October 4, 2025 • 35 mins
Send J. Harvey a text! (Try to be nice, but I get it, everyone's a little cranky sometimes...)
Are you an Alien fan? Do you love watching Sigourney Weaver waste oddly sexual space lizards with no eyes and too many mouths. If so, this episode is for you! I blow myself out of the airlock right into a review of the Alien series, with a deep dive into the newest chapter, Alien Earth. Which is incredible and you should go watch it now. After you listen to this episode. Warning: spoilers for everything Alien abound in this ep. Well, not for the Predator ones. Those are safe.
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Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_01 (00:00):
Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three,
two, one.
How's our girl?
She's ready.
You're gonna be the first personto transition from a human body
to a synthetic.
Because I'm special.
That's right.
(00:21):
You're very, very special.
We have a down spacecraft.
I want what's on that ship.
We can do it.
We're fast, we're strong, wedon't break.
It's like a zoo that the animalsgot out.
This ship collected fivedifferent life forms from the
(00:46):
darkest corners of the universe.
Monsters invasive species.
(01:07):
Predatory.
We don't lock them down.
It'll be too late.
SPEAKER_00 (01:12):
Okay, whoever cut that trailer is a mad genius,
the sound alone.
And when I hear that screamingalarm sound that indicates
alien, I get way too excited.
Hey kids.
So recently we got the hopefullyseason one not series finale of
Alien Earth, which is the bestthing to come out of the Alien
(01:33):
franchise since well, Aliens.
The second one.
That's out of seven.
Wait eight.
Oh wait, let me reverse for asecond.
For those just tuning into Lifeon Earth, Alien is a legendary
sci-fi horror franchise thatlaunched in 79 with Ridley
Scott's groundbreaking film.
Over seven main movies, itfollows humanity's chilly
(01:53):
encounters with the deadlyxenomorphs, creatures that
embody survival horror, action,and deep, deep questions about
creation.
The universe has since expandedinto novels, comics, video
games, and now a seriouslyimpressive TV series.
Just a heads up, if you're apurist, you might want to skip
the Predator crossovers.
And tonight, I'm gonna get intoAlien Earth and the Alien
(02:16):
franchise and why it's sofantastic.
And if you want to hear somebodybabbling and spoiling the TV
series for you, you've come tothe right place.
This is Wicked Gay Pop Whatevernumber six, Alien Earth.
(02:47):
Well, uh, most things alien,there was that alien
resurrection issue.
So, let me get a little into myhistory with Alien.
My introduction to the serieswas via Aliens, the second
movie, and that was through myUncle Leo, hopefully resting in
peace and free from idiots.
He wasn't what you call a peopleperson exactly.
Uncle Leo was the cool uncle.
He worked for customs, and hehad done two tours of duty in
(03:09):
Vietnam, and he was sarcastic,and he and my aunt Chris didn't
have any kids, so they had coolstuff like cable before anyone
else did.
It's funny because I saw a moviethat's very dear to me, Jaws, at
Accoleo's house for the firsttime.
Which makes sense because my dadis quint.
I'll get into that in some otherepisode.
So I treasured the times when Iwas a kid and got to sleepover
at Coleo's house.
He had a closet full ofcarefully curated VHS tapes.
(03:33):
Almost every movie you couldimagine, every cool movie you
could imagine.
Uh, for the youngins, beforestreaming and before even
Blu-rays, we used VCRs andwatched movies on tape.
They took up a lot of room.
You should have seen Betamax.
One sleepover, he popped in aVHS labeled Aliens and said, I
think you'll like this one.
I want to preface this bysaying, I really up until that
(03:53):
point hadn't seen any like coolmovies.
I was kinda sheltered as a kid.
Also, my mother, whenever therewas nudity on this TV, she would
actually bodily leap in front ofit, turning her body into an ex
so we didn't see a boob.
I love your mom.
Anyway, uh, this movie was thecoolest thing I had ever seen.
It blew my mind.
(04:14):
Um, it was exhilarating andfrightening.
The little gay boy in me wasthrilled to meet the statuesque
laser rifle toting Ellen Ripley,the first real female action
hero.
I mean, sure you could argueLinda Hamilton and Terminator,
but she mostly ran around.
Leia fired a blaster here andthere, but she wasn't exactly
saving the day.
Ripley was the blueprint.
No Buffy, no Tomb Raider, justRipley in her government-issue
(04:37):
cryo sleep panties, trying tosurvive.
And survive she does.
Alien was her run and don't diemovie, but in Aliens, Ellen
Ripley came into her own.
And she did it in a very drabjumpsuit and using an industrial
exoskeleton to beat the shit outof an alien queen while calling
her a bitch.
Furiosa could never.
And I became a diehard alienfan.
(04:59):
I mean, I'm not doingconventions or anything, and my
bathroom isn't done in the styleof HR Geiger.
Imagine what an HR Geiger toiletwould look like.
Gross.
But I love this series.
And they just keep coming.
The latest alien film wasRomulus, which came out in 2024.
And then word came there wasgoing to be a series, as in TV,
as in streaming, which meanthours of Alien.
(05:20):
But would it be good or versusPredator level?
Alien Earth is the TV series I'mtalking about this evening.
It's so good.
It made me so happy.
Now, every alien property, in myestimation, has something to
like.
I haven't seen them because I'man alien snob, but I'm sure even
those Predator crossovers havesome stupid fun in them.
They aren't considered canon,though.
(05:42):
Uh, you know you're a geek ifyou're concerned about canon.
But nothing has touched thefirst two alien movies until
this show.
And yep, I went there.
Alien Earth is on FX, and itscreator is Noah Hawley, a
novelist and TV creator slashshowrunner type.
Uh he's mostly famous for Fargo,which is the critically
acclaimed anthology TV seriesbased on the Cohen Brothers
movie Fargo.
(06:03):
He also did his version of aMarvel series called Legion, and
that's excellent as well,especially if you like your
X-Men on ayahuasca.
Alien Earth is set in the alienuniverse, but tells its own
story with fresh characters andsome bold ass plot ideas.
For starters, it finally showsus what life on Earth looks like
in the future, which thefranchise has never done.
(06:24):
And secondly, the acid-blooded,second-mouth snapping, sexual
organ-shaped xenomorphs actuallymake it to Earth, and hilarity
so far has ensued.
Normally they're stuckterrorizing humans on spaceships
and space stations or weirdprison planets.
Over watching their ancestors dobizarre things so Ridley Scott
(06:44):
can explain the meaning of life.
But now they're loose inThailand doing all kinds of
unexpected stuff.
Alien Earth absolutely slaps.
Especially episode 5 of this8-episode first season.
I'm saying it.
Episode 5 is the best alienentry since aliens.
Honestly, one of the top threealien flicks is now a TV
(07:06):
episode.
That should tell you everythingabout this show.
So tonight we're gonna talkAlien.
Uh, actually, I'm gonna talkAlien.
I'll give you a crash course andwhat came before Alien Earth,
then get into the series itself,recap that shit, and explain why
you should probably go watch itand then come back and listen to
me squawk about it, and see ifyou share my viewpoints and
opinions on this fine piece oftelevision art.
By the way, there are spoilersfor everything and anything
(07:28):
alien in this episode, so gocatch up on your xenomorphs
before you listen to this.
Now, I'm not gonna gomicroscopic here, so if you're
really wanting to know the thefull-on backstory history of the
film series, actually just thefirst movie, but that's enough,
you should watch a documentarycalled Memory: The Origins of
Alien.
It's directed by AlexandraO'Philippe, and it's really
(07:49):
good.
So go check it out, or stay hereand then do it after.
So originally I wrote shit ashit ton of copy about the Alien
franchise so I could get intoAlien Earth, but if I had gone
through with that, you would behere with me until Saint
Swather's Day, and even the mostdiehard Wicked Gay fan does not
want to hear my voice for thatlong.
(08:09):
Because there are seven filmsbefore the TV show debuted this
year.
Seven.
So I'm gonna quickly sum eachone of them up in order of
release, as only I can.
(08:53):
And that turns into somethingworse, which later bursts out of
his chest during dinner, andthen proceeds to grow real big,
real scary, and real violent.
Welcome to your first xenomorph.
There's also a uh treacherousandroid played by Ian Holm, and
oh, androids are called synthsin the alien universe, and
synths can be a little tricky.
Eventually Sigorni blows thexenomorph out of an airlock so
(09:14):
its corpse can show up 45 yearslater in Romulus.
You eagle-eyed alien fans caughtthat, right?
Then Ripley goes to sleep for 60years.
The sequel to Alien was Aliens,which came out in '86, directed
by one James Cameron, theegomaniacal genius Terminator
guy who would go on to give usTitanic and a fictional mineral
(09:34):
he seriously called Unobtanium.
You know, you really did.
Aliens takes place 60 yearslater, and poor Ripley's been in
cryo sleep.
So she's dragged back intoeverything because the planet
they had found the originalalien face hugger thingy on, has
been colonized in the meantime,but then all the colonists
(09:54):
disappeared, and it's like SpaceRoanoke.
And it turns out there's morethan one xenomorph over there,
hence aliens, and Ripley has tomount up, and it's thrilling and
scary, and the effects wereinsane for the time, and the
movie totally still holds up.
I think that movie will alwayshold up.
And and Bill Paxton plays alovable meathead, and the child
(10:15):
actor pronounces the wordmostly, oddly, mostly, the
mooseli come out at night.
What is that accent?
Was she Canadian?
Who knows?
Anyway, the movie's a classic,and frankly, I think it deserves
the place in American cinemathat Citizen Kane has.
God, I love that movie.
And then after Aliens, well,it's sort of a case of
diminishing returns.
They probably should havestopped after Aliens, but once
(10:38):
something makes money, you gottasqueeze every single nickel and
dime you can out of it untilthere is nothing left but a
smoking husk of regret and fanresentment.
Okay, so lightning fast.
Yeah, right.
Alien 3 or Alien Cubed, 1992.
Ripley crash lands on a prisonplanet in 2179, where she
battles a new xenomorph andfinds out she's carrying a queen
(10:58):
embryo inside her, andultimately kills herself to stop
the Whalen company from grabbingQueenie for nefarious capitalism
purposes.
Pop off, Queen.
By the way, Whalen Yutani is theevil corporation that employed
Ripley in the first two movies,and it's like the evil
corporation villain that wantsthe aliens for like Department
of War purposes or what haveyou.
(11:18):
And I like the slick DavidFincher visuals here and Ripley
shaving her dome because there'slice, and she spends the movie
wondering why the alien iseating everyone but her.
Has it become a late-stagefeminist?
No, the alien just doesn't wantto kill what's inside Mother.
Okay, uh, moving on.
Alien Resurrection, 1997.
Oh dear.
200 years after Ripley's death,military scientists clone her
(11:41):
and the queen embryo shecarried, unleashing hybrid
horrors aboard the latestspaceship setting.
This movie's a rough ride, andso far it's the last one in the
franchise's timeline, and it'skind of lacking as a send-off
for Ripley.
Because the big bad is Ripleyand an alien queen using IVF or
something to conceive a whitelittle person alien with a pot
(12:04):
belly and a human skull for aface, but with human eyes.
Romulus does this idea a lotbetter.
It's got a few things to like.
The Ripley slash alien hybridgets the best lines because Joss
Weed wrote the script, and akind, naive android is sort of
the role Winona Ryder was bornto play.
I think she actually is a kind,naive android.
Who shoplifts?
(12:24):
I'm just kidding.
No, she does shoplift.
That's fine.
I shoplifted before.
Stole a giant cardboard cutoutof the Kool-Aid man from Burger
King's foyer.
A story for another time.
Prometheus, 2012.
Here's where we get weird.
So Ridley Scott returned anddecided to answer some
long-standing questions aboutAlien.
Mainly the question seemed tobe, what the fuck?
(12:47):
It takes place in the year 2093.
A Wayland before Utani fundedcrew seeks humanity's origins,
but instead uncovers hostile,tall people called engineers,
very gross proto-xenomorphs, amutagenic bioweapon ooze, and
the android David's obsessionwith creation.
Bad robot getting worse.
(13:07):
Oh, and a giant space donutflattens Charlie's Thuron, who
is there to do very little butlook perturbed and fuck Idris
Elba.
Don't threaten me with a goodtime, that's what I want to do.
Alien Covenant, 2017.
So then, in 2104, the colonyship Covenant is on its way to
find a new planet to live onbecause Earth is a mess, but
(13:30):
diverts to a mysterious otherplanet, as usually happens, only
to find out that David the robothas wiped out the engineers and
bred the first true xenomorphs.
Yeah, so David is the one togrow the xenomorphs.
David is full-on Lex Luther inthis movie.
They kill an alien, but Davidends up with a starship chock
(13:50):
full of living humans to putfacehuggers on.
And not sure what became ofDavid and Company, but I do know
that Noah Hawley isn'tconsidering Prometheus or
Covenant to be canon now, soshrug.
Bye David.
And then last year we got AlienRomulus.
So somebody went and made apretty competent and fun nothing
of an alien movie set in thetime between alien and aliens,
(14:12):
giving us a colony of cutesyyoung space colonists scavenging
a derelict whalen Utani spacestation and accidentally
unleashing xenomorph terror andlots of face huggers.
And an alien human hybrid at theend that makes the one from
Alien Resurrection look like apregnant maggot.
This one's tall and eats itsmother, who is human.
Oh, and they do one of those oneof those digital things where
(14:35):
they AI dead Ian home, which isfucking tacky.
Don't do that.
And we're gonna slide AlienEarth right between Alien
Covenant and Alien on thetimeline.
That's right.
Alien Earth takes place twoyears before the original Alien.
(14:55):
And some backstory to thisworld, because this is really
the first time in the series wefind out what Earth is really
like when Ripley came on thescene.
It's 2120, and Earth andhumanity are governed not by
governments or nations in thetraditional sense, but by mega
corporations that have dividedthe world up into territories.
Alien Earth, there are five ofthese corporations.
(15:17):
The ones the show is concernedwith are the ever-present
Wayland Utani and another onecalled Prodigy, and that's run
by a truly loathsometechno-oligarch trillionaire
sociopath twerp, just reeking ofmusk, if you know what I mean.
And he's named, get this, BoyCavalier, and he's known as the
(15:38):
Boy Genius, and he's sort of themain villain here, and rightly
so.
And the actor who plays him isSamuel Blanken, and he does a
job, he does his job reallywell, because rarely do you
encounter a fictional charactermore punchable.
There are less punchable Nazisin real life than this guy.
Android synths are still a bigpart of things, or are a big
(15:59):
part of things, and the big namesynth in this show is played by
the beloved Timothy Oliphant.
He plays a bleach blonde synthnamed Kersh, who works for the
boy genius, but you're neverreally sure whose side he's on,
because he seems sort of boredwith everybody and just wants to
be droll and say subtlyinsulting things to people and
just do his experiments.
So we got synths, and now wehave cyborgs, who are enhanced
(16:21):
humans who have big knives intheir arms.
And the cyborg hair is namedMarrow, and he's Whalen Utani's
fixer, and he's kind of abadass, and the series
anti-hero.
So we have synths and nowcyborgs, and now the boy genius
and his team have made hybrids,which are synths implanted with
human consciousness.
So in theory, you get a new bodyand live forever.
(16:43):
Only six of these uh hybridsexist, and they're all hidden
away on the boy genius' islanduh called Neverland off the
coast of Thailand or something.
The twist?
These adult synth bodies areinhabited by the minds of
children.
Supposedly only young, adaptablebrains like the ones that kids
have could handle the transferor something.
(17:04):
The boy genius, his headscientist Arthur, who meets a
gruesome end, and Arthur's wifeDame, who's like a neuropsych
specialist, they pull it off.
They convince six terminally ill12-year-olds to make the leap
into bodies that are nearlyindestructible, super strong,
and fast.
And you know, this isn't just arecipe for disaster, it's the
(17:24):
fucking cookbook girl.
And our heroine is hybrid Wendy.
Wendy is the first hybridcreation, and she's thrust into
a very strange existence whereshe has the body of a grown
woman, but is still 12 years oldin her mind.
It's like it's like 13 going on30, but with aliens made out of
eyeballs ripping out eyeballs.
I'll get to it.
And she's called Wendy becausethe boy genius is obsessed with
(17:47):
Peter Pan, and he's given thehybrids the names of the lost
boys from Peter Pan, henceWendy.
And you should also know thatall these hybrids have families
that think they've died, andthey're unaware that their loved
ones are actually alive in theseshiny new sci-fi bodies.
This is important becauseWendy's brother is named Joe.
He's a medic with one ofProdigy's security soldier force
(18:09):
things.
Yes, these corporations havetheir own armies.
And he thinks Wendy's dead, andshe ain't.
And we learn that her new bodyhas given her the ability to
control technology, so becausethe world is totally surveilled,
she has the ability to followJoe throughout his life via
cams.
But before we get to Neverland,our story opens.
Oh, and the direction is sogood, and the credits are the
(18:30):
famous alien letters slowlyappearing, like in the movies,
and that shrieky music thatsounds like screams, and oh
gosh, I love Alien.
And these people are doing itright.
So we're on a spaceship, whichis very similar to the Nostromo
from the first movie, and thisscene, the first scene, is a
total homage to the dinner scenein Alien.
The decor and costumes areexacting.
Okay, so that cyborg Morrow,he's aboard and acting as like a
(18:53):
security officer, and the shipis carrying aliens back to
Earth, and not just thexenomorphs.
These people went out into thewilds of space and hit the
jackpot.
They're transporting a wholebunch of new and as we learn,
deadly as fuck species.
The most brilliant thing aboutAlien Earth is that Noah Holly
thought, hey, this is calledAlien, and it's supposed to be
(19:16):
sci-fi horror, and it hasn'treally been scary for a while,
so let's make it scary again.
This blessed genius, Holly, mademore aliens, and really
gruesome, terrifying ones torival the xenomorph.
This show had me cringing andlooking away from the screen as
each episode we learn what thesenew and terrifying aliens can do
(19:38):
and how they're gonna melt ormutilate or kill the cast.
God, I love this show.
And you've seen movies.
What do you think happens whenhumans try to take aggressive
and unknowable new species fromthe wild and stick them in cages
and they're not bright enough toimpose the maximum security on
these creepies?
Yeah.
So the spaceship gets rockedfrom within, and we don't see
(19:59):
until episode 5 what happensexactly on the ship, but it
crashes to Earth and it lands inProdigy City, owned by the Boy
Genius, and at 9-11s into askyscraper, and it's a big
disaster.
So now it's a whaling Utani shipand has crashed into a Prodigy
skyscraper in a Prodigy-ownedcity.
And as we learn, the Boy Geniushas been very aware of Lady
(20:22):
Yutani's uh let's find new spacepets and bring them to Earth
operation, and he wants them.
So he sends a platoon ofsoldiers in to secure the ship
and get any inhabitants out ofthe building who survived, but
mostly to make sure he getsthese new creepies because he's
insatiably curious withoutmorals or conscience, and likes
new toys that can make him evenmore money.
Wendy finds out that her bro Joeis among the soldiers sent in,
(20:46):
and without mentioning thatfact, she convinces the boy
genius to let her and the otherlost boys in to help, because
they can't be hurt and theydon't feel pain and can probably
accomplish more than thesoldiers.
The boy genius finds thisamusing, so he lets them go in
and Timothy Oliphant goes tobabysit them.
Yes, he's sending what arebasically six 12-year-olds into
a disaster area, teeming withincredibly dangerous alien
(21:09):
lifeforms to see what happens.
He's the worst.
Meanwhile, one of the crew ofthe ship has survived.
It's Moro the Cyborg, and hismission is to get his boss, Lady
Utani, your creepy cargo, andhe's a very dedicated employee.
And conflicts and story enginesare arising left and right.
So that's the setup.
The first three episodes areintroing all the characters and
(21:31):
getting most of them to thecrashed spaceship stuffed
directly into the side of askyscraper.
So the hybrid kids in Kersh,Maro in his sword arm, and the
soldiers, accompanied by Wendy'sbrother Joe, and all the escaped
creepy crawlies, all runheadlong into each other, and
chaos, delicious, wonderfulsci-fi horror chaos ensues.
(22:01):
And as we go along, we learnthat four species in particular
escape from captivity.
Our old friend the xenomorph, asspry and deadly and looking to
munch heads as possible, thisone large creature that looks
sort of like a closed Venusflytrap that hangs upside down
from the ceiling, and you're notquite sure what it does.
And we learn what this is allabout in the final episode, and
(22:23):
it's gruesome.
And in addition to the xenomorphand the Venus flytrap hanging
plant, we get these slugs thatlook innocuous but move really
fast.
And once they sucker onto you,they suck all of the blood out
of your body to the point thatthey blow up like blood balloons
and it's revolting.
And then, well, and then there'sthe eye.
(22:44):
The eye is pretty much thebreakout character of Alien
Earth.
It's got tentacles for legs, andits shtick is to skitter really
fast at you, then climb intoyour eye socket, scoop out the
eyeball that's already in there,and take that eye's place.
And this happens in the mostgrotesque CGI operation
(23:04):
possible.
And then the eye controlswhatever form it resides in.
It spends most of the series ina sheep, glaring at people and
trying to soak chaos and deathwhenever it can.
It's great.
So Joe and his squad pick theirway through the busted ship,
finding lots of bodies and lotsof evidence that something
horrific is going on.
He gets separated from theothers and he's chased all over
(23:26):
the place by a xenomorph.
So Wendy goes to rescue him andshe has this badass fight with
the xenomorph where she ends upputting one of those like long
hooks you like, I don't know,uh, catch fish with or move meat
through a factory with, and sheputs this hook through the
alien's second retractablemouth, and she drags it around
to beat it up.
And why didn't Ripley think ofthat?
(23:47):
That will teach it to snap atpeople.
And Wendy kills it, but she'sseriously injures herself, and
Joe's injured too, and everyonebut Mara is taken back to
Neverland to recuperate, and sothe boy genius can have his own
new alien toys.
And we learn that he hasferocious ADD, and even though
he's just solved for deaths withthe hybrids, he's now way more
into the xenomorphs becausethey're way cooler because
(24:07):
they're terrifyingly dangerous.
So Wendy eventually getsrepaired, and we learn that she
can not only sense xenomorphswhen they're near, but she can
talk to them.
That's right.
This woman can do little withxenomorphs.
She speaks alien, and this couldbe a super stupid plot addition
to the alien franchise, but it'smore like exhilarating because
(24:30):
she ends up being able tocontrol the xenomorphs like
attack dogs, and it's verysatisfying because can you think
of a better way to deal with abully than a xenomorph?
Also, Joe was hurt, so he gets anew lung, and Timothy Oliphant
takes the old lung and grows axenomorph with it.
And this is the xenomorph thatWendy bonds with.
So now there is a whole lab justfilled with deadly alien
(24:54):
lifeforms just waiting to breakout of stir and kill everybody
just like they did on the ship.
And in the meantime, the lostboys are sort of realizing
Neverland and the Boy Geniusaren't the nicest place or
people, and then also Moro theCyborg is able to blackmail one
of the lost boys, known asSlightly, into helping him sneak
a Xenomorph facehugger off theisland to give back to Lady
(25:16):
Utani, who is Arch Enemies withBoy Genius.
That operation doesn't reallywork out.
And then episode 5.
Episode 5 is called In Space NoOne Can, and that's a reference
to the very famous tagline ofthe first movie, In Space, No
One Can Hear Your Scream.
And this is where we find outwhat happened on the spaceship,
and it's a remake of the firstmovie, really, but with more
(25:38):
chills and spills.
It's so good that I turned to myhusband 75% of the way through
it and said, This should havebeen the only other alien they
ever made.
You could probably watch italone and enjoy it.
So all the creatures are tryingto escape captivity, and most of
them do.
Not only is the eye runningaround, but those blood balloon
bugs, they're like ticks.
(25:58):
And there's this whole sequencewhere they spawn little ticks in
the doctor's water bottle, andshe's going around with the
water bottle and you're cringinglike bitch, don't drink that
water.
But then someone else drinks itand he dies, and when they do an
autopsy on that guy, you findout that ticks gestate by
attaching themselves on organs,and if you try to get them
offset organs, they spray apoison gas that will kill
(26:21):
everybody in the room.
And a face hugger gets out andkills everybody else, except for
the Scottish engineer who getskilled by the eye, and there's
this bad shit crazy fight scenebetween the eye-possessing the
daddy bear engineer and thexenomorph, where they literally
like they brawl, and theeye-possessing daddy bear
engineer jumps on thexenomorph's back and bites it.
(26:45):
And it was it was ridiculous, itwas audacious and silly and
actually kind of smart.
And girl, I jumped off thecouch, I was cheering and
laughing so hard.
This episode of TV made me feellike I was watching aliens again
for the first time.
Noah Holly uh needs some Emmys.
Anyway, Mara the cyborg is theonly survivor after letting the
captain get eaten because hisonly desire in life is to get
(27:08):
the aliens back to Lady Utani,who was like his foster sister
or something.
Oh, and we find out that the boygenius was behind the ship
crashing all along, and heengineered the whole thing
because he's an evil boy genius.
Admittedly, okay, so the nextthree ups, the last three ups,
are fantastic, but it is whenyou realize it may be called
Alien Earth, but the aliens arestaying on the island for now,
(27:31):
so it's a little disappointing.
Not seeing them take over NYC orsomething.
And here's hoping for seasontwo.
So back on the island, thehybrids all have their own story
arcs, some more interesting thanothers.
(27:51):
One of them is TimothyOliphant's little protege, and
he dies when one of the specieswe hadn't encountered yet ends
up being these flies that onlyeat metal and basically vomit on
this hybrid kid's face to melthim and eat him.
And oh, and by the way, the eyeand the sheep facilitated this
death through Nefaria'sheadbutting means.
(28:12):
So the hybrids aren't asimmortal as we thought.
Oh, and we eventually find outwhat the last species capture
can do.
Remember the Venus, the quietVenus flytrab thing hanging from
the spaceship ceiling?
Yeah, you probably guessed thatit actually is a Venus flytrap
thingy because uh it can scuttlearound walls and ceilings first
before it hangs there quietly tosnatch and liquefy hapless
soldiers.
(28:32):
Gross.
Wendy and Joe have becomedisillusioned with Neverland, so
they're trying to get off theisland, and hippie scientist
Arthur tries to help them afterthe boy genius fires him for
having a conscience.
That's until Moro blackmailspour Slightly into tricking
Arthur into receiving a facehugger so Moro can smuggle it
off the island.
And it sorta ends in hilaritywhen Slightly and his friend
(28:55):
hide a face hugged Arthur underSlightly's bed like any
12-year-old boy would do, so hewouldn't get in trouble.
By the way, the actors playingthe hybrids are really good at
playing 12-year-olds in adultbodies.
So Slightly and his friend Smeemake it to the beach with
Arthur, but not before the chestbursts, and now there's a small
xenomorph running around toaccompany the big ass one that's
killing everybody.
(29:15):
Yes, the one that's Wendy's newbest friend escaped.
Moro meets up with Slightly andSmee, and everybody gets
captured by Prodigy soldiers totake back to the Boy Genius.
In the meantime, Wendy and Joemake it to a dock after a scary
encounter with both the Eye,which abandons the sheep and
tries to get in Joe's head, andBoy Genius' right-hand synth
named Adam, who we find out wascreated by the Boy Genius at age
(29:38):
six to murder his abusivefather.
We learn also that Wendy can notonly control xenomorphs, but she
can also control other synths.
She's gotten a massive powerupgrade as the show goes on.
Oh, and Joe and Wendy are withthis redhead hybrid named Nibs,
who is she's batshit crazy,right?
And she's been mind wiped byArthur's wife Dame, which Makes
(30:00):
her even more batch it crazy,and she quickly becomes my
favorite character on the showbesides the eye, as she begins
killing soldiers with glee.
It's funny seeing a young gingerwoman who was a psychotic
12-year-old in her head justmassacring prodigy soldiers left
and right with true delight inher face.
Loved her.
Everybody gets recaptured, andit's kind of stupid because
(30:20):
Wendy has technological controlof the entire island, and she's
realized something veryimportant about herself and the
other hybrids.
A, Boy Genius sees them asamusing property, and B, they
are way more powerful than himand his soldiers and his
company.
And C, she's even more powerfulbecause she controls the
island's entire network and twoxenomorphs.
(30:42):
And in an intensely satisfyingscene in the last episode,
because he's so irritating andhe refuses to wear shoes and his
feet are dirty, Wendy forces BoyGenius to play a homicidal game
of hide-and-seek with thembecause she now knows that she's
that bitch and has little to notime for his antics.
Also, Joe ends up kicking him inthe face, and that's fun.
(31:03):
Oh, and Moro and TimothyOliphant have a brutal cyborg
synth fist fight, which is kindof a draw as they're both
seriously injured.
And we end with all of the quoteadults captured by all of the
quote kids.
The boy genius, Dame, theneuroscientist's mother figure,
whose husband Arthur'schestburst corpse, by the way,
has been taken over by the eye,which is funny.
(31:24):
Uh, you have cyborg Morrow,Timothy Oliphant, and the
revolting boy genius, who is nowbloody and tied up, and Wendy
dog walks his ass by telling himexactly what he is.
A hateful little man, not PeterPan.
And he clearly doesn't likethat, so triumph.
But he does like when thehybrids ask Wendy what they're
going to do now, and she merelylooks up at the two pet
(31:46):
xenomorphs she has guarding theprisoners, and she says, They're
going to rule.
End season one.
It's a cliffhanger.
Actually, several, because thatuh that main stuff going on, and
then the funny one with theeye-possessing author out on the
beach, and then Lady Utani'sWhalen Utani troops are flying
uh to take over the island.
They're on the way, they'realmost there, so she can get her
(32:07):
property back.
And there's way more to theshow, but I've already gone over
a half hour, so it's like, shutthe fuck up, Jay.
Just go watch the show.
Season two hasn't been announcedyet, but it's kind of a definite
seeing as it pulled in 9.2million global views on Hulu and
Disney Plus in the first sixdays, which makes it one of FX's
strongest launches in years.
And it was consistently rankedamong the most watched shows
(32:29):
week to week, and their viewsare very positive.
It has the highest RottenTomatoes score since the first
two films.
Then again, I think RottenTomatoes though is sort of like
an untrustworthy concept used bytoxic MAGA incel misogyny nerds
to sync movies that might have awoman or a black person in them,
but I'll take the score is agood thing.
And it wasn't perfect, the showwasn't perfect.
(32:51):
The focus wasn't exactly on thexenomorphs like you would want,
and they didn't answer a lot ofquestions like Wendy can do what
now and how and why, but I'msure I'm gonna get around to
that in season two.
Seriously, I want to seexenomorphs in Los Angeles eating
influencers.
I highly recommend Alien Earth,because it doesn't just rehash
the old xenomorph scares, uh,but it expanded the universe
(33:12):
with new monsters, new techstuff, new corporate fuckery,
and asked new questions aboutidentity and morality and
morality and technology andprogress and what it means to be
human.
Thank you for joining me forthis Wicked Gay Pop Whatever.
(33:34):
Stay tuned for a new traditionalWicked Gay episode here and a
new one on Patreon.
Hopefully, I'll get those damnvideos out soon and what have
you.
Good night.
Oh wait, remember in space, noone can hear your scream,
especially if an alien eyeballhas embedded itself in your
melon and it's controlling you.
Good night.
You've been listening to aWicked Gay Pop Whatever, where
(33:56):
Jay Harvey, who is clearly inlove with the sound of his own
voice, spoils things.
Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three,
two, one.
How's our girl?
She's ready.
You're gonna be the first personto transition from a human body
to a synthetic.
Because I'm special.
That's right.
(00:21):
You're very, very special.
We have a down spacecraft.
I want what's on that ship.
We can do it.
We're fast, we're strong, wedon't break.
It's like a zoo that the animalsgot out.
This ship collected fivedifferent life forms from the
(00:46):
darkest corners of the universe.
Monsters invasive species.
(01:07):
Predatory.
We don't lock them down.
It'll be too late.
SPEAKER_00 (01:12):
Okay, whoever cut that trailer is a mad genius,
the sound alone.
And when I hear that screamingalarm sound that indicates
alien, I get way too excited.
Hey kids.
So recently we got the hopefullyseason one not series finale of
Alien Earth, which is the bestthing to come out of the Alien
(01:33):
franchise since well, Aliens.
The second one.
That's out of seven.
Wait eight.
Oh wait, let me reverse for asecond.
For those just tuning into Lifeon Earth, Alien is a legendary
sci-fi horror franchise thatlaunched in 79 with Ridley
Scott's groundbreaking film.
Over seven main movies, itfollows humanity's chilly
(01:53):
encounters with the deadlyxenomorphs, creatures that
embody survival horror, action,and deep, deep questions about
creation.
The universe has since expandedinto novels, comics, video
games, and now a seriouslyimpressive TV series.
Just a heads up, if you're apurist, you might want to skip
the Predator crossovers.
And tonight, I'm gonna get intoAlien Earth and the Alien
(02:16):
franchise and why it's sofantastic.
And if you want to hear somebodybabbling and spoiling the TV
series for you, you've come tothe right place.
This is Wicked Gay Pop Whatevernumber six, Alien Earth.
(02:47):
Well, uh, most things alien,there was that alien
resurrection issue.
So, let me get a little into myhistory with Alien.
My introduction to the serieswas via Aliens, the second
movie, and that was through myUncle Leo, hopefully resting in
peace and free from idiots.
He wasn't what you call a peopleperson exactly.
Uncle Leo was the cool uncle.
He worked for customs, and hehad done two tours of duty in
(03:09):
Vietnam, and he was sarcastic,and he and my aunt Chris didn't
have any kids, so they had coolstuff like cable before anyone
else did.
It's funny because I saw a moviethat's very dear to me, Jaws, at
Accoleo's house for the firsttime.
Which makes sense because my dadis quint.
I'll get into that in some otherepisode.
So I treasured the times when Iwas a kid and got to sleepover
at Coleo's house.
He had a closet full ofcarefully curated VHS tapes.
(03:33):
Almost every movie you couldimagine, every cool movie you
could imagine.
Uh, for the youngins, beforestreaming and before even
Blu-rays, we used VCRs andwatched movies on tape.
They took up a lot of room.
You should have seen Betamax.
One sleepover, he popped in aVHS labeled Aliens and said, I
think you'll like this one.
I want to preface this bysaying, I really up until that
(03:53):
point hadn't seen any like coolmovies.
I was kinda sheltered as a kid.
Also, my mother, whenever therewas nudity on this TV, she would
actually bodily leap in front ofit, turning her body into an ex
so we didn't see a boob.
I love your mom.
Anyway, uh, this movie was thecoolest thing I had ever seen.
It blew my mind.
(04:14):
Um, it was exhilarating andfrightening.
The little gay boy in me wasthrilled to meet the statuesque
laser rifle toting Ellen Ripley,the first real female action
hero.
I mean, sure you could argueLinda Hamilton and Terminator,
but she mostly ran around.
Leia fired a blaster here andthere, but she wasn't exactly
saving the day.
Ripley was the blueprint.
No Buffy, no Tomb Raider, justRipley in her government-issue
(04:37):
cryo sleep panties, trying tosurvive.
And survive she does.
Alien was her run and don't diemovie, but in Aliens, Ellen
Ripley came into her own.
And she did it in a very drabjumpsuit and using an industrial
exoskeleton to beat the shit outof an alien queen while calling
her a bitch.
Furiosa could never.
And I became a diehard alienfan.
(04:59):
I mean, I'm not doingconventions or anything, and my
bathroom isn't done in the styleof HR Geiger.
Imagine what an HR Geiger toiletwould look like.
Gross.
But I love this series.
And they just keep coming.
The latest alien film wasRomulus, which came out in 2024.
And then word came there wasgoing to be a series, as in TV,
as in streaming, which meanthours of Alien.
(05:20):
But would it be good or versusPredator level?
Alien Earth is the TV series I'mtalking about this evening.
It's so good.
It made me so happy.
Now, every alien property, in myestimation, has something to
like.
I haven't seen them because I'man alien snob, but I'm sure even
those Predator crossovers havesome stupid fun in them.
They aren't considered canon,though.
(05:42):
Uh, you know you're a geek ifyou're concerned about canon.
But nothing has touched thefirst two alien movies until
this show.
And yep, I went there.
Alien Earth is on FX, and itscreator is Noah Hawley, a
novelist and TV creator slashshowrunner type.
Uh he's mostly famous for Fargo,which is the critically
acclaimed anthology TV seriesbased on the Cohen Brothers
movie Fargo.
(06:03):
He also did his version of aMarvel series called Legion, and
that's excellent as well,especially if you like your
X-Men on ayahuasca.
Alien Earth is set in the alienuniverse, but tells its own
story with fresh characters andsome bold ass plot ideas.
For starters, it finally showsus what life on Earth looks like
in the future, which thefranchise has never done.
(06:24):
And secondly, the acid-blooded,second-mouth snapping, sexual
organ-shaped xenomorphs actuallymake it to Earth, and hilarity
so far has ensued.
Normally they're stuckterrorizing humans on spaceships
and space stations or weirdprison planets.
Over watching their ancestors dobizarre things so Ridley Scott
(06:44):
can explain the meaning of life.
But now they're loose inThailand doing all kinds of
unexpected stuff.
Alien Earth absolutely slaps.
Especially episode 5 of this8-episode first season.
I'm saying it.
Episode 5 is the best alienentry since aliens.
Honestly, one of the top threealien flicks is now a TV
(07:06):
episode.
That should tell you everythingabout this show.
So tonight we're gonna talkAlien.
Uh, actually, I'm gonna talkAlien.
I'll give you a crash course andwhat came before Alien Earth,
then get into the series itself,recap that shit, and explain why
you should probably go watch itand then come back and listen to
me squawk about it, and see ifyou share my viewpoints and
opinions on this fine piece oftelevision art.
By the way, there are spoilersfor everything and anything
(07:28):
alien in this episode, so gocatch up on your xenomorphs
before you listen to this.
Now, I'm not gonna gomicroscopic here, so if you're
really wanting to know the thefull-on backstory history of the
film series, actually just thefirst movie, but that's enough,
you should watch a documentarycalled Memory: The Origins of
Alien.
It's directed by AlexandraO'Philippe, and it's really
(07:49):
good.
So go check it out, or stay hereand then do it after.
So originally I wrote shit ashit ton of copy about the Alien
franchise so I could get intoAlien Earth, but if I had gone
through with that, you would behere with me until Saint
Swather's Day, and even the mostdiehard Wicked Gay fan does not
want to hear my voice for thatlong.
(08:09):
Because there are seven filmsbefore the TV show debuted this
year.
Seven.
So I'm gonna quickly sum eachone of them up in order of
release, as only I can.
(08:53):
And that turns into somethingworse, which later bursts out of
his chest during dinner, andthen proceeds to grow real big,
real scary, and real violent.
Welcome to your first xenomorph.
There's also a uh treacherousandroid played by Ian Holm, and
oh, androids are called synthsin the alien universe, and
synths can be a little tricky.
Eventually Sigorni blows thexenomorph out of an airlock so
(09:14):
its corpse can show up 45 yearslater in Romulus.
You eagle-eyed alien fans caughtthat, right?
Then Ripley goes to sleep for 60years.
The sequel to Alien was Aliens,which came out in '86, directed
by one James Cameron, theegomaniacal genius Terminator
guy who would go on to give usTitanic and a fictional mineral
(09:34):
he seriously called Unobtanium.
You know, you really did.
Aliens takes place 60 yearslater, and poor Ripley's been in
cryo sleep.
So she's dragged back intoeverything because the planet
they had found the originalalien face hugger thingy on, has
been colonized in the meantime,but then all the colonists
(09:54):
disappeared, and it's like SpaceRoanoke.
And it turns out there's morethan one xenomorph over there,
hence aliens, and Ripley has tomount up, and it's thrilling and
scary, and the effects wereinsane for the time, and the
movie totally still holds up.
I think that movie will alwayshold up.
And and Bill Paxton plays alovable meathead, and the child
(10:15):
actor pronounces the wordmostly, oddly, mostly, the
mooseli come out at night.
What is that accent?
Was she Canadian?
Who knows?
Anyway, the movie's a classic,and frankly, I think it deserves
the place in American cinemathat Citizen Kane has.
God, I love that movie.
And then after Aliens, well,it's sort of a case of
diminishing returns.
They probably should havestopped after Aliens, but once
(10:38):
something makes money, you gottasqueeze every single nickel and
dime you can out of it untilthere is nothing left but a
smoking husk of regret and fanresentment.
Okay, so lightning fast.
Yeah, right.
Alien 3 or Alien Cubed, 1992.
Ripley crash lands on a prisonplanet in 2179, where she
battles a new xenomorph andfinds out she's carrying a queen
(10:58):
embryo inside her, andultimately kills herself to stop
the Whalen company from grabbingQueenie for nefarious capitalism
purposes.
Pop off, Queen.
By the way, Whalen Yutani is theevil corporation that employed
Ripley in the first two movies,and it's like the evil
corporation villain that wantsthe aliens for like Department
of War purposes or what haveyou.
(11:18):
And I like the slick DavidFincher visuals here and Ripley
shaving her dome because there'slice, and she spends the movie
wondering why the alien iseating everyone but her.
Has it become a late-stagefeminist?
No, the alien just doesn't wantto kill what's inside Mother.
Okay, uh, moving on.
Alien Resurrection, 1997.
Oh dear.
200 years after Ripley's death,military scientists clone her
(11:41):
and the queen embryo shecarried, unleashing hybrid
horrors aboard the latestspaceship setting.
This movie's a rough ride, andso far it's the last one in the
franchise's timeline, and it'skind of lacking as a send-off
for Ripley.
Because the big bad is Ripleyand an alien queen using IVF or
something to conceive a whitelittle person alien with a pot
(12:04):
belly and a human skull for aface, but with human eyes.
Romulus does this idea a lotbetter.
It's got a few things to like.
The Ripley slash alien hybridgets the best lines because Joss
Weed wrote the script, and akind, naive android is sort of
the role Winona Ryder was bornto play.
I think she actually is a kind,naive android.
Who shoplifts?
(12:24):
I'm just kidding.
No, she does shoplift.
That's fine.
I shoplifted before.
Stole a giant cardboard cutoutof the Kool-Aid man from Burger
King's foyer.
A story for another time.
Prometheus, 2012.
Here's where we get weird.
So Ridley Scott returned anddecided to answer some
long-standing questions aboutAlien.
Mainly the question seemed tobe, what the fuck?
(12:47):
It takes place in the year 2093.
A Wayland before Utani fundedcrew seeks humanity's origins,
but instead uncovers hostile,tall people called engineers,
very gross proto-xenomorphs, amutagenic bioweapon ooze, and
the android David's obsessionwith creation.
Bad robot getting worse.
(13:07):
Oh, and a giant space donutflattens Charlie's Thuron, who
is there to do very little butlook perturbed and fuck Idris
Elba.
Don't threaten me with a goodtime, that's what I want to do.
Alien Covenant, 2017.
So then, in 2104, the colonyship Covenant is on its way to
find a new planet to live onbecause Earth is a mess, but
(13:30):
diverts to a mysterious otherplanet, as usually happens, only
to find out that David the robothas wiped out the engineers and
bred the first true xenomorphs.
Yeah, so David is the one togrow the xenomorphs.
David is full-on Lex Luther inthis movie.
They kill an alien, but Davidends up with a starship chock
(13:50):
full of living humans to putfacehuggers on.
And not sure what became ofDavid and Company, but I do know
that Noah Hawley isn'tconsidering Prometheus or
Covenant to be canon now, soshrug.
Bye David.
And then last year we got AlienRomulus.
So somebody went and made apretty competent and fun nothing
of an alien movie set in thetime between alien and aliens,
(14:12):
giving us a colony of cutesyyoung space colonists scavenging
a derelict whalen Utani spacestation and accidentally
unleashing xenomorph terror andlots of face huggers.
And an alien human hybrid at theend that makes the one from
Alien Resurrection look like apregnant maggot.
This one's tall and eats itsmother, who is human.
Oh, and they do one of those oneof those digital things where
(14:35):
they AI dead Ian home, which isfucking tacky.
Don't do that.
And we're gonna slide AlienEarth right between Alien
Covenant and Alien on thetimeline.
That's right.
Alien Earth takes place twoyears before the original Alien.
(14:55):
And some backstory to thisworld, because this is really
the first time in the series wefind out what Earth is really
like when Ripley came on thescene.
It's 2120, and Earth andhumanity are governed not by
governments or nations in thetraditional sense, but by mega
corporations that have dividedthe world up into territories.
Alien Earth, there are five ofthese corporations.
(15:17):
The ones the show is concernedwith are the ever-present
Wayland Utani and another onecalled Prodigy, and that's run
by a truly loathsometechno-oligarch trillionaire
sociopath twerp, just reeking ofmusk, if you know what I mean.
And he's named, get this, BoyCavalier, and he's known as the
(15:38):
Boy Genius, and he's sort of themain villain here, and rightly
so.
And the actor who plays him isSamuel Blanken, and he does a
job, he does his job reallywell, because rarely do you
encounter a fictional charactermore punchable.
There are less punchable Nazisin real life than this guy.
Android synths are still a bigpart of things, or are a big
(15:59):
part of things, and the big namesynth in this show is played by
the beloved Timothy Oliphant.
He plays a bleach blonde synthnamed Kersh, who works for the
boy genius, but you're neverreally sure whose side he's on,
because he seems sort of boredwith everybody and just wants to
be droll and say subtlyinsulting things to people and
just do his experiments.
So we got synths, and now wehave cyborgs, who are enhanced
(16:21):
humans who have big knives intheir arms.
And the cyborg hair is namedMarrow, and he's Whalen Utani's
fixer, and he's kind of abadass, and the series
anti-hero.
So we have synths and nowcyborgs, and now the boy genius
and his team have made hybrids,which are synths implanted with
human consciousness.
So in theory, you get a new bodyand live forever.
(16:43):
Only six of these uh hybridsexist, and they're all hidden
away on the boy genius' islanduh called Neverland off the
coast of Thailand or something.
The twist?
These adult synth bodies areinhabited by the minds of
children.
Supposedly only young, adaptablebrains like the ones that kids
have could handle the transferor something.
(17:04):
The boy genius, his headscientist Arthur, who meets a
gruesome end, and Arthur's wifeDame, who's like a neuropsych
specialist, they pull it off.
They convince six terminally ill12-year-olds to make the leap
into bodies that are nearlyindestructible, super strong,
and fast.
And you know, this isn't just arecipe for disaster, it's the
(17:24):
fucking cookbook girl.
And our heroine is hybrid Wendy.
Wendy is the first hybridcreation, and she's thrust into
a very strange existence whereshe has the body of a grown
woman, but is still 12 years oldin her mind.
It's like it's like 13 going on30, but with aliens made out of
eyeballs ripping out eyeballs.
I'll get to it.
And she's called Wendy becausethe boy genius is obsessed with
(17:47):
Peter Pan, and he's given thehybrids the names of the lost
boys from Peter Pan, henceWendy.
And you should also know thatall these hybrids have families
that think they've died, andthey're unaware that their loved
ones are actually alive in theseshiny new sci-fi bodies.
This is important becauseWendy's brother is named Joe.
He's a medic with one ofProdigy's security soldier force
(18:09):
things.
Yes, these corporations havetheir own armies.
And he thinks Wendy's dead, andshe ain't.
And we learn that her new bodyhas given her the ability to
control technology, so becausethe world is totally surveilled,
she has the ability to followJoe throughout his life via
cams.
But before we get to Neverland,our story opens.
Oh, and the direction is sogood, and the credits are the
(18:30):
famous alien letters slowlyappearing, like in the movies,
and that shrieky music thatsounds like screams, and oh
gosh, I love Alien.
And these people are doing itright.
So we're on a spaceship, whichis very similar to the Nostromo
from the first movie, and thisscene, the first scene, is a
total homage to the dinner scenein Alien.
The decor and costumes areexacting.
Okay, so that cyborg Morrow,he's aboard and acting as like a
(18:53):
security officer, and the shipis carrying aliens back to
Earth, and not just thexenomorphs.
These people went out into thewilds of space and hit the
jackpot.
They're transporting a wholebunch of new and as we learn,
deadly as fuck species.
The most brilliant thing aboutAlien Earth is that Noah Holly
thought, hey, this is calledAlien, and it's supposed to be
(19:16):
sci-fi horror, and it hasn'treally been scary for a while,
so let's make it scary again.
This blessed genius, Holly, mademore aliens, and really
gruesome, terrifying ones torival the xenomorph.
This show had me cringing andlooking away from the screen as
each episode we learn what thesenew and terrifying aliens can do
(19:38):
and how they're gonna melt ormutilate or kill the cast.
God, I love this show.
And you've seen movies.
What do you think happens whenhumans try to take aggressive
and unknowable new species fromthe wild and stick them in cages
and they're not bright enough toimpose the maximum security on
these creepies?
Yeah.
So the spaceship gets rockedfrom within, and we don't see
(19:59):
until episode 5 what happensexactly on the ship, but it
crashes to Earth and it lands inProdigy City, owned by the Boy
Genius, and at 9-11s into askyscraper, and it's a big
disaster.
So now it's a whaling Utani shipand has crashed into a Prodigy
skyscraper in a Prodigy-ownedcity.
And as we learn, the Boy Geniushas been very aware of Lady
(20:22):
Yutani's uh let's find new spacepets and bring them to Earth
operation, and he wants them.
So he sends a platoon ofsoldiers in to secure the ship
and get any inhabitants out ofthe building who survived, but
mostly to make sure he getsthese new creepies because he's
insatiably curious withoutmorals or conscience, and likes
new toys that can make him evenmore money.
Wendy finds out that her bro Joeis among the soldiers sent in,
(20:46):
and without mentioning thatfact, she convinces the boy
genius to let her and the otherlost boys in to help, because
they can't be hurt and theydon't feel pain and can probably
accomplish more than thesoldiers.
The boy genius finds thisamusing, so he lets them go in
and Timothy Oliphant goes tobabysit them.
Yes, he's sending what arebasically six 12-year-olds into
a disaster area, teeming withincredibly dangerous alien
(21:09):
lifeforms to see what happens.
He's the worst.
Meanwhile, one of the crew ofthe ship has survived.
It's Moro the Cyborg, and hismission is to get his boss, Lady
Utani, your creepy cargo, andhe's a very dedicated employee.
And conflicts and story enginesare arising left and right.
So that's the setup.
The first three episodes areintroing all the characters and
(21:31):
getting most of them to thecrashed spaceship stuffed
directly into the side of askyscraper.
So the hybrid kids in Kersh,Maro in his sword arm, and the
soldiers, accompanied by Wendy'sbrother Joe, and all the escaped
creepy crawlies, all runheadlong into each other, and
chaos, delicious, wonderfulsci-fi horror chaos ensues.
(22:01):
And as we go along, we learnthat four species in particular
escape from captivity.
Our old friend the xenomorph, asspry and deadly and looking to
munch heads as possible, thisone large creature that looks
sort of like a closed Venusflytrap that hangs upside down
from the ceiling, and you're notquite sure what it does.
And we learn what this is allabout in the final episode, and
(22:23):
it's gruesome.
And in addition to the xenomorphand the Venus flytrap hanging
plant, we get these slugs thatlook innocuous but move really
fast.
And once they sucker onto you,they suck all of the blood out
of your body to the point thatthey blow up like blood balloons
and it's revolting.
And then, well, and then there'sthe eye.
(22:44):
The eye is pretty much thebreakout character of Alien
Earth.
It's got tentacles for legs, andits shtick is to skitter really
fast at you, then climb intoyour eye socket, scoop out the
eyeball that's already in there,and take that eye's place.
And this happens in the mostgrotesque CGI operation
(23:04):
possible.
And then the eye controlswhatever form it resides in.
It spends most of the series ina sheep, glaring at people and
trying to soak chaos and deathwhenever it can.
It's great.
So Joe and his squad pick theirway through the busted ship,
finding lots of bodies and lotsof evidence that something
horrific is going on.
He gets separated from theothers and he's chased all over
(23:26):
the place by a xenomorph.
So Wendy goes to rescue him andshe has this badass fight with
the xenomorph where she ends upputting one of those like long
hooks you like, I don't know,uh, catch fish with or move meat
through a factory with, and sheputs this hook through the
alien's second retractablemouth, and she drags it around
to beat it up.
And why didn't Ripley think ofthat?
(23:47):
That will teach it to snap atpeople.
And Wendy kills it, but she'sseriously injures herself, and
Joe's injured too, and everyonebut Mara is taken back to
Neverland to recuperate, and sothe boy genius can have his own
new alien toys.
And we learn that he hasferocious ADD, and even though
he's just solved for deaths withthe hybrids, he's now way more
into the xenomorphs becausethey're way cooler because
(24:07):
they're terrifyingly dangerous.
So Wendy eventually getsrepaired, and we learn that she
can not only sense xenomorphswhen they're near, but she can
talk to them.
That's right.
This woman can do little withxenomorphs.
She speaks alien, and this couldbe a super stupid plot addition
to the alien franchise, but it'smore like exhilarating because
(24:30):
she ends up being able tocontrol the xenomorphs like
attack dogs, and it's verysatisfying because can you think
of a better way to deal with abully than a xenomorph?
Also, Joe was hurt, so he gets anew lung, and Timothy Oliphant
takes the old lung and grows axenomorph with it.
And this is the xenomorph thatWendy bonds with.
So now there is a whole lab justfilled with deadly alien
(24:54):
lifeforms just waiting to breakout of stir and kill everybody
just like they did on the ship.
And in the meantime, the lostboys are sort of realizing
Neverland and the Boy Geniusaren't the nicest place or
people, and then also Moro theCyborg is able to blackmail one
of the lost boys, known asSlightly, into helping him sneak
a Xenomorph facehugger off theisland to give back to Lady
(25:16):
Utani, who is Arch Enemies withBoy Genius.
That operation doesn't reallywork out.
And then episode 5.
Episode 5 is called In Space NoOne Can, and that's a reference
to the very famous tagline ofthe first movie, In Space, No
One Can Hear Your Scream.
And this is where we find outwhat happened on the spaceship,
and it's a remake of the firstmovie, really, but with more
(25:38):
chills and spills.
It's so good that I turned to myhusband 75% of the way through
it and said, This should havebeen the only other alien they
ever made.
You could probably watch italone and enjoy it.
So all the creatures are tryingto escape captivity, and most of
them do.
Not only is the eye runningaround, but those blood balloon
bugs, they're like ticks.
(25:58):
And there's this whole sequencewhere they spawn little ticks in
the doctor's water bottle, andshe's going around with the
water bottle and you're cringinglike bitch, don't drink that
water.
But then someone else drinks itand he dies, and when they do an
autopsy on that guy, you findout that ticks gestate by
attaching themselves on organs,and if you try to get them
offset organs, they spray apoison gas that will kill
(26:21):
everybody in the room.
And a face hugger gets out andkills everybody else, except for
the Scottish engineer who getskilled by the eye, and there's
this bad shit crazy fight scenebetween the eye-possessing the
daddy bear engineer and thexenomorph, where they literally
like they brawl, and theeye-possessing daddy bear
engineer jumps on thexenomorph's back and bites it.
(26:45):
And it was it was ridiculous, itwas audacious and silly and
actually kind of smart.
And girl, I jumped off thecouch, I was cheering and
laughing so hard.
This episode of TV made me feellike I was watching aliens again
for the first time.
Noah Holly uh needs some Emmys.
Anyway, Mara the cyborg is theonly survivor after letting the
captain get eaten because hisonly desire in life is to get
(27:08):
the aliens back to Lady Utani,who was like his foster sister
or something.
Oh, and we find out that the boygenius was behind the ship
crashing all along, and heengineered the whole thing
because he's an evil boy genius.
Admittedly, okay, so the nextthree ups, the last three ups,
are fantastic, but it is whenyou realize it may be called
Alien Earth, but the aliens arestaying on the island for now,
(27:31):
so it's a little disappointing.
Not seeing them take over NYC orsomething.
And here's hoping for seasontwo.
So back on the island, thehybrids all have their own story
arcs, some more interesting thanothers.
(27:51):
One of them is TimothyOliphant's little protege, and
he dies when one of the specieswe hadn't encountered yet ends
up being these flies that onlyeat metal and basically vomit on
this hybrid kid's face to melthim and eat him.
And oh, and by the way, the eyeand the sheep facilitated this
death through Nefaria'sheadbutting means.
(28:12):
So the hybrids aren't asimmortal as we thought.
Oh, and we eventually find outwhat the last species capture
can do.
Remember the Venus, the quietVenus flytrab thing hanging from
the spaceship ceiling?
Yeah, you probably guessed thatit actually is a Venus flytrap
thingy because uh it can scuttlearound walls and ceilings first
before it hangs there quietly tosnatch and liquefy hapless
soldiers.
(28:32):
Gross.
Wendy and Joe have becomedisillusioned with Neverland, so
they're trying to get off theisland, and hippie scientist
Arthur tries to help them afterthe boy genius fires him for
having a conscience.
That's until Moro blackmailspour Slightly into tricking
Arthur into receiving a facehugger so Moro can smuggle it
off the island.
And it sorta ends in hilaritywhen Slightly and his friend
(28:55):
hide a face hugged Arthur underSlightly's bed like any
12-year-old boy would do, so hewouldn't get in trouble.
By the way, the actors playingthe hybrids are really good at
playing 12-year-olds in adultbodies.
So Slightly and his friend Smeemake it to the beach with
Arthur, but not before the chestbursts, and now there's a small
xenomorph running around toaccompany the big ass one that's
killing everybody.
(29:15):
Yes, the one that's Wendy's newbest friend escaped.
Moro meets up with Slightly andSmee, and everybody gets
captured by Prodigy soldiers totake back to the Boy Genius.
In the meantime, Wendy and Joemake it to a dock after a scary
encounter with both the Eye,which abandons the sheep and
tries to get in Joe's head, andBoy Genius' right-hand synth
named Adam, who we find out wascreated by the Boy Genius at age
(29:38):
six to murder his abusivefather.
We learn also that Wendy can notonly control xenomorphs, but she
can also control other synths.
She's gotten a massive powerupgrade as the show goes on.
Oh, and Joe and Wendy are withthis redhead hybrid named Nibs,
who is she's batshit crazy,right?
And she's been mind wiped byArthur's wife Dame, which Makes
(30:00):
her even more batch it crazy,and she quickly becomes my
favorite character on the showbesides the eye, as she begins
killing soldiers with glee.
It's funny seeing a young gingerwoman who was a psychotic
12-year-old in her head justmassacring prodigy soldiers left
and right with true delight inher face.
Loved her.
Everybody gets recaptured, andit's kind of stupid because
(30:20):
Wendy has technological controlof the entire island, and she's
realized something veryimportant about herself and the
other hybrids.
A, Boy Genius sees them asamusing property, and B, they
are way more powerful than himand his soldiers and his
company.
And C, she's even more powerfulbecause she controls the
island's entire network and twoxenomorphs.
(30:42):
And in an intensely satisfyingscene in the last episode,
because he's so irritating andhe refuses to wear shoes and his
feet are dirty, Wendy forces BoyGenius to play a homicidal game
of hide-and-seek with thembecause she now knows that she's
that bitch and has little to notime for his antics.
Also, Joe ends up kicking him inthe face, and that's fun.
(31:03):
Oh, and Moro and TimothyOliphant have a brutal cyborg
synth fist fight, which is kindof a draw as they're both
seriously injured.
And we end with all of the quoteadults captured by all of the
quote kids.
The boy genius, Dame, theneuroscientist's mother figure,
whose husband Arthur'schestburst corpse, by the way,
has been taken over by the eye,which is funny.
(31:24):
Uh, you have cyborg Morrow,Timothy Oliphant, and the
revolting boy genius, who is nowbloody and tied up, and Wendy
dog walks his ass by telling himexactly what he is.
A hateful little man, not PeterPan.
And he clearly doesn't likethat, so triumph.
But he does like when thehybrids ask Wendy what they're
going to do now, and she merelylooks up at the two pet
(31:46):
xenomorphs she has guarding theprisoners, and she says, They're
going to rule.
End season one.
It's a cliffhanger.
Actually, several, because thatuh that main stuff going on, and
then the funny one with theeye-possessing author out on the
beach, and then Lady Utani'sWhalen Utani troops are flying
uh to take over the island.
They're on the way, they'realmost there, so she can get her
(32:07):
property back.
And there's way more to theshow, but I've already gone over
a half hour, so it's like, shutthe fuck up, Jay.
Just go watch the show.
Season two hasn't been announcedyet, but it's kind of a definite
seeing as it pulled in 9.2million global views on Hulu and
Disney Plus in the first sixdays, which makes it one of FX's
strongest launches in years.
And it was consistently rankedamong the most watched shows
(32:29):
week to week, and their viewsare very positive.
It has the highest RottenTomatoes score since the first
two films.
Then again, I think RottenTomatoes though is sort of like
an untrustworthy concept used bytoxic MAGA incel misogyny nerds
to sync movies that might have awoman or a black person in them,
but I'll take the score is agood thing.
And it wasn't perfect, the showwasn't perfect.
(32:51):
The focus wasn't exactly on thexenomorphs like you would want,
and they didn't answer a lot ofquestions like Wendy can do what
now and how and why, but I'msure I'm gonna get around to
that in season two.
Seriously, I want to seexenomorphs in Los Angeles eating
influencers.
I highly recommend Alien Earth,because it doesn't just rehash
the old xenomorph scares, uh,but it expanded the universe
(33:12):
with new monsters, new techstuff, new corporate fuckery,
and asked new questions aboutidentity and morality and
morality and technology andprogress and what it means to be
human.
Thank you for joining me forthis Wicked Gay Pop Whatever.
(33:34):
Stay tuned for a new traditionalWicked Gay episode here and a
new one on Patreon.
Hopefully, I'll get those damnvideos out soon and what have
you.
Good night.
Oh wait, remember in space, noone can hear your scream,
especially if an alien eyeballhas embedded itself in your
melon and it's controlling you.
Good night.
You've been listening to aWicked Gay Pop Whatever, where
(33:56):
Jay Harvey, who is clearly inlove with the sound of his own
voice, spoils things.
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