Season 18 - Episode 5 - Tellus

There are billions of stars, millions of planets, but there is only one man, Terrance McDoogal. Welcome to LIU Atlas.

LIU Atlas - Tellus

The Ludgonian Industrial Union's galaxy contains billions of stars and billions of planets. Unfortunately, most residents of the LIU could only name a handful of these worlds. In order to improve astronomy grades across the LIU, TV2 has started a new program called LIU Atlas. Follow our host, Terrance McDoogal, as he takes you on a tour across the LIU and some of its more obscure worlds.

​Note: This episode is presented in full screen. The corresponding dialogue is underneath each photo.

Amaya: “I’m telling you guys – this isn’t a bathroom smell. You’re wasting your time spraying the bathroom door.”
Mike: “At least Cam and I are trying something!”
Seitse: “That air-freshener has been diluted so many times, that you’re basically just misting water.”
Amaya: “The fanning isn’t helping either, Mike. It’s just giving the smell a velocity.”
Doog: “I’m not sure what’s worse – the smell…or Timbo’s cat sweater.”
Amaya: “That’s not helpful.”

Cam: “It definitely smells worse closer to the bathroom.”
Seitse: “But you can’t smell it inside the bathroom.”
Mike: “So, bathroom adjacent?”
Doog: “Oldie’s bed?”

Oldie: “Good news and bad news. I found the smell…”
Amaya: “Ugh! Is that milk?!”
Seitse: “Why is the milk in your bed, Oldie?!”
Oldie: “I had this plan where I wake up and eat cereal…without having to get out of bed.”
Amaya: “How long ago did you have this plan?”
Oldie: “I don’t remember…a few days ago? Maybe weeks?”
Doog: “He’s losing it! I’ve been warning you all!”
Seitse: “Wait…was that the good news or the bad news?”
Oldie: “Finding it was the good news. The fact that I spilled it all over my bed…and it smells ten times worse…is the bad news.”
Doog: “Ugh! It just hit me!”
Mike: “That is so bad!”
Amaya: “Bernard! What have you done?!”

Doog: “Fan, Mike! Fan!”
Mike: “I’m trying!”
Cam: “I’m not opposed to opening the airlock!”
Hugo: “What’s going on down here? All the atmosphere sensors just went haywire. Never mind, I smell the problem.”
Amaya: “You need to find somewhere to land, ASAP.”
Hugo: “Where?”
Doog: “Anywhere with fresh air!”
Amaya: “Computer, find the nearest habitable planet!”
Computer: “Tellus.”
Doog: “No, you idiot! You tell us!”
Amaya: “Computer, please!”
Computer: “The planet’s name is Tellus. It’s in close proximity.”
Doog: “You TELL US!!”
Seitse: “I think that’s the planet’s name…Tellus.”
Amaya: “Map a course.”
Computer: “Confirmed.”
Amaya: “Get us there Hugo – and quickly!”

Doog: “Welcome to another episode of LIU Atlas. I’m your host, Terrance “Doog” McDoogal. Today, we’re visiting Tellus. I wish I could tell you more, but this wasn’t exactly planned. We’re currently in panic mode because our entire ship smells like rancid, curdled milk. Thank you, Oldie. Tellus has fresh breathable air, and that’s all we need to know for now.”

Doog: “This is much better!”
Mike: “Get away from the ship! In case any escaped!”
Oldie: “Hey! Wait for me!”
Amaya: “You’re staying on the ship, Bernard! Get that mess cleaned up!”
Oldie: “Aw man…”

Oldie: “Oh, hey, Hugo…the crew wanted me to stay behind and let you know that you’ve been assigned to clean up the mess. Tough luck. Blame Amaya, I guess.”
Hugo: “No she didn’t. I was right behind you. She told you to clean it up.”
Oldie: “Did she? I guess I misheard.”
Hugo: “Sure you did.”
Oldie: “Awkward…”
Hugo: “Despite your attempted betrayal, I think I’ll stay with you. There might be a few things I can do from the cockpit – adjust some filters, reroute airflow. Besides, we know nothing about this planet. It could be dangerous.”

Seitse: “Why…why did we run so…far?”
Doog: “I didn’t…stop…till the smell did.”
Cam: “Better question – how did Doog keep up? Also, why are you all so out of breath?”
Doog: “Smell motivation…might be…a thing. Also…shut up…fitness boy!”
Amaya: “I know it was bad…but we shouldn’t have gone so far from…the ship. We know nothing…about Tellus.”
Doog: “I’ll take my chances…with the unknown.”
Cam: “Well…your chance might be coming. I hear something.”

Amaya: “What is that?”
Cam: “Sounds mechanical.”
Doog: “If it’s deadly, I’m dying. I’ve got nothing left in the tank.”
Mike: “Doog dying might buy some time for the rest of us.”
Doog: “Thanks, Mike!”
Mike: “I think your sacrifice would be honorable, if that helps.”
Amaya: “Relax. The computer didn’t give any specific warnings when it mentioned Tellus. It’s probably just a routine settlement or something.”
Doog: “When is it ever routine for us?”
Amaya: “Here’s the plan. Seitse and Timbo – you two head back to the ship. See if Hugo or Oldie have an update. The rest of us are going towards that noise.”
Doog: “Why?!”
Amaya: “Best case scenario, we turn this into an episode. We need our host, cameraman, and audio guy.”
Cam: “The Hover-Cam does most of the work. I’m really not needed.”
Mike: “Same.”
Amaya: “We’re going!”
 
​
Back on the Magellan:

Hugo: “Made any progress?”
Oldie: “I’m on my second bowl of Hamster Puffs.”
Hugo: “What?! I mean with the spill!”
Oldie: “Oh, that? Not yet. It is smelling better, though.”
Hugo: “That’s because I have the exhaust fans on overdrive! It might actually work…if the source gets removed!”
Oldie: “Oh, I see. I’ll get to it right after I finish.”
Hugo: “How are you even eating in here?!”

Mike: “That’s the source of the sound? A rundown windmill?”
Doog: “Better than anything I was imagining.”
Amaya: “I don’t think it’s a settlement – not a permanent one, anyway.”
Cam: “Looks more like a crash site.”
Doog: “Well, whatever it is – let’s rummage through it, get any valuables, and get out of here.”
Amaya: “No…I don’t think it’s abandoned.”

Amaya: “There’s food being grown.”
Cam: “And no weeds in the plots.”
Mike: “Water pump is humming. I’m picking it up through my integrated audio-implant.”
Doog: “But there’s no one here. I’m picking that up with my eyes.”

Earl: “Hands up, pirates! I’ll shoot!”
Amaya: “We’re not pirates!”
Earl: “The out-of-breath guy wanted to loot our home!”
Doog: “That’s because I thought it was abandoned! Not full of gun-having guys!”
Amaya: “We’re just a TV crew that made an emergency landing!”
Cam: “Milk incident, if that helps!”
Dottie: “I don’t think they mean any harm, Earl.”

Amaya: “Sorry if we gave the wrong impression.”
Dottie: “Same. We’re a bit strapped for resources these days, and the thought of losing them made us act uncharacteristically.”
Earl: “It’s a conduit junction, not a gun, if that makes you feel any better. I’m Earl, by the way.”
Dottie: “And I’m his wife, Dottie.”
Amaya: “I’m Amaya, and this is Mike, Cam, and Doog. We work on a TV show called LIU Atlas.”
Doog: “You’ve probably heard of it.”
Dottie: “Earl and I don’t watch much TV these days, on account of us disassembling the subspace receiver.”
Earl: “Which we were forced to do, in order to keep our life-support systems running…right, Dottie?”
Dottie: “Oh. Yes. We were forced.”

Doog: “Are there settlements on Tellus? We could really use a shop that sells air-fresheners.”
Earl: “I’m afraid it’s just Dottie and I.”
Doog: “You’re the only two people on the planet?”
Dottie: “Only two humans. There are locals…”
Earl: “…local plants. She means local plants. They…uh…might act as air fresheners, actually. Try the tall ones with the curly bit at the tip.”
Doog: “Sure…noted.”
Amaya: “What brought you to Tellus?”
Dottie: “Earl and I are scientists. We were sent here to determine Tellus’ economic potential.”
Earl: “It was all the rage back in the early LIU. Millions of scientists were shipped across the galaxy and dropped onto unknown or under-discovered worlds.”   
Doog: “So? Find anything?”

Dottie: “So much.”
Earl: “So much…air-freshener potential. Right, Dottie.”
Dottie: “Oh. Yeah. The curly ones.”
Earl: “We would have shared it too, but the dang life-support systems kept failing. Had to sacrifice the subspace communicator.”
Dottie: “Receiver.”
Earl: “Both.”

Doog: “It looks like you took more apart than the communications. Is that one of your engines?”
Earl: “It all just started to snowball. Took apart this to fix that. Sacrificed that to save this.”
Dottie: “Earl is a real genius when it comes to mechanical systems. He really made the best of our situation. Impressively turned the comm equipment into a wind turbine and irrigation…”
Earl: “Life-support!”
Dottie: “Power and food is life support!”
Earl: “Uh…”

Seitse: “Run!”
Doog: “Not again! I’ve got nothing left!”
Seitse: “Monsters! Big heads…big teeth!”
Dottie: “They’re not monsters!”
Doog: “Will they fall for the bent-pipe trick?!”
Cam: “Everybody grab something that vaguely resembles a gun!”
Mike: “Doog! Still up for the sacrifice-plan?!”
Doog: “I wasn’t up for it first time!”
Earl: “There are no monsters on Tellus!”
Dottie: “Please, trust us! We’ve been here fifty years!”

Doog: “Fifty years?!”
Dottie: “Yes. And in that time, we’ve never encountered monsters. Only the local…”
Earl: “…plants. Yeah, plants. They’ve been known to make people hallucinate monsters, but they’re not real.”
Dottie: “Earl…it’s time.”
Earl: “They’re TV reporters! This place will be crawling with invaders in weeks!”
Dottie: “We can’t do this forever, Earl. One day, we’ll be gone, and someone else will stumble upon Tellus. We can’t hide this planet and its secrets forever.”
Earl: “I still have a few years in me, Dottie. We can buy them a few more years.”
Dottie: “It’s time.”
Amaya: “What have you guys been hiding?”
Doog: “If it helps, we don’t really have a lot of viewers.”
 
 
​
Back on the Magellan

Hugo: “I came down to see if you were making any progress, but it just looks like you’re eating again.”
Oldie: “I’m not eating.”
Hugo: “Why is there food all over the table, then?”
Oldie: “Apparently, cereal wasn’t my only in-bed idea.”
Hugo: “Bread, a pretzel, and a dumpling were in your bed?!”
Oldie: “Yep. Don’t worry though, the milk’s covering their smell.”
Hugo: “I guess that’s a…plus.”

Dottie: “When we came to Tellus all those years ago, we were young, ambitious newlyweds.”
Earl: “I still remember the excitement. A whole planet to uncover.”
Dottie: “We hardly slept the first week.”
Earl: “If we weren’t mapping, we were cataloguing. If we weren’t cataloguing, we were analyzing samples.”
Dottie: “We did a few other things in between.”
Earl: “Ha! I know we’re confessing, but I think we can keep that part secret!”
Dottie: “Of course, dear. I was just reminiscing.”
Earl: “While our love for each other never faded, our explorative ambitions did.”
Dottie: “Tellus is remarkably sparse biologically. It’s a monobiome with three plant species in total.”
Earl: “Geographically dull, as well. Endless, flat plains dominate the planet.”

Dottie: “We reported our findings diligently. Never missed a deadline.”
Earl: “But then we discovered something that changed everything”

Dottie: “Tellus had a sentient race.”
Earl: “And we made first contact.”
Dottie: “There are usually rules to follow and reporting procedures, but we met them out in the field, far from our ship.”
Earl: “So…we sort of winged it.”

Doog: “There’s sentient life on Tellus?”
Dottie: “Yes, but we believe it’s exceedingly rare.”
Earl: “We can only confirm three individuals.”
Doog: “Three?!”
Earl: “Yes.”
Dottie: “There may be more, but in all our time here, we’ve only ever encountered the same three.”
Earl: “Sometimes years apart.”
Dottie: “If you saw ‘monsters’, then it’s likely those three are back in the area.”
Earl: “We’d love to see them again. It’s been months.”
Seitse: “I can give you the general direction they were travelling.”
Dottie: “Please.”

Dottie: “It’s them!”
Doog: “How do you know it’s the same three every time? Couldn’t it just be different groups of three?”
Earl: “When we first met, we gifted them some of our purple dishcloths.”
Dottie: “We’re not overly modest, but…their twigs and berries were really distracting.”
Doog: “Their junk?”
Earl: “We think.”
Amaya: “That’s not pertinent, Doog. The dishcloths confirms that it’s the same three.”

Doog: “If I’m interpreting stems and berries correctly, they’re all male? Or is there a blossom scenario too?”
Amaya: “Doog! They are right there! Can we stop discussing their genitals?!”
Dottie: “No worries, dear. They can’t understand us.”
Earl: “We believe all male, but we really couldn’t determine what was going on down there.”
Doog: “How does that even work? How can a race exist with just three dudes?”
Dottie: “We have a couple of theories. Obviously, we might not have encountered every member of the species.”
Earl: “We believe their migration pattern follows the rains, taking them across vast distances.”
Dottie: “It’s why we don’t see them frequently, they’re always moving.”
Earl: “They could certainly could be meeting other individuals far away from us.”

Dottie: “The other theory is tad more bizarre, but supported by some of our research.”
Earl: “The other plant species on Tellus appear to be genetically female. We haven’t found a single male.”
Doog: “What does that mean?”
Earl: “Well, given the native Tellusi are presumably male, and all the rest of the plants are female…”
Dottie: “We think there’s cross-species reproduction.”
Doog: “Wait…what?!”
Dottie: “The ecosystem seems to have evolved to have stationary female plants and mobile male…plants.”
Amaya: “The Tellusi are plants?”
Earl: “We believe so. We never obtained any genetic samples, but there is lots of circumstantial evidence.”
Doog: “The giant leaves growing out of their heads is a great clue.”
Earl: “Yep. We think they photosynthesize for energy because we’ve never witnessed them eat any local flora.”
Dottie: “They do eat dirt, but only for nutrients – not energy. We think that’s why they have those large tusks and carry spears.”
Amaya: “For accessing the dirt?”
Dottie: “Yes…”
Doog: “Whoa, let’s back up a bit. Are you saying these guys roam around banging bushes?”
Amaya: “Doog!”
Doog: “What?! I’m curious how it works!”
Earl: “I’d lean towards pollinating over banging.  Some type of pollen dispersal method, probably from the…uh – stem and berries.”

Doog: “They could be pollinating us right now.”
Mike: “My mouth was open!”
Amaya: “Can you all stop embarrassing us?!”
Earl: “Actually, we believe pollination events are rare and usually tied to rain events.”
Dottie: “We see an uptick in seed production after rainfalls, but only when the Tellusi are present.”
Cam: “Isn’t this whole planet grasslands? How can they possibly roam the whole planet?”
Doog: “They must be pollinating huge loads to cover a whole planet!”
Amaya: “Don’t say it like that!”
Earl: “Actually…he may be right. It’s a toss-up. Either the pollination events are extremely large-scale, there are other Tellusi reproducing with distant parts of the planet, or…the Tellusi are immortal.”

Doog: “Like…live forever?”
Earl: “Possibly. These three look no worse for wear after fifty years.”
Dottie: “Wish we could say the same.”
Earl: “We’ve never found any remains of dead Tellusi or burial sites, although given their biology, not much may remain.”
Dottie: “If biologically immortal, it might explain how the entire planet became covered in their offspring.”
Earl: “Fifty years is nothing to them. They could have spent thousands…maybe millions of years traversing Tellus.”

Dottie: “And they’re off.”
Doog: “That’s the extent of your interactions?”
Dottie: “Yeah, it’s pretty common.”
Earl: “Dull, yet exhilarating.”
Doog: “Just standing beside each other?”
Earl: “If they’re immortal, this is just a fleeting anomaly to them.”
Dottie: “A rare glitch in a millennium of consistency. Perhaps it is an entertaining change…”
Earl: “Or…they are equally curious of our sudden appearance.”
Doog: “Maybe a disappointment in what they’re now producing. Like…they think they made you.”
Earl: “Maybe.”
Doog: “And that’s why they wear your dishcloths. They’re the parents that hang horrendous art on their fridge.”
Amaya: “Why are you always so negative?”
Dottie: “Whatever the reason, we always enjoy it. They’re something special, and we’re glad to be a part of it.”
Earl: “It’s why we did what we did. We tried to…”
Amaya: “…report it! Of course you did. If it wasn’t for the life support issues, you would have, right?”
Earl: “Um, yeah. Totally.”
Doog: “Ah…I see. We, uh, would take you in to report this development, but…uh…”
Cam: “…we had a milk incident.”
Mike: “And there’s not enough room.”
Doog: “Yeah. I guess we’ll abandon you now.”
Amaya: “Sorry.”
Dottie: “Thanks.”

Doog: “Well folks, that’s Tellus. We landed here because of an emergency, but we’re also leaving because of an emergency – boredom. This planet has a few people, grass, and a weird male to female ratio. I hope it smells better on the Magellan, because this planet stinks. Nothing to see here. Oh well, see ya!”
 
 
Note: 

Seitse: “It actually smells good in here.”
Amaya: “Too good, if I’m being honest.”
Hugo: “Oldie cleaning, plus full exhaust fans and an atmosphere refresh, did the trick.”
Doog: “I agree with Amaya, it’s almost too good. Smells like a sterile space station.”
Mike: “Definitely a chlorine smell.”
Doog: “There’s only one way to fix this…taco night!”
Mike: “Bathroom smell’s making a comeback!”

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Credits
Created by: Ludgonious
Crew Member:  Jonathan Rivli