TAKE ONE Presents... - The Xenopod 11: ALIEN: EARTH (2025–)

Episode Date: October 15, 2025

Simon and Jim return to The Xenopod for a special episode discussing the new Alien franchise TV series, ALIEN: EARTH created by Noah Hawley. They discuss how well the worldbuilding works, the production design, the creature design before ultimately descending into discussion of why the series as a whole doesn't work: pacing issues including the pacing issues with US prestige TV in general, themes that don't fit the Alien franchise, narrative threads that taper off unresolved, and the never-ending Peter Pan references. The Impossipod will return later this month for an episode discussing MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE - DEAD RECKONING PART ONE.Content warnings: body horror; mutilation and violent death; biological experimentation; child slavery; transhumanism and biological augmentation; pregnancy; eyeball stuff.Our theme song is Alien Remix by Leslie Wai available on SoundCloud: ⁠⁠https://soundcloud.com/lesliewai/alien-remix⁠

Get away from her, you bitch away from her, you bitch! Hello, and welcome back to Take One presents the Xenopod, a podcast where we watched all the alien franchise films, question mark, in order, contextualizing them and critiquing them. I'm Simon Bowie, and I'm joined, as always, by my co-host Jim Ross. Hello, Jim. Hello. Yeah, question mark after franchise films,

because we're not talking about. a franchise film. The alien franchise has expanded into a TV series, Alien Earth, and we're here to do a discussion episode about that. Yeah, so we thought it would be a really good idea to go

over a TV series in our series where we go over franchise films for a film website. Yeah, we're entirely unprepared for there. We're outside and bounds of the format. It may not seem like it, but this is brave new territory. but TV is the new cinema isn't it Jim TV is the new cinema

well actually are we in the golden age of TV anymore or is the consensus that we're coming out of the golden age of TV now yeah I think we're I mean that's ended up yeah we're just you know we're on the hot new train as ever yeah I died with succession yeah so we're talking about a TV series This is a US Prestige TV series with the requisite eight episodes. It aired on Disney Plus in the UK, I think it was FX in the US, or Hulu or whatever.

And yeah, it's a TV series. This is all new. We also have no format because we run through the film, and I'm not going to do that for the TV series. So we're really just flapping in the wind. I can't do the box office run down because there is no box office for TV. Yeah, I think the other things we're doing, we're doing this one episode on the whole series now that we've seen the whole thing, right? Yeah, because I don't think, I don't know what people would have wanted an episode, an episode per episode, but I don't think we had any desire whatsoever to do an episode per episode.

So that's not the way we're doing it. and I think you know from my perspective I prefer to kind of analyze and contextualize this whole thing having looked at the

the arc of the series and what story it tells spoilers more on that in a minute as to whether there is one but we'll come to that so yeah we're going to look at it as a whole right

because I suppose the idea is meant to me that this is a complete story in and of itself in the same way that one of the films should be. We want to talk about it as a complete thing, like you say, and see how it fits into the alien franchise more generally. But I can talk about production a little bit.

So this has been kind of long gestating, like a face hugger, an embryo implanted into a human chest. But in February 2019, it was first reported that two alien TV series were in development. One was animated based on alien isolation. great video game and one was live action. We've Ridley Scott producing for FX. Noah Hawley was announced as the showrunner and the series was announced as being set on Earth. That was around 2020 and there were various production delays to do with the COVID pandemic around them like they couldn't start filming immediately. Now Noah Hawley is a kind of famous showrunner.

He's one of the big names in show running I guess because he has done. every series of Fargo which I think I've seen every series he worked on Legion which is like an X-Men spin-off that I haven't seen and obviously this

but I like Fargo I like the majority of Fargo the series Yeah I'm not gonna I think I'm trying to think what I've actually watched it up to I'll certainly watch the first

three series and I might I think I might have like lost my way with it in season four I can't remember exactly but it's kind of secondary to the point I make I think that the first season of Fargo

is a sort of real proper top tier piece of television for me I still appreciated the second one I thought the second one was good and I recall enjoying the third one but the first one genuinely I think is a absolutely superb series of television.

I would recommend that to anybody. Season one is great. Season two, meh. Season three, great. Season four, meh. Season five is fantastic. Like, season five is really good. It really speaks to, like, the contemporary political moment and kind of

issues of transgenderism and transness in society. It's really good. Notably, it's, It doesn't really come together, or at least it didn't for me, until the last episode, when it becomes clear what Hawley was trying to do all along. And I think I was expecting a bit of that on this show, but as we'll discuss. Maybe it doesn't come together.

Spoiler alert, my chuckling here. So I do, yeah, so I've watched Fargo, I haven't watched Legion. Noah Hawley seems like a reliable pair of hands. I realised in prepping for this episode that I confuse him with Noah Wiley, the ER actor, and so I've always pictured him like that, but he doesn't look like that. He has a far bigger forehead. And a much rounder head. Much rounder head, yeah.

It's got a very round head. No, no offence, I'm not trying to shame him. I have a big forehead. Yeah, and his dad, there's nothing wrong with having a round head. I have quite a round head. But he's not, Noah Wiley. Famously Handsome Man. So Hawley was announced as a showrunner,

and he confirmed that it would be a prequel, that it would take place before the events of Alien, the original 1979 film, and that it would be set on Earth, with the title Alien Earth. Yet they largely filmed in Thailand, for presumably the Big Island, which is the largest,

the main location, in the film, was interrupted by strikes, interrupted by pandemic, blah, blah, blah, but came out earlier this year, as we're recording, it came out a few months ago, and sort of stretched over the summer. So I suppose I can give a brief synopsis of what happens with kind of full spoilers for the entire series, but essentially, and feel free to jump in if I get anything wrong, A Wayland-Jutani mission to find alien specimens. The ship crashes on Earth. It lands on a continent belonging to one of the four mega corporations that have taken over the Earth.

I forget the name of it, but it means with P. Prodigy. Prodigy, thank you. And Prodigy is named for its kind of CEO, Executive Director, this boy genius, boy cavalier, who is, at the same time as the ship crashes, on an island experimenting with hybrids. So the series opens with a little title card explaining the difference between androids, cyborgs who are humans with robotic components, and hybrids,

which are human brains transferred into android bodies. and these children that get transferred into these Android bodies are known as the Lost Boys I don't know if you noticed Jim there were subtle Peter Pan references throughout the entire series

Yeah Surely not It's yeah Actually you know Her being called Wendy Is a very subtle Peter Pan Blink or you'll miss it Peter Pan reference

If anyone who hasn't seen it I'm joking the Peter Pan references Yeah, there's probably less Peter Pan references in fucking Peter Pan frankly Knock you over the head with it

They show footage of the Disney Peter Pan Because they can Because Disney owned everything And it's somewhat relentless I'm sure we'll talk about that later But Jesus Yeah Anyway

The hybrids are sent on a mission To get the alien specimens from the crashed ship. They return the specimens to the island, episodes, episodes, episodes. The alien specimens eventually break out and this coincides with the hybrids deciding they want a kind of self-fulfillment,

they want to live their own lives and not be suppressed by the humans, so it coincides with this kind of hybrid rebellion. I've skirted over some stuff, but I think that that's a reasonable summary though right i think it like there's different strands here as you might expect because they need to fill out an entire tv series here which i think we can talk about from their own terms because there's a few there's there's bits and pieces here where i like what they've done there's bits and pieces where i kind of think it's a bit

nothing and then there are some aspects where i actively really quite dislike what they've done and they all kind of like come across during the whole season right it has different strands running through it so I think looking at those kind of by and large is the way to probably the way to do this while we are on the production I just want I think something to lead out with is

something that I do like about this series and I think it's evident from the very first episode is I quite like the world building here Like I quite like in terms, like I'm a bit skeptical about the, like in advance, I was a bit skeptical about the idea of an alien show set on Earth. I think that the world that Noah Hawley and the creative team have put together here to set it within is quite good, right? And you get that from early on, right? The opening of the episode is very clearly aping aliens intro and the style of it. but I quite like this idea of a world that's controlled by megacorporations.

The setting is quite interesting. I found that intriguing. Yeah, agreed. I think the world building is a standout part of that first episode. It really establishes the space. You know, the franchise has always been dominated by Wayland-Utarni as this kind of mega-corporation, this standing for hyper-capitalism, that is ultimately the kind of villain of the piece,

pushing people to do monstrous things and to become monsters, get monsters in order to advance kind of rapacious capitalist ends. And so building that out where the world is now dominated by these five mega corporations is quite cool. I like that idea. I like the idea of this corporation owning this continent

and there being this squabble between the different corporations between Whalen Jutani and Prodigy about ownership of these kinds of biological property intellectual property I think that's good production design is also

great really top-notch like you say the first scenes on the Maginot which is the Wayland Jutani ship looked like for all intents and purposes like they filmed on the Nostromo set from the original alien it just, they've aped it

fantastically well. Yeah. Like I feel like they've done a good job of integrating it into what we expect of this world based upon alien whilst also building it out, right? Like there wasn't really anything in the setting of it that kind of

seemed incongruous to me. There are certain other things that do seem in congruous to me, but that wasn't one of them. So in that respect, I think it's done very well. Yeah, there's a certain sense of kind of cultural incongruity in the world building

whereby there's a lot of 20th century needle drops at the end of each episode, the credits are like a rock song. And Wendy, one of the main characters, Wendy is this

hybrid character who bonds with her brother over Ice Age, the kind of animated film. And there's a lot of shots of Ice Age, which they can use because Disney own everything. And this idea that they bonded over this animated movie from years, centuries before they were born, I found a little off. But I did read an interpretation that this is because, in a cultural context where mega corporations own everything, no new art is being created. So art has ossified, art has calcified, into this representation of the long 21st century,

whereby, you know, films from that period, like I said, are now cultural touchstones because nothing is being created, nothing new is being made. And I like that, I can buy that. Yeah, I saw this. and maybe this is where I start getting into some of the issues I have with the series because I would say

in order to as a summary before we get into it there are things as you can kind of probably gather from the comments I've made about the production design and the world building there there are things I like about the series right I'm not completely negative on it but I think by the time I've got to the end of it

I'm a lot more negative on this entry into the franchise than I am positive, right? So to kind of like start winding up for the things that I don't think works as well for me, right?

And I'd say it's not really black and white, right? I mean, there are some things where I kind of like, I kind of, okay, I can see what we're trying to do. I don't think it's done particularly well. Let's stick with this. I want to stick with what we do like for the moment. Okay. We'll come back to that.

Yeah. Because I like this idea. I think my only thing with it is, I'll leave it at this before we get into it. That reading to me is completely extra textual, right? I don't feel like there's anything within the series that actually backs that up. I like that interpretation. I don't think that's something the series itself is offering. Yeah, that's what I thought you were getting to. And there's a lot more of that to come. So I think let's stick with what we did like for now and get into things later. So like I say, world building production design, very good. I also like the creature design. I think the creature design of, there's what, like five, six alien specimens, including the xenomorph. And I think the creature design is very good. Like there's interesting bugs, there's this kind of plant-like vegetative thing. And most pressingly, there is a little eye.

eyeball octopus that crawls around on its little tendrils and it is like the star of the show it's a fantastic design and the creature itself which I also kind of had a bit of a visceral reaction to like even before this sees

I have a thing about eyes and kind of like you know things interfering with your eyes so this was just like absolute fucking nightmare fuels as far as I'm concerned absolutely horrendous yeah so no like the creature design

is great, and I think that in particular, like, because, you know, we're doing this for the whole series, the spoilers at the end of it, the thing that appears to be more plant-like, right? You see a different way of it behaving later in the series where, you know, it moves and it's done in the background as some characters are trying to deal with, you know, a lab, you know, a lab disaster as inevitably will happen in the series. And it is really well done. It is really well done. This stuff I liked, and it also felt, again, to link it back to the world building part of it, it felt like something that was kind of like flora and fauna that you could imagine living in the same world as a xenomorph. You know, it felt like an extension of that sort of ecosystem. You know, so again, I like that. I think that was good. It felt, you know, it felt a part of, ironically, given it doesn't really address Prometheus in any way whatsoever, right? Some of the stuff that you see in Prometheus in terms of other creatures that come from that sort of lineage, it felt a part of that in a way that I think worked and was scary and horrible,

and it brings up some of the same sort of reactions that the xenomorph and facehuggers do and all that sort of thing. Yeah, yeah. So I think the creatures are good. There's a lot of good performances as well. So I think the standouts for me are Samuel Blenkin is Boy Cavalier who is this kind of very young CEO and he's obviously standing in for like your Jeff Bezosia Elon Musk

billionaire sociopath without any kind of conscience thinks he's the smartest person in the room kind of thing and I have my issues with the character but I think the way he's played by Samuel Blenkin is generally good generally good Timothy Oliphon is very good as he's this android

assistant scientist working for Prodigy working for Boy Cavalier you know Adrian Edmondson's not a standout for me but it's wild to see Adrian Edmondson I've got to be honest I enjoyed Adrian Edmonds

Yeah he's not bad by any means It's just Yeah I saw him in something else But, yeah, no, I mean, if you're used to seeing him in, like, Bottom, it's something of a left turn, yeah. It's like, we're very far from Bottom and the Young Ones here. In a UK, from a UK context, you know, we're watching this, having been familiar with Adrian Edmondson from his comedy roles, especially with Rick Mail, in Bottom, the Young Ones, etc. What's he in as well?

Jonathan Creek as well. That's what he is. But yeah, very good, very good. So Sidney Chandler kind of leads the cast as Wendy, who is this hybrid leader of the Lost Boys, and she is kind of the first hybrid. She's struggling with her identity after being transferred into an adult body. She's not a standout for me,

but she does solid enough work that it kind of provides a good foundation for the rest of the show. Yeah, I think I think she does a pretty good job I mean, I have my problems with the role but I think the problems there are with the character as written Yeah, right?

I think, you know, in the journey she goes on and what she's representing, I don't know if that really works for me. In terms of her performance, I think it's pretty decent. I wouldn't say it necessarily elevates anything there, but I think she does good work with what she's given.

Another standout is Babo Sisei, as Morrow, who is the security officer from the Maginot, works for Whalen Dutani, and tries to infiltrate his way into the prodigy base to get the xenomorph sample specimen for Whelan Jutani. He's a cyborg, and he's very good. He has this kind of steely conflictedness that kind of represents, it's similar to ash in alien kind of post-Android reveal. He has this steely determination, this roboticness to him, that he's very good. Like, he represents someone who had humanity, but he's had his humanity stripped away from him as he has become more robotic.

Yeah, and I think this is the standout performance for me, I would say. Like, there's a lot of, just the way he delivers some lines I really, really enjoyed. So I think it's the standout performance for me. I think this is also the standout role. for me, to be honest, I think for kind of like the reasons you outline there, it's an interesting, it's an interesting spin on this whole, you know, machines representing the loss of humanity driven by the corporate imperative thing. Like, you know, like, we've spoken about it with Ash, we've spoken about it with David Johnson's character in Eileen Romulus, you know, like, this has come up before. I think this is the, this is an interesting spin on that. right as a you know a synthetically augmented human let's say yeah um you know because he's a you know a lot of play is made of this sort of like you know you have since fully synthetic you have cyborgs who are you know essentially fully human but have then kind of like had

cybernetic enhancement my own in particular has a kind of knife arm like yeah exactly right in his case It's kind of in his arm, arm, and actually, I'm glad you brought up that, because there was one thing he does in particular, which I wonder if it's a terminator reference, but we'll come to that. And then lastly, the hybrids, which are, like, you know, fully synthetic bodies, but they've got, like, a human conscience implant. And a lot of play is made about, kind of like, you know, what is the technology is going to dominate, who's been, you know, this sort of thing. And I think the introduction of the cyborg idea and what the moral character shows there is one of, is an interesting way to bring that, that spin in. So, no, I think that performance and that role are probably my favourite ones there, alongside Timothy Oliphon. There's a very interesting dynamic between Morrow, Babu Sisi's character, and Kersh, Timothy Oliphon's character, right? Full synthetic, cyborg.

One works for Prodigy, one works for Yuland Utani, one is kind of like, you know, another is kind of like more kind of emotionally driven to an extent. it's interesting it's interesting it is and there seems to be these fun parallels like I say he is a human who has become more synthetic Timothy Oliphant's

Kirsch feels like a synthetic who yearns to be more human who yearns to understand the world through science and to connect with the hybrids and to be more human so there's interesting parallels there

that I don't think get particularly well developed. No. But while we're sticking on things that I enjoyed, I enjoyed that this talked about kind of transhumanism and post-humanism. This is a major theme through the series, you know, this idea that you can put the human in a synthetic body and there is a conflict of identity there. What does that mean for humanity? What does that mean for people? I particularly enjoyed the way it is tied to capitalism and the corporations. like this is transhumanism in pursuit of profit and in what way is that liberatory for humans

like that is just making people into property like the way it transfers these children's consciousnesses and turns them into literal property that the the prodigy corporation owns is really interesting to me this idea of the liberating potential of transhumanism being warped is say it's is cool I don't think it gets into that particularly well but I appreciate that it's looking in that direction I appreciate that theme

but yeah I do feel like there are good ideas in this it yeah yeah you know and like and again not to get ahead of ourselves here right while we're focusing on things that we appreciated about series what I would say is in the first

you know two or three episodes, let's say, right? I wouldn't say I was necessarily 100% sold, but I was seeing enough where I was like, oh, okay, right, this has got, this has potentially got something between the years, right? You know, there's interesting ideas here. I don't know if this is necessarily the best vehicle for them, but, you know, I'm going to put that to one side. There are things that are interesting here, right? There are interesting ideas going on here around corporate ownership of people how exactly a world

ruled by corporations explicitly looks you know how that then affects people's motive it like there's interesting stuff going on right they set up interesting things as I say not to get MS up don't think it executes on all of them very

well some better than others but there is stuff that's interesting here it's not it's not completely empty you know Yeah, I think I felt the same for the first two or three episodes. Like, there's potential here. I wouldn't see how it plays out. Being familiar to some extent with Noah Hawley's work on Fargo,

like I said, I thought it would all pay off. I thought it might come together in a way that it didn't feel like it was doing for the first few episodes, but I trusted it to bring these ideas together. And maybe this is the time to move on to stuff. we're less keen on because I don't think it does come together. I don't think it resolves these themes particularly well

over the course of the entire series unless you have more stuff you liked. I think we've covered the big ticket items. I mean like there are specific moments I did like I think you know so like spoiler alert there are xenomorphs at points in the series right I liked some of the stuff they did with that

right and I think I'm perhaps in a minority there to be honest like friends in episode two so in episode two this is the one where kind of like a lot of the time

is spent in this massive building that the ship has crashed into right so the hybrids have been sent into retrieve samples and you know

it's kind of like it's going between the ship and the building it has crashed into right and by this point there's a xenomorph on the loose

right because there was one on the ship that's basically what's crashed and there's one there is a moment where kind of like you see a statue in the background and you're kind of thinking to yourself that's going to move and it moves

and it's the xenomorph listen is it a small simple very kind of like superficial moment yes it is I fucking loved it it was great right it set it up it executed on it extremely well I really liked it

it as kind of like it's it kind of echoes the final stretch of alien where she doesn't realize it's there and then it just emerges it also kind of like to a certain extent it has some similarity with aliens when the xenomor rises out of the water and you like I loved it

sits perfectly in this franchise and it's executed great there are lots of different moments with the xenomorph like that which I kind of appreciated right it does have a certain batmanish quality later in the series where like you know it will be there

and then it will kind of like suddenly appear somewhere else loved that shit. Like I enjoyed that, right? This thing is meant to be scary, is meant to be otherworldly, right? That worked for me. So there's bits about that that I liked.

The best bits of the Xenomorph for me are those early bits where it's terrorising this building and... Yeah, there are a bits where it starts to fall apart a little bit later on, but I think early on, yes, those bits are good. While we're on this episode with the building as well, there is an intriguing

bit of world building around this like they're going through the building and there's this this moment where they come across an apartment and knock on the door and say you need to evacuate and the building is full of these like people in like georgian dress having some kind of decadent opulent party and and it really reminded me of like ballads high-rise like these people who live in this building who are so disconnected from the rest of the world outside that they're just in their own kind of fantasy space, playing with this kind of privileged

cosplay of kind of Georgian nurse. I was really interesting to me this idea that their life is so mediated by faceless corporations that they can just live in this dream in this fantasy, in this building entirely disconnected with the fact that

a spaceship crashed into the foundations of the building a couple of hours ago. That never gets built upon, but I liked as a moment. Yeah, I'd agree with that. I just find myself thinking about Blackad or the third quite a bit,

watching that. I understand it. Yeah, but that's the thing. I think that there are moments in this series that I like beyond this. I think we've dealt with a lot of the big ticket strand items that I say I appreciated, maybe more than I liked.

You know, but I mean, this is, this is quite watchable for the most part. I mean, like, you know, and we'll probably talk about, I guess, episode five in a bit more depth, right? Because that deals with what happened on the Mad Geno, right? This Whelandutani ship the crashes. It deals with that

in a little bit more depth. Michael Smiley has quite a big role in that. I appreciate his performance. I always kind of like it when he shows up. I find him a very engaging actor. I like that. I quite like that episode. We'll talk about that more later. And there's It's like I say, there's bits and pieces I like, but that's the thing.

They're bits and pieces. Yeah, bits and pieces I like that don't come together that well. I liked episode five a lot. I think that was purely on its own terms, like my favorite episode. I've seen people who have problems with it, but I liked it. I think that is an episode that is. So, this is the problem I have with Prestige US TV. series in general is the inability to structure an episode so what US TV series

generally do these days is structure the season so they structure it like a long movie and it's got you know a beginning middle and an end in terms of series and the series is self-contained and works but you're not making a long film you are making an episodic TV series it is me complaining about a general gripe I have generally, but each episode should have its own narrative arc. It should have an internal coherence, even if serialized. Maybe I just want to watch Chartette the next generation and Star Trek Deep Space 9 again and again. But that's the way TV should be structured.

I should walk away from an episode feeling like I have watched a complete thing, even if that thing is part of a whole. I loved Andor There's a lot of comparisons to Between this series and Andor Both in kind of critical reviews and people online Which makes it extra handy that I've not watched Andor yet Well

And I loved Andor Andor is great But Andor also does this Andor also structures each episode As part of a long thing Rather than a thing in itself The first three episodes of Andor in particularly are one episode in terms of structure.

They should be one episode, but they have just broken it arbitrarily into three. So, like, minor arcs don't get resolved, it doesn't feel complete, it doesn't feel like an episode. And so Alien Earth does this too. Each episode feels incomplete. Apart from episode 5, which is a complete story told aboard the Maginot

of this crew that went into deep space and retrieved these specimens obviously it goes wrong the alien escapes and blah blah blah it's essentially a retread of the original alien film but it's like a mirror image version of you know what could have happened if alien played out slightly differently

what if it was slightly different and I didn't mind that I thought that was interesting like say it has its own structure but it means that the effort episode is paced well because it is complete it's got better pacing

than all the other episodes tells a complete story and I enjoyed it maybe I just want to see an alien wreck shit aboard a spaceship maybe that's what I come to this franchise for I think so I would say if you forced me to pick

an episode right that I thought it was kind of like the standout episode of the series right I'd probably pick this one Right. And I think the reason for that is exactly what you've said. It has a complete-ish arc. Now, the thing that I find it interesting about this, because it probably shows up what maybe some of the gaps are in the rest of the series. I think the reason it works for me is it is focused a little bit on one, kind of the action of what is happening. And, you know, it has its horror. moments, it has its action moments, it has its kind of character moment. But effectively, we go on a journey, really, with the moral character, right? Because the purpose that this serves in the arc of the whole series, such that there is one, is effectively, it's really

establishing his motivations, right? Because we've had four, four episodes up to this point where he's kind of like this, you know, malevolent, uh, malevolent, uh, malevolent, um, presence who presents a threat, right? And, you know, you've got Babu, Sisi, kind of like snarling his way through lines and seeming bitter, and it's a very engaging performance, but you don't really know

kind of what the overarching reason for it is. You get that here, right? It unfurls, it's established, you know where the character's come from, you know what he's gone through, you know where he's going, right? So you come out of this episode understanding his perspective.

that is very poorly done across the rest of the series for other characters. Yes. Right. You know, for all the strengths, the performances can have at points, Wendy is very confusingly pitched through the series. Her brother, which I'll come, that relationship I'll come back to in a minute, like, is very one note and doesn't really develop. he just has this naive, we need to get off the aisle and things out,

until kind of Adam Eince, Adrian Edmondson's character, kind of disabuses him of this notion in like the penultimate episode or something. You know, you've kind of got the same thing for a lot of the other hybrids, the Lost Boy characters, it's not really well developed. I find the revelations towards the end about Boy Cavalier a little bit inconsequential.

I think it confuses his character more than anything else. nobody else gets this treatment right and I think to me that's why this episode works not only is it a complete story in and of itself in this episode it has a compelling reason to care about it right

there's something happening here beyond the well executed but ultimately unconnected moments I spoke about before this feels like a complete piece of work yes agreed it does does a lot of that character building

for the Morrow character that really pays off. Is it a retread of alien to an extent? Yes, I don't know if like in the grand scheme of this franchise is particularly necessary or adds much, but I do think it's well done. Yes. Yeah, if I had to change anything,

it would be the name of the ship because I think Maginot is a little on the nose for kind of symbolism of a boundary that's being broken. But, yeah, but I mean, this whole series is a bit on the noise. Well, exactly. Boy Cavalier. Like, Jesus Christ.

Like, I thought we were at least going to get some sort of at least the other more mundane name or something. But like, no, no, okay. We're sticking with that, are we? So, Peter Pan is repeatedly returned to as a motif for, out the film, because in the very first episode, during the operation to turn Wendy into a hybrid, she watches Peter Pan on the kind of view screen in the surgical room. And Boy Cavalier reads Peter Pan to the hybrids all the time, every night. Boy Cavalier is a young boy who wants to live forever.

He's obviously a Peter Pan reference. the kids themselves are called the lost boys they are named after the lost boys in Peter Pan he also has a slightly freewheeling attitude if only there was a word for that he's very cavalier

one might say interesting and he's a boy and he's a boy he's very young very young a boy cavalier like Peter Pan a boy who's very cavalier yeah no so pizza pan is clearly this this reference point for kind of the kind of childhood versus adulthood theme that is going on you know children discovering the treachery of adults but just it's hammered every episode and I don't care about Peter Pan like it doesn't really particularly like genuinely

for something that is referenced I think probably pretty much every episode apart from the aforementioned episode five because it has a different setting I think you know it comes in every episode right I don't think it does anything particularly interesting

because there's bits there's bits there was like so you know so we're kind of spoken about things that we've liked I'm going to focus on something which was mixed for me right and you know before we kind of

like getting to things that properly maybe didn't work, right? This entire angle with childhood I found interesting right? This intrigued me for a couple of reasons, right? The first one was that

taking this capitalist exploitation idea which has always been in the series despite the many think pieces that came out in this when this series was aiding saying oh the actual bad guy is not the xenomar It's corporations this time.

It's like, you know, you've been watching the same goddamn films that I have, but anyway, like, you know, I'm setting myself up for failure here because we're doing analysis of alien, alien earth, and people may well come within and saying, you know, well, Jim, your own one was, was shite. But, like, some of the level of analysis of the series as it was aiding, I thought it was just dreadful. It's funny, we were just talking about Frankenstein before we started recording, and there's been all these think pieces, like, did you know that in this new film, Frankenstein isn't. The monster? Yeah. Like, Victor Frankenstein is the evil one. I mean, yeah. You know, like, Jesus, they open the schools, etc.

Right. But, so anyway, like, putting that to one side, I found this and this is a new angle to it that I found interesting. And there were lots of things which I feel like the show could have developed, maybe even hinted at developing, but didn't go on to do so, right?

Because one thing that I found particularly interesting is the idea of taking this capital, say, exploitation and extending it into childhoods. And there were a couple of ways that that came up, right? The first one is the very obvious one of basically corporations owning people, but not just owning people, owning children, effectively, right? And that felt like a really interesting extension of this dynamic. It doesn't particularly do anything with, right? The only point of which I thought it was going to go somewhere with it is when one of the hybrid children characters, right? I forget her name, unfortunately. Basically ends up with this delusion that she's pregnant, right?

And, you know, other characters put to work There's one character who meets a very grizzly demise Who effectively ends up working as a lab assistant He adopts the name Isaac Right? Instead of one of the lost bodyings like to, you know Because, you know, loves science, right? You know, kids being put to work And I did wonder if it was like some

If we were moving towards a comment about forcing children to grow up too early, right? This idea of kind of, you know, the media we present and the world that we bring children into, are they forced to grow up too early? They're not allowed to be children. And this is brought, this is manifested in the series and it's a very literal way

by taking a child's mind and putting it in what essentially outwardly appears to be an adult body, right? And in the same way that, kind of like, you know, some of that comment came in from poor things, right, the Yorgas Lantern on, so it's kind of like, is this kind of like a sci-fi bent on

that, right? Or a more kind of like, you know, more hard sci-fi bent on that, because obviously there's, you know, there's a science fiction element to poor things in that respect. It's just a very different type of film. And but it didn't really do anything with it. I like the idea, but it doesn't really

go anywhere. It doesn't linger with it. It doesn't take any of the characters on any sort of journey which links back to that idea if anything it does the opposite, right? The character who is

convinced she's pregnant, like, has her memory reset like two separate times or something. It's a weird one. It's a weird one. I just, I can't decide whether that's something I've read into it that I shouldn't have. And, you know, maybe I have to an extent

but like, even if that is the case, I do feel like it is indicative. of the way that this kind of sets up a whole bunch of stuff that is not developed. You know, there are many things it could have but I don't think it actually does any of them. No, it's using Peter Pan to hammer home

this childhood adulthood theme, like you say. You know, children not wanting to grow up or growing up too fast or whatever. But it doesn't say anything about Peter Pan. Like, what are we saying here? That Peter Pan was a bad guy, a bad influence on these children through the shape of Peter Boy Cavalier

like what are we using Peter Pan for apart from hammering home this theme and it doesn't seem like it's doing anything apart from hammering this theme repeatedly it doesn't feel like Wendy grows beyond the Peter Panness of it even though Wendy leads this rebellion at the end it doesn't feel like that's

in any way linked to a rejection of the Peter Pandas of Boy Cavalier it just feels disconnected and I'll want to linger on this moment you mentioned where Lily Newmark plays Nibbs

she gets her memory wipes because she has delusions of being pregnant because that came to my mind as well interestingly this child who has been put in an adult's body now thinks she is pregnant like the ultimate expression of kind of adult woman

of being able to reproduce of being past puberty you know she feels like an adult but she gets her mind wiped so she doesn't have these delusions and there's interesting stuff that could be said there about kind of transhumanism treating these children as

objects that you can just wipe like a computer hard drive you know they're just computers they're just objects that you can control and and it is set up as if one of the scientist characters specifically says she mustn't realize that she's had her mind wiped

she'll be very confused she mustn't realize no one must ever tell her and in the first scene after waking up from the operation Wendy's in her room and she says like don't you remember blah blah blah I think you've had your mind wiped like are you trying to I thought we're going to build tension with this where it becomes a thing, but she immediately realises that she's had her memory wiped. It doesn't last one scene. The first thing she realizes upon waking up is that she's missing memories.

There's no slow burn, there's no time for it to develop. I found it infuriating. Yeah, I mean, this leads on to a general problem I have with the pacing of this series in that so much doesn't happen. There is so much of the series, when nothing happens. I feel like I skipped over in my summary. You know, the spaceship crashes into the building,

they go into the building, they get the specimens and they take them back to the island. That's by episode three. And then you've got five more episodes where nothing happens. There's so much time when characters are reiterating what has already happened or philosophizing about what has happened.

Instead of anything happening. Or the funny thing is actually, Right. I'm going to call you a slightly in that stuff happens, right? Because I can think of like a couple of key strands that like develop over those episodes. But the thing is that they develop. They're not developed, right? Because the reason that I don't think they're necessarily coming to mind when you're going over, you know, what happens there is because they're not resolved in any way. No. You know, and the main one I can think of, right, is, and I'm going to start getting into kind of like stuff that I found frustrating now, right? Because one I'm about to say kind of like links into that. The one major strand that comes up is that Wendy, right, has the ability to communicate with the xenomorph, right? yeah um so at some point

you can like hear this frequency that no one else can hear and we think it's because she's a hybrid that she can hear this frequency that is the kind of clicks and communication of the xenomorph and she learns to mimic it so she can literally talk to the xenomorph and apparently control it yeah

right because like early on I say early on I don't know at some point at some point in the first half of the season right basically a lot of contrivances to get here right her brother who is a medic who works for prodigy who went into the building that she is also sent into so they reunite they realize that their siblings blah blah you know skip over all this anyway he ends up with losing the lung right so he gets a fake lung implanted and his real lung right is used to gestate xenomorph right so early on We have a xenomorph, right? Because the original one, I think the original one ends up getting killed, right? But they've got this one, it grows in the lab. Yeah, right? And this is how we learned that she's able to communicate with it, right? And it responds to her, basically, right? Now, at this point, I think, okay, right, so what this is doing is it's kind of between that and episode five and, you know, various other things. And, you know, I think there's a

there's a reference made to we lost a lot of men to get these samples, right? Okay, right, so it's establishing Wayland Utani's motivation for why they want to acquire this thing that they encounter in the first alien film. That's kind of like the overarching

reason for this existing, right? But it doesn't go anywhere. No. It doesn't go anywhere. By the time we get to the end of the series, right? She's chatting with this thing basically, and it's basically kind of like her sort of like guardian devil

for want of a better phrase right but it doesn't do anything with it like what's the point of this like why why do I why do I give a shit like you know I it's and it speaks to like there are a whole bunch of things in this series

which have been either already done in this franchise right either to you know a better degree certainly not a worse one, or frankly, by other pieces of media, where this is not the vehicle to do it, right? You know, like one of the things that comes up with Boy Cavalier is, you know, I finally get to, you know, he wants to kind of like have something that becomes super intelligent and will come to kind of like what his particular vehicle is for that in a minute. so I can finally have a fucking interesting conversation, right?

That's kind of one of his key things, right? And he has this drive to be potentially immortal so that he can then, you know, and all this sort of thing. You've done this. We did this with Wayland and Prometheus. We did this. This has been done, right? The idea of, you know, and like this idea kind of like, you know, the hybrids becoming not conscious because they are conscious but having greater free will growing up and kind of like striking out against their creator wanting to become more than they are Westworld has already done this right and this entire strand of the hybrids it felt like I've got it written down here it feels like poundland Westworld to me you know and they're not they are dressed in more creative engaging ways

elsewhere, I don't particularly see why, not only do I not see why you need the alien universe to communicate these ideas, right? And I'm going to put aside the obvious thing of kind of like as a brand name, but, you know, all the obvious commercial imperatives here, right? But I don't really see why you need the alien universe to express these. Not only that, I think it ends up hamstringing how you can express them and you end up pushing to the side a lot of the things that this series has done well and is a good vehicle for. And I have specific examples we can get into, but that's the key thing for me. It doesn't really, apart from the stuff that we mentioned at the start, which I think is

very well, you know, the world building and some of the idea, it doesn't really excel at anything here. Yeah, the hybrids achieving self-determination, you compared to Westworld, which I think is perfectly valid, but it's also done this in the alien franchise with David. like David wanted to grow beyond his human masters and reproduce and he does that in Covenant and you know people praise Michael Fastmender's performance in those films even if those films aren't well thought of

so it's already the alien franchise has already done this and done it fairly well I want to go back to the communication with the xenomorph again briefly because I think that is potentially an interesting theme it's like a lot of the things in this series it is potentially interesting You know, how does a xenomorph think? How does a xenomorph's thought process influence how it communicates? You know, how does language structure their thought? This is kind of Saperwaffe hypothesis kind of stuff.

And it has a potential to be interesting if you do it like a rival, where you're thinking like through what does communication mean with this alien creature? How do you communicate? How does it think? Because obviously they have some form of hive mind with kind of, the queen structure and this like ant-like social structure that they have how does that influence them it doesn't touch on any of that like even having these thoughts i am going beyond what the series presents because like you say it is just commanding this creature to do various things it's like a command spell in d and d go over there flee attack blah blah blah so it doesn't go anywhere it's a it's a potentially interesting idea that doesn't get developed. And then you went on to talk about the kind of themes of this show,

which are potentially interesting, but I've either been done elsewhere or aren't developed well enough. And I think you alluded to the idea that why is this here? Why is this an alien show? And I think that's a big problem for me. Like, there are recurrent themes of alien films. like motherhood and reproduction, the monstrous feminine, capitalism as exploitative practice.

Now obviously that one's touched about, but this series develops and focuses on themes like transhumanism, childhood versus adulthood, you know, discovering the treachery of adults, that aren't bad per se, but like, why is it in an alien film? In some ways, it's a lot more blazing. runnery than alien

particularly in its focus on kind of human consciousness and robots and robotics and what is human you know what is human consciousness that just don't seem to fit don't seem to gel particularly well with

alien like obviously it's alluded to this stuff with synthetics and stuff in the past but it hasn't been the focus and to make it the focus seems I don't know, a bit strange, a bit disconnected from the rest

of the franchise. Yeah, and to me, and I've got a note here where once I kind of like sat and let this kind of like percolate for a bit, it seems very strange to me, right? Because I think a lot of the themes it ends up

focusing on, right? Or what you've said there, right? And you know, it's the idea like, what is consciousness, how do you obtain it? What does technological, immortality look like what does that mean for humans what is maturity exactly

all very west world like you say yeah right so you know that's that aspect while we're here because I have a check I don't think I've done it in this season before go watch season one of Westworld genuinely one of the best series of television going I think

I think it's excellent it kind of increasingly goes off the rails in the seasons after that but season one itself I think is a complete arc interesting fantastic Anthony Hopkins I recently rewatched it I think because we maybe mentioned it on the Jurassic Park series

we mentioned it in a non-Zanaport series I'm sure we mentioned it in Jurassic Park because of the Michael Crichton connection yeah almost anyway I went back and rewatch the first season and it was great fantastic I bought a box set that only had seasons one and two because I remember season three and I'm not watching that again

but I I went over to the first episode of season two, and there's such an immediate dropping quality. Like, it felt... I don't be right, I think I appreciated season two. I quite enjoyed it. It's not on the same level. I remember liking it, but I was like, oh, no,

I don't have time for this. Yeah. So, you know, but the thing is, right, these are all ideas dealt with there, and I find it interesting that that is kind of the thematic concern of this series by and large, right? Because when you think about some of the other things that other alien entries have dealt with, it's things like bodily autonomy, physical violation, right? Or at least that's the vehicle for kind of like, you know, some of the more visceral aspects.

It doesn't focus on those, right? But then when you actually take a step back and you'll look at what's supposedly motivating the hybrids, right? And I don't think it's necessarily particularly clear, right? We've discussed this as one of the downside. But where you can attach something, right? The thing that's motivating them is stuff like that, right? One of the things that they kind of like get really upset about and kind of like Stokes this rebellion is that violation of nibs where they wipe her memory

and, you know, set her back in. It's seen as like a violation. We're not in control. It's seen as a violation that, you know, they've been taken, put into these bodies. And that seems to be kind of a motivating idea. It's a motivating idea, but then everything that the series then tries to address with these characters is not really based in that. And I find it weird, given that a lot of that stuff has come up in the Alien series before.

It seems ripe for doing that sort of thing. But that's not the route it goes down. And the thing that I found interesting was, a film that I had a lot of problems with, right? And, you know, our previous episode in this particular strand, Romulus, right? It even did this, right? it did this better, even though I have, you know, issues with it, right? It dealt with this in the character who is pregnant, right? And, you know, the way that then this kind of, like, you know, monstrosity,

it deals in the same territory. It tries to do it a little bit differently. I have my problems with that film, but, like, it kind of understands what are the things that you're meant, what are the things that this world and this sees? is best used to express. It seems to get that. I don't think this series does. Yeah, I think if there is a series arc, it comes into shape in the last second, literally, of the series. So, Wendy leads the hybrids on this kind of rebellion against the humans on the island,

against the prodigy staff on the island, and against Boy Cavalier by proxy, and ends up locking them up and the last moment of the series is Boy Cavalier I think says to her what are you going to do now and she says now we rule and I was like what is that what you wanted

like that doesn't seem to have come into view over the series I didn't know that was what she wanted I thought you know self-determination isn't necessarily ruling and I didn't know she wanted to rule the island, or take over prodigy, or whatever that's meant to imply,

take over from the humans. It felt so underdeveloped to the extent that I didn't know that was what they were striving for. It felt like, I haven't watched all of the Mandalorian, but I watched enough of the Mandalorian that Boba Fett came back, and at the end of Boba Fett's little arc in that, he goes and takes over Jabba's Palace and goes and sits in Jabba's throne. And I was a bit like, is that what you wanted? I didn't get, I didn't know you wanted, you aspired to that kind of leadership. That hasn't come across in your appearances here or in the old films. And I felt the same way here. I just didn't know that ruling was something that Wendy and the lost boys

wanted. Yeah. No, that's, or it's like, you spend so much time with it being kind of like, you know, taking control of themselves and having autonomy it feels like it's then got to that point and then accelerated to the next level. Like you know, in the space of like, you know, half an episode or something.

I think just to focus on the finale a little bit for a moment, right? Genuinely, I think the ending of this series is abysmal. I think it's really one of the worst series finale I've seen in a while.

not only like it does a whole bunch of things including one it doesn't close off a bunch of threads that i think probably should have been closed off to some extent not only that it introduces new ones that it then doesn't close off as well like you come out of this this season with more questions and not in a good way not in a sort of like a intriguing lost sort of way right you come out of this with more questions and you went in with You know, it's just, you know, it's, because it spends, like to focus on one thing which was another mixed thing that has good aspects, right? Let's go back to our pal the eyeball creature. So, yeah, for a minute, right? So there's a lot, this is another one of these strands that goes through quite a few episodes. And it basically is established that this thing is extremely intelligent, right? It's not animalistic and quite a few episodes. And it basically is established that this thing is extremely intelligent, right? It's, it's not animalistic and quite, the same way as some of the other things we've seen, right? And this is established because they implant it in a sheep, right? And the sheep is seen to be observing them. It then seems to kind of like intelligently cause the death of one of the hybrids. So boy cavalier attempts to have a conversation with it, right? And his logic for this is that, you know, because like the number pie is kind of intrinsic to the universe in some way, right? In particular, kind of like its relationship between the circumference and the diameter of a circle,

any advanced civilization would be aware of it. So he holds this conversation with this sheep, where he tries to get it to basically give him the digits of pie. Yeah. Right? And I think it does it to like the first three or four figures or something like that. that before, then takes a shit on the cage floor, right? So, he's the side of this thing is incredibly intelligent.

I love that scene. Like, that was fantastic. The sheep, sinisterly stamping out digits of pie while maintaining eye contact, locking eyes with its captor, this young boy who thinks he's smarter than it, is fantastic. I loved it. I loved most of the scenes with the sheep,

because I think the sinister sheep with this swore and alien eyeball is fantastic. Yeah. No, genuinely like that, that's good stuff, right? But the thing that this builds to is you clearly pick up on the idea that what boy Cavalier wants to do is he wants to let this thing take over a person, right? And we've seen it kind of like, because, spoiler alert, Michael Smiley in episode five ends up with this thing in his eye and it fights the xenomorph right you don't see a lot with

a lot of it right but what's a pan is it can take over a person he wants it boy cavalier to take up a human as its host basically so you can have a conversation with it right it builds to this the entire probably what second half of the season i would say and it happens whereby one of the employees of Prodigy who had a Zina Mortady you know whatever we're not going to go and go over it because it's all us so what happens with a lot of disease

completely inconsequential when it's like you get to the end right but basically it takes over a dead body the dead body stand sits up it's the last we ever see of it right so it it's just it's left it open ended

for season two but then like does that actually link in to what boy cavalier's going to want because boy cavalier is now in captivity with Wendy's saying we rule and it's just it's so it's so messy and disjointed

and this whole season right and this is not the pacing and the structure of it is all over the shop it is wildly disjointed it's wildly disjointed across the series as a whole right there's stuff that is not

resolved there's stuff that's resolved to early, like you made that allusion with kind of like, you know, nibs finding out her memories being white one scene after that happens, right? So there's stuff that's wrapped up too quickly, there's stuff that's not wrapped up at all. But it happens within episodes as well. Like this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this is very fond of random fades to black, you know, because it has no way of like, you know, organically managing to transition from one thing to another because there's no coherence. There is no coherence. There is no humans. Within episodes

there's no humans across the series it's very poorly structured. It's very poorly paced. I'm really surprised by it to be honest. Yeah, the eyeball monster is very emblematic of this. It's like Chekhov's Eyeball Monster where they're setting it up to do

something all season, to do something significant and to be very significant. There's a strand where whereby the eyeball monster is in some sense set up as a natural predator to the xenomorph and maybe there's

been parallel or convergent evolution because the xenomorph doesn't have any eyes so is this a natural predator from where the xenomorph came from in this continuity that's not Prometheus and Covenant that gets alluded to but never gets built on

and like you say the sheep thing just fizzles out the eyeball monster just escapes and goes and possesses a corpse something that it has never been shown it has the capability to do. Because, you know, they're feeding

the sheep hay. Like, the sheep is alive. They're keeping the sheep alive. It's not a sheep corpse that it has animated. And then suddenly it animates this dead body and just walks off. And, like, I have in my notes for episode 8, well, maybe the eye will do something next season. We'll look forward to what the eye will do next.

And I think it's emblematic of kind of these loose threads that aren't built upon and there is a kind of I think you've put it in your notes as don't ask questions just consume product and get excited for the next product it felt MCU where the MCU is always like don't worry the exciting things will be in the next film we'll actually develop this thread in the next film you'll get to see the characters you want to see in the next one don't you worry because they're in this post credit we're building up to it we're going to get there um but you It's not getting there.

Just getting there in this season, especially when you don't have a second season confirmed. It's just, it's very frustrating. Yeah, and the MCU comparison, but I actually a reasonably apt one. Like, by the time I got to the end of the series, I felt like I'd watched eight separate 45 minutes to hour long post-credit scenes.

Right? You know, I can think of very few things that are actually in any way resolved by the end of this series, right? In particular, the one that's the most egregious is I've said one of my favourite characters was Morrow and my favourite performance was Babu Sisi. I stand by that.

In the finale, they just fucking forget about him. Yeah, he just ends up in the cage at him. He escapes from sort of like the holding cell he's in and we just never see him again. It's ridiculous. It's just, it's utterly absurd. Like, it's just, it's just nonsense. The problem with the pacing, it is egregious throughout the entire series.

But it feels like they're building towards something the entire time. There's hints of like Jurassic Park. This is a secure lab on an isolated island, and you feel like security's going to fail. Something's going to go wrong, and everything will escape, and there will be Carthosus. but that catharsis of something going wrong never really happens like there's isolated incidents where some of the specimens escape and like say the eyeball monster escapes in the last episode but it never goes Jurassic Park

it never goes this facility is breached or whatever and by the end of the series like no one's even really dead no characters don't die by and large that almost the entire cast is now just in a different position for the next thing and I'm sorry if this is me being nostalgic or indulging in nostalgia for what I want to happen but it's an alien film I feel like people should get killed by the alien along the way

and we should lose characters in a way we just don't like all the lost boys are like even though one of them got shot at the end of episode seven and in the next episode he's just there one is stood like the guy who got the guy who got attacked by the flies he's still dead yeah no fair yeah

but I think that this speaks to your point though because even thinking about the so the character that actually ends up getting taken over by the eyeball is one of the prodigy scientists who's working there and has had ethical qualms

with what's happening and he kind of like gets booted off. He's married to... He's being used as a host for a xenomorph by wheeling, you know, blah, blah, blah, like, you know, go over it. It's a no consequence whatsoever, basically, right? Unresolved Freds, he is married

to one of the other scientists and in the series, she never even finds out he died. Yeah, exactly, right? So, but to speak to your point, I'm fairly certain, right, that you're like, you know, nobody really dies and especially not in the, the

finale. I'm pretty sure he died at least one, if not two episodes before the finale. Right? That was when the xenomorph actually erupted from him. I'm pretty sure that might have happened towards the end of episode, at some point in episode seven. Yeah. Like, he doesn't actually

die in that episode. I think he's a corpse. He gets left on a beat. I could be wrong about that, but the, you know, the point is, you know, part of the, there's so many things that are not resolved. Like, one thing that we've not mentioned at all. And I think it's because it's

basically, save for one scene, of very little consequence and it's also still ongoing as the finale finishes is, Whalen Dutani have invaded this goddamn prodigy island to retrieve their specimens,

right? When we leave this series, which doesn't have a confirmed season two, they're still in the process of doing that. Yeah. We've seen their truths on that, but that's it. Like nothing else. And it's just, it's just, as I say, don't ask questions, just consume product, then get excited for next products, right? That's it. That is this entire finale. And yeah, it's just like, you know, I've said, it sets up with some interesting things. I'm not going to say it doesn't. It then develops them poorly and doesn't resolve them. It doesn't even have a poor resolution. It develops them poor. It develops and poor. and then doesn't resolve them.

Yeah. The title is a little strange to me. Alien Earth, because the alien is somewhat incidental to what actually happens to the arc of the show. It's not about the alien,

it's not about the xenomorph, it's about the hybrids. And sure, the xenomorph is there, but it isn't core to the story. You know, he's just one of the specimens it's just one of the specimens that they are working on and the show would work perfectly well if that was replaced with another alien the xenomorph isn't important to the story, it is incidental

it's also incidental that it's set on earth because while it is set on earth and there's some importance to that in the first episode they almost immediately get all the specimens on an, isolated island that might as well be a spaceship for all intents and purposes there's no way for the alien to get off this island there's no way for the specimens to get off this island there probably is but in narrative terms if there was it would be contri in narrative terms it is an isolated space that it doesn't matter that it's on earth it could be on any planet or on a spaceship like i say

because it's just an isolated facility. So it's a very strange title. The earthness of it is not important. When they announced alien earth, I thought, oh, the threat will be the idea of xenomorphs coming to Earth and the disaster that could ensue. Which is something that, you know, many films in this series have hinted at. And, you know, in the case of resurrection,

even had an ending shot. you know, which was look at that. But I think this is another kind of like overarching problem I have with it, where the CD itself didn't really do anything to disabuse me of that, which is having the xenomorphs on Earth, it just makes this world feel small again, you know, in a way where they've built out kind of like, you know, the multiple mega corporations, them controlling tech,

like in a way that they try to expand it. and it immediately shrinks it again. But it does it in other ways as well. Like, one thing that we've not focused on at all, and the series doesn't really focus on it, because it sets it up, sets it going, and, you know, we're off to the races limping along, is the dynamic between,

so Wendy, whose actual name was Marcy, finding her brother, right? So the way this happens is the hybrids are sent in, right to this crash site at the same time her brother who is a prodigy employee

who wants to leave prodigy but he hasn't clocked insufficient hours something that's also already been dealt with in Romulus but anyway is also sent in and they bump into each other he realizes who she are she proves it

and you know and there's an element of kind of like has this been set up But later in the season, has this been set up by Boy Cavalier? But, like, at the time, also, like, has Wendy engineered this, right? Because she also has this weird ability to kind of, like, manipulate electronics. Yeah, she can manipulate, kind of telecommunications. Never explained in any way whatsoever, right? But again, they just find each other so easily and so quickly,

it makes this world feel so small. So immediately, so quickly. He so quickly accepts that this full-grown adult is his baby-s. sister who died as far as he knows there's none of the expected issues that would come

with that kind of relationship there's no distrust or anything he didn't suspect oh this is some kind of weird copy of my sister which he should well it kind of alludes to it like I think there's one conversation I think maybe

where it comes up but like you expect it to play more with the idea of kind of like, you know, this kind of like humanist ship of theseus type thing, right? You know, is this my sister? Is it a copy of my sister? Is it, you know, a twin-ed, like, you know, like, what philosophically am I dealing with here? And what role does this mega-capitalist corporation have in it? Yeah. And it doesn't really do that.

You know, it just kind of like just moves along, okay, that's the relationship, you know, and like he is suspicious of her later on in the sense that kind of like he doesn't like some of the things that she's saying or doing, but it doesn't really play with the idea kind of like, well, why, right? Am I suspicious of her? Am I suspicious of not her, right? Is it kind of like, this is not what's something my sister do? There's some sort of perversion here in kind of like the way you've, you know, reanimated her. Or like, is it some sort of corporate dry but it doesn't

he doesn't really do that right it's all very surface level twitchy eyebrows and that's it the conflict threatens to come to a head when he shoots a hybrid and Wendy confronts him like what did you do

why did you do that she's very angry at him and then the episode ends on a kind of smash cut to black and then in the next episode we've already been on for the next episode it's never mentioned again like they don't

they're in separate cages so they can't talk through it the conflict is. Yeah, which brings us back to our disjointed, you know. And also full contrivances, right? Because you say they're not able to talk, yeah. She's able to unlock that cage

later on, I think, with her magic electronic. Yeah. Like, it's just nonsense. Like, it's just garbage. Like, sorry, it's just like, you know, it resolves things when it wants to resolve them. It doesn't when it does it.

It's all, it's so, it's so poorly structured and it's so contrived yeah just very shoddy I think it's pretty bad on a whole I think it's mid to bad

is how I would characterise the series I've been somewhat baffled by the critical response because the critical response was very positive like a lot of critics were really positive about it. And frankly, I don't know how much they saw. Like, I don't know how many preview

episodes Disney sent out for critics to review. But it doesn't feel like they could have watched the whole season. Because these pacing issues are so glaring and apparent, and have been apparent to everyone I have talked to about this, like in my real life. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, in my experience, I think it would probably have been about probably three maybe and I think the thing is in those first episodes it sets up a lot of interesting stuff and it still

has over half the season to resolve it right so if and this is kind of to an extent why I think we've decided to look at it as a whole series right because if we were to be reviewing this after three episodes I think I'd be reasonably positive like there were things

I liked in that like a lot of these moments I've mentioned that I liked were in those first episodes, you know, it's still kind of like building stuff, or so we thought. You know, like, I was fine on it, right? There were a couple of people in my social media who, like, took to it very badly straight away. And I remember in the first, like, when we were about three episodes, I think, seems a bit harsh, and it seems half decent to me. I'm not blown away at the moment, but yeah, it seems good. By the time we got to the end of the season, I was like,

you know, you were maybe seeing something or intuiting. something I wasn't because yeah not good so yeah I'm not impressed with it and I think if you know we can't rank this

in kind of like you know letterbox or whatever alongside the films because it's not a film and it's also not a mini series now because I think they are looking for a season two whether they get it or not we'll see genuinely I think I'd have this as the worst thing besides the

Predator crossovers. I would put this below Romulus. I'd put this below Residence. I genuinely I would like it expresses things clumsily it doesn't express them in a way that I think makes use of the narrative tools they have

at their disposal it doesn't resolve anything it's poorly paste it's poorly structured and I think a lot of the things it does well end up being fleeting surface pleasures. There's nothing here which is in really any way memorable. Yeah. On a positive level, at least. Yeah, so I'm confused by the critical reception, which is more or less positive. Interestingly, there are two alien

subreddits that I frequent. Maybe there's probably more, but I've looked at these two. There's one called R slash alien, and the consensus on that side, on that subreddit, is that it's garbage. Like, everyone hates it. They really hated the finale. And they despise it for all the reasons that we've brought up more so than me even. There is another alien subreddit called R slash LV426, and they loved it. They thought it was great. like just a really good solid entry into the alien franchise that that accomplishes its goals well and and does it all well it feels very strange to me like it feels like they've watched something different yeah genuinely i don't understand that right and you need you know especially when you do this thing we're kind of like you know it's trying to expand the world it's also trying to examine different themes right

I need to, for me anyway, one of the things I always try to do, and I've probably said on one of our various, you know, strands on this podcast before is I try to judge a film, or in this case, TV series, on its, on its own objectives, right? I don't think there's much point in criticising something for not being what you wanted, right, if it, you know, if it's not trying to do that, right? The key thing for me is this series does not achieve the things that it seemingly wants to. It does not examine the themes that it brings up well. It doesn't

do them in a particularly satisfying way. It doesn't develop them with the tools it is put at its own disposal. That's the key thing for me. I don't like the fact it makes the world feel small. I don't like the fact

that like, you know, the xenomorph isn't particularly well used across a lot of the series. I don't like some of the things it does with it. Whatever. That's not what I wanted. But the more egregious problem is the fact that it brings up all these ideas that we've already said around, you know, autonomy and your maturity, childhood, even parenthood once you get to the kind of final episode. It doesn't do any of these things well.

And that's that's what it's wanting to. to communicate clearly, and it does it poorly. It doesn't resolve them. It doesn't develop them well. And at worst, it sometimes does it in confusing ways that undermine itself. You know, if you're looking for kind of like a cool creature design, yeah, the plant thing, then when you see it sliddering across the walls, that's cool. I like, that's good, it's well done. It's the background of a single scene. Like, you know, come on.

now you know and like you know the statue moment I meant again is the background of a single scene like these are all well done moments but it's like you know come on like can we not do more than this you can do more than this you want to do more than this

and it's bad it's just badly done and I you know I don't I don't get it and it's like you know the actually the thing is like the eyeball alien is kind of emblematic of this whole thing

like it's a really good idea it causes this visceral reaction it's horrible and it's interesting and they set up interesting things and then there's just nothing and for what? Nothing. Where did it go? It doesn't go anywhere. And if all you want out of it is like an interesting eyeball alien

then okay great like fine but like part of the the reason the reason that this series, this franchise has endured, is because of the creature designs, but also kind of like what is being expressed via those. And the thing about this is,

does it have cool creature designs in World Blidden? Yeah, it has that. It's not expressing anything interesting with them. No. And that's why it doesn't linger. It's not, like, I have, I have no excitement for a potential season two of this, because I'm like, what are we even doing here? What are we doing?

What can you do that you've not already done? Yeah. I've seen the eyeball alien in a human and a sheep. I've seen the big plant thing swallow a person up. I've seen the xenomorph, you know, float around like Batman. I've seen the flies kind of like, you know, dissolve somebody's face. I've seen the weird tick things, drains up, like I've seen all of this.

What are you going to do with it? And the answer, based on season one, is fuck all. Like, you know, so... Yeah, it's got these interesting elements, like the eyeball ones, like you say. It's a shame that the xenomorph is the least interesting creature in a show called Alien Earth. But yeah, to...

To what end? Why? Yeah. To what end? I'm not interested in seeing any of these characters continuing stories. Like, I don't need to see them again. I'm not, I didn't know Wendy wanted to rule.

I'm not sure what that means. I'm not sure what she wants to do with that. I don't care. Yeah. And I didn't... Also, minor point. It really annoyed me that they just straight up called it the xenomorph constantly.

Yeah. I don't know if that's just a me problem but it was just something about it just felt a little bit too No that's You know It just felt a little bit too metatextual or something I don't know it just it didn't it didn't sound right It was like

You know Yeah but Not fine Not fan It feels like it must have come up in one of the previous alien films But it feels like in aliens Xenomorph is a generic term for an unknown creature, an extraterrestrial threat that they don't understand.

Yeah, rather than this specific species. Yeah, it's just a codename that the Colonial Marines have for something. But it becomes so codified for this creature. I can't remember any other films that do this, but in here it's done constantly. You're right, and it's frustrating. I felt the same while I was watching it as well. Like, I wasn't rushing to what's the next episode.

Every week, two weeks would go by, and I'd realize I'm not caught up on alien earth. I might not have finished it if it hadn't been for this podcast. And I'll contrast it again with Andor, because Andor, every week, I was there when it came out. I was watching every episode as it came out, because Andor's really good. and this is not yeah it's just yeah it's

I just I don't basically I've come out of this series I don't really understand what they were trying to achieve you know that's the thing right any other any other entry in this France well not any other entry but most other

entries in this franchise, right? I've come out of it understanding what they were trying to do, right? Like, the alien resurrection is a good example, right? I don't think it's a particularly well-executed film in the end, right? But I kind of, I get what Jeunet was going for, right? And bits of it work, bits of it don't. This one, I don't really understand what they were trying to do. And I don't think that's a shortcoming in my reading of the material, right? I think it's just very confused material. And the very few things that you can glom on to as being obvious kind of things that they're trying to, you know, push through the whole series, it executes poorly, right? So, you know, if somebody else is seeing something that I'm not, and a coherence

that I'm not, you know, all the better. for you, right? I'm not seeing it. But I really genuinely don't, well, I mean, I hope not, given that I'd just criticise the level of analysis of the series beforehand and I purport to be a part-time film critic. I don't think I'm quite as inept at reading the material as that, right? And I can see why somebody would like this series, but frankly, all the reasons that I'm seeing a pretty shallow. Like, you know, and it's like... Yeah, I don't know.

I saw a critic and I couldn't find it again. But I saw a critic after the first episode came out who had seen like the first four to five episodes. And he called it the best TV series ever made. And I couldn't find... I mean, that's just... I couldn't find it again. So I don't know who it was. but that's nonsense

that is absolute nonsense I mean I'd have to go back and see what else was playing it I'd be surprised if it was the best television series airing at that time let alone ever I'll compare it to Andor again Andro came out earlier this year and he's better That also came out on Disney Plus

That is also a TV series based off a franchise But it accomplishes all its goals so much better. Yeah. No, and it's just it's a confusing vehicle. It's like to go back to something that you said way at the start of the episode, right? I could imagine some of these ideas being expressed,

even with very minor tweaks, frankly, better in the Blade Runner universe. If you must attach it to like some Ridley Scott initiated IP, right? It seems like a better fit for that. Even some of the characters, like Timothy Olfant is Kersh, right? Performance that I liked a great deal, right? And I think he's very good in this. But I got more kind of like replicant vibes of him than like, you know, a synth akin to Bishop and Ash.

Yes, that's true. It was kind of like he felt more replicanty to me. Yeah. You know, and maybe that's me projecting because I decided early on that like maybe that would have been a better IP vehicle for some of the ideas expressed. here, but like, it kind of speaks to the idea that like, I can't decide whether this the open question here

is I've said it introduced to a bunch of stuff that either doesn't, it develops poorly and then doesn't resolve. I think the underlying question there, right, the question behind that observation is, could it even do that in what it's set up here, right?

Like, is it that they do it poorly or they've kind of set themselves up for failure in the first place? by trying to express these ideas with this set of narrative tools you know like was it just doomed from the start basically

and I don't know I don't have a good answer for that but even then if you say so like oh yeah maybe if it's been in the Blade Runner and universe again I've returned to just go watch Westworld yeah like you know this has been done

this has been done and You know, and like Westworld, I think, went for, what, four seasons in the end, and I think I gave up on it towards the end of season three, I think. But, like, season one is a complete arc, you know? It has a cliffhangery sort of ending, spoiler alert, like, it does leave it open-ended, that, like, thematically it is resolved. Yeah, precisely. Right, that's the key thing for it. Thematically, for the questions it deals with in that season, it is resolved. It leaves further things to explore, which it then does to diminishing returns in the following seasons.

But it is thematically resolved. This season is in no way thematically resolved. It's completely open and confused. So, speaking of which, work has not yet begun on a second season, and Hawley expected a decision to be made after the season finale went out, after the viewership can be evaluated. So Hawley is still hoping to have a decision as of we, in the next couple of months.

So we'll see. Maybe they get a second season. Viewership will have been affected from, is it one of the jimmies? Jimmy Kimmel or Jimmy Fallon? A lot of people... A lot of people cancelled their Disney Plus subscriptions because of that. So I imagine this might have been impacted by that. and the kind of larger political context around boycotting Disney because of that.

But we'll see. So, perhaps unsurprisingly, it took us longer to talk about a TV series that is the better part of eight hours, then it takes for us to talk about a film. So Jim had to go. He'll be back to say goodbye in a moment through the magic of editing. But I wanted to do a quick round of xenobiology, which is a feature we did in the xenopod, where we talk about what we learn about the xenomorph biology and physiology

in the film or in this case TV series that we just watched because we do learn a little bit about the xenomorph as well as obviously the other alien specimens. So aside from some of the things we've discussed, like the xenopod has spoken communication, it has verbal communication and it can communicate through these various ticks and blah, blah, blah. and there's possibly a parallel or convergent evolution with the eyeball monster.

Maybe that's why the xenomorph has evolved to not have eye sockets. Apart from those, there's a couple of other things that we do learn about xenomorphs, and it should be said, this is a different continuity to Prometheus and Alien Covenant, so this is slightly different from those previous canon iterations. The first thing is that xenomorph embryos are actually injected by the facehugger, and they incubate inside the lung. Maybe this is clear from the fact that it bursts from a chest or whatever, but I think I had always thought of the facehugger as releasing some kind of enzyme that results in the gestation of an embryo inside someone's chest cavity. here we actually see an embryo being extracted from a face hugger before it latches onto a person and then the scientists at a prodigy putting that embryo directly into a lung

so that they can grow a kind of test tube alien outside of actually getting someone infected The other thing is in episode 5, the episode about the Maginot incident. There is direct confirmation that xenomorphs can survive in the vacuum of space. Now, this has been implied, I think, in previous films, and it's certainly text in alien isolation, the video game. But I've never been clear on whether that's canon for the films and stuff. But yeah, xenomorphs can survive in the vacuum of space. and that means that the extreme cold of cryosleep doesn't affect them

so you can put someone in cryosleep who has a gestating xenomorph inside them and the xenomorph will continue to gestate it will continue to live and ultimately will burst out of the person even if they're in cryosleep so I think they talk about this in the original alien one of the suggestions is to put John Hertz character in cryosleep here we get confirmation that that wouldn't have worked So that's about it We also get some shots of the xenomorph in broad daylight

In episode 7 and 8 Which like absolutely don't work For me they are confirmation of why you should show the xenomorph in a low-light environment It just simply doesn't look as good or as scary In that context So anyway, that's xenobiology So that is alien earth And that is once again for like the third time

the end of the Xenapod. We'll see you for season two. We'll see you one day, one glorious day for season two, in three years' time based on how TV production goes these days. But no, we'll be back with another episode in the Imposopod series looking at the Mission Impossible films. So do join us for that. Continue to subscribe to Take One Presents.

We have some things planned for the coming months as we approach the end of the Impossopod series and move beyond. So we'll see how that goes. Yeah, you can find us online at Simon X-A-X on all the things. Jim, your Jim G.R. On Blue Sky, et cetera. Go to take one's cinema.net, which produces this podcast and read the reviews. Do tell your friends, we only spread through word of mouth.

So let people know that there's a great episode on Alien Earth. Better than the CDs. Yeah. Yeah, this is better than the entire series. Tell them that. Yeah, and that works whether they liked it or not. Game over, man! It's game over!