Body Snatchers

Body Snatchers is an informal name attributed to a race of parasitic alien spores from an unknown planet. The function of these spores is to target and replicate other living organsims, assuming their form, personality and memories, ultimately replacing the originals who subsequently die off once their doppelgänger fully matures.

In their natural form, these spores exist as free-floating microscopic gelatinous organisms that appear to maintain a limited shared consciousness. Born of a dying world, these spores broke the gravitational pull of their planet and drifted upon the solar winds to other worlds in which they were forced to adapt and survive.

Upon landing on another world such as Earth, these spores cross-pollinated with the local plant life producing exotic flowers. The fragrance given off by these flowers attract human victims and once they are within close proximity, the flowers begin growing into large, oblong pods. The growth cycle of the pods is stimualted by the act of sleeping. When the target is asleep, their doppelgänger begins to grow inside the pod. When it hatches, it emerges fully grown, but wrapped inside a membrane of slime and white tendrils. They are only partially formed at this point, bearing only vague similarities to the person they are copying. Within minutes of its birth, this newborn fetus develops fully into an exact duplicate of their selected target. At which point, the original individual dissolves into a pile of a dust and dies. The fully matured body snatcher posesses all the memories of the individual they are copying, but also maintains racial memory of their original species. Body snatchers are human bereft of emotion and this is demonstrated by their actions and behavior. They believe that concepts such as love and hate stand in the way of their natural evolution. However, they are intelligent creatures and can fool humans by pantomiming human emotion. This was demonstrated via a body snatcher known as the "Kibner unit" who replicated an Earth psychiatrist named Doctor David Kibner.

Often referred to as "pod people", these individuals appear to be slightly empathic with one another and can sense when another of their kind is injured or in trouble. They are not telepathic however, and cannot automatically recognize another pod person on sight. Pod people do not appear to have a native language, but do possess a rudimentary form of communication which is demonstrated by emitting a high-pitched shriek. This is commonly used as a warning system to alert other pod people to the presence of danger.

Pod people appear to have an affinity towards music. Spa owner Nancy Bellicec noted that plants thrive in the presence of music and as the body snatchers are grown from plants, they too seem to maintain increased vitality through music. Examples of this include, Dentist Geoffrey Howell, who persistently sat in his home wearing stereo headphones. When the pod people were loading high volumes of pods onto a ship bound for overseas, Scottish bagpipe music was broadcast across the shipyards. After taking control of San Francisco, music was piped through loudspeakers outside of City Hall.

Notes & Trivia

 * The concept of the body snatcher parasite was first envisioned by novelist Jack Finney in his 1955 novel The Body Snatchers. The race was featured a year later in the 1956 Don Siegel adaptation of Finney's book, Invasion of the Body Snatchers. The concept was expanded upon in the 1978 remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers as well as the 2007 pseudo-remake The Invasion. Other iterations of this race were also featured in the low-budget 1993 film Body Snatchers and the 2005-06 ABC television series Invasion.