Spoilers Alien: Earth Spoiler Thread

[Paul Farquhar]

Also...the wig-wearing folks who are so into their party that they haven't noticed a giant freaking spacecraft has just split their building in two? Seriously? What the hell was the scene about

Nobles partying whist the world burns is a fairly common trope. There is a very similar scene in Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous during a demonic invasion, for example.

And, of course, they are all off their heads with alcohol and drugs.

 

[Swanosaurus]

I’m wondering why the xenomorph is so violent, whether the xenomorph is in « secure perimeter for the queen » mode, or totally panicked and confused, or whether it is a juvenile queen clearing a nest for herself?

I was wondering that as well ... though in the beginning, it behaves pretty much the way we are used to, skulking around, waiting for the opportunity to pick off one or two at a time, probably not hunting a lot beyond what it wants for food or as hosts or because it feels threatened. (that's always how I understood the behaviour of it in the original movie, though killing Lambert and Parker didn't quite fit.)
But then, it goes full psycho on that wig party, which seems out of character.
Killing the troup of soldiers afterwards seems to make more sense - it has just been attacked and trapped, so waking up, it will probably ill everything that might be a threat.

But beyond that, I feel it's depicted as being more inherently violent then most of the Xenos we have seen before. Even aboard the Maginot, going after the Cyborg, it acts more like a furious psychpathic killer than like the calm, deadly monster we know.

I wonder if this will be explained, or whether it is just considered part of the range of different depictions of how the creature looks and behaves.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

As we mentioned earlier, it’s possible this Xeno incubated in the cat, and is exhibiting cat-like (i.e. psycho) behaviour and movement.

Which means there is another xeno, most likely a queen, that incubated in the human crew member. Which would make cat-xeno its protector. I expect the queen is busy laying more eggs.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Once again, people are shockingly lax about any kind of safety protocols or precautions of any sorts, from people who should know better… At this point it’s so deeply ingrained in the series that doing otherwise would feel wrong I think.

I think we have to see the this as an alt-history given the Maginot necessarily launched in 2055, and yeah we're definitely not going to have the capability to manufacture a space-faring vessel with that outward appearance by 2055 (and it'd have to have been started building, completed and trialled years before that, even), let alone have access to artificial gravity, cryosleep, FTL, presumably a fusion-based power planet, and so on (and seemingly inertial dampers - a lot of stuff is hard to explain if there weren't inertial dampers here, but they're sort of "baked in" to a lot of sci-fi ship behaviour)!

And there are some curious quirks of technology which look deeply retro from our perspective. So despite Ice Age (of all things!) and that 1977 ball game happening in both timelines, I think the timelines probably start diverging in like the 1950s or earlier.

With the five corporations running the planet for what, probably decades by 2055 even, I have to imagine all OSHA/"'Elf and safety innit"-type organisations have been deleted from existence, litigation against the companies is probably legally impossible (except by each other - we know from episode 2 that that's possible), so they don't have to worry about safety except where it hurts the bottom line or imperils their workers/vessels in ways they actually care about. It does seem, from Alien, that they probably at least act like they care a bit, and have safety manuals, because Ripley's whole deal early in Alien is "What the hell are you idiots doing, this puts us all in danger and (IIRC) isn't protocol!".

I’m wondering why the xenomorph is so violent, whether the xenomorph is in « secure perimeter for the queen » mode, or totally panicked and confused, or whether it is a juvenile queen clearing a nest for herself?

Yeah there seem to be four theories here:

1) Oh no poor baby is scared!!! Awww little xenomorph kill the mean men scaring you!

I don't think this is it personally but I do enjoy that people are increasingly siding with/anthropomorphizing the xenomorph we're so used to it at this point!

2) Yeah maybe it's a queen. I would be surprised given Scott is EP but... Hawley said this show is "officially non-canon", and there's only one thing that determines whether something is "canon" in this franchise - Scott's opinion - so Hawley may have pre-permission to use the "non-canon" queen angle. He's certainly using a ton of aesthetics and some ideas from Aliens.

3) That there may be two xenomorphs and the very agile, fast, sleek and incredibly aggressive one may be from the cat (or there's one and the apparent chestburst from a cryopod is a misdirect).

4) That this xenomorph is operating on an "eggmorphing" principle (this is slightly supported by some random pre-release thing for Alien: Earth referring to "ovomorphogenesis"), a technically non-canon process (because the scene got cut from Alien by Scott himself) that nevertheless often pops up in Alien-based media whereby a non-queen xenomorph can somehow cause an incapacitated victim to turn into an facehugger egg (a royal facehugger egg in some versions of this), and is protecting eggs it made. This doesn't completely track with the slaughterfest (you'd expect the xenomorph to drag more people away if it was doing this) and also seems wrong because the eggs appear to have been in crates before someone got them out, though could link to the "two xenomorphs" theory.

I suspect none of the above are fully correct (the first one least of all) but we shall see.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Did the crew capture all the species, tang? Involved in the species being released and the cyborg reliving the events before the crew died or when they were dying

I gotta presume the cyborg (Marrow) was a major part of capturing most of these species, because I don't see anyone else on the crew who is up to that, and he also clearly has and knows how to use capture equipment. I guess the blood bugs and the eye-octopus might just have been tempted into traps but even then, they surely live in pretty scary environments!