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Alien: Earth
2025 · TV series · 1 season
Created by Noah Hawley
When the mysterious deep space research vessel USCSS Maginot crash-lands on Earth, Wendy and a ragtag group of tactical soldiers make a fateful discovery that puts them face-to-face with the planet's greatest threat.
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14 comments on Hacker News
My favorite contemporaneous example of "current real technology being pitched as the future" are the Thrustmaster HOTAS Warthog joystick and throttle controls, which are visible in so much modern stuff.
I've got them on the shelf next to my television (for DCS sessions) so whenever the stick or the throttle control appears in, say our current favorite show .. "Alien:Earth" .. one of us gets up and disengages the action on the screen as the watching session running gag. ;)
Great controllers, amusing movie props.
I also have the same feeling about media since around 2015. The prime example being Alien: Earth, which people will argue has immeasurable depth and nuance while when I watched it I just facepalmed a lot. Although it did get better in later episodes.
I feel like no media today has really topped the stuff of the 90s and 00s. Star Trek Voyager season 5 still stands tall above the rest for me. The movie September 5 came close as it had interesting bits.
But besides that, there is a generational thing going on. I felt when I grew up online in the 90s and 00s that people who were older than me were smarter than my generation. My generation watched movies and played games while gen x and baby boomers did hardcore assembly programming and whatever.
And then the same thing happened with millenials and gen z. Gen z is just different from millenials which again are different from baby boomers. Each generation progressively gets less technical it seems like. There are always outliers in every generation of course but I think the trajectory is somewhat clear.
I also think this applies to movies and tv shows. Gen z just thinks differently and doesn't have the same ideas. I don't think a gen z'er could create Voyager season 5, and maybe not even a millenial could. There is so much information and knowledge and perception in the context a generation is born into and grows up in and a lot of that context and information is lost with the next generation.
You are right about everything from Alien 3 through Covenant. However! Romulus was pretty okay. It has some questionable plot decisions, and it's kind of soft continuity compatible with the two Prometheus-era movies. But it does work as an action-horror in the shared universe of the original films. Alien: Earth was also pretty good, it explores the setting without breaking it too badly, and it's fun with dangerous aliens that aren't THE Alien. There are some plot points that require very smart characters to be holding the idiot ball.
Yes, that and Romulus is what I was thinking of. Alien Earth has that whole fanfic-style flashback episode.
I watched Alien: Earth recently and was admiring the TUIs everywhere. The show takes place in 2120 and they kept up the aesthetics of the original movies. A future full of synthetic humanoids and interstellar ships kept the TUI. I do not remember tablets being in the series, however even those seem to use a similar TUI.
I look forward to my great grandchildren rediscovering the TUI.
> Alien: Earth was the dumbest addition to the franchise. Hybrid synths that can “talk” to the aliens… pffft. Off the rails.
It started off so well. The first few episodes were good/interesting/promising and the series seemed destined for greatness ( if they could stick the landing ). Unfortunately, it fizzled out in the latter half of the series as they turned the xenomorph into a silly pet.
> Besides, what's wrong with mentioning how crappy these movies are (they really do suck) in a post that specifically names them?
Assuming you're talking about Prometheus and Covenant, I enjoyed them. Not quite as good as the first (1979) or the second (1986), but I did indeed enjoy the last two.
It's the Alien:Earth series that I stopped watching after 3 or 4 episodes. I did not enjoy that one bit.
Alien Romulus was also not enjoyable; there was no progression of the stories in the universe. At least Prometheus and Covenant attempted expanding the original story. A:E and A:R didn't even bother - with very few changes, those both could be about any alien-filled universe, not specifically about the one started with Alien(1979).
I'm curious what didn't work for you about those movies?
They don't make a whole lot of movies where all the characters just follow the rules, cause it wouldn't be fun to watch.
Xenobiologist is tired of eating with the rest of the crew and eats in the lab instead seems reasonable. We didn't see the leadup to see the deviance normalized, we just get to see the end of it.
Alien:Earth isn't the best writing, obviously, but we're how far into the series, the writing just has to be enough plot to get to the xenomorph rampage scenes. It's like plot in a video game or an adult film; you have to have it, but it doesn't matter.
Alien: Earth was the dumbest addition to the franchise. Hybrid synths that can “talk” to the aliens… pffft. Off the rails.
The last few films were of similar ilk. Prometheus started it with their David narrative. Just terrible writing.
> ...maglev trains that hit 430 km/h
That's only one short track, connecting a major airport not even straigth to downtown, but rather the outskirts of that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai_maglev_train
And it isn't doing well, economically.
> Our movies should be set in Neo-Beijing.
Try 'Prodigy' corporate owned (one of the big five) New Siam, out of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien:_Earth
edit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobius_(TV_series) probably, too. But haven't watched that, so far.
No further complaints ATM. Just shrug?
Hrrm. I watched it in 2D, and was very tempted to skip/FF.
Was boring for me, compared to the original. Just more of the not so same, with maybe better FX, sometimes.
edit: To expand on that, from memory, the original had for me fucked up cyperpunkish earth, somewhat realistic spaceships/travel, heayv mining industry, cynical execs and military, nerdy techs and scientists.
Compared to most of what else streams over the screens nowadays, it was almost HARD-SF. I like that.
The Way of Water had much less of that, instead more tribalism, maybe some wokery. I don't give a shit about that.
(While I'm at it, the pre-prequel to the Alien-franchise "Alien Earth" with six episodes out ATM has much of that cyberpunkish flair, and is at least slightly more than just 'so-so'.)
In the new TV series Alien Earth, the low resolution CRT monitors and clunky keyboards aboard interstellar spacecraft really stand out. Presumably it's an homage to the 80s' movies.
I think you've got it backwards.
That was the hallmark of old TV, on networks. Since the start of TV in the 50's.
There are tons of modern TV shows that don't do anything you're talking about because they're made for streamers or paid TV without ads.
It sounds like you watch different shows than I do, but I watch a lot of TV and haven't seen what you're talking about in many, many years. Not with Squid Game or Stranger Things on Netflix, or Andor on Disney+, or White Lotus on HBO, or Severance on Apple TV+, or even something like Alien: Earth currently on FX/Hulu.
You might want to find better places for watching TV...
Aliens and Terminator 2 also make sense as continuations. Of the character growth of the protagonists (growing more competent). And also of the “size” of the threat.
It is no coincidence that the first in each series is a horror movie (the enemy is overwhelmingly stronger than the protagonist, survival is the goal). And the second is an action movie (the enemy is strong but the protagonists have a fighting chance). It is the only way the momentum can keep building.
I think this is the main reason why so many series stall out at 2. There isn’t a third popular genre they can go to that keeps building. Maybe Alien:Earth will pivot into the Disaster genre, that would be a novel try at least.