Prodigy – Simon’s Incoherent Blog

Alien: Earth Season 1, Episode 8 – The Real Monsters

“All this time, we’ve been afraid of them. But I think… they should be afraid of us.”

(SPOILER WARNING!)

It’s become a familiar refrain both on and offscreen in the Alien universe that the Xenomorphs are not “the real monsters”. No, the real monsters would be people – in particular, the rapacious, greedy corporations eager to make a quick buck out of the uncontrollable killing machines, uncaring how many people die to make that happen.

Alien: Earth Season 1, Episode 7 – Emergence

“We’re all going to die here. And then the bugs will crawl in and we’ll all be ghosts.”

(SPOILER WARNING!)

As expected after last week’s tension-building instalment, all those plotlines that Alien Earth has built up over the season start coming to fruition in this penultimate episode. Joe and Wendy’s escape plan from Prodigy; Slightly’s frantic attempt to bring Morrow an Alien; Yutani sending in troops to retrieve her specimens; Wendy’s bond with the recently hatched Alien – all feature heavily in an episode that shifts the story into high gear.

Alien: Earth Season 1, Episode 4 – Observation

“I think they picked me. They’re talking to me. I want to hear them.”

(SPOILER WARNING!)

It was a much more character-driven, intrigue filled episode of Alien: Earth this week, with barely a terrifying beastie in sight most of the time. That’s definitely a good thing, as (besides advancing the plot) a breather in the action allows us to get to know these characters, and the world they inhabit, rather better.

Alien: Earth Season 1, Episode 3 – Metamorphosis

“Trillions of dollars of research and development just landed in our laps!”

(SPOILER WARNING!)

Looks like my initial impression of what Alien: Earth was going to be was wrong. I’d assumed, based on the first two episodes, that what we were going to get was one of those stories that takes place over a short timeline, entirely set around the “search and rescue” operation of the crashed spaceship and the apartment block it had crashed into. Instead, it became clear this week that the story is wider and more ambitious than that, moving to new settings and later days.

Alien: Earth Season 1, Episode 1 – Neverland / Episode 2 – Mr October

“You used to be food, you know. Humanity. Your lives were short. Then your brains grew. You built tools and used them to conquer nature. Built impossible machines. Went to space. You stopped being food. Or, I should say, you told yourself you weren’t food anymore.”

(SPOILER WARNING!)

It was inevitable, really. Once Disney got its hands on the Alien franchise, it was only a matter of time before we got a TV show from it. That’s how Disney work with successful film franchises – they milk them to death by overproducing content, both film and TV until nobody wants to watch them anymore. They’ve done it with Star Wars, they’ve done it with Marvel – is this the first step to doing it with Alien?