Events of the Irken Empire

The Foodening

The Foodening is a strange occurence which seems to happen in a periodic and predictable fashion. When The Foodening occurs aliens and Irkens flock to Foodcourtia where they proceed to eat ravenously until the end of The Foodening, causing immense problems for any unlucky restauranteurs whose employees have quit being banished to go become an Invader.

In The Frycook what Came from All that Space Sizz-Lorr is left to fend for himself during a Foodening and it buys Zim 20 years of freedom since the gravitational pull of a Foodening is so strong that nothing can escape it (and the reason that it takes less than 20 years for Sizz-Lorr to come looking for Zim is very a very complicated matter involving space and time and relativity and junk like that. Trust me. A Space time flux is the proper reason.)

The Great Assiging

The Great Assigning is a huge meeting of Irkens which kicks off large military operations. The pictures and most of the text here refer to The Great Assigning which kicked off Operation Impending Doom II during The Nightmare Begins.

The Great Assigning was held on planet Conventia. The Almighty Tallest invited nearly all the Irken military to the event (as you can see from the crowd below) to witness the assigning of the elite Invaders to their target planets. It was quite a fantastic spectacle overall featuring hovering platforms, holographic maps and of course cool lasers. The Invaders were arrayed in a semi-circle behind the Tallest's podium in front of the galactic map.

Everything was going well and according to plan until Zim showed up (he wasn't invited...at all). Zim begged and pleaded with the Tallest until they agreed to send him to invade a planet and then we get to see the rest of the Great Assigning - the crowd was given nachos and each Invader was given a SIR unit to aid their conquest. Zim was given GIR, a SIR unit made of spare parts assembled by Almighty Tallest Red himself.

After the Great Assigning the Invaders dispersed to their targets but most of the other Irkens moved to the Massive - the command ship of the Irken Armada. We see in a few later episodes that there is room in the Massive for meetings as large as The Great Assigning so I have to assume they used Conventia for it's snack potential and the cool lasers.


Operation Impending Doom

The original Operation Impending Doom was a resounding failure. It was the first official attempt by the Irken Empire to conquer the universe - but they failed to take one thing into account - Zim. At the time of Impending Doom it seems that Zim had already proven his amazing skills to the Tallest and as such he was told to stay in a circle and to not leave. He left, stole a Frontline Battle Mech and went on rampage (destroying various ships, buildings and other military targets on Irk itself and setting several fires.)

After Impending Doom I failed Zim was exiled to Foodcourtia and eventually the Irkens decided to try conquest again - with Operation Impending Doom II.

We can see from this rare footage that the leaders of the Irken race, the Almighty Tallest, were in fact in charge of the Irkens back at the time of Operation Impending Doom I so the leadership hasn't really changed. What IS interesting, though, is that after Zim's adventure in the battlemech planet Irk is never shown in the series.


Operation Impending Doom 2

After the untimely failure of Operation Impending Doom, the mighty Irken Empire found itself with nothing to do and hence Operation Impending Doom II was born. While Operation Impending Doom itself seemed to be a very heavily military operation, Operation Impending Doom II sought to use stealth, espionage and sabotage as paths to conquest - as such the Irkens send their elite warriors, the Invaders out one to a planet to infiltrate the indigenous peoples and to weaken that planet's defenses.

We get to see the very beginning of Operation Impending Doom II in The Nightmare Begins as the Almighty Tallest bring the Irken citizens together on Conventia for The Great Assigning where the Invaders are assigned their target planets. Zim himself is not invited to The Great Assigning as he was not supposed to be participating in OID II, but he hears of the event and escapes his exile on Foodcourtia and begs the Tallest until they agree to assign him to a planet.

Over the course of the show we see that OID II is in fact quite successful. In the course of OID II Invader Skoodge conquers planet Blortch, Invader Larb conquers planet Vort and Invader Tenn (and some malfunctioning SIR units) destroy most of planet Meekrob. OID II is so successful, in fact, that a group of well-meaning aliens banded together to resist the Irkens - the Resisty.


Probing day

Probing Day is a day when each Irken Invader is remotely inspected by the Almighty Tallest and any Invader who is found to be lacking in any way is visciouly pummeled. Of course, it might not be easy to anticipate exactly what the Tallest require of an Invader to pass; perhaps a puppet show?

On the one hand, I think it's absolutely hilarious (and unforutanate) for the Tallest to have little remote control pummeling mallets built into each of the bases of the Invaders. On the other hand, I have to wonder why they haven't used the pummeling mallets on Zim more often.

We find out in Walk for your Lives that passing a Probing Day inspection has been one of Zim's greatest goals in life - in fact the quote is too good to pass up. "Even as a small Irken Smeet, my dream was to pass Probing Day like a Slorbeast passes her young: Jiggly, and full of juice!"

Zim does not in fact pass inspection but he also avoids an official pummeling as the temporal prison he had used to encase Dib exploded and destroyed his base (this is because Zim temporly turned him into a time manulapting living energy weapon that is highly flammable or explosive when it is activated it will creat a explosion the size of a city but moves and slows everything down plus snail paced).

i like the impeding doom, sage

i do feel sory that zim failed. but he never gives up.

plus i love grrr. especially all his side bar comments.

It's ok if they failed after probing day the Tallest will then give the invader the premission to resume and go back to their normal lives until the next probing day