The Monstrefact: Alien Earth Roundup

that I really enjoyed Alien Earth. My one true complaint is that I wish it had wrapped its story up in a single season, and it felt like all the pieces were on the table to do just that going into the eighth episode. But all of this being said, I love the performances. Timothy Oliphant as a synthetic person wasn't something I knew I needed. He's terrific. Adrian Edmondson of The Young Ones and Bottom Fame was a fun bit of casting, and Babu Sisey's Cybord character was terrific.

The rest of the cast excelled as well. If you were hesitant about watching the whole series, I'd at least urge you to watch episode five, which can be viewed as a standalone or a key piece of the series. But this is the monster fact, so I want to discuss the creatures of Alien Earth. I won't say much about the Xenomorphs. We certainly get them. Sometimes they're absolutely terrifying. Sometimes they're a little lost in the shuffle, but that's kind of par for the course. With the Alien franchise.

On top of the title Aliens, however, we also get a number of other extraterrestrial specimens. The existence of other non xenomorph and non engineer extraterrestrial life forms is of course alluded to in nineteen eighty six's Aliens. The Alien RPG from Freely throws in some additional supporting bugs for players to hunt, and of course the various Alien books, comics and crossovers over the years have introduced others, including the famous Kryptonian himself. In the mid nineties Superman Aliens

limited series. Noah Holly does not give us DC Superman, or even Marvel's Legion for that matter. We don't get the Fargo Alien crossover that I think a lot of us were pining for, but he does introduce no fewer than four new extraterrestrial organisms. Let's run through them. There will be spoilers from here on out. First up, we have the parasitic species nineteen, a leech like organism that drains a fatal amount of blood from its host, filling

up like a balloon in the process. We also observe that it reproduces by spewing its larval young in whatever fresh water is available. On the reproduction front, various organisms of the natural world do seek out water for reproduction, including some notable parasites. Mosquitoes famously lay their eggs on the surface of the water, and their larvae and pupe

are fully aquatic. The horsehair worm also has a rizzly reputation for hacking the brain of its host grasshopper or cricket, and then forcing that organism to drown itself in a puddle, so the noumautomorph might burst forth and wiggle free into

the water to complete the life cycle. As for the blood ballooning, certain parasites, such as ticks and leeches, do expand as they feast on the host blood, filling up like a balloon in the process, though these organisms are generally incapable of individually draining a lethal amount of blood from the host. We might presume then, that Species nineteen hails from a world where they depend on some form of suitable megafauna that can sustain them without succumbing to

blood loss with each feeding. Up next, we have the species referred to informally as the fly, a fairly large winged insect creature that feeds on minerals and of course, synthetic flesh. Obviously, the creature exists as a nasty foil for the show's many synthetic characters, but it also plays on a very real zenobiological consideration. Chemo lithothrops actually exist on Earth in the form of certain bacteria and microbes

that feed on inorganic compounds and minerals. We don't have anything as big as the fly, but it's proof that such forms of life are possible, all right. Up next, we have the specimen d plum the kyrie, which presents itself essentially as a kind of carnivorous plant, but also proves itself capable of fairly speedy movement when necessary, and ultimately conducts itself more as an ambush predator than a

passive trap. We might think of this one as a cross between a venus fly trap, which is capable of rapid plant movement, a walking palm tree which carries out a slow repositioning that I should flag may seem to be exaggerated at times in reporting, and the barnacle enemies from the Half Live video games. You remember these. They dangle down, you walk into the dangling bits, and then

you get sucked up. Finally, we have the show's most fascinating non zenom or alien life form, and that is tripanohica ocellus or t ocellus, a crawling, tentacled eyeball creature that affixes itself to the face of another organism, gouges out one of the eye sockets, and then takes that

eye's place, taking over the organism in the process. Living or dead, the creature is all the more fascinating because it seems quite intelligent and may have an agenda all its own that goes well beyond reproduction and acquiring food.

It's an inventive creature design which calls back to various crawling eye monsters, especially nineteen fifty eight's The Crawling Eye, and also perhaps plays with accounts of the isopod Simonthoa exagua, which has been observed to seemingly replace a fish's tongue. And then, of course we're also playing on general brain hacking parasitic abilities that we see in multiple instances throughout

the natural world. I suppose we'll just have to find out more in a possible second season of Alien Earth, or perhaps in supplemental alien Fiction. Tune in for additional episodes of The Monster, Fact, The Artifact or Animalist at Pendium each week. As always, you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.