Just Call Me Beta, Please

Any who have the misfortune of knowing me know I have a rather selective view of what constitutes Bionicle. Essentially I consider Bionicle to have run from 1998 to mid 2002. As a kid I was a die hard fan until 06, where a combination of the marketing and the sets just not being very good caused me to gradually lose interest until I just got one set in 07 and never again bought a Bionicle.

All this preamble is to say that for the longest time I never really knew all that much about Voya-Nui, apart from it being the namesake of a terrible game. Later on, as I got back in to the hobby I heard rumors, dark, twisted rumors. They spoke of a stick making the island fly underwater through a hole, that the island itself was ejected from the body of the robot and left a Voya-Nui sized hole in a continent. Just the ravings of a mad man, so I threw it in the bin along with everything in Bionicle after the Toa go in to the Bohrok hives in 02 and moved on with my life.

Fast forward to now, and Christian Faber starts releasing some development materials through a humanoid water fowl, and this very interesting image is among what's released

This image made everything click for me and I fell in love with Voya-Nui as a concept.

But I think before revealing the original intent, its important to explain the "canon" sequence of events surrounding the so called "Island of Doom"

ISLAND OF DOOM, A PRIMER

Okay so there's a big robot sleeping in an ocean, one day its heart pops and a chunk of land that was on top of the heart breaks out of its chest and starts floating in the ocean. The island, I must add, survived this event, as the hole it left is the same shape and size as the final island.

Now the island floats around for a bit, the volcanic crater on it eventually builds up a large land mass in the middle of the bay, the people on it (yes there were people on the island when it got ejected, and they survived the event) decide that this is the best place to build a city.

It turns out that wasn't the best place to build a city as the new land mass breaks off and somehow anchors it to the sea floor.

Eventually some guys show up and break the anchor cord and the island, inexplicably, sinks down under the water, and manages to go right back in to the hole it made and everything returns to normal.

In some blog post it was explained that there was a magic wand that fixed everything that was used at the same moment.

This is the canonical sequence of events.

More like island of dumb¹.

THE ORIGINAL CONCEPTS

Okay now that all that unpleasantness is out of the way, we can start with the actually interesting things.

There are so many details to cover here, I think the best way to organise them would be to present everything roughly chronologically.

The scenario is the same, a massive robot crash lands in a large ocean, its completely under the water outside of its face, upon which the larger island of Mata Nui forms.

From the beginning its very different, there's no large landmass over the heart (in fact the very idea of the robot itself being full of various domes with islands in them is very suspect but this post is already long enough). The heart is a reactor, and consists of a massive spherical cavity in the chest. Something occurs and the heart pops open, a small panel or valve on the perimeter of the reactor core's wall bursts out of the chest of the robot. Through this hole sea water begins to flood in-this is important!

The ejected panel floats, and some sort of system within it cools it down, causing the sea water to freeze, essentially turning it in to a massive iceberg. There's also mentions of it being magnetic, the final island is described as looking somewhat like a magnet run over a factory floor. It probably also attracted debris from the sea bed as it floated through the seas. As you can see in that diagram the core is filled with massive long cables and the island eventually gets anchored by a long cable, so that's possibly where that came from!

Over years the island grows and grows as it floats around the oceans, being buffeted around by the currents. Eventually part of it becomes unstable and breaks off, sinking to the ocean floor, and since a large cable was attached to both pieces, it anchors the island in place.

Now we get to the crucial part. In the canon depiction of events the most baffling thing is why does breaking the anchor rope make it sink? Now we come back to this image:

When the panel popped out it left a hole. Water is pouring back in to the hole, forming a giant whirlpool. The robot is so massive that even after all these years of constant flooding the cavity on the inside is still not even half full. Voya-Nui was caught in the whirlpool's strong currents when the island broke up. This impromptu anchor stopped it just as it was about be pulled in! Then the super strong currents from the whirlpool gave it the distinctive curved shape.

So now we know why destroying the cable holding it in place causes the floating island to sink: once untethered its free to be pulled in to the whirlpool! The island that formed around the panel would break off and the panel would basically be a giant plug and stop the flow of water flooding in to the reactor.

Figuring this all out was such a revelation, taking one of the most nonsensical sequences of events in the series and transforming it in to this completely logical scenario which, from the point of view of the characters involved, is still quite mysterious and oblique, but when looked at from the perspective of repairing this giant robot it makes perfect sense.

And we were robbed. Imagine the Mata Nui rising sequence of animations starting off with a whole island being pulled in to a whirlpool.

THE CORE

This is getting a bit beyond the main focus of the island, but I just want to talk about the core itself because there were a few interesting tidbits there as well. Its a very evocative setting which I feel suffered greatly and few of the interesting parts were conveyed well in the story.

The water streaming through the hole is described as having some sort of light emitting reaction to the part of the reactor its hitting, lighting the whole chamber. Steam from the reaction swirls upwards and vaporised materials from the heat of the reaction collect on the roof, forming massive stalactites that eventually fall, creating this jagged forest of stone needles within the massive pool of water, water which's temperature varies depending on how close it is to the reaction.

Really seems a shame that in the final story it was simplified down to "sky" and "swamp". Just imagine, this forest of stone, shrouded in fog, lit by this flickering unearthly light emanating from the centre. You have the added aspect of once Voya-Nui has returned to its rightful place the water fall would cease, leading to the light dwindling until the whole area is pitch black.

MISCELLANEOUS OTHER NOTES

One major feature of the island that was missing from the earlier ice and rock version is the massive lava crater, supposedly from the mask of life². I had been toying with the idea that the volcano formed the rest of the island around the panel, but with how much larger the island was it just didn't make sense, so the ice and magnetism really helped out there!

Its said that the ice formed as some sort of self defence mechanism, like an organ freezing itself to preserve itself in an emergency. Personally though I have this little idea that the panel was actually something like the cooling system for the reactor, and without it the reactor was going to over heat, but luckily it was kept just cool enough by the falling water. The cooling system, being linked somehow to the main robot, detects that the reactor was over heating and starts working over time to cool it, leading to it freezing the surrounding ocean and making itself in to a massive iceberg, but as it wasn't connected to the robot's core and nothing it did had any effect, it ends up overheating itself, causing the pool of lava on the top. But that's just a little fan idea.

Another one I have is that the island, when it was floating freely, may have passed next to Mata Nui, close enough to be sailed too, at some point far in the past. Explaining how there would be inhabitants on it despite it getting shot out of the robot like a bullet.

Also it would be remiss of me to not mention that even though the canon depiction of events makes no sense, the whirlpool is briefly seen in the 100% ending of the torture device Bionicle Heroes.

But this is much smaller, and seems to only have just opened up in the bay. Rather than being something to do with the hole it made it seems this is more about how the mask they were seeking went underwater.

SCALE!

Time to talk sizes!³

This drawing is especially useful here, as it shows all 3 major objects in question all relative to each other. Yes Voya-Nui is there, its the tiny little dot on the bottom right. So I simply took the height maps for Voya-Nui, used them to make a quick little model in the same fashion as my Mata Nui, and brought in my old GSR model. I scaled them all to the Mata Nui from my last posts, and guess what! It all lines up perfectly.

The Voya-Nui Model is the exact right size it should be, according to this map:

And what was more impressive, was that the GSR turned out to be pretty much bang on with this even older concept art:

Scaling the GSR was a more bit awkward, as the final design is more gangly compared to this drawing, but lining up the torsos worked really well!

And now let us visit the 1/10th scale Mata Nui and meet Geroge. A new island has floated up off Ta-Wahi beach and he want's to explore a bit!

Excuse the monochrome island, the height maps I'm using are actually quite different from the final island.

There is a height map more accurate to the final island, but that one didn't have an underside. The little islets in the bay were also neat.

The large lava lake in the centre is roughly 250 metres across. Its nothing compared to Mata Nui's caldera, but its still very huge when you get down to the ground level.

The panel that forms the centre of the island is massive as well.

Approximately 550m wide, and 900m tall. Just think of the massive reactor core this thing popped out of!

Seeing it separate from the island really puts it in perspective.

Imagine this thing shooting out of the robot's chest like a bullet.

I'll just quickly mention, earlier on I posted that map of all the internal islands. If you use the size of metru nui on their you can scale Voya-Nui appropriately, and you end up with this.

Its less a small panel popping out of the heart and more the scene from Alien at this point.

CONCLUSION

This has been quite a rambly post, but there was just so much information to cover. I left out a lot of details. This whole thing just makes me very excited, sorry.

I just think its such a beautifully elegant scenario that really adds a lot to the setting and story, rather than just having yet another new island, but this time the island is mean. I find it quite interesting how everything would have sorted itself out, if not for the island breaking in half. There's no Machiavellian plots, no scheming, no betrayal, just an unfortunate situation that makes a bad situation worse, and everyone has to work to fix it. It was utterly butchered in the final story. It makes me quite sad for what could have been. Just picture it, this floating island getting pulled towards a massive whirlpool, the outer island breaking off as it spirals deep down underwater until this long tarnished metal plug is revealed to have been at the centre. With a huge impact it closes up the hole, fitting back perfectly where it came from, managing to avert the disaster of the flood waters growing ever higher inside the core of this robot.

But in any case, really the important take away is, Voya-Nui is just a rip off of Noah's Island when you get down to it.

I'll leave you with a photograph of George waving hello to his large friend.

Have a nice day/night[delete whichever is inappropriate]!

¹-You know its true. ²-Not to be confused with the Mask o' Flight, the film staring a swarm of Tahnok. ³-Please note, I am using 1 kio = .1 km as per my previous posts, if this offends you simply multiply every number in this post by 43.75966487787¾⁴ ⁴-Yes even this one.