Kermode & Mayo’s Take - Alien: Earth Bonus Special

Episode Date: August 5, 2025

Vanguardistas have more fun—so if you don’t already subscribe to the podcast, join the Vanguard today via Apple Podcasts or extratakes.com for non-fruit-related devices. In return you’ll get a whole extra Take 2 alongside Take 1 every week, with bonus reviews, more viewing recommendations from the Good Doctors and whole bonus episodes just for you. And if you’re already a Vanguardista, we salute you.  ‘Alien: Earth’ is landing on the small screen on 13th August in the first TV outing for the much-loved and multi-sequelled Alien franchise—and we’re bringing you a special bonus drop to celebrate. Showrunner Noah Hawley is the man behind it, and with ‘Fargo’ and ‘legion’ on his CV, it’s fair to say he’s pretty good at putting stuff on the telly that it seems like would be tough to make work on the telly. He chats to both Mark and Simon all about realising this ambitious project, adapting a stone cold classic, and his surprising love for British comedy.   Plus we’ve got Mark’s review of the series, hot off the embargo press. Where will it place in the Alien canon leaderboard, and can it undo the sins of the later sequels? Don’t miss the Good Doctor’s verdict, and do send your takes in to us too.     You can contact the show by emailing [e-mail] or you can find us on social media, @KermodeandMayo   EXCLUSIVE NordVPN Deal ➼ https://nordvpn.com/take Try it risk-free now with a 30-day money-back guarantee!  A Sony Music Entertainment production.     Find more great podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts and follow us @sonypodcasts    To advertise on this show contact: [e-mail]  ---    Find more great podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts and follow us @sonypodcasts    To advertise on this show contact: [e-mail]  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Well, hey everybody, it's Simon. And hey everybody, it's Mark. Now August comes around and we're all thinking the same thing. How am I going to keep streaming like I'm in the UK as the Cobra de Mayo annual cruise docks in St. Martin, Easter Island and the Outer Hebrides? Well, I've got a suggestion for you. NordVPN. You know, I had a feeling you'd probably say that.

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Check the link in the description. in the description. Well, are we in Thunderbird 3 now or Thunderbird 4? I'd like to be in Thunderbird 5. We've never done 5 in a week, have we? It feels as though we have. Anyway, we're cropping up again to do an alien special, which seems to be a very, very splendid idea, because Alien Earth arrives, well, it's FX is the channel that is commissioned, so that means it's on Disney Plus from August the 12th in America and August the 13th as far as we're concerned. Why we have to wait an extra day feels to me unnecessary, it feels childish, it feels

as though it's the Phantom Menace who's just lashing out. That's probably a very good reason. So Noah Hawley is going to be talking to us, the brains behind Fargo, the TV series, award-winning author, director, singer. He's the guy who's in charge of the whole thing. We'll do some audience and list of questions and ranking and then you'll get our interview and Mark's review. Remember Mark is the expert here because he knows everything and he's a professor.

He's a writer and presenter of the Alien Evolution documentary, available on one of the Blu-ray box sets. I think it's the Quadrilogy, the Alien Quadrilogy Blu-ray box set that it's on. Graham Hall asks, if Mark could revisit his Alien Evolution documentary like Ridley Scott, what would he change, slash add or include now that nearly 25 years have passed? Well, I mean the thing is firstly there's two versions of the Alien Evolution doc. We made it originally for Channel 4 in which it covered the four, as it was then, the four films. So Alien, Aliens, Alien 3 and Alien Resurrection. And then it originally went out on a DVD which was just Aliens.

So they asked us if we could do a version that was just about Alien. Well, we'd interviewed everybody, you know, Ridley and Sigourney Weaver and Giger and we'd done all that stuff. So we did them a one hour version which was only on Alien. That version then supplanted the Alien evolution, which had all the other stuff about Aliens and Alien 3. And that version then resurfaced. But one of the things that never really properly resurfaced was we did a really long interview with Vincent Ward,

who was originally going to direct Alien 3. Vincent Ward's ideas for Alien 3 are very well known. You can see the designs that he did, but basically it was name of the rose in space. He ends up with a story or subscript credit on Alien 3, the David Fincher film, which of course was massively compromised in the end, and I think isn't very good. Although there are things in it that are interesting, but it's a very, very botched film, which is a shame. But there is a long interview that we did about the original Vincent Ward conception for Alien 3, which was the name of the rose in space, the wood planet, the whole idea of angels and demons, that this

angel falls from the sky but brings with her this demonic presence. And if I could go back and do anything, what I would do is I'd make a three hour version of Alien Evolution, in which we had all the stuff that we did about the original Alien, and then all the stuff that was in Alien Evolution, but with a whole long section about Vincent Ward, because I just think he's, you just think that is the great unmade Alien film. Auntie Jean says, did HR Giger come up with any other designs for the Xenomorph? Yeah, I mean, Giger worked through a load of different designs. There's a story that is told

in, I don't know whether it's actually in the finished documentary, but when they were first trying to do the chest, but the chest burster and the way the chest burster was originally designed was quite different to the way the chest burster is now. The way it is now, it's a kind of lizardy, snaky thing. But originally, um, Ridley Scott, I think Terry Rawling, somebody else on set tells this story that Giga was on set and he was going to show them the chest purser and he walked up with his arms folded like this and he had a blanket over something like he was cuddling something and he had the thing and he was going to show them how it worked. And they pulled off the blanket and he went, ah! And this thing came up and they said, it looked like a turkey. It literally looked like a chicken and everyone fell about laughing. And everyone said, I'm sorry HR, that is not what the chest purser is going to look like.

Jonathan Elbeck says, do you think that the used future aesthetic still works even though, even if the period it was inspired by, the 70s and 80s has moved on? I do. I mean that future retro thing that Ridley Scott was so good at, obviously as the future moves on and we realise that the room in which people speak to mother, for example, is an old fashioned computer room and those keyboards don't look like that anymore, but those keyboards incidentally do feature in the new incarnation in Alien Earth. Yes, I do think they work because I think that when you look at that sort of design, you don't think, hang on a minute, that design doesn't make sense in the future. You look at that design and think that's really, really

brilliant design to tell this story. So yes, and again, it's true of Blade Runner. It's one of the reasons why Blade Runner has remained timeless because the future retro, the idea of the future being bolted onto the past makes sense. Question from Dick Byrne, would CGI capability today mean that Alien, made in 2025 and not in 1979, would be shown far more and be worse off for it? Yes, I suspect it. We'd see more of the monster. Yeah, I suspect it would have done.

And one of the reasons why Alien is so brilliant is because the mechanical effects, the extraordinary mechanical effects are physical and they can only be shown in certain circumstances. Everything is in half light, everything is covered in KY jelly and drippy goo to make it all look all the more slimy. Yes, I think that Alien benefited from the fact that you really couldn't actually make out the form of the alien for most of it, and that made it more terrifying. So we asked people to rank the Alien films in order.

Of course we did. And bear in mind that the whole purpose of this is to annoy and to make people outraged, as indeed I was. Anyway, Joe Fairweather basically goes in descending order. Alien, aliens, alien three, alien four, with the numbers three and four. Prometheus, Covenant, and then at number seven, Romulus. The steady decline with each release is pretty interesting, in your opinion, Joe. Justin Shepard says, Alien films, my ranking, one, shared, Alien and Aliens, the rest I could not care less. Doug. Yeah, that's interesting.

Doug says, number one, Alien, then Aliens,, then covenant, then Prometheus, then resurrection. And then he says, bad films start here, Alien 3, Romulus, and the Alien vs Predator films. And speaking of Alien vs Predator, side note from CFAX on Blue Sky. Paul Matzkoff Yeah. Paul Matzkoff 2200 hours film, Aliens vs Creditor. The xenomorphs with an insatiable urge to kill are somewhat stumped by a county court summons over a number of unpaid debts. Now that would be fun. So I just want to say I think Romulus was very enjoyable.

Yes, I liked Romulus. I thought Romulus was good. I mean, my own feeling is that, I mean, for what it's worth, I think alien is top of the tree because I think alien, I remember seeing it for the first time. I remember being so scared that I thought I wasn't going to contain myself during the chest burster because you can't imagine what it was like to see that when you didn't know it was coming. I mean, it was, oh my God. And yes, then it ends up being parodied in, you know, space balls and it's become the most famous thing. But the first time, I mean, do you remember the first time you saw it? Yes, I do. Yeah. And it's terrifying. Aliens is genius because it's a different genre of film. So Alien is a science

fiction film, Aliens is a war film. And in fact, the tagline for Aliens was, this time it's war. And then the tagline for Aliens, the special edition was, this time it's more. Which again, very well done. Very well done indeed. We also asked your top five alien moments. Gazelle Twin says, in Alien, Ripley sings Lucky Star before alien ejection. Number two, also in Alien, Brett's cap in Rain before death. In Aliens, Ripley, I Can't drive that loader, the power loader scene. Also in Aliens, the Newt rescue slash Queen fight and in Resurrection, Ripley's backwards basketball. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Which apparently is real. Apparently that really happened. Apparently that's not a CG. She really did. Yeah, completely accidentally she landed the ball. Campbell says number, so, okay, number one, I say we take off, nuke the site from orbit, it's the only way to be sure. Number two, you always were an asshole, Gorman. Three, they mostly come at night. Mostly. Four, soundscape on drop ship crash, which ends with a tinkling crowbar. And number

five, game over man. And Auntie Jean is back. So these are her top five moments. The chest burster, Ash revealing herself as synthetic, Ash revealed as synthetic. Ripley fights Queen in JCB. Yeah. That's amazing. That's amazing. Egg opens and attaches to Kane and Ripley shoves alien into space from shuttle.

So they're pretty epic moments. Yeah. Anything that we've missed out? I mean, I think that the thing that people remember as their own favourite ones are to do with things. I mean, I will always, I know it's the classic, I will always go back to the chest-burster. I do think that Carrie Hens, Mli is just probably the thing that for me sums up the Alien movie because it's perfect. It's so brilliant. And I had the great pleasure of interviewing her later on and she was just fantastic. And she was, you know, I think for a long time, oh, actually I'm looking at her Twitter feed says the official Carrie

Hens Twitter, they're mostly my tweets, mostly. And that is one of those things like, you know, I just want to walk through the front door justified or frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn. That is one of the great moments of cinema. And I also think that there is an absolutely, you know, astonishing moment in when the chest burst happens, the reactions of everyone around who genuinely freak out. Although they knew that the chest-burster was coming, they had no idea just how bloody it was going to be. I think that sense of absolute panic is just brilliant. Mason- So just before we get to our conversation with Noah Hawley,

get us up to speed in terms of the chronology of this. The order the films came out is not necessarily the time order. Just give us a primer on where we are for this. Well, having seen all the major features, all you really need to know is Alien 3 originally was going to take place on Earth, and the original tagline for it was, this time you don't need to go anywhere. Then it didn't happen. Alien 3 ended up being the prison planet, which was going to be the name of the rose in space, blah, blah, blah, blah. In terms of this, what they've done is they've gone back to that idea. They've gone back to the idea that we now live in a world in which is very rollable, incidentally, in which the world is run by corporations and a Weyland-Yutani spaceship has gone out to get specimens and

it ends up, for complicated plot reasons, crashing on Earth, a despoiled Earth, but it has with it a collection of creatures that have been collected, obviously by Weyland-Yutani for nefarious purposes, and then it crashes on Earth and this other corporation then tries to get hold of those aliens. But as far as Earth is concerned, this is all new. But the fact that it's 2120 means it's two years before alien. Yes, that's right. So this is after the Yes, that's right.

After covenant. Oh sorry, is that what you're asking me? I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Not that it matters enormously, but I just think that in terms of it's 2120 for a reason, that's all. Sorry, I beg your pardon. I didn't understand.

I just gave you a very long answer to a very short question. But are we sufficiently primed, do you think? I think we are now. I think I over-egged it a bit. So we're going to play. We're going to give you a clip from the TV show and then you'll hear our conversation with Noah Hawley. Now, Mark, you just realised your business needed to hire someone yesterday. How can

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Shopify.co.uk slash take. No frillsills delivers. Get groceries delivered to your door from No Frills with PC Express. Shop online and get $15 in PC Optimum Points on your first five orders. Shop now at nofrills.ca. She's ready. You're gonna be the first person to transition from a human body to a synthetic. Because I'm special. That's right.

You're very, very special. We have a downed spacecraft. I want what's mine. I want what's mine. I want what's mine. I want what's mine. I want what's mine. I want what's mine. I want what's mine. I want what's mine. I want what's mine. I want what's mine. Very special.

We have a downed spacecraft. I want what's on that ship. We can do it. We're fast, we're strong, we don't break. This ship collected five different life forms from the darkest corners of the universe. Monsters. Well, that was a great clip, I think, from Alien Earth, written and directed by Noah Hawley. It's new on FX.

Noah, how are you? It's very good to see you, sir. I'm good. I'm good. I'm enjoying my junket here, but if at any point I just say me say words now, you'll know that I've run out of words. Do you actually, I mean, you've worked on this project for such a long time, best part of a decade.

Did you ever think this moment would come where you'd be sitting in your suit with an alien earth backdrop and telling everybody what's happening? I was beginning to lose faith that it was ever going to come out. I was enjoying making it. I just thought that we'd spent all this money for me to enjoy the show. But it's great that I get to share it with people now. How long were you dreaming it up before it was actually... Because it wasn't possible, was it, for a while?

Because the studio said, absolutely no, you're not going to do it. But you were dreaming it up. So where did this story start? I want to say around 2018, when FX, who I've worked with on Fargo and have worked with now for over a decade, you know, they asked if they could get the Alien franchise, would I have an idea? And if you ask me if I have an idea, I'm going to have an idea. And so, you know, I came up with what became this show, the sort of Peter Pan analogy of

these children in synthetic bodies. But, you know, this was in a pre-Disney world and the 20th Film Studio was not. They didn't see it as a television property and so it kind of went dormant for two or three years before the Disney merger and then the property became available and so we moved on from there. And just before we get into what happens in space and what comes to Earth, can you talk about the world that you've created? So the year is 2120, which is significant, which you could explain, but our world is dominated by corporations who are manifestly out of control. Just tell us about this terrifying world which is very hot. Yes. And very wet.

And obviously the climate emergency is driving that. Just introduce us to this world that you've created for us. Yeah, I mean, the show is set 100 years in the future. I just tried to think one or two steps forward. Is it realistic to think that billionaires could become trillionaires? Yeah, I could see that. Is it realistic to think that these large corporations will

continue to merge and acquire each other and that we might end up in a more monopolistic world? That doesn't seem unreasonable to me. Is it realistic to think that climate change is going to advance, et cetera? What I wanted an audience to see when they look at the show is a version of their world that is not unlike the world that they live in currently in currently. And then you know there are a lot of cinematic and aesthetic choices that have to be made. The story revolves around mostly around a company called Prodigy which is new to the alien universe. We've

only ever really seen a Whale and Yutani aesthetic and so clearly Prodigy isn't Whale and Yutani, shouldn't look like whale and Yutani, but it should look like alien. So what does that mean? How do we, how do we create that aesthetic that is both complimentary and ties into the larger look? Mark, can I ask you something about how much you felt the legacy of the previous films? Because one of the things that's really interesting watching this series, I've watched all six of them in a binge, is there are certain moments in which

there's a running through a corridor thing which is very Alien 3, there are things which refer to, there are dissolves between shots which very much invoke the Ridley Scott original. The story, however, is completely new, and in fact, in its central concerns, the story is probably closer to the concerns of Blade Runner, of Ridley Scott's Blade Runner, in terms of what it means to be human and what it means to be sympathetic.

So how much did you feel the weight of what everybody knows from the alien movies and how much can you refer to those without simply revisiting those stories? Because you are taking this in a very new direction and as I said that new direction for me is very much into the world of Blade Runner. Well, I think that my approach is about feeling, right? My approach is usually with a Fargo or Alien is what are the feelings that those movies made me feel and why? And then to try to create those feelings in you by telling you a totally different story. And so there are elements that are not literal, but are evocative. So this idea of children in adult bodies, right? It's like, where is that in the alien canon,

the alien universe? And then you think, well, you know, there is a literal child in the second film, in James Cameron's film, you know, Newt. But there's also Bill Paxton, who is maybe one of the most childish characters in the history of cinema, right? Game Over Man. Game Over Man, yeah.

And so you have this adult who's acting like a child, and this child who's acting like an adult, you know, wiser than her years. She understands the danger. She's kind of unflappable. And so that tone of voice is there. That feeling is there. And so I, you know, then I incorporate that.

The discovery of the life cycle of the creature in the first film is so seminal to the horror of the first film, right? It's like, wait, it's an egg and then there's a face hugger, and then there's a chest burster, and then it's 10 feet tall. Like, every stage of that is disturbing and feels like there's a shock factor to it. But we'll never feel that feeling again with the xenomorph because, of course, we've now seen it for seven movies. So I have to introduce new creatures if I want you to feel that feeling.

So it's not an intellectual process in the beginning. It's an emotional process to figure out how do I get you, the audience, to feel like you're watching those movies? In that idea of children as adults, right at the center of it, you have this young tech billionaire who walks around with no shoes on, behaves badly in legal meetings, he is a kid.

I'm sure the answer to this question is no, but he reminded me of Jonathan Richman in his look, and then he's charging Jonathan Richmond for the modern lovers. Was there any of that, or am I just imagining it? I love everything that viewers bring to the show. Let me just put it that way. That was not something that was in my head.

It started as a character thing where basically this man owns everything that he sees, so everything is his home. So why wouldn't he wear his pajamas and go barefoot everywhere? Because he's at home everywhere. I mean, I think the thing that, the difference, right? Because in that Ridley's movie was a working class story,

almost like waiting for Godot about people who are going to a place they don't know where to do a thing they don't know what, for someone they don't know who, right? The individual versus the faceless corporation. And then James Cameron's movie had this sort of like boardroom corporate aesthetic, right? They didn't anticipate the billionaire, the celebrity billionaire technocrats of today, right?

The boy cavaliers, their corporate worlds, their power base was more in this like anonymous faceless corporate structure. So that's the shift for us going up into the clouds and seeing that, oh, there's just a sort of lunatic up there with too much money, you know, who thinks that his whims are genius. I can't believe Mark's brought Jonathan Richmond into this conversation. Noah, does it all have to fit together, the way Marvel is obsessed with fitting everything together? Does it matter whether it all fits or not?

Well, I don't think it all fits already in some ways. I mean, I think that if by fit what we mean is that everything is cohesively designed story-wise to go together, but why is the technology of Prometheus, which takes place 100 years before aliens, so much more advanced than the technology of alien? Already at that moment, you're like, well, was there some kind of disaster and we had to go back to the drawing board? You know, there are holograms and, you know, this minimal technological futurism there versus the retrofuturism of Alien.

So, you know, what I felt when I looked at the seven movies is, well, I just have to make choices. And for me, I said to Sir Ridley, I'm adapting your film, right? That's the origin point for me, and everything stems out of that. Now, James Cameron made one of the greatest action movies of all time out of Alien,

and so that genre is also available to me. But I think in terms of the feel of the show, it wants to feel like Ridley's movie. For British audiences in particular, there is a strange moment when you're watching from the later episodes and you suddenly go, that's Edmundson, who I hadn't recognized. He'd been on screen for quite a long time.

Can you tell me about casting him? Because particularly from a British point of view, that's an unusual piece of casting. Well, this is what I'll say. I mean, my dad in the 1950s went to drama school in the UK and he brought home a collection of Goon Show records that I listened to when I was growing up. And then when I was in my teens, I would listen to the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy original radio program.

And my evolution as a creative brain has been so tied to British comedy, especially. And I told Adrian when I cast him, I said, there's a moment in The Young Ones where you walk into a closet and you end up in Narnia that explains my entire oeuvre of material, right? The fact that the show made that choice, right, that it suddenly became this whole other thing just opened my mind as a storyteller to what you could do.

I mean, there'd be no Legion without that moment. And so when I saw that Adrian had put himself on tape for this role, I thought, well, now I have a reason to make the show. I have to work with this man. We just have a couple of minutes left, Noah. I do want to ask you about the sound design, purely because I listened to all of this on headphones

for various reasons. That's how I experienced your show. And the sound design is incredible. Can you just give us any flavor about what your instructions were about what you wanted this to sound like? Yeah, I mean, I think that's the secret weapon, right? That, you know, I like to say the script is the best worst blueprint for what it's going to feel like to watch the show. And the reality of it is, especially in horror, that sound design is critical.

You think about the Kubrick films. You think about Ex Machina. These spaces, the ambient sound. There's dread that's built in just atmospospherically, you know, in these places. Obviously the movie Alien is a touchstone for us. I started the creature sound design when we were in pre-production, you know, because I want to be able to play sound on set for the actors of what it's going to sound like. And then it is about balancing music and sound, and often there's conflict between the two of them,

not just for volume but for space. And we all know with horror as well, like, you know, you want to keep sound low so that when you do the jump scares, etc. So, you know, it's really been a long process, but it's, you know, something I'm the most proud of because I do think that sound is one of the most critical parts of watching. And this is just series one, how many have you panned out? Well you know as a storyteller I find that endings are what give story meaning so if you don't know how it ends what is you don't know what the story means. You know I have a shape, I have a destination, I don't know how long it's

gonna take me to get there. So I think that's the question. In success, I couldn't tell you how long it would be. Some of it depends on how many episodes you make a season and how many seasons it is and how long it takes to make them. But I've got a few more years in me. Noah Hawley, a pleasure to speak to you. Wish you all the best and thank you very much for talking to us today. Thanks. Noah Hawley talking about his new show and obviously he's been living with this for a long time and he could have

probably talked for five minutes or for 500 minutes. He really does know this thing inside and out. But he's an extraordinary, you know, he, the stuff that he creates and the fact that he's written six novels and he can record music and all of that makes him an incredibly talented guy. I thought the most interesting bit actually was, the bit I didn't know was about his dad and how he grew up with it being a huge fan of British comedy. I mean, it all makes sense because the Edmondson thing does, as you correctly said, really stand out. So my feeling about it is this, obviously I went in with a certain sense of trepidation,

although obviously Noah Hawley has a track record of taking things that you don't think could possibly be reinvented as a series and then doing it. And I think that one of the ways that he manages to do that is by sort of asking a question about what's the interesting idea rather than what's the plot point. So when, at the very beginning of this, when you said, when is this set, I'm sorry, I mean, I actually wasn't even thinking in terms of, oh, it's that, here is where it fits into the chronology of alien. And more importantly, you asked him a question about how does this fit with the chronology and he said, well, there are things that already don't fit in the existing thing.

And he very specifically brought up that example of Prometheus has got technology and Prometheus takes place, you know, why haven't they got that technology beforehand? You know, all that stuff. So if we just put all that aside and say, okay, what's it about? Well, what it's really about is, yes, it's an alien movie, so we have to have creatures. But the reason alien was scary is because you didn't know what the life cycle of the alien was the first time you saw it. And then by the time we get to this time it's war it changes and by the time you get to Alien 3 it's like, well, it's taking on the form of the thing that it infests, like comes out of a dog, therefore runs on all fours.

So in the case of this, there's a bunch of new things that you don't know about and you don't know what they do. One of them, which is referred to as the eyeball, which very much to me is a sort of thing that you would have seen in John Carpenter's The Thing, except of course now it's, back then it would have been done entirely mechanically. So that's one thing. The more important thing is the Peter Pan thing. The central idea is a very blade-runnery idea, is what does it mean to be a person? When is a machine not a machine? And this is the question that gets asked. So there is this young boy genius who, as I said in that interview, I mean, I'm sorry, I knew the answer was no, but it's just funny because they want somebody to look like a

grown-up kid and so he looks like Jonathan Richmond. I mean, I don't mean Jonathan Richmond isn't an evil genius. Jonathan Richmond is genuinely a grown-up kid, but it was funny that he reminded me of Jonathan Richmond. And essentially what they've done is taken young kids whose bodies have failed and put them into synthetic bodies. So they are a hybrid of a synthetic creature and human being. But they are kids, but they are in adult bodies. And the kids' minds will grow, but the bodies will stay the same. So it's about Peter Pan, it's about not growing up, it's about what it means to be immortal, it's about all of those things. And it seems to me that that's actually the key interest. The other stuff about the monsters and the gribblies and the stuff feels much more like stuff. And it's, you know, it's

well done. There are some yucky moments. There's, well, when we get to the end, there's angry sheep. But all that stuff is really, it felt to me like that's there because you're in the world of Alien. What the series is more interested in, and this is for better or worse depending on what you expect, if what you want from an alien movie is you want the alien life cycle, you want that, you don't really get that. I mean, you get it, but that's not the prime directive. By the time you get to episode five, it goes back to show you what happened before, and that's the thing that is closest to being an, in inverted commas, alien movie. For the rest of it, it is about, to use the phrase from

Team America, World Police, corporations doing corporation-y stuff. And as I mentioned, Rollerball is the precursor of all of this, because the thing about in the future, wars will not exist, but there will be Rollerball. And in the world of Rollerball, the world is really run by these big corporations. And So it's about that, and it's about what it means to be a child in an adult body. I mean, there's quite a lot of Spielberg's AI, I think, in its kind of inspirations. There are also very specific nods to the series. I mean, Noah Hawley sort of sidestepped this slightly, which I understand entirely, but for example, there are scenes running down corridors which are very much taken from Fincher's Alien 3, or not Fincher's Alien

3 because it ended up being taken away from him. There are the dissolves which very much evoke what happens in Ridley Scott's Alien. There is the famous dissolve to the meeting where they're having the lunch and then everything goes horribly wrong. There is the score which keeps reminding you of the alien world that you are in. There's the weird thing about Ed Edmondson, I swear I didn't realise it was Ed Edmondson until he'd been on screen for quite a long time. It was his voice. It wasn't the way he looked, but I was thinking, I know, I do know that voice from somewhere. So yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But the crucial thing is, it didn't disappoint me. And considering how often I

have been disappointed by Alien after the primary movies, I thought this was, I mean, this sounds like damning with faint praise. If you're going to take on the Alien thing, please don't suck. I think in the case of Alien alien thing, please don't suck. I think in the case of Alien Romulus, it didn't suck. I think there are scenes in Alien Romulus that are actually just from a point of view of the kind of construction of the scenes, like the gravity on gravity off stuff with the acid, I thought was an amazing scene. I thought that was a well-made movie, wasn't it? Yes, I entirely agree. I think it was much better than some of our correspondents, please.

Yeah, really, really edge of your seat. The problem with the Prometheus and the Covenants was the building of the world that I didn't particularly need. Now, there is an issue in alien earth in that when alien is set up at the beginning of alien, the whole thing is it's the beauty of the alien is it has no complications. It lives, it reproduces, it kills to reproduce. That's it. And this is the terrifying thing is it's like the ultimate killing machine. It's just remorseless. That's what it does. Over the course of the movies, we've seen, like for example, particularly when you get to Alien Resurrection, there is a genetic connection between the character of Ripley, reborn Ripley, and the alien, and there is

that amazing shot of her lying in the coils of all the aliens because she's sort of become the monster. That is really played up here. And although this sounds completely nuts, there is an attempt to humanise the aliens by having a connection made in terms of language, a connection made in terms of communication, and a suggestion in the later episodes that nasty, bitey chest-bursters may have feelings too. I don't tell me we're the monsters. Don't tell me after all of this that it turns out that we're the monsters, we're the bad guys.

Well, I think we already knew that in Aliens. So it goes into that area and I think that that is a fundamental... For me, Alien is most powerful when the alien is alien. What they're trying to do here though is go, okay, well, what if alien isn't just alien? And how that will now pan out, because that's really set up in the first six episodes, which are the six that I've seen, how that will pan out, we wait to see. I was fascinated that Noah Hawley said you have to know the ending of the story to work. So he apparently has in his head a whole arc. Mason- Yes. They want this to be Game of Thrones. They want this to be Last of Us. They want

this to be a whole series. Which makes me slightly nervous because it's like if you've got a six series zombie franchise, after a while the zombie... Okay, who cares? And I would have been very happy with one series thought, yes, okay, they can do it. I know it's not the way television is going to work and if it's a successful series, they're going to want to have more of them. But I would have been very happy just to have to have this one series and thought okay well done let's move on do something else. I mean if I'm honest with you I would have

been very happy if there was only ever one alien movie. Yeah okay. I love aliens and there have been entries in the series which I think have been great. But would the purity have been better? I mean, certainly I think we never needed any of the Ridley Scott editions. God bless them because they didn't need to revisit it. And there is a certain thing about that first film, which was originally Star Beast. And when Ridley Scott was making it, he went back and watched Texas Chainsaw Massacre because that was what he was going for. However, if we live in a world of a plethora of aliens, of alien evolution, then I'm quite happy for this series to exist. I just don't know where it's going to go from here, and I have the same as you, an alarm bell which is...

Mason- Enough already. Jason- Yeah. Mason- Yeah. I don't think we've mentioned Sydney Chandler, who plays Wendy, and obviously this is a female-centric, the whole alien world has been female-centric and continues to be so. I found in episode two, I was getting annoyed by this grown-up body, childish idea. All these kids, do we have to do that? And I thought, I'm slightly worried because the essential, you know, Wendy and the Lost Boys here are going to be rather annoying. By the time we got to episode four, Wendy, there's a development and I think,

okay, I can see what you're doing and why you've done it. But I wasn't in, it took me four episodes before I was there with the Lost Boys. Okay. I got there faster, partly because I have the Peter Pan fascination. I keep bringing up the Mad Monkey because the Peter Pan thing works for me. I think that things like AI, the Spielberg AI, I do find that idea. Some super toys last all summer long, I do find that idea. You know, summer toys, super toys last all summer long. I find that stuff fascinating. So I had less of an issue with that than you did. And I actually thought she was very good at the centre of it. I mean, I have more of

an issue with the Winona Ryder character in Alien Resurrection, which just felt like an attempt to reposition the thing for a younger audience, for example. This has been a take five special looking at the world of Alien. We can continue the Alien conversation in our regular takes, obviously, but we did this because of, you know, embargoes and everything else. But let us, once you've started watching, as I said, this is on FX, so you can, you'll access this if you've started watching, as I said, this is on FX, so you'll access this if you've got a subscription to Disney Plus, and then let us know what you think. I've thought of a new series name. Embargo Schmembargo.

It's better than some of the ones that Pauley McPoolface have come up with. Isn't it though? Anyway, once you've seen a few episodes, let us know. Correspondence at Kermit and Mayo.com.