Alien: Earth is receiving excellent reviews

I'm a HUGE Alien franchise fan and I didn't even know about this! It has really good reviews. I'll be watching this. Thanks OP.

Here's the trailer in case anyone is interested. It looks excellent.

It's television, Jim

Its a series ........ Disappointed it's not a movie.

Anyone watching yet?

No. Next.

Don't all shows start off with excellent reviews? I can't remember the last time I saw a new release that had bad reviews.

Thanks for reminder OP. Noah Hawley has an impressive track record. I have high hopes.

Ridley Scott is executive producer so this will be top notch.

It has the 1979 look down pat.

Yeah it looks really authentic and faithful to the original Alien but also updated and modern at the same time R10.

Wow Hulu is really trying to keep me as a subscriber right now between this and the return of King of the Hill.

I just watched the first episode on FX. It's bleak and scary and very well done. If you're depressed do not watch it.

[quote]Ridley Scott is executive producer so this will be top notch.

Oh, please. His films suck now.

I was getting bored during episode one, trying to figure out why the black android and the Asian man in the spaceship are so disagreeable, watching some sick girl get her body switched into an adult with super powers, then we have to see her "learn" about having boobs now and watch old movies. Following some sad sack through rainy streets and some billionaire genius acting funky. Why is Timothy Olyphant looking like a meth lesbian or cracked out Billy Bob Thornton?

I kinda tuned out around when the alien ships started falling to earth. Guess I'll try again

I'll give it a go, but the portentous dialogue and plodding ASMR line readings in the trailer don't inspire confidence.

I like Noah Hawley, but after watching forty minutes of this I’m confused why it even exists. They spent an absolute fortune on it, well north of 250 million. It certainly looks expensive. Given the diminishing returns of the Alien movies in the past decade, it makes little sense for FX to spend that much. It’s received barely any promotion, and the promotion that it has gotten has been troubled at best with the main star not showing up to interviews because she clearly dislikes Hawley and Olyphant (who is doing some sort of weird performance copied from Guy Pearce in Prometheus.

The first episode is an uncomfortable mix of Blade Runner, Spielberg’s A.I. and a direct copy of the first Alien with multiple dumb jump scares that have no effect. I just… don’t get it. The action is dull and the talky scenes even duller. Make it make sense.

The first episodes are usually to introduce characters and plotlines. I'll give it a chance. I have always been a fan of the franchise. It's better than most science fiction out here and Ridley raised some terrifying possibilities about the future of the human race. I thought the weakest movies were the Alien vs Predator ones. Those were garbage. I never got why they literally killed children after transferring all the usable parts to the clones or who ever they are. Super Androids? This is a very dark series. I can already see that much. I don't recommend it for those who are fragile.

They had major productions issues. It’s been in production since 2020. Pandemic screwed it and then screwed again by the writer’s strike. They finally finished shooting early last summer but took another year to release. It feels disjointed to me, that’s probably why.

It was pretty engrossing story wise, and I love the characters with children’s brains and adult bodies.

I do wish the acting were at a higher calibre, which has been my big problem with a lot of the post Prometheus films. When that first chest bursted popped out in the original Alien everyone on camera looked fully and truly SCARED, and the palpability of the actors’ fear was a huge reason why the film succeeded.

The scene in this show were the female crew member was banging on the door to the control room begging to be let in because the monster was coming had zero stakes, she didn’t seem terrified to be dismembered by a lovecraftian monstrosity, instead it was as if she needed to pee real bad. Veronica Cartwright is missed.

I find it very hard to be truly engrossed in a film if the actors are bland, let alone subpar, but that's just me. I'm very finicky about audiobooks of novels for that reason. I'd rather bring the narrative to life in my head.

Fully agree that the cast from the original film was untouchable. What an amazing ensemble of stage and screen actors.

It's wonderful. I love the Alien Franchise and I loved Episode 1. More please!

Episode 2 was dropped and it's much better than the opener, IMO. I've also read the recaps on Collider and it helps make things clearer. But I am R22. This is gonna be amazing.

Finished episode 2 - so far, I'm not that invested. I count 4-5 different storylines and none of them are making that much impact on me: the black android wanting to keep the xenomorph thriving, the super kids recruited to fight aliens, the genius asshole with a God complex, the girl looking for her brother, the aliens on earth causing havoc. The thing that struck me the most is how bloody and gory the series is.

I wonder if this will skew away from the aliens and become a weekly character study with flashbacks, ala Lost.

The best thing about this is Essie Davis.

it's very bleak.

Alien was very beak R26. The whole Alien series is bleak and fatal. The aliens kill everything they encounter and the victims have almost no chance of surviving. That's their reason for existing. And if you manage to kill an alien then their blood will eat through your ship and kill you that way. Pretty bleak.

I watched the first two episodes last night and LOVED it because I really want to see what happens when the Xenomorphs escape into the general populace. I always thought that an Alien 5 could have been made picking up were Alien Resurrection left off where the ship was in the process of touching down on Earth. I really enjoyed the tributes paid to Alien and how the sets and tech all match the 1979 movie but expand on it. There's obviously been a lot of money spent on the show - I read it was more expensive than Shogun. Agree with others who have said the storyline seems a bit disjointed and what R19 posted makes that make sense. I'm looking forward to more episodes before judgement.

What grosses me out and makes it hard to watch is the very realistic way they have these mutations where a cat or some other familiar creature gets "impregnated" and something gross and disgusting burst from it. That cat licking blood was extremely gross. This series may be entirely too graphic for a TV show even if it is streaming.

Yes, no one expects graphic violence from the Alien franchise.

I was disappointed that the Versailles dinner party massacre occurred off screen

Maybe next week R30!

I absolutely love that shot of the sparks in the mirror when the soldier first realizes the gravity of the spaceship wreck.

The SFX are impressive for a TV show. I love that they kept the widescreen like a theatrical production. And the cast seems perfect for their characters. Last night's back-to-back episodes felt like a movie (without an ending, of course). I'll be watching.

Just to clarify some confusion about the various “androids”:

Androids, or “Synths” are advanced robotics with artificial intelligence.

Cyborgs are robotically enhanced humans.

Hybrids are humans whose consciousness has been transferred into the body of a synth.

R30 me too!

why would there be confusion r34, your post is almost word for word the very first piece of information we get in episode one, after the credits, before the story starts.

R36 Some posts on this thread have referred to certain characters as androids as opposed to their appropriate classification. It’s easy to get confused.

“Excellent reviews” lured me into the theater for the last Alien film and it sucked. Alien fans are easy to please as long as you stick to the formula.

For me, Alien ended with the death of Helen Ripley in Alien 3. Everything after that sucked.

Helen Died?!

R39 that's Ellen Ripley, if you please and she comes back to life in Alien Resurrection enhanced by her favorite DNA, which is a great movie.

Just call me Ripley. No one calls me Ellen.

The show's composer, Jeff Russo, does not have any formal musical training or a background in 20th/21st-century concert music, and it shows. It's all crude gestures and stock sample library aleatorics rendering pale imitations of Goldsmith/Horner/Goldenthal.

R38 Have you checked your expectations lately?

I thought the first two episodes were just meh.

The first two episodes became great when the focus was on the xenomorph and the other monsters (the eye with tentacles was creepy). But when the focus was on Wendy or the Prodigy CEO, the series became really, really dull. Wendy is not a compelling character, and neither is the CEO; both are annoying. The "child in an adult's body" plot point isn't handled well. And if your main character isn't vulnerable to the villain (the xenomorph), then there's no dramatic tension.

The violence is way more graphic than expected. The production itself looks really expensive, and the details look carefully curated. The opening scene on the spaceship evoked the original film really well.

Did the second hour get any better? I turned it off after the first one. The brother/sister thing just ground everything to a halt.

I thought the second episode was better. But that's me.

I saw the first episode. Meh

I went in expecting the level of tension you got from Alien or Aliens, or even Romulus. But this being a series, I think the first episodes are more focused on building up the main characters which ultimately worked for me. The leading brother and sister are sweet enough and smart enough that I can see identifying with them in future episodes.

R46 We don't know if Wendy and the other hybrids are going to be invulnerable. I can imagine the xeno shredding them to bits with those claws or its acid blood.

Third episode and I was feeling zero tension when the alien was threatening Wendy and her brother. But I guess we're supposed to be curious why it is not killing them outright when they are inches away.... did the alien "sense" something from them? Whatever, it's dead now. Still don't care about the genius asshole and his quest to make an alien his weapon.

Lastly, those adult actors who have to play like they're still just kids are cringeworthy. Their conversations and interactions are so bad! The red-haired girl just looks stunned and the black and Indian guys are trying too hard.

I've decided I don't like the young guy in charge, the boy genius who is inventing these clones and who is stealing the alien creatures to experiment on them. He is terribly annoying. I do like Kirsh. I hope he doesn't turn into a bad guy.

R50, I can't recall if the Alien attacked the ones in the earlier movies? Didn't Michael Fassbender's character get ripped up? And I thought the first two had injured androids? What I don't get is that thisissupposed to be taking place afew years before the first Alien movie with Sigourney asRipley. It seems like this should be happening after?

The thing is we know that the Aliens don't infest Earth because this is two years before the first Alien movie and fortysomething years before Aliens. So what's the point of this show? We know that the infestation is somehow going to be stopped. And apparently it's these retarded kids who do it.

Three eps in and it seems like this is yet another limited series that would've been better as a two hour movie.

R55 I suspect we are the wrong demographic for it. This series targets a younger audience than us old farts. Of course I'm speaking for myself. I know most of you are still in your 20's. It's so obvious.....

I am old as fuck and am enjoying it so far.

Zero tension indeed but fun to watch, so far.

The sex scene with the alien was unnecessary

I was going to avoid because it seemed a rather weak premise. It's not great so far but an unexpected surprise was the introduction of humanoids formidable enough to tangle with Xenomorphs.

[quote] The sex scene with the alien was unnecessary

R59 Where was the sex?

How did I miss the sex?

R61 it was a joke

R59 wasn't there something unnatural going on with Winona Ryder and Sigourney Weaver in Alien Resurrection? It was the 4th movie.

The third episode rather bored me. I find myself caring about the characters less and less.

It sucks ass.

There’s just no pleasing some of you old farts.

[quote] [R61] it was a joke

I actually think it was a dizzy queen who watched Alien Resurrection by mistake.

It’s like a somber reboot of ‘The Big Bang Theory’

I’m enjoying it so far with the bleak atmosphere. The Blade Runner and Peter Pan mash ups are working for me.

Is it worth coming back to? I couldn’t make it through the first episode.

It's meh so far r70

Besides the beginning with the xenomorph, episode three was pretty boring. You could have condensed the remaining 45 minutes into about 10 and not lost much.

The main mistake this show has made is to put children into adult bodies with adult actors.

I was bored and fast forwarding through Episode 2. Will I even bother with 3? There is nothing clever or surprising or new going on.

Alex Lawther is a good actor in certain roles. But he feels really miscast here.

I'm liking it so far.

In space no one can hear you say BRO (or dude!)

The xenomorph's two-jawed mouth is based on the moray eel's.

The child-like robots or whatever they're called are ruining it for me.

Yeah, they don't make sense in a story that needs to be driven by the vulnerability of its main characters to generate suspense.

I thought the first two eps were kinda meh, but I really liked the 3rd one. Timothy Olyphant is a chameleon- he was so goofy in, "The Santa Clarita Diet".

If you want to see a really good more realistic movie of what an alien might look like check out Life (2017) with Ryan Renolds and Jake Gyllenhaal. I get tired of aliens always being some guy in a costume. This move does not do that. It's more like what a possible encounter might be like.

I wish the Timothee Chalamet knock-off would put some fucking shoes on.

I thought she wasn't moving very fast when she was looking for her brother, moments after they had shown her moving super fast with her superpowers.

I also don't like the kids in the adult bodies. You just have adults talking and acting like they're retarded. It should've been adults in the synth bodies.

And the brother and sister just need to DIE already.

I loved Alien Romulus because I cared about the characters. I haven’t got an attachment to the characters in this one yet.

It's so poorly conceived I want an Alien character to root for. To dispose of some of the rotten disagreeable or deeply boring characters we are supposed to like. Am I the only one?

I'm really enjoying it so far. I must be the only person in this thread who doesn't expect this to be better than The Godfather.

I think there will be a special surprise for the CEO character down the line. He will die in an alien altercation in a spectacular way. Looking forward to that. However, as others have posted - I'm also not loving the children in the adult bodies and don't see the point of it. But I'm willing to see where it all goes. Perhaps they will mature at a sped up rate? If so they should do it real soon.

Whoever upthread recommended the film "Life", you owe me $3.89. I rented it last night and it was PURE SHIT.

I like it so far, I also thing the CEO will get it at some point. I kind of like the brother sister thing. As far the the kids in the adult bodies, as they mentioned, a young brain is open to possibility that adults are not, creativity. I get that because as someone who have worked in a creative field all my life, keeping an open to all possibility when creating things is a struggle as an older person. Your life time of experience with previous wins and failures make you want to edit or prejudge new ideas. Something kids don't do.

Something in the storyline that annoys me in this and many other films is the shoehorning of something culturally specific to our recent times in something set hundreds of years in the future. I know it’s suppose to make it more relatable to the audience, but it’s just not credible. This is set in 2120. Do you really think people are going to give a shit about specifics of baseball that happened 150 years ago? For context, how currently obsessed are you with the cultural trends of the 1870’s?

Yeah, that baseball thing was stupid, though the same thing. You just know that writer was some straight Bro assuming Field of Dreams will still be a thing 150 years in the future.

In contrast, the immature Trillionaire CEO I could totally see as a thing still happening. He's like a Mark Zuckerberg / Elon type and I have seen that charter now in a few different Sci-Fi movies. I think the days of old men who spent a lifetime obtaining wealth is over. We don't live in an industrial age anymore, everything is digital or viral type of business where wealth comes almost overnight or not at all.

[quote]For context, how currently obsessed are you with the cultural trends of the 1870’s?

Guess you haven't read any of the Gilded Age threads.

R92 - I agree, it came across like an ageing out Yankees fan wanted to leave his childhood memories as a mark in the film. The franchise has done stuff like this in the past too like using John Denver’s ‘Country Roads’ which was instantly recognised by one of the crew in the future in Alien Covenant. I agree in your second point about billionaire douches. They may well exist like that in the future.

RR3 - touché, I’m sure there is are people out there cosplaying Alva Vanderbilt on a daily basis especially after Gilded Age.

Since this take place before the first Alien movie, we can assume that Prodigy fails, and the Xenos are eradicated from earth, only for Nostromo from Weylan-Yutani to find one of them again. Possibly WY takes over Prodigy, as they have a synth on board Nostromo.

[quote]Whoever upthread recommended the film "Life", you owe me $3.89. I rented it last night and it was PURE SHIT.

What? But Ryan Reynolds was in it. How could it be pure shit? All of his movies are so watchable.

Life was not “pure shit,” Idk what that poster was talking about. I thought it was a good horror thriller and that creature made my skin crawl—I saw the film years ago and I can still see the alien in my mind. Was it a great movie? Not by most measures. But it wasn’t a waste of time, I can tell you that much. The director did a good job, the actors did a good job, it had great production value. It left a lasting impression and I enjoyed it.

The best part of "Life" was Ryan Reynolds dying a gruesome death within the first 30 minutes.

Well Ryan's character was supposed to be kind of a jackass so there is that. It was an entertaining movie. And like R2 said, the alien will creep you out. Not some stupid dude in a rubber costume.

Now if you want to see a really shitty sci-fi movie, probably the worst I have ever see, go watch Adam Sandler ins Space Man. The alien which he bonds with is a stupid stuffed spider puppet. It's almost camp level stupid without being funny, or not supposed to be.

I am not responsible for the 2 hours of your life lost if you watch it.

I refuse to watch Adam Sandler movies.

This is getti g more interesting. I don’t understand why the red headed hybrid is glitching, what she went through didn’t seem so traumatizing

The red headed chick is so ugly, like a poor man's Molly Ringwald.

An eye octopus monster trying to get into your eyeballs is not traumatizing? Especially if you're mentally a child?

Mental children should not watch Sci-Fi then.

I'm totally not invested in anything going on in this show - I tune in because I programmed it into my DVR and once I start a show, I can't help but finish it.

The B-team synth kids are the most annoying, tied with the genius butthole. The character of Morrow is going for sinister but the threat is just not there and his interaction with the blubbering Indian kid is tedious because the actor is not selling it. Can't wait until red-head girl explodes from the inside with her alien baby.

Alex Lawther is a good actor but terribly miscast as the brother. And he looks way too much like the one who plays the CEO boy genius. When they’re in the same camera shot they look like they’re related.

Essie Davis finally had something to do in this most recent episode and she’s very good. Jennifer Saunders’ husband has the easiest role in show biz-he just stands around in a few scenes in each episode and delivers aminimum of dialogue using his snobby British accent. He might as well be playing a butler.

Blade Runner vibes.

Now that they’re at a lush resort peddling basic philosophical concepts most of the steam seems to have run out and stakes are now very character-specific.

This universe works much better on ships and wrecks, where danger is always a hop and a skip away.

That they’re giving these creatures elements of personality has long been considered sin in Horror.

La Marcy is Kyle Chandler’s daughter and I find her performance to be rather good.

Timothy Olyphant is aging like world’s finest wines.

Timothy Olyphant is like a block of wood. They could kill him off tomorrow and no one would even notice. He reminds me of the Blade Runner dude with white hair. Feels like they threw him in there just for that reason. We need a stiff creepy guy with white hair.

I think I’m going to stop watching at this point.

They’re going to drag this out forever, aren’t they? I know this isn’t a popular opinion but I’m sick of American tv shows having to go on and on and on for multiple seasons, and now of course, there being 2, 3 , 4 years or more between seasons. Doesn’t anyone want to see just a few episodes of a story anymore that holds your attention and plays out in less than 8 years? I do.

The crazy ginge girl, who we all knew from the beginning would be batshit crazy, declaring she’s “pregnant” and lunging at Dr. WhatsHerName, who had to call the guards….. we weren’t allowed to see that play out so that we could suffer more whimpering and quivering from Wendy’s clueless brother who STILL can’t read the room and get what’s happening.

And while I’m pointlessly bitching, could we PLEASE, for fuck’s sake, stop getting shots of the dirty, weird feet of the bargain basement Timothy Chalamet guy playing the evil Marc Zuckerberg role?

She’s not actually impregnated in any real way r105 , just nuts.

So this series, so far, is not about aliens, it's about indestructible kids.

What is it with girls who like to keep snakes and reptiles as pets

Think about it, r114.

They had an opportunity to cast a hot looking British or Scandinavian lad as the CEO boy genius. Someone with hot looking feets which would be featured in scene after scene. But Noah Hawley is a hetero idiot .

I hope the eventual horrible death of The Boy Genius will prove worth all these episodes I've been slogging through

Supposedly it picks up after this episode with the last couple of episodes being particularly action packed.

Normally Noah Hawley writes compelling characters even within heavy action and sci-fi settings, but these characters are just annoying across the board. The human characters--the brother and the scientists--are bland. The boy genius is especially unbearable and makes it hard to enjoy any scene he's in. I'm going to stick with this, but I would never guess this is a Noah Hawley series if I were watching it in isolation.

I like Hermit, Wendy's brother. I think he is a lot smarter than they realize and he is clearly "free" in his thinking. These people live in their own bubble. He clearly sees things much differently.

God this show is dragging.

[quote]They’re going to drag this out forever, aren’t they? I know this isn’t a popular opinion but I’m sick of American tv shows having to go on and on and on for multiple seasons,

You mean like a TV series that has several seasons? Oh what a world this has become, it's almost like I love Lucy and the Golden Girls should have stopped after the first season in your rational.

This last episode was really good. Boy Genius made sure the ocellus creature noticed him. That’s probably not going to go well for him,

The recaps said this last episode was excruciating and unwatchable.

On the other hand, Alan Sepinwall liked this episode:

"After having mixed feelings about last week's Alien: Earth, I was all-in on this week's installment, which gave us more of the eyeball monster, and finally started taking the Xenomorph material into a new and fascinating direction."

Halfway through the season, and I'm still not feeling it with this show. The scenes with the aliens are about the only interesting thing it has going for it; the rest is a slog. Wendy is not an interesting enough character to carry a show; Boy Cavalier is insufferable to the point his character almost ruins the show. The other characters are just plot points.

The Alien franchise lends itself to a lot of exploration and stories, but this one is really uninspired. Alien: Romulus did the brother-sister plot a year ago and executed it much better.

The problem with this series is that they won’t let us BINGE it. When you make us wait a week between episodes, we crave an action-packed payoff by the time it gets here. If we could’ve watched this as a full season, these slower episodes in the middle wouldn’t feel like such a drag. It’s not like Law & Order where each episode is a complete story with a satisfying conclusion.

I should’ve waited until the season ended then spent a weekend binging it on Hulu.

What happens if one of those eyeball things hijacks an android or a Xenomorph? Do xenomorphs even have eyes?

[quote]I should’ve waited until the season ended then spent a weekend binging it on Hulu.

Watched the first episode and intend to to just that for the rest of the season.

That alien eyeball thing would have an orgy in an ophthalmologist office.

I think we're overdosing on the alien creatures. IMO there is no longer an element of surprise or horror. Not nearly enough tension.

So Dame Sylvia’s first name is actually Dame because she’s married to the techie Arthur Sylvia? Really? How very gauche.

We’re still making movies and TV shows about figures from the late 1800s. Billy the Kid, Jesse James. And I don’t doubt we will still be talking about Ty Cobb and Babe Ruth a few decades from now.

Agree this is slow and underwhelming. Hopefully ext week will have more action at the compound.

Much as i hope for the alien attacks, so far they have been, paradoxically, both gory and not scary. Can’t put my finger on exactly why, maybe as someone said above results from poor acting.

Most scary alien thing so far is the gigantic rat’s nest wig in Dame Sylvia. I watch in fear of the moment one or several creatures will disentangle from it and attack.

That was just ok

During tonight ep, which was a variation of the original Alien movie, the was another shot of the woman who was still in cryosleep and was stared at by 1-2 of the male crew. I guess I missed her story: was she dead, not revived for a reason, equipment malfunction and kept under until the return to earth, what exactly was her role on the crew, etc. Can someone remind me, please? Thanks.

Only some of the crew is up at any given time.

It really bugs me how the computer technology is still a 1970s vision of what computers of the future would look like. Monochrome cathode ray tube monitors limited to alphanumeric character displays, keyboard data entry. Flashing lights. And when Morrow was searching video transmissions for the saboteur, he had to watch random videos until he found what he was looking for?

And let’s just say that the Weyland-Yutani Corp’s alien containment systems are . . . laughably inadequate.

I like the retro computer tech, it's very utilitarian which is how I picture the future to be, a hodgepodge of old and new. Not some Apple store in space.

Was everyone on the DEI alien collection spaceship retarded?

Apparently r139. Bloodthirsty dangerous parasite alien creatures and they were so not worried that some horrible shit could happen.

This shit just isn't as good without Sigourney.

Is anything?

R137 It’s intentional. The show is set two years before the events in the original Alien which premiered in 1979. It would make sense then, that a similar ship would have the same retro-futuristic design. It’s also a cool homage to the original film.

It's like every character - save the black cyborg guy - was intentionally written to be clownishly stupid.

I understand they are paying homage to the original 1979 conception, but I wish they had abandoned it . A lot of movies from the last century had no idea what technology of the future would look like. In Total Recall, they can reprogram human memory and colonize Mars, but to make a video call required standing in front of a fixed location call booth.

In particular, computers that can only interact with keyboard data entry and display on cathode ray monochrome monitors is an especially egregious lack of imagination, especially in a world that has cyborgs.

^should say was a lack of imagination in 1979. Now it’s kept for continuity and nostalgia.

I did not like any of the acting or characterizations in this episode. Visually it had the right look- they looked like real people not CW heartthrobs, but whether due to bad writing, direction or limited range, the characterizations all came off charactatyrishband tbh slightly bizarre. What was the point of the creepy Asian dude? Why was the biologist so profoundly careless? Has the art of naturalistic acting completely died out? Just look how believable weaver is in her screen test. Everyone on this show is written in broad strokes that are then acted inside of huge quotation marks and it kills all the things that made the original so intense and immediate

[quote]A lot of movies from the last century had no idea what technology of the future would look like.

It's called an alternative universe and movie magic. You are bitching about how it's not accurate tech wise but willing to believe Aliens landed on Earth, breathing our air, walking upright eating people is totally plausible?

That great big Alien that was chasing the woman captain who had been relieved. OMG it was really terrible. It looked like a tall guy in a very bad Halloween costume.

[quote] It looked like a tall guy in a very bad Halloween costume.

So did the alien in the original. It still worked.

If everything was CGI, I suppose you’d all become experts in that and complain about how much it sucked.

The nit-picking, complaining, whining, and joy-sucking is particularly unusual even by DL standards.

I can't decide who was stupider, this crew of mentally challenged clowns or the crew of the Prometheus

Well, space truck drivers are not usually known for their high intelligence. Wasn't the Prometheus basically a mining ship?

I loved the whole sequence with the eye. And how those wormy looking things snuck into the water bottle and then the mouthy young guy drank it, and when t hey opened him up he had all these bugs infesting his organs. Now that was some very excellent special effects. But the giant Alien looked too muscular. In the movies it looked scrawny and bug like except for it's head.

No one will ever beat Ridley Scott's genius Alien. The movie which should have been awarded Best Picture. No question about it.

R152 you're thinking of the Nostromo. That crew was pretty competent, and behaved rationally. Not that that helped them in the end

Junior Security Officer Clem was pretty cute. Mechanic twink Malachite was also kinda cute but they almost made him too stupid to be on the crew.

[quote] It's called an alternative universe and movie magic. You are bitching about how it's not accurate tech wise but willing to believe Aliens landed on Earth, breathing our air, walking upright eating people is totally plausible?

Completely different things. Aliens and interstellar travel were fantasy in 1979 and remain fantasy today. Computers are real and a part of everyday life. The idea that computer interfaces and technology remain frozen in what someone in 1979 thought was “futuristic” but got completely wrongis kind of silly when so much care is spent on building an otherwise advanced technological world.

You sound like an idiot, R157.

I’m glad you think so.

[quote]you're thinking of the Nostromo.

Yes, I stand corrected. Thanks.

I am sure R157 your oh so insightful opinion was considered by the writers, the producers, and the set designers and builders before they did that. How could they have missed your opinion?

Obviously. I’m criticizing their choices, not claiming they didn’t make any.

Respecting the original aesthetic makes the most sense to preserve continuity. Updates to a setting's aesthetic to account for advances in technology are often received poorly. Star Trek: Discovery is one of the most recent examples of this. Strange New Worlds returned to the TOS aesthetic and was much better received. Admittedly, that's far from the only reason, but it was a significant factor. I think it's also clear that Noah Hawley wants to tell a "classic" Alien story, so the aesthetic supports that.

An interesting element this week is that maybe the eye creature is "good" in some way. It seemed to be trying to warn the scientist about the tick breach and possibly drove off the xenomorph temporarily. It's obviously still a parasite, but there may be more to it in its intelligence.

Episode five was an improvement over the previous few, but it still had pacing issues. The crew of the ship were pretty stupid in how they handled dangerous creatures. The eyeball fighting the xenomorph was a highlight.

To be so sophisticated and so far into the future, these people clearly have no knowledge of or apparently interest in containment protocols, backup containment scenarios etc. It’s bordering on the absurd how easily the aliens are able to get out of their containers and run around. One and only on door going into the research lab, no backup doors or airlocks or anything. Air vents that are easily accessed from inside the supposedly “high security” labs. Scientists and doctors operating on people infected by aliens with not even a paper mask over their faces much less biohazard suits or respirators. I mean, I know it’s fantasy but shit, did the writers just blow off all the basic stuff so they could rush and get to the aliens slaughtering people?

Oh, also, they can transplant Human consciousness into synthetic robots but clearly they’ve forgotten how to produce high def, color and/or flat panel monitors, opting instead for 1960s era TV’s inserted into walls. This show is a hot mess.

The evil hybrid unwilling for the Asian woman, the black guy… could they have maybe put some clothes on him before he walked around in his underwear? He can produce lethal daggers and blowtorches out of his hands but he can’t cut back on the carbs?

R167, this is why I love DL

This was a massively expensive multigenerational mission by one of the leading powers on earth whose entire purpose was to find and bring back creatures so dangerous they could be turned into weapons. The sloppiness of the containment protocols and infrastructure is an insult to our intelligence.

It worked in Alien because that ship was not designed to contain a dangerous alien life form. This ship would have been.

Basically, a glass jar on a shelf is the best these interstellar-traveling cyborgs could come up with?

I still love the old 1950's space alien movies better. I especially like that we had giant anys and spiders chasing people because nucleer fall out.

What's the deal with that weird simpering flat affect Asian guy? I assumed he was a synthetic of some sort but usually Aliens don't go for that kind of milky white meat.

The Asian guy was jerking off to the girl in the sleeping pod every day. Pervert.

I can’t keep track of who’s a cyborg, who’s a synth and who’s just a weirdo. The bald guy who hangs around Boy is apparently a human while Timothy Olyphant is a synth. Morrow is a cyborg. Teng was apparently just a weird human.

that weird Asian guy plot thread was random, had zero payoff and added nothing to the story

[quote] It's obviously still a parasite, but there may be more to it in its intelligence.

The eyeball parasite is so lovable. I want one.

Bobby? Bobby, is that you?

You know, this show got me thinking. Does anyone else believe that there are a whole lot of labs and scientific experiments with transplanting brains from one species to another? I'm not suggesting you'd give a rabbit the brain of a lion. But let's say you have a kangaroo and a deer and you tried it. I look at Wendy and I wonder if in the future they will be able to transplant a whole lot of things to give people who are dying a new life, so to speak. I found the comments between President Xi of China, and Putin very interesting. They were talking about people being able to live for 150 years and to just keep getting organ transplants. So conceptually where does that end? Is this Alien series and the movies suggesting that there is an interest in all these alien creatures beyond using them as weapons? I mean, in the past I read about doctors using heart valves from a pig to repair damage in a human. And even the heart of a chimpanzee into a human.

Yes, R178, all of that will happen and in the not too distant future. I don't know about using aliens as weapons but people will be able to live 150 and more due to technological advancements. They'll think of us the way we think of our ancestors who died at an average of 30 years old.

I know people in their 70's and 80's who have taken good care of themselves and are in much better shape than my Grandmother was in her 60's.

Why would you want to put the brain of a deer into a kangaroo?

I can imagine that technology might be able to translate personal memories and character traits into digital information that could exist outside of biological time. But once you do that, why leave the bad traits and trauma? Why not improve yourself and add happy memories and then at what point are you no longer you? What’s the point of living forever?

[quote] Why would you want to put the brain of a deer into a kangaroo?

Because the deer identifies as a kangaroo.

I'm sure there's all sorts of freaky biological experiments going on. A small example, back in 2013 a son in Arizona donated his mother's body, who had died of Alzheimer's, to a company for research into the disease that killed her. Instead the company, Biological Resource Center, sold it to the Army for bomb experiments, ie, they blew it up. It turned into a big scandal and when the company was finally investigated they discovered a huge horror show, including heads sown onto different bodies.

When you donate a body to “science,” you better read the fine print.

R184, you just made me spit out some of my coffee.

[quote]When you donate a body to “science,” you better read the fine print.

If you actually give a fuck about what happens to your body when you're dead.

Some people want their parents remains treated with respect and dignity, I suppose. Fucking idiots

[quote]I can imagine that technology might be able to translate personal memories and character traits into digital information that could exist outside of biological time

In case you missed it in the very first episode, even if you could implant the memories into some other bio mechanical body, you still would be lacking all the the other things that make up the personalty. Like loss of testosterone, adrenaline, sleep cycles for offloading during dream states etc. All biological things that affect the brain.

It's really a lot more complicated than just sewing back on a missing finger. I read about an attempted head transplant of monkey a while back, connecting the spinal cord etc. When the brought the monkey out of Anesthesia it opened it's eyes, couldn't move and died almost instantly. The brain also controls breathing so....

[quote]When the brought the monkey out of Anesthesia it opened it's eyes, couldn't move and died almost instantly.

Animal testing at its finest!

Can we please get back this hot mess but still somewhat interesting tv series? Please?

Heads sown onto the wrong bodies are much more fun than this thread's topic, R191.

Well the Eyeball Alien is basically an eyeball sown onto an octopus so it's quite on topic.

Like the above poster said, it is so fucking stupid that these deadly alien creatures are being kept in glass containers and the containment room is just another room on the ship and not some high-security lockdown-type place with its own ventilation system. Ridiculous.

Has Alex Lawther's homosexuality been discussed yet?

[quote] it is so fucking stupid that these deadly alien creatures are being kept in glass containers and the containment room is just another room on the ship and not some high-security lockdown-type place with its own ventilation system. Ridiculous.

Is that any different that what they used to do on the real space station? We have brought small earth species into space pretty much without any extra special containment room.

r196 these are dangerous deadly creatures from other worlds and nobody really knows much about them.

Well, they knew the critters were deadly and they needed them to kill the crew, so the fragile glass containers fit.

Killing the crew wasn't part of the plan.

Alex Lawther has a boyfriend.

They should've had a little hamster wheel in the cage of the eyeball thing

Maybe it was not glass at all. In fact in the real world glass of any kind would be bad in a weightless environment. Most likely it would have been some polycarboate, which is semi-bullet proof. But even that can break.

Ugh the annoying robot kids are back this episode.

Wendy/Marcy is so damned sanctimonious. Just like Gen Z.

OP looks like Alien: says Earth gets excellent reviews…

Honestly I'm just hate watching at this point

This show is a flop. If FX renews this hugely overexpensive misfire, they’re fools. Noah Hawley needs to stop being given the keys to major Hollywood properties. Enough.

Other than Timothy Olyphant, every character on this show is deeply annoying. I was actually rooting for them all to die in the lab for being stupid enough to keep opening the cages.

Feeding door breaks and hybrid feeder manages to get locked in a cage with deadly creatures is another insult to the audience’s intelligence. And how exactly did the alien that hatched escape its cage? As far as I could tell, they didn’t even bother to explain it.

I think I’m done.

I suppose it was all some kind of off-screen sabotage by Morrow using his little friend. So Prodigy was responsible for sabotage on the ship and Weyland-Yutani for the mishaps on the island. If these companies are so quick to resort to sabotage against each other, you’d think they’d have better defenses against it on themselves.

I like the overall tone of the show, but the plot is awfully glacial. I guess they're judiciously using the budget, but it just feels uneven. Like for the action-light episodes, at least give us bone-chilling lore dumps or something. It's almost like they're trying to make a statement with the show (beyond power corrupts, aliens dangerous, etc.), but it's taking fucking forever and we really just want more alien vs robot fights.

I haven't seen interest in a series fall off a cliff so drastically in a long time. No-one even seems bothered enough to laugh at how shit it is.

The concept was WRONG from the get-go with all the indestructible characters and the confusion about who's a bot, a half bot or a human. There's just no tension in the show and you couldn't care less who lives or dies.

Well if we have this on Earth, imagine what else is out there.

This show sucks. I'm at the point of making it background noise while I do other things. The pacing is SO slow, likely because there isn't enough plot to sustain a series. The alien monsters are great ideas and the execution of their stories is good; the rest of the show (the hybrids, specifically) is just dull.

Almost everyone in this show hardly ever changes their facial expressions and speaks in a monotone, making for a dull hour of TV. The few exceptions are Morrow, Kirsh and the British dude, who are forever in whisper-threat speaking tones, Boy Kavalier is in snotty mode and the Indian actor is doing the "I'm stressed!" thing to little result. 80% of the cast walk around with blank faces. I'm not rooting for anyone.

Blech, one episode was enough.

Wow.., dumb synth kids trying to get a body out of the facility looked like Lucy and Ethel lugging the cement block they stole that had John Wayne's footprints. Also, I eyerolled when Wendy and company just happened to stumble on the shitty little graveyard for the children who were upgraded by BK. Little dirt plots in the middle of a forest with some janky headstones and Nibs crashing out at seeing her original name. A billion dollar corp. can make synthetic children and had no better plan that to erect budget tombstones in a random forest? What a dumb scene for no good reason.

Don't care that Wendy is the Alien Whisperer.

This show fucking sucks. I’m actually embarrassed FX spent so much money on this.

The writing of this show is simply bizarre. But not in a good way.

Arthur's scene with the boys was moving, though.

I wonder who Boy Genius Bad Actor is going to put the eyeball alien into. My guess is Dame Sylvia.

The bodies would've been cremated, not buried with headstones.

I just want the barefoot ass hole man child and/or his bald headed henchman to die terrible deaths.

The opinion here has taken a decided turn.

This is one of those threads dominated by a hate watcher who's trying to look smarter than they are by making inane, nitpicky criticisms. That said, the show's not good enough that anyone's coming out to defend it, so there's not much point to the discussion anymore. The last few episodes have been better, but this show's really going to have to stick the landing to have any kind of future.

My problem with the show is that I don't find the "kids" to be interesting in the slightest and several of them I find to be downright annoying. If the show had only been about the power struggle between the corporations and whatever it is they have planned for the aliens, I think it would have been a lot better.

Jesus this show has really turned out to suck.

[quote] My problem with the show is that I don't find the "kids" to be interesting in the slightest and several of them I find to be downright annoying.

The only one I find interesting is the one who can communicate with the xenomorph. The others could all die, ESPECIALLY, the South Asian one and his dumb ass friend.

I want the boy genius to turn out to be a synth but didn't know

That would be excellent R228. I hate that character so much.

I'm on the fence between Joe and the Boy Genius to top my * Most Want To Die * list

Then maybe the Indian synth kid. Then ... oh yeah the British butler dude.

R230, Joe’ okay but I definitely want to see the other three go. I was actually yelling at the screen, telling Morrow to shoot the Indian synth.

I’m enjoying it. To be fair there is an inconsistent canon between all the Alien films, and character stupidity seems to be endemic in this franchise. I’m just suspending logic about the plot holes and nonsensical actions. Recent pet peeve: Like Boy would just kick Arthur out with no terms considering Arthur was the lead technologist on the hybrids. He would have been instantly snapped up by the competition like Yutani. Good thing the face hugger got him! Kirsch is my favourite character, and he’s executing something Machievellian. Looking forward to the final.

Kirsch is might favorite character as well r232, especially since he’s played by the always magnificent Timothy Olyphant. I think he has a grand plan in mind as well.

[quote] Then maybe the Indian synth kid.

R230 He’s a hybrid.

This show has a great PR team. It has to because the hype around it doesn’t match how bad it can be. It’s okay, it just drags and relies too much on cliffhangers. And the sanctimonious lead synth girl (I forget her name) proved that she’s also a cold blooded heartless killer robot when she unleashed the big alien that slaughtered all those innocent underling workers. She needs to meet a horrible end just like Boy Genius and his evil British butler

They are showing the xenomorph WAY TO0 MUCH in this. The long sequences that focus on the Alien's anatomy and physiology are ruining not only the show but the entire franchise for me.

The "A" story in the show is the two corporations fighting over possession of the xenomorphs/alien creatures. In the last 2-3 episodes, I feel like I lost the thread of the "B" plot, which seems to be that the kids are in mortal danger from Boy Kavalier and his evil henchmen.

It all seems to be centered around Nibs getting her memory wiped, which seems to be a reasonable thing after hearing her say she's suddenly pregnant. Wendy has taken that (and Toodles getting himself killed by his own stupidity) into her rallying up the other kids and the need to escape! before they are all terminated. Is there a part I am missing that would explain why suddenly Wendy feels like there's a target on their backs?

I watched this review earlier today and I think this guy basically nails all the key problems with this show.

I cancelled Disney today. I will have to torrent download the rest of this show.

Has anyone else cancelled Disney?

The penultimate episode was better than the previous ones (and mercifully shorter); obviously, it was extended setup for the finale. The grave scene and how the episode ended seems to be implying Hermit realizes Marcy is dead and Wendy is not really her. The season could end with him trying to kill Wendy but fails, and she kills him instead. Boy Cavalier then uses Hermit's body as a host for the eyeball, allowing it to speak.

Kirsch helping Smee and Slightly seemed like a move to lure Morrow into his trap. It worked.

Seeing the xenomorph in broad daylight instead of the dark corridor of a starship was kind of strange.

The xenomorphs aren't scary anymore and even when they face plant and you know eventually one is gonna rip a human open and pop out of their body, it's not scary. No tension anymore. Maybe if your 12 it's tense andscary but not for grown ups.

How do they survive without a queen?

So the little girl now controls the xenomorph? Of all the stupid...

Somehow, they seemed to manage making the Alien of my nightmares from the original move seem like a cute plush toy. Even the crab thing now looks like a pet.

This has to be one of the worst concepts for a series I have ever seen.

I have always had a problem with the corporate element of the Alien franchise. I just don’t buy that any corporation would have any reason to spend trillions of dollars and decades of time to bring poorly-understood, dangerous alien species to earth . The “weapons research” cover story makes little sense. You can’t control them (notwithstanding Wendy’s ridiculous unanticipated abilities) The dangers are so obvious. In this case, the sloppiness with which they are acting takes me right out of the story.

With the xenomorph, it makes zero sense unless you capture a queen. Otherwise the species cannot reproduce. Not that the one lone eye creature has much of a future.

R246, I agree. But as I thought about it, there are so many better angles they could have approached it from. Finding alien species and doing scientific research is not a foolish concept, and there are so many ways it can backfire. But they seem to have exploited the weapons capabilities to the exclusion of other avenues. it would have made more sense to me for example, if they were looking for a cure for some diseases or a new source of energy, and were unexpectedly met with smart, hostile, destructive creatures

Sure, if they were simply scientists exploring for knowledge it would make sense, though they would be better of looking for alien civilizations than alien creatures. They have plenty of places, including their ships and isolated bases in space ships, to do scientific research. Why bring them to earth?

For me, it would have worked better if:

1. It followed the movie franchise history in time and location. The fact that it takes on Earth before the first Alien movie obliterates everything we came to accept through Alien 3 and not in a good way.

2. The kids including Wendy were not the protagonists but secondary characters. Don't delete them but put them in the background and bring them up as weapons, but leave them off the center of the narrative.

3. Pick up the pace. The shows slows down to a grinding halt sometimes. It's a 2 hour movie stretched out to 8 hours, like most series nowadays. Excruciating.

4. Follow some basic horror movie cliches such as killing off some of the good characters so we can cheer for the ones that are left. Right now, the characters are so diluted I don't care who lives or dies, which is the kiss of death for any action story.

5. Please don't come back for season 2.

[quote] Right now, the characters are so diluted I don't care who lives or dies, which is the kiss of death for any action story.

I REALLY WANT the barefoot childish company owner to die and die horribly.

Well, you certainly don't need to come back for season 2, r249.

[quote] I REALLY WANT the barefoot childish company owner to die and die.

I just want him to die because Boy Kavalier is the fucking stupidest name on the planet.

The eyeball spider does not make sense to me. The whole point of an iris is to focus light to a tiny spot on the back of the eye where the retina is. How could you have floating, merging irises without anything fixed for them to focus the light to?

The list of things in this show that do not make sense is a very, very long one

What I observed in the season finale: The old bald dude is BK's reanimated dad, the synth kids have all grown balls under Wendy's leadership and done a hostile takeover, Arthur is the eyeball squids new host. Dame Sylvia is looking sad and drinking while wondering where Arthur went, Kirsch got his ass beat and is leaking fluid and Morrow has his cyber hand on lockdown. Wendy is chirping like a pigeon to her alien buddy and can suddenly stop other machines (bald guy) with a wave of her hand.

Of course BK gets to live to be an asshole next season.

You forgot that the disembodied eye somehow made it down to the beach and occupied Arthur’s dead body.

I don’t think bald guy is BK’s reanimated Dad. Apparently 6-year-old BK built his own synth to be the Dad he wanted after he killed the real one.

The episode had a lot going on, none of it the least bit interesting or exciting.

I hate the way the xenomorph has been reduced from the unspeakably horrifying angel of death (and worse) that it was in the original film to what it is in this series- basically an attack dog.

Yu can't legitimately call it Alien anything without the terror.

[quote]the synth kids have all grown balls

Pics please.

The xenomorph needs to be confined on a spaceship. The iconic moment was when it hid in plain sight on Ripley’s escape vessel because you couldn’t see where the technology ended and the alien began

Running around on earth, it’s just comes across as a guy in a monster suit.

[quote] The xenomorph needs to be confined on a spaceship

But it’s not, Blanche. It’s not on a spaceship.🚀

Unfortunately you’re watching a show called Alien: Earth 🌎.

I really wanted that dirty feet ADHD fucker to die.

Wait, THAT was the season finale? I’m sitting here thinking there’s two more episodes coming. How fucking lame.

[quote] Arthur is the eyeball squids new host.

Ridiculous. The eyeball creature can reanimate a dessicated corpse missing vital organs?!

[quote]But it’s not, Blanche. It’s not on a spaceship.🚀 Unfortunately you’re watching a show called Alien: Earth 🌎

My point is I’m watching a show called “Alien: Earth” that is an ill-advised dumb rip-off of the Alien legacy that never should have been made.

If Hawley wanted to make his Peter Pan movie about children in synth bodies with space monsters, he should have left the Alien franchise out of it. All they took was the xenomorph (which they ruined), some corporate names and, inexplicably, the dated 1980s computers used by a company that can download human consciousness into synthetic bodies and conduct interstellar travel.

Then they made otherwise terrible show.

You can't help but to admire R261's emoji usage.

What a shit finale for a shit show.

This makes me glad I cancelled Hulu.

If they knew it would only be 8 episodes, why did it ever drag? You couldn’t make it more action-packed? I gave them the benefit of the doubt under the assumption that they had to stretch this shit over 10 episodes.

Because they really have no story—just a concept. And because there are no likable characters except maybe Joe.

How the fuck are the critics eating this shit up? A 94% RT rating? What in the fuck were they watching?

I think Season 2 will have a storyline where Dame Sylvia, still stranded in that damn cage, desperately searches for a Tennessee Williams heroine the xenomorphs will enjoy so they don’t rip out her guts. Maggie the Cat? Blanche? Amanda? Who will they choose?

Here’s one critic channeling how I feel:

[QUOTE] Alien: Earth just wrapped up its first season and all I can say is, what a mess. Where to even begin with the dreadful, sloppy, pointless finale?

[QUOTE]The episode starts with some very nice shots of the beach, and Arthur’s crab-bitten body on the beach, a foreboding bit of foreshadowing. There are some lovely overhead shots of the jungle island where this story is set. It’s a nice moment. Grim, macabre and beautiful. Everything goes downhill from here.

[QUOTE]The Xenomorph shows up to sniff Arthur’s corpse and while I think the head of the alien looks great, every time I see its legs I just see a guy wearing alien pants. It’s incredibly jarring. They’ve botched the Xenomorph in every possible way this season. It’s not scary at all, for one thing. Making it a pet for Wendy-Sue is another. This is by far the worst Xenomorph in the Alien franchise.

[QUOTE]Alien: Earth does not succeed as an Alien show. It is not scary enough. The Jurassic Park-like island is the wrong setting. This isn’t Predator. It does not function as deep sci-fi, either, paling in comparison to a series like Westworld which does all the same things, only far better. It does not succeed as a Blade Runner series, despite its many nods to that franchise, achieving far less in eight episodes than the original Blade Runner did in two hours. It doesn’t work as a Westworld knockoff, because the hybrids aren’t synths so the nature of their consciousness is never really in doubt. These are clearly just kids in robot bodies who still (by and large) act like kids. None of the stuff we’re told about them having fewer emotions appears to be true. It’s just the movie Big with aliens and robots.

[QUOTE]And it does not succeed as entertaining television, because it is too riddled with plot conveniences and eye-rolling moments (despite the eyeball alien being one of its best characters). It’s a game of idiot ball. Its protagonist is a Mary Sue who might have been interesting had she not been written as a tropey girlboss with inexplicable super powers that remove all friction and struggle from her character arc. The whole thing is a mess, and the finale only underscores that fact, ending on a deeply unsatisfying cliffhanger.

[QUOTE] I really wanted to love this show, but I can’t look past its myriad problems. So much wasted potential. So much Peter Pan nonsense, all the way up to the finish line. I can’t wait for Season 2, when Wendy is about to kill Boy Kavalier and he says “To die will be an awfully big adventure.”

I honestly didn't realize that was the finale!

I feel like they're lucky this show aired weekly because had critics been provided the whole season in advance there is no way it would have gotten such positive reviews.

I don’t remember seeing anything so bad since American Horror Story, which was another FX production.

[QUOTE] I honestly didn't realize that was the finale!

I wasn’t in finale mode. I wasn’t ready at all. I thought for sure there were two more episodes coming. Even after it ended, I’m like “Okay these next two episodes better be epic.” It looked as if they were setting us up for a grand payoff which might redeem the season. Instead these jackasses actually thought that was a proper ending?

I hate it when I watch something and I want it to be good, and I give it time, and invest my attention and then after wasting time for 8 damned weeks I am pissed because it was just awful and never got better.

Same here r278. It's like the writers were just throwing shit out there because they had no ideas. The girl being able to communicate with the aliens and having some kind of telekinetic powers like she was fucking Carrie White was just jaw-droppingly lazy and stupid.

[quote] Running around on earth, it’s just comes across as a guy in a monster suit.

Seeing a xenomorph running around outdoors in the daylight shattered all of its mystique and terror.

It’s astonishing how all the Alien directors used various techniques of illusion to cover up the fact that xenomorphs were people in costumes. It never felt that way to me. They always seemed larger than life. Even the Alien vs Predator movies made them feel like some sort of big expensive animatronic creation, like the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park.

It wasn’t until Alien: Earth that I ever looked at a xeno and just saw a guy in a suit.

Zero interest in finding out what happens next. Buh-bye Hulu.

The finale was horrendous. The entire season was a waste of time. The series had the potential to do something interesting with the franchise, but the end result was a total nothing. Most of the plot points in the series happened because the characters were morons. Wendy suddenly gaining superpowers is really lazy writing. The xenomorph stopped being scary as soon as it was shown in broad daylight running through the jungle. The eyeball octopus was the only intriguing concept in the series.

Like so many shows these days, this felt like a two-hour movie stretched out into a series; there was not nearly enough plot to sustain eight episodes.

If there's a season two, I won't bother.

The only person I know who likes this show and thinks it’s good is a major pothead. I tend to believe he imagines a lot of the show as he watches.

I really don't care. Do you?

So when the Eyeball squid wants to make, do they just basically cruise each other like gays in a T room?

I found that sheep more scary than the fucking xenomorph.

The xeno is no longer scary in this stupid show. He's more like a Doberman Pinscher with a master.

Chrisr, what a shit show. Alien Earth i was expecting the alien to go through the cast of Sex and the City, Sucession and The Morning Show. Instead we have Lost with subpar Chalamet and Diana Rigg. Only the sheep won the day.

I was up late last night in bed thinking about the whole run and how I would have fixed it. I was up the whole fucking night.

I think Noah Hawley had a sock drawer full of random "cool ideas" that he tried to rubberband together into some kind of plot or storyline. In the end he had to resort to ... all the characters are retarded and act in illogical retarded ways, in order to shoehorn it all together into one thing to make his half thought-out themes all fit. And even then it didn't work

[quote]I was up late last night in bed thinking about the whole run

The Datalounge condoles you.

Here's my idea for making this show better, R290: The entire season takes place in the building the ship crashed into over a day. Several xenomorphs -- one a queen -- emerge from the ship and establish a nest, with the queen hatching eggs. A well-armed rescue team is sent, and Wendy is one of the medics, but she's not a hybrid. The rest of the season is about Wendy trying to survive. Something like this would have eliminated all the garbage plots that didn't work.

That would have been better. But I’d also have been fine with a subplot about the two warring corporations and their nefarious plans for having retrieved the aliens in the first place.

I was scrolling through some videos a while back and there is actually a creature that has the second inner jaw that jets out just like the xenomorph. It's the moray eel, although it does not shoot out as far, it does shoot forward inside the larger jaws. It was apparently the inspiration for the Xenomorph all those years ago.

[quote] But I’d also have been fine with a subplot about the two warring corporations and their nefarious plans for having retrieved the aliens in the first place.

The bad corporation theme has been established since the first movie and on a show like this it would just dilute the tension which the show as is doesn't have.

R292 All of Twitter along with DL would criticize the plot you’re proposing as a direct copy/rip-off of Aliens.

It’s extremely difficult to come up with something new and creative in the Alien universe while satisfying audiences at the same time. It’s a no-win situation because directors aren’t interested in making Alien/Aliens over and over, but the complaints are always that the subsequent films, and now this show, don’t measure up to the originals.

I have found something to like in all the films (we won’t talk about A3). I even liked this tv show. I just understand that I’ll never again feel the way I did when I watched Alien and Aliens for the first time. Those were thrilling, unforgettable, unique experiences.

Great series. Highly recommended. All episodes for Season 1 have dropped.

Since this was presented as a prequel/origins story of the Alien Franchise, IMO it would have been better if it had started out with a group of scientists doing legitimate research into various disease, or new energy sources or both. Among this scientific community were both good and "bad" or unethical scientists. And clearly the success of their scientific research depended on grants and funding from philanthropists and from Corporate entities, many of whom were unethical and in some cases evil. Maybe Boy Kavalier is a very young Weyland (The Guy Pearce character who wanted to live forever.) So there are good guys and a few bad ones all engaged in scientific research and to that end they also benefit from exploration in outers pace to find new forms of energy, minerals or species that will aid their research. This is all introduced in the first episode. I wouldn't have the Peter Pan/Lost Kids conceit at all. I would have those artificial, human looking androids. But IMO the thread running thru the entire franchise has been the corruption of science when corporations take over. So this series would be the beginnings of that. And since we already know what is to come from the movies, all of this builds tension and it has sinister overtones. We watch as , step by step they get closer to the abyss. It would end with the colonists going to the station where the Nostromo discovers them and the aliens years later.

So r298, an Alien show without any xenomorphs. 💤 💤 💤

R296 But what audiences want IS to relive some of the emotions from A1 and A2 which were the two most successful films in the series. I want to ache for the fate of the characters facing a force much greater than them and I want to be scared to death when they confront each other. I also want the story to stick to the parameters established by those first films: that the aliens have not been to Earth before the first movie, that there are no characters with superpowers so great that they can dominate the antagonist, that children are circumstantial and not central to the story.

There was a moment on one of the first episodes where the alien perches on an hall statue and suddenly you realize is there. It was , i think a bit of an homage to Alien where it does the same thing in the shuttle at the end. It was all downhill from there. No tension, few scares, the attacks were feable. I liked the evil dolly sheep, but if why used the Alien concept if only to play second fiddle to an eye.

I just find it hard to call this a prequel. In the original Alien, the whole discovery of a crashed ship was supposed to be the first time we encountered alien life forms. And all through the move everything from the crab face mask to the baby birth jack in the box was supposed to be a total surprise and shock never seen before. I mean if all this stuff happen on earth, they would never had let all that stuff happen on the ship without precautions.

You forget r302, Ash the android worked for the company that own the Nostromo. He knew what was up.

R302 Remember also that the events of Alien take place just two years after Alien: Earth. Ripley and the Nostromo crew were headed home and in hyper sleep, which suggests having been in deep space longer than two years. They would not have known what was going on at home.

R303 is right. Ash was placed on the Nostromo to ensure the safe delivery of the creature after the ship was diverted. The crew was expendable.

In the Dark Horse comics (Alien vs Predator),, Earth scientists are experimenting on the xenos (not on Earth) and controlling them for possible weaponizing via the Queen- they threaten the eggs, so she communicates to the drones to comply with the humans. But then a Predator lands, and everything goes to hell.

Apparently xenos can make eggs without a queen.

I agree with the poster upthread about the xeno's design- it was better when it was biomechanical. If we follow what happens to the first Alien, Yutani is not successful in obtaining the xenos.