DOGHAN DAGUIS
“Valerian is [comprised of] 29 albums and I
think the Doghan Daguis are in probably 20 of
them. They are very emblematic of the series.
There are three of them, and they share a brain
in three parts. So one of them starts saying
something, the next continues the line and the
last finishes it. What’s interesting about them is
that they sell information for money: that’s how
they make their business. If you kill one of them,
you lose the information, so you’ve got to keep
them alive. They’re annoying, but sweet. I like
them a lot.
“In the comics they don’t talk, so we have
adapted them a little bit. I had three actors down
on their knees for six weeks to shoot their
scenes, because they’re not very tall. It’s actually
very hard to do Doghan Daguis scenes, since
they’re dividing up all their dialogue. There was
a lot of rehearsal just to get the rhythm right.”KC P02
“This looks like a kind of jellyfish. They are in
tubes in liquid, and they’ve basically built robot
bodies so they can walk and shake hands and
talk. They have a little head, but in fact the
animal is inside, in water. They’re very impressive.
“Originally Alpha Station was in the orbit of
the Earth, but after a couple of hundred years it
got way too big, so it was pushed further out. Now
it just floats around in space, growing and growing
and growing, and it’s become organised into
different areas for the 8,000 species to live in.
Down in the south are the gaslands, where
everything is living in gas. In the west you have
humans and affiliates. And up north are the
aqualands, where you have creatures like the
KCP02. There’s some pretty trippy stuff up north!”�KORTA N
DA H UK S
“A Kortan Dahuk is the first alien we see in the
film, and they’re the first species I chose to put in
it, a long time ago. They’re very big, colourful
guys, with blue and orange markings. When they
talk it’s just clicking — you can’t understand the
language — but they are a very peaceful people
and participated in the creation of Alpha.
“Here’s a story that is not in the film but is
in the bible. They have a way to travel which
is unique to them: they have a map that tells
them where there are holes in the universe, so
they can go through and appear from another
hole, someplace far away. For this reason they are
useful guys to know. They travel around in
a big spacecraft. Like them, it’s very beautiful,
very elegant.”