Is Blairs computer program accurate?
Well, it certainly isn’t accurate in the sense that a biologist would not be working on computer animations as part of his investigations, especially under the pressing circumstances like we see in the film. This scene is obviously meant to be an aid to the audience to understand the Thing’s life-cycle, not a realistic portrayal of a biologist’s studies. And how well does the simulation work? Unfortunately, it leads to more questions than answers. We see dog cells being devoured, one by one, by a single Thing cell and this seems to contradict what we’ve already seen of the Thing’s behavior. Never does the simulation show that the Thing cells divide to replace canine cells, which is what would make more sense. So, the animation should be taken with a grain of salt. On the DVD commentary track, Carpenter comments that they “didn’t get it quite right” regarding the Thing’s life cycle but that “it doesn’t matter.” From this it may be concluded that the goal with the computer sequence was n
