Spoilers Alien: Earth Spoiler Thread

[Paul Farquhar]

They don't even follow the basic protocols of a high school lab

They don’t have the education of a high school student. Did you miss that? It’s not in the corporations’ interest to have universal education.

 

[Morrus]

I understand that's their attempt at justifying bad writing.

The reality is that following basic safety protocols in any situation is a lot cheaper than wasting crews and spaceships, let alone labs next to where you live that are handling anything dangerous.

They don't even follow the basic protocols of a high school lab. Okay, you've left (multi-billion dollar) kids in charge. Maybe monitor them closely? Most of the time, they are unmonitored, or being monitored by a clearly and openly hostile synth.

It's the lazy horror trope of people doing dumb things because the plot requires it.

How hard would it be to write that final scene, for example, without having the hybrid kid forget that he has super strength and still put him in jeopardy?

Thats basically the premise of the whole Alien franchise. Just because somebody wrote a scene different to the one in your head doesn’t make them “lazy”.

 

[kermit4karate]

Octo-eye works better for me than eye midge.

No way! Eye midge FTW!!

 

[kermit4karate]

Hudson's not the most reliable character, though. He's assuming it was intentional.

In our world, animals are constantly having deadly interactions with the electrical power grid that can cause a loss of power, but are presumably not doing so as part of any larger scheme.

Perhaps they were on orders from the queen....

Ha! Was almost able to type that with a straight face. Seriously, though, Aliens is one of my top 5 favorite movies of all time. I have every line of dialogue memorized from it.

 

[A2Z]

No way! Eye midge FTW!!

Are we talking about the Eyelian?

 

[kermit4karate]

Are we talking about the Eyelian?

You win!

 

[Ruin Explorer]

True.
But the Queen, at least, seemed to understand, based on her interaction with Ripley in the hatchery. She understood the implied threat of the flamethrower, understood that it was a promise of future action against the eggs, and also understood what it was Ripley wanted (ie. the retreat of the xenomorphs).

Obviously, the queen is on a different level than the warriors, but it still implies a higher level of intelligence in at least some of the species?

Some cats and dogs can understand the threat of future action, understand the vague concept of "guilt" (as in future punishment for a thing, and how you should avoid being detected doing it), and so on. Monkeys take items from people and barter them back, even refusing "low" prices for them (in terms of fruit etc.). Hell I know a wild wood pigeon who pecks at the window to ask for food, and will go around the outside of the house looking for the person. Animals, even really dim animals, are capable of actions that appear far more intelligent than people give them credit for.

Nothing the Queen or any other xenomorph does indicates an level of intelligence definitely higher than, at most, a great ape, and you could make a case that in general they are more like small monkeys in their level of intellect (but incurious rather than curious, unlike even, say, cats). The Queen catches on pretty quick, you could say that, but we have no idea how much of that is actual intelligence and how much is genetic memory in the real sense - i.e. pre-programmed behaviours that were adaptive at some point in the history of the species.

You could also make a case that the Queen was perhaps of human intelligence (but couldn't prove it), but xenomorphs still fundamentally behave like animals, and often take actions which a human wouldn't, because they could see that in the near future, they'd be screwed by doing that. They're also predatory and clearly have behaviours that lead them to extreme aggression in ways that Earth macropredators (even historical ones like dinosaurs) wouldn't engage in because they'd be too risky and energy-expensive - but this probably can be attributed to them basically being hive animals - the ultra-aggression to the point of suicidality makes a lot more sense if they're more like hive-based wasps than say, lions.

On the latest episode:

Two really weird comments from Kirsh:

1) "She could invent faster-than-light travel!". Errr Kirsh? You guys have FTL travel. I'm not going to bore us with details unless someone wants to argue the toss, but this is a bizarre thing to say, because they definitely do, and have done for some time, due to the timings of various events, and distances involved. Especially weird given they show them having artificial gravity and seem to have inertial dampeners, both of which would be potentially closely linked to FTL (and are about as "magical" as FTL). I wonder if Hawley thinks because they use cryopods they don't have FTL? But that's crazy, that's like thinking big rigs having beds in them they're stationary or something, all that means is the FTL isn't very fast and is being used to go very far.

2) Kirsh describes the alien as an "adult male". On what possible, basis, Kirsh, would you make this fairly wild assertion? You do not understand the biology of the xenomorph anywhere near well enough to be assigning Earth sexes to the morphs you see. You don't even fully understand its reproductive behaviour. No-one does! You're literally doing FAFO in this episode in order to find out about it! Also, why would that imply anything? Unless he has a female, he doesn't know if they're smaller or larger (and in fact the audience knows that the Queen at least is much larger and stronger). I guess he's trying to fob off Hermit, but it sort of undermines his whole "superior intellect" deal.

The eyeball alien is called "she" by Chibuzo but that's frankly an easier assessment to make - it's the default if you believe it's capable of reproduction, whether sexual or parthenogenic or w/e. Is what Kirsh is trying to say that the xenomorph cannot, in his opinion, reproduce? But then why not say drone, not male? Did they think the audience was too unfamiliar with the usage of the word drone in a biological context?

Now, clearly from other behaviour, Kirsh is either going bonkers (most likely, literally every android we've seen in Alien shows apart from Bishop was bonkers-adjacent, and arguably Bishop was insane just in a helpful way) and/or has some sort of bizarre humanity-ending masterplan (also likely), so maybe we can say "Yo Kirsh is just talking nonsense" - maybe the FTL comment is more like someone "She could invent a nuclear reactor!" in the 1960s, when nuclear reactors had been around for a while, but were still used as an example. I don't think that was the intention, because the show is very on-the-nose and direct, but there we go.

The failure to follow basic lab safety and so on here is at least a bit justified because everyone involved is engaged in malfeasance, and doesn't have any idea how dangerous the things they're dealing with are, and indeed, it seems like Kirsh very much wanted things to go wrong, for reasons he has yet to properly elucidate.

Another weird thing - Why did no-one explain to the rest of the Lost Boys that Nibs had lost her memory, why did they let Wendy just be there when she woke up and start saying stuff to her? Surely that's deeply counterproductive? If Wendy had broken in, which she probably could trivially do, this would all make sense. But otherwise? What? You do all this to try and reset her so she can be shown off, but don't do anything to prevent her being immediately traumatized by Wendy? They didn't even pre-lie to the others, or Wendy specifically, which would be surely first on Atom Ein's list, because he clearly understands that these are not the most stable beings.

The arbitration scene was surprisingly plausible to me. That's not how arbitrations work IRL but this is TV and no-one wants the reality, but the notion that Weyland-Yutani's lawyers might have essentially overlooked the 6 week quarantine thing when advising Yutani is, in my experience of large corporate negotiations, actually not that unlikely. Especially when corporations are used to getting things their way, and operating in an area of the law that that they haven't had to directly deal with before (and may well be using in-house counsel rather than seeking independent legal advice). Often pretty major regulatory barriers get just forgotten (sure it only happens once with a particular set of regulations for any given corp, then it becomes a big deal but...). IRL, this usually just means delays, setbacks, cost overruns and so on, and that's kind of all that's happening here, except obviously the consequences will be larger.

Finally, I'm on definitely Team Eyeball at this point. Hope you make it off this ghastly planet! These people are all awful! If only you were like, 0.75 of inch smaller in diameter!

 

[Mallus]

I understand that's their attempt at justifying bad writing.

Was the OceanGate sub implosion badly written?

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Was the OceanGate sub implosion badly written?

I think the three seasons of foreshadowing was probably enough.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Someone’s Law: In real life, people do stupid things all the time. In fiction it’s bad writing.