Alien: Earth

[sunacres]

Win - win!

[DigitalC]

I want more octoeyeball than xenomorph after a couple episodes.

[EllisDee]

Tough crowd in here. Then again, if I go back and read the original SDMB threads for some of my favorite shows, they are mostly critical. The one that springs to mind the most is Rome.

I thought it was fantastic, and am excited for the rest of the season. Especially with Noah Hawley at the helm. Fargo was top-tier, and even though I felt the later seasons of Legion devolved into self-indulgent navel gazing, I still rate it as a high quality show overall.

One nice touch I loved was ending the first episode with Mob Rules. Haven’t heard or thought about that song in decades but was immediately singing along.

[DSeid]

I quickly found

Transporters and the destruction of the self: What am I missing here?

In another thread about AI rights and sentience, a side conversation developed about storing people’s brains and downloading them into clones, or transporters. Now unwilling to hijack, we decided to agree to disagree about the point and let it die. However, The other poster posited that those opposed to transporter use, or biological storage and cloning do so because the new “you” really isn’t you. It was stated that this was simply something you got or didn’t and nary shall the twain meet. I’m …

and

Willing to be teleported as in Star Trek? I'm not.

Would you be willing to be teleported? I couldn’t do it if it were around. In my mind it is killing oneself and a copy being made. I know it is fiction, but it terrifies me. I know, I know. It’s weird.

and

Star Trek transporters

Why Star Trek transporter technology would never work in the real world or even in the Star Trek world: Let’s start off by thinking about the food replicator. The technology is similar to transporter technology. In the food replicator, matter in the form of atoms and molecules are rearranged using a pattern in order to produce an item of food. For example, if you say “ribeye steak,” the replicator will look in its memory banks for the pattern for “ribeye steak.” Then it will take the necessary …

I am sure there are more.

[Sherrerd]

@Stranger_On_A_Train

The xenomorphs themselves were presented as essentially unknown in the original Alien (although the Company clearly knew that there was something useful and potentially dangerous when the directed the crew of the Nostromo to LV-426), and then apparently covered up and completely forgotten about between the events of Alien and when Ripley was recovered at the beginning of Aliens, causing Burke to go send a survey team to check out the derelict ship (which somehow wasn’t found in previous surveys), which then resulted in the colonists being used to gestate the aliens and the Colonial Marines (along with Ripley and Burke) sent to check out the loss of the colony even though the review board doubted her story about a species “… never recorded once in over three hundred surveyed worlds.”.

Noah Hawley must surely be aware of this. Alien: Earth posits xenomorphs becoming known to (at least) dozens of people, pre-launch of the Nostromo, via a spacecraft crashing into a city. Perhaps he plans a story in which the city gets nuked?

It’s tough to see how else knowledge of the xenomorphs is expunged from every database–and even there, the nuking would have to be followed up by a monster computer virus. (Your “New Plague” mention would clearly be relevant here.) Realistically knowledge of the x. should go Earth-wide shortly after the crash, and its absence would have to be explained.

I’m still bothered by the ‘corporate warfare over which immortality-tech will prevail’ idea. Only the third on the list (transfer into android bodies) would really do the job.

[DigitalC]

@Sherrerd

I’m still bothered by the ‘corporate warfare over which immortality-tech will prevail’ idea. Only the third on the list (transfer into android bodies) would really do the job.

We don’t know if the cyborg implants make you immortal, but I assume that would be the end goal. Which would make them the superior choice since you are modifying your actual body without having to die. Morrow, the pilot cyborg, survived the crash inside a cramped room, that seems pretty dang good already.

[Stranger_On_A_Train]

@Sherrerd

Noah Hawley must surely be aware of this. Alien: Earth posits xenomorphs becoming known to (at least) dozens of people, pre-launch of the Nostromo, via a spacecraft crashing into a city. Perhaps he plans a story in which the city gets nuked?

I’m not sure he cares. To the extent that continuity even matters within the Aliens universe (most people are certainly inclined to dismiss the Predator v. Aliens movies even though 20th Century Studies and Fox-inheritor Disney are continuing to maintain them as canon this show seems to break it in several obvious ways. But that isn’t even my biggest gripe with the show; it is that the structure of the story and frequent shifts in tone from scene to scene preclude maintaining any tension or sense of dread. I could forgive the continuity problems, or throwing in a big cast of mostly interchangeable characters with no distinguishing characteristics except to be meat-sacks for visceral gore, or even Timothy Olyphant’s completely out-of-place synth with deadpan sarcasm (and don’t get me started on “Boy Kavalier”), but that I’m more annoyed than engaged by the action makes this a really dull watch despite the excellent production values and cinematography.

@Sherrerd

I’m still bothered by the ‘corporate warfare over which immortality-tech will prevail’ idea. Only the third on the list (transfer into android bodies) would really do the job.

Except it can’t be done by ‘adult minds’, only young children for…reasons.

After watching the first two episodes, I think the rest is a pass for me.

Stranger

[DPRK]

@Sherrerd

I’m still bothered by the ‘corporate warfare over which immortality-tech will prevail’ idea. Only the third on the list (transfer into android bodies) would really do the job.

There was some Prodigy monologue about how AI would design smarter AI and so on, therefore transferring human minds into (physically and mentally enhanced) artificial immortal bodies was the only thing that would leave humans with a chance to share the future. Then again, he also wished for someone intelligent to talk to, but you definitely don’t want a human for that.

[Horatius]

@DPRK

Then again, he also wished for someone intelligent to talk to, but you definitely don’t want a human for that

He explained that a bit. Since the kids now have synth brains, their brains work faster, and the hope is this will make them smarter over time, as they develop more.

[Staggerlee]

I’m struggling to understand how Boy Kavalier has become a trillionaire at such a young age if his idea of good decision-making is to allow a bunch of wholly inexperienced children (albeit indestructible super-robot children) to go on a rescue mission, in part to rescue a brother who’s forbidden to know of the the super-robot-sister’s existence. Unless it’s all explained in the last ten minutes of episode two which I haven’t yet seen.

I do find the series extremely nice-looking and a good (as opposed to Romulus) homage to ‘Alien’. But it’s already reached Prometheus levels of stupidity within two episodes which doesn’t bode well.

[Darren_Garrison]

Wendy begged him to let her. He decided to be indulgent. At their level of durability, led by an experienced synth, why would he have thought they were at any particular risk? It isn’t like he knew there was a lose xenomorph.

[Elmer_J.Fudd]

What’s the use of having toys if you can’t play with them? Boy trillionaire can always make more.

[TroutMan]

@Staggerlee

I’m struggling to understand how Boy Kavalier has become a trillionaire at such a young age if his idea of good decision-making is to allow a bunch of wholly inexperienced children (albeit indestructible super-robot children) to go on a rescue mission, in part to rescue a brother who’s forbidden to know of the the super-robot-sister’s existence.

On the one hand, you’re absolutely right. On the other hand, we have real-world billionaires who buy companies based on a weed joke, release car models with no market research, and destroy their brand goodwill on a lark. So maybe “billionaire makes stupid decisions” isn’t so unrealistic.

[blondebear]

I did a double-take seeing Timothy Olyphant, what the…? I know this a serious role but for some reason I imagined him suppressing an urge to raise an eyebrow and bust out laughing.

[Spice_Weasel]

We’re on vacation with my family and we’ve been having an Alien marathon. Alien still stands at #1, and I’d put Romulus at #2. The only one left that I haven’t seen (ignoring the predator movies) is Resurrection.

So far I like Alien Earth with some reservations. I thought the way they started it was a little frustrating because it wasn’t really clear who mattered and why. Now that I know who I’m supposed to be following, I find it mostly engaging, but I still have a lot of questions about the world that they don’t even attempt to explain, AND, this is not the show’s fault but it has the potential for some complex themes and that makes me nervous, because I think Alien works best as a slasher horror like the first movie and Alien Romulus. While it’s not Ridley Scott directing, historically this franchise just hasn’t figured out what it wants to say and said it effectively, except within the constraints of a standard thriller. But maybe I’ll be pleasantly surprised with the new one.

The Alien bits are super cool! Good use of this crumbling tower environment. And I of course love the eyeball tentacle creature, that’s like my favorite two weird creature preferences combined. I’m just worried it’s all going to get weighed down by this whole hybrid thing. And the writing is already pretty maudlin considering it just started. The dialog is a bit cringe in some parts.

B+.

[madmonk28]

I take the first two episodes as scene setters. I’m not in love with the show, but I’m willing to give it a chance. The Fargo series was uneven IMHO, but when it was good, it was really good.

I wonder if we find out there is more to the brother, that maybe he is also part of Wendy’s experiment. Just a WAG.

[DigitalC]

@Darren_Garrison

Wendy begged him to let her. He decided to be indulgent. At their level of durability, led by an experienced synth, why would he have thought they were at any particular risk? It isn’t like he knew there was a lose xenomorph.

I don’t think the danger was the main problem. Wendy was clearly displaying behaviors of being obsessed with her brother, to the point of hacking her tablet to talk to him. It was obvious she was going to go right to him and spill their big secret.

[Half_Man_Half_Wit]

@madmonk28

I wonder if we find out there is more to the brother, that maybe he is also part of Wendy’s experiment. Just a WAG.

Both my wife and I thought that if there isn’t some special deal to Hermit, you’d be hard pressed to buy that he isn’t wall decoration at this point. He survived what, like three encounters with the xenomorph? And each lasted longer than it took to rip through the whole cosplay party. That’d be a lot of plot armor. Also, the only other encounter that went on for any length without one of the parties being turned into red slurry was with Marrow, who’s clued in to the whole ‘they can sense fear’-thing, and is a cyborg.

Anyway, as for the show as a whole, I’m enjoying it, but there’s definitely some unevenness that one might hope it’ll overcome as it finds its feet. I’m not sure if I liked the whole initial scene of the cargo obviously getting loose on the ship being skipped, or found it too knowingly winksome—‘yes, that’s the trope, you know it, we know it, everyone knows it, now whoops, everyone’s dead’. I wonder if they’re trying to give the whole ‘humanity’s hubris’-thing a new spin with the hybrids, to at least slightly alter the course of the usual ‘messing with forces beyond our capability’-narrative; if so, let’s hope it doesn’t get preachy.

[madmonk28]

@Half_Man_Half_Wit

I’m not sure if I liked the whole initial scene of the cargo obviously getting loose on the ship being skipped, or found it too knowingly winksome—‘yes, that’s the trope, you know it, we know it, everyone knows it, now whoops, everyone’s dead’.

I think that there is a flashback episode coming up showing what happened on the ship. I say that because some of the actors on that crew are too established for what was a cameo.

[madmonk28]

@Half_Man_Half_Wit

I’m not sure if I liked the whole initial scene of the cargo obviously getting loose on the ship being skipped, or found it too knowingly winksome—‘yes, that’s the trope, you know it, we know it, everyone knows it, now whoops, everyone’s dead’.

I’m pretty sure we’re going to get a flashback episode for what happened on the ship. One of the crew was the lead from the last season of Fargo, it seems like a pretty small part for her if it was just a cameo.