Android Files

Some popular Lego commentators have talked in the past about the similarities of Life on Mars and Mars Mission. The comparison is apt, not just for the shared setting. Both have relatively similar alien creatures running about in advanced floating technology powered by seemingly native energy rocks. But one thing a lot of these commentators seem hung up on is the fact that if you were to view the two themes as a single contiguous story, there are some frightening implications regarding the Martians and their energy crystals. Namely, their absence in Mars Mission leaves a haunting sense that this confict to save Earth with clean, strip mined martian rocks is being done over the site of a Martian genocide, either at the hands of the Crystaliens who seem to need the crystals just as badly, or at the hands of the oddly heavily armed human “explorers” of Mars Mission.

Having spent the better part of two decades thinking about these two themes, I can honestly say I don’t love this interpretation. It just feels like the kind of overly dark and twisted story a teenager or history professor would tell, and not really the spirit of either theme. Life on Mars is almost utopian in it’s sense of peacefulness and cooperation between the Martians and Humans, and so that is reflected in my headcanons.

Furthermore, the connection between the “Biodium meterorites” and native Martian Energy crystals is shaky at best aside from the fact that they’re both fuel-laced rocks found on Mars. A lot of people seem to find it funny or appealing to simply say that Biodium is energy crystals in some way, and that the humans in Mars Mission have come to steal the Martian’s source or power.

Nonetheless I’ve decided to sort of headcanon that “biodium” may just be a more stable or more rare version of Energy Crystals, one which the Martians prize above the dangerous and far more abundant energy crystals. Maybe it’s even a form that was created in soace instead of in Mars’ crust, leading it to only being found in meteors. This allows the theme(s) to work together instead of assuming the Mars Mission astronauts had slaughtered the Martians for their oil I mean energy.

And there we have it! It was important to me to establish humans were still peaceful allies with the Martians, who I believe probably went into a the safety of hidden villages, like the Fremen in Dune for example. Meanwhile there were other ways to make the theme a little bit more horrifying and fun, such as the idea of traveling 200 million kilometers to another planet to work as cannon fodder/subsistence farmer.