Alien: Earth — The Mid-Season Team Empire Take

0:24Chris Hewitt:This podcast is brought to you by Chris Hewitt.

0:30Chris Hewitt:surprise. This is something that was unplanned. This is a mid-season checkpoint for Alien Earth, in which we will be talking about the show to date, but I guess also specifically episode 5 of Alien Earth, which is entitled In Space No One... You can draw your own conclusions and connections from there. And joining me to talk about the show and that episode over the next 45 minutes or so are three colleagues of such lethal cunning, none of whom have drunk from each other's water bottles, at least. Oh my God. I hope not. I have a water bottle here on the desk. Me too. Do you? Yeah. All right. Oh God.

1:07Chris Hewitt:I wouldn't touch it. And it looks rather similar to the one. Sales of water bottles have plummeted since episode five hit Disney Plus yesterday. Anyway, those three colleagues are, hello Nohara. Hello. James Dyer. Hello. And Sophie Petzl. Hello. Hello. Welcome, welcome, welcome. two of you were not on the first Alien Earth spoiler special Sophie and James James you wrote the five star Empire review of the show so I think I know where you stand Sophie where do you stand real quick before we get into this episode in particular I think I've realized that the Alien Cinematic Universe is not my oeuvre really okay and I think that actually has a fairly big impact we've not been sharing water bottles James was feeding us sweets out of his bum hang on that sounds weird to be clear my bum sweets are bum sweets in the same way that in Ferris Bueller they're like would you like a gummy bear they've been in my pocket so they're all soft he didn't produce a string of pearls I basically went to the post room no I didn't do that I grabbed a handful of pick and mix and shoved them in the back pocket of my jeans and that's where they've been the skittles are warm the post room here has pick and mix yeah don't ask me why I don't know why they do have pick and mix in the post room I don't know why so they start vomiting blood yes so they've been Every possibility.

2:23Chris Hewitt:Bum sweet. Okay. Why is it not your oeuvre? Oh, God. So there was a lot of hype around this. I was quite excited for it just because it's a sci-fi, horror-y kind of thing. And a lot of my friends, there's a breakthrough. A lot of my friends are talking about it. They all really, really like it. And I found myself just quite unmoved by it. I have no real problem with any of it. I can't really, you know, Noah Hawley is sort of an acquired taste. I love his Fargo. I didn't love Legion. I think sometimes this sci-fi stuff for me is kind of high concept-y and weirdy-woo. And I find it kind of difficult to emotionally engage with it.

2:58And I think I had that issue with a lot of this. But mostly I felt that there were moments where I felt, I think I'd be enjoying this a lot more if I gave a shit about the alien stuff. I really like Alien 1 and I like Alien 2. And other than that, I think the universe is quite shallow and superficial. And I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I feel the way about the alien cinematic universe. I think a lot of adults feel about Marvel. They're just like, oh God, it's all just insipid and silly. And so, yeah, I feel like there'd be a lot of moments where I'm going, oh my God, it's the xenomorph, or it's the facehugger, and they use the music, and all the cameras doing the same thing, and look, it's a human being in the suit.

3:33But that doesn't do anything for me, and the synth stuff is not my... Yeah, so I just wasn't that keen.

3:40Chris Hewitt:I think that would be controversial if most of the Alien franchise wasn't shit. It is, yeah. That is where we are, I think. I think that's the advantage here, because there's so little mythology that's canonized by this series, because most of it is incoherent bullshit. But really, just the first two films are the only ones you really need to care about. And they're very light on what the wider kind of universe structure and the politics and the corporations are. And I think that's what's allowed Hawley to kind of go deep on all this. And almost, he's basically creating mythology from the ground up.

4:10The only thing he's keeping is the alien life cycle. Like, that's really the only thing. And the aesthetics, right? Yeah. And everything else, I feel like he's doing off his own back. this kind of five-corporation super-capitalist structure, all this stuff about Earth, the fact this new Siam thing where prodigies place. I love all that stuff because it feels new, but it also kind of seamlessly slots into alien and aliens, the only two that matter. So I really like it. So I'm not sure you, you know, you don't need to know anything really or love anything. Maybe I'd appreciate it more if I understood that that's what he was doing as well.

4:37I had to do a bit of Googling because I knew about Yutani and I know that some guys wear T-shirts that have Weyland Yutani on. So that corporation is the only one I'm really familiar with. Are you?

4:45Chris Hewitt:I'm genuinely wearing a Stronghold t-shirt right now. I was like, oh, I know this name because I see guys wearing that t-shirt. I'm like, cool. That's me. But that kind of Noah Hawley sci-fi weirdy woo stuff, again, just it's not. I feel like. I like the weirdy woo stuff. I need these sort of, I need some boring basic ITV stuff to like engage in. No, I do. And everyone is either some weird freak or hateful. And episode five, I sort of hated all of them. It's like, God, they're either all just, apart from Baboushi Say, who I've... Love him. Love him. This tells you everything about me that I feel like, oh, I've seen him in some plays, and I've also seen him as Richard Taylor in the Damalola Taylor drama on ITV.

5:29So not Wolf, not any of the other major things he's been in, but just the ITV stuff and the Royal Court Theatre. But other than that, everyone's just a weird freak. And I couldn't quite figure out what, is this a direction thing? Everyone's performing in a weird way. isn't like terribly freaky.

5:46Chris Hewitt:Who's Essie Davis? She's someone called Dame Sylvie. I think she's more... A mum figure. She's a therapist. She's a scientist. The one who lost all the specimens? No, no, no. Not in episode five. Like in back with the lost boys. Oh, yeah. But yeah, because the other guy is a weird freak with freaky hair. And then the boy, boy Cavalier, is a weird freak. Yeah, that's fine. He's 100 % a weird freak. I like the weird freakiness of it. But I think you're right. because even our lead character in this, we'll get on to episode five. A starry freak. Yeah, Sydney is a child in a woman's body who is slowly beginning to come to terms with that.

6:26Chris Hewitt:And so there's a lack of Ripley's to hang your head on. Yeah, and I think I miss that personally. So that's why I'm not going to come at this show and say there are things that are wrong or bad about it because I think it's really, really well made. I find anything that's over an hour and ten minutes that would have been really difficult. And also because Noah Hawley is not a sort of rip-roarer. He likes to slow burn. So there are a few things working against my tastes here. And I think James Lawther is the hermit, is the character I can latch on to. Because he's the most likable normal. Yeah, because he's my ITV guy.

7:01And then he's in hospital for one whole episode and he's not in episode five. Sorry, episode three? Or is it four? Yeah. He comes out at the end, but yeah.

7:12Chris Hewitt:Yeah. To be threatened by Ade Edmondson. Because even when they, again, it's the child in an Alex body, I'm not connecting to her. I'm not really feeling, even Babu Sissé, who I again feel, I can't remember his name either. He's Moro. He's Moro. Why am I here? People who listen to this, where the fuck is she? Does she have a job? I do. It's not remembering names. Your job is not to remember names. It's to make up names. but Moro they give him some kind of grounding with the flashbacks of the daughter that broke my heart actually that bit where he sees that he's been sent by notified by a really dispassionate inhuman facts space facts that your that your daughter has died at 18 in a house fire and that that gives such depth to a character who is weirdly I think straddling that line between protagonist and antagonist hero and villain and in this one it's again I don't know how to categorize him he's the best thing in it I think he is followed closely by Ade Edmondson who I'm convinced is doing a version of Claude from The Apprentice which I'm convinced that's who he's doing take your word for it but yeah Helen I love this show I absolutely adore this show I think this is the best and I hate this phrase I hate even as I said I'm going to hate myself for it the best piece of alien content since Aliens.

8:45Chris Hewitt:Did you say alien thing? I think it is. And I think that episode five, I know Sophie wasn't that wild about it, but I think episode five is the best alien movie since Aliens. I think it's incredible. I think it is. I think it's a weird one for people to have glommed onto in this show, though. Like, people are going, this is what the show should have been all along. And I'm like, it's literally called Alien Earth. Why is the spaceship episode the one that you love? And I feel like that is maybe be suggesting that this has more of an uphill battle than like we were in three of us were pretty much in from for minute one james and i had a big debate about is it four or five but we didn't have six but we didn't have a debate about is this good or not but i think you know for a lot of people it was just not alien enough there wasn't enough of that iconography for people to maybe attach to i'm saying there are people out there i don't get it last week episode four when it aired on Disney Plus, I saw a whole bunch of really negative reviews of it on things like places like IGN and Forbes and whatnot.

9:46Chris Hewitt:I just could not believe, I couldn't reconcile what they were seeing and what I had seen. Yeah, that's kind of my thing as well. I feel like it's very alien-y. I think a lot of the grammar of it and sometimes the pacing, definitely some of the characters are very alien-y. Even if it's doing this weird, you know, Lost Boys thing and it has its own different feel. I think a lot of that feels very grounded in alien-iness to me. And so I just, I don't, fundamentally I'm on a different wavelength, I think, to a lot of those people who are saying it's not alien enough. And only episode five is the only bit they'll accept.

10:18Episode five is great. I loved it. I thought it was incredible. And I think it's incredibly brave to put it in the middle of the series and not just have that be your episode one, because I think it's so much more interesting. We're not invested in what's happening on Earth, and this just gives context to some of that. it's not a way of you know kind of cheaply fixing our attention and going oh this is going to be so alien you guys well there's a hint of that because it obviously it begins with it as well it does begin with it but that's like very much set up at the beginning of episode one and it's like what five minutes ten minutes you know to put this in episode five when we're now invested with the Lost Boys and everything happening on earth is a better move because I think it would have been a fundamentally dishonest one to make this episode one and I like that they didn't but it now gives us a bit of context and background for that.

11:07Chris Hewitt:Country text. I think I can't help myself even if it's an alien show I can't help myself. But I think that by delaying it to episode 5 we get a chance to see what those freaky dinky animals the other aliens are capable of in the previous episodes so that when they get loose on the Maginot we're like oh fuck the octopus thing is out. You're fucked. And we also know now that Boy Cavalier the twist of Boy Cavalier being directly responsible for the spaceship crashing in his city that's a nice little wrinkle as well we've got to know what an unprecedented unmitigated prick he is over the last four episodes or so Jimbo where do you stand?

11:47The Musk the Musk analogy that he is it's funny I didn't feel the same way that you felt about it I get when people say it's not alien enough and I think it starts on the match specifically so it sort of almost lures you in with that. Hey, look, it's Alien. It's exactly as you remember it. It looks exactly the same. We've got almost the same archetypes of our characters. You remember this. And he uses really Scott's slow dissolves when it sort of transitions from scenes as well. And then as soon as we get back to Earth, it becomes much more Noah Hawley. And I don't think it's sort of like Weirdy Woo, like not Legion level, which genuinely is weirdy woo.

12:23But I actually found it quite grounded. It definitely has a weirdness to it. And I think it's amplified by the kind of crazy things he does, like the needle drops that he does, sticks in Jane's Addiction and Metallica and stuff like that, which is wild. But also, the fact that Ice Age 4 is canon in this universe now, which is insane to me. But I love that it uses the alien as a kind of bit part player in this show. It's not a big part of this series. It's kind of part of the narrative spine that runs through it, but it's not essential to it. To a certain extent, I think the other aliens, the other creatures, the other sort of flora and fauna that they've picked up, are more interesting than the xenomorph, especially the eyeball that we've mentioned and that features in this particular episode.

13:04Partly, and Hawley said this himself, because we don't understand what is their life cycle, what do they do? You know, the fact that it squirts tadpoles into the water bottle and then they eat him from the inside out, it's horrific, the fact that the eyeball gets into their skull and takes over their body. Like, it's just upsetting and it gives you levels of body horror that, frankly, none of us have been shocked by since the original Alien. And I think all that stuff is wonderful. So, I like that this has a kind of an aesthetic feel and a tone that feels somewhere between Alien and Aliens. And I think it's more successful than Fede Alvarez's attempt to do the same thing, which is very much an aesthetic and it's slightly clunky, it's less subtle.

13:42I love the way he did this. I really do. But when people say, oh, it's not Alien, what did they want? Did they want it to be eight hours of just running around a spaceship being chased by? Because I'd say that'd be really fucking boring. And I think, you used the Andor thing and I mentioned it in the review as well, I think nobody, when Tony Giorgis was making Andor, if they said, what do you want from that? No one would ever have said, I want what he delivered. But fuck me, did we want that? And I feel this is the same thing. No one was asking for this, but I'm very glad that we have it.

14:12Chris Hewitt:Yes, I would agree with that. A couple of things about the aliens, before we talk about the episode in more general terms, the new aliens, and of course, the title of the show, Alien Earth, I think we're now moving past the idea of equating Alien with the Cenomorph although I still think the Cenomorph is a major major part to play in this show moving forward the Alien now refers to every other freaky deaky weirdy woo shit that they found or whatever weird fucked up planets they were going to the octopus eye monster thing is for me almost becoming the big bad of the show and there was something really interesting in episode 5 I don't know if you guys concur or not he's directing the other creatures.

14:55Chris Hewitt:That's really... He taps into your brain to then fuck up other shit happening. I immediately ascribed the very toxic masculinity attributes to it. I immediately called it a he. He started directing the other creatures because the little creatures that get out of the cage. I fucking know. I can't think of words. The cockroach-y. The cockroach-y things. Thank you. Archibald leech they get out and they squirt themselves into the water that's another technical term they do so in my reading because the eyeball monster is directing him to do so what the fuck is going on there I'm not sure I did pick up on that first time but I definitely did second time I don't think that I read that it was directing I definitely think it was communicator so if not directing at least suggesting like pointing out pay attention do you know what I mean because it feels like it has an intelligence way beyond its appearance Yeah, even when it's a sheep.

15:53Yeah, and it's cunning. That sheep is terrifying. Yeah. For some reason, I thought the little octopus eyeball was trying to warn her that the leech was behind, the woman, the leech was behind her in that moment. Oh, really? For some reason. Because then when it attacked the xenomorph, or it seemed to attack the xenomorph, I thought, oh, maybe this little octopus is on people's side. Oh, that's interesting. I thought it was calling the xenomorph at one point. Because then it fights it. Yeah.

16:18Chris Hewitt:I think it was at one point, because it does attract the attention of the scenomorph when it's possessed Michael Smiley, who, by the way, had a really, his character is Shmuel, which is not a Northern Irish name that I'm aware of. But hey-ho, I'll let it go. Sci-fi Northern Ireland. It's weirdy-woo. Weirdy-woo Northern Irish. So I think it does call it initially to use as a weapon. And then when that doesn't work out, then it's like Godzilla versus Kong. let them fight. I think it's one of those situations. So I don't know what the fuck's going on with this. I still have what he's saying. I've seen the next episode.

16:57Chris Hewitt:I'm not going to allude to anything I've seen in the next episode. I haven't seen anything else beyond that. I haven't seen the last two. But I think that that little tentacly bastard is really interesting. I do have a slight question about the life cycle-y stuff, which is, are we sure they're all on the island right now? because they were very small on the ship and a lot of them got it out. Are we definitely sure they've got them all? Like, I guess we are from a storytelling point of view because we can't have these things running around on Earth for the next several hundred years if the cannon has any meaning at all.

17:33But are we sure? And how are they sure? Because they're really tiny and it was a big ship. Well, I know what you mean because we know how many different specimens there are but we don't actually know how many of each thing. And as you say, if it was populating into a water bottle, where else are there eggs like the water bottle could still have some stuff in it and also like the ones that then like turned into little maggoty things in his stomach like they weren't on the manifest they were not on the manifest yeah they don't know if they have them all I'm just saying well that got his island uh Alex Lothar also vomited blood didn't he oh no well they they operated him and taken his lung out he did oh yeah but he was stabbed yeah but it was the same visual image it was the same language oh no They shot him vomiting blood in the same way that they shot the kid vomiting blood.

18:20Chris Hewitt:I think if there was something inside him, they would have detected it. Or it would have been dealt with by now. So maybe it was just a bit of visual poetry. But I thought when I saw the engineer kid puke blood, I thought, oh, that's the same thing that happened to her hermit. I've got no loyalty to the alien cinematic universe, so I'm not sitting there going, I wish there was more alien stuff. weirdly I thought I did really I enjoy the bits that are kind of action packed and have a bit more kind of stakes and energy to them but I found even though I can admire it and I think it clearly is very in-depth world building from Hawley I find the synth versus cyber evil corpo stuff a bit Prometheus all that stuff I I never really, I never took away from the movie Alien.

19:17Do you know what I want to see? I want to see like a kind of corporate cyberpunk dystopia Blade Runner thing about like robots. Who doesn't want to see that? And so all the business around robots and the ethics of robots. And at one point he quotes Asimov and I just sort of visibly twitched. I think he means Clark as well. Yeah, misquotes. Right, because I was like, do not quote the greater gods. Like this is, this all comes from a really fun, like elevated B movie where people run around running from creatures and it's an incredible piece of filmmaking and what fun to watch and I sometimes feel when they try to go deeper it stretches it for me.

19:50Chris Hewitt:I want to see them fucking each other with a goddamn percentage. That's what I want to see. I like that show. I'm quite enjoying all the cyborg versus synth versus, what are we calling them? The hybrids? I love the conversation between Oliphant and Cissé when it's basically who's the better model of artificial being. I thought it was so funny. I'm very, very much, I mean this will not surprise you You know, I'm very much enjoying Kirsch still. I just think he's so over everyone around him. He is so like, Jesus Christ, will you people calm the fuck down? I am trying to work here. I have interesting things to look at.

20:26They're weird and they might kill people around me, but they're really interesting. Get the fuck out of here. I just love him. He's amazing.

20:33Chris Hewitt:Yeah, I think his agenda has yet to be revealed. Totally unclear. He may be very evil. You know, I love that. Both him and Morrow, neither of whom are what you would call heroes, I'm super invested in. Yeah, I said in the first show, I was like, I'm just obsessed, what the fuck is Kersh's deal? I don't know what that dude's deal is. And was it episode three or episode four where we see that he actually is aware that Morrow has burrowed somehow into Slightly's brain and is aware of that and doesn't raise the alarm bells. Well, because he's getting valuable intelligence, isn't he? What is going on there?

21:12Chris Hewitt:What is going on with Morrow? He even looks like that guy from Blade Runner. Is it Batty? He does look like Batty. Batty. So, yeah, maybe it's all that. Maybe it's a crossover. There's your ITV BBC link. This is a sequel to Last of the Summer Wine. Oh, my God. Yeah, I'm very much taken with this show. The Isaac Asimov misquote, that boy cavalier misattributed to Isaac Asimov, that caused a bit of a shitstorm in last week's Twitter and social media platforms where people were going, this is outrageously sloppy from Noah Hawley. How dare he misattribute this quote to Isaac Asimov. We all know it was Arthur C.

22:01Chris Hewitt:Clark who said it. And it's like, did not enter your head for a second that that might be deliberate. But it seems very on brand. Oh, yes. He has a whole thing about the boy genius is not, in fact, a boy genius. Yeah, we've not seen him be clever once. That was one thing I noticed. We've not seen him do anything really... We've not seen him say a lot of sci-fi techie words. We've not seen him with his hands in wires. We've not really seen him be a genius. And sometimes I kind of found that challenging. Other times I was like, well, clearly that is the point. I mean, I didn't know that was a misquote at the time.

22:33but usually if you want people to know it as a misquote, you might sort of raise it in the text somehow. Like somebody raised an eyebrow, but nobody does, so I wouldn't know. But I don't know, maybe I'm basic.

22:43Chris Hewitt:That's why people are thinking that maybe it was a mistake, but I wouldn't be surprised if they come back to it at some point. Yeah, I think if it's not a mistake, they probably will. Who else was there at the time? It wasn't Akir, who might have corrected him, right? Or Adrian Edmondson. I'm not even sure Adrian Edmondson would have corrected him you know like Claude in The Apprentice he's the ultimate yes man yes Alan great idea Alan wonderful Alan yes lovely you've never seen The Apprentice no I've seen The Apprentice but not enough to know who Claude is Claude is was Lord Sugar's bald right hand man oh I remember Nick and the other one yeah when Nick left Claude came in and then Claude had a biking accident and left yeah but he's in his 70s he's fine now He's okay now.

23:32Chris Hewitt:Yeah. They can rebuild him. We have the technology. We certainly do. But yeah, I was just, I was really, really taken by episode five. And yes, I know that it could be really reductive going, oh, yes, I'm the alien fan is wearing this Dromo t-shirt. This feels like a Mromo episode. Yeah, it's great. But it's the new elements of the show that are really, really impressing me. And as I said last time around, when the alien does show up, it's scary again. And that's a hell of an achievement because for a long time it wasn't. But it is the new stuff. And the new characters as well. I'm quite sad that we're not going to get more of Michael Smiley unless it's another flashback episode.

24:11Well, at least we did get more of him because I thought we'd only seen him for the beginning of the pilot. And I was like, oh, that was a brief little cameo. So nice that we got to him. But I think that fifth episode is amazing for so many reasons. But to do this show at all is an incredible swing. You know, talk about taking a risk. To actually do a show based on Alien. when so much could go wrong and so little is likely to go right. You know, that's a hell of a thing to do. And then to do this episode where you are essentially aping one of the greatest horror movies ever made and trying to make it scary again.