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1[[quoteright:160:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Expedition_to_DarwinIV_patch_2324.png]]
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4''Expedition -- Being an Account in Words and Artwork of the 2358 A.D. Voyage to Darwin IV'' by Creator/WayneBarlowe in 1990, is a illustrated SpeculativeDocumentary about an expedition to the [[ScienceFiction fictitious]] planet "Darwin IV" and its life forms. It was adapted into a [[MadeForTVMovie TV movie]] called ''[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_Planet Alien Planet]]'' by the Creator/DiscoveryChannel in 2005, featuring [[SpecialGuest guest appearances]] by Creator/StephenHawking, Creator/GeorgeLucas, Michio Kaku and Jack Horner.
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6[[https://waynebarlowe.wordpress.com/artwork/expedition/ The author's website for the book can be found here]].
7
8----
9!!The book and film provide examples of:
10* AdaptationalBadass:
11** The Littoralopes gain some cool-looking black armor for ''Alien Planet''.
12** The Amoebic Sea is portrayed as an active predator that hunts flyers, such as the young of the Emperor Sea Strider. In the book, it was perfectly defenseless and is essentially a feast for all the animals that live at its shore.
13* AdaptationalVillainy: The Eosapiens are not "villains" per se, but they do more harm to the main characters in Alien Planet. In the book, they just startle the crew. In the special, they mistake a disc camera for a threat, and this leads them to destroy the probes.
14* AdaptationDeviation: The baby Emperor Sea Striders fly via jet propulsion in the book, but have flapping wings in the documentary. They are also preyed upon by the Amoebic Sea itself, while in the book the sea is entirely inert.
15* AdaptationDistillation: ''Expedition''[='=]s storyline regarding GaiasLament and the Yma giving humanity interstellar travel is adapted out in ''Alien Planet'' in favour of Earth scientists merely discovering Darwin IV and sending probes to explore it.
16* AdaptationExpansion: ''Alien Planet'' changes and re-works quite a number of details:
17** The book describes the Emperor Sea Strider as being 600 feet or 183 meters in height, but the documentary scales it down to a more realistic 80 feet or 24 meters (it's still described as being the biggest creature on Darwin IV or Earth).
18** Prongheads are only depicted in a single picture in the book, but the documentary portrays their predatory behaviors in hunting Gyrosprinters, as well as their social behavior in packs.
19** Littoralopes are shown as having black armor in the documentary: they just have pale, leathery skin in the book.
20** The plants growing on the Groveback are depicted in the book as commensals, dying once the Groveback begins to move again. The documentary depicts a mutualistic relationship instead, with the plants providing the Groveback with sugars and receiving water in return.
21** The Amoebic Sea is portrayed as an active predator in the documentary. In the book, it's mostly inert and defenseless even as many shoreline creatures feed on its gelatinous matrix.
22** Electrophytes are expanded on, describing their electrical shocks as a means to hunt Jetdarters.
23** The Eosapiens are redesigned quite a bit: notably, their hands are more tentacle-like in the documentary, they wield spears instead of clubs, and they are portrayed as far more hostile and aggressive.
24* AdaptedOut: Of the over 50 creatures in ''Expedition'', only a handful make it into ''Alien Planet''. Notably, the ''entire tundra'' is excised, with one of its focus organims, the Unth, being moved to the Mountains instead. The Yma, the human characters and Earth's ecological collapse are also not featured.
25* AfterTheEnd: Darwin IV itself, possibly. There are many indications from the drones' observations that, as beautiful and unspoiled as the planet is, its biosphere is a mere shadow of its former self. Apparently, the planet is currently in the process of recovering from [[UnspecifiedApocalypse a mass extinction event of uncertain origin]] sometime in the recent ([[TimeAbyss as in a couple million years]]) evolutionary past that was so horrific it wiped out most of the planet's lifeforms and radically altered the composition of its atmosphere and oceans -- in fact, all surface water is gone; this catastrophe led to the evolution of the Amoebic Sea, as organisms banded together to trap what water was left. It's possibly similar to prehistoric Earth's "Oxygen Catastrophe" or, [[AbusivePrecursors more ominously]], certain scientists’ worst case scenarios for a runaway Greenhouse Effect.
26* AlienBlood: In ''Alien Planet'', when a Skewer impales a Littoralope, the blood that squirts out is purple.
27* AlienSea: The Amoebic Sea is purple, gelatinous, slimy, and alive. What's a more alien sea than a Texas-sized living blob that sends out tentacles to ensnare unfortunate critters flying above it? (Only in the documentary though, it's mostly inert and defenseless in the original book).
28* AliensNeverInventedTheWheel: On Darwin IV, neither jawbones nor eyeballs ever evolved, not that this hinders the aliens much.
29* AllCavemenWereNeanderthals: The Eosapiens may be sentient, but their level of technology is limited to sticks and clubs. They also end up smashing the two probes, not out of hostility, but because they mistook the camera as an attack.
30* AlwaysABiggerFish:
31** In ''Alien Planet'', a probe is saved from a Skewer by an Eosapien.
32** Eosapiens, in a parallel to humans, can hunt predators like Arrowtongues and Raybacks, seemingly for sport.
33** The food chain on Darwin IV is mighty bizarre. The top land predator, the Arrowtongue, is the Darwin equivalent of a ''T. rex'' yet itself is preyed on by the flying Skewer, a winged beast that hunts practically everything else. And just when you thought that nothing could prey on such a fierce predator... it itself is caught by the sessile Butchertree!
34* ArtificialIntelligence[=/=]ArtificialStupidity: Played with, as Ike is programmed to be cautious, while Leo is programmed to be adventurous, as a nod to the fact that sometimes the best discoveries come from doing something incredibly stupid, but there should be one robot that is more self-protective.
35* ArtisticLicenseBiology:
36** One notable criticism of Darwin IV is the seeming lack of taxonomic relationships between animals. The only attempt at classification the book gives them is based on their number of legs, which make about as much sense as saying humans are birds because they're both bipedal.
37--->'''Creator/{{Diogenes}}:''' Behold, a man!
38** The lack of eyes is incredibly unlikely -- if Earth's evolutionary history is any indication, sight is very easy to develop and provides a massive evolutionary advantage, meaning that it's almost a certainty in any ecosystem with light.
39** Darwin IV has no large bodies of water and its global environment is almost entirely dominated by arid deserts, windswept tundra, and rocky scrubland, yet it somehow hosts tons of gargantuan wildlife. This runs counter to what arid habitats are like on Earth, where lack of resources means large animals are rare. Additionally, the atmosphere of the planet is stated to have so much oxygen it's toxic to humans, but with the lack of vegetation, it's never explained where this oxygen is produced.
40** All of the animals living in the tundra habitats are depicted with naked exposed skin, without any explanation of how they keep themselves from freezing in the sub-zero temperatures with no obvious insulation.
41** The vast majority of Darwin IV's life are hermaphroditic, however on Earth, obligate hermaphroditic animals are comparatively rare, making up only a very small percentage of animals, and is unheard of in large animals, while in plants, separate sexes evolved independently at least a hundred times. This is because having separate sexes allows for greater genetic diversity, provides greater resistance against build-up of negative mutations, and it is more efficient to develop only male or female gametes rather than both. Unless there was some major genetic anomaly that resists evolution of separate sexes (which is not mentioned), there's no reason to think the same would not apply on Darwin IV.
42** Flight evolved several times on Darwin IV, but virtually only in the form of jet propulsion. Why flapping flight, the only form of flight that ever appeared on Earth (and appeared at least four times independently, not including the countless underwater fish which flap their fins to move through water) evolved so rarely is not made clear, especially since jet propulsion is much more energy intensive than flapping.
43** In several independent cases, animals on Darwin IV have fused limbs (such as the Rimerunner and the Gyrosprinter), but still function perfectly fine despite this. Nothing like this has ever been known to have happened on Earth because it's both extremely rare and ''always'' a deleterious mutation; the complete fusion of a pair of complex jointed walking legs, never mind ''two'' pairs, would be catastrophic for ''any'' animal, never mind the possibility multiple animals with this mutation could occur at the same time, survive to adulthood, and find each other to breed and pass on this gene over generations. There's no clear benefit to this, nor does the book provide any reason for it to evolve so many times.
44** Jaws are indicated to have never evolved on Darwin IV. Why this is so is never made clear, as jaws evolved multiple times among animals on Earth because it provides an obvious number of advantages over being restricted to a liquid diet, first and foremost it provides the important process of mechanical digestion that eases chemical digestion (and for carnivorous animals, it often functions for subduing, ripping apart, and/or killing prey). Notably, animals of this sort on Earth tend to be very small and have simple diets. While it is viable for small predatory insects to dissolve their prey and drink up the liquified insides, it's probably less so for dinosaur-sized predators dissolving dinosaur-sized prey carcasses because SquareCubeLaw is in effect; it would take many gallons of powerful acids several hours, if not days, at minimum to dissolve a body so large, while an animal with jaws could've ripped bite-sized chunks from a carcass and started eating immediately.
45** The flying Skewers do not appear to be capable of landing. They have no legs nor any other means of locomotion on the ground and evidently spend their entire lives in the air, even mating in flight. How exactly they prevent themselves from dropping dead with exhaustion is anyone's guess, as permanent activity -- especially activity as physically taxing as flight -- would eat up a lot of their energy.
46%%** Some of the creatures appear to be inspired by man-made Earth machines. For example, the Skewer's gas pods and birdlike shape evoke a World War II jet fighter, and the Gyrosprinter's leg arrangement, flat seat-like tail and handlebar-like halteres bear more than a passing resemblance to a motorcycle.%%How is this Artistic License - Biology? Simply taking visual cues from something isn't enough to be an example.
47* ArtisticLicenseChemistry:
48** Many of Darwin IV's aliens are bioluminescent, despite none of them having eyes to see it with. The text implicitly attempts to justify this as the glow mainly being a side effect of heat pits, but this is [[VoodooShark an explanation that raises further questions]], since (a) bioluminescence is "cold light" and produces very little heat, and (b) constantly having chemically-produced lights all over your body that serve no purpose at all is really metabolically expensive and wasteful.
49** The Skewer and Sea Strider nymphs remain airborne via active and continuous combustion in jet engine-like organs. The viability and efficiency of armoured, whale-sized, flying animals that never land relying entirely on chemically produced flammable gases as fuel is up for debate (never mind how this doesn't scorch their flesh). This is rectified in ''Alien Planet'' with the Sea Strider, as the nymphs are given wings instead of jets.
50* ArtisticLicensePhysics:
51** Many of the much larger creatures of Darwin IV, such as the Flipstick, the Groveback, and the Emperor Sea Strider are highly questionable in regards to SquareCubeLaw, being motile terrestrial life-forms of {{kaiju}} scale. Even taking into account the lower gravity of Darwin IV (stated to be 0.6 G), something as massive as a Sea Strider would, at minimum, need to be tens of thousands of tonnes just to stand up, but would certainly collapse under its own weight if it actually tried to walk around. And there's the Flipstick, which is a ''fifty metre tall'' organism (the same height as the first Godzilla) which only moves by ''leaping'' hundreds of feet into the air and somehow isn't pulverized into a fine paste on impact. The ''Alien Planet'' adaptation notably downsizes both the Groveback and Sea Strider considerably (and leaves out the Flipstick entirely). Not even mentioned is the Ebony Blisterwing, which is described as having a wingspan over 300 meters, and somehow kept aloft by a few bubbles on its wings.
52** On a related note, it's a bio-mechanical nightmare to try and explain how it's beneficial for an animal even half as massive as the Groveback to lose a perfectly functional leg and replace it with a fleshy skid that drags on the ground for the rest of its life, and it somehow doesn't tear the skid the shreds immediately.
53** Instead of flying by wing-propelled movement, some of Darwin IV's flying animals utilize lighter-than-air gases to stay airborne. However, even in a slightly lower gravity, the volume of air needed would be very large; the bladders would at minimum exceed the volume of the rest of the body a few times over (think how huge the gasbag chambers of zeppelins are compared to the passenger compartment). However, the gasbag aliens seen (the Eosapien, the Ebony Blisterwing, and the Rugose Floater) only have relatively small bubbles that are much smaller than the rest of their body. For the Eosapien, it is especially egregious, as it somehow lifts very large and heavy stone clubs into the air but doesn't seem to have any buoyancy issues.
54** The Skewer is a giant flying predator that kills its prey by spiking it from above with its lance-like head at jet-like speeds. How the Skewers are not pulverized on impact is not explained (especially because it's stated the lance is ''hollow''). There's an obvious reason no military ever tried inventing a warplane that destroyed ground targets by ''impacting'' them, nor is there any bird that hunts by impaling its prey on its beak mid-flight... There's also the fact that it still hunts by sonar, even though it is traveling at supersonic (read:''faster than sound'') speeds.
55* AscendedExtra: Electrophytes and Prongheads are barely mentioned in ''Expedition'', but in ''Alien Planet'' they manage to score a full creature feature.
56* AssholeVictim: Scar-Chest, an unusually-aggressive, cannibalistic Daggerwrist, is ultimately executed by the rest of the tribe. [[spoiler: However, it was because it was pregnant, and the rest of the tribe cut the baby from its belly and adopt it as one of their own.]]
57* AuthorAvatar: ''Expedition'' is written in the first-person perspective of a scientist in the far future named... Wayne Barlowe. As in, you know, the author.
58* BenevolentAlienInvasion: In the book, the Earth was taken over by the alien Yma after being devastated by human mismanagement, after which the aliens took over the process of making it habitable again.
59* BinarySuns: The Darwin system is centered on a dim red giant and a much smaller but brighter white dwarf. The term "''suns''light" is used to remind the readers of this fact.
60* BioluminescenceIsCool: Many species have this, which is odd, since no eyes ever evolved on the planet, so visible light is pointless. However, the bio-luminescence may just be a side effect of generating heat for thermographic signaling, as the majority of bioluminescent animals are explicitly identified as producing light from heat pits on their bodies.
61%%* BizarreAlienBiology: Plenty bizarre, but [[MostWritersAreHuman recognizable]]. Some, however, are odd halfway critters neither flora nor fauna.%%ZCE; this is just barely describing {{Planimal}}, not this trope.
62* BizarreAlienLimbs: The Emperor Sea Strider's legs are where its ''mouths'' are. Many species are tripodal and some, notably the Groveback, start life with a third leg which they shed as they grow older, replacing it with a weight-supporting skid.
63* BizarreAlienLocomotion: All sorts. There's the Rimerunner, a vaguely kangaroo-like creature that hops on one leg; the Skewer, which flies with jets of gas generated in its stomach; the Tundra Plow, which drags its face along the ice; the Gyrosprinter, a horse-like creature with a single front leg and a single hind leg; and a number of keeled animals such as the Groveback and the Forest Slider, which are born as quadrupeds or tripods but lose their hind legs when a hind skid replaces them.
64* BizarreAlienSenses: Sonar seems to be the primary sensory input for Darwin IV species, with thermographic sense as the closest they come to "vision". Justified by the majority of the planet having been blanketed in thick fog at the time when animal life's slate of sensory abilities were emerging, making vision superfluous.
65** Retconned in ''Alien Planet'', where the Eosapiens are able to "see" projected images by the probes; possibly they were detecting the slight heat generated by the light beams.
66* BizarreSexualDimorphism: Largely averted, as the Darwinian creatures are mostly hermaphroditic. Exceptions include the Sac-back, where the male waddles about on three limbs and the female is an immobile, sessile creature buried underground that requires feedings from her mobile mate as she is unable to move around, and potentially the Butcher-tree, as it is speculated (but not confirmed) in the book that the sessile, predatory tree and the tiny yellow fliers found around it are the female and male of a single species.
67* BodyHorror: Earth's remaining fauna are subject to this due to environmental pollution. A picture of malformed earth cows is shown at the beginning of the book, with no eyes, ears, horns, or even anything that could be recognized as a face.
68* {{Bowdlerization}}: ''Alien Planet'' conveniently neglects to mention that the Emperor Sea Strider’s second “tail” is actually [[ExoticEquipment a phallus]].
69* ButtMonkey: In a world of amazing, strange or frightening creatures, there's the Bladderhorn, a big, blue beast with balloon-like antlers and a comically flatulent call. It serves rather as comic relief in all the weirdness going on.
70* ColourCodedForYourConvenience: The ''Von Braun'' probes look identical except for being colored red, blue and yellow.
71%%* CoolStarship: The ''Von Braun'' from ''Alien Planet.''
72* CompositeCharacter:
73** The Arrowtongue is portrayed as a predator of the Gyrosprinter, a role filled by the Rayback in the books.
74** The Symet's armor and and head-tail symmetry is switched to the Littoralope, and the Symet itself does not appear.
75** In the books, the narrator witnesses a Groveback die of old age, and later sees a horde of Beach Quills striking down a Beach Loper. Here, the two are combined into a wandering Groveback being killed by Beach Quills.
76* CreatorsPet: InUniverse. Check out the ''Expedition'' badge -- an Emperor Sea Strider is emblazoned on it.
77* CrouchingMoronHiddenBadass:
78** The Gyrosprinter looks feeble as it awkwardly hobbles along on its mismatched legs, but should danger threaten, it bursts forward with the speed of a cheetah and the maneuverability of a mountain bike.
79** Bladderhorns look more like ill-designed rubber toys than extraterrestrial creatures, but their inflatable antlers and beeping roars belie their aggressive, territorial natures, especially against rival Bladderhorns, with whom they engage fierce headbutting duels with.
80* DeathByAThousandCuts: Beach Quills attack this way, propelling themselves in huge numbers at whatever happens to get too close, piercing into them and delivering fatal doses of neurotoxin. This allows them to bring down creatures as large as the Groveback.
81* DemotedToExtra: The Littoralopes get such a treatment in ''Alien Planet'', which even ignores their double-head trick and never explains them in detail.
82* DeusExMachina: The Skewers, which Barlowe calls as such [[http://waynebarlowe.wordpress.com/artwork/expedition/ in the website]], exist in large part to appear out of the blue and drastically alter any situation they enter.
83-->''The Skewers were always meant to be something of a deus ex machina, descending nearly unseen from heaven to lift off some pathetic animal, only to vanish as quickly as they appeared.''
84* DiesDifferentlyInAdaptation: Both ''Expedition'' and ''Alien Planet'' feature a scene with a dying Groveback. In the book, it simply dies of old age, but in ''Alien Planet'' it is killed by a swarm of Beachquills.
85* TheDreaded: The Eosapiens are intelligent and powerful hunters capable of dispatching even the most dangerous of the planet's creatures with only the assistance of crude clubs and spears. Little wonder, then, that almost every animal on the planet flees immediately upon so much as catching a glimpse of one, even the ones that regarded the probes with indifference or aggression. Even the titanic Sea Striders seem to be rattled by their presence.
86* DubNameChange: The Discovery special's Hungarian narration gave new, [[NonIndicativeName mostly meaningless names]] to the creatures. The changes are:
87** Arrowtongue to Megatroll
88** Bladderhorn to Pirotusz
89** Daggerwrist to Pengeriszt ("Blade-rist")
90** Groveback to Gigantis
91** Gyrosprinter to Futodron ("Runodron")
92** Jetdarter to Kriptor
93** Littoralope to Entulup
94** Pronghead to Sekil
95** Sea Strider to Teraton
96** Sea Strider nymph to Eszkirt
97** Skewer to Modir
98** Trunksucker to Szívokron ("Suckocron")
99* EatTheCamera: An Emperor Sea Strider, with mouths on its feet, swallows Ike's camera by stepping on it.
100* ElephantGraveyard: The imagery of such an idea is depicted in [[http://vignette4.wikia.nocookie.net/aliens/images/9/99/SeaStriderSkeleton.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20100427141417 this]] illustration of some animals grazing in the shade of a Sea Strider's skull.
101* ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin: Names like Arrowtongue, Groveback, Daggerwrist, Rayback, and Gyrosprinter tend to very concisely encapsulate each creature's most notable physical and behavioral traits.
102* ExplosiveBreeder: Prismalopes are abundant, fast-breeding omnivores that are practically Darwin IV's rodents.
103* {{Expy}}:
104** Considering Wayne Barlowe was a co-designer in ''Film/PacificRim'', it's really no big surprise that one Kaiju in the film, Mutavore, shares features of some creatures found in the book, the Keeled Slider being an uncanny look-alike.
105** The two-pronged ambush predator tree-things [[VideoGame/HalfLife look familiar to anyone who's been to Xen]].
106** The Ass-Blasters from ''Film/{{Tremors}}'' look an awful lot like the Daggerwrist.
107* EyelessFace: No eyes ever evolved on Darwin IV, as sonar and radar are the primary senses evolved on the planet.
108** Some creatures, though, have eye-like holes in their skeletal faces, and the Groveback's breathing organs resemble eyes.
109** The Rimerunner has a single, undeveloped eye on a head appendage, meaning that either eyes have gone extinct on the planet, or sight has just begun to evolve.
110%%* EyePop: The rimrunner does this with its single primitive eye.
111* FantasticFaunaCounterpart: Darwin IV's fauna has a number of species resembling either extant or extinct Earth species. Gyrosprinters are fast, antelope-like herbivores, unths are large tusked arctic beasts similarly to mammoths, prismalopes are the equivalents of rabbits, arrowtongues are large predators resembling a ''Tyrannosaurus rex'', prongheads are pack-hunters similarly to wolves while physically resembling velociraptors, etc.
112** Eosapiens may be comparable to early humans such as Neanderthals, however their physical strength and size that allows them to overpower nearly everything else in their environment makes them rather similar to orcas.
113** Namely, however, are some extremely unusual creatures that seem to have no earthly counterpart, such as the Springwing, which can be very loosely described as a flying mountain goat, or the Butchertree, a sessile terrestrial macropredator, or the Flipstick, which would be an aerial leaping filter feeder.
114** Strangely some unusual analogues are present: the Emperor Sea Strider, for example, is a massive micro-organism-eating creature restricted to the closest region the planet has to a sea: making it, despite appearances, Darwin IV's equivalent to a baleen whale.
115* {{Foreshadowing}}: Both the book and the show hint at the presence of the Eosapiens long before they are seen in the flesh.
116** In the book, Barlowe finds a strange circle of plants alongside the head of an arrowtongue minus the signature tongue. It's later revealed that these plants are actually Eosapien clubs and the Arrowtongue one of their kills.
117** In the show, ''something'' is shown watching the probe's arrival, with its view and sonar ping being shown repeatedly until Ike is saved by them from a Skewer attack.
118* GaiasLament: In the book, the Earth has been left a polluted, overexploited ruin by human activity. Most animal life is extinct, surviving creatures are horribly mutated by pollutants, and the air and water are thick with toxins and smog.
119* GeniusBruiser: The Eosapiens, compared to the rest of Darwin IV's life forms. Unlike humans, they are not only the most intelligent of the planet's life forms but also one of the most powerful. Their strength is such that they can easily rip the limbs off of the other creatures, and throw their spears with such force that they tend to go ''clean through'' their target and keep flying.
120* GeniusLoci: The Amoebic Sea. Downplayed in that it is not sapient, but is nonetheless a superorganism effectively acting as a place.
121* GiantFlyer: The immense Ebony Blisterwing, with a wingspan of over ''1,000 feet''.
122* GiganticAdultsTinyBabies: While the adult Sea Strider towers hundreds of feet high, its offspring are tiny, buglike buzzing flyers no bigger than Earth's pigeons.
123** Baby grovebacks have three legs and are small, fast runners, but as adults lose the hind leg and grow a hind skid.
124* GreenAesop: Aside from the GaiasLament aspects of the story's framing device, the ultimate resolution humanity takes away from the expedition is that it should be left untouched: rather than viewing it through the lens of what can benefit humanity, they decide that the miracle of Darwin IV simply existing is enough to justify it being preserved.
125* HandicappedBadass: The Gyrosprinter resembles an equine build but has its ''front legs and hind legs fused together,'' leaving it with a single forelimb and a single hindlimb, which raises balance issues. Fortunately they evolved balance-aid halteres, allowing them to continue careening along the Darwinian plains despite what would normally be a fatally deleterious disablity.
126* AHeadAtEachEnd: Littoralopes and Symets have head-like tails and tail-like heads, in order to confuse predators and divert their attacks away from the creature's true head. Given that nothing on Darwin IV has any eyes or mouths, this trick works just fine.
127%%* HumanoidAliens: The Yma.
128* HumansNeedAliens: The aliens called Yma are there to protect humanity from itself. We'd destroyed the environment almost beyond repair before they showed up, and they're helping us put the world back together.
129* {{Irony}}: The Jetdarters have no wings but can fly. However, Stripewings, with disproportionally large wings, are flightless.
130* {{Kaiju}}:
131** The Emperor Sea Strider is estimated in ''Expedition'' to be ''620 feet tall'', as tall as London's BT Tower[[note]]Although ''Alien Planet'' sizes it down to a still-impressive six stories, or about 80 feet.[[/note]]. That is, by Creator/{{Toho}} standards, ''three Franchise/{{Godzilla}}s standing on each others' shoulders!'' The book actually goes into a lot of detail about how the creature is able to exist at such a size without collapsing under its own weight-- it lives on the Amoebic Sea, a gelatinous surface which can absorb the pressure of its footsteps, and which it also eats, meaning that finding enough food to support its size is not a problem. It also has to move constantly, or else it will sink into the Amoebic Sea.
132** The Amoebic Sea itself, a massive gelatinous single organism ''covering one-tenth of the planet's surface''.
133** The 5-story high Groveback also counts.
134** The book-only Ebony Blisterwing is a LivingGasbag seen very briefly with a wingspan exceeding ''one-thousand feet''.
135* KillerRabbit: Beach Quills may initially appear to be a harmless patch of plants, but they are deadly enough to bring down something the size of a Groveback.
136* LightningBruiser: Despite their odd forms of locomotion, some creatures, such as Skewers and Gyrosprinters, are capable of high speeds.
137* LivingGasbag: Eosapiens, Rugose Floaters, Skewers, and many fliers on Darwin IV.
138* LosingYourHead: Apparently a part of the life cycle of the Mummy-nest Flyer, whose head detaches from its body and flies about, using its still-living body as a home -- that is, it camps out inside its former torso's cavity.
139* MixAndMatchCritter: The Groveback has the head of a planarian, the mouth of a basking shark, the carapace of a crab, the porous tissue of a sea sponge, the front legs of an elephant and a rudder-shaped rear skid.
140** Daggerwrists have the projectile jaw of a damselfly nymph, a bird-like beaked head, the arms of a praying mantis, the gliding "wings" of a flying squirrel and the quills of a porcupine.
141* NoMouth: Jaws never evolved on the planet, so most creatures have spearlike proboscises, long flexible tongues, or suckerlike mouths, generally on odd places.
142** Grovebacks, however, have a wide gaping mouth used in filter-feeding, and the Forest Gulper is the only true jawed creature.
143** The Daggerwrist also has a projectile appendage on its chest that is usually tucked under the head, giving the illusion of a jaw.
144* NumberedHomeworld: Darwin IV.
145* OneGenderRace: All creatures (except the Sac-Back) are hermaphroditic, and mating impregnates both partners. Strangely, Unths have mating duels and rutting-like behavior.
146* {{Planimal}}: Grovebacks, large, dinosaur-like creatures with trees sprouting on their backs ([[VideoGame/PokemonDiamondAndPearl Torterra,]] anyone?). There is also the Butchertree, a carnivorous creature that outwardly resembles a plant.
147* PokemonSpeak: Unths are named for the sounds they make through their side-holes when they take a step.
148* PolarOppositeTwins: Ike is more cautious, Leo is a daring explorer.
149* PoorCommunicationKills: Ike meant no harm to the Eosapiens, all he wanted was to speak with them. The Eosapiens themselves were also only curious about the strange new being, but unfortunately, a misunderstanding had them thinking the camera disk was a weapon, causing them to attack Ike.
150* PragmaticAdaptation: With only 90 minutes to tell the tale, ''Alien Planet'' had to make cuts. By removing some creatures and embellishing others, it creates a new spin on Darwin IV's ecosystem while keeping to the essence of the tale. As the special is more about alien discoveries than conservation, the prologue is not as important, and the final reveal of the Eosapiens hits harder as a "first contact" moment without the presence of the Yma.
151* PregnancyDoesNotWorkThatWay: Pregnant Daggerwrists are cannibalistic and are executed by their tribes when their single offspring is born. If you can't do the math, this means that ''at least two Daggerwrists will die for every one born''.
152* RaptorAttack: The pack-hunting Prongheads, frequently compared to the prehistoric dromeosaurs. The Daggerwrist also looks and acts a lot like a ''Franchise/JurassicPark''-style "Velociraptor". Some (thankfully feathered) ''Velociraptor'' appear briefly in a scene in ''Alien Planet'' depicting the Gyrosprinter.
153* RedShirt: The probe ''Balboa'', whose only role in ''Alien Planet'' was to show how easily things can go wrong on missions like this. It was not nicknamed, never called by its full name (''UsefulNotes/VascoNunezDeBalboa'') once, and was even [[LampshadeHanging colored red]].
154* RiddleForTheAges: Given the book's perspective being told from a single researcher's point of view, many questions are aaked and speculated upon, but ultimately never confirmed. The relationship of the Mummy-Nest Flyer and its living nest is theorized to be the separation of head and body of formerly a single organism, but this is not entirely confirmed. Others include the seemingly-intelligent portrayal of the Daggerwrist, the metamorphosis of the Sea Strider, and the lifestyle and pregnancy of the female Sac-Back, all of which are left as open-ended questions.
155* RuleOfCool: Many of the alien and landscape designs are clearly intended to look as visually bizarre and fantastical as possible, rather than realistic. A two-hundred metre tall biped walking across a living sea of jelly while followed by swarms of flying larva that are kept airborne by biological jet engines may not necessarily be ''plausible'', but it does make for an awesome visual.
156* SelfInsertFic: Similar to one of the author's other works, ''Barlowe's Inferno'', the main character who visits and documents Darwin IV is Wayne Barlowe himself.
157* SensoryTentacles: The gyrosprinter has these sticking out on either side of its torso -- they're actually extremely sensitive ''balance'' organs, like the human inner ear.
158* ShoutOut: ''Alien Planet'': A lot of the names: The ''Von Braun'', ''Isaac Newton'' ("Ike"), & ''Creator/LeonardoDaVinci'' ("Leo"), even the planet is "[[UsefulNotes/CharlesDarwin Darwin]] IV".
159* SpeculativeBiology: A fully realized alien world with a developed ecosystem and species. Barlowe's attention to detail made this a TropeCodifier for works set outside of Earth.
160%%* SpeculativeDocumentary
161* StarfishAliens: Most of the species presented, although they typically evoke an earth animal in niche and design.
162** An animal on Darwin IV may be an Earth creature's equivalent in terms of ecology, but looks nothing like it (the Sea Strider is supposed to be the Darwinian equivalent of a ''whale'').
163** A lot though, are so bizarre,and truly surreal enough to put Salvador Dali to shame, one doesn't think "That's a really weird creature", but "What the *&#! am I looking at? Is this ''even'' supposed to be alive?" The Sea Strider in particular looks utterly abstract. Many other creatures hardly are even comprehensible as creatures at all.
164** The Eosapien is the page image for this trope, and is best described as a cross between a human, an octopus, and a balloon.
165* StockSoundEffect:
166** The Prongheads make sounds similar to some monsters from the video game ''Silent Hill''.
167** The Unth's honking call sounds similar to ''Jurassic Park''[='=]s velociraptors.
168* SurveillanceDrone: In ''Alien Planet,'' three named after famous people.
169* TooManyMouths: The Sea Striders have mouths in the bottoms of their feet, allowing them to gulp down mouthfuls of the Amoebic Sea just by walking about.
170* TRexpy: Darwin IV was envisioned by Barlowe as an alien world going through its equivalent of the Late Cretaceous, and this includes a ''Tyrannosaurus'' analogue -- the arrowtongue, a heavily-built ArmlessBiped that chases down prey in rapid pursuit and subdues it with its harpoon-like tongue, and the dominant predator of the open plains.
171* UndergroundMonkey: The Arrowtongue family, which has three different forms.
172** The Rayback, the first creature Barlowe encounters, which is a medium-sized predator found on the plains and the edge of forests.
173** The Arrowtongue, which is larger and, as the local TRexpy, the apex predator of the plains.
174** The Bolttongue, which is roughly the size of a ''Utahraptor'' and is the top predator of the tundra.
175* VaderBreath: In ''Alien Planet'', the Sea Strider's roar sounds like echoing deep breaths.
176* ViewersAreGoldfish: ''Alien Planet'', ''a lot''.
177** After live commentators mention the name ''Arrowtongue'', the narrator announces, "Scientists may call this creature... the Arrowtongue".
178** Every creature feature ends with "on Darwin IV" as if the audience was likely to forget the planet's name.
179* VisualPun:
180** The Gyrosprinter has one foot in front of the other.
181** The Groveback not only has a grove of trees on its back, but its rear skid leaves a deep ''groove'' on the ground at its ''back''.
182** The Arrowtongue's "tongue" (technically a proboscis) is arrow-shaped and used to harpoon prey.
183** Eosapien means "dawn thinker", due to Barlowe encountering them at dawn, and that they are "dawning" on sapience.
184* WeHardlyKnewYe: Balboa, the red probe, is destroyed right away, and we never see what "personality" it would have developed or used to interact with the other two probes.
185* WhoNeedsTheirWholeBody: The Sliders and the Groveback are born with hind legs, but as the rear skid hardens and matures, the rear limbs shrivel up and eventually drop off. The Mummy-nest Flyer takes this to an extreme. When it matures, it sheds the lower half its body, consumes it from the inside out, and uses it as a nest.
186* ZergRush: Beach Quills are small but swarm in ''sheer numbers'' and launch themselves simultaneously when attacking. This, combined with their potent toxin allows them to take down the massive Grovebacks.

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