Is there a particular reason that the Bahrag’s lair just so happened to have six Toa-sized tubes leading to a bar of EP? It doesn’t seem like it could be a coincidence, but I’m not sure who could have foreseen that the Toa Mata would a) come into conflict with the Bahrag and b) need to transform right about then.
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I would like to know this, too. Surely it couldn’t be the Bahrag.
And if it was one of the higher ups, like Artakha, why would they enable the Toa to defeat the Bohrok Kal, whose mission it is to free the queens, when both Toa Mata and Bohrok are backup systems? Why purposefully pit the two forces against each other?
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The Great Beings.
The Great Beings always foresee ridiculously obscure and unlikely events and make exorbitantly complicated contingency plans for them.
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This isn’t an Ask Greg topic
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I could have sworn it was stated somewhere that it was a trap.
That is why we like them!
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Maybe the Bohrok Kal were created there?
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Unfortunately no, Bohrok-Kal were created via some other mutagenic substance. But perhaps EP was used to create said substance - you know to make something that would mutate bohrok in the same reproducible manner.
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Something you always have to keep in mind with Bionicle is that a lot of story details were retconned, and the earliest versions of the story tend to have much better possible explanations for a lot of the stuff in 2001 and early 2002.
So let’s take a look at what the early story material has to say:
In “The End of the Toa?” on page 7, there’s this bit of dialogue as the Toa are about to fall down the tubes:
Onua: “Looks like Cahdok and Cahdok had one more surprise for us!”
Lewa: “This is not their doing! this comes from the very heart of Mata Nui.”
Consider also the Nuva symbols that suddenly pop out of the suvas. I think perhaps the implication is that those were always there, but had simply now been unlocked.
In the early versions of the story, the Mata Nui robot was an evacuation vehicle containing the survivors of a dying planet, lying in suspended animation for the duration of the voyage. I suspect that Papu and Rangi (the original Great Beings?) were the only ones who weren’t asleep, though I’m guessing they must have been trapped somewhere (the Red Star mothership?), only being able to help the Toa’s quest indirectly by remotely activating various systems on Mata Nui that Makuta had not yet gained control of.
If I had to guess, I’d say the original intent was that the transformation chambers were created by Mata Nui and/or Papu/Rangi during Mata Nui’s voyage, and the Toa were about to receive those upgrades when Makuta sabotaged the GSR. This would explain why the suvas had the Nuva symbols and why the transformation chambers exist in the first place.
Perhaps it was Papu and Rangi who remotely activated the transformation chambers once the Toa defeated the Bahrag. Opening the chambers too early might have allowed the Bahrag to use them on the Bohrok, which would be bad news for the Toa.
Also, don’t forget that the Bohrok-Kal were a last minute addition to the story so LEGO could stall for time while the Mask of Light movie/story was developed. So you can just pretend they don’t exist. I wonder if the Rahkshi would have been the ones to steal the Nuva symbols originally…
I think trying to make sense of any of the mysterious stuff from 2001-2003 in the context of the final canon is futile. The story had already been massively altered by 2004, and by 2006 it was almost unrecognizable.
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Your answer is elaborate, but I don’t think it works. You are trying to explain existing plot points by applying concepts that never even made it into official storyline.
And by 2003, they were certainly not any leftovers from the concept phase as was the case in MNOG.
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Just because something was never stated outright in 2001 doesn’t mean it was never part of the official story. And of course, some details were never going to be spoken outright until the big reveal at the end of the story.
By 2003, the story had already diverged quite a bit from the initial concepts. But remember, the Toa Nuva aren’t from 2003. They’re from late 2002, which means they had to have been conceptualized in early 2002, to give enough time for their sets and story to be developed.
That means the Toa Nuva were conceptualized at a point when Bionicle’s story elements were still being carefully designed with the “big secret” in mind, and at a point when there were only 6 Toa, not hundreds.
I assume the story team was still trying to have everything make sense in the context of the “big secret” in mid-2002. I do think that once the massive 2004 retcons happened, a lot of the concepts from 2001 no longer made any sense and were thus abandoned.
But why abandon a concept when it doesn’t contradict anything yet? Since the story team was still mostly the same as it was back in 2001, they must have still had all their early concepts in mind when they came up with the Toa Nuva. Again, this was before the 2004 retcons were conceived. The story was still pretty similar to what it was in 2001.
Sure, you could argue the story team just came up with the protodermis tubes as a quick deus ex machina, but I don’t think that’s giving them enough credit. I’d like to think they were still putting careful attention into every major plot point at this point. Remember, this is the era when the 7 books of Bionicle were still a thing (even if they were only ever in Bob Thompson’s head), and this is before the massive 2004 story alterations. They must have had at least some kind of vague idea in their heads to explain the 6 incredibly convenient protodermis chambers, right?
Besides, trying to explain them in the context of early 2001 story concepts makes way more sense then trying to explain them in the context of the post-2006 storyline. 2002’s story is a lot closer to early 2001 than 2006 or even 2004.
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The various retcons and changes in direction are definitely why so many elements of 2002 look funny in hindsight. I think it would be cool to find explanations that make sense in the context of the “final” canon, though.
Full disclosure: I posted this question as stealth research for a fanfic I’ve been thinking about writing. I want to parody how little sense this stuff makes in the final canon, and perhaps present a solution of my own. But I wanted to make sure there wasn’t an official explanation first.
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“In the Matoran Universe, the Bahrag used Energized Protodermis to transform an unknown substance into the mutagen they used to create the Bohrok-Kal.[6]”
I just found this on bs01.
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So I was correct, it would seem.
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Yes, but still it does make sense why there is energized protodermis and why six is the seemingly random number of tubes. Six tubes to enable a fast creation for the mutagen for six Bohrok Kal.
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The Kal were exposed to something different than EP, though, so it doesn’t seem to follow that the tubes were for them. (If they were for the Kal, why were they filled with EP when the Toa got there?) And why build an elaborate tube network just to transform 6 Bohrok?
So I don’t have proof for my theory, but I think the EP in the tubes is a part of a chemical synthesizer (I don’t know how it’s called) that is used to create the mutagen. Each one created enough for one Bohrok to transform. It is also a way to create replacements if one was broken during the mission.
The Bohrok-Kal’s functionality was originally as vital as the Toa Nuva’s. But there was no fail in the system once the time actually came when the Bohrok were needed.
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Since the LMBs link on BS01 is dead, here’s the referenced quote by Greg in 2016:
5b. What was the Energized protodermis in the Bahrag’s nest for? Was it a trap for anybody who might fight the Bahrag? Was it what the Bahrag used to create Bohrok Kal?
5b) The assumption is it had something to do with Kal creation
Good to know there actually is an explanation in the current canon, even if it has some hiccups.
On a related note, it’s interesting that the Bohrok-Kal are sort of the counter to the Toa Nuva. They’re basically Bohrok Nuva. On the other hand, you could view normal Bohrok like the swarm’s equivalent of Matoran, and the Kal would be the equivalent of Toa.
Considering the Bohrok-Kal were last minute story additions, I wonder if the counter-Toa idea was originally intended to apply to the Rahkshi (or whatever the early version of the Rahkshi was). It’s worth noting the early Kraata that appear in the Toa Nuva renders, which are rising out of the protodermis.
I wonder if the Rahkshi were originally going to be the “Toa” of the Bohrok Swarms, rather than creations of Makuta. Or maybe Makuta would have just used the Toa’s protodermis chambers to create the Rahkshi.
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Because it’s fun.
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