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Lance845 wrote: And their handler, though not specifically stated as such, appears to by a synthetic.
He quite explicitly is, in the way he refers to humans and Kavalier referring to his 'synthetic intelligence'.
I'm liking this, so far. Tonally, it feels somewhere in between the first two movies, which works for me. More story-driven and less actiony than Aliens, while not being as much of a slow burn as Alien. And they've done a fantastic job of matching up the tech to the originals.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2025/08/16 01:46:33
[DCM]
Chief Deputy Sub Assistant Trainee Squig Handling Intern
Just seeing (and hearing!) a Pulse Rifle without the grenade launcher is nice.
Presumably, being some years before Aliens and Romulus they’re an earlier model? Certainly the magazine appears to hold 45 rounds, going on the counter.
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This show has one thing against it. The same thing that plagues all prequels.
If you introduce new technology or information into the series, you then need an explanation of why the people in the later "episodes/films" don't have the technology/information.
BorderCountess wrote: Just because you're doing something right doesn't necessarily mean you know what you're doing...
[DCM]
Chief Deputy Sub Assistant Trainee Squig Handling Intern
Easy.
Alien is set two years after. And we know those deep space missions can last years, thanks to cryosleep. Indeed the crew in the show are ending a 65 year mission.
So when the crew of the Sulaco were woken up to investigate LV426? They couldn’t have known about the events of Alien Earth.
And by the events of Aliens? Cover up and plausible deniability. By the end of the second episode, the infestation is still contained to the crash site.
Working on the assumption it doesn’t go much further? There’s no reason for anyone outside The Company to know or learn exactly what happened, as any and all deaths can be put down to “spaceship crashed into mixed residential/commercial building, lots of people went rather predictably splat”
Fed up of Scalpers? But still want your Exclusives? Why not join us?
Alien is set two years after. And we know those deep space missions can last years, thanks to cryosleep. Indeed the crew in the show are ending a 65 year mission.
So when the crew of the Sulaco were woken up to investigate LV426? They couldn’t have known about the events of Alien Earth.
And by the events of Aliens? Cover up and plausible deniability. By the end of the second episode, the infestation is still contained to the crash site.
Working on the assumption it doesn’t go much further? There’s no reason for anyone outside The Company to know or learn exactly what happened, as any and all deaths can be put down to “spaceship crashed into mixed residential/commercial building, lots of people went rather predictably splat”
Spoiler:
What about the "phaser" weapon that disables the Xenomorph and the spray net, it seems like WT would send that out with Burke and the Marines, since the Company is aware of what the Xenomorph can do, and how best to disable one.
BorderCountess wrote: Just because you're doing something right doesn't necessarily mean you know what you're doing...
[DCM]
Chief Deputy Sub Assistant Trainee Squig Handling Intern
Well…
Spoiler:
We see they’re not really up to the task. Sure, the taser eventually KO’s the Alien, and then it’s gooped for transport.
Within a few minutes at most? It’s waking up, and able to get out the goop net easily enough. Had the Cyborg lad not had a distraction on his hands, there is an argument he’d be able to rinse and repeat.
But it seems a very short term thing. Sooner or later, you’re going to run out of goop. So it doesn’t seem terribly fit for purpose.
The Marines in Aliens were sacrificial. Ostensibly there to wipe the Aliens out, we see from Burke’s actions that was a lie. They wanted specimens.
Safest way to do that is get people facehugged, then stick the in cryo. You keep them in cryo until you get them to a suitable facility and go from there.
Which is more or less what we see in Alien Ressurection. Sure, there they have the Queen from Ripley, and bring the “donors” to the resultant eggs. But the principal is the same - the safest way to get new test subjects.
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On the point of the Xenomorph not taking people back to the egg room, I'd argue it's a weight of numbers thing mixed with the overriding instinct to kill.
If we think about Alien, it's a lone slasher, hiding in the dark places to grab each crewmember almost one by one. There are only five crew on the very large Nostromo, easy enough to get people alone and into the proto-hive.
The Maginot is a different beast. It's one Xenomorph against a crew of eleven, plus the other specimens on the ship. We don't know which ones have interacted with the Xenomorph, and if it has deliberately delayed forming a hive because of these other predatory specimens.
Then we've got the crash, introducing even more variables into the mix with new humans with weapons, and an expanded hunting ground.
Ultimately, the real reason is "plot" but we know Xenomorphs are highly intelligent creatures, and they do a heck of a lot of ambush hunting.
I like it. Prometheus' problem (well, one of them) was how it somehow managed to make the alien universe both smaller and dumber at the same time. And then the sequel repeated the error. Episode 1 so far actually makes the universe bigger. More varied. Expanded with new ideas that fit or add some interest. I like it so far. There's some rough spots for sure, but as with Romulus I admire that this movie is at least trying to be good and to actually be part of its own brand rather than stupidly trying to be some other brand entirely in Alien's skin.
Honestly the story is not entirely far off from what you'd get in the OG Dark Horse comics back in the 90s which gives it a nostalgic vibe for me. It's nice to see some other moral questionable and most definitely probably evil corporation getting in on the game and competing with Yutani. It's cool to see the idea of synthetics get expanded. I like that they're sticking to the retrotech design instead of gaudy holograms that don't do anything useful but spend the SFX budget. Some of the new critters look like they have some potential even.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2025/08/17 05:47:21
I liked the first 2 episoders more than I would have originally thought. Then I listened to the ofc series podcast and realized, the Fargo guy is actually behind this. Explains a lot.
Looking forward to seeing what happens next.
Not going to bother thinking about the overall timelines and potential retcons. I'm pretty sure the franchise honchos dont think timeline consistency as much as average Dakkaites.
"The larger point though, is that as players, we have more control over what the game looks and feels like than most of us are willing to use in order to solve our own problems"
Watched the two eps tonight. I enjoyed them. A definite solid start to the series.
I appreciated that the show didn't try to hold your hand and explain way to much stuff early on. It just throws you in to the good stuff pretty quickly. Set up for events was tight and punchy with minimal messing around.
I couple of things I liked.
Spoiler:
-The fact that we didn't get burdened with the events that lead to the specimens getting loose. You KNOW they're going to get loose. It's the whole point of the show. But I'm glad they skipped it all and cut right to end where things had gone the shape of the pear and the ship was on an unstoppable collision course with Earth.
-The kids in adult/synth bodies. An interesting route to take with the characters, but more so I like that the actors portraying the kids in adult bodies still acted and spoke like kids. Especially when in the ship and they're getting spooked by little noises and electrical sparks, etc. They react like kids would. So as much a kudos to the actors themselves as the directing/script. I foresee their inevitable deaths/destruction being suitably traumatic.
-The critters were interesting. The blood bugs and the weird tentacle eye (poor Jonesy 2.0) look like they've got some potential for shenanigans. I'm keen to find out more about that hanging pod thing that was raring to suck face with Tootles (I think it was). I also get the impression there was more in containment there then we've yet seen. So hopefully there's more to come from the non-xenomorph critter angle.
-It was nice to see a Xenomorph in full combat mode for once. With less ambush/strike and fade, and more RIP and TEAR.
-The fact they didn't try to hide who Wendy was to Hermit for an annoyingly long time. Again, this ties into the kids in adult bodies. Kids don't have a filter and things WILL just slip out whether by accident or not.
On the other hand though there were a couple of things that didn't sit right with me.
Spoiler:
-Is Earth completely bereft of Near Space scanning equipment? No radar or any such thing to detect a ship coming in on a direct collision course. How did no one see it?
-The guillotine blade Wendy casually rips off the guillotine. She just... sticks it to her back? Is it magnetised? Is there an invisible hard-light sheathe she slides it into? Maybe kept in some sort of geostationary orbit with her via hyper-localised gravity well? It just seemed a bit janky.
-Something about the scene in the apartment annoyed me. The xenomorpth attacks Hermit and he's promptly saved by Morrow. Yep fine, no issue there. But then his actions afterwards don't seem right. He almost get skull-fethed and then.... goes off to watch baseball highlights and commit theft? Ok, I get that stress and near death experiences do strange things to people and everyone reacts to those situations differently. Then when Wendy and Slightly turn up and all of a sudden he's forgotten his protocols and he just starts talking to them like nothing happened. The whole scene just seems a bit of disconnect from the rest of the events.
Dropping this here as folks might be interested. Potential spoilers across all Alien franchise films and the new series, but they focus in on the weapons pretty tightly.
Please excuse any spelling errors. I use a tablet frequently and software keyboards are a pain!
Alien is set two years after. And we know those deep space missions can last years, thanks to cryosleep. Indeed the crew in the show are ending a 65 year mission.
So when the crew of the Sulaco were woken up to investigate LV426? They couldn’t have known about the events of Alien Earth.
And by the events of Aliens? Cover up and plausible deniability. By the end of the second episode, the infestation is still contained to the crash site.
Working on the assumption it doesn’t go much further? There’s no reason for anyone outside The Company to know or learn exactly what happened, as any and all deaths can be put down to “spaceship crashed into mixed residential/commercial building, lots of people went rather predictably splat”
Spoiler:
What about the "phaser" weapon that disables the Xenomorph and the spray net, it seems like WT would send that out with Burke and the Marines, since the Company is aware of what the Xenomorph can do, and how best to disable one.
Spoiler:
I quite like that we actually see special equipment, and a moderately successful capture team. Most of those specimens are still contained, and clearly they were able to complete their primary mission. With the exception of Resurrection, we've always seen groups that are not prepared for or equipped to deal with the xenomorphs fight them. Convicts, miners, marines, but we haven't seen a WY hazardous biological specimen capture team in action. Given this company, I'd assume that's simply a cost efficiency decision. Why waste the expensive high tech gear on the possibility a team might encounter xenomorphs (and have to explain to all teams that xenomorphs exist and what they do) when you know capturing a dormant egg and securing it is far more safe? By resurrection they have secured samples and data, and mostly solved the containment issue. Mostly. This is a chance to see the cutting edge gear being put to use.
I'm enjoying it so far. The atmosphere is right, the alien is suitably killy, and we're setting up a nice philosophical debate about perfecting the post-human species is best- thinking machines, cybernetic bodies with human brains, or genetic evolution to aliens.
Klawz-Ramming is a subset of citrus fruit?
Gwar- "And everyone wants a bigger Spleen!"
Mercurial wrote:
I admire your aplomb and instate you as Baron of the Seas and Lord Marshall of Privateers.
Orkeosaurus wrote:Star Trek also said we'd have X-Wings by now. We all see how that prediction turned out.
Orkeosaurus, on homophobia, the nature of homosexuality, and the greatness of George Takei.
English doesn't borrow from other languages. It follows them down dark alleyways and mugs them for loose grammar.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: The fact it has so much potential, and 8 episodes has me oddly worried.
See….the first two episodes brought a lot. And I definitely want to know more about the other species farting around the wreck.
With six hours of episodes yet to come? I do worry it might begin to drag, and leave points of interest hanging.
It’s also not clear if this is a One And Done serial. I can’t find mention of any second season or follow up.And for now, I don’t know it’ll need one.
Guess I just feel a bit fingers burned from other shows having wasted potential, or outstaying their welcome.
If the Fargo series set any sort of precedent, you can expect this to be a pretty tight set of 8 episodes which wrap up the entire story. No follow up seasons. Could be wrong though.
"The larger point though, is that as players, we have more control over what the game looks and feels like than most of us are willing to use in order to solve our own problems"
Listening to the podcast for the 2nd episode. The Alien costume in the show is made by Weta Workshop (surprise surprise). The actor inside the suit moves the body, Weta technicians handle the animatronics, moving the tail, head and mouth. No CGI involved in the xenomorph shots. The epic leap in the 2nd episode was shot in 2 takes, utilizing only practical effects in real time.
There was also a "spoiler" for ep 3 at the end of the podcast, just a single sentence.. I'll leave it up to you to hear it for yourself.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2025/08/17 16:24:11
"The larger point though, is that as players, we have more control over what the game looks and feels like than most of us are willing to use in order to solve our own problems"
That would explain a lot of why it looks so damn good.
I would love for a return of practical effects. CGI has somehow only managed to look faker and faker as time has gone on and doesn't age well while practical effects age with the grace of a fine wine and just look great for the work that goes into doing them right.
"The larger point though, is that as players, we have more control over what the game looks and feels like than most of us are willing to use in order to solve our own problems"
My only major gripe is the whole 'it can smell your fear' thing is fething stupid. I get that it's there to 'explain' obvious plot holes at 'certain moments' but it's still stupid.
It's just not stupid enough to ruin that it's still a very good show so far. Good enough I'm willing not to care about the occasional stupid bit. I'm really liking out newest corporate douche by the way. He's like the perfect stand in for the techbro age of corporate douchery. If I were told the character was overtly inspired by Zuckerberg, I wouldn't need much convincing.
[DCM]
Chief Deputy Sub Assistant Trainee Squig Handling Intern
Boy Genius is an interesting character.
Spoiler:
In a way, he’s kinda sympathetic. And whilst hardly Mr Altruism? What he did for those kids was remarkable. He gave them their lives back.
The bunging them in adult bodies kinda makes sense, or at least is a reasonable explanation for potentially nefarious reasons. Though he did say he wanted the kids to grow and learn, and hopefully give him an intellectual equivalent to talk to,
I don’t think we can say he’s a wrong ‘un for sending them in to the wreck. At this point, I don’t think we’ve reason to believe he knew what the ship’s cargo and mission actually was. But I wouldn’t be surprised if we find out he did actually know.
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My only major gripe is the whole 'it can smell your fear' thing is fething stupid. I get that it's there to 'explain' obvious plot holes at 'certain moments' but it's still stupid.
The fact that a character said it doesn't mean it's actually true.
Spoiler:
Or that his attempt to stay calm would have saved him if the alien hadn't been interrupted.
In a way, he’s kinda sympathetic. And whilst hardly Mr Altruism? What he did for those kids was remarkable. He gave them their lives back.
The bunging them in adult bodies kinda makes sense, or at least is a reasonable explanation for potentially nefarious reasons. Though he did say he wanted the kids to grow and learn, and hopefully give him an intellectual equivalent to talk to,
I don’t think we can say he’s a wrong ‘un for sending them in to the wreck. At this point, I don’t think we’ve reason to believe he knew what the ship’s cargo and mission actually was. But I wouldn’t be surprised if we find out he did actually know.
Nah. It's really fethed up, and rather foolish.
Spoiler:
The story more than a little implies they're all trapped at the emotional maturity they had when they got bodied. He even calls them 'the lost boys' referring to how they will never grow up.
And experimenting in secret on terminally ill children who are then locked away on his 'Neverland' island is insanely exploitive on several levels.
He outright tells us his goal isn't altruistic. He's literally so high on himself he thinks the only way to have an interesting conversation is to make someone smarter than him and apparently his way of doing this is putting terminally ill and vulnerable kids in synthetic bodies and locking them away from their families.
He's not like, the outright evil but he's not noble and literally said 'this isn't about ego, I'm just smarter than everyone else and bored' which sure sounds like it's all about his ego.
EDIT: Granted I agree he's interesting but given this is Alien I'm doubtful he comes out a hero by the end of this.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2025/08/18 00:22:59
The story more than a little implies they're all trapped at the emotional maturity they had when they got bodied. He even calls them 'the lost boys' referring to how they will never grow up..
Spoiler:
That may be how it turned out (although the Lost Boys reference is the only hint of that that I caught) but it certainly wasn't the goal, as they explain to Wendy that they expect her to mature mentally into her adult body.
But, yeah, either way Boy Kavalier is very much coming out of this a villain.
LordofHats wrote: Wending? The Lost Boys? Neverland? Eccentric and self-absorbed? He's kind of a walking allusion to Peter Pan.
Yes, he sees himself as Peter and has set up his domain to reflect that. but they specifically explain to Wendy that they expect her mind to mature into her adult body. Which fits, as the Lost Boys all eventually leave Neverland. It's only Peter who never grows up.
LordofHats wrote: Wending? The Lost Boys? Neverland? Eccentric and self-absorbed? He's kind of a walking allusion to Peter Pan.
Yes, he sees himself as Peter and has set up his domain to reflect that. but they specifically explain to Wendy that they expect her mind to mature into her adult body. Which fits, as the Lost Boys all eventually leave Neverland. It's only Peter who never grows up.
Wasn't there a scene specifically about how they were trying to handle simulating growth, physically and mentally, in a body that doesn't grow?
Spoiler:
At the end of episode two when the xeno was barreling down on them and she was hearing that noise in her head and it transitioned to a slightly different sound that I thought it sounded an awful lot like part of the intro to Tool's Stinkfist. Turns out that is exactly what it was. Was not expecting Tool to make an appearance.
Amidst the mists and coldest frosts he thrusts his fists against the posts and still insists he sees the ghosts.
Cadre Coronal Afterglow w1;d0;l0 
