Seriously Though, Why Didn't the Animorphs Just...

[TobiasMasonPark]

I realize this probably belongs in a "Seriously though, why didn't the Yeerks just...." thread, but I was reading #9 The Secret the other day where they were attempting to find Andalites by chopping down the forest they were convinced they were hiding in.

In said book, Cassie morphs a wolf and immediately recognizes an unfamiliar smell of "Andalite".  Given Andalites have a unique smell and the Yeerks have an andalite body handy as a reference, why don't they just use blood hounds to sniff out Ax's scoop?  I don't get the impression his scoop is particularly far from human civilization.

I know they always had a built in excuse that Visser 3 doesn't know anything about Earth animals, but you'd think at some point some eager to advance human controller would say "you know, Visser, humans use these blood hound creatures to track things down all the time".

Just something that hit me while I was reading.

     Feel free to post any "Seriously, why didn't" moments here. It's not just the Animorphs' stupidity that we're interested in

     You make a good point, Snakie. Of course, one must remember what tends to happen to Yeerks who suggest things to Visser Three.

[Chad32]

It's fridge logic, I guess. Something you think of that would be considerably easier to do. They could have scoured the forest with bloodhounds, putting a story in the paper about a missing child so people wouldn't think the search parties were suspicious. I'm not sure why they couldn't find a more subtle and cheaper way than clear cutting a forest.

[Tim Bruening]

To keep this thread going, why didn't the Animorphs just hide David away until they could take care of the world leaders mission and ease him into things more slowly?

Trying to train a new Animorph and bring him along on their most crucial mission yet created tension they really weren't equipped to deal with at the moment, and shouldn't they have eased the new Animorph in with some smaller missions and morphing sessions first?  Was having a 7th person for THAT mission REALLY that critical?

They could have parked David with the free Hork-Bajir until they had the world leaders settled.

[Altephor]

There's a million of the 'why didn't they just' scenarios in Animorphs, especially towards the end.

Why didn't they just kidnap Tom?  Someone mentioned that the Chee couldn't replace him because it results in a Yeerk death, but they replace the Animorphs all the time and hundreds of Yeerks, Hork-Bajir, and Taxxons are killed in the process.  So that's a moot point.  In book 31, Tom is isolated with Jake in the mountains with his family.  Away from the Yeerk forces.  Bring the gang, tie him up in the woods, have someone morph him so the family doesn't get suspicious.  Done.  Easy.

The biggest one that bothers me is the Yeerks being able to morph.  Because it's the host body that's morphing.  The presumably unwilling host, which the Yeerks will have to leave every 3 days to feed.  So now you have tons of unwilling humans, with the power to morph, and they can't fight/escape from the Yeerk pool?  What!?  The animorphs have been infiltrating, fighting, and escaping the Yeerk pool the ENTIRE series, and there are SIX of them!  And now hundreds of humans with access to birds, leopards, etc can't make it out of some measly cages? 

For that matter, why even keep the human hosts at all!?  Just aquire your human host, then kill them.  Now you have able bodies, and less humans to fight against.  Not that there's any reason to fight anymore, because.. NOW YOU HAVE ABLE BODIES, aka the entire reason the Yeerks are an issue in the first place.  The whole 'Yeerks can now morph' thing was handled so poorly it was almost cringe worthy.  Not to mention, they could have aquired and morphed their own Hork-Bajir, which the Yeerks themselves describe as basically being the perfect host body, able to fight as well as being dexterous enough to build things with.  So I can totally see why, given the ability to morph, they would choose a lot of birds instead.  Hell, they all could've acquired Visser One and went around in Andalite morphs.  We've already seen that an Andalite is more than a good match for any Earth animal.

Why didn't the animorphs use Dracon beams?  The only instance I can think of in which they did was when Marco fried a helicopter while protecting the governor.  There's tons of times where the Animorphs get a hold of them and they just toss them away.  Why not keep them?  Same for the Hork-Bajir!  For god's sake, they've 'raided' hundreds of Yeerk outposts by the end of the series, and yet when the Yeerks attack they defend the valley with sharp sticks!  Are you kidding me!?

And why are they in a valley in the middle of nowhere anyway?  Once they free the governor, they have military backup.  Uninfested, informed military personnel.  Instead they live in the woods with little shelter, rather than move to a secured military compound.  Continue to defend with sharp sticks and holes dug into the ground, instead of anti-aircraft guns and artillery shells.

But at the end of the day, I guess the only answer that makes sense is that they are kid's books.  All the bad guys have to be horribly stupid and have terribly bad aim because if they didn't, they should've fried the Animorphs in the first book and continued to take over mankind.

[MoppingBear]

There's a million of the 'why didn't they just' scenarios in Animorphs, especially towards the end.

Why didn't they just kidnap Tom?  Someone mentioned that the Chee couldn't replace him because it results in a Yeerk death, but they replace the Animorphs all the time and hundreds of Yeerks, Hork-Bajir, and Taxxons are killed in the process.  So that's a moot point.  In book 31, Tom is isolated with Jake in the mountains with his family.  Away from the Yeerk forces.  Bring the gang, tie him up in the woods, have someone morph him so the family doesn't get suspicious.  Done.  Easy.

Mostly because it would heap a lot of suspicion onto Jake being an Andalite bandit.  The Chee couldn't replace him because he was an established and I believe reasonably high ranking controller.  Erik was "infested", he did not replace an existing controller.

The biggest one that bothers me is the Yeerks being able to morph.  Because it's the host body that's morphing.  The presumably unwilling host, which the Yeerks will have to leave every 3 days to feed.  So now you have tons of unwilling humans, with the power to morph, and they can't fight/escape from the Yeerk pool?  What!?  The animorphs have been infiltrating, fighting, and escaping the Yeerk pool the ENTIRE series, and there are SIX of them!  And now hundreds of humans with access to birds, leopards, etc can't make it out of some measly cages? 

Some Yeerks (like Tom's) did acquire it for their Slug body.  I don't know how well they controlled what morphs the hosts got, but presumably if the war had kept going a significant amount of time after that, it would have become an issue.

For that matter, why even keep the human hosts at all!?  Just aquire your human host, then kill them.  Now you have able bodies, and less humans to fight against.  Not that there's any reason to fight anymore, because.. NOW YOU HAVE ABLE BODIES, aka the entire reason the Yeerks are an issue in the first place.  The whole 'Yeerks can now morph' thing was handled so poorly it was almost cringe worthy.  Not to mention, they could have aquired and morphed their own Hork-Bajir, which the Yeerks themselves describe as basically being the perfect host body, able to fight as well as being dexterous enough to build things with.  So I can totally see why, given the ability to morph, they would choose a lot of birds instead.  Hell, they all could've acquired Visser One and went around in Andalite morphs.  We've already seen that an Andalite is more than a good match for any Earth animal.

That ws why (supposedly) Cassie let Tom get away with the morphing cube.  She knew it would lead to the war ending because the main reason for fighting was gone.

Why didn't the animorphs use Dracon beams?  The only instance I can think of in which they did was when Marco fried a helicopter while protecting the governor.  There's tons of times where the Animorphs get a hold of them and they just toss them away.  Why not keep them?  Same for the Hork-Bajir!  For god's sake, they've 'raided' hundreds of Yeerk outposts by the end of the series, and yet when the Yeerks attack they defend the valley with sharp sticks!  Are you kidding me!?

They actually didn't get the chance that often, but the main reason?  How would they use them?  Most animals can't, and they can't exactly run around in their human bodies shooting Hork Bajir.

And why are they in a valley in the middle of nowhere anyway?  Once they free the governor, they have military backup.  Uninfested, informed military personnel.  Instead they live in the woods with little shelter, rather than move to a secured military compound.  Continue to defend with sharp sticks and holes dug into the ground, instead of anti-aircraft guns and artillery shells.

That valley in the middle of nowhere is hidden by the Elimmist.  A military base, even an underground one, would have been trivial for the Yeerks to destroy from orbit.

But at the end of the day, I guess the only answer that makes sense is that they are kid's books.  All the bad guys have to be horribly stupid and have terribly bad aim because if they didn't, they should've fried the Animorphs in the first book and continued to take over mankind.

[RYTX]

That valley in the middle of nowhere is hidden by the Elimmist.  A military base, even an underground one, would have been trivial for the Yeerks to destroy from orbit.

[spoiler]That valley was lost in 47: the Yeerks found it, they fought, the Free HB's kinda won, but they still had to relocate. By the time the whole team was leaving there, they where depending only on hiding in nature, no Ellimist[/spoiler]

[NateSean]

What's really funny is that I had typed up a whole post in response to this, but something happened and I lost the post completely. Rather than retype it, I went on with my day with the intention of retyping that same post. Mopping Bear hit on pretty much all of the points I had made. :p

So way to go Mopping Bear and thank you to Altephor for adding to the discussion. So what do I have to add?

The other problem with the Dracon beams is that they are mostly accounted for. Aftran lost one and was punished for it, but presumably there are fail safes in place to keep a primitive species from getting a hold of the technology and hurting the Yeerks with it. I make this guess based on the fact that the Yeerk Mother Ship has a tightly monitored security network that rivals that of the world's most secure locations. So the fact that they would slip up on something like a Dracon beam doesn't add up when you see how thorough they are.

Plus, the Dracon weapon is pretty distinctive and could be easily traced if it was fired. Having an alien weapon doesn't make using it a free action. Remember when Rachel got ahold of one in The Underground, she maybe got two or three shots in before she drew attention.

What made the morphing technology so useful was that it was inside of them and easy to access. A Dracon weapon would have been a logistical impracticality.

[Jdorsey314]

They didn't know the limit on morphs you could hold at the start of the series, and over time they got the impression it was a lot.

[NateSean]

Are you responding to any point in particular or were you just throwing that out there?

[pallosalama]

I have few things in my mind. These might not be all exactly on subject but I'll say them anyways.

First, why did the Dracon beams have so large variation of damage? I know there were different power levels they could be used at. But still, for example in few books I remember that they got shot at with Dracon beams, and most of time all they did was punch holes in them(usually in battle morph) or make parts of body vanish. Yet other times whole animals vaporized or big parts of them. If this was because of different power settings, well I wonder why would yeerks have used low-power setting in real battle where they were trying to kill them all the time?

Second. WHY so many times when they "planned" on doing things, they left so many things out of consideration. I remember countless times when they were going in somewhere and I couldn't believe how poorly they had planned it all.

And finally, have to say there is great connection between Yeerk fighters and Stormtroopers. Hows that? Well, both are well-trained(at least I hope so) soldier groups, yet they can't hit anything even at close range, and if the impossible thing happened and they did, it was never a lethal hit.

 

[NateSean]

Yet other times whole animals vaporized or big parts of them. If this was because of different power settings, well I wonder why would yeerks have used low-power setting in real battle where they were trying to kill them all the time?

Presumably the lower settings on the Dracon beams were "stun" settings. The Yeerks would rather injure an Andalite and bring it in for questioning and possible infestation. That's not the explanation for every single time, mind you, but it would account for certain instances.

Second.

It's one of those things that's easy to second guess from the safety of retrospect. I make mistakes planning breakfast every morning. So I can only imagine how poorly I would do trying to fight an invading army of aliens on top of managing grades and keeping my parents in the dark.

[pallosalama]

New thought popped on my head, was too lazy to search if there was similar thread for Yeersk, so I just post it here.
First, I know as in said throughout series, Yeerks do not fight if there is too small chances to try. But, when not thinking about that,
why in book #6 the yeerk didn't nothlit himself and Jake to take off big part of Animorphs fighting strength? I mean, he
had access to Jakes brain and so on, and therefore would sure notice importance of Jake as leader and fellow Animorph to others.
Would have been huge drawback for them.

[Chad32]

Plot reasons. If he morphed a fly, and gave them an ultimatum, there wasn't really anything Jake's friends could do about it. They couldn't afford to take the Yeerk back to his people, and they couldn't force him to demorph. Taking Jake with him would have been the smartest thing to do as a last ditch effort, but since the others would be powerless to stop it, the author just didn't have him do it.

[RYTX]

Alternatively, he may just not have thought of it.

Example, I first read that book probably 15 years ago. I've read it repeatedly since then, and critically reflected on the story many times. Probably not 3 days of intimate proximity worth like the Yeerk had, but still plenty of time. Yet seeing your post made me think, "omg, I've never thought of that, you are an evil genius".

And that early on, I wonder if the Yeerk would realize Jake was as critical as he was, especially when only getting Jake's POV on the matter. The boy never thought his leadership was all that, and this was before they'd really started doing damage.

[Chad32]

Number 7 was when they really started hurting the Yeerks, aside from when they wrecked the supply ship, but we don't hear about Yeerks dying because a shipment of air and water didn't make it back to base.

"He just didn't think of it" may have actually been true. That's the best we can do. I don't think that, after reading that book for the first time, I thought "man they're lucky he didn't just stay in a bug morph and take Jake with them". It just goes to show how close Jake got to being screwed.

Maybe it would have been better if he just died on the plan after all, if the Yeerk was going to pull that stunt.