Black Hole Planet 3 Alien UFO
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The Black Hole Planet 3 Alien UFO (大宇宙ブラックホール第三惑星人円盤 Daiuchū Burakku Hōru Daisan Wakuseijin Enban, lit. "Universal Black Hole Planet 3 People [Flying] Saucer") is the spaceship used by the Black Hole Planet 3 Aliens in the 1975 Toho Godzilla film Terror of Mechagodzilla. Other ships used by the aliens also appear in multiple American Godzilla comics, typically sporting a different design in each appearance.
Name
The UFOs are never identified in Terror of Mechagodzilla, but like the Black Hole Planet 3 Aliens to which they belong, they are given a variety of names in supplementary sources.
The most common Japanese name is 大宇宙ブラックホール第三惑星人円盤 (Daiuchū Burakku Hōru Daisan Wakuseijin Enban), literally translating to "Universal Black Hole Planet 3 People [Flying] Saucer," and is used in places including the Godzilla Store website and the 2014 book Godzilla Dictionary [New Edition], as well as the now-defunct websites Godzilla.jp and Toho.website. Another website, Godzilla.com, formerly used the English translation Macrocosm Blackhole The Third Planetilen Flying Disk.
Other Japanese names include ブラックホール第3惑星人円盤 (Burakku Hōru Daisan Wakuseijin Enban, lit. "Black Hole Planet 3 People [Flying] Saucer"), used for the UFO figure in Iwakura's "Counterattack! Mechagodzilla BOX"; the similar ブラックホール第3惑星人の円盤 (Burakku Hōru Daisan Wakuseijin no Enban, lit. "Black Hole Planet 3 People's [Flying] Saucer"), used on a model kit by DAIMOS[1]; and 第3惑星人円盤 (Daisan Wakuseijin Enban, lit. "Planet 3 People [Flying] Saucer"), used in the 2017 book All Toho Mechanic Pictorial Book. The aforementioned Iwakura set also gives it the English name Black Hole Third Planet Man Disk.[2]
The UFOs are never given a proper designation in their comic book appearances, though in the case of Godzilla Legends, the Black Hole Planet 3 Aliens themselves are referred to as "Simians".
Design
The Black Hole Planet 3 Alien UFOs feature a different design in most of their appearances. In film, the ships are flat, blue disks with small tail fins; they appear to share this design for their appearance in IDW Publishing's Godzilla: Mechagodzilla 50th Anniversary, albeit white in color. In Dark Horse's comic, while the ships remain flat, they are purple and triangular. In IDW's Godzilla Legends, they sport a dramatically different appearance, featuring a more rectangular base with wings and visible turrets; the front of the ship bears a resemblance to Mechagodzilla's snout. In Godzilla vs. America: Boston, they resemble stereotypical alien flying saucers, appearing as simplistic, flat grey disks.
History
- Terror of Mechagodzilla (1975)
Showa era
Terror of Mechagodzilla
Following the destruction of Mechagodzilla at the hands of Godzilla, Mugal knew his defeat was imminent and fled. Interpol chased Mugal through the woods before he inexplicably jumped off a cliff into the ocean. His reason for doing so was quickly revealed when a trio of UFOs suddenly rose out of the water and prepared to escape with Mugal onboard. However, while grappling with Titanosaurus, Godzilla noticed the UFOs flying overhead. As he restrained Titanosaurus, Godzilla quickly dispatched all three vessels with his atomic breath, killing Mugal and ending the threat of the Black Hole Planet 3 Aliens for good.
Capabilities
Flight
The Black Hole Planet 3 Alien UFOs are capable of interstellar travel. According to Mugal, their saucers can travel from their planet to Earth in 1,000 hours.
Teleportation
In Godzilla Legends, the Simian UFO can teleport nearby subjects to another location instantly, and was used to teleport the Simians, Tristan, and Titanosaurus elsewhere. The teleported subjects were later seen on the Simians' homeworld, though it is not clear if they were transported directly to the planet using this ability.
Lasers
In Godzilla vs. America: Boston, the UFOs fired red lasers at Godzilla, who appeared to be unfazed by them.
Other capabilities
In Godzilla Legends, the Simian UFO materializes directly about Titanosaurus. It is not clear if this is indicative of a cloaking ability or if the ship can teleport itself in addition to teleporting other subjects.
Comics
- Godzilla #8 (1996)
- Godzilla Legends #3 (2012)
- Godzilla: Mechagodzilla 50th Anniversary (2024) [hologram]
- Godzilla: Here There Be Aliens #1, #4–5 (2025) [flashback in issue 1]
- Godzilla vs. America: Boston (2025) ["The Green Line"]
Godzilla
After revealing themselves to G-Force, the Black Hole Planet 3 Aliens detailed their backstory, explaining that their homeworld was being dragged to its inevitable demise by a black hole within their solar system. Hoping to escape certain doom, the aliens launched expeditions to explore new planets suitable for colonization using their UFOs before locating Earth, which was deemed a suitable replacement for their species. Even though a number of humans witnessed the arrival of these spacecraft, the Black Hole Planet 3 Aliens revealed to G-Force that humans were too primitive to accept the reality of alien life and promptly dismissed these sightings, allowing their mission of infiltrating the United States military in secret to proceed as planned.
Godzilla Legends
At an academy for psychic students led by the mysterious Headmaster Mugal, a young psychic named Tristan experienced a nightmare about his parents being abducted and rushed home to find them, unintentionally drawing a monster he had psychically connected with - Titanosaurus - to his house as well. There, he was attacked and knocked out by the Simian aliens under Mugal's orders, at which point one of the Simians requested immediate retrieval before Titanosaurus could destroy the house. A Simian UFO proceeded to materialize in the sky above Titanosaurus, where it used a teleportation beam to transport Titanosaurus, Tristan, and the Simians elsewhere.
Godzilla: Mechagodzilla 50th Anniversary
The Black Hole Planet 3 Aliens shared a hologram of their impressive armada to Tamotsu Sato, convincing him that the aliens' invasion of Earth could not be opposed. As such, he chose to work alongside the aliens to achieve a more peaceful transition of power when they inevitably conquered the planet, serving as the public face behind the various Mechagodzillas the aliens employed in their bid to eradicate Earth's kaiju.
Godzilla: Here There Be Aliens
In a flashback to the Xilien–Simian war which delayed the Xilien invasion of Earth by over a century, a Simian UFO is shown attacking Xilien infantry.
Godzilla vs. America: Boston
Upon liberating LittleGodzilla from the clutches of an underground Black Hole Planet 3 Alien base in Boston, Godzilla and his child were subsequently attacked by a fleet of the ape-like aliens' spacecraft, though their lasers had no visible impact on either kaiju.
Gallery
Screenshots
Terror of Mechagodzilla
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A UFO being hit by Godzilla's atomic breath
Merchandise
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Model kit by DAIMOS
Miscellaneous
Trivia
- Instead of these ships, the Japanese poster for Terror of Mechagodzilla features Xilien UFOs, which do not appear in the film itself.
References
This is a list of references for Black Hole Planet 3 Alien UFO. These citations are used to identify the reliable sources on which this article is based. These references appear inside articles in the form of superscript numbers, which look like this: [1]
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