The name of a star, and in the novel by Pierre Boulle, the name given to the son of Ulysse Mérou and Nova; the birth of Sirius, and the prospect of a newly-intelligent human race.
History[]
Forced Union[]
Sirius was conceived through a pairing of his mother and father assigned by Zaïus in an experiment of sexual selectivity. Initially his father Ulysse while finding Nova physically attractive refused to have relations with her, especially in an audience of the apes. However in order to prevent Nova from being taken from him and given to another male, the Earthman complied with the apes directive to mate with her.
Birth[]
Zira, who was first to return to the institute from an archaeological dig of an ancient city in the antipodes with Cornélius and Ulysse, was the first to notice Nova to show signs of pregnancy. The gorilla staff had yet to see her conditions, and after speaking with her fiancé and administrator, it was agreed that it would be best to keep her pregnancy. With the fact that the woman bared Ulysse's child, as a result of physical intimacy with the Earthman, the pregnancy was regarded as one that needed to be carefully watched. To that end Zira took Nova to an isolated cage in the institute and personally looked after her.
Two months later after Ulysse and Cornélius returned from their trio, the former was made aware of his eventually birth of his child which would be due in three or four months. Cornélius though believed that the child would probably be like any human child born on Soror, despite Ulysse's fierce rebuke that it child would at least be able to talk. Though such an outcome was deemed worrisome by Cornélius for the new parents as the Grand Council were closely monitoring the birth. Due to Nova bearing his child, Ulysse finally made an effort to commit to a relationship beyond physical attraction with the wild woman, slowly seeing her as a person.
At the expected time, Nova gave birth to a baby boy, who was the spitting image of his father as well as possessing Nova's beauty. After the birth security measures around the mother and child were raised, preventing Ulysse from being present at the birth and only being able to finally see his family a week later. The newborn was closely monitored during the day with the restrictions placed on them, make Nova's uneasy;
Sirius's unique lineage through his father afforded him with greater intelligence not found in the men of Soror for thousands of years. Since his birth he displayed emotions, crying rather than whining compared to normal infant humans, a trait that surprised even his mother. Ulysse was intent that his son be a proper man and had a destiny to be the start of a new human race that would bloom on Soror, though was afraid of the obstacles he would have to overcome whilst being a captive of the apes.
Another aspect of the boy's birth was his existence was what allowed his mother, Nova to relinquish her hatred of Zira. Zira who had been taking care of Nova during her conception with her son, was finally accepted by Nova as a friend, and in a show of trust the woman permitted the chimpanzee to kiss the boy on his brow without protest.
Exile[]
At three months old he was able to talk, an astonishing feat even by Earth standards. Due to his existence and potential for mankind it led to growing animosity towards the human family from the simian populace. As a result, a plan was crafted to allow Sirius and his family to flee Soror. While another woman and her child were placed in their cage, Nova and Sirius accompanied Ulysse on a satellite that took them to Mérou's spacecraft and using it traveled first to Earth. On the journey he successfully becomes a teacher to his mother, helping her become more rational. Sadly the family discovered apes too had also become the dominant species, forcing the family of exiles to search space for a new home.
Notes[]
At one point in the Planet of the Apes movie adaptation of Boulle's novel, Nova was due to mirror her namesake from the original novel by being pregnant with the child of Taylor (analogous to Mérou's character in the novel). The scene remained in Michael Wilson's final shooting script as late as 15 June 1967, as he confirmed:[1] "In the penultimate drafts of 'Planet of the Apes', Nova (Linda Harrison) was pregnant With Taylor's (Charlton Heston) child. In this version, Taylor was killed by the bullet of an ape sniper just after he sees the Statue of Liberty. But Nova escapes, vanishing into the Forbidden Zone beyond the Statue of Liberty. The meaning is clear: if her unborn child is a male and grows to manhood, the species will survive. If not, modern man becomes extinct. Such an ending left open the possibility of a sequel long before sequels were discussed. Nova's pregnancy was deleted from the film, I'm told, at the insistence of a high-echelon Fox executive who found it distasteful. I suppose that if one defines the mute Nova as merely 'humanoid' and not actually human, it would mean that Taylor had committed sodomy."[2] Associate producer Mort Abrahams also suggested that, "if she's pregnant that becomes an element of the story... and now we're off to something else entirely."[3] Actress Linda Harrison added, "I remember that we were all set up to do the scene. It was the scene where we say good-bye to Cornelius and Zira, and Taylor asks for the gun. That was the scene where Zira was going to tell Taylor that Nova was expecting. But then the brass huddled in a quick little meeting and they decided that it wasn't the right course to take."[4] The scene was included when Marvel Comics adapted the movie from that version of the script, but had the dialogue altered just before publication. However, the following year the strips were re-printed in colour in Marvel's Adventures on the Planet of the Apes comics with the original 'pregnancy' dialogue restored, probably by mistake.
A different version of the character appeared in the Boulle-penned movie sequel, Planet of the Men. In this unused treatment from July 1968, Sirius was a son born to Nova and Taylor shortly after the events of the first movie. As intelligent as his father, he helped his mother to learn to speak, and at a very young age also began to teach the primitive humans of the planet to speak and to form a society. However, as an adult he was headstrong, and objected to the welcome his father extended to his old ape allies Zira, Cornelius and Lucius. After the humans' victory over the invading ape army, the other hot-headed young generation of humans persuaded Sirius to lead them in a war of conquest over the Ape City. The same young humans ultimately killed Taylor when he tried to intervene, leaving Sirius at the head of a new, aggressive human culture.
When Paul Dehn prepared his own treatment for a sequel in September 1968, titled Planet of the Apes Revisited, he also included the birth of an infant son named Sirius, who is born into a new era of co-operation between the apes and humans. Dehn's story appropriated elements from Boulle's treatment, such as Field Marshall Urus/General Ursus, and he possibly took the idea from there. Both writers may also have read the version of the movie script which showed Nova pregnant. Dehn's subsequent revisions of his screenplay for Beneath the Planet of the Apes did not include Sirius.
In 1988, Adam Rifkin wrote "an alternate sequel to the first film." In Rifkin's Return to the Planet of the Apes, Nova has died but left Taylor a son named Duke. Taylor is later killed by a ruthless gorilla leader, and Cornelius promises to raise Duke amongst the community of humans Taylor had founded in the Forbidden Zone. Ultimately, Duke helps overthrow the gorilla tyrant. However, Rifkin's project was abandoned.[5][6]
References[]
- ↑ 'Final Shooting Script' at Hunter's Planet of the Apes Archive
- ↑ 'Marvel's Planet of the Apes', USA Issue 2 (October 1974)
- ↑ Behind the Planet of the Apes
- ↑ Linda Harrison Interview - The Forbidden Zone (about 1998)
- ↑ Return to the Planet of the Apes (part 1), at Hunter's Planet of the Apes Archive
- ↑ Return to the Planet of the Apes (part 2), at Hunter's Planet of the Apes Archive