"I cannot begin to express the joy I feel at being present at such a historic moment. The world's fate lies in these hands. Now we head into a new age with the new Master of Creation..." - from Dr. Lem's diary
Clinic Chief Lem (also known as Dr. Lem) is the director of Michelangelo Memorial Hospital, where Rion Steiner is being held at the beginning of Galerians. He is fought as a boss before leaving the hospital.
A megalomaniac and narcissist, he was responsible for several inhuman and highly unethical medical experiments that took a lot of lives, and whose signs are still visible during Rion's trip in the hospital. He was completely suitable and had no remorse, instead taking pride in doing this. Believing that he was witnessing humanity's extinction and the birth of a new world as well as Dorothy's ascension to Godhood, he worshiped her with fanatical and perpetual devotion.
In the game[]
At the beginning of the game, Rion hears Clinical Chief Lem's name from one of the doctors that injected him with PPECs, saying he only did what his director ordered him to do and that only he knows the true nature of Rion's powers.
Rion first sees Chief Lem's face from a series of computer monitors while he was looking for a way out. The doctor orders Rion to return in the isolation room and when the boy refuses, he said he was truly disappointed since Rion is his most successful experiment. He then proceeds to isolate the hospital, mocking his prey that he won't go anywhere.
However, when Rion is able to reach a room with not only an elevator to the outside, but even a computer with top secret information, Clinical Chief Lem is forced to face him personally. He refuses to answer Rion's questions about Family Program, threatening him with a gun, saying that if he shoots Rion with that PPEC, he will die by shorting, again intimidating the boy to come back to the isolation room. Rion refuses again, disarming him with his new powers. Realizing that words and threats are useless, Chief Lem decides to use force, with Rion looking at him with hate for what he had done. Firstly, Rion easily overpowers Chief Lem, who tries to attack with his stick, apparently killing him only to realize his opponent is a cyborg. The battle continues, with the doctor trying to attack the boy with powerful nudges and shoves, as well as overbalance the boy, grabbing his former guinea pig's neck and banging him on the floor with violence. Anyway, Rion is still able to win, destroying Chief Lem's mechanical body. Using one of his eyes to activate the elevator, Rion escapes from Michelangelo Memorial Hospital.
In the movie[]
In Galerians: Rion, it is revealed that Chief Lem, during Rion's escape, encountered Birdman who offered him help. However, he refused, saying that he was the one who gave the orders. In the film, the cyborg survives the battle with Rion, even if in only pieces. Birdman appears and then laughs at his defeat. Chief Lem roughly ordered him to collect his components and rebuild him. Instead, the Galerian proceeds to crush the cyborg's head with his feet, furiously asking how he still dared to give orders to him "even as a head".
Gallery[]
Trivia[]
- Clinical Chief Lem is the only boss in the series that can be killed by shorting. In the film he is indeed defeated this way. This is due to him not being a Galerian but a cyborg. Also, Major Romero in Galerians: Ash is a cyborg but can't be killed by shorting. Supposedly, between the two games, Ash improved the technology preventing Romero from suffering the same weakness Chief Lem had (there are also no bosses in the second game that Rion can defeat with shorting.)
- He shares several features with Major Romero: both are bosses that are not Galerians or A.I, but are cyborgs. Both have mechanical left eyes, both allied themselves with the main antagonist A.I of the game where they appeared. Also, they were apparently not forced to fight mankind, but did what they did of their own choice (it is possible Lem acted of his own choice as his amount of free-will from Dorothy is never officially confirmed.) Lastly, they both died having their body turned to pieces and their head crushed by via stomp. However, Chief Lem was shown dying in this way only in Galerians: Rion and not in the original game.
- Clinical Chief Lem's true nature is left ambiguous: it's not properly explained, not in the game or in the movie, if he was a human turned into a cyborg or if he is just a machine built with the purpose to only serve Dorothy, and the game's manual doesn't explain much more on this. However, he shows much more personality than any other machine in both games, and even wrote a diary, so the former hypothesis looks more believable.
- His appearance is slightly different in the various media he appears: while in the game he maintains some kind of human aspect, in the movie he looks like a completely mechanical being. In the game, he doesn't talk anymore when he reveals his true form, but does it in the movie instead. Interestingly, he strongly resembles a T-800, a famous cyborg from the Terminator franchise.
- His human appearance, as a doctor with a long stick and a very questionable ethics, is somehow similar to Gregory House, the protagonist of House M.D. However, Galerians was released in 1999, while the Doctor House series began in 2004; and, unlike Gregory House, Clinical Chief Lem is depicted as truly evil.
- He is described as in his middle 40s in the manual of the game, but his appearance seems to be much older.
- If the last of Rainheart's memory is to be believed, Clinical Chief Lem in the past injected him with PPECs, despite the Galerian begging him to not do this to him since the drugs were turning him into a monster he wasn't and didn't want to be. The doctor however continued regardless, saying it was Dorothy's order and that Dorothy only wanted Rainheart to grow stronger. He also ordered the doctors in the hospital to inject Rion with PPECs too. It's unknown if he did the same to the other Galerians. However, it should be noted that, in the movie, Birdman kills him more with wrath rather than sadism, even asking how the doctor still dares give orders to him "even as a head". So, considering that Michelangelo Memorial Hospital was the place where Dorothy started her research about human genes, it can be suggested that Birdman, and by extension all the first Galerians, suffered from Clinical Chief Lem's experiments.
- Clinical Chief Lem is, arguably, one of the most evil antagonists of Galerians franchise : he is never depicted in a sympathetic light, never showed redeeming qualities or remorse for his actions and, apparently, did all of his horrible crimes of his free will. Rion shows no kind of remorse for his death, something he instead did with most of the other Galerians, and absolutely has no sympathy or compassion towards him. He acts in a similar way towards Major Romero, a character who shares a lot of features with Clinical Chief Lem.
- His name is possibly a reference to the Polish science fiction writer Stanisław Lem. Additionally. Lem's name is similar to Rem which also means Random Eye Movement sleep. This may be a reference to Lem's red left eye which he obscures with an eye-patch.
