“ALIEN: EARTH” on FX: Peter Pan, Wendy & Albino Timothy Olyphant

Going out on a limb to say that this show deserves its own thread

First 2 eps went up today I think

Anyway, discuss?

Just finished ep 1 diving into ep2 but: hell yes to ep1 credits needledrop Dio Sabbath fuck YES lets fuckin goooooo

Hahahah I was specifically thinking of you when I heard that riff kick in! Just wrapped up watching both episodes. Here's my non-spoiler thoughts, copying from FB:

Hmmmm. Thinking a bit on this one. Let me start with the downsides: essentially, and incredibly unsurprisingly, the shadow of the IP in general and the first two films by default still can never be escaped, given how much anyone playing in this pool never wants to escape it. (It's almost perverse exactly HOW much it can't be escaped in the first five, ten minutes -- the decisions made are beyond knowing and trying to own it, it's more like 'Okay, Hawley, come on.') There is also hilariously clunky IP management in general thanks to the overall Disney/Fox merger -- let's just say you'll be surprised to learn what films are mysteriously kid favorites a hundred years in the future! (You won't be surprised.) Also the fact that this IS a series and not a movie is a bit of a problem when it comes to manages scares and ominous atmosphere over hours -- if everything after a certain point is creepy and threatening in the production design, then nothing is. (Binging this seems like a mistake for this reason so watch this an episode at a time for sure.)

Now, that said? There's enough going on for me to continue watching. The new and reasonably original elements are matched with this interestingly slippery/chilly tone that's very deliberate without being boring -- the more it leans into its own sense of pace and steady development the more interesting it was to me. Without delving into details, the main 'crew' that is exploring things has a so-far unique dynamic for the whole series for a particular reason, and I appreciate the earned reactions and in-universe awkwardness that results. Separate from them: rather than one Inevitable Android Role there are two as such, one of whom is Olyphant, and I kinda appreciate the weird Rutger Hauer/Roy Batty meets Gary Busey on methadone vibes of his styling and approach. The other is an interesting variation that I'll let you discover for yourself if you watch (they don't hide it, it comes up pretty quick). There's a couple of surprisingly funny out-of-nowhere moments that vary things up, it certainly looks great, budget's on the screen, and boy was I surprised to realize Adrian Edmondson is part of this. It's a long way from The Young Ones!

Plus, as a ending fillip and as VG has just noted, they have an interesting line in end credit song syncs. Kinda wondering what we get next.

Part of me SHOULD hate this because it’s partly technically what I hated about the last movie ie the thrall of Alien is so monolithic it sucks any originality out of what they’re doing & it becomes pure zombified fanservice

BUT i love Hawley & I guess I trust him enough as a writer that he’ll get that out of his system

The story elements interest me enough already so I’m keen to see more

Stray thoughts
-Olyphant has some very funny line deliveries. The tone is odd for him but I like the weirdness of it
- The brother (Nemik from Andor) is great, I love him & I like the story between him & Wendy
- ADE EDMONSON HOORAY
- Morrow the keeper of thr specimens is cool as hell, i enjoy him a lot

Could really do without everyone standing around NOT SHOOTING THEIR WEAPONS AT THE ALIUMS. Point AND Shoot? Maybe? Lotta dumbness driving the action which annoys me.

That cat in ep2 was on some Carpenter-Thing-wtfery. Very nope. Cool tho!

Also I enjoy the grossout parts. Very fun so far

Anyway I’m all the way in I just hope this isn’t dumb lol

even in the first good sci-fi pilot episode in ages there’s some distractingly shit CGI

Wendy jumping off the cliff, the whole crash sequence

yeah agreed

the first appearance of the titular Alien it just looked like a grip crouched underneath the camera waving it back and forth … like do we have to light it ~that~ much? arent shadows kind of the point?

anyway as you can see this franchise absolutely brings out my worst Simpsons Comic Book Guy instincts lol

Bad FX I noticed in the first ep (haven't seen the second yet) were Wendy jumping and the leech bug crawling. Otherwise, first ep was great. I didn't have any problems with (most of the) callbacks, esp. to the first movie, because this one takes place a couple of years before that one, so they're kind of setting up the connection. Got to admit, even having seen the first movie a bunch, I never once wondered what things were like back on Earth. Now we know!

Some of the more specific callbacks (computer text reflecting on screen, the vibe/crew composition when they're having their wake-up meal, the references to the Goldsmith score), they made me roll my eyes a bit, but they were cute. Anyway, it's, like, the millionth iteration of the "Alien" franchise, seems pointless to complain about callbacks. What I really *do* appreciate are the echoes of "Prometheus" and "Covenant," neither of which I liked at all and both of which were sooooo dumb. In this, though, they are more successful (so far) at expanding the world, and not dumb (yet). And so efficient at doing it! Right off the bat we're more or less in the deep end of both monster movie and Hard Sci-Fi (TM).

I did not have a problem with the (primary) Disney IP integration, per se, because it's not just that movie it's the whole broader IP, from the book to the nickname for all the hybrid "kids" (and the lead kid's name).

Anyway, Hawley has had a great run with "Fargo," and he seems to have a good grasp of this world, too. I have high hopes that will hopefully not be dashed.

It was less Peter Pan and more Peter Pan AND Ice Age, the more so for the emotional leveraging.

Ice Age I thought was a weird choice, but the first thing that came to mind is the random assortment of media one finds in rental properties. "What do we have here, Ice Age? I guess we're watching that one again!"

I mean maybe but it is a Disney property now, so etc

There's maybe some unintentional satire there, a show where the world is divided up into rival corporations that itself is enthusiastically embracing a contemporary corporation that is buying up the (creative) world.

OK, glad I'm not gonna pop in and shit up a thread full of unqualified raves. I watched the first episode with mild interest, was disappointed right off the bat that one of my favorite recently discovered actresses, Richa Moorjani (from Fargo season 5), was basically a cameo, and after that... meh. The whole Peter Pan thing doesn't do it for me as a theme/nod, but I'm mildly intrigued by Olyphant's character... I don't know yet. Will see if I make it through episode 2 tonight.

Hope this is good, I'm a Hawley fan but don't have Hulu at the moment, and we're watching all of Taskmaster for the foreseeable future.

I half wonder if we're going to get more of the Maginot crew's deal through flashbacks during the season, as well as wondering if this is going to turn into a 24/The Pitt real time scenario in the main story.

(Also, LOL at Maginot, which Weyland-Yutani exec thought that was a good idea. "Sorry, boss, Dien Bien Phu was already taken.")

I do assume we're going to get flashbacks.

Despite the tone of my post last nighy I am overall optimistic about the show & enjoyed the first 2 episodes — Josh is otm in that the throwback elements do fit in with this series since it’s placed a mere 2 years prior to Alien

and it does all add a bit of excitement to re-enter this world again, not gonna lie

i still have kneejerk eyeroll at the constant simpsonsesque DO THE THING / THEY DID THE THING - really hard for me to shake that with these spinoffs these days, we have endured so much lol

i did find myself wondering over my morning coffe though, like just how much “earth” we’re really going to get in all of this if we’re ultimately still exploring a spaceship… that’s stuck in a building. lol

and yes we loled over Maginot too! behold our fleet: Agincourt,
Trafalgar…

I thought this was great. I do have concerns that stretching the basic framework of Alien over a multi-episode show has the potential to become very tiring if it really is just jump scare after jump scare in various dimly lit rooms. But I feel like Hawley is laying enough groundwork here to avoid that. I like the idea that there are multiple aliens, multiple corporations, multiple android types, whereas we know that in terms of the greater mythology of the franchise, there is only one of each. I like that there are layers of Darwinism here... and that most of the characters we are invested in (e.g. Wendy, Kavalier, leechy blood bags and eyeball monsters) are on the losing side of that determination.

I'm definitely having fun with 'oh right it's that actor' with the cast, like in checking just now I see Dame Sylvia is Miss Fisher as in the Australian mystery series.

i didnt realize one of the bloodslug soldiers was our guy Gaitok from White Lotus!

xpost i knew i recognized her from something!

oh also our nostalgic childhood bonding property is (checks notes) Ice Age 4?
surprised they didnt go for Land Before Time XIV

Anyway here's one of those 'look ahead at the season' trailers so probably general semi-spoilers:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRfFIQP598c

Could've sworn that was our Lord Percy as the Restoration Cosplay guy : )

Really cool first two episodes. Lots of fun.

Tyres!! I'm only 3 mins in, ha

I'm saving ep2 for tomorrow.
when Morrow is sealed into the room and the alien slowly slides past the window, just cracked me up.
otherwise i like it and will continue to enjoy being in the Alien universe

In the future, the race for immortality will come in 3 guises:

Cybernetically enhanced humans: Cyborgs
Artificially intelligent beings: Synths

and
Synthetic beings downloaded with human consciousness: Hybrids

uploaded with human consciousness. not a great start.

Tyres!! I'm only 3 mins in, ha

he dead now, sad face. (ok I haven't seen ep 2 yet, I don't see him coming back though!

have to say the effort at carbon copying the all time classic "show don't tell" opening of alien was a dismal failure, tyres' part in it especially. ("hey idiot who apparently doesn't know anything about the world he lives in, let me tell you some key backstory facts!")

he hasn't done his social studies tho

It's Alien enough for me to breeze past the bad CGI and the neon sign reading WHAT THE FUCK hanging over the trillionaire who owns Neverland RanchIsland and throwing in some retcon exposition... but I fear just a little that this is going to lead to an actual melding of the Blade Runner and Alien universes and in give years we're going to have a movie with CGI Roy Batty fighting a xenomorph near the Tannhauser Gate.

five years

ledge otm

as soon as the computer terminal in the empty room whirred to life Mr Veg said “man, don’t do that…”

it’s that thing where everyone who picks up the mantle feels the pull to recreate those moments & as a fan you want to yell “but we’ve seen THAT movie! we’ve seen THAT moment. show us your movie. show us your moment!”

For better or worse, more than any other franchise I think Alien *insists* that you make specific callbacks to various past movies. So I didn't mind the repetition in these first few episodes, but I do hope it shakes that off and moves into more of its own thing now that it's established its world and characters.

yeah otm

looking forward to getting into this. i swear i thought i started a thread about "every alien movie ever".

- "you bitch"
- a woman's face turning away from a closeup of a drooling alien
- facehugger
- chestburster
- whatever plan the humans had goes out the window when it becomes clear that escape is the only option
- a crew that's been kept in the dark
- an android with white stuff for blood

Could've sworn that was our Lord Percy as the Restoration Cosplay guy : )

As soon as that door opened I said "oh, and now we're in High Rise." And I thought "Michelle Visage is not going to like this."

It seems fine, but the xenomorph is very person-in-a-suit, the Willy Wonka trillionaire guy is too whimsical, and I don't care about anyone really except Timothy Olyphant, for the reason that he is Timothy Olyphant. Good to see Adarsh Gourav, I hope he gets a bit of something to do.

looking forward to getting into this. i swear i thought i started a thread about "every alien movie ever".

- "you bitch"
- a woman's face turning away from a closeup of a drooling alien
- facehugger
- chestburster
- whatever plan the humans had goes out the window when it becomes clear that escape is the only option
- a crew that's been kept in the dark
- an android with white stuff for blood

I did like the part in e2 when the brother looks close up to the facehugger eggs and then just stands up and says “we should call this in.”

ok i rewatched the first 2 episodes and I am way more locked now

*locked IN now

winced a little at the scene in ep1 in the army transporter "okay by the book".

Made it to the end of episode 2 and I'm done. It's mostly pretty well done but just not my thing, and the characters' obsession with literal century-old popular culture is infuriating to me. (I would absolutely love an SF series — book, movie, TV show, whatever — that got really deep into imagining future pop culture instead of pretending that as we're colonizing the universe, we're also gonna all be listening to the same old records from Earth.)

I expanded on this thought elsewhere, so I'll just leave it here:

I have given up on ALIEN: EARTH after two episodes, and I'm gonna explain why, because it's an issue bigger than this one show.

I can no longer put up with stories set in the future where the characters are fixated on 20th century American pop culture. It's lazy and frankly infuriating. ALIEN: EARTH is set in 2120, and we have a character talking about a Reggie Jackson baseball game from 1977.

Another character is obsessed with PETER PAN, a movie from 1953. Over the end credits we have heard songs from Black Sabbath (1981) and Tool (1996). Raise your hand if your primary sources of entertainment, in 2025, are from 150 years ago.

Why are SF writers incapable of imagining future pop culture, or even that there could be pop culture in the future at all? (Not all, mind you; William Gibson has thrown in passing references to future trends, particularly in his Bridge Trilogy of novels.)

Music and art evolve CONSTANTLY. One of the primary purposes of young people is to come up with sounds that make old people (like me) say "Jesus, you listen to that shit for pleasure? Why, in my day..." But in ALIEN: EARTH, it's all sonic/visual nostalgia.

(See also THE LAST OF US, in which a queer teenage girl has the musical taste of a straight middle-aged man.)

I'm no longer going to put up with this dearth of imagination from SF writers. Think harder about what people a hundred years from now — a thousand years from now — on far distant planets — would be listening to for pleasure. And if your answer is "the Beatles," fuck off forever.

in the LoU world the pop culture references are so old because society has fallen apart and those references signify a lost golden age

i suspect the golden oldies references in Alien have a similar function - to signify that everything's gone downhill and the pop ephemera that today we regard as worthless have become tokens of a a better, purer more innocent time

This was something Tony Gilroy thought about for Andor - recycling and remixing a song at various points in the show because, as he said in an interview somewhere, he imagined the song was a galaxy-wide hit.

lol what a weird reason to bounce off a show. That's like complaining everybody in the future speaks English.

That's like complaining everybody in the future speaks English.

Well, why does everyone in "New Siam" speak English? I guess we should be happy that people still have accents in the future...

As far as any of this goes, I just assumed the handful of tech companies that run the world imposed their own lingua Franca, as such.

Is Blade Runner one of the few science fiction films that features a newly developed language?

(See also THE LAST OF US, in which a queer teenage girl has the musical taste of a straight middle-aged man.)

i hate that show but this is the most credible thing about it

Why do movies sometimes start with characters speaking their native language with subtitles and then it switches to english? because they're english language shows created for a broadly english-speaking audience. what people are speaking has a lot more to do with the target audience than the fictional characters

In future: all movies to be made with Esperanto.

I mean, yeah, the 20th century refs are there for the audience, and not to build the world, and it can come across a little goofy. However, I do think it's likely that in 100 years people will still make references to, e.g. Neil Armstrong or the Beatles or w/e, partly because of the outsize cultural shadow cast by these things and partly because the Internet has made it so that nothing ever gets completely forgotten. I mean, contemporary people still make references to 19th century literature all the damn time! To say nothing of even older culture.

As for this show: I've just watched episode 1 so far and I think it's cool. I did groan at the slavish recapitulation of the first fifteen minutes of the OG film, but I think the characters and story are actually attempting something new and I'm here for it.

it was cool on The Expanse when the big club hit was a remix of the disturbing alien voices

it is interesting that it seems to be literally impossible to create convincing "music of the future"

in children of men you had michael caine listening to skrillex or whatever but it was pretty clear that it was supposed to be an "oldie" at that point and he was the equivalent of a dad doing air guitar to led zeppelin

Science fiction is not predictive; it is descriptive.
-- Ursula K. LeGuin

Honestly, Peter Pan specifically, we have been reading, watching, and performing that for 150 years already. I'm not sure it requires any more suspension of disbelief to think we'll be doing that for another 150, any more than it takes to believe we will see a world with aliens fighting cyborgs.

The reason I actually kind of liked all the goofy callbacks at the beginning of the first episode is because it so efficiently just shuts that down. It's basically the entire first movie in 15 minutes, because why not, we already know how the first movie goes. Better than a recap.

Honestly, Peter Pan specifically, we have been reading, watching, and performing that for 150 years already.

For what value of "we," though? Even if I concede this, the show takes place in future Asia. Why wouldn't the characters be fixated on Akira or Sailor Moon rather than Disney product?

I've only seen the first episode and we will see where it goes, but it looks like they're depicting a post nation state world. I'm not sure there are even countries, let alone governments, so I think of it less as regions as we know them now and more as just various corporate fiefdoms.

Do you think Akira and Sailor Moon were bigger in modern day Vietnam, or modern day North America?

The residents of what seems like a relatively well-to-do building that the Weyland-Yutani ship crashes into are broadly all, from our point of view, migrants or colonizers to Southeast Asia. The crowds of extras fleeing the crash at ground level seem more analogous to what we'd expect, but aren't the focus. The whole area seems very Prodigy-corporate, and the kids that are part of the supposed boy genius CEO (and the W-Y ship's crew) don't really skew to a specific modern day nationality or ethnic group. We're not really seeing the world at large, at least not yet. Just a snapshot of corporate sector versus corporate sector, as far as I can tell.

I figured they just went with Ice Age since 1. It's a 20th Century Fox thing, and somewhat thematically correct to show in a legacy Fox-distributed property 2. The writer is around kids that like that series

Better than a recap.

Speaking of: obviously didn't apply to the first episode, but I appreciated how the title bit for the second episode folded the 'previously on' stuff into the background as the title assembled itself in first-movie-fashion. Nice two-in-one, I assume they'll continue it.

ok i’m watching and this shit is dope

the boy genius is an exact cross between greg james and nick grimshaw

the set design, the lighting eg the harsh white underlighting on their sweaty faces against the flickering bluish background, warm fires sputtering just off camera, even the quality of the film/video feels like there’s real fidelity to the first movie yet it also feels kind of effortless. less a recreation and more just a vernacular they’re fluent in. the crash of the spaceship and the initial response is fucking outstanding

that said unperson i do kinda accept your point about the signifiers of the past in re the minor flashbacks we get from wendy, which are sepia hazed 1970s coded in every way, and sure, it’s an effective signifier to us now of “childhood flashback” but doesn’t fit the timeline of the story. that said they do seem to be leaning quite heavily on the cultural stagnation theme what with baseball still being around 100 years into the future and the brother wearing a classic c20 quarter length sleeve baseball shirt

i’m a funny way though, now that i think think about it, the 70s vibes - back sabbath, the flashbacks, and i even think i detect some 70s styling on the shaggy blond lab tech who’s doing wendy’s hearing test - his hairstyle for one but also the wood beaded seat cover - remember those??? people had them in their cars, so comfortable anyway the 70s coded stuff gives it continuity with alien 1. i mean if you’re going to get canonical that is simply how things look in this world at this time. the only thing harder to de-anachronise in movies than music is hairstyles

also can i just say i LOVE how deep we’re diving into cyborg/synth stuff, always a strong theme in alien movies obv but taken as a given really, and this time we get into the chewiness of the hybrid situation without losing the classic “robot following orders and unleashing the alien on us” plot which, plus or minus a paul reiser or two is always the strongest motor for these things

Speaking of the robots, and yesterday's discussion of how each iteration of Alien hits various beats of the original... I'm just going to call it now that Olyphant's synth is a Weyland-Yutani plant.

i could see that

btw the spaceship/building “hybrid” is fuckin sick

Olyphant’s character feels like he is a bridge between Alien & Bladerunner, the

agh lemme try that again

Had the same thought re: Olyphant’s character. there’s no indication anyone’s manufacturing synths outside of W-Y, right? You know those assholes have some hidden program that makes all their products loyal

oh and.. re being accurate to the year 2120. the job-bot uses punch cards!

Olyphant’s character feels like a bridge between Alien & Bladerunner, thematically in a way i guess i mean idk how to say it exactly. But the way he has this interesting Roy Batty vibe where his body language & speech patterns give all the hallmarks of compliance but his *tone* & that glint in his eyes tell you this mfer could go rogue in a heartbeat if he found the right opportunity

And i get the feeling that he is interested in Wendy’s human convictions “i will save him”/“he wont die” on some deeper level than just amusement/curiosity

he's giving big malcolm mcdowell on the verge of farting energy

lol

i loved how he wrangles the Kids with that slightly bored tone “fear is for animals, you are not animals, keep moving” (paraphrasing)

gotta say the whole sending children into a disaster zone scheme is one of the more disturbing aspects of this and one of the dumbest decisions ever taken by a member of alien's illustrious pantheon of dumb billionaires but it is weirdly compelling and def works on a horror level

I agree but I don't think Kavalier sees them as kids. They were test subjects who successfully transferred into their adult bodies. But those bodies are also very strong/superhuman so I think he's more than happy to see what they can do. If they die, at least he knows he can transfer new candidates down the line.

I agree but I don't think Kavalier sees them as kids. They were test subjects who successfully transferred into their adult bodies. But those bodies are also very strong/superhuman so I think he's more than happy to see what they can do. If they die, at least he knows he can transfer new candidates down the line.

you're right but they definitely are kids mentally, as we keep seeing, so kavalier is uh i guess a little cavalier about this at the very least

i was kind of hoping that wendy would hold on to her secret just a little longer, that the forward pace of events would forestall any ponderous scenes of reunion but bah my hopes were dashed. when he asked her the question about what she said on xmas morning, to test whether she really was his sister, she'd be like wtf, i don't remember dude that was a long time ago can you please hurry up before you become FOOD

I got Roy Batty vibes from Olyphant as well.

I watched ep 1 and wasn't sure I was getting out of it what I should - because now I have to admit that honestly I know fuck all about the Alien(s) universe. Ive half-assedly seen Alien, not seen Aliens/Resurrection/Covenant. I watched but prob didnt really "get" Prometheus and that most recent one.

So I felt like I was missing a ton of cues?

xps I think Kavalier just sees them as fodder and doesn't GAF what happens to them, he'll just make more because he can. It's definitely the most disturbing and interesting thing about the show. I'm worried about these kids, superhuman strength and nigh-invulnerability not withstanding.

IDK I think if you've seen the first two you're good. I've seen all of them except Covenant and I barely remember what happened in Romulus

You don't need to see any beside the first two, imo. This one, there are aspects of Prometheus and Covenant it echoes, imo, but nothing essential (and besides, those movies look great but are really dumb). Romulus I barely remember at all, but between it and a couple of others it's implied Earth is not the best place to be, if even livable at all, which portends very bad things happening in this show. As if it being an Alien story doesn't give that away from the very start.

Long story short, I doubt you're really missing anything if you're not up to date on the mythology.

why are u all calling Olyphant kavalier
he’s kirsch?

maybe the later episodes turn into an Adventures of Kavalier and Clay adaptation

wasn't sure I was getting out of it what I should

i'll venture this could be less because of not seeing other aliens stuff and more that the show seems quite willing to let some things not get a full explanation right away, which i like, because imo it's not sloppy it's deliberate to build tension and suspense

for instance, maybe this is obvious to you guys idk but the weird buzzing wendy hears in her head seemed like it was a result of kavalier "tuning in" to her in order to see through her eyes - if that's what he's even doing - as part of his "data" discovery sprint lol. but later when they reach the eggs it almost seems like the buzz is somehow connected to the aliens - it gets stronger as they approach. all of this quite vague and suggestive but still ratchets the screw a little tighter.

likewise i don't really understand what wendy is doing with the cameras, and her ability to simply speak through the speaker of any connected robo-devices in prodigy city?? very mystical and not something prodigy appeared to anticipated she could do. again that's not a reference to anything in another movie it's just this weird thing that happens that doesn't have a neat explanation (or at least not yet)

it's such a great setup - three different bureaucracies closing in on this terrifying force, bickering with each other, getting snapped in two like fools

and dudes the PARTY

i do feel a little unperson-ish about the reggie jackson ball - it would have been cool if it were signed by like "Dale Mullins" and the video clip was from the 2044 world series, bro tears up, turns to his rescuers and then sits down and writes out the box score from memory, describing every play as the aliens keep killing people outside

i don't think any of us are mistaking kavalier for kirsch? kirsch is just following orders to herd the kids along, he's not responsible for the scheme

james dyer says there's an ep later on that rewinds to the events leading up to the crash "that could comfortably be described as the best Alien movie since 1986"; tallerico says it's "basically a standalone short 'Alien' movie that stands among the best single episodes of TV in years"

then i guess i dont know who kavalier is

Kavalier is boy genius CEO

then call him boy genius lol u nerds who on earth knows character names yet

He's called Boy Kavalier in IMDB.

Second episode was great, too. Once again echoes of the better stuff in "Prometheus" (gross space cooties) plus some nods to ... "Alien 3" (esp. the racing alien-cam). I love that so much of this is focused on the variety of synthetics. Only thing that bugged me was that Joe was pretty chill about the alien. "Have you seen any ... animals?" Or whatever he says to his fellow Prodigy dude. They keep expanding the world building in subtle ways, but not sure of any context where they wouldn't all be scared shitless about the menagerie on the loose. Boy Genius, though, sure. He's a sociopath, like our own equivalents.

Tim Olyphant is great in this, redolent of Fassbinder's eccentric turn in the dumb ones.

Can I just say I really love all the actors who are playing the kid hybrids. The way the one guy held on so tightly to those bins so the little eyeball alien wouldn’t get out, his child energy was STRONG in that scene

the kids really grew on me after the rewatch, i like them a lot more now

xpost yes!! i loved the way he clung to the bin for dear life, it was very funny

Pretty good quick making of stuff about the crashed ship set

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TlJWE8R2oUA

Also lolled at when they first go into that room with the blood sucking bag things and they're like "Arrgh, monsters!" and all scared because of course they are, they're kids xp

yeah that was great

the brother Hermit keeps reminding me of sadsack Kevin in Motherland

Hoping they get out of the spaceship set, I want EARTH! Aliens wrestling with goats and bears

gotta say the whole sending children into a disaster zone scheme is one of the more disturbing aspects of this and one of the dumbest decisions ever taken by a member of alien's illustrious pantheon of dumb billionaires but it is weirdly compelling and def works on a horror level

Yeah, I feel like putting kids in danger in order to prove your technology works is exactly what a trillionaire would do. It made me think of the current business with Meta's chatbot.

He doesn't see them as children at all. I mean, he's a child himself, and as he more or less says in E2, they are basically his playthings. Dame whomever is all, "we should consider the ethical implications of literal potential vs. becoming, we want more than to create immortal consumers," and his response is essentially "who cares about that, I just want a smart toy I can talk to." I'd like to think this is by design. Boy Genius puts all his energy into creating beings to superficially stem his boredom, but the first super being he creates spends much of her time reestablishing a strong "human" emotional connection to her brother. Some loose similarities to "A.I." (the movie) in here, so far. Plus aliens.

Somewhat related, I do wonder what any of the creatures would care about the cyborgs or synths, who do not have blood, per se.

(Funny connection, but in "A.I." the overriding semi-Disney public domain property motif is "Pinocchio.")

re what the creatures make of the synths there is one xenomorph that seems particularly keen on filleting the surviving Weyland-Yutani synth (Morrow) from the research vessel. he only barely locks himself in Mother’s panic room in time. this happens in the first 20 minutes of the show. later, in the building, Morrow is on the verge of getting got, sweat beading down his face, his fist transforming into a blade (T2, anybody??) but the alien gets distracted at the last second

The cyborg thing is interesting. Have they ever been in any previous Alien stories? The expo-text at the beginning says they are enhanced humans. This sets up an interesting parallel between Morrow (human body, but seemingly* a soulless, perfectly loyal W-Y drone) and Wendy (synth body with a human soul, has her own agenda unrelated to her corporate overlord).

*I suspect we'll find out there's more going on with him than meets the eye

If I recall correctly, Ash in the first movie has no real interaction with the alien. In the second, Bishop gets torn up mostly because he is in the way. I think the aliens are pretty indiscriminate in who they target - even a cyborg probably doesn't want to be torn apart - but of course they can't lay eggs in or I guess eat synthetic people (assuming the aliens eat).

But I was also thinking of the leech and eye creatures and the like, you would think that they would be attracted to blood, if that's what they eat. Maybe, like the aliens, they are just mean and violent.

can't believe Tracer didn't catch that Morrow's a cyborg even though a half dozen characters say "You're a cyborg!" especially after seeing his hand throughout both episodes smdh

lol you’re right i kind of confused cyborgs and synths in my brain despite the explicit text at the beginning smdh

i can't believe we have to wait until Tuesday for the next episode it feels like an actual crime

I agree but I don't think Kavalier sees them as kids. They were test subjects who successfully transferred into their adult bodies. But those bodies are also very strong/superhuman so I think he's more than happy to see what they can do. If they die, at least he knows he can transfer new candidates down the line.

Also thought his whole vibe - Wendy repeatedly calls him “the Boy Genius” is a little childish too, but cruel in the way children can be cruel, like pulling the wings off insects or destroying things just because. Per convo with Dame whatever, he pretty clearly sees most normal people as barely conscious compared to him, synths are likely even more removed and more comparable to experiments than people.

Oh man, that episode one needle drop at the end…

they hooked me good with that!

And based on the latest episode, their knack for immediately recognizable/appropriate opening riffs and notes for the end credits continues.

Starting to settle more into its own thing as it goes, which is good. Definitely appreciate how the sheer chill-but-never-cold/dead flow of everything in general goes, it's a hell of a tension winder. But that early faceoff in the butcher truck, that was pretty sharp.

okay i feel like we’re starting to cook now

if Prodigy’s magic lost boy hybrids can be hacked from outside like goddamn Ring cameras then no wonder they didnt outlast Weyand Yutani … that sequence was v unnerving

Nibs better start doing something other than “thousand-yard-stare-amateur-drama-class” or I will personally push her out an airlock

Olyphant still top-tier great work. Dorky to say maybeI am so thrilled to see him doing something in this unusual new gear this far into his career. So fun to watch.

Yup, it’s amazing to see.

I wonder if they're deliberately leaving the other megacorps unnamed so as not to un-canonize alien 4's throwaway line about walmart being the winner

They’re named: Lynch, Dynamic and Threshold. The first is obviously AI David L creating nightmares for profit.

Threshold is the Target home brand lol

I absolutely love the kid dynamic between Adarsh Gourav and Jonathan Ajayi. I want to see those outtakes, especially if they caused Babou Cessay to lose his shit.

yeah me too. i’ve been a little skeptical of the kid-vibe but those interactions really showed where it has the potential to go

I’m all in on the child synths. I think they’re hilarious and pure and fresh. I don’t care that it’s conceptually wild/stupid, I just love the characters and I want them all to be ok.

It's the physical acting that puts it over the top -- either that crazy immediate quirky energy or that still 'are we in trouble?' vibe.

Alien series:
More compelling Synth performances than in Villeneuve's Blade Runner? Check!
More compelling synth performances? Maybe they'll end an ep with blue monday or something.

Ceesay is doing incredible work here. This is the first thing I've seen him in but he is bringing so many shades of sadness and menace and desperation to Morrow, who is growing into the most compelling character IMO

He's like, what if the T-1000 was just some regular guy. I can't get over it

yeah i’m really enjoying him

So much top tier acting in this thing. Olyphant fantastic in this episode. Switching from quiet menace to disdain/exasperation when one of the kids says something stupid.

And echoing the love for the Smee/Slightly dynamic. Not sure my heart will cope when one of them inevitably meets an untimely end at the hands or claws of Morrow/Xenomorph

Also was that Joe's fucking lung they took out for baby Xeno to infest?!?

yes

and D:

Well imagine that will have repercussions down the line when/if Wendy finds out.

And good that they've moved off the ship although an isolated, secure facility still seems very much on brand

I did love, BTW, the implication at the end of the episode that Wendy made into the lab and collapsed while the other three were all working and then they just left her there when Kirsh went off to do the lung test.

Important information (and a spoiler for a future song):

https://decider.com/2025/08/12/what-song-is-playing-at-the-end-of-alien-earth-noah-hawley-explains-those-black-sabbath-tool-needle-drops/

Separately, that "Maggot Brain" drop.

Albino Timothy Olyphant face and hair disturb me.

Apologies if this has been mentioned before but I really appreciate how they are almost blurring the lines between the Alien and Blade Runner universes.

great work Decider / the AI that writes your articles: "Black Sabbath, of course, is also famously Ozzy Osbourne’s band. The beloved rocker passed away recently at the age of 76. DECIDER can confirm that the song was chosen before his death, but it still feels like a great homage to the Prince of Darkness."

THANKS FOR CONFIRMING THAT FACT JOURNALISTS

The whiff of AI taint

Broken synth. (The link was for the Hawley quotes, not the waffle.)

Separately, that "Maggot Brain" drop.

Following up on this: I am vaguely bemused at the unknown-to-me person elsewhere (seriously, I don't recognize them) who complained about "the Lethal Weapon inspired blues soloing" ie that song sync in question. I noted in response what the actual song was via a link and some info, along with noting among other things that this was released a decade and a half before said movie. The response: "Thanks for setting me straight. Nothing funky or fun about that song and I now know who is responsible for inspiring Sanborn, Clapton, and Kamen. Yuck to all of three of them." I will take this under advisement.

Apologies if this has been mentioned before but I really appreciate how they are almost blurring the lines between the Alien and Blade Runner universes.

The thing that's interesting to me in all this is that the Predator universe is being even more specifically tied in now; the upcoming Predator: Badlands has Elle Fanning specifically playing a Weyland-Yutani synth. Obviously this all happened with the 2000s crossover movies already but I'm more intrigued by the current retcon as such, though I have no sense of any of these individual projects (counting Alvarez's Romulus followup as well) specifically tying together more beyond that.

Specifically specifically. I must like that word.

It wasn't actual Eddie Hazel/Funkadelic Maggot Brain. I shazamed it during the show because I the soloing sounded off. Shazam returned the title "Procession" by Jeff Russo.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UeHjm5cvUHM

Checking the Alien subreddit (/r/LV426), there has been some discussion:

https://www.reddit.com/r/LV426/comments/1mvtqxw/did_anyone_else_clock_this_song_in_the_latest/
https://www.reddit.com/r/LV426/comments/1mwjka5/audio_clip_backtoback_30sec_of_maggot_brain_and/

Added here: "Maggot Brain" -- What next?

big Vietnam war vibes during that song, the "choppers" swinging through the jungle to Boy K's lair, shell-shocked hybrid kids, the casualties on stretchers.

I disagree about the Blade Runner parallels - pretty much everybody is mentally, spiritually, actually a human eg the kids, Morrow.. Kirsch is the only full-on synth we see, right? and he does not seem to have any yearnings or self-doubt or reflections on himself, his past etc. He seems quite at home with himself.

On the other hand, the eyeball with legs is straight out of The Thing and of course Morrow's hybrid skills are straight out of T2 - and I love it all, it's like they've just decided all 80s scifi thrillers take place in the same universe

Oh and uh random note: There's a Prodigy scientist with a.... lion's head!?

Also I love that apparently in the future instead of Internet cafes they have Internet S&M clubs

What, you don't?

Is Kirsch full synth?

Yup.

This episode (third?) was great, the show is so clever at taking this known world and subverting what we know of it. Olyphant in particular is such a strange presence. I agree this feels very much of a piece with Blade Runner, esp Blade Runner 2049. Lots of stuff going on, and I have no idea where it is going.

I still can't quite figure out Kirsh, tbh. In the opening of the first episode, there are the three classes of let's call them robots.

Cybernetically enhanced humans: Cyborgs
Artificially intelligent beings: Synthetics (Synths)
Synthetic beings downloaded with human consciousness: Hybrids

Hybrids are easy; they are created/heightened humans with implanted human consciousness. But Morrow, he is a cyborg, so ... human but enhanced? (This episode had him talking about his family, and he seemed to agitate the xenomorph.) And then there's Hirsh, who doesn't get the attention of the eggs, so ... synth? Not human? What was Ash supposed to be, or Bishop?

He's a synth. So were Ash & Bishop

In the Alien universe, cyborgs and hybrids are unique to this show

cyborg could be anything right, just some robotic enhancements or a full on robot in a flesh package e.g. terminator. I wondered if morrow was bluffing about his family. he seemed to act like sacrificing the crew was part of his programming, not just following orders.

I'm not necessarily expecting any further clarity on this since I think this is a show that priorities things that look cool over things that make sense.

Yutani makes a reference to Morrow working for her parent 60 years earlier, though, so yeah, there's nothing human about Morrow; he's pretty much a Terminator. I thought he was bluffing about the family, too, but this show is full of surprises. One of the questions I have (given this show is as much about robots as aliens) is why he has that cyber arm. This is set two years before "Alien," which means the mission Morrow was on departed from wherever years before that. So what's with the liquid Terminator arm tech?

yeah there’s a lot of things that look cool in this and a premium on things that make sense. agree with everyone above that morrow is utterly compelling

Yutani makes a reference to Morrow working for her parent 60 years earlier, though, so yeah, there's nothing human about Morrow; he's pretty much a Terminator

i don’t think this is right. cyborgs are humans, but upgraded. they live they die. morrow was on a deep space research vessel that required its humans (and presumably, cyborgs) to go into deep sleep for the voyage. that’s why it’s been so long. that’s why all his friends are dead.

not watching this until donna haraway is properly credited

Yutani makes a reference to Morrow working for her parent 60 years earlier, though, so yeah, there's nothing human about Morrow; he's pretty much a Terminator. I thought he was bluffing about the family, too, but this show is full of surprises. One of the questions I have (given this show is as much about robots as aliens) is why he has that cyber arm. This is set two years before "Alien," which means the mission Morrow was on departed from wherever years before that. So what's with the liquid Terminator arm tech?

The mission he was on was a 65-year mission into deep space, so he was likely sleeping in a cryo-pod like the other humans (and I think there was also a synth on that mission). I believe him about his family. I would imagine the ship from the first Alien movie is therefore already out in space somewhere while the events of this show are happening.

I’m a bad person and spent part of the first episode thinking that one of the dying children put in a synth body should be Cancer Boy from Kids in the Hall. It’d be a terrible bit

cyborgs are humans, but upgraded. they live they die.

So what's the difference between a cyborg and synth? Synths don't have red human blood, but cyborgs do? Did Morrow's presence agitate the eggs? I can't recall.

But yeah, I guess I forgot that in Alien lore you don't age in deep sleep, so that's how Morrow could outlive all his friends. That's also why Ripley was (more or less) the same age, but her daughter on earth was dead (though that info is a deleted/director's cut scene).

a synth is not human. it’s a robot created from scratch. like bishop.

In the future, the race for immortality will come in 3 guises:

Cybernetically enhanced humans: Cyborgs

Artificially intelligent beings: Synths

And synthetic beings downloaded with human consciousness: Hybrids

Which technology prevails will determine what corporation rules the universe

if only this was explicit in the show somehow

I suppose I'm trying to suss out the differences between them all. So Cyborgs: flesh and blood, but with ... other stuff? Like Terminator liquid metal arms and super strength and smarts and the power to just be super chill and cold while dealing with killer aliens? Synths, totally synthetic, a la Bishop and Ash, so super smart and ... what else, besides an apparent ethernet port in Kirsh's arm? Strong? Why would someone prefer a synth to a cyborg? Why did this cyborg tech exist for apparently decades before the first Alien movie, where there are only synths? And then hybrids, totally synthetic but with human consciousness, though not sure what the means or gains you if you are functionally a robot with superpowers and have the mentality/maturity of a child. Will they develop further mentally? I guess we'll see!

josh, our sweet summer child, do you ever just quietly try to work out stuff for yourself, lol
here’s the thing w hybrids: if you can put your consciousness into a robot
…then maybe rich owner of a corportation could forseeably live forever
…therefore…

the hybrids are tests
prodigy willy wonka pan is using an expendable/desperate portion of the population to test a theory

they are only starting out as children to see how/if/in what manner they survive because if they dont nbd

Why did this cyborg tech exist for apparently decades before the first Alien movie, where there are only synths?

Because it was made up for this TV show

(but the in-universe explanation will probably be that Weyland-Yutani ended up suppressing cyborg and hybrid tech or whatever)

I understand that the hybrids are experimental potential vessels for Boy Genius, lol. Didn't the show's open say something about the future being the race for immortality or whatever? That's literally the theme of the show (plus Aliens). I get that. But cyborgs vs synths ... Morrow is even more robotic than Hirsh. Maybe that is the point? Anyway, sorry to clutter up discussion of the show (which is great) with discussion of the show.

whatever dude, go off.

but the hybrid portion of yr question was not at all phrased in the way you just rephrased it. so. do what you want, we are here to explain shows to you

What are you talking about? Kirsh is a robot. Organic or not, a robot. It’s like a Boston dynamics body with a chatgpt brain.

I have no idea whar direction cyborgs will take in this fictional world, but the general thing with cybernetics in science fiction is they either replace or augment human parts. Get your arm blow off in a work accident, you get a cybernetic arm. Some of its opt-in, like enhanced eyes or other augmentations. So we have a character with a bionic arm that also can become a weapon.

There are people with bionic arms on our own internet right now with robot arms that respond to muscle movements or nerve impulses that refer to themselves as cyborgs! It’s not even science fiction at this point. Morrow might have more replacement parts than we’ve already seen, but he has at least some brain implant as well, given the most recent episode. He’d probably have to, to control the other junk in his body.

Like does “robot” mean “has body parts that don’t look like standard human” or are you talking about affect?

I guess my question is whether you're attempting to spur discussion with questions, or whether these questions are genuinely things you don't understand.

I think you could argue that the Morrow character seems more robotic in affect than Kirsh, but I think that's more the fact that he's a security officer working for a company that notably does not treat their employees well. He's on a mission to complete his orders in hostile territory. Kirsh also obeys orders, he's programmed to, but he's also programmed to report directly to the upper echelon of a different company and is guarding the crown jewels of their experimental portfolio, so despite being an artificial being, he has higher class stature.

can I sidetrack to say how great the goggles Kirsh and the other two who were dissecting the alien egg were

Why do people still engage with JiC in TV threads? Truly don’t get it.

Yes, the goggles were fantastic. I enjoyed how swiftly Kirsch shepherded Kavalier out the second the egg started stirring. I mean I’m no super genius but him peering at an opening alien egg up close given what they know so far? Really kind of gave the lie to the whole “everyone else is so BORING and STUPID I have no humans to TALK TO” bit.

Prodigy doesn’t exist in the canon films, correct? So you know this is going to come to some sticky end soon.

yeah all of this feels like fuel to the fire of why they (probably) flamed out

lol, "engage." why be assholes? jeez. But whatevers, I like you guys.

Because you do this in every single TV thread, you take up tons of time asking about simple plot points that have already been explained on the show itself. Some would consider that the asshole behaviour.

I mean, the only things in the films about Weyland-Yutani are about them owning the most workmanlike/exploitative space industries (space trucking, mineral extraction) and being the creator of synthetic human-like beings. And Peter Weyland's obsession with finding aliens and progenitors in his quest to become a god, which really makes me question if that first category was legit or just a pretense for workers to "accidentally" encounter xenomorphs

Whether other corporations exist is never really brought up. Barring the aforementioned Alien: Resurrection (which may or may not be in canon) where Weyland-Yutani had been bought out by Walmart.

I just had a thought about how they might be taking Alien: Earth in an Alien: Resurrection direction from a different angle!

The clothes are very interesting in this show (to me anyway). Boy Kavalier’s pyjamas and bare feet in various organic fabrics, the ostentatious Louis IVX/Regency costumes at the rich people’s party, whatever we see Yutani wearing. Everyone else is in functional and/or technical clothing.

which really makes me question if that first category was legit or just a pretense for workers to "accidentally" encounter xenomorphs

Why not both? At worst, one funds the other.

There are people with bionic arms on our own internet right now with robot arms that respond to muscle movements or nerve impulses that refer to themselves as cyborgs! It’s not even science fiction at this point.

Dick Cheney is a cyborg.

Bob Barker was for sure a cyborg

Morrow showed his human freewill by defying his boss to continue on with his investigation instead of returning to HQ, sort of like wendy searching out her brother. In contrast, Kirsch as a synth could only get his boss to leave the lab as a safety measure, to prevent harm from coming to him.

Morrow's got a few different routes for his long game now. He's a company man, but returning to his boss with proof of what Prodigy is up to with the hybrids is just as juicy as bringing home the xenomorph specimens.

Really enjoyed his comment about how it must be nice to be completely a machine, as opposed to his own status where he's part machine and... the worst parts of a man

Definitely hitting mid-season sloooow burn vibes to set things up some more with the new one but I do like that, and they've pretty successfully keyed me up for everything going real-bad wrong soon enough, so not bad in terms of character study/development. I absolutely am down with the closing scene as something I almost haven't seen before in the cycle -- there was the dumb-ass version of it in Prometheus of course, but here it was really unsettling, especially since Kirsh's still-not-fully-spelled-out long game is getting more and more interesting as it goes.

this episode sets up so many super-not-good things and I am here (peeking through my fingers) for it

and yeah, a pretty fascinating road ahead if they can pull it off

Yeah another great episode

So was Kirsh listening in on the conversations between Morrow & Slightly?

And I'm more scared of the eyeball thing at this point. All the fucking nope when it took over that sheep

To your first question: yes.

To your second point: for damn sure.

Minor spoiler but as has been confirmed by the trailer for it, next week's episode is what exactly happened on the Maginot -- a smart move, it allows for some full-on gruesome tension/shock and then sets up the final three episodes as everything bubbling up and over on the island in a mess.

Will check thread soon (on episode 3) but the Lynch aspect of this is undeniable.

It's been a long time since I've seen Alien Resurrection, and I can't say that I remember much about that, but there were shots in the second episode that seemed like callbacks to Jeunet's other work, City of Lost Children and Amélie.

VERY disappointed no straw hat and cane at the end of 4.

lmao same

Can’t wait to get an eye octopus Funko Pop

i want a sheep on hindlegs action figure

I thought you were kidding. Of course you weren't kidding.

https://funko.com/pop-sheep-with-the-eye-alien-earth/87150.html

Anyway, this show makes me want to hop over to Barnes & Noble to buy a copy of Peter Pan. I've never read the book and haven't seen the Disney movie since I was a small child. Anyone have any opinions on the novel?

It’s very good, very dark. The version of Peter in the novel who’s cruel and capricious is worlds away from the sanitised Disney version.

Ok, cool. I'll start there. Thanks!

I've been thinking similar as some of the passages Boy Genius has read have sounded quite dark

I rewatched Alien this week and was surprised that apart from the infamous John Hurt scene it's pretty goreless as a lot of the other deaths happen off camera

I thought you were kidding. Of course you weren't kidding.

damn, I actually was kidding. I didn’t think merch would hit so quickly.

I actually would buy an eye octopus thing but more of a realistic prop if it was affordable.

Good stuff, this latest one. Obviously Hawley wanting to do his own version of the original film in full (and in only an hour), but taking advantage of the fact that we all KNOW the original film so allowing him to shorthand a ton of things as well as play around with his own ideas for the series, the original monsters etc. It *can't* be the original film in impact and all on any number of levels but I like the idea of how it's this crew reacting and how, the key difference being there's no Morrow equivalent in the original -- and there's a good red herring in terms of who the antagonist of the episode is. Also, watch all the way to the end credits where they specifically shout out the production designers and art team for the original film in terms of creating the full Maginot look.

Also I would like the end song a lot, of course.

Speaking of which, something I only caught about the opening theme-as-such during the sequence where the title slowly assembles a la the original film: per the subtitles, it's a very distorted/reworked interpretation of Cream's "Strange Brew," specifically the lines "Strange brew/Kill what's inside of you," which, well yeah. (And I know the actual lyric is "Killing" but the slight change seems very apt.)

This episode made me grimace and squirm (complimentary). I always watch with subtitles on because I find a lot of dialogue hard to catch otherwise. This always ruins the closing needle drops, though.

Yeah, same here. But I would have recognized that drum roll out of the gate regardless.

yo this was pretty good also levelling up with the nightmare-fuel jfc
love how he’s layering on new behaviours and interactions of the creatures, really smart. the eyeball-monster vs xenomorph fight was unexpected and great!
NO OPEN CONTAINERS OR SANDWICHES IN LABS EVER AAAAAAAAGHHHH
Petrovich reveal was v good and layering in Boy Genius was pretty chef’s kiss — excellent way to use a flashback episode to propel future story

i love every closing credit needle drop and i am unashamed

I had the realization that we were watching a version of the space battle from “Rogue One,” where “a bunch of film people who were massive freaks for this seminal 70s SF franchise film are given the chance to play with those toys only with massively improved technology.”

If you will.

I did think that everybody on the ship was ludicrously negligent of all safety regs at all times.

Still, dug the episode. Made me wanting more.

you would not catch me eating a single morsel of food on that ship … hook me up w a feeding tube or a daily food injection thats all thank you VERY much

also nagl but i am glad the rest of the Maginot crew died bc man that crew sucked

The ship's mechanic seemed competent, at least!

And I loved how patient he always was with his catastrophically dumb apprentice

The real trouble was the med team being anti-maskers, to their detriment. (Perhaps this crew was the equivalent of Douglas Adams’s Golgafrinchams, though given the general competence of the Prometheus crew maybe Weyland-Yutani just suck at HR.)

what am I missing w the end of show music cues here. idgi always seems so incongruous

gnarly episode tho

xpost I linked it upthread! Hawley gave a specific reason for them:

https://decider.com/2025/08/12/what-song-is-playing-at-the-end-of-alien-earth-noah-hawley-explains-those-black-sabbath-tool-needle-drops

if you had told me at the end of ep1 that the most interesting characters were going to be Morrow, Kirsch, and T. Ocellus…

honestly kinda rooting for the little guy now

and yeah, I’m corny but that might have been the best needle drop yet

I think the needle drops have all been good songs that absolutely do not fit the mood of the show at all, the most recent one especially so. The end of every episode my reaction has been "LOL what"

& I love the design of the eyeball monster so much, it's like something I would have drawn when I was 8

Very intrigued that the eyeball alien might actually be a “good” guy—or at least an enemy of the xenomorph.

same!

One of the smarter things about that whole setup: zero information given about where or how these specimens were found, whether or not these species were already aware of each other etc. Entirely possible we get more of it but hoping we don’t.

Re the music it makes sense to me. Alien, HR Giger, the 80s, extreme violence, creeping dread... it's a pretty metal kind of world

what am I missing w the end of show music cues here. idgi always seems so incongruous

I legit just said this exact thing, I always find them cringe but I’ve accepted it as a minority opinion.

Anyway, what a superb episode, Morrow is the best character in this show and it totally turned the first episode introduction to Morrow on its head. Fantastic self-encapsulated story. Liked getting to know all the crew in more depth (Northern Irish people and space, though, not sure about that.) It’s likely that because I recently watched all the canon films except Resurrection again (cos fuck that) alongside this but…the aliens are incredibly fast, how are these crew members outrunning them though open corridors? Managing to close one door in every fifteen doesn’t slow them down that much, cmon.

I liked the suggestion that eye alien and Alien alien are natural enemies, which makes sense as they’re both clearly parasitic in nature and feed on the same hosts and eye alien escaping the lab suggests it’s a similarly highly evolved murder machine. And we don’t even know what they might look like or grow up to be…

Also, I thought to myself “why the FUCK are you eating in the lab with all these parasites, how is that a good idea over doing it in your room or something?”

Was Teng actually confirmed an android? I am sure someone called him one and his affect was reminiscent but then the alien attacks him and he screams like a human.

Useful interview

https://collider.com/alien-earth-episode-5-noah-hawley/

I wonder if it’s the other thing, and the eyeball guy and the alien are natural enemies that co-evolved. The eyeball is the one creature the alien can’t infiltrate, and it’s evolved to communicate (and maybe make hosts uninhabitable) by taking them over in a different way. Not a friend to humans, but it’d be very interesting if it finds a human it can briefly take over and communicate before jumping back out.

It seemed to be warning the scientist about the escaping bugs before it made its escape. It’s neutral so far, hasn’t attacked a living human

eye guy communicates with Morrow in rapid morse code in a scene, he pulls a cybernetic eye out, and they hang for a bit to figure out some alien bullshit. eye guy then gets a bio-compatible synth to pilot around for an episode or two

in my version they maybe send the eye-guy-controlled Kirsh back to mess with Kavalier

yeah the eyeball-GIRL definitely seemed to try to signal a warning re those escaping slugs!

girls are one of the guys too, didn’t mean to imply otherwise

I’ve tried but ffs my own mom was with me at a Panera of all fucking places and I am buying but let her order first and she walks up and asks “which of you guys are taking my order” because there’s no line and both cashiers are women and I shake my head

lol

Speaking of unappetizing eateries, which of the aliens would be the tastiest to eat if properly prepared and de-blooded?

I'm a bit behind, just watched the eyeball/sheep scene and that was fuckin gross

https://www.polygon.com/alien-earth-episode-5-noah-hawley-interview/

he may be misleading, but Hawley says t.ocellus was NOT helping

Face hugger w/ rice and vegetables

xxpost

Trying to get a convoluted question out here, so bear with me:

One thing that my wife and I were both a little hung up on was when the Alien was chasing Zoya, it seemed like way too long of a chase scene. Like, it must have only been doing a light jog for her to get away down so many corridors. I'm mostly only familiar with the first two movies*, and I don't remember many examples of running down a hallway, pursued by a Xenomorph. Maybe they're limited to being more of an ambush predator, or inescapable crawling doom. Is there precedent for this elsewhere in the series?

On the other hand, if I'm not wrong, this is the same Xenomorph that toys with Wendy and The Brother earlier in the series. So maybe this particular creature just relishes playing with its food a little? And again, have we seen Xenos that exhibit specific personality traits like that before?

*My headcanon stops with Aliens. I've watched all of the others, but in most cases, it's been decades since I've revisited. Should I?

I thought you were kidding. Of course you weren't kidding.

https://funko.com/pop-sheep-with-the-eye-alien-earth/87150.html

Anyway, this show makes me want to hop over to Barnes & Noble to buy a copy of Peter Pan. I've never read the book and haven't seen the Disney movie since I was a small child. Anyone have any opinions on the novel?

― peace, man, Friday, August 29, 2025 7:22 AM (six days ago) bookmarkflaglink

It’s very good, very dark. The version of Peter in the novel who’s cruel and capricious is worlds away from the sanitised Disney version.

― Marsee playground (gyac), Friday, August 29, 2025 7:59 AM (six days ago) bookmarkflaglink

Ok, cool. I'll start there. Thanks!

― peace, man, Friday, August 29, 2025 8:51 AM (six days ago) bookmarkflaglink

btw, definitely reading Peter Pan now. Although I sourced it from a local bookshop, rather than B&N. Loving it!

Alien 3 (kinda) introduces more hallway chasing/running etc

(xposts)

I also hated that in Alien 3 where it made even less sense cos that’s a quadripedal alien that’s going to be even faster!

I read Peter Pan to my kids a few years ago and was really struck by how blinkered and annoying Peter is - he's that type of "leader" who ultimately you realise is just in it for his own ego, proudly marching everyone off the edge of a cliff

He is, famously, a child that doesn’t grow up

It's kind of a horror story if you think about it

Imagine you could never grow up

"They didn't send the A-Team up there,” showrunner Noah Hawley tells Polygon.

this is what I keep saying about Prometheus, and what makes it so delicious when they get whacked, but everybody's like nooooo it's unrealistic, everyone in the future must be smart and professional at all times especially when dealing with haunted alien eggs

Relentless commitment to eating in inappropriate situations from certain crew members of the Maginot was very much in that vein I thought

yeah this is the first time i really started to think about the implications and the subtext of a “65 year deal” … like who is a company looking for with that kind of arrangement, and what kind of ppl sign on to do it

not the same thing but the structure makes me think of like Nixon/Kissinger secret Cambodia bombing missions where the pilots and everyone are given fake mission plans so that no-one knows whats going on like only Weyand Yutani TRULY know what is being done and why and so the crew are being smoothbrain about the aliens bc they dont know and havent been briefed on the dangers idk

yeah this is the first time i really started to think about the implications and the subtext of a “65 year deal” … like who is a company looking for with that kind of arrangement, and what kind of ppl sign on to do it

Isn’t it kind of futuristic indentured labour? Indentured labourers in the Caribbean, like a lot of people voluntarily went there from South Asian to do shit work like working in the fields during Caribbean summers, and the work was awful backbreaking labour on brutal terms…but as someone who would know put it, it worked for the employers/farmers because you could always find some of the world’s poorest people to cut sugar cane in the blazing sun because even that shit was better than where they came from. Capitalism! Just because they’re doing it on a big fancy console it doesn’t mean they’re any less exploited.

Trinidad followed a different trend where the Government offered the labourers a stake in the colony by providing real inducements to settle when their indentures had expired. From 1851 £10 was paid to all those who forfeited their return passages. This was replaced by a land grant and in 1873 further incentives were provided in the form of 5 acres (20,000 m2) of land plus £5 cash. Furthermore, Trinidad adopted an ordinance in 1870 by which new immigrants were not allotted to plantations where the death rate exceeded 7 percent.

Sounds not unlike their share system, doesn’t it?

yeah it really does

and of course the shares (“lays”) apportioned to whalers, whose place in the pecking order melville immortalised in moby dick

“Well, Captain Bildad,” interrupted Peleg, “what d’ye say, what lay shall we give this young man?”

“Thou knowest best,” was the sepulchral reply, “the seven hundred and seventy-seventh wouldn’t be too much, would it?—‘where moth and rust do corrupt, but lay—’”

Lay, indeed, thought I, and such a lay! the seven hundred and seventy-seventh! Well, old Bildad, you are determined that I, for one, shall not lay up many lays here below, where moth and rust do corrupt. It was an exceedingly long lay that, indeed; and though from the magnitude of the figure it might at first deceive a landsman, yet the slightest consideration will show that though seven hundred and seventy-seven is a pretty large number, yet, when you come to make a teenth of it, you will then see, I say, that the seven hundred and seventy-seventh part of a farthing is a good deal less than seven hundred and seventy-seven gold doubloons; and so I thought at the time.

“Why, blast your eyes, Bildad,” cried Peleg, “thou dost not want to swindle this young man! he must have more than that.”

“Seven hundred and seventy-seventh,” again said Bildad, without lifting his eyes; and then went on mumbling—“for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”

“I am going to put him down for the three hundredth,” said Peleg, “do ye hear that, Bildad! The three hundredth lay, I say.”

Bildad laid down his book, and turning solemnly towards him said, “Captain Peleg, thou hast a generous heart; but thou must consider the duty thou owest to the other owners of this ship—widows and orphans, many of them—and that if we too abundantly reward the labors of this young man, we may be taking the bread from those widows and those orphans. The seven hundred and seventy-seventh lay, Captain Peleg.”

the “widows and orphans” a fig leaf for the ship’s investors, who may, conjecturally, have at some point donated money to a charitable cause or two

It’s neutral so far, hasn’t attacked a living human

Maginot's chief mechanic would like a word. Except he's a got an eyeball-octopus in his fucking head and is busy fighting a xenomorph

I might have written that before getting to that scene, oopsy

GROOOOOSSSSSSSSS! Gross! No thank you to any of this!

Sorry, I realise you were all having a proper conversation about ships.

you are right to exclaim though - grossest episode so far on many levels

Blecch.

Yes, also the long-term indentured thing is really interesting, and I think they do it right here. Mickey 17 had a stab at it as well, but then took a left turn into something else altogether.

quick hat tip to this episode's needle drop because despite having grown up on SP, for the first 20 seconds with that drum roll intro thought a Shellac song was about to play before the rest of the actual song re-triggered into my head.

but also the needle drops for this show suck but it's not the be-all end-all.

Did you want Dave Matthews scat-singing or the like instead?

*episode wraps up, Adam Levine starts singing about his dick or something*

*episode wraps up, “SOMEbody once told me the world” etc*

*episode wraps up, "IT'S BEEN ONE WEEK..."*

completely fine at this point if the Dave Matthews Band's "Don't Drink the Water" outro closes out one of these episodes

“HEY SOUL SISTER”

Why are SF writers incapable of imagining future pop culture, or even that there could be pop culture in the future at all?

I liked how the 1988 Dark Horse comic handled this. Neubaten, Laurie Anderson, David Byrne and most temporally-displaced pop culture were formal-dress holographic events befitting any classical music event.

https://qc-ckb.s3.amazonaws.com/ilx/aliens-02-1988-industrial-noise.jpg

re: shares, just sounds like the maritime practice to me? Hunting whales, catching crabs, seeking out eyeball octopus aliens, same old same old.

This episode was fine but… I’ve seen Alien. I don’t really need the bar band cover version of Alien.

now i just want one an episode to end with the Len "Steal My Sunshine" intro that cuts to the credits when the "well, does he like butter tarts?" hits.

Wendy takes off running into the distance, searching for her brother (again)… cue Ben Folds Five, “Brick”

Being underqualified and underpaid indentured labourers doesn't really excuse the dicking around that happened when they were told their captain is dead, dangerous life forms are loose aboard the ship, and they are low on fuel with no way of steering. Seriously the guy who opened the episode - "the captain is dead. and these two have hooked up lollll!" wtf.

And who designs biological containment vessels with no kind of airlock (those things could have just jumped out when it was open), that can be opened from the inside (!!), that are made of breakable glass and just stored on a shelf with no kind of restraints? Even the drinks trolley on an aeroplane is more robust and secure than that.

agree the lid design with the totally removable top, reaching right in there etc. is jarringly dumb. breakable glass silly. but the shelf storage does have a restraint system that they fumbled and didn't engage after someone came in and gave them a fright just as they were replacing the vessel.

milo yes. in fact i literally pasted an entire chunk of moby dick to make that point earlier!

I am also prepared to give an Alien show some leeway on the cheap-ass ship design/stupid crew thinking business. I wouldn't be suprised if, after 65 years, they're not exactly breathing the greatest air in the world and therefore making the best decisions. I also wouldn't be surprised by them being given shoddy equipment that does not meet the highest standards for containment. It's not like the company cares about keeping them safe.

Like, I was watching it and thinking this behaviour is all very stupid, but who's to say what kind of rational thought I would be capable of after being woken up and put back to sleep and rewoken and refrozen, etc.

Was hammered home with the mechanic assistant but you also have to wonder at the calibre of person who's happy to commit to 65 years in space and so basically abandon all friends and family, never to be seen again. Can't imagine there would be many highly qualified people clamouring to sign up.

You'd think the company would require basic competence, the crew may be expendable but they're also essential to protect the company's massive investment and assets (aliens). The Nostromo crew weren't so bad. Anyway no more griping, the show is what it is.

having Prometheus thread flashbacks

(eyeball thing) seemed to be warning the scientist about the escaping bugs

I thought it was distracting her so the bug could escape unnoticed.

yeah, Hawley pretty much confirms that in the interview I linked a ways down from my initial post

Rewatched this episode last night plus backtracked to the opening scene of the series as well as the wrecked-ship/bodies sequences in the initial episodes, a way to tie together all that in a heap. milo's not wrong with the bar band comment -- it's a little more studied all around as a vibe, and it shows -- but it felt more unsettled and effective in a rewatch, even with the 'what happens next?' factor removed.

I reckon the fact the crew here were all annoying arseholes is what made the episode bearable? If they'd been competent and likable (or if even one of them had been, Ripley-style) and we'd been rooting for them, then we'd just watching a remake of the original film. I actually really liked the fact that they skipped all this stuff in E1 in a "yeah you've seen that before, you know what happened" way, so initially rolled my eyes at the idea of a flashback episode to cover that ground. But the fact that this time they were a bunch of dickheads frees us up to root for the monsters instead, which ended up being a lot more fun than a straight "watch this play out, you know the ending and you've seen it happen before" episode would've been.

Eyeball spider basically the hero protagonist at this point, is what I'm saying.

that eyeball is obv a genius. Belter of an ep was that.

Speculation on other boards is that the real competent crew members were mostly taken out in all the beastie-hunting on multiple planets they did, and these are the dregs left

Rewatched it tonight and did spot one possible anomaly.

In the previous episode Morrow tells Slightly he needs to take a human to the eggs so a facehugger will attach itself and then hide the human for a couple of days until the facehugger falls off and the person appears to recover. But how does Morrow know that? As in this flashback episode it transpires that of the two crew members with facehuggers, one (captain) died when they tried to cut it off and the other was put in cryo before the John Hurt moment happened with no one there. So no apparent recovery

So is it just a plot hole or does Morrow know a lot more.about the aliens than the rest of the crew? As it appeared the Maginot crew had not encountered the facehuggers before

Well Morrow doesn't have to tell Slightly the whole truth or anything, after all -- he's just relentless in figuring out his mission.

the other was put in cryo before the John Hurt moment happened with no one there. So no apparent recovery

As we wait on the new episode

https://people.com/sigourney-weaver-reacts-to-alien-earth-after-starring-in-movie-franchise-exclusive-11806071

Well that was nicely gooey.

Not entirely sold on the immediately obvious ‘oh something weird happened to Nibs’ revelation because…no contingency plan even thought of by the Dame there? That was going to be the first thing that came up! And it was!

Awesome ‘new’ monster though. But this was the first end credits song where I was “THOSE guys? C’mon, you can do better here.”

ok that new monster was on some real Cronenberg shit GAH

also: never wanted to be looked at by a sheep less

The piercing stare of the sheep is so fucking creepy

i hate it (i love it)

i have to say though: the way they just say the subtext out loud in casual conversation is very corny & annoying

Kavalier being a barefoot in public kind of guy? oh no

Great episode and I know Kirsh is "monitoring" it on his tablet but c'mon, how is there so little security around the secure lab where all the fucking space beasties are kept?! I mean at the least you'd think there'd be alarms going off everywhere if the doors are open

And yes, I want cute eyeball octopus back as the sheep is just too creepy

“Gooey” was my immediate reaction, too

- The guy who plays Smee is phenomenal. Favourite of the “child” actors and yes that includes Wendy whose cute little whimsical pixie dream hybrid schtick is wearing thin with this Weekly Active User.

- I love love love the very frequent use of overlays, or whatever it’s called when a shot is laid, at half opacity, over another, to convey simultaneous presence - eg Morrow hacking into a hybrid’s mind, or just someone thinking about something else. And very appropriate for Alien’s 70s/early 80s universe, when that technique was used a lot more

- I thought this last episode was kind of mid. The arbitration was a formality to let us get on with Morrow’s “kinetic” response to Prodigy and it wasn’t particularly fun or interesting. And er, Morrow has evidence that Prodigy sabotaged the ship!! Why didn’t he mention that??? Kind of knocks boy genius’s argument to shreds! V strange

- Elevator meet-cute w Morrow and Kirsch was… forced?

- Mind-wipe PTSD scenario incredibly irritating all the way through. Maybe it will pay off at some point. Hard to believe that the Dame scientist wouldn’t at least simply tell the other kids that they wiped Molly Ringwald’s mind, and tell her, “it was for your own good” etc - rather than sow even more seeds of confusion. idk I guess it’s partly a show about scientific incompetence and frankly if it were more entertaining of a scenario I wouldn’t have a problem w it but it’s just boring. “But.. I… there was a crash..? What?” GET ON W IT

Yes, I love Smee (Jonathan Ajayi)!

I agree with your criticisms of the episode. Especially regarding the scientific incompetence being too incompetent to be believable. See also the lack of safety proceedures surrounding biospecimen containment.

The arbitration was a formality to let us get on with Morrow’s “kinetic” response to Prodigy and it wasn’t particularly fun or interesting.

Yeah, there was only one interesting question posed at the arbitration -- what happens if Barefoot Babyman decides he doesn't feel like playing along with the rest of the Umbrella Academy? -- and they completely sidestepped it.

a friend of a friend was a whistleblower at her former employer. they were running a lab presumably doing sequencing/rna research and she discovered they had non-functioning fume hoods, water lines weren't run correctly in the lab, and they had a number of other really jacked up unsafe practices

nbd, they were working with a deactivated HIV virus. she also suspected that they were lying about it being deactivated

just saying, some science labs play fast and loose and I don't think Prodigy is the type of company that has OSHA making a lot of stops in there

yeah i don’t care if the incompetence is realistic or not, it’s more that this particular incompetence - mind-wiping and then simply… pretending you didn’t?? - leads to some very boring conversations

the incompetence in the lab has much more exciting outcomes :D

Dropping in to ask if my wife would possibly enjoy this if she doesn't really like Alien/horror, but does like Legion (and Fargo)?

Maybe? It depends whether she has an active aversion to Alien/horror, I think.

Jordan, it toggles back and forth - there are episodes that are extremely “Alien”, and others that more expositional with character types and plot lines that diverge from standard Alien fare. In that regard it’s similar to Fargo—taking its own path from well-known source material. But otherwise the shows have nothing in common. Ultimately though, there is enough of the original Alien DNA here that if she doesn’t like those movies then she probably will not like this either.

I never saw Legion so can’t compare to that.

Bits of it definitely remind me of Legion but ultimately it's the Alien universe and so there's lots of horror/aliens that she probably won't enjoy. And there's a lot of that in the opening two episodes too

some of the editing reminds me of Fargo

FUCK THESE MUSICAL CUES AT THE END OF THE EPISODE THEY’RE SO FORCED THEY’RE SO BAD

i agree w Tracer, the mindwiping secrecy or non-discussion makes it into an unnecessary plot point we all then have to slog through

my least favorite trope is “unecessarily withholding of info for ‘drama’ reasons”

they even had a weird mid-episode awkward music interlude this time round

the music supervisor needs sacked imo

I’m embracing the shitty end credit tunes. I want so badly one of these remaining episodes to end with Pearl Jam’s “Alive”

- The guy who plays Smee is phenomenal. Favourite of the “child” actors and yes that includes Wendy whose cute little whimsical pixie dream hybrid schtick is wearing thin with this Weekly Active User.

The excerpt from Peter Pan quoted in this week’s episode and the actual ending of Peter Pan makes me think this shtick is not long for the show. They talk about Wendy’s potential more than any of the others. The excerpt is about how Wendy’s mother hopes she never grows up. At the end of Peter Pan, Wendy does grow up, and has a daughter of her own. Peter doesn’t recognise her, and she’s too old to go to the Neverland. They’d better be doing something along those lines.

- agree re elevator scene being eh

- where are the failsafes in this fucking lab for these incredibly dangerous creatures lmao

- I didn’t necessarily parse the mindwiping as incompetence as executed. It was on the orders of sinister bald man, who’s quite senior in Prodigy, certainly above the two scientists. Found it plausible that he’s the guy charged with putting a lot of Kavalier’s ideas into practice and therefore the awkwardness comes from them following a direct order that conflicts with the original idealism of the hybrid project.

Right but at the very least, even just selfishly, you’d explain some version of what had happened otherwise you just create another unstable situation; in any case as VG succinctly says it just leads to boring exposition of stuff we already know

By the way bald guy is super annoying and his authority feels extremely unearned and not only do I wish he would shut the fuck up I hope he gets garrotted by an alien tail toot sweet

did i miss something about boy genius’ book reading? is he doing a podcast… for himself? (not that i would know anything about that…)

I feel the same way about Brooks Newmark’s daughter Nibs, I find the character extremely irritating

Bald guy is Adrian Edmondson who's quite famous in the UK as Vyvyan from The Young Ones, Eddie from Bottom and various Comic Strips. Also married to Jennifer Saunders of Absolutely Fabulous fame

But yeah, almost certainly headed for a grisly (and deserved) end in this show

Oh my god of course. Didn’t recognise him!

confessing to you all i just bought a used copy of Peter Pan - hearing the excepts made me realize that i dont think i ever read the book? just disneyfied versions as a kid like the readalong book w the 45 rpm record etc

xpost -- yer shutting off the end credits too early there!

I quite liked the second half of this ep, the fuck up in the lab seemed like the kind of dumb thing that could happen to anyone - although the doors that lock shut with no override from the inside maybe not the best safety feature. And the terrified and inept kid somehow pulled off his (not his) scheme - well so far anyway. Yay!

Eddie Hitler can fend off the xenomorph with a swift frying pan to the knackers!

agreed re Smee’s acting, really excellent — and I really enjoyed Isaac

the whole lab situation was pretty enjoyable in terms of dumb things that will get you eaten

also those horror-flies eat ROCKS and METAL? huge no for me. And the way they….well… ugh yes super gross and very good

which is why i’m guessing they really like synths/hybrids mmm tasty alloys

so creepy and weird and wrong and GREAT

I liked this ep, though it's not really at the height of the one before it.

I kind of get what y'all are saying about Nibs' memory erasure being tedious, but it's the catalyst for Wendy/Marcy to "grow up" and realize that the Prodigy folks absolutely do not have her best interests at heart.

I still don't understand is what Kirsch's game is. It's hard to tell if he has a plan, or is just detachedly watching chaos unfold.

I feel like he's a smart enough model that he's developed David from Prometheus-type tendencies

yeah, he's either turning on his creators in spite of his upcoming obsolescence or double agenting for one of the other three off-screen corpos, i think

i am feeling like Kirsch could be a double-agent for Weyand or another corp

Ooh, that would make a lot of sense. Why else would they keep reminding us that there are FIVE if we're never going to see any of the other three?

I dunno, I tend to think he's on his own particular trip. It could just be that when it comes to aliens that, like Ash, he admires the purity. (If he was double-agenting for Weyland in specific, hmm...could explain how he knows about the Slightly/Morrow chatter, maybe he knows he's out to backstab Morrow without Morrow knowing the opposite. But I'm not sold that that's what's happening.)

On a tangent, the BFI Imax is showing Alien on Saturday at 20:30:
https://whatson.bfi.org.uk/imax/Online/default.asp

I was surprised to learn that Tom Skerritt is still alive.

Why is Tom Skerritt still alive? Because he went that way. Not the other way.

I'm also surprised that Alien is a 15-cert. I learn from the BBFC that it was originally rated X. It was one of those video nasty-adjacent VHS / Betamax releases that didn't have a rating, until the BBFC gave it an 18 certificate in 1987, but they reclassified it as 15 in 2019 because there are much more frightening things in the world nowadays.

Aliens is still 18, though, which is odd because it's not really that gory. I though I'd mention it in case you're fourteen years old and live near London.

the elevator ride w Morrow and the snarky banter suggested to me that they know each other and Kirsch is aware of his movements, role, etc .. and Morro vice versa

i feel like they’re both inhabiting similar disruption roles for Weyand and Kirsch is playing a long (very long) game w prodigy

there’s some weight to that snark, it’s not just cyborg v synth

Next series will be Alien: Odd Couple -- Kirsch and Morrow move in together and deal with japes amid personal problems.

"It's linguini!"

*Morrow slices it up with his arm blade*

"Now it's garbage!"

*xenomorphs burst in again*

I'd watch it.

It would be cool if they used "Five Corporations" to close an episode but ofc that will never happen

xps Kirs(c?)h is definitely aware of Morrow's infiltration, he was explicitly shown listening in on the conversations Morrow's been having with Slightly

Massive banger of an episode. Lots of payoff and a ton on the table for the finale.

Yup, good stuff. Did not expect a How To Tame Your Alien moment but here we are.

Oh and MUCH better ending riff (and vocal) action this time -- Hawley had said long since that a song from them was going to feature and this was a good place to drop it.

Also I've been listening to the official podcast as it goes, and the episode just now confirms that the vocalist doing that snippet of "Strange Brew" by Cream in the opening credits is...Hawley himself! (Apparently he and composer Jeff Russo -- who I hadn't even clocked was the main dude from Tonic, I guess -- do this all the time on his shows.)

ahhhh this episode RIPPED (so to speak)

We still need a good “hello my baby” moment of course.

lol otm

so next time we see Kavalier he'll have the baby octopus in him? assuming they didn't telephone in that one enough.

Here’s hoping!

My take on the Kavalier/eyeball thing is that he wanted Wendy's brother--for him a expendable idiot he dislikes

Does anyone else have actor/character doppelganger nicknames for these characters?
I always think of that guy as pajamas Middleditch.
RIP science camp counselor Tom Green.

I thought Hermit too, especially as the cut to him in the very next scene xp

*they

BE USEFUL

Ayjai so, so good in this episode

And Ned, Legion had lots of cover versions from the pair of them xps

This I believe.

i had no idea their real surname was actually Hermit, I assumed it was as callsign

I wanted so much more MurderNibs

We may yet get more. But will it be as jaw-dropping?

lol

not sure how I feel about this new concept of the alien being able to feel, ‘love’, and communicate. part of the xenomorph’s allure and terror has been its dread psychopathy - a pure murderous weapon that (while intelligent) can’t be reasoned with or cajoled. certainly could cast previous films in a different light on a rewatch

Or it demonstrates how Wendy is less human than the first episodes have suggested. She doesn’t fear the creature, she can talk to it, we’ve seen previous synthetics either sympathetic to or outright in favour of them. That’s what that made me think of. It’s still a fucking terrifying menace, she’s using it as a weapon exactly as Yutani would (literally) kill to.

part of the xenomorph’s allure and terror has been its dread psychopathy - a pure murderous weapon that (while intelligent) can’t be reasoned with or cajoled.

TBF, nobody's ever tried before. Human-xenomorph interactions have previously been limited to "kill it!" or "maybe we can point it in a direction and it'll kill things we want killed"... figuring out what it might want has never even been considered.

have to agree with ||||| - simply not very interested in Alien: Overcoming Our Differences - the thing is meant to be death incarnate and totally unknowable

I do like gyac’s take though - that this reveals something deeper and more sinister about wendy that the show’s only just hinted at so far. given that this is a prequel, keen to see how they retcon this ability communicate with the xenomorph in the historical record (if they even bother to broach this at all)

IDK I think the tame xenomorph is congruent with what has come before...the xenomorphs have always been just animals doing what they do to survive. It seems reasonable that one kept in captivity could develop a weird bond with a human (hybrid, w/e) that had a means of communicating with it. I don't think this makes them any less terrifying

xp I suspect it’ll die with everyone associated with Prodigy including Wendy

Yeah, no one should be making out of this series alive

Perhaps a hybrid’s ability to communicate with and control a xenomorph goes toward explaining why Weyland-Yutani have been insistent on seeking the aliens out in the movies, despite all evidence in the films pointing to certain doom for any all humans who meet them.

the #2 lesson of this franchise has always been DON'T TRUST ROBOTS (#1 being something about hubris)

love what they're doing with Wendy, also love that the Good Guy Doctor actually came out and said a few episodes ago "uh, at best these are machines that think they're human and at worst we just murdered a bunch of children'

Just catching up with ep 7, I said no more griping but of course all advanced civilisations would know pi in base 10, the best of all bases.

Pretty good with Arabic numbers as well.

I think the eyeball's able to learn things from its hosts. That's my theory.

So that sheep was a math wiz?

It's been in a human before. And who knows what else?

*watches final episode*

Well, clearly they knew VG was going to be watching given the last end credits song.

Thoughts on the finale: this show has not been perfect but its flaws in logic have been outweighed by Fuck Yeah Aliens. Which is to say I’ve been fully into this show from the start and have accepted its flaws without much hesitation. But… I found this finale underwhelming. Feels like there should still be one more episode because this was nearly all set-up without any payoff. No major characters got their comeuppance, the eye alien didn’t actually do anything, and the Xenomorphs are basically just creeping around like junkyard dogs rather than the galaxy’s apex predators. In short there was not enough Fuck Yeah Aliens in this episode! After all that I’m left feeling like “yes, and?”

Oh also I have to share this anecdote - my 11yo son asked me what Alien: Earth was about, having only seen the billboards around town and not knowing the original films. He truly knows NOTHING about this show.

Son: So what even happens on this show?

Me: Well this corporation is being back a bunch of alien species they collected in space, but they crash on earth, and—

Son: —and let me guess they all wind up on an island and run around and kill everyone.

Me: How did you know that???

Son: I didn’t, that’s just the plot of Jurassic Park.

After all that I’m left feeling like “yes, and?”

They could have tied everything off in one more episode (two, if they felt like stretching, adding pointless flashbacks, etc.). Instead they're gonna try to get people to come back for another season in what, two years or something? Fuuuuuck this show.

xpost Roffle. I mean add that to the 90s nostalgia!

And per unperson's point, Hawley said as much in the accompanying official podcast episode, which...I'm not surprised, that's how TV works! But yeah, it did end too suddenly/conveniently in a 'let's renew all the contracts' way.

I will give it this: so the bit with the eye-octopus was, based on an offhand comment in that podcast episode, apparently a post-credits scene until fairly recently, and would make sense given it frames the opening shot of this episode, but I honestly appreciate that they DIDN'T have a post-credits scene as a result.

so

they did so much w ideas & visuals in this show that they kind of forgot to do any real character work - so much of this show was people explaining their own motivations & literally saying the themes out loud. we get to the finale still somehow expecting some good payoff but you realize there was so little banked, and the things established are so bare-bones that the “payoff” is really quite meagre. Oh well. It wouldnt be a 21st century Alien iteration if it wasnt disappointing somehow lol. I still kinda love all this shit. Sickos unite! Til the wheels fall off! haha weee ugh

Still better than Romulus.

lol yeah well that bar is cleared by merely stepping over it, so

my big takeaway from this Aliens/Peter Pan allegory is just grow the fuck up.

setting it on jungly isla nublar looks like a tee off for aliens vs predator vs velociraptor vs battle angel amelie

Obligatory:

FUCK THE MUSICAL OUTROS

And also

- that ending line was dogshit
- I am on the Tracer Hand trajectory of being very sick of Wendy’s wide eyed shit BUT at least they moved towards “haha I’m actually superior to you now meat brother ps human life means little to me if they hurt me”
- I wish Nibs had been killed off
- ditto Kirsch who ended up so much more boring than we’d hoped
- “an eternity of ‘are there yet?’” was funny
- k but how did eye alien reanimate the guy who iirc was extremely dead?
- I wish brother’s plot armour had chipped off, I care very little about this sibling relationship because they’ve basically done little with it
- do aliens eat people? I thought they just fucked then up. Do aliens even “need” food, I thought they could survive in the vacuum of space without food or oxygen or anything? If that’s the case then they don’t need food and they’re doing it because that’s just what they do.
- disgusting sheep lived an episode too long
- “You just killed six kids” ok but girlie you guys were terminally ill, you were literally not buying any advance tickets, they had yoghurt in the fridge that had more of a shelf life than you guys? You don’t have to like eternal life but cmon
- pls no Peter Pan analogies if you’re not going to use the most interesting parts
- besides all that I overall enjoyed the stupid alien show but agree with general sense of underwhelm

Yeah.

Kirsh, Hermet (the brother), and the eye alien... all ultimately extremely under-utlized.

I was expecting boygenius to get taken by the eyelien, disappointed it did not work out that way. Agree with the general consensus that this finale was overall a bit of a letdown

Seems like kind of a misfire to not have any plot thread have a strong payoff unless I missed one. even the cyborg/synth fight needs a round 2

After all that I’m left feeling like “yes, and?”

They could have tied everything off in one more episode (two, if they felt like stretching, adding pointless flashbacks, etc.). Instead they're gonna try to get people to come back for another season in what, two years or something? Fuuuuuck this show.

― Instead of create and send out, it pull back and consume (unperson), Tuesday, September 23, 2025 11:07 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

yeah, they fucked the landing on this series. this could've been a lovely, bow-tied single season and then they went this route.

came on here to agree with everything upthread...

One thing I did like was it didnt end with some sort of crowbarred link to Alien to fit it in.

I was expecting some Yutani based ending as the camera pans up to show the Nostromo taking off etc...

but given that no one mentions Earth being overrun with Xenomorphs and eyeball aliens in the subsequent 5 films, means we know that whatever happens in series 2 doesn't actually affect anything significant.

Was confused by Wendy, The Brother, and Nibs actually getting arrested and ending up imprisoned, following the pier debacle. Couldn't she have called the Xeno who was just meters away in the jungle? Or unleashed her own super-human strength?

In general, shame on me for being fooled into watching another refresh of childhood fav IP. Yeah, there was some cool alien shit, and I managed to get on board with the Peter Pan angle, but of course they were going to biff it.

Yep. I hate these prequels of classic films and shows that add a whole load rubbish that clearly is no longer present in the future of the show - see also ST: Discovery's Spore Drive and er... that's it maybe. I also hated Wendy's essentially magical ability to control all electronics with her mind (ok she has a wifi chip installed, that explains it!) and to talk to the aliens - the eyeball monster has been given magical corpse reanimating powers too. Just dumb.

Best episode was the self contained one that’s set on the ship that is essentially an hour long Alien film. Only one with rewatch quality for me.

First couple were really good I thought - exploring the crashed ship/building - but yeah agree w ledge and others, they set so many mysteries in play, so many ideas, and then it turns out that they just decide not to deal w any of them!

deus en machina

we get to the finale still somehow expecting some good payoff but you realize there was so little banked, and the things established are so bare-bones that the “payoff” is really quite meagre

otm. really quite surprising given how rich in confident detail the early episodes were. it slowed waaaaaay down. alien can't slow down. alien gotta kill. it's like those metal songs. they're hard, they're nasty, they're vicious, they move. alien gotta move but alien didn't move. morrow's whole plot with the kid ends up just not mattering. the amphibious force shows up, the kid's like sorry we fucked it, morrow's like "alright, moving to objective 2". uh okay sorry i cared

Also I kept waiting for Joe/Hermit to become a more interesting character (mostly bc he’s a really talented actor) but no, he just grew into more and more of a smoothbrain

like dude is really going w Atom to Boy’s office… the same guy who basically threatened to take back your lung?! i was so hoping he’d be the eyeball jockey’s target

He had so much stupid plot armour you never like thought anything was going to happen to him - but it should have! Very underwhelming use of a talented actor.

Good eye acting from Vyvyan though!

Yeah, that was a good moment.

i was so hoping he’d be the eyeball jockey’s target

yes! also was hoping Nibs was dead or more fucked up, properly complicating or destroying the relationship between Wendy and the Brother felt like the most interesting play available, so boring that they didn’t go there

already bored by the prospect of s2 reanimated beard guy miraculously accessing vestiges of human emotion when about to kill Essie Davis

cards on the table I am VERY excited about eyeball jockey Arthur

already bored by the prospect of s2 reanimated beard guy miraculously accessing vestiges of human emotion when about to kill Essie Davis

Or maybe the next season starts showing reanimated Arthur having already killed everyone in the cell, synths, humans, hybrids, whatever, even the xenomorphs, and it's just about eyeball and zombie Arthur going on a road trip across America.

to be clear i am ~annoyed~ that zombie Arthur is a thing (its so dumb i cant even) but i dig eyeball jockey so much as a concept i’m willing to overlook that

the phrase "eyeball jockey" does now have my interest in the next season but i know they're going to fuck that up.

i stole it from the Ringer’s Rob Mahoney

sadly count me in with being a bit underwhelmed with the finale, too much setup for a second season, and ... everybody lived? geez!

it's canon that at the end of any alien property everyone must die with the possible exception of 1) the protagonist 2) at least one alien

totally! what are we doing if the alien/s arent killing everyone!? the more I think about it the more annoyed I am that the show ended up sidelining the titular alien to explore “what does it mean to be human”.

like i loved soooo much of the show but again, they went with something different payoff-wise than we have grown to anticipate with the franchise

i get hawley isnt big on canon but zagging away almost completely from xenomorph & pals destroying more bodies after that Louis XIV costume party … it’s not BAD exactly it’s just irritating & sort of petulant or something idk

i feel like a dork even saying all this

i blame this franchise for my poor mental health is what i’m really trying to say lol

The final lines should have been: "What do we do now?" "We become the aliens...on Earth."

the aliens are the friends we made along the way

looking back, honestly i guess I knew we were cooked when Wendy/Marcy petted the chestburster lil xeno

the way the best alien movies operate is that whatever story the company thinks is happening, and whatever story the crew thinks is happening, it all gets completely thrown out the window once the alien shows up and from that point forward the story is: try not to get killed by the alien

in this one the alien kind bobs around behind glass or some bushes like some kind of little fuckin mascot

prometheus works this way too but i think that moment arrived a little late for some people’s tastes

i’m less mad about what Prometheus was doing

honestly since my recent rewatch of Prometheus I appreciate what it was trying to do a lot more now than i did then

It whiffs a lot but it did swing for the rafters.

yeah I realized on this rewatched like they were kind of on the runway to explore some super interesting idea but didn’t quite get to soaring

but the fact that it tried was really quite exciting to me with some time & objectivity under my belt

I think this was overall fine and I'd watch a second season to see where it goes but its worst moments had Alien vs Predator vibes

not the concept of that, but the actual terrible movies

hard agree

Yeah so I guess I'm going to give this a pass, lol

and the way this show was just out here full HERES A MAN IN A SUIT WITH A XENOMORPH HEAD WE DONT CARE DO YOU was always jarring

but look

for as much shit as i am talking in light of the finale there was SO much to enjoy (Moro! Kirsch! all the weird new aliums! the whole building collapse setup, the flashback episode), I really did ride hard for this show overall

its like climbing a beautiful new mountain & finding a starbucks at the top

i am not a climber dont @me

the Morrow/Kirsh fight was good, they really didn't have to lampshade it with a John Henry reference

oh THIS x 1000

its like climbing a beautiful new mountain & finding a starbucks at the top

― werewolves of laudanum (VegemiteGrrl), Friday, September 26, 2025 bookmarkflaglink

OMG VG I could not have said this better.

the John Henry stuff was not not interesting from Moro but we’re doing that now? it felt like they had this notes app doc of extraneous exposition that didnt fit anywhere that they wanted to use that they just plopped into the finale in such a last minute “i forgot to tell you” fashion

like the boy dad story
is good and dark and weord but my guy you are already in a cell with your uh children who now hate you. why are we doing this now?

the finale felt like i have a pre-set list of these cool shots for various scenes
and then they went in & added exposition & dialog over top

or vice versa

so many moments that did not at all match with their setting, character revelations coming so late as to be useless or wasted interactions between characters that could have been really good or interesting

idk

i love Hawley normally and still do but i’m intrigued by where/how this story went south

its worst moments had Alien vs Predator vibes

Speaking of, I hope we've all caught that the upcoming new Predator movie has Elle Fanning very specifically playing a Weyland-Yutani synth.

And yes that mountaintop/Starbucks comparison is apt.

don't curse it!

I'm through being cautiously optimistic about things, like the direction they've taken Predator lately, and Elle Fanning with a Predator as an odd couple pairing sounds like it could be fun

chanting "mountaintop! Starbucks!" to the tune of "build me up buttercup"

yeah i feel the same way

xpost

and the way this show was just out here full HERES A MAN IN A SUIT WITH A XENOMORPH HEAD WE DONT CARE DO YOU was always jarring

1000% this. Also, why did Wendy's pet alien have a swirly green head? XENOMORPHS ARE BLACK. PERIOD.

i figured it was maybe depigmenting and/or unwell due to earth atmosphere, captivity etc

In defense of this series I do think it nailed a comedic tone that that weird Ianucci space comedy with Hugh Laurie never quite got w/r/t varying degrees of incompetent space dorks / hyper-capitalists fucking things up in the face of disaster. That awkward pause after bruised-up Edward Knifehands said "BTW I juw ant you to know I was just kidding about threatening your mom" was A++

OK, I just figured out that the bodyguard guy is Adrian from The Young Ones and my mind is kind of blown.

I didn't even notice it was Ade. Most bald white guys all blur into each other when they get past 50!

ha, I'm terrible at recognising male actors but some are just very distinctive to me! i think he also voices some TV ad that's on at the moment. most disconcerting.

Tim McInnerny has been appearing as sinister men for ages - they occupy a similar space in my mindgrapes.

I don't think I managed to understand a single word out of Olyphants mumble muffin mouth for the entire run, but still thought he was the only good character.

Season 2 greenlit and goes into production early next year

Can wait

cosign - they landed the first season so badly that i couldn't care less where anything goes from here

Season 2 will have cyborgs riding around on aliens like horses.

Semi-related, but I definitely enjoyed Predator: Badlands. Hooray for robutts!

they should go full Young Frankenstein for s2 and have the Aliens do a little musical number. like try to win Galaxy's Got Talent. would be a good tie-in for Spaceballs too.

i hope they give the peter pan stuff a rest that shit is some lazy ass coattailsy "DO U SEE?" garbage
also get a quote right clarke not asimov you clowns

Hahah. I'll give this second season a go but more for the atmosphere and less for the 'let's wrap things up in a way that all our contracted stars somehow stay alive' approach at this piont.