The Fantastic Four's Female Silver Surfer Was Inspired By This Star Trek Character

There's a lot of overlap between the Fantastic Four and "Star Trek. Both franchises are pulp sci-fi born from the 1960s "New Frontier" optimism that the stars were within our reach. "The Fantastic Four: First Steps" director Matt Shakman understands that. Before he signed up for "First Steps," Shakman was even going to direct a "Star Trek" movie, and it still feels like he was getting the "Trek" out of his system when making this one. "First Steps" portrays the F4 as astronauts more so than any previous movies. They even take a starship ride to seek out the planet eater Galactus (Ralph Ineson), after his herald the Silver Surfer (Julia Garner) marks Earth as her master's next meal.

The Four entering Galactus' ship is designed to evoke "Star Trek: The Motion Picture," when the Enterprise crew faces the enormous entity V'Ger. When the Four flee, the Surfer chases after them through hyperspace in an action scene that feels half Marvel, half "Star Trek."

While the Surfer's skin is metal and she operates with cold machine efficiency, she is not an automaton. Once she was Shalla-Bal, but when Galactus came to her homeworld Zenn-La, she volunteered to help him find other worlds if he'd spare hers. Speaking to Marvel.com, Garner discussed how she got into character as the Silver Surfer:

"What helped me find the voice was I was listening to a lot of T.S. Eliot poems — his own poetry that he was reading out loud. His delivery I found quite interesting, and it felt somewhat right for this. And then also her human emotions, her feelings. She's processing it and then blocking it in a way. She's trying to block, but there's only so much blocking you can do."

Writer Eric Pearson also noted how Shalla-Bal blocks herself from feeling, saying that they "talked about her a little bit like Spock" from "Star Trek" in a Hollywood Reporter interview. "To save everyone she loved, she's locked into this emotionless way," Pearson explained. Since the F4 cannot physically defeat Shalla-Bal, Pearson and co. decided Johnny Storm (Joseph Quinn) would break Shalla-Bal's emotionless facade. "Let's emotionally compromise her and give all the messages from her home planet and then contrast that with all the other people who've been crying out for mercy. Thank God for Julia Garner. Her scream of a million planets is so awesome."

As a half-human, half-Vulcan, Spock has struggled with controlling his emotions throughout "Star Trek," including in the new prequel series "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds." The Vulcans are not emotionless, they merely suppress those emotions and behave as logically as possible. His human side means Spock doesn't take to the Vulcan way quite as naturally — not that it deters him from living it.

Spock is such a cultural icon that Shalla-Bal is not the first bad guy based on him. For instance, Shockwave from "Transformers" is a coldly logical Decepticon modeled on Spock. In "Transformers," each of Decepticon leader Megatron's lieutenants has a different ethos. Soundwave is truly loyal to Megatron, while Starscream is loyal only to himself. Shockwave, though? "Ultimately I serve only one master: pure logic." 

Speaking of evil robots, there's another one who seemed to influence this Silver Surfer. Now, of course, the Silver Surfer's design in "First Steps" and her glistening metal skin is patterned on Jack Kirby's character design from the "Fantastic Four" comics (and true to Shalla-Bal's first appearance as the Silver Surfer in the 2000 comic Earth X #12). But seeing her on the big screen brings to mind the T-1000 (Robert Patrick), the shapeshifting liquid metal Terminator from "Terminator 2: Judgment Day." In his most natural state, the T-1000 is a chrome-plated, featureless humanoid not unlike the Silver Surfer.

Like the T-1000, Shalla-Bal is a relentless hunter, chasing our heroes in service of a greater master. No matter what they throw at her, she's nigh unstoppable; it takes a black hole's gravitational pull to slow her down. Galactus' ship includes a foundry of molten metal, and the light from that makes the Silver Surfer glisten gold — the same way the T-1000 does in the final set-piece of "T2," inside a factory.

But while the T-1000 was utterly inhuman, Shalla-Bal redeems herself in the end, sacrificing herself to trap Galactus. In the end, she was more like the heroic T-800 Terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger), who grew from an emotionless automaton to a truly ensouled being. All that's missing is the thumbs-up (or perhaps a Vulcan salute) to Johnny as she vanishes into the portal with Galactus.

"The Fantastic Four: First Steps" is playing in theaters.