Characters / Alienators: Evolution Continues

A character sheet for the film Evolution (2001) and its sequel series Alienators: Evolution Continues.

Movie Characters

Humans

Ira

Ira Kane

Played by: David Duchovny (Film), Kirby Morrow (Series)

In the film

• Cool Teacher: He and Harry are generally this to their student body.
• Doctor's Disgraceful Demotion: He developed an effective anthrax vaccine for the government that turned out to have terrible side effects, which include debilitating stomach cramps, severe diarrhea, memory loss, partial facial paralysis, temporary blindness, drooling, bleeding gums, erectile dysfunction, uncontrollable flatulence, and many more. It was dubbed the Kane madness.

In the series

• Farm Boy: He used to be this; the series reveals his parents to be farmers.
• Insufferable Genius: He likes to point out how smart he is on a semi-regular basis. His catchphrase is basically "I'm a genius."
• Younger and Hipper: Looks less middle aged in the series.

Harry

Professor Harry Phineas Block

Played by: Orlando Jones (Film), Cusse Mankuma (Series)

A geologist and women's volleyball coach from Glen Canyon Community College.

In the film

• Ass Shove: Happens twice.
  • An alien fly manages to get into his body, and the only way to remove it was either to amputate his leg or remove it rectally. He initially agrees to the leg when the fly started moving somewhere else.
  • Later, he himself gets ass shoved into the orifice of the giant amoeba while delivering the Head and Shoulders.
• Black and Nerdy: Downplayed. He is a scientist and college professor like Ira, but it's seldom called out.
• The Chew Toy: He's on the receiving end of most of the film's physical comedy.
• Conversational Troping: He points out many of common racist tropes likely to play out when Ira and him try to break into the facility built on top of the crater.
  • While sneaking in, he asks why Ira, who is White, is disguised as a colonel while he plays a private. Ira's response was that he was a colonel.
  • He also mentions that while Ira will get 5 years imprisonment, the authorities will likely execute him.
  • He names the Black Dude Dies First trope, despite not being an example himself. Indeed, he brings it up when he refuses to collect a sample for Ira, specifically to avert it.
• Deadpan Snarker: Frequently takes jabs at Ira and later Wayne.
• Genre Savvy: He is well aware of common movie tropes, especially very racist ones, and tries to avoid them.
• Forgot Flanders Could Do That: The movie seldom calls attention to Harry's field of expertise. He mentions that the caves are a honeycomb that could facilitate the spread of the aliens. This was taken up to eleven in the series, where him being a geologist is barely acknowledged.
• Small Name, Big Ego: He's not as scientifically well versed as Ira and Allison, so he tends to show off his chops whenever he could. Ira also mentions that he think he's an athlete.

In the series

• The Big Guy: Unlike in the movie, Harry is more athletic in the series.
• Flanderization: His affinity for sports has been exaggerated to a single-minded obsession. Meanwhile, his actual field of science, geology, is barely alluded to.
• Lovable Jock: Has this personality. He's friendly to the others and possesses a love for sports that borders on the encyclopedic.
• Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: In a Call-Back to the film Harry's terrified of bugs. Ironically he likes snakes as many eat bugs.

Wayne

Wayne Gray

Played by: Seann William Scott (Film), Andrew Francis (Series)

A fireman in training who discovers the meteor in the cavern. He later joins the team meant to stop the aliens from spreading.

In the film

• The Cavalry: Drives the firetruck that leads the ragtag group to defeat the giant amoeba.
• Dreadful Musician: He sings "You Are So Beautiful to Me" in the microphone at the mall in an attempt to attract the dragon. He succeeds.

In the series

• Adaptational Name Change: Wayne Green in the animated series.
• Gadgeteer Genius: Is responsible for modding the firetruck.
• Flanderization: Is more of a ditz obsessed with being a fireman and upgrading his firetruck.

Allison

Dr. Allison Reed

Played by: Julianne Moore (Film), Fiona Hogan (Series)

In the film

• Cute Clumsy Girl: She tends to trip a lot.

In the series

• Demoted to Extra: Replaced by Lieutenant Lucy on the field.
• Mission Control: Works as this for most of the series.
• The Not-Love Interest: In contrast to the movie, she and Ira have a more subdued relationship that's only barely romantic.

General Woodman

General Russell Woodman

Played by: Ted Levine (Film)

In the film

• Hate Sink: He's portrayed as the primary antagonist toward the middle of the film, having taken over Ira's and Harry's discovery and put it under military guard. He later takes a backseat to the aliens as the true antagonist.
• Jerkass Has a Point: He does have a point that Ira, a maverick who borked a vaccine, shouldn't be trusted with any form of scientific research. Torpedoed by him having effectively spied on Ira, which was how he got to know of the meteor in the first place.
• Kill It with Fire: He and the governor agree with bombing the aliens before they spread.

In the series

• Adaptational Heroism: As opposed to being a poster-boy for the meddling tendencies of the army, he acts as a beleaguered handler for the team and isn't actively malicious. Given that Ira is much more of an insufferable genius in the series, his exasperation is understandable.
• Obstructive Bureaucrat: Constantly locks horns with Ira and the rest of the team over various matters, often budgetary.

Deke and Danny

Deke and Danny Donald

Played by: Ethan Suplee (Deke, Film), Michael Bower (Danny, Film)

• Adaptational Name Change: Danny to Derrick in the animated series.
• Chekhov's Gunman: The duo begin as two idiot students who get in trouble for plagiarizing each other's abysmally bad biology assignments. Much later, they inform Ira and the crew about the readily available selenium found in Head and Shoulders—a eureka moment that has Ira immediately grants them A's.
• Smart Ball: They knew that Head and Shoulders had selenium as an active ingredient, which was the key to ultimately defeating the aliens.
• Those Two Guys: A pair of not-too-bright students who always appear together.
• Two First Names: Their surname Donald can be a first name.

The Genus

A collection of nitrogen-based lifeforms that emerged from a meteorite that landed on a cave system in Glen Canyon, Arizona. First emerging as a goo-like collection of microorganisms, they later evolve into various weird creatures

In General

• Adaptive Ability: They can evolve to suit new environments, which makes them a formidable opponent both in the third act of the film and throughout the series. Ira must constantly rework the Alienators' selenium mix just to keep up.
• Bizarre Alien Reproduction: Some genus in both the movie and series vomit out their offspring.
• Call a Smeerp a "Rabbit": Ira really doesn't want to call dragon-shaped Genus by that word.
• Came from the Sky: The genus came from a meteor.
• From a Single Cell: All it takes is one surviving genus microorganism (or in the series, a microorganism tied to a pod) to start the process all over again.
• Explosive Breeder: Mixed with Truly Single Parent; they only reproduce asexually and do so very fast.
• Miracle-Gro Monster: Heat is the key to the genus' explosive evolution. The heat from the comet's entry triggered their rapid reproduction and evolution into multicellular organisms, and the dry heat of Arizona contributed to it. Eventually, a few tons of napalm caused one of the microorganisms to evolve into giant size, consuming all others in the process.
  • In the series, their dependence on heat is alluded to in a few episodes and averted once. The Genus eventually spread to the French Alps, in which case their cold-adapted forms were susceptible to the heat.
• Named by the Adaptation: The series gives them their present name.
• No Biochemical Barriers: Averted; in the film and throughout the series, the Genus' biochemistry prevents them from fully colonizing the planet. Selenium ended their first attempt to spread out.
• Our Dragons Are Different: In the first film, they start evolving into dragon-like creatures that start leaving the cave but die en masse in the desert. One of them (which Ira calls "the bird") evolves a tolerance to oxygen and causes mayhem at a shopping mall. In the series, an entire episode was dedicated to the Genus evolving into dragon-like forms that could even breathe fire.
• Starfish Aliens: The original microorganisms and the giant one all resemble starfish.
• Weaksauce Weakness: Selenium in the film served as this. In the series, it became a stopgap measure alongside carbon dioxide. They were eventually done in by a modified common cold virus carrying selenium, which multiplied faster than they could evolve.
• Ultimate Life Form: The Genus eventually produce this in one form or another.
  • The giant amoeba is the film's version.
  • SCOPES is this for the series. Stage 4 Genus are likely to be this as well.
• Xeno Nucleic Acid: Ira finds their DNA to have 10 base pairs instead of 4.

Genus in the film

Lead primate played by: Tom Woodruff Jr.

• A Head at Each End: One Genus in the film is a 2-headed creature that looks like an outdated reconstruction of hallucigenia.
• Evolutionary Levels: Downplayed. At first, they appear to represent this, with creatures evolving from flatworms among mushroom-like plants to dragons and primates. Averted by the final organism to emerge after the military attempted to napalm them: the final alien was a giant amoeboid microorganism, as the simplest form of life is often the most adaptable to change.
• Grotesque Cute: One of the vertebrate-like Genus resembles a cutesy frog-dog thing that emerges from a house. The club members occupying the house find the creature adorable, at least until it unleashed its tongue before finally asphyxiating.
• Introduced Species Calamity: The end-game of the aliens spreading past the cave systems of Arizona. Once they became oxygen tolerant, nothing could stop them from breeding out of control.
• Killer Space Monkey: The Genus eventually start evolving into primates.
• Non-Malicious Monster: Unlike in the series, the Genus in the film are, in effect, just stray wildlife that are trying to survive in a new environment. They bore no ill-will to the humans even as they ate them and began to evolve sapience. To further this, members of a species may attack and eat individuals of different species just as much as humans.
• When Trees Attack: Many of the trees in the cave forest turn out to be carnivorous though they seem more interested in their fellow crustacean creatures.
• The Worf Effect: The primates were built up to be the most dangerous thing the Genus produced, but they're immediately afraid of the giant amoeba which then ate all of them along with the entirety of the alien ecosystem.

Giant Amoeba

• Ass Shove: The monster was destroyed by giving it a deadly dose of dandruff shampoo up its only orifice.
• Attack Its Weak Point: Its sphincter.
• Big Bad: Quite literally. The giant single-celled organism is the final enemy in the film.
• Fusion Dance: The giant amoeba began by gradually absorbing all the other creatures in the cave, including the primates that had been the most dangerous threat until then.
• Kaiju: A building-sized starfish-shaped microorganism that grew from a fleshy blob combining the biomass of all the Genus that had previously evolved.
• Ultimate Life Form: Played with and lampshaded in the movie; it's the simplest organisms that often respond best to change. Director commentary reveals that the plans for a multicellular species that has evolved beyond humans didn't seem like a big enough threat, which was why the amoeba was used.

Genus in the series

• The Cameo: The giant amoeba re-appears in the opening of the series specifically to be killed like they were in the movie.
• Captain Ersatz: The Genus are this to the Zerg from Starcraft. They have a collective genetic memory and a hive mind mentality and have a society centered on a pod. The series' opening even retcons the meteor the Genus came from to contain a pod within it.
• Evolutionary Levels: Played straight, unlike in the movie. The Genus come in 3 levels, corresponding mainly to the 3 main eras of the Phanerozoic Eon.
  • Stage 1 (Paleozoic Parturition): These resemble fungus-like plants, flatworms, carnivorous trees, and invertebrate animals similar to those seen in the cave in the movie.
  • Stage 2 (Mesozoic Meridian): This level contains mostly "cold blooded vertebrate"-like creatures, much like the fish, killer-tongued frog, and dragon from the film.
  • Stage 3 (Cenozoic Array): These take on the appearance of mammals and birds and includes primate-like species like those shown in the film. Scopes always emerges as a Level 3 species.
  • Stage 4 (Extinction-Level Event): The final level where the Genus evolve too fast to effectively counter, leading to the extinction of all Earth's indigenous life. Never shown in the series, but constantly alluded to.
• Goal-Oriented Evolution: In contrast to the film, the Genus in the series has conquering Earth as their overarching evolutionary goal.
• Hive Mind: The Genus have a collective intelligence with a Genetic Memory. Each time SCOPES re-evolves, he has the memory of his previous reincarnations.
• Horde of Alien Locusts: Although the Genus (or at least SCOPES) are somewhat sapient, they have no overarching culture or social structure and are apparently only after consumption and expansion.
• Keystone Army: The pods are the focus of all Genus evolution. Take out the pod and any ecosystem the Genus create slowly die off.
• Logical Weakness: The Genus in the series are ultimately defeated by a selenium mix carried by a variant of the common cold, which mutates much faster than they can.
• Mix-and-Match Creatures: The Genus often take on hybridized forms based on Earth animals, be they from the Kane farm or from a zoo in Rome. Ira mentions in later episodes that they copy the DNA profiles of the animals they encounter; this is in contrast to how they may have evolved animal-like forms in film and in the early episodes of the series (i.e. out of convergent evolution).
• Never Say "Die": The Genus are devolved in the series (often into a starfish-likeform), implying they've been brought down an evolutionary level rather than outright killed.
• Shout-Out: Many of the aliens in the series are this to pop culture.
  • The oil Genus in Slick resemble Gamera.
  • SCOPES himself is a reference to the Scopes Trials.
  • The Genus infecting the space station resemble xenomorphs from the Alien series.
• Starfish Aliens: Devolving the Genus through the Alienators' tools reduces many of them into a starfish-like state.

Series Characters

Lieutenant Lucy

Lieutenant Lucy Mai

A soldier brought in by General Woodman, Lieutenant Lucy replaces Allison in the field.

• Action Girl: A West Point graduate, skilled combatant, and martial artist.
• Friend to All Children: She's very good with kids. This extends to Wayne, the youngest member of the team.
• Hidden Depths: She's a Broadway fan, much to the astonishment of Ira.
• Twofer Token Minority: Of Chinese descent and the only woman in the Alienator team.

Gassie

Genetically Altered Symbiotic Stasis in Evolution/G.A.S.S.I.E.

A Genus organism genetically altered by Ira to hunt other Genus infestations. He was frozen mid-evolution, preventing him from becoming a threat.

• Ascended Extra: He is, in essence, the movie's logo turned into a character.
• Badass Adorable: He looks like a cross between Ditto and Pikachu with 3 eyes.
• Gasshole: Gassie produces a pungent odor whenever he detects a Genus colony.
• Team Pet: Serves as this for the Alienators.
• Token Heroic Orc: A Genus on the side of the humans.

SCOPES

SCOPES

Voiced by: Mark Acheson

A recurring villain and the sapient embodiment of the genus' collective intelligence. He takes on many forms, but resembles a red and purple humanoid octopus in most appearances.

• Aliens Speaking English: He starts off speaking Binary after learning computer language from an old man's computer, which Ira could translate. He later learns English and starts talking to the Alienators in their language.
• Big Bad: Of the series.
• Contrasting Sequel Antagonist: Unlike the ultimately mindless and non-malicious giant amoeba of the film, SCOPES is sapient and actively trying to take over the planet.
  • In his second appearance, he evolved from the primates rather than supplanting them like the amoeba did.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: He considers the Genus collective to be his family. He was willing to harm Ira's parents. after the Alienators dispatched them all.
• Hive Queen: To the Genus.
• Killer Space Monkey: He is first shown evolving by bursting out of the back of a primate.
• Lamprey Mouth: His mouth is circular and has a ring of teeth.
• Large Ham: His dialogue is repetitive, though no less bombastic.
• Tentacled Terror: His first few appearances give him a tentacled lower body.
• Ultimate Life Form: Believes the Genus and himself to be this. Based on the director commentary, an ultimate life form far evolved from humans was meant to be the original final baddie in the film, but was replaced with the giant amoeba. The series re-treads on this original idea with SCOPES.

Ira's Parents

Mr. and Mrs. Kane

Ira's mother and father who appear in only one episode.

• Good Parents: They have their embarrassing moments, but the Kanes raised Ira well. They were quite open minded folk who indulged their son's love of science to the point that Ira still has a lab in his parents' place.
• So Proud of You: Proud of their "Little Genius."

General Granger

General Granger

• Visionary Villain: Wants to create a new world order and willing to cut a deal with the Genus to make it happen.