Morlock


Morlocks are a fictional species created by H. G. Wells for his 1895 novel, The Time Machine, and are the main antagonists. Since their creation by H. G. Wells, the Morlocks have appeared in many other works such as sequels, films, television shows, and works by other authors, many of which have deviated from the original description.
In choosing the name "Morlocks", Wells may have been inspired by Moloch, the Caananite god of child sacrifice, with the Eloi analogous to children. Alternatively, he may have also been inspired by the Morlachs, an ethnic group in the Balkans which attracted attention from Western travelers as a perceived archetype of barbarism and backwardness.

In ''The Time Machine''

The Morlocks are at first a mysterious presence in the book, in so far as the protagonist initially believes the Eloi are the sole descendants of humanity. Later, the Morlocks are made the story's antagonists. They dwell underground in the English countryside of AD 802,701, maintaining ancient machines that they may or may not remember how to build. Their only access to the surface world is through a series of well-like structures that dot the countryside of future England.
After thousands of generations of living without sunlight, the Morlocks have dull grey-to-white skin, chinless faces, large greyish-red eyes with a capacity for reflecting light, and flaxen hair on the head and back. They are smaller than humans. Like the Eloi, they are significantly weaker than the average human, but a large swarm of them can be a serious threat for a lone man, especially unarmed and/or with no portable light source. Their sensitivity to light usually prevents them from attacking during the day. The Morlocks and the Eloi have something of a symbiotic relationship: the Eloi are clothed and fed by the Morlocks, and in return, the Morlocks eat the Eloi. The Time Traveler perceives this, and suggests that the Eloi–Morlock relationship developed from a class distinction present in his own time: the Morlocks are the working class who were relegated to working and living underground so that the rich upper class could live in luxury on the surface. With time, the balance of power changed - the hedonistic surface people no longer dominating the underground dwellers, but instead becoming their livestock.

In sequels and prequels to ''The Time Machine''

''When the Sleeper Wakes''

H. G. Wells also wrote a book called When the Sleeper Wakes. The book centres on a man who somehow falls asleep for several centuries, and wakes in the mid-21st century to find that he has inherited the world. In this book, we find out that an organization called the Labour Company has rounded up most of the world's lower class, forcing them to work underground in horrible conditions for the sole benefit of the rich upper class. It would seem that these people will later degenerate to become the Morlocks.
When the "Sleeper" encounters these proto-Morlocks, they appear as labourers working underground under horrible conditions. He notes that they seem to be turning paler, as well as developing their own dialect of English.

''The Time Ships''

The Time Ships, by Stephen Baxter is considered by the H. G. Wells estates to be the sequel to The Time Machine and was published to mark the centennial of the original publication. In its wide-ranging narrative, the Time Traveler attempts to return to the world of tomorrow but instead finds that his actions have changed the future: one in which the Eloi have never manifested. Instead, the Earth is a nearly barren waste that has been abandoned in favour of a 220 million kilometres wide self-sustaining sphere around the Sun drawing its energy directly from sunlight, where the Morlocks now live.
Utterly peaceful, moralistic, and highly intelligent, the only resemblance these new Morlocks have to the monstrous cannibals of the first future is that of appearance and dwelling "underground". The sphere they inhabit is divided into two concentric shells, with the Morlocks living exclusively inside the nearly featureless exterior. Above them, the inner shell where the sun shines openly is an Earth-like utopia. In its many forms and at many technological levels, they continue on here in much the same way as that of the Time Traveler's era.
The Morlocks' civilization includes a variety of nation-groups based on thought and ideology, in which individuals move between without conflict. All needs are met by the sphere itself, including reproduction where the newly born are "extruded" directly from the floor. These peaceful intelligent Morlocks seem also to have extraordinary resistance to disease and perhaps to radiations too, even when not in their homeworld, as stated by Nebogipfel when in the Paleocene.
The only Morlock given a name is Nebogipfel, who remains with the Time Traveler throughout the book. Nebogipfel's name comes from the main character of H. G. Wells' first attempt at a time travel story, then called "Chronic Argonauts". The character's name was Dr. Moses Nebogipfel.

''Morlock Night''

In K. W. Jeter's novel Morlock Night, the Morlocks have stolen the Time Machine and used it to invade Victorian London. These Morlocks are much more formidable than those in The Time Machine - a clever, technological race with enough power to take over the entire world. They also get support from certain treacherous 19th century humans, especially a dark wizard named Merdenne. It is also revealed that the Morlocks living in their native time have stopped allowing the Eloi to roam free and now keep them in pens.
The Morlocks are separated into two types, or castes, in the novel. One is the short, weak, stupid Grunt Morlocks, who are supposedly the kind that the Time Traveller encountered, and the other is the Officer Morlocks, who are taller, more intelligent, speak English, and have a high rank within the Morlock invasion force. An example of the latter type is Colonel Nalga, an antagonist later in the book.
These Morlocks are always described as wearing blueish spectacles, which are presumably to protect the Morlocks' sensitive, dark-adapted eyes.

In other books

Some authors have adopted the Morlocks and adapted them to their works, often completely unassociated with The Time Machine, or were named in-universe in homage to H.G. Wells' works.
The Morlocks appeared in a story by Alan Moore titled Allan and the Sundered Veil, which appeared as part of the comic book collection The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Volume I. In the story, the Time Traveler takes some of the regular League characters into his future world, where he has made a base out of the Morlock sphinx. The party is soon attacked by Morlocks, who are fierce, simian creatures in this story. They are physically much more powerful than Wells' creatures, although they're similar to the Hunter Morlocks from the 2002 film.
Larry Niven included a version of the Morlocks in his Known Space books. They appear as a alien race living in the caves in one region of Wunderland, which is one of humanity's colonies in the Alpha Centauri system. Many of these stories are by Hal Colebatch in the shared spin-off series, "The Man Kzin Wars", especially in vols. X, XI and XII. They are also mentioned in stories in the same series by M. J. Harringtom.
In Joanna Russ' short story "The Second Inquisition", The Time Machine is referenced a number of times, and the unnamed character referred to as "our guest" claims to be a Morlock, although she does not physically resemble Wells' Morlocks.
In the fictional universe of Warhammer 40000, Morlocks are the elite warriors of the Iron Hands chapter of space marines and feature in several Horus Heresy novels where they act as bodyguards for their primarch Ferrus Manus.

In essays and non-fiction

In Neal Stephenson's essay on modern culture operating system development, In the Beginning... was the Command Line, he demonstrates similarities between the future in The Time Machine and contemporary American culture. He claims that most Americans have been exposed to a "corporate monoculture" which renders them "unwilling to make judgments and incapable of taking stands." Anyone who remains outside of this "culture" is left with powerful tools to deal with the world, and it is they, rather than the neutered Eloi, that run things.
J. R. R. Tolkien mentioned Morlocks three times in his 1939 essay On Fairy-Stories, which discusses the genre now called fantasy. The first reference occurs where Tolkien attempts to define the genre, and he suggests that the Morlocks place The Time Machine more in the genre than do the Lilliputians in Gulliver's Travels. He reasoned that the Lilliputians are merely diminutive humans, whereas the Morlocks and Eloi are significantly different from us, and 'live far away in an abyss of time so deep as to work an enchantment'. Another reference to the creatures of The Time Machine occurs in the essay's section Recovery, Escape, Consolation. Here it's argued that fantasy offers a legitimate means of escape from the mundane world and the 'Morlockian horror of factories'. Elsewhere in his essay, Tolkien warns against separating fantasy readers into superficial categories, using the Eloi and Morlocks as a dramatic illustration of the repercussions of sundering the human race.

In film and television

''The Time Machine'' (1960 film)

In the 1960 film version of The Time Machine directed by George Pal, the Morlocks are eventually defeated by the Eloi, who are motivated to fight by the Time Traveler. They are shown to be quite susceptible to blows, though this may be due to them having never encountered resistance before. One of the differences of the movie Morlocks is that the divergence was created not by a varying caste system, but by being forced underground by a nuclear war that started on August 19, 1966 and lasted hundreds of years.
The Morlocks in the film also have a system for summoning the Eloi into their sphinx by using air raid sirens. Supposedly, this was originally used to warn of bombing. Responding to the siren has become inborn, and the Eloi now do so like cattle. The Morlocks use whips to herd them.

''The Time Machine'' (1978 film)

In the television film The Time Machine directed by Henning Schellerup and first broadcast on US television on November 5, 1978, the protagonist Dr. Neil Perry travels with his time machine into the future to tell his company Mega Corporation, for which he developed an Antimatter bomb, about its future destructive impact on humanity. In the future, he witnessed the destruction of civilization, but also learns that nature has been revived from the wasteland and that some of the people who had previously sought refuge underground, the Eloi, have returned to the surface. The race that remained below the surface became the Morlocks, and when Perry arrives he watches as the Morlocks begin to harvest the Eloi as their food. Here he also meets the Eloi girl Weena, played by Priscilla Barnes, who, unlike the other film adaptations, now has a brother named Ariel.
Weena leads Perry into a preserved technology museum, which also shows his bomb developed in the past for the Mega Corporation, and in a video animation he can see the damage caused by his bomb. Before Perry returns to his time, he and Ariel blow up three entrances to the Morlocks' caves with plastic explosives they found in the museum. When he travels back in time to tell his company about the dramatic effects of the bomb in the future, his superiors show disinterest. Perry travels to the future again to return to Weena and the Eloi and finds that their world is now free of the Morlocks.

''The Time Machine'' (2002 film)

In 2002, another film based on The Time Machine was directed by Simon Wells, the great-grandson of H. G. Wells. The Morlocks in this film, as well as the Eloi, have been changed in several major ways. The Morlocks have become physically stronger and faster, and are very ape-like now, frequently running on all fours.
The movie displays three of these races:
As explained by the Über-Morlock when Alexander is brought to him while trying to save the Eloi Mara, the Morlocks originated from humans that sought shelter underground, after an underground demolition attempt at constructing a lunar colony on the Moon sent some of its fragments crashing to Earth. They remained underground for so long that they developed bodies with very little melanin in their skin and very sensitive eyes that could not tolerate sunlight for long. As a result of the past catastrophe and the resulting strain on resources, the proto-Morlocks divided themselves into several castes, two of which could survive in the daylight. They inbred within each caste until the Morlock race became composed of genetically fine-tuned sub-races designed for specific tasks.
During the climax of the film, Alexander kills the Über-Morlock by pushing him out of the moving time machine. The rest of the Morlocks are destroyed when Alexander causes his time machine to malfunction and explode in their tunnels.

''Time Machine: Rise of the Morlocks''

A 2011 television movie originally named Morlocks produced for Syfy, starring David Hewlett, and Robert Picardo. The plot sees a time machine open a portal to the future allowing Morlocks to travel back to the present and wreak havoc. These Morlocks are descended from a patient with terminal cancer whose father used the military time travel project to look for technology in the future as a cure. One of the first Morlocks to escape through the portal into the present is captured and has its DNA extracted; paradoxically, it is treatment with this DNA that causes the patient to mutate into the first Morlock.

''Mutant War''

Morlocks are briefly referenced by the protagonist in reference to the zombie like mutant antagonists of the film.

Television shows

In the serial Timelash episodes of the twenty-second season of Doctor Who, the Sixth Doctor takes H. G. Wells into the future where they encounter an underground-dwelling, reptilian species called the Morlox. The Borad, an evil ruler, accidentally becomes half-Morlox before the episode.
In the 1978 Challenge of the Super Friends episode titled "Conquerors of the Future", the episode featured Barlocks, a variation of the Morlocks in a time period when the Super Friends are long dead who lived outside a domed city that is Earth's capital. The Barlocks have attacked it many times and are driven away by the bright lights. In addition, they aren't very good at mastering the technology they have. When the Legion of Doom arrived and encountered the Barlocks, Lex Luthor formed an alliance with their leader and came up with a trick to take over the domed city. Afterwards, the Legion of Doom used them in their plans to conquer the galaxy with Lex Luthor leading the Barlocks to conquer the ruling planet of Sector 13 while Black Manta leads the Barlocks to conquer the ruling planet in the Outer Galaxy Region. When Superman, Green Lantern, and Flash arrive in this time after accidentally appearing in the farther future and finding a history book that details the history of Earth, they defeat the Legion of Doom as Flash uses his super-speed to place the Barlocks back in their cave. The inhabitants of Earth's capital city sees to it that the planets the Legion of Doom and the Barlocks have conquered are liberated.
Homer Simpson mentions Morlocks in The Simpsons episode "Homer the Moe", claiming he became their king while telling a shaggy dog story.
In 2003, Peak Entertainment relaunched "Monster in My Pocket" with former lead villain Warlock as the hero. The new villain became Warlock's evil twin Morlock. The series was passed on by Cartoon Network and Peak's rights to Monster in My Pocket were revoked on December 22, 2004. With the series' limited distribution, it is difficult to say if the connection was more than a nominal one.
In 2006, a new incarnation of Power Rangers, titled , includes Morlocks as the enemies of the Mystic Force Rangers. Sources from before the show's premiere described them as "zombie-like foot soldiers", and it was also implied that they live underground below the town of Briarwood and plot to rise up and destroy everything. However, it has since been revealed that the Morlocks in the show are not simply foot soldiers; they comprise the entire group of enemies of the Power Rangers that have been led by Octomus. The Morlocks in the show are entirely unlike those in The Time Machine, except that they still live underground and are villains. These Morlocks are not portrayed as a divergent species of humanity, but instead as an ancient, evil legion who were sealed underground centuries ago. The Morlocks have finally broken the seal and are planning to invade Briarwood, and later the world. The term was used exclusively in promotional material and was never mentioned in the show.
On the episode of The Big Bang Theory called "The Nerdvana Annihilation," Leonard Hofstadter and his friends chipped in to buy an original time machine prop from the 1960 film classic The Time Machine. None in the group was more excited about the purchase than Sheldon Cooper, who seemed to think he was the only one able to grasp the full possibilities of owning such a unique piece of memorabilia. His viewpoint changed drastically though, after he experienced a series of episode-ending dreams, all featuring the infamous cannibalistic Morlock species from the classic H. G. Wells book. The first dream was him travelling to the future on 28 April 802701 and being eaten alive by three Morlocks. When he wakes up, Leonard agrees to get rid of the time machine, but he hires Morlocks to do it. As they eat Sheldon, he wakes up again and yells for Leonard to help him.
In the 2010 episode of Futurama titled "The Late Philip J. Fry," Bender, Farnsworth, and Fry travel to the future where they meet a society of small creatures who explain that humanity has diverged into two distinct groups through evolution. Upon returning five years later, the crew discovers that the small, intelligent creatures have been overrun and destroyed by the troglodytic "Dumb-locks."

Comics

In Marvel Comics, the Morlock name was used for a group of mutants that live in the sewers.

Videogames

In Bookworm Adventures 2 Morlocks are instead named Troglocks and appear as enemies of the sixth book.