ONE OF US!

From Star Trek to Stranger Things, what hive minds tell as about ourselves

- MAYA PHILLIPS

Masses of humans moving in total synchronisation. Armies of drones working mindlessly towards the same singular purpose. Beings speaking in the same flat monotone.

The hive mind doesn't quite fit in the same category of horror as slashers or monsters, but it is its own impressive breed of terror. It's been a feature of science fiction and horror for decades, from body snatchers to the Borg.

More recently we've had several examples across TV and movies offer variations on the same theme: a collective consciousness that serves as the antagonising force or a means of control for a higher-ranking villain.

THE JOINING

Joining a community or a club is usually an occasion for celebration, but not when it comes to a hive mind. An early example is the 1960 sci-fi film Village Of The Damned, in which the members of a supernatural in-crowd of platinum blonde-haired, glowy-eyed children are miraculously conceived all at once, during a period of widespread unconsciousness in an English village.

This is a rare case of seeing the origins of the hive mind. What we do often see is how the hive mind starts to spread. It's never a pretty sight. (A 1995 Village Of The Damned remake directed by John Carpenter swapped England for the San Francisco area and changed the body count at the end.)

In the Apple TV series Pluribus, the hive is biological, spreading through contact. In the first episode, a scientist becomes patient zero when she's bitten by an infected rat, and she kisses her colleague, spreading the disease through her saliva. Just like the hive mind is a warped representation of our basic urge to gather in the interest of a greater good, the spread, too, is a perversion of one of our most intuitive ways of showing affection and care for one another.