Alien: Earth (Neverland)

The curse of this Golden Age is knowing a show doesn’t have to “set up stuff for later” (fandom talk for “we’re pretending this part isn’t boring”) to build up dramatic stakes to be paid off at the narrative’s climax—you can just make your show good now. Were this another time, that this pilot sets up disparate thematic tones with a transhumanism plot colliding with another Alien tale, and only promising to pay off the narrative beats, would have gotten it canceled after three episodes and deemed a cult classic by legions of unbearable nerds. We used to dream.

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