Derek (Teenagers from Outer Space)

Derek is the main protagonist of Tom Graeff's 1959 film Teenagers from Outer Space. He is a teenage alien soldier serving aboard a warship that sought to take alien monsters known as Gargons to Earth, but was truly a dissident against the alien regime, and deserted the crew in an attempt to hide on Earth, later defending Earth against the Gargon, and sacrificing himself to protect Earth against the alien regime. Like the rest of the crew, Derek wore a military jumpsuit with a white triangle pointing down on his chest, and like the rest of his species, Derek is externally identical to a human.
Derek was portrayed by David Love.
==Biography==
===Early life===
Like the rest of his contemporaries, Derek was born under an authoritarian regime, practically grown in a test tube and raised by select members of society, not knowing that the genetic material used in his artificial insemination came from the alien leader. However, as Derek grew older, he secretly joined a faction of underground dissidents, wishing to overthrow the empire. He also gained possession of a book passed down through generations of dissidents, detailing the time before the regime, and everything the aliens had lost since it took power. When he was a teenager, Derek joined the alien military, becoming a starship crewman around 1959. Around that time, the alien leader wanted to relocate Gargon herds from their planet to another world, as while the Gargons were a food source for the aliens, they were also dangerous to the general population. Derek was assigned to an adult captain and a crew of three other teenagers: Sol, Morro, and Thor. Their expedition was codenamed Expedition Zeal-6, and they took off to find a suitable world for the Gargons, carrying a single small Gargon aboard their craft.
=== Teenagers from Outer Space ===
After finding many uninhabitable worlds, the crew eventually found Earth, landing outside a small town in the United States, unseen by the populace. When exiting the craft, Thor killed a dog outside the craft with his focused disintegrator, and Derek saw the remains when he exited. Saddened, he went to the remains, and then noticed the dog's tag, realizing that it must mean there are intelligent beings on Earth. Knowing the Gargons would doom any natives, Derek tried to get the captain to call off the expedition, but the captain refused. Additionally, Thor wrote off Derek's claims of foreign beings, also calling the dog nothing more than an insect while Derek berated him for his bloodlust. Derek then drew his disintegrator on the captain, listing some of his grievances against the regime's oppressive policies, and showed the dissident book, ordering them to leave Earth. However, the captain managed to trick Derek into putting his guard down by asking to see the book, allowing the captain and Thor to disarm Derek. Derek tried to plead with the other aliens again, saying that the Earthlings could very well destroy the Gargons and thus render the operation futile, but the alien captain arrogantly stated that the aliens were the supreme race, with the supreme weapons, and that no other lifeform could stand up to them or Gargons. The captain had Thor and Sol hold Derek captive while they analyzed the atmosphere's effects on the Gargon. Although the Gargon initially appeared to be thriving in the atmosphere, it suddenly went limp, with the crew believing it had died due to Earth's higher nitrogen levels. Derek confidently told the captain that their mission on Earth had failed, and they must now leave. The captain reentered the ship to inform the leader of the events, while leaving Sol and Thor to bind Derek. However, while Thor was getting the bindings and Sol was distracted helping Morro pack up equipment, Derek grabbed the dog's tag and made a run for it. Thor attempted to shoot him, only to be narrowly stopped by the captain, who was just informed that Derek was the son of the alien leader.
Derek managed to get to the nearby town, coming across several playing children, which came as a pleasant surprise. Derek then went to a gas station, asking the attendant about the tag. The attendant directed him to the address on the tag, which led Derek to the home of a human girl named Betty Morgan. Betty, assuming Derek was there for a room her grandpa was renting, took him in and introduced him to her grandpa. Betty then talked about her siblings, surprising Derek, as on his planet, aliens grew up not knowing their biological families. He agreed to stay with them, and Betty, seeing that Derek had no other possessions and appeared lost, befriended him and taught him how to drive. They drove to a friend's pool, where Derek decided to confess what happened to Betty's dog, named Sparky, showing her the tag. He drove her out to the landing site, showing her the remains. When Betty refused to believe the remains were of Sparky, Derek tried to explain the workings of a focused disintegrator, but opted against revealing his alien origins. Briefly returning to Betty's house for a change of clothes, Derek opted to find a man of science to reveal the truth to, with Betty referring him to Professor Simpson of the local university, leaving a note so that Betty's grandpa could know where they went. Unbeknownst to the pair, Thor had remained on Earth to kill Derek, and had been killing humans throughout the town in pursuit of Derek, including the gas station attendant and Betty's friend. Thor managed to get the note from Betty's grandpa and killed Professor Simpson before the two could reach him, but upon seeing the professor's remains, Derek realized another alien was on Earth with him. Derek called the police and Betty's grandpa, telling him to get to city hall, where he and Betty planned to go to for protection. However, Thor managed to intercept Betty's grandpa and forced him to drive him to city hall, with both parties running into each other outside the building, and Thor got into a shootout with police officers, disintegrating a few of them but being wounded in the process. Derek, retrieving a pistol, followed the trail of Thor's blood with Betty, only to find Thor hiding in a car, where he held the two at gunpoint and forced them to drive him to a doctor.
Derek and Betty were forced to drive Thor to a nearby clinic, where they stopped the surgeon from leaving. Held at gunpoint, the pair sat in the operating room with Thor and the surgeon, with Thor refusing to take anesthetics in order to remain conscious. Derek took the opportunity to ask why Thor did not leave with the crew, and Thor revealed that after Derek ran off, the Gargon woke up again, reinvigorated by the atmosphere, and that Derek was the heir to the regime. Derek realized that if the Gargon survived, then the fleet of Gargon-carrying warships was bound to arrive soon. However, Thor refused to accept a dissident as the new leader, hence why he resolved to kill Derek. Luckily, Thor began to pass out from blood loss, allowing Derek and the humans to escape. Thor was later apprehended by human authorities when he tried to return to the landing site, although his disintegrator was lost. After Thor's arrest, Derek searched the hillside for the lost weapon, knowing that it would be the only thing that can stop the Gargon. He searched alongside Betty, bonding with her and finally admitting the truth, and his attraction for her. Despite his origins, Derek promised Betty that the Earth would be his new home, and that he would never leave it. Just then, the now enlarged Gargon revealed itself, and Derek picked up a rock to attack it, uncovering the disintegrator. He tried to use it on the Gargon, but found that it was broken, prompting him to throw the rock at the Gargon and run off with Betty, getting back to town. Finding that the disintegrator required a new power source, and that the Gargon was growing to titanic size outside town, Derek went to meet it, realizing that the city's power grid could power the gun. He managed to hook up an electrical line to the disintegrator, with Betty managing to convince the power plant operators to cut the power long enough for Derek to connect the line, and then reactivate it in time for Derek to shoot the Gargon, killing it.
With the town saved, Derek wanted to get the gun to scientists so that they could reverse-engineer it and have weapons ready for the incoming alien fleet. However, he then saw the fleet arriving in the sky, realizing it was too late. Knowing he had to face them alone, he returned to Betty's house and donned his uniform, and then pretended to turn on the humans, using the disintegrator to threaten a male friend of Betty into driving him to the hospital where Thor was held, albeit assuring Betty to trust him. He freed Thor, managing to convince him that killing humans was unnecessary, and claimed to have seen the error of his dissent, returning to the landing site with Thor, with Betty and her grandpa in close pursuit. At the landing site, Derek managed to tell Betty and her grandpa that he had not forgotten his promise, without alerting Thor, and then stood to meet the incoming alien flagship, which carried the Zeal-6 captain, and the alien leader himself. The leader assured Derek that his dissent would not affect his inheritance, and Derek played along, and got the leader to accidentally reveal that his absence put the regime in jeopardy of revolution, especially if he did not return before the populace realized he was gone. Reasoning that killing the leader would spark the revolution he desired, Derek asked to personally lead the alien fleet to land. Given permission, Derek entered the flagship, but promptly sealed the doors, locking the other aliens outside. He took remote control of the fleet, making them speed up on a collision course with his location, ignoring the pleas of the other aliens to open the doors. Accepting his fate for the salvation of both Earth and his species, Derek let the fleet crash directly into the flagship, killing him, Thor, the captain, the leader, and all aliens and Gargons in the fleet. Betty, who had survived in a nearby cave with her grandpa and friend, exited to see the smoldering crater, remembering Derek's promise, which he had fulfilled with the ultimate sacrifice. His actions presumably led to the collapse of the authoritarian alien regime.
Category:Aliens
Category:Humanoid
Category:Military
Category:Big Good
Category:Science Fiction Heroes
Category:Movie Heroes
Category:Live Action Heroes
Category:Deceased
Category:Teenagers
Category:Protectors
Category:Freedom Fighters
Category:Successful
Category:Selfless
Category:Titular
Category:In Love
Category:Determinators
Category:Related to Villain
Category:Lethal
Category:Harmonizers
Category:Defectors