19 - Fences, Moats, And Acrimony
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The iconic Visitors Centre, as shown in the first Jurassic Park movie.
From the start, Jurassic Park - in its final planned iteration for Isla Nublar - was meant to be pharaonic.
Construction on Sorna slowed down to a crawl, as crews and local labourers were hastily redeployed to Nublar. There, they began work on the glorious pyramidal visitors centre that Hammond envisioned as the centrepiece of a tourist’s experience in Jurassic Park.
This building of monumental proportions would contain two life-sized casts of duelling dinosaurs. One was Tyrannosaurus rex. Its intended prey in the mount, a sauropod, was meant to be Alamosaurus: a giant, long-necked herbivore that coexisted with Tyrannosaurus in the late Cretaceous.
However, no Alamosaurus mounts were available in any museum in the world, at the time. Therefore, under Hammond’s instructions, bones from Diplodocus and Camarasaurus were slapped together to create a chimeric skeleton.
Because the true size of an adult Alamosaurus was not known at the time, the resulting chimeric skeleton was considerably undersized compared to the real animal. (1)
This mattered little to Hammond, nor was he concerned by the fact that Diplodocus and Camarasaurus dated from the Jurassic, and were farther in time from Tyrannosaurus than T.rex itself was from humans. What mattered was greeting the newly-arrived visitors with a grand display, as soon as they stepped off the helipad. (2)
This, however, was only the beginning. The visitors centre would further house a movie theatre, where guests could attend presentations and (nominally) educational shows about the animals in the park. It would also have its own luxury restaurant, a cheaper canteen, a merch shop, a tour booking facility, a playground for kids, and a VIP club reserved for investors, corporate visitors, and various personalities.
More grandiose of all was the excavation beneath the visitors centre. This area was meant to house an underground “lagoon”, as Hammond referred to it - in effect an aquarium, the largest in the world.
Wu had trouble containing his exasperation when he pointed out that so far, InGen hadn’t even attempted at securing any fossil from extinct marine animals, let alone got close to cloning one.
The chances of getting help from mosquitoes in amber on that one were minuscule, and it would take time for computers in Palo Alto to be able to viably reconstruct a full genome based on whatever partial genetic material might be recovered from the fossils of marine reptiles.
Hammond was undeterred, and was beginning to find his employee’s stressed and doubtful reactions irksome. Hammond was cresting the high of the wave, and Wu’s refusal to indulge his enthusiasm was the first sign of a crack in their personal relationship.
Wu’s role in the cloning process made him indispensable, for now. But the negative dynamic between him and Hammond regarding the operational realities of Jurassic Park would play an important role down the line.
For now, though, Hammond decided to forge ahead. As he saw it, he had already given way on the feeding show in the amphitheatre, the petting zoo for the kids, and the genetic engineering of docile dinosaurs. On this, he would not be deterred: construction of the lagoon continued.
Even at the time, Hammond was already thinking beyond this. Nublar was a blank canvas, and he could let his imagination run wild.
The visitors centre would sit at the heart of a sort of village complex, a “walled settlement in the wilderness”, as Hammond liked to call it, harkening back to colonial stereotypes about rich, white people having a dash of adventure in a savage, primitive land.
Tourists would arrive either by helicopter, straight to the helipad incorporated into the visitors’ centre - or, for the less affluent, via ferry from the Costa Rican mainland.
While the staff were already making extensive use of a workers’ dock on the eastern shore of Isla Nublar, a grander dock would soon begin construction to welcome tourists nearer to the visitors centre. (3)
The complex would have to offer the fineries of life - neatly arranged by price range. Fast food chains would be invited to set up shop, and high-end restaurants employing skilled chefs would offer delicacies to the wealthier tourists.
Shopping, entertainment, the village would have it all. Even most of the hotel facilities would be located here, but not all. From the start, Hammond was clear that different tourists should have different options for where to spend the night.
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Perhaps a hotel located in the middle of the park, perched atop a mountain range, with a panoramic view of dinosaur enclosures, might be suitable for the richest visitors. Those looking for the thrill of adventure could make use of camping facilities that got as close to the animal enclosures as possible.
This segwayed into the attractions, a particularly relevant point given the initial set-up: large enclosures, small young animals. The tidal river could be used for a river cruise that would guarantee the ability to see the animals.
A pre-planned tour run with electric, driverless Ford Explorers could bring the guests to the very margins of any enclosure without disturbing the animals - and safari rides would satisfy even the most extreme of thrill seekers.
Tunnels under the earth could house a quasi-metro system, leading to observation bunkers that would be smack in the middle of the enclosures, right next to feeders and watering holes. These bunkers would allow tourists to view the animals as they ate, slept, or simply patrolled the heart of their territory.
But in truth, aside from the visitors centre, for now all these ideas existed only on paper. The real urgency, after all, was relocating the first wave of animals from Sorna, freeing up space for further generations of hatchlings, meant for other facilities that might open in the future.
This is where the blank slate of the island allowed Muldoon to have a field day.
The rudimentary enclosure system that had been hastily erected on Sorna would find no place on Isla Nublar. Muldoon made it clear to Hammond for the start that Jurassic Park would have to follow the standard set by modern zoos with the containment of really big animals.
All enclosures would be secured by having deep, dry moats and ditches between the fence and the space actually utilised by the animals. For the larger species, like the sauropods and the Tyrannosaurus, the enclosure would also be placed at a lower level compared to the surrounding areas, effectively creating a sort of pit.
Aside from the obvious security benefits, this also increased visibility, giving tourists vantage points from outside the fence systems. Hammond was largely placated, reasoning that the various tours he had in mind would allow tourists to see the animals up close anyway.
It was a rare moment of harmony between the visionary founder, and his park warden. It was not to last.
Wu, for his own part, also reacted to the relocation of animals from Sorna in his own way.
The operation still didn’t have a veterinarian, and this was becoming a problem. Moving the animals aboard cargo ships across many nautical miles was a daunting proposition, knowing little about the physiology of the animals.
The alternative, of course, was sedation - but sedating animals with unknown metabolism and physiology was sooner said than done. (4)
It was a highly stressful situation for Wu. He consulted lengthily with Muldoon about possible doses for sedation, but Muldoon’s primary expertise was with big African game, most of it invariably mammalian in nature. Wu dithered, but every delay in the shipment of the animals further agitated Hammond.
At the same time, Wu had to manage the subsequent waves of egg fertilisations, identify people on staff who had a knack for handling the animals, lead the job search for a qualified veterinarian that specialised in birds and/or crocodiles, and oversee the logistics of the future transportation of the animals from Sorna to Nublar.
It was all a far cry from his supposed job description as InGen’s top geneticist, and throughout it all, he had his boss breathing down his neck. Hammond was terribly anxious about the effect either sedation or the sea voyage might have on the animals, and wanted to proceed as soon as possible so as to put his own worries to rest.
It is little wonder, therefore, that at least on one aspect, Wu chose to delegate. He turned to Amanda Weaver once more, entrusting her with a task he felt could be safely pushed onto a trusted lieutenant.
It was a perfectly harmless and eminently reasonable decision, and it would prove useful, then… but troublesome, later.
Footnotes:
(1) And dramatically so. Just compare the photo of the two skeletons from the original movie, with this skeletal drawing by Scott Hartman. I believe it speaks for itself.
(2) For the record, this is what actually happened when the set was being prepared for the movie. Because no Alamosaurus mounts were available, Spielberg’s team opted for a chimeric sauropod skeleton.
(3) The East Dock was, of course, central to the events of the first book and movie, and was selected as the point of egress for Nedry’s ultimately failed attempt at corporate espionage. Needless to say, it won’t play such a role in this story.
(4) Of course cattle, parrots, and many other animals are transported by cargo ships over very long distances today. A year or so into their lifespans, the dinosaurs (who have for the most part been left to their own devices so far while Muldoon studied them) are still small enough that they can be corralled onto a cargo ship. Ultimately however, the questions of sedation and veterinary care can’t be postponed forever.