“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...

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.