Thursday, December 20, 2007

Survival Instinct Will Alter Their Programming

So next month, we're going to see Nova on the world of Kvch, the original homeworld of the Phalanx, as Richard is hoping he'll find something to help him fight said Phalanx. Initially, I was going to talk about how I was hoping we'd find out how the Phalanx began, what was the origin of their hivemind, techno-organic structure, and things like that. Then I did a little poking around on Wkipedia, and felt like going a different direction.

I didn't know the Phalanx are sort of an offshoot of beings like Warlock (the one from the old New Mutants series, not Adam Warlock), called the Technarcy. I vaguely remembered Douglock being around when the Phalanx first really established themselves as a threat, but that was in '90s X-Men comics, so I think I can be forgiven for not trying too hard to follow what was happening. The Wiki entry also told me the Phalanx are considered abominations by the Technarcy, who pride themselves on their individuality, while the Phalanx tend to lack that quality. That's kind of interesting. It doesn't explain how a techno-organic race originated, but it did raise some other questions for me.

See, the entries say that when the Phalanx in a region reach a certain number, they construct a Babel Spire, which sends a signal to the Magus, ruler of the Technarcy, who shows up and destroys all Phalanx. It's clearly not something they should want to do, but it's hardwired into what passes for the genetic code of the transmode virus. And in Conquest, they have built a Spire, but they've also created a barrier, which means the Magus can't get in. Apparently, Ultron wasn't able to eliminate the instinctive drive to build the Spire, but he was able to instill in them a need/desire/urge to build a device that would protect them from the doom the Spire brings.

Of course, that still raises the question of how they learned to build a device that, as Phyla put it, did something not even Galactus is capable of, by shifting the Kree Galaxy out of "normal" space. Where would they have found that technology? Off hand, I'd suggest either the Rigellians, who created the Recorders and were big on collecting knowledge and could have either created such a device, or found records of it somewhere in their explorations, or the Celestials. Where are they getting the power to maintain it? It seems pretty likely that now the energy is being supplied by the Kree that are being "processed", but where did they get the energy for the initial creation of it? They hadn't been invading that long, could they already have captured and processed enough Kree to construct the barrier, or did they sacrifice some of themselves for the energy? That seems like a very "hivemind" thing to do.

3 comments:

Jason said...

Hmmmm...the only thing I remember from those old New Mutants issues is that Magus is Warlock's father. I have no clue what happened to Warlock after Doug died.

Anyhoo, I like the idea that Ultron, though controlling the Phalanx, can't eliminate some of their ingrained directives, some that may run counter to his wishes.

CalvinPitt said...

jason: Yeah, I think setting a limit on just how much control of the Phalanx Ultron has is a nice touch.

As for Warlock, looks like he was initially destroyed by Cameron Hodge during Inferno, and what was left of him was the source of the rise of the Phalanx on Earth. Naturally, he came back later on.

nova3333 said...

Hello. I'm daz; member of the Nova Prime Yahoo group. I've set up a blog dedicated to Nova; the is link below. Long term fan, have been for over 30 years; Current run is the best so far. Looking forward to Rich's encounter with the Technarchy; old favourites of mine so it'll interesting if/how they can aid him with the Transmode virus. You have so interesting articles hre, especially the one ref the Corps; I'm currently doing a series of Nova fan-fiction stories with a few fellow fans from Nova Prime; come and visit if you can. All the best for the new year.

http://novadaz.blogspot.com/