the page I visited, here, says...
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johnnybear
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PostPosted: Mon Jul 30, 2018 3:07 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I think maybe the Eloi were becoming too lazy for their Morlock masters! They no longer made or repaired their own clothes and the majority of the males no longer had the need to mate with the women of their tribe! Indolence among the men was running riot and they weren't even perturbed by one of their own people drowning right in front of them!

Now that sounds like the theme running in cities today! So if George hadn't turned up when he did then maybe both races would have become extinct within the next forty years!
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Mon Jul 30, 2018 9:38 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

johnnybear wrote:
I think maybe the Eloi were becoming too lazy for their Morlock masters! They no longer made or repaired their own clothes and the majority of the males no longer had the need to mate with the women of their tribe!

JB, bear in mind that in the story I suggested, it was the older "slave Eloi" who made clothes for the clueless, lazy "food Eloi", and they were forced to do it. If those Eloi got lazy, they'd be tortured or killed!

As for the idea that the Eloi would simply loose interest in sex, we all know that the need for sex has a powerful influence on ALL animals, humans especially.

The pleasure-loving, totally pampered Eloi have little else to do but screw each other, and since they were apparently bred for blond good looks, I think it would be somewhat unrealistic to suggest that the males no longer felt the need for sex.

Think of the Eloi as bunny rabbits. And what happens when you put a group of rabbits together and give them abundant food? They make more rabbits! They don’t do this because they’re industrious and ambitious. The do it because they’re rabbits and it feels good. Very Happy

JB, I'm enjoying your speculations on this concept, and I know you'll keep coming up with new ideas to discuss. I'm a little puzzled however as to why you keep gravitating back to the idea that the Eloi and the Morlocks are on the verger of extinction. Frankly that’s the least interesting of all the possible outcomes. It offers absolutely no drama, story wise.

But if the Morlocks are just smart enough to maintain and perpetuate their horrible system of food production, then by God we’ve got ourselves an interesting story!

And if there are a few Eloi with enough courage and intelligence to fight back, then we’ve got ourselves an exciting revolution!

The extinction of both groups because neither one has the brains nor the will to do something worthwhile isn’t a big tragedy, much less a good story. I mean, hell’s bells, if the Eloi have degenerated so far that they don’t even have a basic sex drive (much less any of the more redeeming qualities) who cares if they all die? Shocked

What I’d rather see in the sequel are Morlocks with enough brains to be truly dangerous, and a few Eloi with enough courage to fight back.

I realize that I haven’t sold anybody on the idea that the Morlocks are using enslaved Eloi to do all the tasks necessary to keep the “food Eloi” happy, well dressed, well fed, and totally clueless. But the appeal of that idea for me is that it makes the Morlocks much more evil and despicable. Cannibalism is disgusting enough all by itself, but cannibals who force their victims to take care of the ones who will be eaten is much worse!

It’s a colossal injustice heaped on top of a terrible atrocity! (And great story idea!
Very Happy)
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johnnybear
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PostPosted: Mon Jul 30, 2018 1:39 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Bud, Bud! I think the idea of both races becoming extinct is a good one! The Eloi probably weren't always so lazy but in the recent years they've become too self absorbed to care about even one of their number perishing! That or maybe the Morlocks were not producing offspring down in their underground eden!

Strange how in a lot of sci-fi stories it's the humans on the surface who become the monsters or the mindless zombies after a nuclear apocalypse or some other disaster, while the underground dwellers retain their intellect and human appearance even if they might not always be the good guys!
JB
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Mon Jul 30, 2018 3:58 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

johnnybear wrote:
Bud, Bud! I think the idea of both races becoming extinct is a good one! The Eloi probably weren't always so lazy but in the recent years they've become too self absorbed to care about even one of their number perishing!

Well, I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree, JB. I can't for life of me think of an interesting story about two groups of people who just die in the end.

Seems like a rather limited premise. Confused

My tastes obviously run towards more optimistic tales, and I love the idea that George finds out all those new aspects of the Eloi enslavement which make it so much more complex than just "Don't go out at night or you'll get gobbled up!"

It gives George a new group of surviving Morlocks to fight and Eloi to rescue — the ones who are part of the "slave community".

Of course, my own concept doesn't rule out the idea that both groups are in danger of extinction. But it's much more dramatic to suggest that if the poor Eloi don't get free of the Morlocks, they will continue to be victims of the Morlocks' despicable practices for many years to come! Shocked

After all, this is over 800,000 years in the future, which suggests that whatever has been going on has endured pretty well for quite some time. There seems to be no evidence that it's about to end.

And I still think you haven't addressed the obvious questions the movie poses concerning how the helpless Eloi are so well provided for when they seem so damn helpless. Meanwhile the Morlocks don't seem capable of providing all the creature comforts we see, like the daily meals in the big dinner hall and the clean clothes the Eloi wear every day!

When George asked the Eloi boy where the food came from, the young guy just said, "It grows. It always grows."

Obviously these people give no thought to how they manage to live their carefree lives. When George first walks into the big dinning area, everything had been perfectly set up for the Eloi to return from their happy day at the beach and have lunch.






JB, do you seriously think the Eloi were capable of that kind of organization and teamwork? Heck, you said yourself they were so lazy and apathetic they wouldn't lift a finger to save Weena when she was drowning!

So I just can't picture the Eloi organizing themselves into groups who had specific jobs like "the table setting team" and the "fruit bowl team" and the "beverage pouring team".

And as for the Morlocks doing it — even those females you suggested might be creating the clothing — they aren't physically capable of coming out in the daylight and setting up that elaborate lunch for the Eloi while they're off swimming in the river!

Face it, JB, the Morlocks must have recruited Eloi slave labors and trained them to do things like this! No other explanation makes a damn lick of sense! Shocked

I'm just not buying the "recycled clothes" and the "female Morlock seamstresses" suggestions. Sounds completely far fetched to me.

From the expression on George's face, I think he agrees with me. Wink






JB, I'm looking forward to reading your ideas for a sequel that involves the extinction of both groups and a detailed explanation for how the Morlocks solved all these problems without help from older, well-trained Eloi.

Please show me what interesting aspects of that concept have eluded me. Cool

While you're at it, maybe you can solve some of the story problems I haven't even addressed. Like what were all those machines the Morlocks were running?






What was that highly flammable liquid which George ignited while it was running freely from a pipe in the cave wall?

Were tanks of that liquid the cause of the explosions which made the Morlock cave complex collapse? Was it a fossil fuel of some type?






If so, what the hell were the low-brow Morlocks doing with refined fossil fuel in huge tanks! Shocked

It's clear to me, JB, we can't just assume that what little we learned about the Morlocks ( . . . they had machines and they ate Eloi . . . ) is the whole story of these hideous creatures!

And if what we saw of the Morlocks was just the tip of the iceberg, I don't think it's unreasonable to assume that we don't really know everything about the Eloi either.

So, it seems to me there's much more about this concept than you've been willing to consider. Cool

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Last edited by Bud Brewster on Sat Nov 27, 2021 10:34 am; edited 1 time in total
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Robert (Butch) Day
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PostPosted: Tue Jul 31, 2018 5:06 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

George (both Producer and traveler) KNEW what they were doing. He envisioned that the co-dependent Man/Morlock situation was doomed failure but taking hints from the novel had this pre-production painting:



Granted in the novel it is about 1 billion years past AD 802,701, sequel would have been set in a more realistic 10 billion years in the future.

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Maurice
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PostPosted: Thu Aug 02, 2018 12:29 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Robert (Butch) Day wrote:
Granted in the novel it is about 1 billion years past AD 802,701, sequel would have been set in a more realistic 10 billion years in the future.

Realistic how? The sun has been increasing its brightness by about 10% every billion years, and 1 billion years from now Earth will be on the "too hot" side of the Goldlocks zone and the oceans will boil away, long long before the sun goes all red giant in like 5 billion years and swallows the charred little planet.
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Robert (Butch) Day
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PostPosted: Thu Aug 02, 2018 6:59 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Assuming one uses our understanding of stellar evolution as of the late 1950s.
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Eadie
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PostPosted: Fri May 31, 2019 7:33 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Bud Brewster wrote:
Now I'll have to work on what Deslocks are!

In Star Blazers Deslock was the prince and leader of the planet Gamilon, which, like Metaluna, had its civilization underground.



Basically the same shade of blue as the Morlocks
.


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johnnybear
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PostPosted: Sat Jun 01, 2019 7:27 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

That Morlock looks like some woman I've been trying to catch my eye! Laughing
JB
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Gord Green
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PostPosted: Sat Jun 01, 2019 12:23 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I think you also have to keep in mind that Wells meant the Eloi/Morlock relationship to be somewhat of an allegory.
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Wed Apr 27, 2022 1:01 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

________________________________

Here's a thought.

Suppose that the underground complex really was extracting crude oil, then refining it and storing it. This would just be one small installation created for that task, and it would be crewed by workers of low intelligence (even for Morlocks) who were trained for this work.

An underground pipeline would carry the refined fuel to a more elaborate underground Morlock facility that received the fuel from other facilities similar to the one we saw in the movie.



All these underground complexes would serve a much larger Morlock society in an underground city close by. But it's not especially large or technologically advance, and it certainly doesn't have a population who are much more sophisticated than the crude, cannibalism creatures the movie presents.

That's all I've got on this idea right now. Can anybody build on it or modifying it?

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scotpens
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PostPosted: Thu Apr 28, 2022 1:06 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

johnnybear wrote:
Bud, Bud! I think the idea of both races becoming extinct is a good one! The Eloi probably weren't always so lazy, but in the recent years they've become too self absorbed to care about even one of their number perishing!

But unlike the Morlocks, who were presented as subhuman monsters, the Eloi -- despite their passivity and inability to provide for themselves -- retained that spark of humanity. All they needed was the right leader to come along, give them a good pep talk and whip them into shape!
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