History Headscratchers / TheThing1982

** To quote MacReady: This thing wakes up after thousands of years in the ice... probably not the best of moods...
Also, intelligent does not mean peaceful. Let's not make the same assumption than Professor Kessler in Mars Attacks: “We know they're extremely advanced technologically, which suggests - very rightfully so - that they're peaceful. An advanced civilization, by definition, is not barbaric.” The thing, though intelligent, is aggressive and seems to have a compulsion to destroy other life forms.

Also, intelligent does not mean peaceful.
Let's not make the same assumption than Professor Kessler in Mars Attacks: “We know they're extremely advanced technologically, which suggests - very rightfully so - that they're peaceful. An advanced civilization, by definition, is not barbaric.”
The thing, though intelligent, is aggressive and seems to have a compulsion to destroy other life forms.

** Yes but they had ample time between the inital attack and the "dog" being put in the kennel to give it some thought.Honestly suprised that they didn't consider rabis as being a reson for the Norwegiangs has "gone crazy", and it would of lined up with the dogs behaviour, rabis can present as docility in certain stages.

* So if both Garry and Cooper weren't infected, then how ''did'' the Thing get into the blood supply?

*** Blair!Thing ''could'' have had two very good reasons for destroying communications and transportation. One, it's what Human!Blair would do given the information he had about the Thing. Two, it enforces the ClosedCircle setting. The Thing is vulnerable so long as there's one human around who knows what it is and can expose and burn it. Trapping everyone in the confines of the base and preventing them from explaining what they've learned means the Thing has all winter to assimilate everyone. Eventually, someone will come to check on the outpost, bringing their own transportation. The Things can make up any story they like about what happened and get a free ride back to civilization.

** Also thought of in the Novel in another way: the team kill an Albatross found on Antartica so the Thing can't absorb it to grow wings.

*** But even considering all that, there are multiple kinds of intelligence. Just because it can build a spaceship doesn't necessarily mean it can conceive of ideas like "Make friends with the humans". There's no telling what strange gaps an alien intelligence might have in its thinking.

*** But even considering all that, there are multiple kinds of intelligence. Just because it can build a spaceship doesn't mean it can conceive of ideas like "Make friends with the humans". There's no telling what strange gaps an alien intelligence might have in its thinking.

** Another possibility is that the Thing devours and kills its victims before it starts to build the imitation. During the devouring, most likey a "scanning" process is taking place, so the thing examines how the cells and the entire body/system is structured, so it can recreate it later. According to this interpretation, the takeover and the imitation does not happen on a cell by cell basis (the Thing is an organism, not a virus), but first the victim is devoured, killed and "scanned", and an imitation is built only after that. With Bennings, for a few seconds we see how the thing is building the Bennings-imitation, when Windows is returning to the room, and later when the Bennings-imitation is running out to the snow, the vocal chords and the hands are not yet formed. So in essence every "cell" of every imitation is a thing-cell, created by the thing during the imitation phase, so they are capable of the radical shapeshifting we see the imitations routinely performing when they are busted (Palmer-Thing) or otherwise disturbed (Norris-Thing).

*** Well, it's definitely multicellular, since the whole blood test is predicated on each individual grouping of cells being it's own complete organism. As for it "feeding," the impression I got from the computer model was the the individual cells acted more like a virus, infecting the cells that are already there and transforming them from human cells to Thing cells. It's not consuming the body and replacing it, it's ''converting'' the body.

** They weren't exactly thinking straight at that point, and the prequel shows the the actual pilot of the helicopter had no real idea why the hell Lars wanted to kill that dog so badly.

** Here's some FridgeHorror for you. Earlier in the movie, [=MacReady=] was warned that it was possible for just one cell of the The Thing to infect an entire person, and everyone should prepare their own meals and only eat out of cans. At the end, [=MacReady=] hands Childs a bottle of whisky. When Childs takes a drink, [=MacReady=] chuckles. . .
** Or maybe he's just laughing over Childs accepting the drink at all since Childs had been acting very antagonistic towards him during the film. That doesn't necessarily indicate he could be the the Thing.

** Freezing and sleeping is just part one of it's presumed plan, it needs to be found by a rescue team so it can reach civilization. Presumably the The Thing would not want to freeze outside the camp, as it would likely be buried in the snow and never found (it took 100,000 years for its ''massive'' spaceship to be found). As far as destroying themselves goes, they were already as good as dead. With the generator gone, even the interior of the camp would eventually become lethally cold. The only thing they could hope to do was deny The Thing a safe place to impersonate a frozen corpse.

** Leave it outside on a chain lead, put it in Blair's shed, keep it in a storage room. Plenty of options that don't involve risking a nasty dogfight.

* The Norwegians discover the alien ship and dig it up. We can see they use dynamite to uncover it. But would a normal scientific expedition to Antarctica have the resources to dig up with such thorough neatness an enormous spaceship as shown in the film? And wouldn't such an extraordinary discovery prompt them to radio back home what they found? How long would they take to remove all the ice from the ship? In that case wouldn't that take enough time for the excavation to become some sort of priority for the Norwegian Government enough to prevent the Norwegian camp from becoming isolated at all?

* Are explosives the way to go when dealing with this creature? It seems like the troll in D&D: as long as the damage isn't done by fire, it'll regenerate, no matter how catastrophic the damage was. When Macready blew up Palmer-thing, he may have actually saved it: by blowing it apart, the fire is instantly extinguished, and doubtlessly several fragments got separated from the burning flesh, and would recombine and rebuild.

** Because that's what Palmer would have said. Palmer is shown to be a wisecracker, and the Thing perfectly imitates personalities. It's also shown to be selfish and uncaring about other Things.

** Another interpretation somewhere on this site is that Palmer!Thing was ''genuinely astounded'' at the fleeing head's stupidly-obvious escape attempt.