Forum

Given I think the show is dreadful, I'm just going to integrate it by ignoring it in my game entirely. Even Reddit is pretty lukewarm at best on the show so I'm far from alone on this.

"What is Reddit but the weathervane of our times.."

Yeah, my best mate is a bit lukewarm on it as well, which I didn't expect, he loves Aliens as much as I do. I expect its going to be a bit Marmite....

So far I think that I’m basically going to consider it to be completely non-canon for anything RPG-wise. I think that the show captures some of the tension of ALIEN well, but it just doesn’t work fully for me.

a few issues with it:

1. The violence makes it look like a Troma film. Honestly its goofy and fast and overdone. The movies (yes even ALIEN 3) did a good job of creating that terror with some drawn out elements with a flash of intense but not cartoonish violence. The stalking that occurs. Now it’s just kinda over the top. Romulus suffered a bit from this in the third act. There is a line that has to be walked with body horror so that it doesn’t just become goofy and overdone.

2. The synth storyline isn’t grabbing me. Just not invested much in it. I care more about the random troops than these kids in adult bodies. I see what they’re trying to do (hey they’re like Newt! She’s a kid!), but it’s falling flat. Meh.

3. Where are the other corps? Seegson, LaSalle, Pauling, Hyperdyne? All this missed opportunity to give us fake corps like some kind of Wal-Mart 2 Electric Boogaloo. Its dumb.

4. Political Intrigue. Where is the ICC, ICSC, 3WE, and UA?

5. You could have made S1 about the Maginot, or at least half of S1. But that was rushed and to me detracts from it. This is from Noah “Fargo” Hawley who makes new series each season basically.

Honestly I’ll watch it all and put it on the shelf likely to be better than Covenant… maybe? Eh. Its pretty mid.

Bonus: Just show the cat walking off the ship. We are ALIEN fans so ship cats are important to us. That was goofy.

Bonus:. I love the “our Earth” music thats played at the end of each episode but save it for when the credits kick in. It sounds kinda dumb in the ALIEN universe.

Reading the last two comments (UscssRookie & Teean)... a slightly more negative tone is setting in for the show ALIEN EARTH. I'm eager to form my own opinion on the subject (I haven't seen the episodes yet)...

Muthulam said above that Noah Hawley said the series had its own universe and its own timeline (non-canon). It's easy to do anything after that...

I had some reservations going in (with ALIEN EARTH), and it seems to be confirmed. I'll get back to you (guys) with clear ideas after watching the episodes.

Arthur.

Definitely check it out, Dallas. I don’t hate it. It just always irks me when a story can be told in a world as big as ALIEN, with so much substance and material going for it, and they set their sights to muddle it all up.

I think it stays non-canon for me. It’s midi-chlorians all over again…

I was thinking about this during dinner. If we take the example of Fede Alvarez, it's clear in ALIEN ROMULUS that he's a true fan, and he tried to bring us a lot of "fan service" with ALIEN ROMULUS by being clever and trying to align as many elements as possible with what we know. He was careful.

ALIEN EARTH by Noah Hawley. I haven't seen anything yet, so I can't really comment, but my feeling from what I read is that Noah Hawley probably didn't stick to the timeline or the "known" elements of the universe to serve up a product for fans with "fan service." It's still a feeling.

On the other hand, Noah Hawley did a masterful job with FARGO, especially with the character of Billy Bob Thornton. We could use a "Billy Bob Thornton" as an active member of the Weyland family who wreaks havoc in the ALIEN EARTH series.

Arthur.

Its a tricky one, I don't really have the issues that some of the other guys have. I think the hybrids storyline is pretty decent, and gets better in Ep 3 because of how the kids have reacted differently to being incarnated - Slightly and Smee are still kids, Curly is learning, Toodles is scheming, Nibs basically has PTSD and Wendy is different to all of them. And Kirsh, as an actual synth, plays well alongside them (in a creepy Ash/Rook kind of way).

I'm not doing spoilers here, but we do get to learn some new stuff about the Xenomorphs and how they operate, which I quite liked.

I don't think its fair to say Noah Hawley chucked everything out, he just decided to focus on certain aspects of the franchise, and zoomed in on Weyland-Yutani and Prodigy (which, remember, is a relatively new upstart corporation). And I believe I read somewhere that Episode 5 flashes back and tells the Maginot story.

I still find Morrow a bit jarring, but I thought his interaction with Yutani in Ep 3 was well done (again, no spoilers).

I mentioned my mate having issues with it before, and he does agree with a couple of ucssrookie's points, and he also really thinks that most of the music in the show doesn't work

It’s midi-chlorians all over again…

Harsh

Tbh, I find Alien: Earth to be pretty cool and interesting. Tonally, I'm not sure it fits 100% to the Alien-verse, but as it's own thing it works quite well. It is like a Phillip K. Dick what-does-it-mean-to-be-human story with a bunch of vile corporations and deadly alien creatures thrown into the mix, and I find the plots, characters, visuals, and action to range from decent to excellent. Some things feel strange from an Alien perspective, and some stuff feels like it fits better in a sillier, gung-ho AvP franchise, but it all works quite well and stands on its own legs.

I also kinda like that the series feels separated from the grander narrative and does its own thing. We basically have a third (or fourth?) Alien adjacent IP at this point -- Alien proper, AvP, A:E, and I guess some folks would like to put the Prometheus/Alien: Covenant story in its own universe, too -- and there's a cool freedom that comes with that.

So, yeah, I'm finding the A:E stories and ideas intriguing and I am looking forward to the next episode.

Speaking of the guy who does the music, it's Jeff Russo. He's the guy who does the music for today's Star Trek universe (Strange New World, Star Trek Picard, etc.). He also did the music for FARGO (he usually works with Noah Hawley). He usually does good work, but I haven't seen ALIEN EARTH yet.

As far as I know, the music for ALIEN ROMULUS was very good. Composed by Benjamin Wallfisch (he's an assistant to Hans Zimmer). The music had a lot of resemblance to the music for ALIEN ISOLATION by Christian Henson, Joe Henson, and Alexis Smith.

P.S. I think actress Lily Newmark is very pretty. I can't wait to see her in ALIEN EARTH. I don't think she's playing a big role; I think her character is NIBS. We're not talking about a Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) performance. I just think she's beautiful.

Arthur.

As far as I know, the music for ALIEN ROMULUS was very good. Composed by Benjamin Wallfisch (he's an assistant to Hans Zimmer). The music had a lot of resemblance to the music for ALIEN ISOLATION by Christian Henson, Joe Henson, and Alexis Smith.

The music in Alien: Earth is mostly modern day songs. Actually, more like whatever Noah Hawley thought was cool when he was a teenager. It's very jarring when electric guitars start jamming over a scene. He has no idea what he's doing and he's using the Alien franchise to tell his own, not-that-deep-but-thinks-it-is transhumanism story. And every episode adds further inconsistencies with canon which makes it - to keep this to the OP's question - harder to integrate with the RPG. At best you can grab a couple of things like the space leeches and drop them in the game.

I want to say that the writers for the RPG did a great job of integrating everything and making the universe feel coherent and real. Yet a major big budget TV show doesn't even care. And as OP points out and this last episode confirms, we learn that the mission collecting all these species began before the Prometheus mission! The Hell?

Most of the character actions are idiocy at the level of those two scientists in Prometheus playing with the xeno-snake. Or worse. It'd be a very mediocre generic sci-fi show. The fact that it is an Alien show is an extra little insult. It jars tonally and with canon. Two years from now in the timeline you have Ash mostly human-level capable, a little stronger and more robust. In this we have Wendy jumping off 100m cliffs like Battle Angel Alita and solo killing the xenomorph in hand to hand combat. (Cannot figure out how to get spoilers to work here. Highlight the text to see it and I really hope everyone has the same default colour scheme here. If anybody can tell me the correct tags here for spoilers, please let me know. In any case, if you've seen episode three you can probably guess the thing I mean.)

I know Wendy and Ash are different models of body but everything in this show is way off. Noah Hawley is just using Alien for his own bland sub-Blade Runner story.