Terraform: Difference between revisions

[[File:TerraformingMars.jpg|frame|Future Mars - artist's depiction]]

 

'''Professor Farnsworth:''' That's because then Mars was a uninhabitable wasteland, much like [[Place Worse Than Death|Utah]]. But unlike Utah, Mars was eventually made livable when the university was founded in 2636.<br />

'''Leela:''' They planted traditional college foliage. [[Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick|Ivy... trees... hemp...]] soon the whole planet was terraformed!|'''[[Futurama]]''', ''Mars University''}}

* But in ''[[The Authority]]'', another [[Wildstorm]] series, a totally different explanation was given at the end of Warren Ellis's run (not surprisingly, since it's Warren "[[What Do You Mean It Wasn't Made on Drugs?]]" Ellis). Here the Earth was placed in its proper orbit by what is, essentially, God: a pyramidal being the size of our moon with four thousand hearts and pores the size of Staten Island. God even placed some "watch spores" on the planet to make sure everything stayed perfect, then went off to wander the universe for a bit. In the meantime, a big chunk of something hit the Earth, then started orbiting, becoming our moon. By sheer chance, the watch spores were among the matter blown off by the impact. This tilted Earth's axis, altered the atmosphere, and eventually led to the development of life as we know it today. God eventually comes back to discover that its vacation home has suddenly developed a totally poisonous (to it) atmosphere and grown a six-billion-strong infestation. In order to return the planet to its "proper" state, God drops some disgusting organic machinery into the African veldt that begins restoring the original atmosphere. So it's not so much terraforming as ''un''-terraforming.

** The Engineer even tries to come up with a term for it:

* In ''[[Buck Godot: Zap Gun for Hire]],'' the Prime Mover (a [[Sufficiently Advanced Alien]] and [[Obstructive Bureaucrat]]) is Terraforming a planet as a hobby, in his room, ''by hand.''

** In his defense though, he did have a really big bucket.

* ''[[Red Dwarf]]'' did it twice, both due to Rimmer and both resulting in complete catastrophe.

** The first episode, "Terrorform", was based on a sentient moon which formed itself based on the psyche of those who landed -- and it's long been established that Rimmer's psyche is not a good place to be...

** The second time was "Rimmerworld", where Rimmer, abandoned to his own devices (by his own cowardice) on an uninhabitable world for 600 years armed with only a planet seeding pod, creates a [[Single Biome Planet]] of Rimmers -- he lasted barely forty years before being slung in jail by the rest of him.

** Terraforming was the backgound plot of '' Back to Reality'': Planet engineers in an ocean seeding ship had terraformed an ocean moon and created a marine ecosystem teeming with lifeforms by vastly speeding up evolution. Unfortunately it backfired when one lifeform arose that wiped out everything else: the Despair Squid.