The other night I found myself watching La Belle et la Bête - Beauty and the Beast movie from 19461. Great movie, the costumes, loyalty to the fairytale, effects for its time and it’s French – oh la lah
While I was watching, I was thinking how beautiful the costumes, cinematography and fitting in the magic within their limited special effects of the time.
As I am enjoying this film, it got me thinking about the other adaptations. Most of the adaptations I’ve come across are set in a fantasy realm that is reminiscent of in 17th century France. Well, I don’t know if I could that 2011 Beasty film an adaptation. The one with Alex Pettyfer and Vanessa Hudgens – he was not a beast. He was still a very good-looking fella with tattoo’s all over; he could still get it. I am currently not aware of any futuristic or science fiction adaptations of Beauty and the Beast. Pondering on this after the 194 film, just sitting on that for 10 mins; my mind began to run amuck. 6 pages and maybe about 10 hours later, above in the video and below is my sci fi take on Beauty and the Beast.
We begin with the Father character, he is travelling in his spaceship, a small one, alone travelling back to Terra (earth). We find out that he was a wealthy business owner who’s business was in interplanetary transport with a whole fleet. But several months ago, the fleet disappeared into the vastness of space. Nothing was heard about it until a few weeks ago; one ship was recovered and the Father decided to head to the port where the remains were towed to and investigate what happened and see if he can salvage anything. The ship was badly damaged, cargo in tatters and all the crew disappeared; nothing left of them in the ship. There was nothing to be salvaged so the Father is heading home emptyhanded.
We find that the Father is a widower and has 4 children; 3 boys and 1 daughter. The daughter is the youngest and called Belle. Because of this financial predicament the whole family works; the eldest boy at an office job while the younger siblings have part time jobs. Even the second to eldest son is thinking of quitting school and going into employment and assist the family in paying the bills.
The Father wishes to get home a soon as he can so he decided to fly through uncharted space as a short cut. The father takes notes on what he sees to report back to Terra. As he goes through a smaller solar system, he gets a little close to one of the planets and the ship he’s in reports a malfunction. The Father investigates and see’s that it’s an external repair and in order to do this, he will have to land the ship. If the repair isn’t done, he might make it back to Terra but the ship might not be in one piece.
The father lands the ship on this planet and attends to repairs. Father notices that this planet hasn’t been explored as yet and decides to take a break and explore the planet. There’s new fauna and flora, strange beasts that keep their distance from him. He does notice that a lot of plants have these paw paw looking fruit at the base of certain trees; the trees don’t look like they’re related to each other but the paw paw looking fruit are very similar to each other. As he’s walking around, Father spots a bush that seems to be flowering roses. He thinks this is interesting and is somehow drawn to the flower. He decides to investigate further, get closer and decides to take samples of these roses back to Terra. He grabs sample containers and clips off 3 roses from the bush. As he is clipping he gets a scrape from the bush that draws blood. The father patches himself up and does a check over himself to ensure he’s not contaminated. Once he is satisfied that himself, the ship and the samples are safe and secure, he resumes his journey back to Terra.
The Father arrives into Terra space and prepares to go through the Space Port. The Space Port is an artificial station shaped like a crescent that orbits that is in prograde orbit opposite to the moon; so as not to disrupt the moon’s orbit too much. The space port serves as planetary defense, security and quarantine for the whole planet.
Father goes back to Terra and stops at the orbital space port; The Father shares his findings of this new planet and is met with great applause, awards and money. Since the family has gotten some wealth now, the father’s children are invited to see some of the samples that were brought back on the Space Station. The roses have begun to grow a little attracting the attention of researchers and scientists. As they are touring Belle curious about the rose growth and wants to inspect it more closely. She removes her protective headgear and leans in to smell the fragrance, if any from the rose. The rose squirts a green liquid into the face of Belle and it very quickly absorbed into her skin. Belle is knocked out from the green liquid and taken to the infirmary and quarantined to be assessed. Security enters the scene and begins investigation as to why protocol was ignored and Belle was viewing the plant without protection. Belle regains consciousness finding herself in a hospital bed surrounded by doctors in white protective suits. The security enters the scene and through the protective glass interrogate as to why Belle broke protocol. She doesn’t have a real answer and can only say that she was drawn to the flower. A few days go by and the researchers find that the green liquid is somehow infusing with Belle’s DNA; changing her. Belle is showing that now, she as better hearing, better sight; she can view more colors on the light spectrum and her reaction time is better. The green liquid is also changing her to where she is becoming weak and pale. Through some experiments and trials on Belle’s changing status, the scientists figure out that her body is changing to be more adaptive to the planet where the rose came from, not Terran atmosphere.
For Belle to remain alive, she’s got to live in a specialized chamber, which is expensive to run and will force her to live in isolation from humanity. She cannot speak face to face to any human and there will be no physical touch. Once scientist suggests a crazy alternative; send Belle to the planet where the father got the plants from and have her live there until they can figure out how to revert what the green liquid did to her DNA. The father, brothers and Belle choose to have her live free on a planet than contained on Terra. A spaceship is readied with crew, scientists, doctor, the father, and Belle take the 3 day trip back to the alien planet.
Spaceship arrives in orbit of the planet and Belle, is sent down with shelter and provisions for 12 months. The crew, doctors and her father stay in the ship in orbit as she establishes camp and tracks her body adaptations to the planet’s atmosphere and gravity. Belle sets up camp and feels much better in the new planet’s atmosphere; she doesn’t require a respirator; color is back in her cheeks and her energy levels are back up. Satisfied with her livability and safety, the crew, father and doctors depart back to Terra and remain in daily contact with her.
Belle is now alone on the planet and her main job is to report back on the planet, do basic level research for the scientists back on Terra. She has spare time to read and practices her Eskrima2. Continuing to explore the immediate area of the planet, there is a wispy creature following her, observing and copying her movements; this is the entity that lives on the planet and we will call it the Beast. As she goes about her days there are wispy tentacles that show her where to find food, beautiful sights and swimming holes. The Beast finally figures a form that it can copy that looks humanoid to interact with her; think Odo from Star Trek. The Beast introduces itself welcoming her to his home. Belle of course is scared and runs away hiding from the Beast. The Beast sees that this isn’t the best way to proceed and keeps it’s distance when wanting to interact with Belle. The Beast brings Belle with freshly gathered food and clothing items. He brings them to her, leaves them at a distance to her, gets up and leaves her to investigate the goods left. Belle reports about this new humanoid entity to Terra and they are concerned for her safety but more intrigues as to how this being was not picked up on their scans. The scientists ask her to be cautious and report back on everything about this new alien.
“Familiarity of the breeds contempt” and Belle and starts to interact with the Beast; secretly to have some company on the strange planet. The beast says he has been here for a long time and is looking for a Mother Queen. The Beast asks Belle to be the mother queen but she rejects the offer. Every day they hang out, and every day the Beast asks if Belle will be a Mother Queen. Belle refuses every time she is asked.
Belle is still in touch with Terra reporting and conversing with the family and scientists. The scientists are dissatisfied with her work and pressure her to investigate further as to what the Beast is. What does it mean by “long time” and are there any more of his kind? Belle starts the investigation with the Beast and is found that the Beast is an ethereal alien that is 40,000 years old. It was travelling space with it’s herd but it was considered vain from it’s kind because it wanted to asexually reproduce which the species can do but forbidden. This was seen as a vanity in his species: the asexual reproduction is seen as more cloning and extending one’s allocated life time allowance through the asexual reproduction. On a more practical level, asexual production in his species would produce offspring with severe abnormalities3 and not be of use in their particular society. For this vanity, the Beast was cast out from the herd; literally. The Her expulsed him and threw him across space where he crash landed on this planet. The beast has been living on the planet for 200 years and he has produced ‘children’ throughout the planet but they cannot awaken. The force from being flung across the vastness of space damaged his body where he cannot produce live offspring, something else is needed to spark life into the offspring. The Beast takes Belle for a walk around the planet and shows that all of the paw paw looking fruits are his offspring in their sacks. There are hundreds of thousands of them dotted around the planet. Most of this new information is reported back to Terra but Belle lies about the sheer number of the Paw paw offspring fruit.
Time jump to 2 years later; the supplies have been depleted from the original settlement but Belle can eat food from the planet and there are regular ‘home packages’ send to the planet in case she wants something like chocolates or a jacket or chocolates. She is happy she is alive, has a companion but Belle is homesick and wants to see her family and friends.
Back on Terra, the doctors are taking regular skin, blood and hair samples of Belle and found that the green liquid sprayed on her has somehow completely attached and melded with her DNA and they are unable to separate it at all. They do not tell Belle this but it is reported to the Father who becomes distraught. The father begins to ask the gods why his youngest daughter had to be the one sprayed with the green liquid and not himself when he was the one who picked the alien rose. The grief and anguish from this mental torment manifests physically where he becomes weak, unmotivated and bedridden.
News of father’s illness gets to Belle and she wants to visit her family on terra and tend to her father. The Beast says he can let her go but she must return in a fortnight; two weeks. Belle agrees to this. The Beast goes to a rockface that serves as an interface with his technology. It’s covered with carvings, holes and lights. The Beast places a hand on a certain carved out spot and pulls out a glove. The Beast tells her that this is a transport device for her use. Putting on the glove she is able to bring up a holographic map of the immediate galaxy area, she can choose where to go and the glove will transport her there. She picks the orbital space port to transport to. She activates the glove to transport and clear goop comes out, covers her completely and she is transported through space to the space port; this takes about 10 minutes. For the humans in their current technology stage to travel the same distance, for the same trip, it would take 3 days. Belle goes through security and quarantine procedure. The scientists and doctors are okay with her visiting the family, as long as it’s contained on the space port. The scientists in particular are interested in the glove transport device that brought Belle back to Terra so quickly. They offer to look after the glove for ‘safekeeping’ while she visits the family. The Father and the brothers travel to the Space Station and are joyous to see his daughter and he becomes better almost instantaneously.
Belle stays on the space station for 6 weeks; seeing family and friends but not allowed to go on planet for fear of contamination. At the start of the 7th week Belle becomes very fatigued, weak, and struggling to breathe; much like the symptoms she had when first hit with the green liquid. Belle realizes that she has to head back to the planet in order to survive and she in a way misses the Beast. The father and brother say their goodbye and suggests more regular visits to see him and her family on Terra since she did very well and the travel between the planets was quick. The Terran scientists have the glove and do not want to part with it because they have not cracked it’s technology and want to conduct further research on it. To save his daughter, the father and older brothers steal back the glove for Belle to get back to the planet before she deteriorates further. Imagine an action scene where the glove gets back to Belle and transports back to the alien planet and the last thing she sees are the Space Port security tackling and arresting her family members who helped retrieve the glove.
Belle gets back to the planet belt and see’s the Beast on the ground, weak and dying. Belle rushes to his side, starts to cry and asks what she can do to save the Beast. The Beast again asks if she will be the Queen Mother. This time Belle agrees. The Beast directs her to a hole in a rockface with carvings and tells her to put one of her arms into it and she will become the Queen mother. Belle runs to the device, pushes her arm into the hole. The machine in the rockface whirrs to life, latches onto her arm and pulls her into the machinery a little more. Then a bright light comes out and slices her skin from the forearm, across the shoulder and the base of her throat causing her to bleed out profusely. Belle’s blood is pouring out onto the rockface and she sees that it is being absorbed into the machine.
From the rock, wispy tentacles, much like the Beast’s original form, come out of the machine and insert themselves into Belle’s large cut. The machine wispy tentacles also go out to the Beast as well. The wispy tentacles revies both Belle and the Beast but they become these new alien humanoid species. Imagine a yin and yang creature; both creatures have features of each other that compliment but not mirror each other.
The audience gets to see the tentacles reach out and around the paw paw offspring sacks around the planet. The tentacles touch the sacks and they become translucent. The wispy tentacled offspring within the sacks, break out and flip, crawl or totter towards the Belle and the Beast, their ‘parents’. We see that with the injection of Belle’s DNA, the machine, which could be an extension of the Beast’s real form, has given it the ability to give life to the Beast’s asexually produced offsprings. Here is where we realize that the Beast was asking her to be both mother and the queen to all of the offspring.
The parents; Belle and Beast through the machine’s manipulation are alive but since the procedure was done so late, both of them won’t be able to function with their bodies; their minds will be intact for a period before it will eventually give out and they will die. Before their bodies give out, the baby creatures come up, embrace and they start to communicate telepathically hearing the multitude of voices of the offspring coming in. All Belle hears are happy chirps from her ‘children’ and happy to be able to meet their ‘mother’. Belle chooses for her and the Beast’s bodies to become statues as a point where the ‘children’ can come speak and visit. Belle and the Beast set themselves turned towards each other in a parental embrace. As their bodies solidify, Belle and The Beast profess their love for one another as the baby creatures come up to the statues and crawl up, around and nuzzle the solidified forms of their ‘parents’
Back on Terra, the scientists figured out that the only place Belle would go to was the alien planet with the Beast. They turn on the live feed to see what was going on and they have just seen what happened. To the human’s this look like an alien infestation from a species that is much older, much more technologically advanced and much too close for their comfort. The world leaders are informed of this and begin to plan for more planetary defense and assemble a force to combat and attack the planet.
In the cells, all the inmates of the spaceport are in an uproar at the news. In the calls we see the father and his sons in disbelief and shock. The last thing we see is the father’s face, a mix of dejection and horror.
“Science fiction is a literature that belongs to all humankind.”
― Liu Cixin, The Three-Body Problem
https://gwarlingo.com/2012/jean-cocteau-beauty-and-the-beast/
https://blackbeltwiki.com/eskrima
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2077135/
Share this post