In Defense of the Bohrok-Kal, Over 15 Years Later
Do you want to feel old? No? Well tough, here’s a fact for you: the original Toa are all 18 years old now. Meaning that they can legally drink, buy cigarettes, vote and consent to sex or marriage in a large number of countries on planet Earth. I don’t know what the age of consent is on the island of Mata Nui, Metru Nui or Spherus Magna in general though, so I’d ask before you offer Gali a drink.
For me, that’s not too bad, because I got into Bionicle in 2003, with the release of the Bohrok-Kal. That makes Tahnok-Kal and company only 16 years old. You can only legally sell them alcohol or cigarettes or allow the Bohrok-Kal to vote in SOME countries, and what with it only being April and the Rahkshi, which were released in late 2003, are not quite old enough yet.
That being said, most of the Bohrok-Kal are dead. They were murdered. In cold blood. By the Toa Nuva.
I know what you’re all thinking. The Bohrok-Kal were bad guys. They stole the Toa Nuva’s powers, left them helpless and powerless and wanted to free the Bahrag Queens and awaken the swarms once more. With no powers and the Bohrok swarms rising once again, Mata Nui would have been overrun! So it’s a good thing that the Bohrok-Kal were killed!
Yeah, no. The Toa Nuva murdered them. Even though murder is against the Toa code. The Bohrok-Kal were just doing their jobs.
The Bohrok swarms always had one job: to cleanse the surface of the island of Mata Nui so that Mata Nui could wake up and complete his destiny of reuniting Spherus Magna. The small problem was that the Bohrok had been accidentally woken up early by the evil Makuta, while there were people still living on the island of Mata Nui. Luckily, the Toa managed to stop the Bohrok and their leaders, the Bahrag Queens, and put them all to sleep.
The Bohrok-Kal’s job was even simpler. They existed solely to wake the swarms should anything interrupt the swarms’ mission. They saw it as their destiny to save their Queens, the same way the Toa saw it as their destiny to protect Mata Nui.
The Bohrok-Kal, the Bahrag and the Bohrok in general though were all tricked by Makuta into waking up early.
Sure, the destruction of Mata Nui would be bad, except for the fact that the Turaga knew that there was a way off the island and back to Metru Nui. The Toa Nuva didn’t know that though.
On the flip side, the Bohrok-Kal genuinely didn’t want to kill the Toa. Once the Toa were de-powered, the Bohrok-Kal repeatedly told the Toa to move aside as they didn’t see the Toa as threats and saw no need to intentionally harm them. All the Kal cared about was fulfilling their destiny and freeing their imprisoned queens. But more than that, the Bohrok-Kal were sentient. They could think for themselves. It wasn’t the Bahrag telling the Kal to not harm the Toa, the Kal decided that for themselves. You could argue that the Bohrok-Kal were arrogant, but that proves my point further. The Bohrok-Kal were sentient! They may have been mechanical shells powered by organic brain thingies, but they were alive! They had emotions and thoughts and everything the Toa had.
Yet the Toa still killed them.
Okay, you might not think that the Bohrok-Kal were as innocent as I do. You probably see them as evil. After all, they did leave the Toa powerless and didn’t seem to care about the poor Matoran that could have been killed should the Bohrok swarms awaken once more. But let’s look at this another way. Every other threat the Toa had faced so far, they hadn’t really killed. The Bohrok swarms were put to sleep. The rampaging Rahi with infected masks were captured and cured from madness. The Rahkshi who came afterwards had their bodies destroyed but their intelligence and sapience were equivalent to the Rahi. Even Makuta himself was sealed away and not truly defeated. The Bohrok-Kal on the other hand were very obviously killed. The Toa killed the Bohrok-Kal by overpowering them, causing them to be destroyed by their own powers.
Let’s just pause for a moment and think about the powers the Bohrok-Kal had. Electricity, magnetism, vacuum, sonic, gravity and plasma.
Now let’s think about how death via those powers would be like.
Yes, Nuhvok-Kal was crushed to death by his own gravitational pull. So was Gahlok-Kal, by the remains of the Exo-Toa which were all magnetically attracted to him. Kohrak-Kal shattered himself into shards while Pahrak-Kal LITERALLY MELTED TO DEATH! Lehvak-Kal’s pain wasn’t too bad as he was sent flying up into orbit, but Tahnok-Kal found himself trapped inside a cage of his own electric power, his moving parts fused together by the heat generated by said electricity.
And you know what the Toa said after the Bohrok-Kal died?
“They didn’t really die, they weren’t alive as we understood it.”
No! That’s not how it works! Just because something is not as bio-mechanical or as flesh-and-bone as you are, doesn’t mean they aren’t alive! If a being is capable of forming emotions, forming opinions, looking to the future and able to think for itself, it’s ALIVE. And the Toa Nuva KILLED the Bohrok-Kal!
You know what makes me sadder though? That they’re all dead apart from Lehvak-Kal. Initially, Tahnok-Kal was considered alive but inactive and trapped, but according to the Bionicle Encyclopedia, Tahnok-Kal was destroyed alongside his siblings. Lehvak-Kal is the only one still technically alive, but he’ll eventually burn up in orbit unless someone (say, a budding fan fiction writer) saves him.
They were all killed just because they had their own destinies to fulfill.
Oh well. The Bohrok-Kal live on in my heart.
They also live on in my clan dojo.
Hello ! I just discovered this blog post by happenstance. I’m a huge fan of the Bohrok-Kal as well ! That being said, I disagree with a lot of things in your article… :p I’m not sure if you wrote this article seriously or if it’s just me being a picky fun police officer, but I’ll take my chances anyway because it’s not every day that I get a chance to talk about the Bohrok-Kal.
I agree that the Bohrok-Kal had emotions, something the entire Bohrok Swarm was lacking, apart from the Bahrag of course. However, I disagree about the fact that they were “just doing their job” and about the fact that they were murdered, or even dead for that matter.
It is true that the Bohrok Swarm itself was just doing its work. They were indeed tricked by Makuta into awakening too early. They were seen as monsters by the Matoran who feared for their home and were subsequently defeated by the might of the Toa because of it. This has been properly acknowledged in the story when the Toa Nuva were tasked to reawaken the Bohrok Swarm in order for Mata Nui to rise again. The same beings who put the Bahrag to sleep were forced to wake them up again in order to fulfil their own destiny. It was made pretty clear to them and the reader that the Bohrok Swarm was not evil to begin with and was actually a valid part of the mechanism of the universe as it is.
The Bohrok-Kal, however, are completely different. The Bohrok-Kal were not created as another mechanism of the universe. They were created by the Bahrag themselves. Sure, they were doing their job of releasing the Bahrag, but this job was not really part of how the Matoran Universe works, at least not like the rest of the swarm was. It was just the Bahrag being over zealous over not accepting defeat and creating a failsafe of their own.
The Bahrag knew it was possible that they could be defeated, because that’s the entire purpose of the energized protodermis tubes below their chamber. It has always been possible to defeat the Bohrok Swarm, but would the people defeating the Bahrag be the ones destined to do so or would they be bad guys acting for evil purposes ? The energized protodermis would decide their fate. If they’re bad guys, the energized protodermis would most likely have destroyed them. If, however, the good guys are starting to have good reasons to defeat some valid useful mechanisms of the universe, then you know something is very wrong, so better giving them more power in order to make things right. That’s how you get Toa Nuva.
So, the Bahrag always knew they were not invincible, and they hated it. They chose to deny the universe the failsafe of being able to stop the swarm if needed by going out of their way to create their own failsafe for the failsafe: the Bohrok-Kal. We can agree that the Kal were not doing this job out of evil indeed, but they cannot be considered an integral mechanism of the universe like the swarm itself is. Unlike the rest of the swarm, their purpose was not in service of the grand scheme of the universe. It was in service to the Bahrag only, in defiance of the order of the universe.
If anything, the Bahrag should be to blame for creating them and giving them sapience while knowing full well that they would be pitched against the very beings that were destined to stop the swarm in the first place. The Bahrag basically set the Kal on a collision course with the destiny of the entire universe. That being said, even if the Bahrag could have feelings for setting the Kal on this path, which they don’t as far as I know, they could not have foreseen it. They made the Kal so powerful that they genuinely thought nothing could stop them, and it was true in theory. The Bahrag did not miscalculate the power of the Kal. They indeed were unstoppable and with the help of the silver Krana-Kal mechanism, they were even impossible to harm at some point. Makuta knew that, and I would argue that the very reason he awoke the swarm in the first place was to get the Kal to be released. In the Bohrok-Kal novel, Makuta says this: “You have defeated the Bohrok swarms… as it was foreseen. And in doing so, you have called forth the instrument of your own doom.” From my point of view, Makuta released the swarm as a trap to the Toa, and once they sprung the trap, they got to face the Kal, who completely wrecked them at every turn. The Bahrag failsafe was perfect, there was no way the Bohrok-Kal could fail. Except the Bahrag made their failsafe so powerful that it ended up being their undoing in a very surprising way for everyone I’m sure. So if you want to blame someone for what happened to the Bohrok-Kal, the Bahrag and/or Makuta are the most likely candidate in my opinion. The Bahrag for creating them in the first place, and Makuta for using them for his own nefarious purposes.
It’s funny because it’s one of those foreseeing loops and I love those. The Bahrag somehow realize that they are destined to be defeated at some point, which prompts them to create the Bohrok-Kal to escape their fate, which actually prompts Makuta to wake up the swarm too early, while knowing that the Toa will defeat them, just so that the Kal can wreck the Toa completely, which in turn ends up fulfilling the prophecy that the Bahrag were trying to avoid in the first place.
I’m going a little bit out of my way here to wonder what would the Kal have done after releasing the Bahrag if they had managed to do it. Would they have gone back to sleep now that their job was done ? I doubt it, especially considering they had actual emotions and personalities. I don’t see them just accepting to be shut down and return to sleep. I think they would have joined the swarm and would have reveled in the destruction they could have wrought throughout the island. That is pure conjecture so I’m closing this line of thoughts right now, but my entire point up to here is that I don’t see the Kal as innocent beings doing the universe’s work, unlike usual Bohrok.
Now about the fact that they were murdered, or even dead. The only sentient part of the Bohrok-Kal are the Krana-Kal. The rest is just elaborate armor. The Toa Nuva did no harm to the Krana-Kal. Even when the Kal armors were destroyed, the silver Krana-Kal were unharmed. The sentient beings that have been feeling the Kal emotions all along have not been harmed in any way except having suffered a resounding defeat. They have not been murdered and they are not even dead. As far as I know, there is no reason to believe the Krana-Kal would have died when their armor was destroyed. In fact, the flash animations even go out of their way to show that they survive the extreme conditions that the armor do not. If its form survived the overloaded plasma powers of Pahrak-Kal while the armor was melted in a second, I see no reason to believe the Krana-Kal itself would have died. I think I even remember hearing them scream after their armor is destroyed but my memory might be fuzzy on that particular detail. While the Bohrok-Kal as actual entity have been destroyed, the living beings that were the Bohrok-Kal, with their emotions, feelings and all, are still very much alive. It’s like if you had been in a robot suit all along and your robot suits ends up being destroyed. You’re still yourself. You were dealt a great blow and you’re probably very angry, but you’re not dead and you’ve certainly not been murdered.
Though that being said, it is actually worse for the Kal in a way. If the Turaga have put the Krana-Kal in the same pit were they have put the Krana, what horror it must be for the Kal who are sentient ! The story never gives any detail about what exactly the Turaga have done with the Krana-Kal. I would like to hope that they were at least a little bit respectful to them as sentient beings, but considering how arrogant the Kal used to be, I wouldn’t be surprised if the Turaga had no good feelings toward them at all and acted with no remorse or pity. I sincerely hope I’m wrong on this one. The Turaga are quite hard to predict IMO, sometimes acting very benevolently and warm and at other times acting in very surprising and cold ways, so I really don’t know what would happen. Pure conjecture here again but it is also possible that the Krana-Kal might have fallen back to sleep automatically when the Toa Nuva released the Bahrag later on, thus ending their agony (and answering my prior wondering on what the Kal would have done after releasing the Bahrag.)
It turns out we don’t have any details on any matter regarding the Bohrok-Kal after their defeat and it’s a shame, really. The Bohrok-Kal are my favorite villains of all Bionicle, and as far as I know the only ones that were actually so powerful that literally the only way to defeat them was to surrender yet more power to them.
In any case, if you’d like to write a fan faction about a mad Matoran who goes into the wreckage of the GSR to free the Krana-Kal from their prison and build new armors for them, I’d be glad to read it ! 😉
Wow, that is a stunningly detailed comment! Most of my “the Bohrok-Kal did nothing wrong” is mostly just an old joke I used to make (and no one laughed at), but damn, you really hit the nail on the head here, enough so to be a whole article on its own!
Either way, the poor Kal got absolutely fucked over. Which wasn’t fun for me since my first Bionicle sets were Tahnok-Kal and Gahlok-Kal. I just often needed an excuse as to why the Kal were 1. alive, 2. angry and 3. fall guys, to write my old The Bohrok-Kal’s Ramblings back on BZPower.
The Kal have a very special place in my heart too. They are the very first set antagonist that are actual individuals. Prior to them, it was just the Rahi who were beasts with infected masks and the Bohrok which were mindless machines that did not even acknowledge the Toa unless they directly got in their way. Both were very numerous in the story, but obviously your parents would only buy you one of each tops, and that is if you were lucky enough to have them at all. It always felt a little hollow when I played with them, especially the Bohrok because they were supposed to be in huge numbers in story and one Bohrok is no match for a Toa.
Moreover, when you read the books, in 2001 and 2002 you only get the thoughts and talks of the Toa and their allies. The Toa ennemies that you had as toys never said anything. That doesn’t mean they weren’t worthy foes, but there wasn’t a lot of actual interesting interaction between them and the Toa. So basically you could only play as bashing one against the other because that was really the only interaction they could have. The Kal were completely different beasts in that regard. They had personality. They replied to the Toa. They even taunted them ! They were actual characters of their own. And they were so powerful ! If I remember correctly, the Toa Nuva only got one success against them and it was by ambushing one of them 2 or even 3 against 1 with the element of surprise. That is the only time when the Toa Nuva didn’t get basically rolled over by the Kal, and even that one time meant nothing because the Bohrok Va almost instantly fitted the defeated Kal with a new Krana-Kal and he was gone in a heartbeat.
The Bohrok-Kal were literally unstoppable. They succeeded at every turn and the only reason they were ultimately defeated is because they were actually too powerful for their physical shells to contain their own incredible powers. Of all the ways to be defeated in fiction, I think that might be one of the best. They couldn’t win anyway, they were the bad guys after all and LEGO wouldn’t re-release the Bohrok as sets just because the Bahrag had actually been freed… :p That being said, their time in the spotlight was clearly too short, and I hate how they are often glossed over in retrospectives of the Bionicle story and such because they are eclipsed by the Mask of Light saga in the same year.
I like to remember them as the one beings in Bionicle who could never be stopped. Their time was short for sure, but in that time they repeatedly rolled over the Toa Nuva again and again. They even got to be the first story appearance of an antagonist Kaita when they literally one-shot Wairuha Nuva ! Even the Rahkshi Kaita were defeated by the Toa Nuva without going into Kaita themselves, but the Bohrok-Kal Kaita ? Unstoppable powerhouses. I so love the Bohrok-Kal. They are so awesome. The Bohrok-Kal are the best.
What’s more surprising is that the Kal were the only antagonists to actually speak. The Rahkshi were rather mute, so were the Vahki and the Visorak. Wasn’t until 2006 with the Piraka that we got other, smarter and more chatty enemies, and the Piraka absolutely wiped the floor with the Toa Nuva.
lmao daves entire comment at the top is alot of nothing. the bohrok came and left, defeated, retired and murdered. we know nothing more of them or the queens. the queens and the kal were pretty invincible, there was no prophecy beside the toa and makuta, they had no idea they would be defeated or whatever, the toa mata were rewarded with a upgrade because they defeated the bohrok who were only doing there job. doesnt seem fair, thats like a matoran thats done bad. the kal have no origin and by that logic there was no nuva 2.0 and no rahkshi 2.0 and as far as the cube i will add, it and the queens didnt matter and did nothing, the cube was more of a curse then a gift. it severed as a key and either it had crap wifi or stranger danger system when stolen it cut off the nuva’s power. wow. the nuva cube was a terrible idea. thats like leaving your phone or laptop with important info at the park and hoping no one takes it.
I don’t understand why you say this.
In the Bohrok-Kal novel, Makuta says this: “You have defeated the Bohrok swarms… as it was foreseen. And in doing so, you have called forth the instrument of your own doom.” So there absolutely was a prophecy about the Bahrag being defeated.
The Bahrag created the Kal specifically for the purpose of freeing themselves so they obviously knew they could be defeated otherwise why even bother?
I agree that the Energized Protodermis argument was only a theory, though. I was simply trying to find a story reason for the Toa transformation into Toa Nuva other than “LEGO wanted to sell new sets”. I like my interpretation of being a power up for the good guys if the universe has gone so much astray that good guys are actively working against a valid mechanism of the universe, but I respect your opinion if you don’t like it.
I agree with you that the Nuva Cube was a weird idea and did more harm than good apart from looking awesome. That being said, I have a theory for it too. We know it was created by Artakha so it must have had a purpose in story other than be a weak point for the Toa Nuva. We know that the Bohrok destroying the island of Mata Nui was a requirement for awakening the Great Spirit. Clearly, considering the size of the GSR and the ease with which he cracked up the island in the awakening cinematic, it’s not the weight of the actual rocks and trees of Mata Nui which prevented it from rising up. I think it was more like a software requirement. The system would not boot if the cleaning routing wasn’t run properly, even if there was relatively few things to clean in the first place. This is an important gotcha because it means that if the Bahrag are locked with no way of being unlocked, then the GSR can never boot back up. My theory is that Artakha realized this weak point in the Great Beings design, and created the Nuva Cube specifically for the purpose of being able to free the Bahrag even without the Toa. If one of the Toa Nuva died in battle and that there were no more Toa of that element alive in the GSR, the Toa Seal around the Bahrag could never be broken in the absence of the Nuva Cube. Without the cube, the entire universe would have been at risk of being stuck forever as soon as one of the six element had no more Toa left alive. Sure it’s a weak point for the Toa Nuva, but in its own way it’s also a failsafe for the entire universe.