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I rewatched the last couple episodes back to back over the weekend and I have a couple questions.


#1. Who has a self-destruct device in an elevator? (With obligatory countdown timer)

#2. Is the Xenomorph born of the lung on earth a lot stronger than the space born Xenomorph?

(The Xenomorph shrugs off a shot to the head from Rashid, and there is no mark later where it got hit... while the first Xenomorph died from a papercutter)

#3. Is T. Ocellus the most resilient creature? Wendy is is able to deal some damage to things she hits... but the eye monster (who gets wacked a lot in the series) seems to be no worse for wear.

1. I assumed it was a general self destruct. Then again, being able to take out lift shafts specifically in case of hostile isn’t an inherently bad idea. Would certainly help restrict movement and make enemy progress more predictable. And in a way simply winching the cab(?) all the way up alone wouldn’t achieve.

2. Being shot in the bonce and being decapitated Are Not The Same Thing. The Pulse Rifles in Aliens specifically fire explosive rounds. We also see comparatively weedier but still same lineage firearms in Romulus. So I’m comfortable concluding the explosive rounds were either hyper specific issue and USCM only, or were a more recent development. Given the Xenomorphs acid blood, exactly how much you need it to go splat compared to how far it goes splat is of course a matter of debate. But that’s two sources showing lone shots not overly troubling the dribbling horrors.

3. Well….possibly? So far as we can tell it’s mostly gelatinous and all fibrous. So, short of directly stomping on it, lobbing it in a fire*, bunging it through a paper shredder, it’s resilience is to be expected.

*and of course keeping it there. But giving it a good burnination seems a reliable way of cooking its goose.

Did we actually see the elevator self destruct? I kind of wondered if it was just her messing with them.

It was, that was the whole point of that, Wendy making it a haunted house for the humans keeping them captive.

My Season 2 Wishlist.



More thoughts as they occur to me.

The elevator has a self destruct mode because the facility was designed by the same engineers as the NSEA Protector in Galaxy Quest.

Weren't the bullets in Aliens explosive and armor penetrating? The weapons in AE looked more like Pulse Carbines so already not as heavy a hitter as the rifle and they probably didn't have ammo that would penetrate, which considering the corporation wants the specimen alive wouldn't be a stretch.

Season 2 has to be AE: Private Eye, we've already gone over this.

I don't care about Season 2+....

As I've already written the ending to the whole series:



EXT. EARTH – NIGHT

The island burns, a blooming inferno under mushrooming clouds. Weyland-Yutani’s orbital bombardment completes its "containment protocol." Silence. Ash rains.

CUT TO:

A scorched shoreline. Something moves beneath the debris — a Xenomorph, blackened but alive, crawling free. It staggers upright.

The creature hisses, raising its head — defiant, unstoppable.

Three red dots form a triangle on its elongated skull.

In the distance, the faint clicking growl of a Yautja echoes through the smoke.

FADE OUT.

In light of a disappointing finale, I'm watching the directors cut of Aliens as the good lord intended, on the Big Screen with surround sound.

 Lathe Biosas wrote:


#2. Is the Xenomorph born of the lung on earth a lot stronger than the space born Xenomorph?

(The Xenomorph shrugs off a shot to the head from Rashid, and there is no mark later where it got hit... while the first Xenomorph died from a papercutter)

Yeah, I think at such close range it should have left a mark. Wendy didn't cut through it's less armoured neck; she chopped down through the most heavily armoured part of it's body, cleaving it's skull in two.

Then again, why do only Player Characters have the guns with the stun mode? Do it's trainers insulate it from such effects?

The soldiers vs aliens scenario was the least satisfying part of the show, for me. Its simply too one-sided to be interesting.

Is the name of BK's corp also a reference to Prodigy's Firestarter song?

‘Alien: Earth’ Renewed for Season 2, Noah Hawley Inks New Overall Deal With FX and Disney Entertainment Television - Variety

“Alien: Earth” has been renewed for Season 2 at FX, Variety has learned. In addition, series creator Noah Hawley has signed a new overall deal with FX and Disney Entertainment Television.

According to an individual with knowledge of the situation, Hawley’s overall deal is valued in the nine figure range. Production on Season 2 of “Alien: Earth” will begin in London in 2026, whereas the first season was shot in Thailand.

Nice to have confirmation of the renewal. Too many successful shows get cancelled nowadays just so the studio can save a few bucks.

Oh Joy, Ren!

Right, that’s increased the ending of S1 from a comfortable 8, to a 9.

As with many, I felt slightly cheated by the lack of a particular conclusion, because at no point was a potential second season ever mentioned or hinted prior.

With this very welcome news? I’ve high hope for MOAR of the same quality and interesting gubbins.

Plus? I’ve got to know what Eye Ball Paul is up to.

I’m lukewarm on it. The writing talking about how they don’t actually have plans where the story is going kind of ruins it for me. Puts me in the mind of Lost where they just ask questions they don’t have answers to and make stuff up as they go along.

 AduroT wrote:
I’m lukewarm on it. The writing talking about how they don’t actually have plans where the story is going kind of ruins it for me. Puts me in the mind of Lost where they just ask questions they don’t have answers to and make stuff up as they go along.

Or the ultimate in writers running into wall - BSG.

Sounds to be a returning trend in a lot of series these days. They have a strong plan for season 1, everything after that is just stumbling from episode to episode. Stranger things, yellowstone, peaky blinders, whatever.

Peter Dinklage Boards ‘Alien: Earth’ at FX - The Hollywood Reporter

FX’s Alien: Earth is adding a multiple Emmy winner to its cast for season two.

Peter Dinklage has joined the series from creator and showrunner Noah Hawley. Details on Dinklage’s role are locked in a secure Weyland-Yutani facility for the time being.

Nice. He’s a good actor is Peter Dinklage.

He is. I am also a bit concerned over the apparent lack of a plan. They absolutely nailed the visuals in S1 (barring nerd-baiting pulse-rifle wackiness) but the actual aliens very much played second fiddle to everything else, and were mostly used as a handy plot contrivance rather than a character getting any kind of arc. I mean, even the Boy and the Eddie Hitlerbot weren;t that interested in the title beasties any more than they were for any of the other research spaceimens (yes I spelled that correctly).

It serves more as a way to explore the future world. For instance, alongside its most excellent stablemate Alien Romulus we gain a greater understanding of how much power these mega corporations wield.

Boy Kavalier is particularly interesting there. He never expected to take ownership of such wonderful beasts, and so wasn’t working to a particular plan.

Hence so much of it was him and Eddie Hitlerbot just…fiddling. Using his new previous latest toys (the lost boys and girls) to play with his new toys (the Xenomorphs and Eyeball Paul).

And I for one really like the mundanity of that. There is some moustache twirling, because he’s a sociopath uncaring of the feelings of others, doing whatever he thinks he can get away with (which is a lot). But….he doesn’t have any world domination via army of rapacious alien monsters vision. He’s just…poking and prodding.

With Season 2 primed to change that? I’m definitely interested. And the setting has shown it can cover various sub-genres.

I think the other thing is that the xenomorphs really aren’t that interesting compared to the other creatures. They’re terrifying if you’re an unarmed space trucker or a lone marine squad outnumbered 20-1, but the W-Y obsession with them in the early films is kind of stupid. Romulus actually provides a nice fix for that, in that it’s their ability to adapt to different environments that’s of interest, not their raw lethality.

"Nice. He’s a good actor is Peter Dinklage."

Dinklage is just about the right height to wear the xenomorph rubber suit.....

Romulus did an excellent job in taking some of the wonkier elements from the preceding films (black goo, hybrids) and making them cooler, and make more sense.

I’m not saying perfectly so. But I really do like W-Y wanting to use the goo to rapidly evolve smelly Hoomans to a given world. Seems kind of altruistic at face value. Keeps your workforce happy and healthy after all, and yes W-Y would face significant initial outlay for any new colony. But pushed just a little further? You’ve now adapted them so well, they can’t live anywhere else. Welcome to your indentured sub-species of smelly Hoomans.

The hybrid just looked cooler.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Romulus did an excellent job in taking some of the wonkier elements from the preceding films (black goo, hybrids) and making them cooler, and make more sense.

I’m not saying perfectly so. But I really do like W-Y wanting to use the goo to rapidly evolve smelly Hoomans to a given world. Seems kind of altruistic at face value. Keeps your workforce happy and healthy after all, and yes W-Y would face significant initial outlay for any new colony. But pushed just a little further? You’ve now adapted them so well, they can’t live anywhere else. Welcome to your indentured sub-species of smelly Hoomans.

The hybrid just looked cooler.

Romulus was everything Alien: Earth could have been, but wasnt.

Alien Earth had a lot of interesting set ups and asks some good questions and it was really disappointing to find out they had no answers planned for any of it and are just making it up as they go along.

 AduroT wrote:
Alien Earth had a lot of interesting set ups and asks some good questions and it was really disappointing to find out they had no answers planned for any of it and are just making it up as they go along.

The whole series felt like every episode was written by someone else.

In some it tried to be like Alien, I others it tried to be... something else.

I just wasn't a fan of indistructo-bullet proof second xenomorph.

Bullet to the head? Not even a mark.

@Lathe - Agree with the points, but just wanted to drop in that its not the first time that Xenomorphs have been shown as having bouncy heads. In Aliens, Vasquez gets some headshots in with her pistol in the ducts, and they bounce.

I can't recall what is bouncing off in Earth, but are the infantry weapons firing armour piercing ammo a-la M41A yet?

Nope. It’s set some years before Aliens, so it’s possible that ammo isn’t standard issue, or even exists just yet.

Security Forces are expected to take down Smelly Squishy Hoomans, Kinda Resilient But Never Been Shown To Be Bullet Proof Synthetics, and the Cyborgs, who’s level of enhancement is unclear, but aren’t total body prosthesis, or an endo Skellington covered in living flesh.

Colonial Marines are being sent in to deal with Who Knows What (well, we now know W-Y knew all along, on the newly understood timeline), and so take the biggest and best rounds, just in case.

The rifles in Romulus don’t appear to have exploding rounds. Probably to help minimise any collateral damage in the big expensive lab and space station.

The Xenomorph? Has chitinous exo-skeleton, and that doming on the head I presume acts like angled armour, helping some percentage of shots hit at the wrong angle for penetration.

But, regardless? The Colonial Marines are, thus far, the only fighters we’ve seen on-screen to explicitly be equipped with the exploding rounds.

Ah, so we are getting another season? That changes things! I was personally really disappointed by the ending of season 1. If we get continuation from where things left off, there is a chance this series will become something more than just a boring Peter Pan remake with Alien characters. I sure as hell hope thats the last of the Peter Pan metaphors for this series..

Yeah. Second season was confirmed a few weeks after season one finished airing. Was a frustraring few weeks, as if it had just ended with the one season? It wouldn’t so much have dropped the ball, but punted it straight through Mr Rottweiler’s Greenhouse and blamed us for it.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Yeah. Second season was confirmed a few weeks after season one finished airing. Was a frustraring few weeks, as if it had just ended with the one season? It wouldn’t so much have dropped the ball, but punted it straight through Mr Rottweiler’s Greenhouse and blamed us for it.

Yep, it was confirmed just up the page.

Wendy chops completely through a Xenomorph’s head with a regular paper cutter blade a few episodes in. So a rifle bullet from point-blank range should do something at least.