Two questions
So I'm watching The Thing right now and two questions, which may already have been answered on this forum (but I'm too lazy to do a thorough search, hopefully you won't mind repeating which may have been already said) and which I've never thought before, although I've seen the movie countless of times. I'm quite convinced the marihuana would have an effect on Palmer's body strong enough to intimidate the thing. First: I assume the reason why the thing inside Norris decided to attack during his cardiac arrest is that he got scared. Most fans have said that it's Palmer's shadow on the wall (which I originally thought as well). Now, when he's smoking a huge joint then wouldn't the thing become frightened when he gets high? Second: Many fans think Blair was taken over prior his little riot, but wouldn't the thing's mission be to assimilate with as many people as possible? I mean, why would the thing sabotage the transportation which could eventually lead him to civilization ? Sorry about the messy spelling. :D

The answers to your questions depend on whether or not a Thing-imitation perfectly replicates the original organism in terms of its psychology, i.e. do the imitations consistently think like the originals and indeed believe they are the originals? If yes, then a stoned Palmer-Thing would simply feel stoned, just like the real Palmer would have. Similarly, the imitation Blair would have done exactly what the real Blair would have, and given that the real Blair understood exactly how high the stakes were, it's not surprising that he, or a perfect imitation of him in every sense, would have destroyed all means of propagation. We do have a bit of a problem if we assume that The Thing produces perfect imitations: it can't help but act against any survivalist/reproductive mandate if it imitates creatures that want to destroy it. A problem, but not quite a paradox: there's nothing here that makes such a creature a physical and/or evolutionary impossibility. If the imitation isn't perfect and if it's an actor concealing its real intentions, well, then it's open season. To determine exactly what would happen, we would require a sufficiently wide-ranging theory of how The Thing interacts with the consciousness of the imitation. In lieu of such a theory, let's make the assumption that The Thing is as detached from the mental processes of the imitation as you are from the computer monitor you are looking at. There would then be no more reason to suspect that the physical-psychological correlation between chemical reactions in the imitation stoned Palmer's brain and psychological phenomena in his mind would carry across to psychology of The Thing, than there would be to suspect that if your computer crashed you would slip into a coma, experience some particularly lurid hallucinations or have some other psychological correlation with the events on your computer screen that amount to more than merely the registration of its change of state, and what follows from nothing other than this observation in terms of your normal rationality/historicity. To illustrate this last caveat, I'm sure any one of us would be severely affected psychologically by what happens on our computer screen if we received an email from a trusted source telling us that someone close to us had died. Having said that, 2 Girls 1 Cup or BME Hatchet vs. Genitals normally does the trick. As could this post, by proxy. Sorry about the long-windedness in places. That's due to the psychological effect of half a bottle of Cointreau. :wink: XidiouX

Second: Many fans think Blair was taken over prior his little riot, but wouldn't the thing's mission be to assimilate with as many people as possible? I mean, why would the thing sabotage the transportation which could eventually lead him to civilization ? I'd say it was part of the creature's plan. Let's say Blair is a Thing. So he smashes up the choppers/snowmobiles/radios and then gets put away in the shed, leaving him in peace to work on his "spaceship" while safe in the knowledge that Palmer is infected and can go after more victims.