The Mysteron Lunar Complex

[chrisbishop]

We were having a chat discussion the other night about the Mysteron Complex on the moon. And a few questions (and not necessary answers) had arisen on that occasions. Sharing them with you seemed like a sensible thing to do, as you may have some thought about this.

First question: how did the Mysterons - who seemed so far content with a sedentary existence on Mars, emigrate to Earth's moon? They weren't there before - that's a certainty, because they would have been discovered on the Moon instead of Mars, way before the Zero-X mission was sent to Mars to investigate radio signals coming from there. So, they must have moved AFTER their encounter with the humans. The question as to WHY seeming evident, it's the HOW now that's bothering me... Did they suddenly developped a way to travel through space (they didn't bother visit us before, I'll remind you...) and if so, how come they weren't detected by radars when they were approaching the Moon? I don't think they physically moved themselves that easily. Subsequent exploration of the Lunar Complex by Scarlet and his crew seemed to indicate that the Mysterons weren't present. Only an empty complex waiting for... what?

Second question: Have you noticed that the Mysterons were building their lunar complex from scratch when Scarlet and the others discovered them in Crater 101? Using EQUIPMENT and TOOLS. That's so mundane from them, don't you think? But then again, they COULD'NT retrometabolise a city on the spot. For that to happen, there would have need a previous complex there in the first place (and still from previous explorations of the Moon, we know it wasn't the case). So they probably had to do that the old fashion way. Now, there's probably a lot of earthly junk lying around on the Moon for them to use and built their complex. Now, taking into account that they physically are not there, and their awsome powers, they probably controled and supervised the construction at distance from Mars. The vehicles (wherever they came from - maybe remains of the equipment used to built the Lunarville many cities?) might also be animated of an analitic computerised 'mind' in order to do their work - or to attack the vehicle bringing Scarlet and the others on the spot!

Third question: While junk lying around may have served to built the Complex, what about energy source? The Mysterons CERTAINLY DIDN'T find the diamond pulsator on the Moon. Nor did they recreate it. It had to be brought there - which bring us back to question number one, so to speak. For what it is worth, the diamond pulsator might very well be the only piece of technology the Mysterons had brought from Mars to the Moon in order to built their complex.

And last question: WHY build the Mysteron Complex on the Moon in the first place? Maybe as a launching platform for a larger attack on Earth? Maybe unlikely, as we all know the content of the Mysterons' initial threat ('Our retaliation will be slow but nonetheless effective...'). I think it was discussed in a previous thread (One I don't know had survived from previous forum...) but it has been stipulated that the Complex had been just a huge mouse trap especially built for humans. For what exactly? Test the 'specimens' who would come to explore it? Or was there a more sinister project behind that?

Feel free to add to the reflexion if you want - or to present your explanations and theories about those questions. All answers are acceptable... as long as you accept debating about them!

[FlicCity]

Here's the answers according to my theory of what the Mysterons are...
First point: How they got to the Moon. I am assuming that they are non-corporeal life-forms, so that the problems most species would have with travelling through vacuum wouldn't apply to them. While it would presumably take a great deal of energy for their influence to reach the Moon, I do not think it would be beyond their capabilities. After all, they can reach Earth with enough control to drive a car or truck! They might find it slightly harder on the Moon because they have no agent to act as a conduit, but it should be possible for them to reprogram a set of machines. Which leads to the second point: the fact that they were using EQUIPMENT and TOOLS to build the complex. It would be much harder for them to 'create' a complex on the Moon than it was to build it -- influencing physical matter is easier than creating it.
Third point: The diamond pulsator. According to my theories, the diamond pulsators are physical manifestations of the energies the Mysterons need -- rather like a storehouse. The fact that there was a diamond pulsator within the complex suggests that it was either completed or very nearly so.
And your final question: Why they built a complex on the Moon. The complexes are their processing plants; they need them in order to survive. The complex was probably built so that if humanity did succeed in destroying the Martian Complex, the Mysterons would have another ready. And from the Moon to Earth is a much shorter distance -- they would probably have an even greater range of powers when reaching over so much smaller a distance...

[Doc Denim]

One of my favorite questions! (Also covered under - Lunar Missions.....)

I happen to think that the whole purpose of the Mysteron's Lunar Complex wasn't (in all likelihood) as a base for the Mysterons to use as a place from which to attack Earth and/or Lunar colonies at all - I think the genuine purpose of the Lunar Complex may well have been to give us lowly humans Another Chance. Think about this:

The Mysteron's Lunar Complex was built quite close to a number of Earth's Lunarville colonies - but for proximity of attack, if that was their intention, they could likely have put it a little further out of reach of easy discovery without too much problem...as noted above, they do seem to manage things quite all right all the way from Mars, after all. And why, do you suppose, the Lunar Controller chose to announce that he'd made contact with and negotiated a settlement with the Mysterons on the time schedule that he did? The Mysteron's Complex wasn't finished yet, therefore giving Spectrum and the Lunar Authorities an opportunity to do something about it before it was too late. The Mysterons may well have wanted to see just exactly what we'd actually do. We know that Spectrum was able to get in there, steal the power source and then demolish the Complex (which may not have been necessary, after they'd disabled it by taking the diamond pulsator) (and which the Mysterons may have intended that they do) and then get away clean, pictures and all, with enough info to go and build a working model of the pulsator unit for a future episode.

What if, just maybe, the purpose of the Lunar Complex was a TEST, to see whether or not the humans would repeat their first mistake? Perhaps the inital destruction of the Martian complex was an error in Black's judgement. But that simply can't be said for the destruction of the Lunar site - the humans learned about it, talked it over, and then very deliberately arranged by concensus to destroy it. (Using a low-yield nuclear device - 'Arrangements have been made with the Lunar Authorities to carry this out' I believe Colonel White said. And 'Of course, it must be destroyed at once.' Proving on the whole what sort of aggressive, territorial and short-sighted creatures we really are, even Colonel White.)

Have fun!

Doc Denim

[chrisbishop]

It may also be that Earth authorities decide to destroy the Lunar Complex AFTER having considered that the Lunar Controller - who had obviously been previously Mysteronised by the Mysterons - had tried to stop Scarlet, Blue and Green from leaving Lunarville Seven - and threatening them. Therefore proving that the Mysterons' intentions were indeed hostile.

[shaqui]

The Mysterons cannot create objects out of nothing. It would seem the lunar complex was specialised and nothing like anything they had built before, therefore it had to be created from scratch, rather than from anything they could 're-create', such as the buildings of the Martian one. Some were superficially similar, but hey - wouldn't humans build along similar lines for their own stuff when creating something new?

The Mysteron machines were probably used before, in buliding the Martian complex, and could have been re-constructed on the Moon without previous detection. They could have had the ability to refine materials from the lunar crust. That said, some areas of the lunar complex seem to straddle a fine line between matter and energy - Scarlet and co, following the observation of one of these drones, simply walk through a seemingly solid wall. Hologram? Or is the complex constructed by means we cannot comprehend, even if it seems to have been built by 'conventional' means?

[Kambei]

Is it possible that the Mysterons possess a 'stealth' technology that could be applied to space travel using ships? If so, it would explain how they transported vehicles, materials and the pulsator to the moon without detection. Or possibly they copied the technique used to get the satellite to Phobos, this time using the moon as a shield. Odd that, isn't it. We have a proper name for every moon of every other planet in our solar system, and yet mainly refer to ours as 'The Moon'.
As for the pulsators, are they possibly artificial diamonds? I was just wondering because of the size of them. Creating one would not be beyond the Mysterons' abilities. All you need is some carbon and enough pressure.

[Kambei]

Clonel Chris, I'm not sure if the Mysterons' intentions in stopping the Spectrum agents from travelling to Crater 101 can be purely interpreted as hostile. Consider that the last time people from Earth encountered a Mysteron complex, they destroyed it, and not long after the new city was discovered, that was destroyed too. I think the Mysterons had a right to be paranoid about letting humans near one of their bases.

[Clya Brown]

Just to pick up on the last of Chris's original questions (i.e. why build the Mysteron complex in the first place?), I feel the key to all of this revolves around the Lunar Controller, and the reason for that apparently ridiculous announcement that the inhabitants of the moon had no quarrel with the Mysterons. Ridiculous because it made no sense: the only effect of it was to alert Spectrum to the fact that something untoward was going on and needed to be investigated PDQ - and any self-respecting Mysteron with two retrometabolised brain cells would surely have understood that at the outset. So why the devil did the Lunar Controller do it?

Was it done specifically to titillate Spectrum's curiosity, and get them to investigate? If so, was it just one big mouse trap? I don't think so - because of a couple of private conversations that we hear between the Lunar Controller and Orson, his second-in-command, both of whom are clearly sympathetic to the Mysteron cause. There's the one just before Scarlet, Blue and Green arrive, in which the controller notes that this is Spectrum's first visit to the moon, to which Orson asks if it's going to be their last, and the controller replies that it could well be their last (though interestingly he doesn't actually say that it will be their last). And there's the other one when the controller is informed that Scarlet and his pals have gone off in a moonmobile, and he announces to Orson that it's essential that what they've seen must never be reported back to Earth. The combined effect of those two conversations strongly suggests that the Mysterons really don't want the Earthmen to discover what they're up to. (There's also a conversation between Scarlet and Orson in the earlier moonmobile trip in which Scarlet says he wants to go to the Humboldt Sea, and Orson says that it's impossible, but I think we have to discount that one, because that could easily be interpreted as a ploy to make the Earthmen even more determined to do just that.)

The only possible conclusion - as far as I can see anyway - is that the Lunar Controller has been almost incredibly naive when making his little declaration of independence. In effect, he's acting like an idealistic revolutionary who believes that all he has to do to advance the cause of his people is wave a flag in the air and chant a few slogans. And I'm guessing that the reason for that is that he wasn't close enough to the Mysteron consciousness (in the form of either his masters on Mars or Captain Black on Earth) to grasp the reality that you need to be a lot more Machiavellian than that if you're going to effect a successful revolution on the moon. I reckon the Mysterons saw a chance to get a foothold on the moon - which they obviously took when the opportunity arose - but later found themselves shaking their collective heads in abject dismay when they realised what an ass he'd been by tipping off the Earthmen that something was afoot. However what was done was done - and just like any regime down here that's been dropped in the soup, they chose to put a brave face on it when broadcasting their little weekly radio message to Cloudbase by expressing their complete support for his actions.

There are a few interesting things we learn about Mysteron agents in that episode. They sleep (because Scarlet managed to steal the controller's identity disk while he was doing so), and they discuss policy and tactics among themselves, which in turn implies that they're capable of independent thought. So they aren't automatons - but they possibly aren't used to thinking for themselves, which could well be part of the reason why Captain Black is so necessary to their operations on Earth.

To sum up, I reckon the complex was built for the reason the Lunar Controller defiantly stated to Scarlet towards the end of the episode, namely to act as a base for taking over the moon prior to launching an assault on the Earth. But I suspect the construction of it may have been opportunistic as opposed to being part of preconceived strategy, and it may well be that the Mysterons abandoned that plan once it had been prematurely discovered. Whether they subsequently planned to use it as a testing ground for the intentions of the Earthmen after that remains an open question.

[Maltray]

Hmm quit intreasting indeed, I have to agree with Fliccity and Doc Brown on some of the things they postulate. It is possible I guees, myself I have to say that the Mysterons had to be a form of none corporeal life. I would say something of some sort of energy being.

We must remember that cannot retrometbolise anything on a given whim. With the moon it's quite possible that they never spotted a need for a complex there. We are told that they posses the ability to recreate an exact likeness of an object or person. But first, they must destroy. If there's nothing to destroy then they must have to build or influence a object or person.

Then there is the Lunar Controller and Orson. In my thought both had to be mysteron reconstructions. It's been show several time Scarlet's 'sixth scence' isn't as good as it should be. The moon after all is a big place. It's possible Orson and the Lunar Controller suffered some sort of accident brought on by the Mysterons. After all it's hinted at in the "Mysterons" that the SSC's tyre explodes after being influenced by the Mysterons. There by causing the deaths of Scarlet and Brown.

Was Crater 101 and it's complex a better mouse trap?

I'm not so sure my reasons are that the complex was much to big just to trap Scarlet, Green and Blue, way way over kill. If they wanted to do that a direct strike against cloudbase would be much better for them.

I have to argue this, the Mysterons thretened only Earth the Moon wasn't named in the original threat. It's possible that the Mysterons intended to leave the moon alone. Anyway a Complex on the moon could have been the next logical step to launch the next phase of the mysteron plan to destroy all life on earth.

I'm sure someone will chew me out for this but there you go that's what I think.