SPEAKER_01: Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one.
SPEAKER_01: How's our girl?
SPEAKER_01: She's ready.
SPEAKER_01: You're gonna be the first person to transition from a human body to a synthetic.
SPEAKER_01: Because I'm special.
SPEAKER_01: That's right.
SPEAKER_01: You're very, very special.
SPEAKER_01: We have a down spacecraft.
SPEAKER_01: I want what's on that ship.
SPEAKER_01: We can do it.
SPEAKER_01: We're fast, we're strong, we don't break.
SPEAKER_01: It's like a zoo that the animals got out.
SPEAKER_01: This ship collected five different life forms from the darkest corners of the universe.
SPEAKER_01: Monsters invasive species.
SPEAKER_01: Predatory.
SPEAKER_01: We don't lock them down.
SPEAKER_01: It'll be too late.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, whoever cut that trailer is a mad genius, the sound alone.
SPEAKER_00: And when I hear that screaming alarm sound that indicates alien, I get way too excited.
SPEAKER_00: Hey kids.
SPEAKER_00: So recently we got the hopefully season one not series finale of Alien Earth, which is the best thing to come out of the Alien franchise since well, Aliens.
SPEAKER_00: The second one.
SPEAKER_00: That's out of seven.
SPEAKER_00: Wait eight.
SPEAKER_00: Oh wait, let me reverse for a second.
SPEAKER_00: For those just tuning into Life on Earth, Alien is a legendary sci-fi horror franchise that launched in 79 with Ridley Scott's groundbreaking film.
SPEAKER_00: Over seven main movies, it follows humanity's chilly encounters with the deadly xenomorphs, creatures that embody survival horror, action, and deep, deep questions about creation.
SPEAKER_00: The universe has since expanded into novels, comics, video games, and now a seriously impressive TV series.
SPEAKER_00: Just a heads up, if you're a purist, you might want to skip the Predator crossovers.
SPEAKER_00: And tonight, I'm gonna get into Alien Earth and the Alien franchise and why it's so fantastic.
SPEAKER_00: And if you want to hear somebody babbling and spoiling the TV series for you, you've come to the right place.
SPEAKER_00: This is Wicked Gay Pop Whatever number six, Alien Earth.
SPEAKER_00: Well, uh, most things alien, there was that alien resurrection issue.
SPEAKER_00: So, let me get a little into my history with Alien.
SPEAKER_00: My introduction to the series was via Aliens, the second movie, and that was through my Uncle Leo, hopefully resting in peace and free from idiots.
SPEAKER_00: He wasn't what you call a people person exactly.
SPEAKER_00: Uncle Leo was the cool uncle.
SPEAKER_00: He worked for customs, and he had done two tours of duty in Vietnam, and he was sarcastic, and he and my aunt Chris didn't have any kids, so they had cool stuff like cable before anyone else did.
SPEAKER_00: It's funny because I saw a movie that's very dear to me, Jaws, at Accoleo's house for the first time.
SPEAKER_00: Which makes sense because my dad is quint.
SPEAKER_00: I'll get into that in some other episode.
SPEAKER_00: So I treasured the times when I was a kid and got to sleepover at Coleo's house.
SPEAKER_00: He had a closet full of carefully curated VHS tapes.
SPEAKER_00: Almost every movie you could imagine, every cool movie you could imagine.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, for the youngins, before streaming and before even Blu-rays, we used VCRs and watched movies on tape.
SPEAKER_00: They took up a lot of room.
SPEAKER_00: You should have seen Betamax.
SPEAKER_00: One sleepover, he popped in a VHS labeled Aliens and said, I think you'll like this one.
SPEAKER_00: I want to preface this by saying, I really up until that point hadn't seen any like cool movies.
SPEAKER_00: I was kinda sheltered as a kid.
SPEAKER_00: Also, my mother, whenever there was nudity on this TV, she would actually bodily leap in front of it, turning her body into an ex so we didn't see a boob.
SPEAKER_00: I love your mom.
SPEAKER_00: Anyway, uh, this movie was the coolest thing I had ever seen.
SPEAKER_00: It blew my mind.
SPEAKER_00: Um, it was exhilarating and frightening.
SPEAKER_00: The little gay boy in me was thrilled to meet the statuesque laser rifle toting Ellen Ripley, the first real female action hero.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, sure you could argue Linda Hamilton and Terminator, but she mostly ran around.
SPEAKER_00: Leia fired a blaster here and there, but she wasn't exactly saving the day.
SPEAKER_00: Ripley was the blueprint.
SPEAKER_00: No Buffy, no Tomb Raider, just Ripley in her government-issue cryo sleep panties, trying to survive.
SPEAKER_00: And survive she does.
SPEAKER_00: Alien was her run and don't die movie, but in Aliens, Ellen Ripley came into her own.
SPEAKER_00: And she did it in a very drab jumpsuit and using an industrial exoskeleton to beat the shit out of an alien queen while calling her a bitch.
SPEAKER_00: Furiosa could never.
SPEAKER_00: And I became a diehard alien fan.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I'm not doing conventions or anything, and my bathroom isn't done in the style of HR Geiger.
SPEAKER_00: Imagine what an HR Geiger toilet would look like.
SPEAKER_00: Gross.
SPEAKER_00: But I love this series.
SPEAKER_00: And they just keep coming.
SPEAKER_00: The latest alien film was Romulus, which came out in 2024.
SPEAKER_00: And then word came there was going to be a series, as in TV, as in streaming, which meant hours of Alien.
SPEAKER_00: But would it be good or versus Predator level?
SPEAKER_00: Alien Earth is the TV series I'm talking about this evening.
SPEAKER_00: It's so good.
SPEAKER_00: It made me so happy.
SPEAKER_00: Now, every alien property, in my estimation, has something to like.
SPEAKER_00: I haven't seen them because I'm an alien snob, but I'm sure even those Predator crossovers have some stupid fun in them.
SPEAKER_00: They aren't considered canon, though.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, you know you're a geek if you're concerned about canon.
SPEAKER_00: But nothing has touched the first two alien movies until this show.
SPEAKER_00: And yep, I went there.
SPEAKER_00: Alien Earth is on FX, and its creator is Noah Hawley, a novelist and TV creator slash showrunner type.
SPEAKER_00: Uh he's mostly famous for Fargo, which is the critically acclaimed anthology TV series based on the Cohen Brothers movie Fargo.
SPEAKER_00: He also did his version of a Marvel series called Legion, and that's excellent as well, especially if you like your X-Men on ayahuasca.
SPEAKER_00: Alien Earth is set in the alien universe, but tells its own story with fresh characters and some bold ass plot ideas.
SPEAKER_00: For starters, it finally shows us what life on Earth looks like in the future, which the franchise has never done.
SPEAKER_00: And secondly, the acid-blooded, second-mouth snapping, sexual organ-shaped xenomorphs actually make it to Earth, and hilarity so far has ensued.
SPEAKER_00: Normally they're stuck terrorizing humans on spaceships and space stations or weird prison planets.
SPEAKER_00: Over watching their ancestors do bizarre things so Ridley Scott can explain the meaning of life.
SPEAKER_00: But now they're loose in Thailand doing all kinds of unexpected stuff.
SPEAKER_00: Alien Earth absolutely slaps.
SPEAKER_00: Especially episode 5 of this 8-episode first season.
SPEAKER_00: I'm saying it.
SPEAKER_00: Episode 5 is the best alien entry since aliens.
SPEAKER_00: Honestly, one of the top three alien flicks is now a TV episode.
SPEAKER_00: That should tell you everything about this show.
SPEAKER_00: So tonight we're gonna talk Alien.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, actually, I'm gonna talk Alien.
SPEAKER_00: I'll give you a crash course and what came before Alien Earth, then get into the series itself, recap that shit, and explain why you should probably go watch it and then come back and listen to me squawk about it, and see if you share my viewpoints and opinions on this fine piece of television art.
SPEAKER_00: By the way, there are spoilers for everything and anything alien in this episode, so go catch up on your xenomorphs before you listen to this.
SPEAKER_00: Now, I'm not gonna go microscopic here, so if you're really wanting to know the the full-on backstory history of the film series, actually just the first movie, but that's enough, you should watch a documentary called Memory: The Origins of Alien.
SPEAKER_00: It's directed by Alexandra O'Philippe, and it's really good.
SPEAKER_00: So go check it out, or stay here and then do it after.
SPEAKER_00: So originally I wrote shit a shit ton of copy about the Alien franchise so I could get into Alien Earth, but if I had gone through with that, you would be here with me until Saint Swather's Day, and even the most diehard Wicked Gay fan does not want to hear my voice for that long.
SPEAKER_00: Because there are seven films before the TV show debuted this year.
SPEAKER_00: Seven.
SPEAKER_00: So I'm gonna quickly sum each one of them up in order of release, as only I can.
SPEAKER_00: And that turns into something worse, which later bursts out of his chest during dinner, and then proceeds to grow real big, real scary, and real violent.
SPEAKER_00: Welcome to your first xenomorph.
SPEAKER_00: There's also a uh treacherous android played by Ian Holm, and oh, androids are called synths in the alien universe, and synths can be a little tricky.
SPEAKER_00: Eventually Sigorni blows the xenomorph out of an airlock so its corpse can show up 45 years later in Romulus.
SPEAKER_00: You eagle-eyed alien fans caught that, right?
SPEAKER_00: Then Ripley goes to sleep for 60 years.
SPEAKER_00: The sequel to Alien was Aliens, which came out in '86, directed by one James Cameron, the egomaniacal genius Terminator guy who would go on to give us Titanic and a fictional mineral he seriously called Unobtanium.
SPEAKER_00: You know, you really did.
SPEAKER_00: Aliens takes place 60 years later, and poor Ripley's been in cryo sleep.
SPEAKER_00: So she's dragged back into everything because the planet they had found the original alien face hugger thingy on, has been colonized in the meantime, but then all the colonists disappeared, and it's like Space Roanoke.
SPEAKER_00: And it turns out there's more than one xenomorph over there, hence aliens, and Ripley has to mount up, and it's thrilling and scary, and the effects were insane for the time, and the movie totally still holds up.
SPEAKER_00: I think that movie will always hold up.
SPEAKER_00: And and Bill Paxton plays a lovable meathead, and the child actor pronounces the word mostly, oddly, mostly, the mooseli come out at night.
SPEAKER_00: What is that accent?
SPEAKER_00: Was she Canadian?
SPEAKER_00: Who knows?
SPEAKER_00: Anyway, the movie's a classic, and frankly, I think it deserves the place in American cinema that Citizen Kane has.
SPEAKER_00: God, I love that movie.
SPEAKER_00: And then after Aliens, well, it's sort of a case of diminishing returns.
SPEAKER_00: They probably should have stopped after Aliens, but once something makes money, you gotta squeeze every single nickel and dime you can out of it until there is nothing left but a smoking husk of regret and fan resentment.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so lightning fast.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, right.
SPEAKER_00: Alien 3 or Alien Cubed, 1992.
SPEAKER_00: Ripley crash lands on a prison planet in 2179, where she battles a new xenomorph and finds out she's carrying a queen embryo inside her, and ultimately kills herself to stop the Whalen company from grabbing Queenie for nefarious capitalism purposes.
SPEAKER_00: Pop off, Queen.
SPEAKER_00: By the way, Whalen Yutani is the evil corporation that employed Ripley in the first two movies, and it's like the evil corporation villain that wants the aliens for like Department of War purposes or what have you.
SPEAKER_00: And I like the slick David Fincher visuals here and Ripley shaving her dome because there's lice, and she spends the movie wondering why the alien is eating everyone but her.
SPEAKER_00: Has it become a late-stage feminist?
SPEAKER_00: No, the alien just doesn't want to kill what's inside Mother.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, uh, moving on.
SPEAKER_00: Alien Resurrection, 1997.
SPEAKER_00: Oh dear.
SPEAKER_00: 200 years after Ripley's death, military scientists clone her and the queen embryo she carried, unleashing hybrid horrors aboard the latest spaceship setting.
SPEAKER_00: This movie's a rough ride, and so far it's the last one in the franchise's timeline, and it's kind of lacking as a send-off for Ripley.
SPEAKER_00: Because the big bad is Ripley and an alien queen using IVF or something to conceive a white little person alien with a pot belly and a human skull for a face, but with human eyes.
SPEAKER_00: Romulus does this idea a lot better.
SPEAKER_00: It's got a few things to like.
SPEAKER_00: The Ripley slash alien hybrid gets the best lines because Joss Weed wrote the script, and a kind, naive android is sort of the role Winona Ryder was born to play.
SPEAKER_00: I think she actually is a kind, naive android.
SPEAKER_00: Who shoplifts?
SPEAKER_00: I'm just kidding.
SPEAKER_00: No, she does shoplift.
SPEAKER_00: That's fine.
SPEAKER_00: I shoplifted before.
SPEAKER_00: Stole a giant cardboard cutout of the Kool-Aid man from Burger King's foyer.
SPEAKER_00: A story for another time.
SPEAKER_00: Prometheus, 2012.
SPEAKER_00: Here's where we get weird.
SPEAKER_00: So Ridley Scott returned and decided to answer some long-standing questions about Alien.
SPEAKER_00: Mainly the question seemed to be, what the fuck?
SPEAKER_00: It takes place in the year 2093.
SPEAKER_00: A Wayland before Utani funded crew seeks humanity's origins, but instead uncovers hostile, tall people called engineers, very gross proto-xenomorphs, a mutagenic bioweapon ooze, and the android David's obsession with creation.
SPEAKER_00: Bad robot getting worse.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, and a giant space donut flattens Charlie's Thuron, who is there to do very little but look perturbed and fuck Idris Elba.
SPEAKER_00: Don't threaten me with a good time, that's what I want to do.
SPEAKER_00: Alien Covenant, 2017.
SPEAKER_00: So then, in 2104, the colony ship Covenant is on its way to find a new planet to live on because Earth is a mess, but diverts to a mysterious other planet, as usually happens, only to find out that David the robot has wiped out the engineers and bred the first true xenomorphs.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so David is the one to grow the xenomorphs.
SPEAKER_00: David is full-on Lex Luther in this movie.
SPEAKER_00: They kill an alien, but David ends up with a starship chock full of living humans to put facehuggers on.
SPEAKER_00: And not sure what became of David and Company, but I do know that Noah Hawley isn't considering Prometheus or Covenant to be canon now, so shrug.
SPEAKER_00: Bye David.
SPEAKER_00: And then last year we got Alien Romulus.
SPEAKER_00: So somebody went and made a pretty competent and fun nothing of an alien movie set in the time between alien and aliens, giving us a colony of cutesy young space colonists scavenging a derelict whalen Utani space station and accidentally unleashing xenomorph terror and lots of face huggers.
SPEAKER_00: And an alien human hybrid at the end that makes the one from Alien Resurrection look like a pregnant maggot.
SPEAKER_00: This one's tall and eats its mother, who is human.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, and they do one of those one of those digital things where they AI dead Ian home, which is fucking tacky.
SPEAKER_00: Don't do that.
SPEAKER_00: And we're gonna slide Alien Earth right between Alien Covenant and Alien on the timeline.
SPEAKER_00: That's right.
SPEAKER_00: Alien Earth takes place two years before the original Alien.
SPEAKER_00: And some backstory to this world, because this is really the first time in the series we find out what Earth is really like when Ripley came on the scene.
SPEAKER_00: It's 2120, and Earth and humanity are governed not by governments or nations in the traditional sense, but by mega corporations that have divided the world up into territories.
SPEAKER_00: Alien Earth, there are five of these corporations.
SPEAKER_00: The ones the show is concerned with are the ever-present Wayland Utani and another one called Prodigy, and that's run by a truly loathsome techno-oligarch trillionaire sociopath twerp, just reeking of musk, if you know what I mean.
SPEAKER_00: And he's named, get this, Boy Cavalier, and he's known as the Boy Genius, and he's sort of the main villain here, and rightly so.
SPEAKER_00: And the actor who plays him is Samuel Blanken, and he does a job, he does his job really well, because rarely do you encounter a fictional character more punchable.
SPEAKER_00: There are less punchable Nazis in real life than this guy.
SPEAKER_00: Android synths are still a big part of things, or are a big part of things, and the big name synth in this show is played by the beloved Timothy Oliphant.
SPEAKER_00: He plays a bleach blonde synth named Kersh, who works for the boy genius, but you're never really sure whose side he's on, because he seems sort of bored with everybody and just wants to be droll and say subtly insulting things to people and just do his experiments.
SPEAKER_00: So we got synths, and now we have cyborgs, who are enhanced humans who have big knives in their arms.
SPEAKER_00: And the cyborg hair is named Marrow, and he's Whalen Utani's fixer, and he's kind of a badass, and the series anti-hero.
SPEAKER_00: So we have synths and now cyborgs, and now the boy genius and his team have made hybrids, which are synths implanted with human consciousness.
SPEAKER_00: So in theory, you get a new body and live forever.
SPEAKER_00: Only six of these uh hybrids exist, and they're all hidden away on the boy genius' island uh called Neverland off the coast of Thailand or something.
SPEAKER_00: The twist?
SPEAKER_00: These adult synth bodies are inhabited by the minds of children.
SPEAKER_00: Supposedly only young, adaptable brains like the ones that kids have could handle the transfer or something.
SPEAKER_00: The boy genius, his head scientist Arthur, who meets a gruesome end, and Arthur's wife Dame, who's like a neuropsych specialist, they pull it off.
SPEAKER_00: They convince six terminally ill 12-year-olds to make the leap into bodies that are nearly indestructible, super strong, and fast.
SPEAKER_00: And you know, this isn't just a recipe for disaster, it's the fucking cookbook girl.
SPEAKER_00: And our heroine is hybrid Wendy.
SPEAKER_00: Wendy is the first hybrid creation, and she's thrust into a very strange existence where she has the body of a grown woman, but is still 12 years old in her mind.
SPEAKER_00: It's like it's like 13 going on 30, but with aliens made out of eyeballs ripping out eyeballs.
SPEAKER_00: I'll get to it.
SPEAKER_00: And she's called Wendy because the boy genius is obsessed with Peter Pan, and he's given the hybrids the names of the lost boys from Peter Pan, hence Wendy.
SPEAKER_00: And you should also know that all these hybrids have families that think they've died, and they're unaware that their loved ones are actually alive in these shiny new sci-fi bodies.
SPEAKER_00: This is important because Wendy's brother is named Joe.
SPEAKER_00: He's a medic with one of Prodigy's security soldier force things.
SPEAKER_00: Yes, these corporations have their own armies.
SPEAKER_00: And he thinks Wendy's dead, and she ain't.
SPEAKER_00: And we learn that her new body has given her the ability to control technology, so because the world is totally surveilled, she has the ability to follow Joe throughout his life via cams.
SPEAKER_00: But before we get to Neverland, our story opens.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, and the direction is so good, and the credits are the famous alien letters slowly appearing, like in the movies, and that shrieky music that sounds like screams, and oh gosh, I love Alien.
SPEAKER_00: And these people are doing it right.
SPEAKER_00: So we're on a spaceship, which is very similar to the Nostromo from the first movie, and this scene, the first scene, is a total homage to the dinner scene in Alien.
SPEAKER_00: The decor and costumes are exacting.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so that cyborg Morrow, he's aboard and acting as like a security officer, and the ship is carrying aliens back to Earth, and not just the xenomorphs.
SPEAKER_00: These people went out into the wilds of space and hit the jackpot.
SPEAKER_00: They're transporting a whole bunch of new and as we learn, deadly as fuck species.
SPEAKER_00: The most brilliant thing about Alien Earth is that Noah Holly thought, hey, this is called Alien, and it's supposed to be sci-fi horror, and it hasn't really been scary for a while, so let's make it scary again.
SPEAKER_00: This blessed genius, Holly, made more aliens, and really gruesome, terrifying ones to rival the xenomorph.
SPEAKER_00: This show had me cringing and looking away from the screen as each episode we learn what these new and terrifying aliens can do and how they're gonna melt or mutilate or kill the cast.
SPEAKER_00: God, I love this show.
SPEAKER_00: And you've seen movies.
SPEAKER_00: What do you think happens when humans try to take aggressive and unknowable new species from the wild and stick them in cages and they're not bright enough to impose the maximum security on these creepies?
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: So the spaceship gets rocked from within, and we don't see until episode 5 what happens exactly on the ship, but it crashes to Earth and it lands in Prodigy City, owned by the Boy Genius, and at 9-11s into a skyscraper, and it's a big disaster.
SPEAKER_00: So now it's a whaling Utani ship and has crashed into a Prodigy skyscraper in a Prodigy-owned city.
SPEAKER_00: And as we learn, the Boy Genius has been very aware of Lady Yutani's uh let's find new space pets and bring them to Earth operation, and he wants them.
SPEAKER_00: So he sends a platoon of soldiers in to secure the ship and get any inhabitants out of the building who survived, but mostly to make sure he gets these new creepies because he's insatiably curious without morals or conscience, and likes new toys that can make him even more money.
SPEAKER_00: Wendy finds out that her bro Joe is among the soldiers sent in, and without mentioning that fact, she convinces the boy genius to let her and the other lost boys in to help, because they can't be hurt and they don't feel pain and can probably accomplish more than the soldiers.
SPEAKER_00: The boy genius finds this amusing, so he lets them go in and Timothy Oliphant goes to babysit them.
SPEAKER_00: Yes, he's sending what are basically six 12-year-olds into a disaster area, teeming with incredibly dangerous alien lifeforms to see what happens.
SPEAKER_00: He's the worst.
SPEAKER_00: Meanwhile, one of the crew of the ship has survived.
SPEAKER_00: It's Moro the Cyborg, and his mission is to get his boss, Lady Utani, your creepy cargo, and he's a very dedicated employee.
SPEAKER_00: And conflicts and story engines are arising left and right.
SPEAKER_00: So that's the setup.
SPEAKER_00: The first three episodes are introing all the characters and getting most of them to the crashed spaceship stuffed directly into the side of a skyscraper.
SPEAKER_00: So the hybrid kids in Kersh, Maro in his sword arm, and the soldiers, accompanied by Wendy's brother Joe, and all the escaped creepy crawlies, all run headlong into each other, and chaos, delicious, wonderful sci-fi horror chaos ensues.
SPEAKER_00: And as we go along, we learn that four species in particular escape from captivity.
SPEAKER_00: Our old friend the xenomorph, as spry and deadly and looking to munch heads as possible, this one large creature that looks sort of like a closed Venus flytrap that hangs upside down from the ceiling, and you're not quite sure what it does.
SPEAKER_00: And we learn what this is all about in the final episode, and it's gruesome.
SPEAKER_00: And in addition to the xenomorph and the Venus flytrap hanging plant, we get these slugs that look innocuous but move really fast.
SPEAKER_00: And once they sucker onto you, they suck all of the blood out of your body to the point that they blow up like blood balloons and it's revolting.
SPEAKER_00: And then, well, and then there's the eye.
SPEAKER_00: The eye is pretty much the breakout character of Alien Earth.
SPEAKER_00: It's got tentacles for legs, and its shtick is to skitter really fast at you, then climb into your eye socket, scoop out the eyeball that's already in there, and take that eye's place.
SPEAKER_00: And this happens in the most grotesque CGI operation possible.
SPEAKER_00: And then the eye controls whatever form it resides in.
SPEAKER_00: It spends most of the series in a sheep, glaring at people and trying to soak chaos and death whenever it can.
SPEAKER_00: It's great.
SPEAKER_00: So Joe and his squad pick their way through the busted ship, finding lots of bodies and lots of evidence that something horrific is going on.
SPEAKER_00: He gets separated from the others and he's chased all over the place by a xenomorph.
SPEAKER_00: So Wendy goes to rescue him and she has this badass fight with the xenomorph where she ends up putting one of those like long hooks you like, I don't know, uh, catch fish with or move meat through a factory with, and she puts this hook through the alien's second retractable mouth, and she drags it around to beat it up.
SPEAKER_00: And why didn't Ripley think of that?
SPEAKER_00: That will teach it to snap at people.
SPEAKER_00: And Wendy kills it, but she's seriously injures herself, and Joe's injured too, and everyone but Mara is taken back to Neverland to recuperate, and so the boy genius can have his own new alien toys.
SPEAKER_00: And we learn that he has ferocious ADD, and even though he's just solved for deaths with the hybrids, he's now way more into the xenomorphs because they're way cooler because they're terrifyingly dangerous.
SPEAKER_00: So Wendy eventually gets repaired, and we learn that she can not only sense xenomorphs when they're near, but she can talk to them.
SPEAKER_00: That's right.
SPEAKER_00: This woman can do little with xenomorphs.
SPEAKER_00: She speaks alien, and this could be a super stupid plot addition to the alien franchise, but it's more like exhilarating because she ends up being able to control the xenomorphs like attack dogs, and it's very satisfying because can you think of a better way to deal with a bully than a xenomorph?
SPEAKER_00: Also, Joe was hurt, so he gets a new lung, and Timothy Oliphant takes the old lung and grows a xenomorph with it.
SPEAKER_00: And this is the xenomorph that Wendy bonds with.
SPEAKER_00: So now there is a whole lab just filled with deadly alien lifeforms just waiting to break out of stir and kill everybody just like they did on the ship.
SPEAKER_00: And in the meantime, the lost boys are sort of realizing Neverland and the Boy Genius aren't the nicest place or people, and then also Moro the Cyborg is able to blackmail one of the lost boys, known as Slightly, into helping him sneak a Xenomorph facehugger off the island to give back to Lady Utani, who is Arch Enemies with Boy Genius.
SPEAKER_00: That operation doesn't really work out.
SPEAKER_00: And then episode 5.
SPEAKER_00: Episode 5 is called In Space No One Can, and that's a reference to the very famous tagline of the first movie, In Space, No One Can Hear Your Scream.
SPEAKER_00: And this is where we find out what happened on the spaceship, and it's a remake of the first movie, really, but with more chills and spills.
SPEAKER_00: It's so good that I turned to my husband 75% of the way through it and said, This should have been the only other alien they ever made.
SPEAKER_00: You could probably watch it alone and enjoy it.
SPEAKER_00: So all the creatures are trying to escape captivity, and most of them do.
SPEAKER_00: Not only is the eye running around, but those blood balloon bugs, they're like ticks.
SPEAKER_00: And there's this whole sequence where they spawn little ticks in the doctor's water bottle, and she's going around with the water bottle and you're cringing like bitch, don't drink that water.
SPEAKER_00: But then someone else drinks it and he dies, and when they do an autopsy on that guy, you find out that ticks gestate by attaching themselves on organs, and if you try to get them offset organs, they spray a poison gas that will kill everybody in the room.
SPEAKER_00: And a face hugger gets out and kills everybody else, except for the Scottish engineer who gets killed by the eye, and there's this bad shit crazy fight scene between the eye-possessing the daddy bear engineer and the xenomorph, where they literally like they brawl, and the eye-possessing daddy bear engineer jumps on the xenomorph's back and bites it.
SPEAKER_00: And it was it was ridiculous, it was audacious and silly and actually kind of smart.
SPEAKER_00: And girl, I jumped off the couch, I was cheering and laughing so hard.
SPEAKER_00: This episode of TV made me feel like I was watching aliens again for the first time.
SPEAKER_00: Noah Holly uh needs some Emmys.
SPEAKER_00: Anyway, Mara the cyborg is the only survivor after letting the captain get eaten because his only desire in life is to get the aliens back to Lady Utani, who was like his foster sister or something.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, and we find out that the boy genius was behind the ship crashing all along, and he engineered the whole thing because he's an evil boy genius.
SPEAKER_00: Admittedly, okay, so the next three ups, the last three ups, are fantastic, but it is when you realize it may be called Alien Earth, but the aliens are staying on the island for now, so it's a little disappointing.
SPEAKER_00: Not seeing them take over NYC or something.
SPEAKER_00: And here's hoping for season two.
SPEAKER_00: So back on the island, the hybrids all have their own story arcs, some more interesting than others.
SPEAKER_00: One of them is Timothy Oliphant's little protege, and he dies when one of the species we hadn't encountered yet ends up being these flies that only eat metal and basically vomit on this hybrid kid's face to melt him and eat him.
SPEAKER_00: And oh, and by the way, the eye and the sheep facilitated this death through Nefaria's headbutting means.
SPEAKER_00: So the hybrids aren't as immortal as we thought.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, and we eventually find out what the last species capture can do.
SPEAKER_00: Remember the Venus, the quiet Venus flytrab thing hanging from the spaceship ceiling?
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you probably guessed that it actually is a Venus flytrap thingy because uh it can scuttle around walls and ceilings first before it hangs there quietly to snatch and liquefy hapless soldiers.
SPEAKER_00: Gross.
SPEAKER_00: Wendy and Joe have become disillusioned with Neverland, so they're trying to get off the island, and hippie scientist Arthur tries to help them after the boy genius fires him for having a conscience.
SPEAKER_00: That's until Moro blackmails pour Slightly into tricking Arthur into receiving a face hugger so Moro can smuggle it off the island.
SPEAKER_00: And it sorta ends in hilarity when Slightly and his friend hide a face hugged Arthur under Slightly's bed like any 12-year-old boy would do, so he wouldn't get in trouble.
SPEAKER_00: By the way, the actors playing the hybrids are really good at playing 12-year-olds in adult bodies.
SPEAKER_00: So Slightly and his friend Smee make it to the beach with Arthur, but not before the chest bursts, and now there's a small xenomorph running around to accompany the big ass one that's killing everybody.
SPEAKER_00: Yes, the one that's Wendy's new best friend escaped.
SPEAKER_00: Moro meets up with Slightly and Smee, and everybody gets captured by Prodigy soldiers to take back to the Boy Genius.
SPEAKER_00: In the meantime, Wendy and Joe make it to a dock after a scary encounter with both the Eye, which abandons the sheep and tries to get in Joe's head, and Boy Genius' right-hand synth named Adam, who we find out was created by the Boy Genius at age six to murder his abusive father.
SPEAKER_00: We learn also that Wendy can not only control xenomorphs, but she can also control other synths.
SPEAKER_00: She's gotten a massive power upgrade as the show goes on.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, and Joe and Wendy are with this redhead hybrid named Nibs, who is she's batshit crazy, right?
SPEAKER_00: And she's been mind wiped by Arthur's wife Dame, which Makes her even more batch it crazy, and she quickly becomes my favorite character on the show besides the eye, as she begins killing soldiers with glee.
SPEAKER_00: It's funny seeing a young ginger woman who was a psychotic 12-year-old in her head just massacring prodigy soldiers left and right with true delight in her face.
SPEAKER_00: Loved her.
SPEAKER_00: Everybody gets recaptured, and it's kind of stupid because Wendy has technological control of the entire island, and she's realized something very important about herself and the other hybrids.
SPEAKER_00: A, Boy Genius sees them as amusing property, and B, they are way more powerful than him and his soldiers and his company.
SPEAKER_00: And C, she's even more powerful because she controls the island's entire network and two xenomorphs.
SPEAKER_00: And in an intensely satisfying scene in the last episode, because he's so irritating and he refuses to wear shoes and his feet are dirty, Wendy forces Boy Genius to play a homicidal game of hide-and-seek with them because she now knows that she's that bitch and has little to no time for his antics.
SPEAKER_00: Also, Joe ends up kicking him in the face, and that's fun.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, and Moro and Timothy Oliphant have a brutal cyborg synth fist fight, which is kind of a draw as they're both seriously injured.
SPEAKER_00: And we end with all of the quote adults captured by all of the quote kids.
SPEAKER_00: The boy genius, Dame, the neuroscientist's mother figure, whose husband Arthur's chestburst corpse, by the way, has been taken over by the eye, which is funny.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, you have cyborg Morrow, Timothy Oliphant, and the revolting boy genius, who is now bloody and tied up, and Wendy dog walks his ass by telling him exactly what he is.
SPEAKER_00: A hateful little man, not Peter Pan.
SPEAKER_00: And he clearly doesn't like that, so triumph.
SPEAKER_00: But he does like when the hybrids ask Wendy what they're going to do now, and she merely looks up at the two pet xenomorphs she has guarding the prisoners, and she says, They're going to rule.
SPEAKER_00: End season one.
SPEAKER_00: It's a cliffhanger.
SPEAKER_00: Actually, several, because that uh that main stuff going on, and then the funny one with the eye-possessing author out on the beach, and then Lady Utani's Whalen Utani troops are flying uh to take over the island.
SPEAKER_00: They're on the way, they're almost there, so she can get her property back.
SPEAKER_00: And there's way more to the show, but I've already gone over a half hour, so it's like, shut the fuck up, Jay.
SPEAKER_00: Just go watch the show.
SPEAKER_00: Season two hasn't been announced yet, but it's kind of a definite seeing as it pulled in 9.2 million global views on Hulu and Disney Plus in the first six days, which makes it one of FX's strongest launches in years.
SPEAKER_00: And it was consistently ranked among the most watched shows week to week, and their views are very positive.
SPEAKER_00: It has the highest Rotten Tomatoes score since the first two films.
SPEAKER_00: Then again, I think Rotten Tomatoes though is sort of like an untrustworthy concept used by toxic MAGA incel misogyny nerds to sync movies that might have a woman or a black person in them, but I'll take the score is a good thing.
SPEAKER_00: And it wasn't perfect, the show wasn't perfect.
SPEAKER_00: The focus wasn't exactly on the xenomorphs like you would want, and they didn't answer a lot of questions like Wendy can do what now and how and why, but I'm sure I'm gonna get around to that in season two.
SPEAKER_00: Seriously, I want to see xenomorphs in Los Angeles eating influencers.
SPEAKER_00: I highly recommend Alien Earth, because it doesn't just rehash the old xenomorph scares, uh, but it expanded the universe with new monsters, new tech stuff, new corporate fuckery, and asked new questions about identity and morality and morality and technology and progress and what it means to be human.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for joining me for this Wicked Gay Pop Whatever.
SPEAKER_00: Stay tuned for a new traditional Wicked Gay episode here and a new one on Patreon.
SPEAKER_00: Hopefully, I'll get those damn videos out soon and what have you.
SPEAKER_00: Good night.
SPEAKER_00: Oh wait, remember in space, no one can hear your scream, especially if an alien eyeball has embedded itself in your melon and it's controlling you.
SPEAKER_00: Good night.
SPEAKER_00: You've been listening to a Wicked Gay Pop Whatever, where Jay Harvey, who is clearly in love with the sound of his own voice, spoils things.