Science Fiction - Creature Feature

Here, Spot!  Come on, boy!  Where are you, Harley?  Love biting our mailman again, Spike?

Ah, the loyal animals in our lives.  Where would any of us be without our pets?  Dogs... cats... fish... gerbils... ferrets... pigs... tribbles....  Hold the phone!  Tribbles?

If you're not a Trekker, you may only know about tribbles by word of mouth.  Maybe a friend or a loved one owns a few collectibles.  If you've lived long and prospered along with the UFP, then you know of what I speak.  Tribbles may be the most famous of all the sci-fi pets.  After all, they're furry, fuzzy and can be kept as pets - right?  Well, I suppose they can be kept as pets if you're really wealthy - because feeding and properly keeping their voluminous offspring is a monumental task only Donald Trump could rightly afford.  I wonder if Trump would build a fence around them to try to contain all his tribbles?  Maybe he'd send them off to Mexico to nurture better diplomatic relations with our neighbors to the south?

For the crew of fabled Starship Enterprise, in the classic episode, The Trouble With Tribbles, the problem all began when Captain Kirk's crew couldn't resist buying these cuddly creatures from cosmic trader, Cyrano Jones.  Doesn't William Shatner look simply delighted in that tribble pow-wow?  Starfleet not only allows you to see the galaxy, evidently, it also enables one to get down right personal with cosmic creatures.

Of course, Tribbles are merely one of the more well known of the sci-fi pets, but they're certainly not the first, nor the last.  Science Fiction has established a great tradition of bringing our pets with us out into the farthest reaches of the cosmos.  Where would Han Solo be without his big, shaggy dog, Chewbacca?  Oy!  I can hear the screams of protest now!  Okay, sure, Chewie isn't actually a dog, but we all know what Han's big fuzzball is based on.  How about Ewoks? More pet like.  Definitely.  Maybe though, they're too cute for words, or many of our stomachs.  And let's not get started with Jar Jar Binks - please.

Me a no popular!?

Could I be your pet?

Fact is that many of the characters in many of the big sci-fi movies, TV shows and books are merely pets reimagined.  In the classic Hollywood science fiction epic, The Day The Earth Stood Still, Gort's an intergalactic and awesomely destructive robot - yep.  He's also Klaatu's companion, assistant, or yes, even pet, after a fashion.

Gort!  Where's your leash?

Robby The Robot astounds us in the 1954 classic sci-fi epic, Forbidden Planet.  He can speak most any known language - take that C3PO! - and even whip up some fine and powerful moonshine.  Morbius (Walter Pidgeon), his human creator, tells us that technical knowledge from planet's native aliens, the enigmatic and long since deceased Krell, enabled him to tinker Robby together.  It's as if Robby's merely a powerful toy, a plaything - and he's so much like a pet, that he has that cuddly factor down to a veritable science.

Even the most advanced technology can always learn something basic, even quaint, from something as old school as a cuddly cat.  Take one of the most advanced, sentient life forms in all of the ranks of the legendary Starfleet - the android Data - science officer on the Enterprise D, under Captain Jean-Luc Picard, played by the great Patrick Stewart.  Actor Brent Spiner played Data as the ever questing, ever human equation pondering artificial lifeform.  But even the astounding Data needed a sci-fi pet.

 

Spot, that is not your litter box.