Headscratchers / Strange World

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What is Splat?

• What is Splat supposed to be, in terms of a body?
  • The tentacled reapers seem to function like Killer T-cells, which destroy bacteria and vira foreign to the body. That would make scouts like Splat be Helper T-cells, which alert other lymphocytes to infections.

Does the Turtle Island never submerge?

• In stories about people living on the back of giant turtles, whales etc., there usually comes a point when the animal dives into the ocean and destroys the civilization on its back. Yet it doesn't seem like the Avalonians have taken any precautions against this after learning the truth of their island.
  • The continent-sized Avalonia Turtle is absolutely gigantic. Even the biggest Godzilla is an ant compared to it. As the camera pans out at the end of the movie, the water world's curvature is clearly visible; if this planet's crust/ocean depths resemble Earth, it can't dive deep enough to fully submerge.
  • Then again, if we are dealing with a true panthalassic planet, it could be the Avalonia Turtle is a Gentle Giant and doesn't want to drown all life living on it.
  • Given that its internal organs - lungs included - are accessible through the same cavern networks which the Venture explored, it probably can't afford to submerge itself or it'd drown.

Pando biology

• Why would multiple planted fields of Pando grow as a unified organism with a single root? Building on that, could there be a way to grow Pando without letting its roots go deep beneath the surface and harm the “Turtle”?
  • Pando is a superorganism, like the real-life Pando tree, which is an aspen with a single root system and trees spreading over 108 acres of land. In terms of the story's intended message: no, there is no sustainable way to grow Pando like there's no sustainable way to use fossil fuels. It's depicted as very cancer or virus-like, not the sort of thing you want to inflict on your world-turtle, no matter how convenient a power source it is. If you kill your world-turtle, it doesn't look like you can just move to another one. In terms of real-life, however: you probably don't want to remove a whole species from your biome like that, no matter how parasitic it appears. Pando isn't dead dinosaur crud, it's alive and it's huge. But when there are kids in the audience and adults who aren't listening, "A fuel source that kills the environment should not be used" is probably as complicated as they wanted to get.
    • It's possible that pando isn't native to the world turtle. It may be a species that normally lives in the ocean or maybe came to their world on an asteroid from space. That would make it an invasive species and maintain the Green Aesop .
    • It's entirely possible that Pando is a native species that is normally kept in check by the world turtle's immune system. However, the way that humans mass cultivated it, protected it, probably even fertilized and irrigated for its benefit, is not natural and allowed the pando to grow and multiply out of control. Think of it like how humans have repeatedly released invasive species, intending them to be for our own benefit, but then finding them to be a disruptive nuisance. Or how we've destroyed sustainable agriculture systems in order to grow vast crop monocultures. This would make out-of-control Pando more like a cancer tumor than an infection.
  • Hypothetically, you might be able to grow small quantities of Pando in pots or troughs, never letting its roots penetrate the actual ground. But the crop yield would probably never be sufficient to power more than a handful of devices.
    • Given that Pando seems to be parasitically feeding off the world-turtle, it's very likely that it would wither and die if kept from sending roots into the ground.