I wouldn’t call her the lead, Juno Temple was the lead. She was an important side character. I think the whole point of getting the crew deaths through flashes is the PG-13 rating. Getting a flashback episode would be weird, it would just be almost exactly the plot of Alien anyways.
I thought maybe we’ll eventually meet other survivors from the crash. After all, the rescue crew seems to consider it possible, else why board it at all?
Also, regarding the level of violence—I mean, we saw one guy’s smashed face, and a dude cut in half crawling along the floor, to me, that’s not exactly Saturday morning cartoon level…
They were dead before the crash.
Yeah, the Big-Brained Boy should have known all that. If he didn’t then I guess there’s some lesson to be learned about oligarchs being self-absorbed, blinded-to-reality idiots. (Not that this is entirely unjustified as a theme.)
Was it pure sadism on the part of the show-creators to shave off Olyphant’s eyebrows? (Or cover them with make-up; the close-ups haven’t been close enough to reveal which.)
That is concerning. I remain angry over the magnitude of resources used to make two movies (Prometheus and Covenant) in which the plot could move forward ONLY by making the characters do stupid things.
Yeah, that seems annoyingly contrived.
Tonight we get more information….
I thought they were just full white like his hair.
Could be. But being full-white kind of disarms him from using one of his reliable actor-tricks.
Clearly just bleached and still archable.
So far, the show is very heavy on mood and scene setting, but I’m not finding it terribly engaging. It’s still possible this long wind up could lead to a huge payoff, but I think it’s also possible it’s all vibes and no substance.
ETA: Sorry about the two near identical posts earlier; my first post just kind of disappeared so I rewrote it.
So what’s the deal with Hermit’s lung? Is it just a convenient hunk of human protein in which to incubate an alien fetus? I haven’t been really paying attention since the second film so I’m really rusty on the life cycle of the xenomorphs.
I think it was just a convenient lung to gestate the alien. It’s never been stated explicitly but it makes sense that’s where it would go.
Ah. Somehow I convinced myself John Hurt had a womb.
The lung thing and the connection Wendy has with the alien makes me think the two siblings are “special.”
I swear that alien they keep looking up on their computer is a metroid.
I thought that was a liver. Guess I need to bone up on my anatomy.
Anyways, I’m a little late to the discussion because the wife and I just bit the bullet and started the series on Monday. One episode a night and we’re now caught up. I originally resisted the show because the idea of Aliens on Earth seems to destroy the continuty. Then the reviews were largely positive (and we were without a show to watch) so we decided to get on the train.
Read the thread and I must say, this is a surly bunch. While I agree with several of the critiques (and I’ll expand on mine in a sec), some of you seem to have a hate boner for the show. As good as Alien and Aliens are, I never really felt like the Alien/Predator universe was the kind of IP that would inspire this kind of rabid hypercritical nerdom since much of it is so silly. Guess I was wrong on that count.
Moving on, here’s my initial thoughts. While wathcing the 3rd eposide I finally Googled the timeline and learned that this takes place 2 years prior to the events of Alien. At first I was thinking this was happening in the not-to-distant future, sometime between Aliens and Alien: Reserruction but no. So my initial fears about this screwing up the lore are well founded. As others have mentioned, if the Nostromo took off in the same year as this show that means this show is likely to have a Andor-like resolution where it flows directly into the departure of that ship. Things will likely need to happen within the span of several months (not sure how many seasons are planned).
Side thought, if Alien takes place just 2 years into their journey, that implies that they aren’t very far away. I don’t know how the interstellar physics are supposed to work in this world, but I always had the sense that the Nostromo was way out in the galactic sticks. Since Aliens takes place 50+ years later, and the Maginot was asea (astar? aspace?) for 50+ years, that seems to imply these critters aren’t near neighbors.
While I have concerns about how they plan to explain away the presense of Aliens on Earth, it does create a potentially interesting puzzle. The show can explore a few ideas, how the Aliens are contained and exterminated, how their existence is screened or erased from the public conciousness, how Wayland-Yutani uses the knowledge to steer the Nostromo into harms way, why cyborgs and synths seem to be mostly unknown in the later instalments, etc. If the writers have a strong plan and execute well, this could be really cool. If they don’t…
The look and feel of the Maginot and crew were pretty spot-on. Defintely paints the picture that this is contemporary with the events of Alien. Liked that a lot.
A few of you have suggested the show is rated PG-13. I’m confused. It’s not a movie and AFAIK it doesn’t get an MPAA rating. It shows up as TV-MA on my device and I can’t see any world in which this show isn’t TV-MA or R rated. It’s scary and gory as hell.
I liked the addition of the corporate antagonism and the competing technologies. Very Cola Wars/VHS-BetaMax vibes. It’s cool having another layer to think about. The show making us chase/run from Xenomorphs for 20+ episodes probably wouldn’t work. Morrow, the cyborg, is a cool bad guy so far. I also like the misanthropic vibes from both Kavilier and Yutani. Unlike some of you, I don’t have any issues with Boy genius acting irresponsibly. That’s totally how a billionaire who doesn’t value life at all would act. Also a Earth ruled by Corporate Facists is a nice dystopian touch.
I actually thought the show made a couple mistakes. First, we’re seeing too much of the Xenomorph too soon. We know that the way Alien hid the Xenomorph for most of that movie is part of what made it amazing. They could have spent more time focused on the Prodigy v. We-Yu story line and kept the threat of the monsters in their back pocket. Second, we’re seeing too much gratuitous blood and guts. We know how dangerous the Xenomorphs are at this point, you don’t really need to beat us over the head with it. I get that it’s a horror/slasher flick at it’s heart, but this show is aspiring to be more dystopian sci-fi which I think makes sense for a TV series. The audience is going to get numb to it if we’re seeing it over and over again each week.
Hermit’s plot armor is defintely starting to bump me a bit. I won’t belabor the point since it’s been covered.
I don’t mind the contrivance that only children can be moved into Synth bodies. The technobabble explanation was fine for me. But what I think will become a problem is the actors having to act like kids throughout the remainder of the show. At some point it’s inevitable that the circumstances will require them to mature and fight. Considering we only have a few months of runway here, this will be a tough pill to swallow. Also, the gimmick could become annoying. The plucky kid trope is one of my least favorite (Skeleton Crew trauma), hopefully the writers can navigate this minefield smartly.
I never got the impression in the previous films that aliens were a normal thing. Like, finding alien life wasn’t treated quite as a eureka discovery in the original film (might be wrong, it’s been a while), but it was definitely not something that was routine. This show introduces not just Xenomorphs on Earth, but 5 extremely dangerous different species. And it strongly suggests that We-Yu planned and sent the Maginot on this mission with the express purpose of finding dangerous monsters. You’d only do that if you knew that there were lots and lots of alien lifeforms out there since predators need lots of prey. Maybe the charatcers in the first 3 films were just really dumb and ill-informed, which wouldn’t be a stretch for some truckers and soldiers, but it could present a continuity challenge.
At some point I’m going to want to do a chronological rewatch of the entire series and see how many holes I find. Probably a lot.
I am very much enjoying this show but I don’t think I have ever seen a show make poorer choices for episode ending music. They are not bad songs, just tonally off putting and weird choices.
In Aliens they certainly seemed to treat it as somewhat routine (for the Marines)
Hudson: “Is this gonna be a standup fight, sir, or just another bug hunt?”
Gorman: “All we know is that there’s still no contact with the colony, and that a xenomorph may be involved.”
Frost: “'Scuse me, sir. A what?”
Gorman: “A xenomorph.”
Hicks: “It’s a bug hunt. What exactly are we dealing with here?”
Even when they see the Space Jockey in the first one their reaction is more “huh, that’s weird” and less “holy shit it’s an alien.”
One thing not to forget is that we’re mainly focusing on Prodigy here, not Wayland-Yutani. I can see the connection to Alien being something like:
- W-Y sends the Maginot on a 50 year mission to a bunch of planets looking for alien creatures
- Maginot crashes and Prodigy takes all the samples.
- Cyborg guy gives the data to W-Y
- W-Y sees that the Xenomorph is most promising and sends the Nostromo on a course near to LV-426
As for the synths, in Alien the surprise wasn’t “robots exists” it was “Ash is secretly a robot.”
I wouldn’t say I have a hate boner for the show, Noah Hawley has earned the benefit of the doubt in my book so I am cautiously optimistic. That said the show started of with two immediate strikes for me: making it kid centric, which almost always ruins literally everything and making it a prequel which makes fitting it in the canon slightly problematic.
I’m not quite sure what lungs or livers look like but the surgery they did on Hermit seemed to imply lung. Also the facehugger implants the xenomorph through the mouth and they burst out of the chest, so it makes sense it would be in the lungs.