Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hi, my name is Robert Lamman. This is the Monster Fact,
Speaker 2: a short form series from Stuff to Blow Your Mind,
Speaker 2: focusing on mythical creatures, ideas, and monsters in time. The
Speaker 2: FX series Alien Earth just wrapped up what is presumably
Speaker 2: its first season, though at the time of this recording,
Speaker 2: no official renewal has been announced for this Noah Hawley
Speaker 2: filmed Ridley Scott produced series. First, I want to stress
Speaker 2: that I really enjoyed Alien Earth. My one true complaint
Speaker 2: is that I wish it had wrapped its story up
Speaker 2: in a single season, and it felt like all the
Speaker 2: pieces were on the table to do just that going
Speaker 2: into the eighth episode. But all of this being said,
Speaker 2: I love the performances. Timothy Oliphant as a synthetic person
Speaker 2: wasn't something I knew I needed. He's terrific. Adrian Edmondson
Speaker 2: of The Young Ones and Bottom Fame was a fun
Speaker 2: bit of casting, and Babu Sisey's Cybord character was terrific.
Speaker 2: The rest of the cast excelled as well. If you
Speaker 2: were hesitant about watching the whole series, I'd at least
Speaker 2: urge you to watch episode five, which can be viewed
Speaker 2: as a standalone or a key piece of the series.
Speaker 2: But this is the monster fact, so I want to
Speaker 2: discuss the creatures of Alien Earth. I won't say much
Speaker 2: about the Xenomorphs. We certainly get them. Sometimes they're absolutely terrifying.
Speaker 2: Sometimes they're a little lost in the shuffle, but that's
Speaker 2: kind of par for the course. With the Alien franchise.
Speaker 2: On top of the title Aliens, however, we also get
Speaker 2: a number of other extraterrestrial specimens. The existence of other
Speaker 2: non xenomorph and non engineer extraterrestrial life forms is of
Speaker 2: course alluded to in nineteen eighty six's Aliens. The Alien
Speaker 2: RPG from Freely throws in some additional supporting bugs for
Speaker 2: players to hunt, and of course the various Alien books,
Speaker 2: comics and crossovers over the years have introduced others, including
Speaker 2: the famous Kryptonian himself. In the mid nineties Superman Aliens
Speaker 2: limited series. Noah Holly does not give us DC Superman,
Speaker 2: or even Marvel's Legion for that matter. We don't get
Speaker 2: the Fargo Alien crossover that I think a lot of
Speaker 2: us were pining for, but he does introduce no fewer
Speaker 2: than four new extraterrestrial organisms. Let's run through them. There
Speaker 2: will be spoilers from here on out. First up, we
Speaker 2: have the parasitic species nineteen, a leech like organism that
Speaker 2: drains a fatal amount of blood from its host, filling
Speaker 2: up like a balloon in the process. We also observe
Speaker 2: that it reproduces by spewing its larval young in whatever
Speaker 2: fresh water is available. On the reproduction front, various organisms
Speaker 2: of the natural world do seek out water for reproduction,
Speaker 2: including some notable parasites. Mosquitoes famously lay their eggs on
Speaker 2: the surface of the water, and their larvae and pupe
Speaker 2: are fully aquatic. The horsehair worm also has a rizzly
Speaker 2: reputation for hacking the brain of its host grasshopper or cricket,
Speaker 2: and then forcing that organism to drown itself in a puddle,
Speaker 2: so the noumautomorph might burst forth and wiggle free into
Speaker 2: the water to complete the life cycle. As for the
Speaker 2: blood ballooning, certain parasites, such as ticks and leeches, do
Speaker 2: expand as they feast on the host blood, filling up
Speaker 2: like a balloon in the process, though these organisms are
Speaker 2: generally incapable of individually draining a lethal amount of blood
Speaker 2: from the host. We might presume then, that Species nineteen
Speaker 2: hails from a world where they depend on some form
Speaker 2: of suitable megafauna that can sustain them without succumbing to
Speaker 2: blood loss with each feeding. Up next, we have the
Speaker 2: species referred to informally as the fly, a fairly large
Speaker 2: winged insect creature that feeds on minerals and of course,
Speaker 2: synthetic flesh. Obviously, the creature exists as a nasty foil
Speaker 2: for the show's many synthetic characters, but it also plays
Speaker 2: on a very real zenobiological consideration. Chemo lithothrops actually exist
Speaker 2: on Earth in the form of certain bacteria and microbes
Speaker 2: that feed on inorganic compounds and minerals. We don't have
Speaker 2: anything as big as the fly, but it's proof that
Speaker 2: such forms of life are possible, all right. Up next,
Speaker 2: we have the specimen d plum the kyrie, which presents
Speaker 2: itself essentially as a kind of carnivorous plant, but also
Speaker 2: proves itself capable of fairly speedy movement when necessary, and
Speaker 2: ultimately conducts itself more as an ambush predator than a
Speaker 2: passive trap. We might think of this one as a
Speaker 2: cross between a venus fly trap, which is capable of
Speaker 2: rapid plant movement, a walking palm tree which carries out
Speaker 2: a slow repositioning that I should flag may seem to
Speaker 2: be exaggerated at times in reporting, and the barnacle enemies
Speaker 2: from the Half Live video games. You remember these. They
Speaker 2: dangle down, you walk into the dangling bits, and then
Speaker 2: you get sucked up. Finally, we have the show's most
Speaker 2: fascinating non zenom or alien life form, and that is
Speaker 2: tripanohica ocellus or t ocellus, a crawling, tentacled eyeball creature
Speaker 2: that affixes itself to the face of another organism, gouges
Speaker 2: out one of the eye sockets, and then takes that
Speaker 2: eye's place, taking over the organism in the process. Living
Speaker 2: or dead, the creature is all the more fascinating because
Speaker 2: it seems quite intelligent and may have an agenda all
Speaker 2: its own that goes well beyond reproduction and acquiring food.
Speaker 2: It's an inventive creature design which calls back to various
Speaker 2: crawling eye monsters, especially nineteen fifty eight's The Crawling Eye,
Speaker 2: and also perhaps plays with accounts of the isopod Simonthoa exagua,
Speaker 2: which has been observed to seemingly replace a fish's tongue.
Speaker 2: And then, of course we're also playing on general brain
Speaker 2: hacking parasitic abilities that we see in multiple instances throughout
Speaker 2: the natural world. I suppose we'll just have to find
Speaker 2: out more in a possible second season of Alien Earth,
Speaker 2: or perhaps in supplemental alien Fiction. Tune in for additional
Speaker 2: episodes of The Monster, Fact, The Artifact or Animalist at
Speaker 2: Pendium each week. As always, you can email us at
Speaker 2: contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
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