FX Alien: Earth

[Big s]

8 hours ago, M'Kyuun said:

I'm not so sure that Kirsch is interested in catching Morrow; I think Kirsch is playing on his own team

I’m with you there. He is willing to give warnings about the dangers of the alien species, but doesn’t seem to care much beyond that and also seems in on the transmissions, but doesn’t want to do anything about it. Almost as if he’s either doing his own experiments or just doesn’t think these new bots are worthy of being held up as more advanced than himself.

 

10 hours ago, Axelay said:

I think one of my biggest WTFs about this show is that Morrow is supposed to be a cyborg apparently incorporating tech which is over 65 years old... but yet can still interface with modern tech like it's not an issue. That seems like a bit of a stretch to me. TVs from 65 years ago aren't exactly going to be able to interface (easily) with tech from 2025. Trying to imagine that level of future-proofing is very difficult for me to accept. I hope there's some bit of explanation for this. I honestly really want Kirsch to catch him.

I kinda get the feeling that things have to be standardized at least as far as connections. They’ve gotten to the point where people have to be put in hibernation and have to have their tech up and running when they reach a settlement that might still rely on tech from many years before. Not saying there aren’t technical leaps, but just that they probably have to be done in a way to keep people connected over large distances that take some long travel times. Things are probably just designed for basic compatibility 

[Seto Kaiba]

17 hours ago, M'Kyuun said:

Yep, but Kirsch is not telling anyone, which points to a probable agenda.

IMO, Kirsh's "agenda" seems pretty obvious.

He's pretty consistently depicted as the person most invested in the actual wellbeing and care of the Hybrids, whom he seems to regard as fellow Synths.  He encourages them to be more Synth-like, but he's also shown encouraging them to take advantage of the freedoms they have that aren't afforded to normal Synths.  He exhorts them to disregard fear as an animal weakness, but also encourages Wendy to make her own choices and provides her with ethical guidance and quietly encourages Tootles's desire to become a scientist and to choose a new name for himself to reflect his new direction in life.

He is clearly aware that his employer is a reckless idiot, and does what he can to minimize the risks involved with Boy Cavalier's actions.

He knows something is wrong with Slightly, and it seems likely that his goal is to resolve the matter quietly and without bringing it to the attention of his superiors who might punish or even destroy Slightly for having been manipulated into betraying Prodigy.

 

17 hours ago, M'Kyuun said:

And yeah, on an island that one would assume would have the absolute state of the art info security and monitoring systems in existence, created by the world's smartest douchebag, Morrow's ability to avoid detection by all but Kirsch, whose sole ability to detect it remains mysteriously unexplained, shoots a huge hole in the presumptive infallibility of said douchebag and his technological wizardry.

There's no presumption of infallibility when it comes to Boy Cavalier.

He's written as a fairly typical techbro douchebag.  He believes he's a genius, but it's pretty clear in-series that he's just another rich idiot who failed upwards and likes to LARP as the next Nikola Tesla or Thomas Edison by claiming credit for the innovations of the companies he's bought his way into.  (He's modeled on a real person, and it is NOT subtle at all.)

 

17 hours ago, M'Kyuun said:

But then again, so does psychologically unbalanced Nibs, as one would think the super-computer brain would be equipped to deal with errant thought patterns and such, but hybrids with flat affects wouldn't make for good tv, I guess.

Well, that's a fairly standard sci-fi trope... give a computer with greater-than-human intelligence the ability to think like a human and you've got at least a 50-50 on it going crazy rampage nuts sooner or later. 😆

After all, we're told directly in-series that the reason Prodigy is using kids for these experiments is because their minds are better able to adapt to their new state as Synths.  That implies both that they've tried this unsuccessfully with adults and that the success rate with kids is not 100% either.

Spoiler

Wendy being "the prototype" implies that she's the first successful transfer.

 

17 hours ago, M'Kyuun said:

LOL. I'm enjoying the show, but it requires tabling a lot of WTF issues. It's apparently getting great reviews now, but I wonder how it'll hold up under the microscope of time.

Yeah, it's got a good critical reception... which means very little considering how many critics are bought-and-paid-for.

Audience scores are lower, but still generally favorable.  It's a mindless sort of nostalgia-driven series so we'll see if those numbers trend up or down.

[Seto Kaiba]

Well... I may end up being a lot kinder to Alien: Earth this week.  I made the poor decision to rewatch the Predator movies over the course of a long flight and part of a vacation, and I forgot quite how terrible most of them are.  Then Event Horizon put the cherry on it by releasing a prequel that completely ruins the cult classic movie's plot.

Spoiler

Imagine, if you will, missing the point of cosmic horror so completely and utterly that you not only give your unknowable horror from beyond space a humanoid profile, face, and mundane dialog... you also give it the name of a demon from Renaissance-era Christian demonology.

Spoiler

That's what Christian Ward did.  He wrote Event Horizon: Dark Descent and revealed that the force behind the horrific events on the titular prototype interstellar spaceship was a Christian demon from the Ars Goetia named Paimon.  That's some weak-ass The Conjuring/The Nun BS from the word "Go" but it's worse if you've actually read the book which is basically a medieval Pokedex and its description of Paimon could best be summed up as "Supernatural Google/Wikipedia".  He's not the "things that go bump in the night" kind of demon.  He's the "supernatural autistic kid you summon to tell you trivia" kind of demon... which is like, 80% of the demons in the Ars Goetia.

Not exactly scary, especially when he looks like someone spilled a bucket of red paint over f***ing Groot and talks like a stereotypical villain.

 

Anyway... time to cross my fingers and hope Alien: Earth can clear the incredibly low bar I've set for it this week.  

"In Space, No One..."

Spoiler

They were this close to building some actual tension in the first couple seconds until they started blasting "Strange Brew" by Cream over the scenes from the Maginot.

Is it just me, or are there are a lot of wildly inappropriate soundtrack choices in the credits of horror/action type movies?

Spoiler

So we're flashing back to the events that would result in the Maginot crashing in Bangkok, when the ship was 17 days out from Earth.

Clem might be the first halfway believable character in Alien: Earth.  He gets frustrated with a groggy and fresh out of hypersleep Morrow interrupting him to ask questions about the situation he's trying to explain, couldn't be arsed to remember the names of the critters they're carrying, and falls into Buffyspeak rather than trying.  He ends up annoying Morrow the entire way to the ship's sickbay, where we see that the two "clam things" that got out are a pair of facehuggers who managed to facehug the captain and one crewman.  The medic tried to remove the facehugger on the captain by cutting the tail and found out the hard way they bleed acid so the captain's dead from the acid burns.

Well, there it is... the usual Alien sequel "horror movie idiot" behavior that makes you wonder if Weyland-Yutani only hires suicidal people who want to be eaten by space monsters.

Spoiler

Morrow is the Maginot's security officer and he clearly knows how dangerous these creatures are.  Nobody else, from the ship's doctor to the various other officers standing there in sickbay seem at all interested in what caused the fire or how the secured containers holding the Xenomorph eggs came to be open.  They table that topic to discuss the fate of the captain and science officer, with the medics needing to be reminded of what proper protocol for the situation even is.  So they make ready to put the science officer into cryo and to toss the captain out the airlock.  

Somehow, the most important point didn't get discussed at all.  The ship's engineer, a sane man who says they should toss both bodies into space, notes that the fire took out the Maginot's navigation and engine controls so the ship is now effectively an uncontrollable missile.

Morrow, meanwhile, has received a massive bump in writing quality.  He's behaving like a dangerously competent professional who knows he's potentially in a horror movie situation and is very determined to survive.  Acting Captain Zaveri wants to avoid a panic by logging a security incident and starting an investigation, doesn't believe that the security officer can relieve her of duty, and is ultimately so foolish that she dismisses being told point-blank by the security officer that the company considers the crew to be expendable and that appropriate precautions need to be taken.

Somehow, despite apparently having security footage of the perpetrator, Morrow fails to identify them?  Possibly because the monitor's tiny?  Was the sex scene really necessary?  I don't think it was.  The saboteur is using the ship's Jeffries Tubes access crawlways to circumvent access controls on the doors and the security cameras themselves.  They also apparently wiped the ship's communication logs.  Acting captain is told point-blank by MUTHUR that the cargo takes priority over the lives of the crew.

How very Star Trek.

The quality of the writing in this episode is noticeably higher than the rest of the series so far.  The difference is not small.  They could almost be doing actual horror here.  All they really need to do is lose the one crewmember whose death grip on the idiot ball risks turning this episode into an Idiot Plot and asking one guy to be less overtly creepy.

Spoiler

Another "from bad to worse" follows almost immediately as the frozen crewman gets chestburster'd and now there's a xenomorph loose on the ship.  

If Morrow were in charge and Teng were a bit less obvious, this would be passable horror.

OK, no, I take it back.  This crew of too dumb to live screaming beefheaps are actively trying to become monster chow.  Imagine being stupid enough to have multiple deadly alien specimens out of securement at the same time, and deciding to eat lunch while observing them?  Hell, why does the sample container have a mechanical closure that is able to be manipulated from inside?  

Noah Hawley et. al. want to call back to the original Alien with this episode, but ultimately do a very poor job of it for one reason:

The crew of the Maginot are standard horror movie idiots.

Alien worked as well as it did because the crew of the Nostromo were professionals who did everything they could, to the best of their ability, to survive and it still wasn't enough.

With one exception, the crew of the Maginot seemingly want to become Purina monster chow.

Spoiler

Some of them are so phenomenally bad at their actual jobs that they end up getting other members of the crew killed.  The ship's doctor, for instance, ignores protocol and tries to cut the facehugger off the Captain leading to the Captain receiving fatal acid burns.  The deputy science officer is so bad at her job that she not only leaves multiple dangerous specimens unsecured, she actually causes two more containment breaches and nearly gets killed by a space tick herself if not for the doctor spotting it.  The engineer seems more interested in his chewing tobacco than doing his job, and the engineers mate is so dim you have to wonder if he has a mental disability.

There's a valiant effort at a Xenomorph tail fakeout using a chain in the engineering spaces, but it kind of falls flat because the victim is incredibly annoying to the point that his demise would be a mercy for the audience... and because we know another monster already got him.

Spoiler

He drank a flask of water full of space tick larvae, and starts vomiting blood before falling down dead.

In quick succession, the acting captain and incompetent acting science officer discover the eye-ctopus is loose.

There's a very effective bit of tension building when Morrow interrogates...

Spoiler

... Mister Teng, because Teng is doing his very best to be creepy and actually spotted the thread that Morrow missed.

Unfortunately, the big reveal is also a painful fumble.

Spoiler

Because the culprit ends up being someone we've never seen before, and have had no interaction with as the audience.  It's the ship's chief engineer, Petrovich, who we only saw briefly back in episode 1.  He was having clandestine calls with Boy Kavalier and arranged to crash the Maginot in Prodigy's territory in exchange for a huge payday... or just to get revenge on Weyland-Yutani?  Or Prodigy?  He seems to suffer some motive drift between the two scenes he actually has and it isn't clear if he wants to just set all the monsters free to kill everyone on Earth, to sell them to Prodigy, or just screw over Weyland-Yutani.

The incompetence-related casualties continue to pile up.  

The Maginot spent many years out in space collecting and researching these specimens, right?  How do the ship's surgeon and the deputy science officer who's been studying these things not know anything about them?  Their attempt to remove the juvenile leeches dimwit boy drank ends up killing all three of them when it releases some kind of a poison gas and the acting captain has to gas the whole room after which she just locks up and Morrow relieves her of command.

Teng got got by the xenomorph offscreen.  A pity, he was one of the more fun characters.

It's here that Morrow commits his first act of horror movie idiocy, overriding the lockdown of a sealed lab that suffered a containment breach during a gunfight.  He shanks Petrovich to death with that blade he's been flashing all series long, but his lack of care lets the escaped leeches get to Anant and lets the eye-ctopus escape the lab.  

The xenomorph ambushes the acting captain and there's a really clumsily composited CG chase sequence that ends with her sealing herself in a compartment only to learn she's welding herself in with the eye-ctopus-possessed engineer.  Morrow conveniently pops out of a crawlspace like... three seconds after the xenomorph leaves?  

OK, that's a new one.

That's a stupid new one, but that is definitely a new one.

Spoiler

"Man bites Xenomorph" was definitely not on my bingo card.  

That eye-ctopus engineer seems to be actually hurting the xenomorph by biting it is impressive in its own right.  It takes shanking him multiple times using its tail and biting out his throat to stop him, and then the eye-ctopus just attacks the xeno directly.

So now we're all caught up to episode 1.

Spoiler

We get to see Morrow meet Ms. Yutani in her indoor zen garden with her... are those Sith troopers?  

He's pretty convinced he's going to have to go loud and invade Neverland to get the specimens back.  

 

Best episode of the series so far by several parsecs.

A shame it stopped painfully short of being actually good horror thanks to a cast comprised mainly of no-sense-of-self-preservation horror movie extras and a bungled villain reveal that broke Knox's Ten Commandments.

 

 

Edited September 3 by Seto Kaiba

[Hikuro]

While the episode was def better than episodes 3 and 4, something incredibly bugs me that I haven't seen pointed out.

Spoiler

How in the bloody hell are they aware that the facehugger releases an embryo, that will eventually hatch a chest buster and then grows exponentially and become a vicious killer. Yet they're suddenly all more worried about the security breach and what not versus hunting down the Xenomorph. They even call it straight up a Xenomorph. Now if they had called it the Xenomorph XX-121 proper I"d be pissed off and wanting to know how they would be aware of this. 
Now my question is where in the world did they find the eggs, they even mentioned these things can survive in deep space, how the hell did they even know that?! How are they fully aware of the xenomorph and yet the medic goes and makes a dumb mistake like cutting into the facehugger thus killing the captain witht he acid blood? I mean come on!
The Xenomorph showing up looked way more like a guy in a suit in this round. There were to many wide angle shots and distant camera movements giving away far to much of the creature which was one of the biggest things Ridley Scott wanted to avoid....and he was right, doing close up slow shots of the creature helped build the suspense. This was totally lost from this episode. 
And I'm starting to think there's something with this ey-topus. Either it's sentient in some fashion, or something else. Cause I was surprised that this creature went head to head with a xeno and was putting up a decent fight, even going as far as trying to take it over after escaping the engineers' body.  

[anime52k8]

 

[Seto Kaiba]

43 minutes ago, Hikuro said:

Spoiler

How in the bloody hell are they aware that the facehugger releases an embryo, that will eventually hatch a chest buster and then grows exponentially and become a vicious killer.

Spoiler

Given that the first episode establishes that the Maginot lost a good percentage of its crew collecting these specimens... odds are someone (or several someones) got a hug on whatever planet they found them on.  Morrow clearly indicates he's concerned about the xenomorph growing and wants to hunt it down immediately.

 

45 minutes ago, Hikuro said:

Spoiler

Now my question is where in the world did they find the eggs, they even mentioned these things can survive in deep space, how the hell did they even know that?!

Now that's an excellent question with no clear answer.

Spoiler

Unless this is not their first Xenomorph containment whoopsie and they tried to space one in the past.

 

46 minutes ago, Hikuro said:

Spoiler

How are they fully aware of the xenomorph and yet the medic goes and makes a dumb mistake like cutting into the facehugger thus killing the captain witht he acid blood? I mean come on!

Spoiler

During Morrow's interrogation of the ship's medical officer, the medic's history of substance abuse is brought up and it's strongly implied the medic has been dipping into the ship's supplies of painkillers and other drugs for "recreational" purposes...

IIRC, don't we even see him take a hit of something from a small bottle before he starts operating on the idiot apprentice?

 

 

 

55 minutes ago, Hikuro said:

Spoiler

And I'm starting to think there's something with this ey-topus. Either it's sentient in some fashion, or something else.

Spoiler

Yeah, it's extremely intelligent that's for sure... we see clear evidence of planning and risk assessment from it.

Mind you, that it's one of the smartest beings on the Maginot has more to do with the fact that everyone who's not Morrow or the Xenomorph is a blooming idiot.

 

[Big s]

5 hours ago, Hikuro said:

They even call it straight up a Xenomorph.

I get the feeling that that’s basically a generic term for an alien creature, not so much just the big chap or their kind. and the numbering is more about the known type. But then again they could’ve run into these things during capture. I think they mentioned some casualties during that process.

 

Spoiler

Kinda liking the lil eye guy. It’s almost like it was trying to warn the stupid lady and may have been trying to save the temporary captain. Although it has to do some rather creepy things to try and get things done.

oddly, i think I’m more interested in it than anything else going on

 

[sh9000]

 

 

[Seto Kaiba]

13 hours ago, Big s said:

I get the feeling that that’s basically a generic term for an alien creature, not so much just the big chap or their kind. and the numbering is more about the known type. But then again they could’ve run into these things during capture. I think they mentioned some casualties during that process.

Y'know, I never really thought about it much since fans and licensees all just call the creature "the Xenomorph"... but I did some checking and you're completely correct. 👍

"Xenomorph" is an in-universe generic term for an unclassified alien lifeform.  Lt. Gorman uses it as a generic term for an unidentified alien species during the briefing in Aliens before anyone ever sees one.  They use "Xenomorph" the same way Warhammer 40,000 uses "Xenos" to refer to aliens... and Aliens was probably the inspiration for that too.  In the Weyland Yutani Report and Alien: Romulus they append a catalog number to it making it the Xenomorph XX121.

The extra features of the Quadrilogy box set for the first four Alien films gives the in-universe scientific name of the creatures as Internecivus raptus.  

 

13 hours ago, Big s said:

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oddly, i think I’m more interested in it than anything else going on

Well, it is one of the only intelligent lifeforms in the series... 😆

[Bolt]

I see a serious lack of security on the island. Considering Prodigy is one of the 5. They should have a serious military program. This would obviously involve several very specialized platoons (or thereabouts) on the island itself as well as defensive installations . And , along those lines, i would've thought that security would have been amped up with the addition of Weyland -Yutani's exotic and very dangerous pets now in Prodigy's possession. A contentious issue, obviously. Are they really just telling us that this kid doesn't have a security commander , and is so arrogant he thinks no additional measures need to be taken. 

Spoiler

It was a miracle he even kept humans out of the specimens zone, but every other thing he does or says is so blindingly arrogant, it's a miracle he's made it this far in life. 
I think Prodigy is going to die. Literally and figuratively.

 

[M'Kyuun]

1 hour ago, Bolt said:

I see a serious lack of security on the island. Considering Prodigy is one of the 5. They should have a serious military program. This would obviously involve several very specialized platoons (or thereabouts) on the island itself as well as defensive installations . And , along those lines, i would've thought that security would have been amped up with the addition of Weyland -Yutani's exotic and very dangerous pets now in Prodigy's possession. A contentious issue, obviously. Are they really just telling us that this kid doesn't have a security commander , and is so arrogant he thinks no additional measures need to be taken. 

  Hide contents

It was a miracle he even kept humans out of the specimens zone, but every other thing he does or says is so blindingly arrogant, it's a miracle he's made it this far in life. 
I think Prodigy is going to die. Literally and figuratively.

 

I agree, and I think that's the point. Kavalier is inherently unlikable, purposely so, and his arrogance is ultimately going to be the downfall of his little fiefdom. His number two, Evil Daddy Warbucks, is also cruising for some karmic takedown. The male IT guy is one of the few truly decent people working for Prodigy. His wife the therapist, who seems old enough to be his mother, also seems like she has the hybrid kids' interests at heart, although she also seems to be more comfortable towing the company line.

Spoiler

I get the sense that the IT guy is eventually going to reach his limit and, regardless of what his wife chooses, he's going to work against Kavalier, and potentially with Kirsch, to perhaps free the hybrids so they can go back to their families if they have them, or he's going to meet an untimely end at the hands of Warbucks, at the behest of Kavalier,  or one of the critters. 

Spoiler

Concerning the antics on board the Maginot, the sheer negligence by the science officer is appalling. Moreover, why would you ever put dangerous creatures of unknown characteristics in glass containers on a high shelf rather than in something made of plexiglass or the like that won't shatter if it falls on the floor, and place said containers close to floor level in the event of a tumble? Beyond that, why wouldn't you put that container into an even stronger more secure container when not directly observing them just for, you know, security's sake? And yeah, the lid design is questionable to say the least.

The engineer's mate certainly seems like he's more than a bit on the slow side beggaring how he would have ever qualified for the job. 

Spoiler

Ah well, he's leech food now.

This show, for all intents, is about monsters and I guess, rather than being creative, the production is falling back on the old 'people make dumb decisions in horror films' trope to ensure that said monsters get their chance to do what they do thus upping the body counts and the gore factor. I rather enjoy both in sci-fi and horror, but it's always more fun when, as @Seto Kaiba mentioned, the protagonists make smart decisions, do everything correctly within their power, and still fall prey to the monsters. Stupid or negligent protagonists offer easy prey and in turn erode the menace and cunning of the monsters hunting them thus lessening the whole experience.  

Spoiler

Morrow's arc is taking a pretty steadfast path; he's a company stooge to the end and since his daughter died young, apparently his humanity died with her and 'the mission' is all that matters to him.  Still, his not-so-subtle manipulation of Slightly, not the brightest of the hybrid kids, is at least proving somewhat entertaining, although it'd be more enjoyable if he was attempting to manipulate someone with a bit more wherewithal. I'm still wondering about Kirsch's angle; he knows about the Morrow-Slightly connection (funny that no-one else in Boy-genius's high-tech island paradise has done the same with what one would assume to be much more sensitive and powerful equipment), and yet he's keeping it to himself. IMHO, that makes him the most interesting character in the show, as you know he's planning something with that info, but you don't know what or to what end. I hope they keep the mystery a bit longer. I do have a feeling that Kirsch isn't too savvy with being Kavalier's servant and that there's going to be a mutiny at some point. Paraphrasing Soundwave, "Kirsch superior, Boy Kavalier inferior." In the meantime, Kirsch is just soaking up info on the hybrids, the new beasties, and Morrow. I hope Kirsch's storyline has some complexity and nuance to it, as every other character seems rather cookie-cutter with little subtlety or mystery. For now, Kirsch's motives are enigmatic and that's about the most interesting part of the show.

 

[Seto Kaiba]

4 hours ago, Bolt said:

I see a serious lack of security on the island. Considering Prodigy is one of the 5. They should have a serious military program. This would obviously involve several very specialized platoons (or thereabouts) on the island itself as well as defensive installations . And , along those lines, i would've thought that security would have been amped up with the addition of Weyland -Yutani's exotic and very dangerous pets now in Prodigy's possession. A contentious issue, obviously. Are they really just telling us that this kid doesn't have a security commander , and is so arrogant he thinks no additional measures need to be taken. 

Neverland does seem to be fairly light on armed security, yes.

I'd assume that has a lot to do with it being a secret research facility on a private island.  We're not exactly sure where, but given that it's a short flight over open ocean from "Prodigy City" (former Bangkok) it's probably in the Gulf of Thailand or Riau archipelago.  Based on the map we're shown, that's pretty much the heart of Prodigy's territory.  They control East Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia, Oceania, the southern half of Africa, Greenland, and Iceland.  Neverland's most probable location is pretty well encircled by other Prodigy territories.  Having a large security force present would tend to undermine the secrecy aspect of it too, since you either have to keep them there and ship in large quantities of food and various supplies or rotate them out to other postings periodically, increasing the chance of leaks.

The best defense is never being a target to begin with, after all.

Though yes, the wisdom of that strategy is likely in question now that the island is home to a variety of different extraterrestrial murder monsters.

 

5 hours ago, Bolt said:

Spoiler

It was a miracle he even kept humans out of the specimens zone, but every other thing he does or says is so blindingly arrogant, it's a miracle he's made it this far in life. 
I think Prodigy is going to die. Literally and figuratively.

Well, yeah... that's kind of the point I think.

They even put his carelessness in his name.

Quote

Cavalier (Adj): Marked by, or given to, offhand and often disdainful dismissal of important matters.

He is almost literally named "Arrogant Brat". 😆🙃

Spoiler

Like I said earlier, Boy Cavalier's written as a pretty typical techbro douchebag.  It's pretty obvious who he's modeled on, too.  He believes he's the smartest person in any room he's in, but it's obvious he's a spoiled rich kid lacking in common sense who failed upwards using generational wealth and believes his own hype.  The Prodigy employees who have regular contact with him clearly know he's an imbecile, but have to put up with him because he's the boss.

Considering the effort the show put into making him completely unlikeable, it was obvious from an early point that he's going to get his comeuppance and it's meant to be a very satisfying and therapeutic moment for the audience.  That he's going to die became a near-certainty the minute he relocated the alien samples to his private island, since he's now trapped there with them and the island itself is likely to be nuked at the end to contain the outbreak.

 

[Big s]

7 hours ago, M'Kyuun said:

The engineer's mate certainly seems like he's more than a bit on the slow side beggaring how he would have ever qualified for the job. 

I get the feeling that he was a much lower employee, something more like a janitor. He had a conversation with his family on the screen about becoming an apprentice, and I kinda get the feeling that the actual engineer felt bad for him and took him under his wing as more of a favor cause he felt sorry for him 

[Big s]

19 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Y'know, I never really thought about it much since fans and licensees all just call the creature "the Xenomorph"... but I did some checking and you're completely correct. 👍

I think I came from a time when Xenomorph was a more rarely used term. It was usually Big Chap or soldier alien or dog alien or alien queen. Not saying the term was used here and there, just more sparingly.

[pengbuzz]

15 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Neverland does seem to be fairly light on armed security, yes.

I'd assume that has a lot to do with it being a secret research facility on a private island.  We're not exactly sure where, but given that it's a short flight over open ocean from "Prodigy City" (former Bangkok) it's probably in the Gulf of Thailand or Riau archipelago.  Based on the map we're shown, that's pretty much the heart of Prodigy's territory.  They control East Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia, Oceania, the southern half of Africa, Greenland, and Iceland.  Neverland's most probable location is pretty well encircled by other Prodigy territories.  Having a large security force present would tend to undermine the secrecy aspect of it too, since you either have to keep them there and ship in large quantities of food and various supplies or rotate them out to other postings periodically, increasing the chance of leaks.

The best defense is never being a target to begin with, after all.

Though yes, the wisdom of that strategy is likely in question now that the island is home to a variety of different extraterrestrial murder monsters.

 

Well, yeah... that's kind of the point I think.

They even put his carelessness in his name.

He is almost literally named "Arrogant Brat". 😆🙃

  Reveal hidden contents

Like I said earlier, Boy Cavalier's written as a pretty typical techbro douchebag.  It's pretty obvious who he's modeled on, too.  He believes he's the smartest person in any room he's in, but it's obvious he's a spoiled rich kid lacking in common sense who failed upwards using generational wealth and believes his own hype.  The Prodigy employees who have regular contact with him clearly know he's an imbecile, but have to put up with him because he's the boss.

Considering the effort the show put into making him completely unlikeable, it was obvious from an early point that he's going to get his comeuppance and it's meant to be a very satisfying and therapeutic moment for the audience.  That he's going to die became a near-certainty the minute he relocated the alien samples to his private island, since he's now trapped there with them and the island itself is likely to be nuked at the end to contain the outbreak.

 

Seems to be an entire case study in "how to let arrogant people lead morons to unleash the apocalypse upon an unsuspecting planet."

As for "Boy Kavalier", I have a better name for him, but I think MWF rules prohibit me from posting it.

 

[Big s]

2 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

As for "Boy Kavalier", I have a better name for him, but I think MWF rules prohibit me from posting it.

I’m sure they’ll allow Boy Blunder

[Seto Kaiba]

4 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

Seems to be an entire case study in "how to let arrogant people lead morons to unleash the apocalypse upon an unsuspecting planet."

Well, yeah... regular people dying in droves because rich arseholes want to control the uncontrollable is pretty much Alien in a nutshell.

If you exclude Alien: Covenant, anyway.  That's just Too Dumb to Live rednecks dying for an obsolete android's daddy issues and doesn't really involve The Company at all.

[pengbuzz]

1 hour ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Well, yeah... regular people dying in droves because rich arseholes want to control the uncontrollable is pretty much Alien in a nutshell.

On that note: it makes me wonder what the aliens' observations about humans would be (if they kept some sort of journal)?

1 hour ago, Seto Kaiba said:

If you exclude Alien: Covenant, anyway.  That's just Too Dumb to Live rednecks dying for an obsolete android's daddy issues and doesn't really involve The Company at all.

Oh, you mean the Magneto android? : I only saw bits and pieces of that movie; I didn't want to sever my higher brain functions for it. 

Edited September 6 by pengbuzz

[Seto Kaiba]

13 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

On that note: it makes me wonder what the aliens' observations about humans would be (if they kept some sort of journal)?

Considering what easy marks Humans are for Xenomorph XX121, with so very many examples of them being stupid enough to go stick their faces directly in a giant wet obviously dangerous space egg of unknown origin... 

It'd probably read like a food critic's newspaper column.

A penny for Big Chap's thoughts.  That's the only XX121 specimen to go through it all twice.  First on the Nostromo and then again on Romulus station.  If he'd lived long enough, he might be upset at getting upstaged at the end by Mark Zuckerberg "The Newborn".

 

13 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

Oh, you mean the Magneto android? : I only saw bits and pieces of that movie; I didn't want to sever my higher brain functions for it. 

Alien: Covenant isn't quite that bad.  It's rubbish as a prequel to Alien, but it's a passable generic monster movie and Michael Fassbender does deliver a pretty good performance as the creepy and insane android David 8.  

The reason I mentioned it as an exception is that it's unique among Alien titles for being a xenomorph massacre where "The Company" was genuinely not responsible.

Spoiler

Ironically, the Covenant's crew end up in danger because the ship's acting captain decides not to follow their orders from The Company.

They only end up in danger, and then dead, because he decided on his own initiative to go against their orders from The Company and take the ship off course to land on an uncharted planet they just discovered completely by accident.

[pengbuzz]

26 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Considering what easy marks Humans are for Xenomorph XX121, with so very many examples of them being stupid enough to go stick their faces directly in a giant wet obviously dangerous space egg of unknown origin... 

It'd probably read like a food critic's newspaper column.

A penny for Big Chap's thoughts.  That's the only XX121 specimen to go through it all twice.  First on the Nostromo and then again on Romulus station.  If he'd lived long enough, he might be upset at getting upstaged at the end by Mark Zuckerberg "The Newborn".

Now I picture a Xenomorph version of Gordon Ramsay doing the following to one of the dumb crew members:

 

26 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Alien: Covenant isn't quite that bad.  It's rubbish as a prequel to Alien, but it's a passable generic monster movie and Michael Fassbender does deliver a pretty good performance as the creepy and insane android David 8.  

Normally I like Michael Fassbender, but he just didn't sit well with me in either of the movies. Just personal preference I suppose. The rest of the movie I honestly had tried to watch, but after multiple tries (my "bits and pieces" comment), I gave up. 

 

26 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

The reason I mentioned it as an exception is that it's unique among Alien titles for being a xenomorph massacre where "The Company" was genuinely not responsible.

  Hide contents

Ironically, the Covenant's crew end up in danger because the ship's acting captain decides not to follow their orders from The Company.

They only end up in danger, and then dead, because he decided on his own initiative to go against their orders from The Company and take the ship off course to land on an uncharted planet they just discovered completely by accident.

I understand your point; I guess stupidity just overloads my "hr geigercounter" too much here.

[Big s]

1 hour ago, pengbuzz said:

Normally I like Michael Fassbender, but he just didn't sit well with me in either of the movies. Just personal preference I suppose. The rest of the movie I honestly had tried to watch, but after multiple tries (my "bits and pieces" comment), I gave up. 

Fassbender was actually my favorite part of those movies 

[Seto Kaiba]

22 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

Now I picture a Xenomorph version of Gordon Ramsay doing the following to one of the dumb crew members:

NGL, the more I think about it the more I think Guy Fieri over Gordon Ramsay for that...

After all, the Xenomorph isn't usually found dining on fresh high-quality white collar executives in a posh and spotlessly clean establishment.  It's frequenting the grungy, grimy, hasn't-seen-a-mop-and-bucket-in-living-memory working spaceships and factories and enthusiastically consuming a diet of cheap, greasy, frozen-and-reheated blue collar working stiffs.

Alien movies from the creature's perspective aren't Master Chef or even Kitchen Nightmares... it's Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives. 😆

[pengbuzz]

56 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

NGL, the more I think about it the more I think Guy Fieri over Gordon Ramsay for that...

After all, the Xenomorph isn't usually found dining on fresh high-quality white collar executives in a posh and spotlessly clean establishment.  It's frequenting the grungy, grimy, hasn't-seen-a-mop-and-bucket-in-living-memory working spaceships and factories and enthusiastically consuming a diet of cheap, greasy, frozen-and-reheated blue collar working stiffs.

Alien movies from the creature's perspective aren't Master Chef or even Kitchen Nightmares... it's Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives. 😆

Are you telling me Xenomorphs are blue-collar?  

[Thom]

I don't really care either way for this show, but it was on while I was surfing so I left in on for five minutes. About long enough for...

Spoiler

...one of the androids feeding the specimens to find out the feeder door was damaged. So he goes to a terminal and a red light lights up and I'm thinking, 'good thinking, lock it down before something bad happens...' But no, he just unlocked the main door. Don't send out an alert or call maintenance, just unlock the main door just so you can feed the dang dangerous alien thing!

It is this level of stupid that makes me glad I am giving this one a wide pass!

[Seto Kaiba]

On 9/7/2025 at 5:00 PM, pengbuzz said:

Are you telling me Xenomorphs are blue-collar?  

Well, if you think about it, they do pretty much always have a working class single parent... 🤔

"The Fly"

Spoiler

Once again, Boy Cavalier laying it on with a trowel reading J.M. Barne's 1911 Peter Pan novel into a microphone for no clear reason.

I get that he's committed to the bit, but the bit was overplayed, stupid, and stale like four episodes ago.Wendy, on the other hand, is apparently allowed to just wander where-the-hell-ever without any supervision and is chilling out in front of the Xenomorph enclosure.  The idea of even having a Xenomorph enclosure is pretty insane (e.g. Alien: Resurrection) and they're trying to make the juvenile Xenomorph cute... but is not effective for horror.

Kirsh and Wendy's brother finally address the elephant in the room vis a vis lifespan...

Spoiler

Namely, that as a Human consciousness in a Synth body Wendy is functionally immortal.  Hermit thinks of Wendy as Human, while Kirsh considers her posthuman.  He seems to consider Hermit's desire for Wendy to try to live like a normal Human an emotional indulgence or a waste of time and her new abilities.

The story then jumps to the opposite perspective as Eins and the engineering team discuss Nibs, the Hybrid who was showing signs of mental illness in prior episodes.  Eins is frustrated that the Hybrids can't simply be fixed like machines, since he needs to have her and the other Lost Boys show-ready in a few weeks for an event with The Five.  He is pushing to have her memory wiped back to before the Tower and her emotional responses dialed back to keep her stable.

Ironically, both Eins and Kirsh seem to view the Human parts of the Hybrids as a weakness... albeit for different reasons.  Kirsh seems to consider Human emotional needs to be unnecessary indulgences while Eins seems to think of Human fragility as a liability.

Well, that bodes ill...

Spoiler

Eins fires the lead developer of the Hybrid project for refusing to tamper with Nibs's mind.  I can't imagine what could go wrong, firing your lead developer a couple of weeks before you're due to demo your new flagship product for the entire world... especially when your flagship product is a super-strong, super-mentally unstable android that can tear people apart like a phone book.

Wait... waiiiiiit... hold on a ding-dang minute here...

Spoiler

Did Wendy just imply that Xenomorph XX121 communicates linguistically?  As in, that this horrifying murder-monster from beyond the farthest stars is potentially something that can speak and be spoken to?  Because it sure as hell sounds like Wendy just claimed she's learning to speak Xenomorph.

She and Hermit have a deconstructive little chat in the hall about how horror movie monsters are in fact horror movie monsters, with Wendy optimistically believing that the juvenile Xenomorph XX121 drone they've got penned up could be a "good" Xenomorph.

There's optimistic, and then there's that.

I guess it's fair given that these characters obviously do not have the perspective on these things that we do, but come the f*** on...

Spoiler

They picked these creatures up from the Weyland-Yutani ship Maginot, which they have to know spent 65 years combing the galaxy for the most inherently hostile xeno forms imaginable.  So much so that the ship's own crew believed that the purpose was to weaponize them in war.  This was the most dangerous creature on a ship with leeches able to drink a man dry in seconds and piss neurotoxin and an octopus that rips out eyeballs to hijack other creatures entire nervous systems with predatory intent.  Get real, kid...

Speaking of irredeemable monsters, Yutani and Boy Cavalier meet.  The douchebag didn't even bother to wear shoes and puts his feet on the table immediately.

I really, really cannot wait for Boy Cavalier to end up as Xenomorph chow.  

The writers have done one thing well in this series, and that is making this character incredibly incredibly easy to hate.  I suppose that it helps that the person he's modeled on is one of the most hated men in the world right now.

Spoiler

The writers have done such an effective job in making Boy Cavalier easy to hate that the series is unintentionally making Weyland-Yutani's CEO look like a good and likeable person by contrast.

Despite being a monstrously evil person herself, Ms. Yutani comes out looking like a decent human being because her opposition is such an irredeemable tosspot that his voice is the most annoying sound.

It veers into "The worst person you know just made a good point" territory when Boy Cavalier points out that Weyland-Yutani was smuggling dangerous invasive species onto Earth, something apparently heinously illegal even in this far future corporatocracy, and refuses to release the specimens to Weyland-Yutani's custody until after the six weeks quarantine period required by law has passed.  Yutani ponies up $20 billion plus damages to get it all back.

The "thoughts and prayers" jab is a nice touch, though.

Almost as if they're reading this thread...

Spoiler

Morrow directly states to Ms. Yutani that Prodigy has significantly beefed up security on Neverland in the last 24 hours.  He thinks they've done so in anticipation of a frontal assault.  So we're likely to see a lot more screaming beefheaps get torn to bits by the Xenomorph, eaten by leeches, etc.

His master plan to extract the specimens without paying is pretty much exactly what you'd expect from this franchise... or Jurassic Park.  The Weyland-Yutani plan is to turn all the specimens loose and use the ensuing havoc to get out with the samples they need.

You know that Alien: Earth is really set in the future because even the robots are inventing new ways to be racist to other robots.

Spoiler

Kirsh and Morrow share what must be the world's most fantastically awkward elevator ride and exchange bigoted jabs.  Kirsh belittles Morrow for being "Almost human" and "a self-hating machine", while Morrow antagonizes Kirsh by asserting he's an "old toy" and obsolete now that the Hybrids exist.

If this were another franchise, you know someone would be calling them both "Clanker" with the hard R. 😆

Star Wars gave us a slur for robots, is Alien: Earth on its way towards showing us the slurs different kinds of machine life come up with for each other?

Nibs gets a memory wipe, and the first thing the first person she sees does is remind her of the insane crap she did that she can now no longer remember.  So, we're basically watching one robot think that another robot is gaslighting it.  Did nobody tell Wendy that they erased parts of Nibs's memory because she was having a psychotic break due to trauma?

Smooth move, Dame Sylvia.  You just removed one kind of incipient psychosis and opened up the door for a completely different kind of mental illness.

Spoiler

Somehow, a staff that went full Red Alert when Nibs started claiming she was pregnant has yet to notice that Slightly is repeatedly showing clear signs of extreme stress and has been wandering off to "argue with himself" loudly for hours at a time?  One seemingly insane robot prompts a full lockdown, but the other is just "Eh, he'll be fine"?  The guards are extremely cavalier about the question of insane robots too.

Can we get some consistency here?  Especially since the guards are clearly aware of the risk a violent Synth poses, given that the rumor they're sharing about the risk of the island being attacked involves Synth soldiers.

In fine horror movie tradition, the guards are not taking their assignment seriously.  Despite apparently having been told that the island is at risk of attack by Weyland-Yutani forces, they believe it's just an excuse to keep them busy on patrols.  Even these dozy guards are not so stupid that they miss Hermit's obvious attempt to solicit information he can use to escape the island though.

OK, I am prepared to say with confidence that Noah Hawley has an oral fetish.

There are so many protracted closeups of Sydney Chandler's mouth.  It's like if Quentin Tarantino wanted to get a Doctor of Dental Surgery degree.

Spoiler

Do we not have... y'know... other Synths that could be handling research work like feeding the lab animals and collecting the research data?  Is Isaac, a child in an adult Synth body, really the ONLY person we can trust to do this?  This is a megacorp with a multi-trillion dollar valuation and they can't afford more than one Synth science officer for a flagship research facility? 

Why is a literal child the ONLY person available to work this entire lab full of dangerous extraterrestrial monsters?  Come to that, why does he have the clearance to unlock the containment chambers?  Why are the chambers so shoddily built that doors can be torn off their hinges accidentally by laboratory staff during routine feedings?  Why can the feeding of the lab animals not wait a few hours for Kirsh to return?

Well, as foreshadowed with all the subtlety of a half-brick to the head, Isaac becomes Neverland's first casualty in the F About And Find Out Olympics.  He gets startled by the eye-ctopus and accidentally shuts himself inside a containment chamber he wasn't supposed to open with a hive of alien flies the size of parrots that spit Hollywood Acid and apparently eat rocks and electronics.  So Isaac dies taking a blast of acid to the face and the flies proceed to melt and eat him.

I know I say this a lot, but it's not effective horror (or even scary) if your characters in a horror movie die by being maximally stupid.

There seems to be a lot of that going around.

Spoiler

Why does Wendy even HAVE access to the secure lab?

"This is a research facility filled with scientists."  Honey, then why are you and your husband seemingly the only two people working on the Hybrid project and why were you relying on the expensive Hybrid prototypes to help out with the alien lifeform analysis work?  I feel like there's some moon logic going on in the script.  This research facility filled with scientists apparently doesn't have any actual scientists free to work on the only two things it seems to actually be researching.

Well, great... now you've got two insane robots.  It was only a matter of time before Wendy went off the deep end.  

Is security MIA too?  We were told earlier in this episode that Prodigy moved a bunch of security forces onto the island and they seemingly can't spare anyone to escort the recently fired Mr. Sylvia off the premises and pack up his effects to make sure he doesn't, y'know, sabotage anything?  Release any confidential information that nobody was supposed to know?  

Honestly, at this point it really feels like the writers are taking the piss.

Spoiler

It's almost like there are two writing teams working on this who aren't talking to each other.

Prodigy's secret Neverland lab is supposedly full of the best scientists and researchers working on the Hybrid project, but we never see anyone but Kirsh and the Sylvias.

The island is supposedly crawling with security forces in anticipation of an attack by Weyland-Yutani, but none of the things that actually need to be protected seem to actually be monitored.  Security in the lab where the Maginot's cargo is being held is seemingly on the honor system with practically anyone able to just walk right in.  Nobody seems to be monitoring the Hybrids most of the time either.  There are monitoring systems tracking the Hybrids vitals and location, as Mr. Sylvia shows, but apparently nobody has the time to actually monitor those and it takes a very long time for anyone to notice that Tootles/Isaac has been killed.  Not to mention a fired employee was left alone in the lab with unrestricted access and disabled security measures.

There is hilarious irony in that the "Last Known Location" for Tootles/Isaac is referred to in the computer as the SECURE LAB.  The room that literally everyone has just been walking right TF into.  Nothing about that is secure.

The "Secure" lab is supposed to be a no-go zone for any organic employees, meaning NONE of them should have access to it.  But Arthur Sylvia, who was fired earlier in the episode and has somehow been wandering around unmonitored by security has valid door codes to enter?  There isn't even an alarm.  He just walks right in, leaves the door hanging wide open for anyone to follow him, and starts opening containment doors.  There doesn't seem to be any access protection on the doors at all, since even Slightly can open the chamber holding the Facehugger eggs in a few short keystrokes.  Neither opening the doors nor leaving the doors open triggers any kind of alarms.  Even the security cameras seem to be unmonitored since there's no alarm or reaction to the intrusion, the doors being opened and left open, or the facehugger attack that happens entirely in full view of the security camera.

For bonus points, the room comes equipped with a massive unsecured air vent large enough to admit an adult Xenomorph and sturdy enough to support the weight of an adult-scale Hybrid carrying an adult Human.

This is the kind of architecture and security that only exists in splatter horror... monster friendly engineering.

 

[Big s]

23 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Why are the chambers so shoddily built that doors can be torn off their hinges accidentally by laboratory staff during routine feedings? 

Spoiler

I can’t defend much in this show, but I kinda get the feeling that that was no accident.

My first thought goes to Kirsh. I think he may have sabotaged it to make himself look better than the new toys. Kinda like why he hasn’t said anything about the traitor bot.

But I also think that eye guy might be up to some shenanigans. He was there when a certain hatch was left open on that canister before and now there’s another hatch somehow left open to one of these enclosures.

 

[Hikuro]

Not gonna say much, it’s gonna be just a driveling venting kind of thing. But this show is really irking me off more than others.

[Seto Kaiba]

8 hours ago, Big s said:

Spoiler

I can’t defend much in this show, but I kinda get the feeling that that was no accident.

My first thought goes to Kirsh. I think he may have sabotaged it to make himself look better than the new toys. Kinda like why he hasn’t said anything about the traitor bot.

But I also think that eye guy might be up to some shenanigans. He was there when a certain hatch was left open on that canister before and now there’s another hatch somehow left open to one of these enclosures.

Spoiler

IMO, there's no likely culprit for it to be intentional.

Kirsh has spent the entire series thus far as the staunchest advocate for the wellbeing and independence of the Hybrids.  Far more than even the Sylvias.  He encourages them to behave more like Synths, he gently counsels Wendy to make her own decisions, he supports Tootles's desire to pursue a career in science and to adopt a new name to reflect his new direction in life.  His treatment of the Hybrids is downright parental and he knows the Hybrids aren't a competing product by any means.  (If anything, he seems to quietly approve of the merger of Human and Synth.)

If Kirsh had malicious intent, it wouldn't make sense for him to have it towards the Hybrids.  He might hate the Human staff, but if that's the case it wouldn't make sense for him to compromise the cell in question.  He and the Hybrids have nothing to fear from the leeches, carnivorous plants, eye-ctopus, or even Xenomorph XX121.  The one cell that got compromised was the one cell with a creature that considers Synths prey... acid-spitting flies that eat electronics.

For its part, the Eye-ctopus has spent the entire time locked up in its cell in the head of a sheep.  It didn't compromise the leech canister back on the Maginot, the leeches did that themselves and the dozy science officer wasn't paying attention.  The hatches that got left open this time were opened by Arthur Sylvia and Slightly, because Arthur's an idiot and Slightly's being blackmailed.

The feeding hatch that got broken was ripped clean off its hinges by Tootles/Isaac with his Synth super-strength, so it seems like nothing more than an ordinary case of horror movie idiocy.

 

[Axelay]

I've reached the point in this series where I almost cannot wait for Weyland-Yutani to nuke the whole island (which is honestly what I hope happens in the end). And I have never once ever pulled for the "company" for any reason... until now.

I wonder why Morrow didn't say something during the arbitration hearing about the crash being intentionally caused?

[TehPW]

On 9/11/2025 at 1:48 PM, Axelay said:

I've reached the point in this series where I almost cannot wait for Weyland-Yutani to nuke the whole island (which is honestly what I hope happens in the end). And I have never once ever pulled for the "company" for any reason... until now.

I wonder why Morrow didn't say something during the arbitration hearing about the crash being intentionally caused?

I have not yet watched this series yet (between the clips i see on YT and the comments here, i remain uncommitted). 

As for the use of nuclear weapons, wasn't the end of the fourth Alien film set on a destroyed land scape (possibly Paris, France, depending on the application of Deleted scenery or not)? likely the home world will be nuked... what would be funny? Someone the Octo-Eye is currently driving is the one that pushes the button.

Edited September 15 by TehPW
random idea about Octo-Eye

[Axelay]

Here's another thing which is bugging the hell out of me - If the Maginot had been out for 65 years, then how are some of the specimens still alive? Assuming that the specimens were collected at roughly the halfway point in the voyage before heading home, then wouldn't that make some of them potentially be 30 years old...? I am not clear on whether the specimens were put into cryo sleep, or even whether or not it would work on them. Seems like a big gamble to collect specimens and not know whether or not they'd make it back home. And do you think that they left Teng to tend to them the whole time when the rest of the crew was in cryo?

The more I think about the writing for this series, the more it bothers me. I wish I could stop trying to analyze.

[Seto Kaiba]

On 9/11/2025 at 1:48 PM, Axelay said:

I wonder why Morrow didn't say something during the arbitration hearing about the crash being intentionally caused?

Probably because he wouldn't be able to prove it.

Spoiler

The only proof that the Maginot crashed due to sabotage rather than a simple accident or crew incompetence is the comm log of Boy Cavalier and the Maginot's chief engineer Petrovich.  That log, and the ship, is in Prodigy's hands and Boy Cavalier has almost certainly covered his tracks by now.

 

26 minutes ago, TehPW said:

As for the use of nuclear weapons, wasn't the end of the fourth Alien film set on a destroyed land scape (possibly Paris, France, depending on the application of Deleted scenery or not)? likely the home world will be nuked... what would be funny? Someone the Octo-Eye is currently driving is the one that pushes the button.

Yeah, the deleted scene at the end of Alien: Resurrection is set in a post-apocalyptic Paris.

They're not clear on what caused the planet to be so ruined and abandoned in the time between Alien 3 and Alien: Resurrection, but it was apparently already basically abandoned well before the start of the movie.

IMO, it'd be more on brand for the franchise if the reason Earth is a ruin in the late 24th century is because the megacorps that were overthrown by that time simply destroyed the environment through shortsighted pollution and ecological destruction.  Like how Boy Cavalier crashed a starship full of invasive species into his own city simply to deny it to W-Y.

 

9 minutes ago, Axelay said:

Here's another thing which is bugging the hell out of me - If the Maginot had been out for 65 years, then how are some of the specimens still alive? Assuming that the specimens were collected at roughly the halfway point in the voyage before heading home, then wouldn't that make some of them potentially be 30 years old...? I am not clear on whether the specimens were put into cryo sleep, or even whether or not it would work on them. Seems like a big gamble to collect specimens and not know whether or not they'd make it back home. And do you think that they left Teng to tend to them the whole time when the rest of the crew was in cryo?

The more I think about the writing for this series, the more it bothers me. I wish I could stop trying to analyze.

That is a really good question.  I don't think the writers were expecting anyone to ask that one. 🤔

Xenomorph XX121 eggs seem to last basically forever (based on Alien and Aliens), but the other four species specimens (the flies, ticks, man-eating plant, and eye-ctopus) were all shown being transported live both in the lab and the cargo bay.

It wouldn't make sense to thaw them out at the same time as the crew considering how dangerous they are.  The smart thing to do would be to keep them on ice until after they got back to Earth if they could be frozen rather than risk any escaping.  If we assume the writers didn't simply forget or assume nobody would notice, either these alien lifeforms are very long-lived for insects and a tropical plant or the crew were breeding them to maintain the population.  The latter case might explain why they have a rotating crew that seems to be awake far more regularly in transit than the crews of the Nostromo, Sulaco, etc. instead of simply putting everyone into cryo until the ship got where it's going.

(Teng's human, BTW... he's just weird.) 

[pengbuzz]

Alien: Earth-

Spoiler

In Space, No One Can Hear You Derp....So We Put It On Earth!!!

 

Edited September 15 by pengbuzz

[Thom]

On 9/14/2025 at 9:40 PM, Seto Kaiba said:

...

Yeah, the deleted scene at the end of Alien: Resurrection is set in a post-apocalyptic Paris.

They're not clear on what caused the planet to be so ruined and abandoned in the time between Alien 3 and Alien: Resurrection, but it was apparently already basically abandoned well before the start of the movie.

IMO, it'd be more on brand for the franchise if the reason Earth is a ruin in the late 24th century is because the megacorps that were overthrown by that time simply destroyed the environment through shortsighted pollution and ecological destruction.  Like how Boy Cavalier crashed a starship full of invasive species into his own city simply to deny it to W-Y.

 

...

Found this on Reddit...

Quote

In the Lore Earth was only saved from major climate change due to Wayland Corp using terraforming tech to reverse much of the damage in the 2030/40s. But most animal life died off and a lot of plant life. They managed to rehabilitate parts of it. But the nice parts are completely off limits to regular people. Only the most elite of the rich are allowed to live in the reclaimed areas. The rest got used by corporate interests and are strip mined, clear cut, and all that's really left by the events of Aliens is mega cities filled with the poorest folk desperate to get work off world, and the Uber rich living in the lush, green garden zones. The Amazon rainforest is mentioned in one of the books. It is by the timeline of Aliens a few hundred acre nature reserve. People can win lottery tickets or pay big bucks to visit it. All the rest is long since cut down, the soil used up, and is now the Amazon drylands

So, basically the world of Blade Runner...

 

 

 

 

Edited September 16 by Thom

[Seto Kaiba]

11 hours ago, Thom said:

So, basically the world of Blade Runner...

Assuming that Expanded Universe lore is canon.  In most franchises, it wouldn't be.

 

 

Oh boy, "Emergence".  Here things go emerging again.  We've got idiocy, we've got negligence, we've got corporate malice... it's basically the Xenomorph's superbowl.

Seems like they've settled on "Strange Brew" by Cream for their opening reference in the last couple episodes.  Did they run out of money to license music for the sake of one on-the-nose lyric?

Spoiler

We're back where we left off, more or less.

Slightly has apparently dragged the facehugged Dr. Sylvia back to his bedroom and hidden him under a desk.  It makes you wonder how nobody has noticed.  You'd think that multiple containment breaches in the "Secure Lab" would trigger some kind of alarm.  There are security cameras everywhere too.  Either Slightly is a ninja or he was somehow able to drag Dr. Sylvia all the way back to his room without anyone seeing... which seems implausible to say the least.  Especially considering the island's security was said to be beefed up recently.

I would like to credit Smee with the first actually-believable reaction by a person in this work.

Spoiler

Freaking out when you find your friend is hiding the body of a man with an alien monster stuck to his face is the objectively correct reaction.

Not immediately running off to alert security to the escape of a highly dangerous extraterrestrial monster... less so.  Smee very unwisely agrees to help Slightly.  Kirsh misses catching them in the act by mere seconds.

There IS an alarm going off in and around the lab because of the breach, and Kirsh apparently can close containment doors remotely from his tablet.  The escaped acid flies prove to be barely an inconvenience for the two-man cleanup team who walk right up to them, zap them with cattle prods until they pass out, and toss them back into their cell.  We literally see one scooped up with a garden variety plastic dustpan.  We learn that the flies are apparently from a world with little organic matter, and that they have evolved to digest minerals.  Presumably this is why Isaac registered as "lunch" and they seem to pay the organic containment team no mind.  Cavalier is impressed by what he's interpreting as clear evidence of forethought and planning by the eye-ctopus and wants it relocated.

Every story where immortality is a fixture of the plot needs to have that moment where someone is reminded forcibly of the important difference between functional immortality and complete immortality.

It's one thing to be The Ageless, it's quite another to be impervious to physical harm.  The Hybrids are the former, not the latter.

Spoiler

Wendy, it seems, has just learned the difference on seeing Isaac's corpse.  She initially denies that he's dead because "We're premium" and then panics when she realizes the Hybrids can in fact die due to injury.  She tries to leave the lab to tell the others, and when it looks like Cavalier won't let her, she threatens to set the Xenomorph on them... revealing she can talk to them.

This, I think, is perhaps the worst and most story-breaking part of Alien: Earth.  Xenomorph XX121 apparently has language and can be communicated with.  To the extent it can and will intervene on the behalf of non-XX121s if asked.  If this thing is intelligent enough to communicate and strategize with why are almost all of them aside from Big Chap and this one Prodigy grew presented as near-mindless violent animals?

Cavalier has his "Oh crap" moment when he and Kirsh discover that the recently dismissed Arthur Sylvia disabled the tracking systems in the Hybrids and locked them out of the system.  How he has the ability to do that is another question since even if his credentials were active his superiors should have elevated permissions above his.

Hermit and Wendy decide to run off and try to rescue everybody as they go.  Nibs is in denial about her memory wipe, and Curly is too busy simping for Boy Cavalier to pay any attention, but she's scared enough to leave when she learns Isaac died.  

Well, OK then.  In most Human cultures, murder is considered a dick move.

Spoiler

After getting Curly to promise not to tell on them, Wendy uses her unexplained Mary Sue powers to unleash the Xenomorph to cover their escape.

Bare minimum, she just murdered six people for the sake of a diversion.  The three-man team working on the Xenomorph she killed back in Ep3, two guards, and a random lab tech observing.  More realistically she probably just killed everyone on the island. 

Worse, Hermit is looking directly at the screen as the Xenomorph gets loose and starts eviscerating people and just asks "What did you do?" like it's not bloody obvious what she just did.

So we have a new narrative problem.

Who do you root for when absolutely everyone is a maximally sh*tty person?  We had a protagonist until a minute ago, now we just have some kind of Villain Battle Royale.

I'm gonna have to say I'm joining Team Horrible Space Monsters.  Somehow, they're the least horrid people in this story.

Spoiler

Dame Sylvia is staring wistfully at pictures of her husband on the sofa, in a manner that sounds very dramatic in a writer's head but just comes off as a terrible cliche.  

She's confronted by Kirsh and Cavalier, who believe she's part of a plan to steal the Hybrids and smuggle them off the island.  They're interrupted by the alarm set off by the escaped Xenomorph.

Somehow, some way, despite multiple platoons of armed guards wandering the halls, Slightly and Smee's bullsh*t adventure has seen them get basically all the way to the front f***ing door without being detected.  Kirsh walks in on them.  He apparently knew all along that Morrow was talking to Slightly.  For some reason, he helps them and tells them a better way to the beach via a secure elevator.

Time for some unnecessary digressions!

Spoiler

Wendy, Nibs, and Hermit find a graveyard on their path with six headstones bearing the names of the children who became the Hybrids.  Wendy insists "it's not us", but Nibs is having another mental breakdown and their little moment is broken up by spotting a Prodigy PMC fireteam nearby.  

How TF big is this island?  Seriously.  It feels like these idiots have been walking forever.

We get a closeup of the weapons that the Prodigy troops are carrying.  One looks to be a forerunner or variant of the pulse rifle seen in Alien: Romulus and Alien 2.  Another seems to be the same M134-based minigun seen in Predator.

Spoiler

Arthur conveniently disappears during this like five second lapse in attention, only for those two idiots to get jumpscared twice... once by the dead facehugger, and once by the now-awake Arthur.  It's pretty pathetic that this is a more effective scare than anything else the series has brought so far.  They don't do a very good job of lying about what'd happened to him, but he seems addled enough to just go with it.  He thanks them for saving his life, which Slightly now feels very bad about. 

Arthur remembers what actually happened (including the parts he was unconscious for?!) and realizes he's being lied to pretty much just in time to try to dispense some cheap life lesson about lying and try to walk them back when the chestburster kills him.

This was meant to build tension and then deliver a sharp shock, but it falls flat because the outcome was so incredibly obvious and cliched.

You can't do horror effectively if everyone in the story is behaving like an idiot with no sense of self-preservation.  It stops being scary and starts being unintentionally funny.

Spoiler

Curly wakes up Dame Sylvia to try to have a personal moment.  Oh, you don't wanna make that promise.  Things are NOT gonna be OK.

Where did Slightly and Smee get this clearly handmade bamboo raft precisely large enough to hold a single dead body?  Is that a thing Prodigy just keeps around?  Are we going to have security wondering where one of the corpse rafts went?

A Weyland-Yutani amphibious assault team lands on Neverland and captures Slightly and Smee.

Cavalier learns the Xenomorph got out of the facility via a waste pipe and Wendy and the Lost Boys are all missing (presumably save for Curly).  Also, Boy Cavalier apparently decided to put the eye-ctopus in his quarters for some reason.  Apparently our newest plot twist is that this thing is sentient.  It can read.  Boy Cavalier shows it the first three digits of Pi and asks it for the next three and it gives them by stomping its feet.  So now he wants to stick it in a person.

Weyland-Yutani team two finds Hermit, Wendy, and Nibs and somehow lays a perfect ambush on two superhumans.  For the second time in a row, Wendy sets a Xenomorph on a bunch of humans apparently without a care in the world.  This becomes another moment of Special Effects Failure because whooboy is it obvious the xeno here is a guy inside a rubber suit who is clearly having trouble moving.  Somehow this entire platoon of soldiers fail to land a single hit on it and all die, and Wendy decides that the giant murder monster she's used to murder like twenty people and counting needs headpats.

So you can just throw a net over a chestburster and it can't get out?  That's... that's a decision.  

Morrow's team walks right into a trap and are rescued by Kirsh, who caught the chestburster from before.  

You can tell that this is a dock by the rusted generic shipping containers just sitting places.  That's a thing that docks have, right?

Spoiler

This dock seemingly is home to only a single small motorboat, which the rest of Hermit's team were guarding knowing the idiot would attempt to steal it thanks to his earlier terrible attempts to solicit info.

Do Star Trek-style transporters exist in Alien?  Because this episode has a lot, and I mean a LOT, of people just popping right TF outta nowhere the minute it's dramatic to.

Someone really loves that scene at the end of Goldeneye where Bond and the girl discover the patch of grass they were making out on was like the one patch of grass in eyeshot that WASN'T a dude in a ghilli suit and three helicopters nobody noticed appear as if by magic.

Spoiler

Much like the Weyland-Yutani ambush of the team a few minutes back, like two dozen armed Prodigy guards pop out of the f***ing ground or something to surround and arrest Hermit and co.

Nibs reacts to a guy tossing her stuffed animal in the water by crushing his jaw and then ripping it clean off his face.  Then Wendy and Nibs beat up the other guards on the boat while everyone else conveniently forgets that they have guns.  Hermit has to stun Nibs to stop her from going full Predator on one of them.  Looks like that might have killed Nibs.  So we close on Wendy screaming at Hermit "What did you do?!".

 

 

Well... decisions were certainly made.  Not good ones, in my opinion, but decisions nonetheless.

I'm going to go ahead and call it now.

Spoiler

Wendy is the True Final Boss.

I think she knows, deep down, that she is a Synth with Marcy's memories and not the real Marcy.  I think that, plus having her belief in her own immortality shaken, is driving her to homicidal psychosis the same way Nibs is having trauma-induced violent psychotic episodes.  She just happens to have more going for her than her synthetic body's super-strength since she has technomancy and can control the Xenomorph.

My money is on her being killed by Hermit at the end, because she'll want to make the rest of Humanity suffer for what happened to her.