why 'Martians' should be bipeds (some WoW spoiler)

[david peters <davidrpeters@earthlink.net>]

Don't read further if you haven't seen and want to see War of the Worlds.

Back in the late 80s I wrote a book detailing the evolution of humans from 
bacteria to worms, to fishy vertebrates through the primates and the rest. 
During the course I learned about what characters the synapsids bequeathed to 
us, why we have a plate separating our eyeballs from our jaw muscles, and how 
the cough originated. 

So it was with a curious eye that I gazed upon the 'Martians' in War of the 
Worlds. I'll only cover two topics. 

They were naked and quadrupedal, in the manner of lemurs and monkeys. 

In human ancestors, standing upright freed our hands to do other things, 
specifically to carry things, like bananas and prey. Before long we were 
fashioning stone into tools and weapons; vines and sinew into string and rope; 
skins and leaves into garments and adornments. This led to trade, greed, 
invention, the moon landing and MTV. So quadrupedal aliens in hi-tech ware 
doesn't cut it for me. 

Second, clothes give you one thing that nudity can't offer: pockets -- again to 
carry things in, be they weapons, medicines or translation guides. No wonder 
the aliens caught 'colds'. They were unprotected and apparently naive about 
life's littlest denizens. Even in the late 60s we were cautious enough to 
quarantine our astronauts (with pockets) even when we thought the threat of 
disease was nil.

Still, the special effects are breath-taking. Not sure what the red roots were 
all about, nor all the red fluids.

David Peters
St. Louis

PS. Do you think they'll ever do an invasion movie where the aliens want our 
gold, want to force us to their religion and we give them syphyllis?