Alien Earth and series creator Noah Hawley will return for season 2

Production will move from Thailand to London, suggesting a new setting.

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[cyberpenguin]

I mean, that character was pretty clearly a stand in for people like Elon Musk, so having him be incredibly arrogant and act like an idiot wasn't remotely weird to me.

Edit: I see I am not the only person to think this lol.

It also seemed to reinforce the parallel to Musk in that he took credit for the inventions but came off as someone that was extremely wealthy cosplaying as a scientist.

 

[Aurich]

Loved the show, watched it every week and always found it worthwhile. Definitely loved the mystery of the crash in the beginning and then the flashback episode to fill it in near the end. Also loved the new aliens, pretty terrifying. I don't especially like how it's somehow before the Alien movie, kind of takes away from that dread of being alone in the universe with a deadly parasite that no one else knows about. But overall great action, story, and production values. Like a movie every week!

I hadn't actually realized it was set just before Alien, but that makes a lot of sense actually.

We know in Alien that WY knows something is up when MUTHUR orders them to bring the organism back, crew expendable. We have no idea what the back story is there, just that they seem very interested in something to the point where you wonder how much they know.

Obviously we're in retcon land, but it does tie into that neatly.

The original films are basically Ripley as narrator. So we get her perspective instead of a broader picture. It's all new to her.

And you can leave it at that and never watch anything else. But I personally found Romulus and Alien Earth interesting additions to the canon, even with some flaws. It's kind of inevitable that as you explore "more" you're going to lose that sense of Alien being a singular event.

 

[Aurich]

It also seemed to reinforce the parallel to Musk in that he took credit for the inventions but came off as someone that was extremely wealthy cosplaying as a scientist.

It's not like there was text on the screen that said THIS IS ELON MUSK ACTUALLY WINK so let's not take it so literally that people start comparing details, but absolutely.

Also, one of my favorite lines in the entire show explains a lot of it:

 

[KeyboardWeeb]

By the time we got to the

Spoiler: second half spoiler

remote controlled alien attack dog

I had pretty much lost my enthusiasm. I always felt like the idea the corps wanted to

Spoiler

control the aliens as bioweapons

being part of their hubris and inevitable downfall. So showing that actually working annoyed me.

Edit: today I learned the difference between a spoiler and an inline spoiler, but I dont care enough to fix it.

I donno, I kinda think it could still work. Just to make sure, I looked up where Alien Earth fits in.. and it's before even Alien.

Spoiler

So, because of this by the time of Alien and Aliens they know it CAN work, or at least suspect it (depending on what happens in S2) and that goes to explain the lengths they go to later to capture more of these things. And even if they CAN control the aliens, this could still easily bring their downfall as the corps fight over it.

Anyway... I enjoyed Alien Earth far more than the movies post-Aliens, some of which were at least good for a popcorn dont-look-too-closely-at-this thrill ride, others not so much.

 

[Aurich]

My other thought that I haven't fully explored yet is I think the title Alien Earth is a little bit like The Walking Dead.

In that sure, there is a xenomorph, and yes, there are zombies. But the "walking dead" was really an allusion to the survivors. And I think what made Alien Earth interesting was that many of the characters were not (or no longer) human. They were, in their own way, already the aliens on Earth.

Kirsh isn't a human, and he doesn't act like one. He knows all kinds of shit is happening, and he just lets it. Not because he's stupid, or it was a plot hole, but because apparently he wanted to see what would happen. It was a very in-human reaction, but I'm very much here for it.

 

[thrillgore]

I hadn't actually realized it was set just before Alien, but that makes a lot of sense actually.

We know in Alien that WY knows something is up when MUTHUR orders them to bring the organism back, crew expendable. We have no idea what the back story is there, just that they seem very interested in something to the point where you wonder how much they know.

Obviously we're in retcon land, but it does tie into that neatly.

The original films are basically Ripley as narrator. So we get her perspective instead of a broader picture. It's all new to her.

And you can leave it at that and never watch anything else. But I personally found Romulus and Alien Earth interesting additions to the canon, even with some flaws. It's kind of inevitable that as you explore "more" you're going to lose that sense of Alien being a singular event.

They actually explained it in Alien Isolation, which for better or for worse, 20th Century/Disney now consider canon. The Nostromo swapped out science officers, and Ash presumably gave MUTHUR new orders.

 

[Aurich]

They actually explained it in Alien Isolation, which for better or for worse, 20th Century/Disney now consider canon. Its why they swapped out science officers.

Ah okay. I started playing it and never got around to really getting that far before I abandoned it because I have Ooh Shiny syndrome and moved on to something else.

I really do think we either need to just watch Alien and Aliens as one of the best one two punches in cinematic history and be done, or allow oursleves to be open to things and not hold on too strongly to those films being the only vision.

There's no real way to tell more stories in the universe without infringing on that sense of it being a rare and special thing to encounter these creatures. And the basic choice is keep telling the same story (kind of what Romulus did, sort of, but I thought well) or to try something else. I thought Prometheus failed to the point where I didn't watch Covenant. Not every try is gonna land.

But for me at least Alien Earth was truly different enough that I was captivated.

 

[DrewW]

Physics professor Paul Frampton falling for a romance scam and smuggling drugs

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_disease

I was not aware of this story, thanks for sharing it.

I now also would rather see Noah Hawley write and produce a Fargo like series about Paul Frampton, maybe called Gluons Unglued.

 

[audincli9]

I liked season 1, enjoyed the lore, the juxtaposition between advanced civilization and retro feel, and a bit of backstory leading to Alien and Aliens. I am looking forward to season 2.

 

[FSTargetDrone]

If I never see another movie or series featuring

Spoiler

aliens as bioweapons

again it will be too soon.

 

[YetAnotherPoster]

I disagree. Romulus is watchable throughout, and it uses member berries effective enough to remind you of the good Alien movies.

It had the potential to be one of the good Alien movies but instead of getting on with it, it spent more time beating the viewer over the head with every reference to the good Alien movies and didn't know when to stop. It kept reminding you of what you weren't watching.

 

[thrillgore]

Ah okay. I started playing it and never got around to really getting that far before I abandoned it because I have Ooh Shiny syndrome and moved on to something else.

I really do think we either need to just watch Alien and Aliens as one of the best one two punches in cinematic history and be done, or allow oursleves to be open to things and not hold on too strongly to those films being the only vision.

There's no real way to tell more stories in the universe without infringing on that sense of it being a rare and special thing to encounter these creatures. And the basic choice is keep telling the same story (kind of what Romulus did, sort of, but I thought well) or to try something else. I thought Prometheus failed to the point where I didn't watch Covenant. Not every try is gonna land.

But for me at least Alien Earth was truly different enough that I was captivated.

I do get that all this Stars Warsing is getting frustrating, but from what I can glean, Walter Hill signed off on it and he is still very involved with the franchise (just not with Alien Earth, as I have mentioned Noah is treating this as an Elseworlds story at the moment)

Those two episodes on the Maginot had all the member berries and there was a lot to like even leading into it, but as the show reached the end, the nadir was in full swing. Shit, I want a show about the crapsack cyberpunk world with the Five and maybe other companies like Seegson.

 

[RandomLab]

I like the potential. But I need to see more attention to “how are we going to study/exploit these aliens/bioweapons in our midst” in smart creative and ultimately stomach-dropping ways before I go all-in. (Hello biocontainment protocols while we still can?) The only sympathetic character I found was Hermit; the rest are so far mostly interesting tokens (Boy is about as obvious as you can get). What really made me shake my head numerous times were the multiple throwaways of “play stupid games, win stupid prizes” written into the scripts for that purpose, using the “children” as vehicles supposedly to show their immaturity.

Love, love, LOVE the T. ocellus.

 

[Kanten]

But some of the writing is really, really dumb (it does that thing where it introduces a character as the smartest person in the world and then he acts like a complete idiot for the entire season, among other issues).

Sounds like a dose of Prometheus Syndrome. "We have a detailed 3D map of the entire structure but now we're somehow lost and the guy that was deathly afraid of ten thousand year old dead bodies is now aggressively trying to pet an alien snake that is viciously hissing at him."

 

[HootenDah]

They lost me - forever - with the utterly fuckwit decision to send a bunch of children into the crashed ship in episode 2. And that’s just the first of many idiotic things I can think of. Plot contrivances that stupid don’t deserve a second chance.

 

[juanxer]

Team T. ocellus here, too.

I don't know. The series was above par, but that's not saying much nowadays. It was clunky as hell, and unintentionally funny at times.

The thing is, I don't know how they hope to find me that interested in a continuation of the story when the second season airs in, say, late 2027 or 2028? These days one has to calculate one's life expectancy before committing to follow a series.

 

[KeyboardWeeb]

Those two episodes on the Maginot had all the member berries and there was a lot to like even leading into it, but as the show reached the end, the nadir was in full swing. Shit, I want a show about the crapsack cyberpunk world with the Five and maybe other companies like Seegson.

Hell, the Hybrids are practically Motoko Kusanagi already. You could practically tell a Ghost In The Shell-type story in the Alien-verse. Tachikomas instead of Xenomorphs anyone?

 

[Simon Green]

I wonder if they’ll finally tell us who the Real Monster in Aliens is in the second season. I never could figure it out.

 

[LeftCoastRusty]

I guess my standards are low…at least based on a lot of the comments. I like Alien Earth and am looking forward to season 2.

 

[Rabid Badger]

it does that thing where it introduces a character as the smartest person in the world and then he acts like a complete idiot for the entire season

If you haven't noticed, a lot of the "smartest people in the world" are complete idiots.

 

[Aurich]

I guess my standards are low…at least based on a lot of the comments. I like Alien Earth and am looking forward to season 2.

It's okay to like something even if someone else on the internet didn't.

I thought it was great. Someone else didn't. It doesn't mean anything about our standards, it's just what we're into.

I personally don't agree with most of the objections people have raised, they all felt perfectly reasonably presented in the universe. If others feel differently that's totally fine, but at least from my perspective it feels like they weren't really paying attention.

 

[Corporate_Goon]

I didn't have a problem with this. A person can be smart in one area (e.g. bio-robotic manipulation and running a business), but rubbish in another. Add in enormous of hubris, a god complex, and a bit of nihilistic "let's just see what happens to my toys" and his actions aren't absurd.

See Also:

• Steve Jobs refusing conventional treatment for pancreatic cancer.
• Physics professor Paul Frampton falling for a romance scam and smuggling drugs
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_disease

I'm totally fine with a "smart" character doing stupid things.

I'm not okay with a work of fiction telling me a character is the smartest man alive and then having him do (and say) only stupid things.

His behavior as things start to unravel is fine, but it would have been much more effective (and his character more believable) if he'd started in a place where we saw some of his brilliance and the abilities that lead him to creating this incredible technology and a globe-spanning corporation. But he's just stupid and arrogant and cruel from the word "go".

This would also be fine if the point was that he's some kind of fraud, but the writers seemed to want us to genuinely believe in what a genius he was, just by continually having characters tell us he's a genius. "He's the smartest man on earth" was 100% tell, it was never shown.

 

[dobrien75]

I really dug it. I like the Alien universe and love Hawley's previous shows.

I tend to ignore the character stupidity as vast human hubris.

I liked the "children" being sent into the ship, because
a) it emphasises that they aren't human and
b) that they are simply property and the ship was a chance for the Uber-Corp-nerd to test his new toys

I'm glad there is going to be another series. There are some crazy things they could do with the premises they have built.

 

[instant classic]

Any time they zoomed in on her mouth while she ”chittered” to the Xeno it really bugged me. It wasn’t so much that she was doing it. It was how they filmed it that bothered me so much and I’m not sure why.

Timothy Olyphant was amazing as usual.

 

[Focher]

I thoroughly enjoyed the first two episodes. I haven’t watched the final yet, but there were definitely a lot of elements I enjoyed. Unfortunately, the long form series today are always riddled with too much filler for my taste. What could have been an excellent movie or even tightened to four episodes inevitably gets stretched out with uninteresting elements. But for what it is, I’d give it a healthy 7-8.

Which is better than 6-7. Am I right?

 

[p4nic]

This talk of supposedly smart characters that do stupid things has reminded me of what may be the most irritating character I’ve seen since Solo in Silo, namely the engineer’s apprentice on the WY ship.

A man so uneducated he doesn’t know what apprentice means.
A man so bereft of even a glimmer of intelligence that he doesn’t understand what “shut the fuck up” means.

I know the intention was to give an excuse for some exposition on “The Five”, but having someone who couldn’t find their arse with both hands working as an engineer, much less on such an important mission, was just too much for me to overlook.

I feel like they're leaning into the hypersleep aspect of these jobs. Normal people don't want to work on ships because it destroys their personal lives, so they're left with a pool of psychopaths and morons from which to pick their off space ship crew from. The Prometheus movies really underlined this with them clearly scraping the bottom of the barrel for the crew of that ship, even though the company thought it was a vitally important mission.

 

[Chuktuds]

The problem with the Alien universe is always the more you know, the less effective it is. Alien (theatrical release) was flawless, Aliens was blockbuster fun, everything else was derivative at best (Romulus), and an abomination at worst. The show is definitely skip-able, which unfortunately, is about as complimentary as anything in the franchise can get nowadays.

to downvoters, you're right, the comics are pretty good, but everything else is trash.

 

[Bodechack]

I didn't have a problem with this. A person can be smart in one area (e.g. bio-robotic manipulation and running a business), but rubbish in another. Add in enormous of hubris, a god complex, and a bit of nihilistic "let's just see what happens to my toys" and his actions aren't absurd.

How about the crew of the Maginot's nonchalant reactions to the incapacitation of their captain by the facehugger, and the escape of the xenomorph?

Or the xenobiologist working alone, with incredibly dangerous aliens, without protective equipment, eating a sandwich, and using a specimen container which isn't shatterproof for some reason?

Or the Prodigy scientists wiping Nibs' memory, and then not telling any of the other hybrids, thus negating the point of the memory wipe?

Or the mercenary crew entering the lab on the island despite seeing the alien ticks suck the blood out of squad members in the first episode?

The first movies' characters may have been naive or cocky or greedy, but once they realized how dangerous the situation was the acted to survive. In Earth, they just kept making the worst decisions for the sake of plot contrivances.

 

[OOPMan]

I dunno...everything I heard about the plot for this show made it sound incredibly dumb.

I think I'll just stick to ignoring all this crud they keep piling on to old franchises.

I'm happy with finding new things to get into, I don't need every nose-hair, metaphorically speaking, explored.

 

[dobrien75]

Or the xenobiologist working alone, with incredibly dangerous aliens, without protective equipment, eating a sandwich, and using a specimen container which isn't shatterproof for some reason?

This is my biggest annoyance. It makes a lie of the idea that the lab is a super safe research facility

Or the Prodigy scientists wiping Nibs' memory, and then not telling any of the other hybrids, thus negating the point of the memory wipe?

This plays into the de-humanisation trope. They aren't people. They are just things

Or the mercenary crew entering the lab on the island despite seeing the alien ticks suck the blood out of squad members in the first episode?

Again, the super rich/powerful showing complete disregard for anything.

The conceit is that humans or non-humans can be used as disposable things. I agree with you that it is stupid, but history is replete with examples of this very thing

 

[dobrien75]

I think I'll just stick to ignoring all this crud they keep piling on to old franchises.

It really isn't related to the standard Alien franchise tropes IMO. It is the same universe of supreme corporate entities vying to compete with each other, and the pursuit of alien bio-tech is one of the latest battle fronts. The titular "alien" is only one part of this. I agree with the plot contrivance problems to some degree, but I applaud the broadening and extension of the universe and lore.

 

[hillbillystarchitect]

Not a huge fan of the actor/acting, but I thought the concept of kid kavalier was great. How would a person of his circumstances actually behave later in life after obtaining extreme wealth and power from an early age? He was profoundly bored with other humans and isolated, creating and confiding in non-human intelligence from an early age - leading to him desperately wanting to find an intelligence on par with his own and having zero empathy for actual humans.

The irony of extreme intelligence leading to objectively bad decisions I think is there, as well as the Peter Pan/man-child layers, but I really don't think he cared one way or the other which way the dice fell.

I also had never heard of the Maginot Line before this show - a great name for the ship and learning a bit of history made the watch worth it. Looking forward to season 2.

 

[breze]

I'm totally fine with a "smart" character doing stupid things.

I'm not okay with a work of fiction telling me a character is the smartest man alive and then having him do (and say) only stupid things.

His behavior as things start to unravel is fine, but it would have been much more effective (and his character more believable) if he'd started in a place where we saw some of his brilliance and the abilities that lead him to creating this incredible technology and a globe-spanning corporation. But he's just stupid and arrogant and cruel from the word "go".

This would also be fine if the point was that he's some kind of fraud, but the writers seemed to want us to genuinely believe in what a genius he was, just by continually having characters tell us he's a genius. "He's the smartest man on earth" was 100% tell, it was never shown.

Does the show actually say he’s a genius? I thought he was a self-aggrandizing rich guy. Like a lot of founder-CEOs: B+ tech skills and great luck/pitching ability.

The character got a lot more enjoyably hateable if you assumed all his weird mannerisms were put on.

 

[breze]

Not a huge fan of the actor/acting, but I thought the concept of kid kavalier was great. How would a person of his circumstances actually behave later in life after obtaining extreme wealth and power from an early age? He was profoundly bored with other humans and isolated, creating and confiding in non-human intelligence from an early age - leading to him desperately wanting to find an intelligence on par with his own and having zero empathy for actual humans.

The irony of extreme intelligence leading to objectively bad decisions I think is there, as well as the Peter Pan/man-child layers, but I really don't think he cared one way or the other which way the dice fell.

I also had never heard of the Maginot Line before this show - a great name for the ship and learning a bit of history made the watch worth it. Looking forward to season 2.

It works great narratively for the show, but. But I don’t know why they’d name their ship after the Maginot line (unless WW2 went differently in the Alien universe). It is more or less universally known as an unsuccessful defensive measure (perhaps unfairly… it was a great defensive line, impervious to anything other than going around it).

 

[breze]

I enjoyed the show and Hawley is great.

But, he and Alien seem a little bit like a mismatch? He seems sort of nostalgic for the 90’s. You can feel it in the music picks.

Alien is very 70’s and 80’s right? The company is lead by faceless suits, not some face-having techbro. WY does not stoop so low as to move fast and break things. It moves ponderously and doesn’t care if you get broken.

I dunno. There’s a fine line between sticking to the thematic elements of the series, and asking for total stagnation.

 

[OOPMan]

It really isn't related to the standard Alien franchise tropes IMO. It is the same universe of supreme corporate entities vying to compete with each other, and the pursuit of alien bio-tech is one of the latest battle fronts. The titular "alien" is only one part of this. I agree with the plot contrivance problems to some degree, but I applaud the broadening and extension of the universe and lore.

Guess we're in different camps then.

I generally feel like less is more, especially when it comers to stuff with mysterious elements like the Xenomorph.

Where did they come from? Are they created or did they evolve? Etc

They're all great questions...that work better without the kind of ham-fisted ideas that people come up with

But like I said, this is why I just prefer to explore new stuff rather than deep diving on existing stuff because I always end up disappointed.

Executing well on deep dives is just not easy.

 

[crepuscularbrolly]

Does the show actually say he’s a genius? I thought he was a self-aggrandizing rich guy. Like a lot of founder-CEOs: B+ tech skills and great luck/pitching ability.

The character got a lot more enjoyably hateable if you assumed all his weird mannerisms were put on.

He's also called "Boy Genius", and they showed some "archival" news footage of him a as a child prodigy impressing some adults. Don't know if I'm just imagining it but I thought they mentioned he was 14 or something when he did something big.

 

[Aurich]

Guess we're in different camps then.

I generally feel like less is more, especially when it comers to stuff with mysterious elements like the Xenomorph.

Where did they come from? Are they created or did they evolve? Etc

They're all great questions...that work better without the kind of ham-fisted ideas that people come up with

But like I said, this is why I just prefer to explore new stuff rather than deep diving on existing stuff because I always end up disappointed.

Executing well on deep dives is just not easy.

You announced that you haven't watched it and think it's dumb. Which is fine, I don't care what you watch.

But I'm getting the sense that whatever you heard about the show was wrong.

 

[Aurich]

He's also called "Boy Genius", and they showed some "archival" news footage of him a as a child prodigy impressing some adults. Don't know if I'm just imagining it but I thought they mentioned he was 14 or something when he did something big.

When he was a kid he

Spoiler

built a robot that killed his parents and then passed off as his real dad

so yeah.

But that doesn't mean he's emotionally stable or a normal person capable of social interactions. He's a giant weirdo who walks around barefoot and names everything after Peter Pan.

I think people confuse "smart" with "rational", and they shouldn't. He's impulsive, probably massively on one spectrum or another, arrogant, and surrounded by literal inhumans who may or may not have any more capability for those things he's missing.

I dunno, all the character building and clues are there, I don't agree with people who say things like "he's just an idiot the whole time".

 

[close]

For me, the early episodes had a lot of potential but I thought it went downhill as the season progressed. I'm still invested enough in the story that I'll probably watch season 2, but I wouldn't say I'm very impressed so far.

The first couple of episodes set the expectation for an "Alien-franchise" story, classic alien monster action. It slowly turned out the alien bit is secondary, the aliens might be more the main characters. This is, as the series suggests at some point, more akin to Peter Pan in a different setting. It's a childhood adventure story.

It's this discrepancy between expectation and reality that kind of ruined the experience for me. I'll probably watch the second season to see the story closing but can't say I'm excited like I was after the first couple of episodes.