The Blair Question

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The above insights allows us to re-approach the Blair question in a new light. Was Blair infected before or after he went berserk? He was the one with the deepest insight into the nature of the Thing. Why didn’t he think up the test? The failure of Blair is a telling point here. Faced with the experimental facts, he knew what was going to happen. He saw the situation’s characteristic curvature, in other words. He then armed himself. Why didn’t he act?

Look to the circumstantial evidence now. On day 1, the Norwegian Dog was loose all day. It could have easily taken over more than one victim. In fact, the tacit, coincidental cooperation between Norris and Palmer in extinguishing the kennel fire that night, suggests that both of them were already infected. The interminable shadow-debate suggests that this is actually the solution: the doomed man’s shadow resembles them both, because both of them were infected that day. And odds are if one man were infected, he would have an opportunity that day to infect another man.

This is where the Thing gets subtle. It knew from past experience some of the pitfalls of attempting to take over an entire base. So the Norwegian Dog didn’t attack the dog-handler, for instance, knowing that would easily blow its cover. When in the presence of the other dogs, though, it gambled and made a move, losing by not accounting for Clark’s concern for his dogs. Similarly, Palmer didn’t attack his roommate Childs, preferring to spread suspicion elsewhere ("I’ll go with Childs"). So if Blair had been infected, he too wouldn’t have attacked Clark while they were alone tending the dogs, due to the potential dog-reactions, and due to the suspicion he knew Clark would be under (and /wanted/ him to be under, falsely).

So if he was infected, why did Blair go berserk? He did so, because he was a perfect imitation, and carried on with his work, filling notebooks with his research, and performing calculations to figure probability of infection. Given his mathematical acumen, it’s unlikely that he wouldn’t have employed analogous formulae to determine the odds of infection for each man and dog present. In so doing, he would have discovered that he himself was one of the leading contenders! He would note that he had been alone, had been around Clark, had conducted autopsies of infectious materials, and as a geneticist was the Thing’s worst enemy. Combine this now, with a scientist’s drive toward hypothesis, and Blair’s understanding of the situation’s characteristic curvature. He would have been getting severely paranoid, trying to figure out if he was safe, if anyone was safe, and above all, trying to figure out a test.

It is therefore out of character for him, as a man of science, to simply freak out and go berserk, attempting to disable the camp in the worse manner possible, by simply diminishing its capacity to survive and solve its problems in a rational manner both materially and psychologically. He would have called a meeting, and exercised his authority as a scientist, and demanded they all listen to him and submit to the test he has devised. Up until that point, not knowing whom to trust, nor wanting to cause panic, he would have hidden, holed up with a gun, until he could figure out what’s what? He would demand that the dead bodies be locked up. He would leave evidence lying around, such as his notebooks, for others to find, in the hopes that they would independently use it to come up with a test. If his notes suddenly disappeared he would know that at least one enemy was present in the science division.

By the evening of day 2, however, he would be nearing a solution. If he knew there was "still biological activity in these burned remains", he knew that discrete tissue samples of the creature could survive and prosper. Knowing that, after conducting experiments and pondering the matter (rather than just hearing about it, as Mac did via Fuchs), would have placed Blair on the path to discovering the test. He would also know by that time that determining who was infected by studying genetics was utterly impossible, hence his authoritative statement of how it imitated its victims perfectly. And at this point, it’s inconceivable that he didn’t know about the blood-mixing test.

So why go berserk? And why wait to go berserk? Keeping Blair occupied, even while infected, was innocuous. The moment Blair realized that he was probably infected, was the moment he went insane. Because at this moment, it was inevitable he would devise the test. Before he realized that next step, the Thing took over, erasing his memory of that thought-process. As described earlier, Blair would have to act soon. His thinking had progressed so much by then, that the Thing could not allow him to continue doing so without risking itself, as he would keep on reaching the same conclusions ever more quickly; but nor could it keep doing brain surgery on him, because he would eventually start acting weird and suspicious (like he had a brain disease!). So it denied him cognition, as is natural to it. In denying him cognition, his thought processes proceeded on a bestial level, thinking in material terms. Instead of making the mental leap of devising the test, he could only think that there was no way to test, and therefore, there was only one way to stop the infection, which was to isolate the camp.

The Thing didn’t stop this, because it knew, because Blair knew that so long as Mac took charge, he wouldn’t be killed but only locked up, should he go berserk. So it didn’t erase that thought, letting him become a paranoid schizophrenic, first locking himself outside his room (pretending someone was in there), busting up the vehicles, killing the dogs, and then luring Mac after him as if by coincidence (which it was, to Blair himself), fending off the others with the gun while he wrecked the radio (the only really problematic piece of equipment, from a Thing perspective). Once he took charge and had Childs try to talk with him, Blair suddenly emptied his gun, hurling it away. That made it impossible for him to escape. At that point he made a half-assed attempt to kill them with the axe, and once bludgeoned unconscious, the Thing knew that it wasn’t in danger (e.g. no electroshock). Once aroused, it could get away with a barely-there Blair. Note how Blair checks to see where the others are while Mac is leaving him in his shack for the first time. Blair was already infected, and knowing that let someone else free him without needing to explain or assimilate him.

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