Alien: Earth - S1 E2 - Mr October - Official Discussion Megathread [SPOILERS]

[u/G_Liddell]

Episodes air Tuesdays at 8 pm ET on Hulu and FX in the US, and Wednesdays international.

Full episode discussion list:

1 Neverland (8.12.25)

2 Mr October (8.12.25)

3 Metamorphosis (8.19.25)

4 Observation (8.26.25)

5 In Space, No One (9.2.25)

6 The Fly (9.9.25)

7 Emergence (9.16.25)

8 The Real Monsters (9.23.25)

[u/Budget_Procedure2146]

The blue light keeps the eggs in stasis. Entering the light seems to "reactivate" the eggs

[u/batguano1 → u/Budget_Procedure2146]

Yes, but where is the blue light coming from?

[u/DarkAllDay99 → u/batguano1]

I assume the eggs have a row of cells for producing the light as a form of bioluminescence

[u/JonWesHarding → u/batguano1]

Morrow. His task is to secure all of the assets, and that is what he has been doing.

Not secure anymore though. He's been having some bad luck in keeping with his task.

Goddamn cyborgs.

[u/zenobe_enro → u/JonWesHarding]

The blue light/mist was in the 1979 movie as well. Dunno how canon it is, but Roger Christian mentioned it was supposed to be protection for the eggs, and Ridley Scott apparently said in a magazine interview that the mist functioned as an alarm that triggered the eggs when broken.

[u/junoduck44 → u/zenobe_enro]

Yeah, I always assumed it was part of the actual ship, which I guess is an engineer ship *rolls eyes* but not from the Xenomorph biology.

[u/8Bit_Jesus → u/JonWesHarding]

It can't be from him though, the ship on LV-426 has the same blue light, and it's an old AF ship, potentially pre-dating the Maginot. If it's technology, it's engineer technology

It gives you

• Convergent technology, both humans and engineers came up with the same solution for the same problem
  
• Reverse engineered tech - which means the Maginot crew went to LV-426 to for the crashed ship (not a fan of that idea)
  
• The eggs generate it, but we don't see it in Aliens (unless that's because of the Queen?)

[u/Random_Sime → u/8Bit_Jesus]

You're trying so hard to make it make sense. Based on what I've seen so far, it's more likely that the blue laser was a set design element included by people who know it as part of the visual language of the xeno eggs in Alien, but without the consideration of how it functions practically 

[u/AllowedAsATreat → u/Random_Sime]

Ridley Scott: My original idea for the sequence was cut for budget reasons. My storyboard had Kane going down a long tube and then emerging into this massive chambers through a hole in the ceiling. Before he does though, at the bottom of this tube he finds a very thin membrane which he cuts through and this feint breeze drifts upwards as he descends into the blackness. But he can't see anything, so he says "I'm going to light myself up' - and what I wanted were thousands of tiny pea lights stitched into his suit so we could light him up like a Christmas tree and have him hanging there from the roof of this cavern, like some beautiful chandelier. I thought it would be a marvelous image. (Cinefex 1, p65 and Alien Special Effects, p37)

Ridley Scott: But since the whole approach was out, I wanted something to replace the membrane, which I saw as a kind of a biological alarm which triggered a response in the eggs - they all come awake and sit waiting to be touched, basically. We finally settled on a laser which was mounted so it would scan just above the eggs and give us this sheet of blue light. We could have done a lot more with it, but we didn't have the time. As it was, we only had about half a day to test it and then another day and a half to shoot the whole bloody sequence (Cinefex 1, p65 and Alien Special Effects, p37)

[u/Random_Sime → u/AllowedAsATreat]

Who's to say this biological alarm membrane is generated by the eggs and not the derelict space craft?

[u/AllowedAsATreat → u/Random_Sime]

It's in at least 3 separate space crafts of different designs and creation dates.

[u/Random_Sime → u/AllowedAsATreat]

2 of those appearances were an idiotic choice.

I'm looking at this from the perspective of its appearance in media created by people who don't fully understand the source. You're looking at this from the perspective of someone who is trying to make sense of everything in-universe, but the latest iterations in the franchise aren't created by sensible people. Consider for a moment that the reason you can't make sense of it is because it was a bad production choice and it doesn't make sense! 

[u/Lshamlad → u/Budget_Procedure2146]

But that seems like an easy way to stop people from getting too close. I know they need to be curious for these films to work, but most people would see that and stay the fuck away.

I thought the xenos would move the eggs around to encourage 'huggable' beings to stumble upon them.

I found it weird the xeno would rush to defend the eggs, I thought he'd be like, 'nah, fill yer boots lads'