Project Stargazer was the United States program that studied Predators and their gear after the Other Worldly Life Forms Program. General Douglas Woodhurst ran it from a hydroelectric dam lab on the Georgia side of the Florida line, while CIA agent Will Traeger pushed for private money and control. The Reapers took a live hunter on a Florida cul-de-sac for that lab, and the hunter later broke out. In The Predator (2018) the Fugitive escaped the same site, took a mask from a glass display, and the program did not survive the Upgrade hunt that followed.
From OWLF To Stargazer
The Other Worldly Life Forms Program was a CIA capture unit that used a DEA cover. It had been tracking hunters for about ten years when Peter Keyes took a team after the City Hunter in Los Angeles in 1997. Simon Hawke's Predator 2 novelization put Keyes in a hospital room with Dutch Schaefer after Val Verde, then sent that office into a slaughterhouse with nitrogen guns and a net. The City Hunter cut Keyes in half with a disc. Lieutenant Mike Harrigan killed the hunter after that, and Garber watched the feed from a trailer before landing the helicopter at the crater after the ship left.
Predator: Stalking Shadows kept that office running after Peter Keyes and most of the capture team died in Los Angeles, with his son Sean Keyes as regional director. Dutch worked for them unofficially and took salvage to their labs, while a rival group of suits and mercenaries chased the same prizes.
The Predator: Hunters and Hunted used Stargazer as the name of that work while it ran from the dam, before the 2018 film. Woodhurst treated OWLF as the years when money had been easier. Moore's book has Stargazer files, a live-capture order, and Congress ready to cut the budget. The film dates the handover after Peter Keyes died.
The Dam Lab
The lab sat beside a hydroelectric dam in southern Georgia, close enough to Deer Water Springs, Florida, for a deployment. Woodhurst wanted a live body under military control. Traeger, Elliott's political deputy, worked senators and aides in Washington, used kompromat, and offered Senator Andrea Laurel subcontracts and first crack at alien tech if she helped replace the general.
Stargazer held old recordings of an alien voice that communications man Dmitri Orologas could not crack. A rumor claimed similar signals had helped civilian labs invent disc compression. Elliott trained the eight-man Reaper team on site and locked recovered gear in a vault two rooms from the holding cell. Golden and Morris's novelization named the program after a hybrid orchid.
The Reapers And The First Escape
In The Predator: Hunters and Hunted, Roger "Pappy" Elliott trained the Reapers to take a hunter alive after he survived a Vietnam hunt. They caught one on Hampstead Road, a cul-de-sac of six ranch houses, during a fight that involved police and a meth crew. Four Reapers survived, and the others died on that street or on the table at the dam.
Sean Keyes took the captive from the team. Elliott photographed it, judged it a different hunter from Vietnam, and locked the helmet, disc, shoulder cannon, and computer gauntlet in the vault. A tech working for Traeger showed the hunter the keypad on a vacuum door, then left. The hunter clawed free, killed two guards, and threw a Combistick through Elliott in the rain.
Tomlin wrecked the hunter's open self-destruct at the Hartshorn Carnival. A later blast leveled the grounds. Four weeks later Traeger held the program and Woodhurst stayed on a short leash. The original mask and computer gauntlet remained in the vault.
The 2018 Capture
Traeger's people took the Fugitive after the Mexico crash and put him on a table in the same dam. They pushed Ranger Quinn McKenna through a fake psych eval and onto a prison bus with the men later called the Loonies. Evolutionary biologist Casey Brackett signed a rider, rode a Pave Hawk to the dam, and met the lab lead. The film names that scientist Sean Keyes. The novelization spells him Shawn H. Keyes.
The specimen on the table had human DNA. A file photo labeled Los Angeles, 2005 showed a hunter in an atmosphere mask. The novelization does not name Shawn's father Peter. Traeger used Predator as a label for a hunter that killed as sport, and Casey rejected that because Predators kill to eat.
The Second Breakout
The hunter on the table opened its eyes, put a scalpel through Agent Thomas Church's brainstem, and tore through the lab guards. In the film it wounded Sean Keyes in the gut and left him alive, and Keyes sent Casey after it. The novelization has the hunter behead Shawn Keyes, take a hand, and use both on the scanners while copying his voice. From a display case it took the scarred historic helmet from the earlier hunt, plus throwing stars. That mask synced to the one McKenna had mailed home to his son Rory.
Casey grabbed a vial of fluid from the hunter's blood and followed green blood onto the dam roof. McKenna crashed the bus through a fence, pulled her off a catwalk, and stole Indian Scout bikes from the motor pool. Traeger ordered her killed over the missing vial. The Loonies left with her, and Stargazer later tried to pin the dead Rangers and the lab massacre on them.
Collapse
Traeger took Rory to the crashed Mexico pod, boasted that Harvard linguistics had been paid since 1987 to crack the language, and died when a compact shoulder cannon on his own skull turned with his head. The Upgrade wrecked Traeger's remaining mercenaries, came back for Rory, and was killed in the swamp by McKenna and Casey. Survivors later opened the Fugitive's gift pod, and a Predator Killer gauntlet built a suit around a lab tech. With Traeger dead and the dam a massacre site, the government shut Project Stargazer down.
Resurgence
Predator: Hunting Grounds later put a reinstated OWLF back in the field, around 2025. A 78-year-old Dutch Schaefer joined that office after a treatment that mixed his blood with Yautja DNA. The tapes credit Sean Keyes with that work. Dutch worked with him in the later labs while hunter landings on Earth increased.
Keyes's tapes also covered the Predator Killer and called it a prototype. Small-arms fire could wreck it, the power pack only lasted a few dozen seconds, and the Upgrade invasion never arrived. Stalking Shadows has Dutch in China about ten years after 2013, doing OWLF lab work, with a rival salvage faction after the same prizes.
Key People
- Douglas Woodhurst was the Army general who ran the dam and wanted a live capture under government control. After the Reaper hunt he stayed on under Traeger. Edward James Olmos shot the role, then the recut removed him.
- Will Traeger was Elliott's CIA deputy, then the man who held Stargazer. He chewed Nicorette, used kompromat in Washington, and died by the cannon on his own shoulder.
- Roger Elliott trained the Reapers after a Vietnam hunt, wrote fake death letters for the dead Reapers, and died in the dam rain with a Combistick through the chest.
- Sean Keyes ran the lab in Hunters and Hunted. The film wounds him in the gut during the 2018 breakout and leaves him alive. The novelization spells the same job Shawn and has the Fugitive behead him for the scanners. Hunting Grounds later puts him on the OWLF tapes with Dutch.
- Casey Brackett was the Berkeley biologist Traeger pulled in from a dog park. The film spells her last name Bracket. She stole the blood vial and later armed the bomb cuff.
- Quinn McKenna mailed the Fugitive's mask home, broke the Loonies out of the dam, and shot the Upgrade in the swamp.
- Erik Tomlin and Devon Hill led the Reapers, lasted to the carnival, and went into induced comas after the first escape.
Behind The Scenes
Shane Black and Fred Dekker wrote the 2018 film, and Fox recut the third act. Edward James Olmos shot Woodhurst and stood in set photos with the Loonies and both hunters, then the recut dropped the general. Moore's prequel is the printed story that keeps Woodhurst running the dam.
James A. Moore wrote Hunters and Hunted as a Fox-approved lead-in while that recut was underway, from material tied to Black and Dekker. The acknowledgements thank Carol Roeder, Nicole Spiegel, and Steve Tzirlin at Twentieth Century Fox. Christopher Golden drafted the novelization, then Mark Morris rebuilt the last movement to match the recut. Titan published the prequel on 31 July 2018 and the movie book on 18 September 2018.
Conclusion
Project Stargazer was the dam-lab successor to OWLF, run by Woodhurst and then held by Traeger. It took two live hunters into that building and lost both. The first left a mask behind glass, the Fugitive took that mask in 2018, and the Upgrade hunt wrecked the official program. Hunting Grounds later put OWLF back in the field with an older Dutch.
Appearances
- The Predator: Hunters and Hunted (Titan, 2018)
- The Predator (2018)
- The Predator (Titan novelization, 2018)
- Predator: Hunting Grounds (2020)
External Sources
- Hunters and Hunted at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
- Hunters and Hunted at Titan Books
- The Predator novelization at Titan Books
Tag Categories: Predator Lore
