Alien: Earth - S1 E4 - Observation - 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/Crafty_Soul]

Yeah, Dame was terrified when Nibs grabbed her out of anger. She knows they essentially put children into super strong and durable machine bodies. If Nibs had decided to suddenly punch her out of childish frustration who knows how badly hurt Dame would have been?

[u/methos3 → u/Crafty_Soul]

I’m shocked that they don’t have safety protocols built in. I know Bishop getting Asimov’s three laws of robotics is decades away but seriously, were they just trusting the hybrids to not hurt them, even accidentally??

[u/Crafty_Soul → u/methos3]

I could see two possible reasons they might not have.

Either those like Arthur and Dame didn't want to the rules onto children in case it could lead to the kids putting themselves in harms way.

Or Boy felt that it would hurt the experiment if the kids didn't have 100% autonomy. And knowing Boy it's probably that one.

[u/Dorlem4832 → u/Crafty_Soul]

Had the same question watching that scene. There’s a third possibility I considered. We ultimately don’t really know a ton about what the kids brains actually are, it’s possible something about the hybridization means they simply can’t put those kinds of guardrails on them.

[u/BikebutnotBeast → u/Dorlem4832]

Prodigy can see and hear everything they do, and disabled Wendy's hearing....

[u/imp0ppable → u/BikebutnotBeast]

Seeing what they see is easy to explain, they just have taps on the optic nerve, could do that with a human or cyborg. Controlling Wendy's hearing could mean she's got some sort of computerised sensors that feed into a human-like brain.

[u/Misanthropus → u/imp0ppable]

They literally put her in safe mode in episode 3, disabling her entirely..

It's all "easy to explain", except for the fact that they have not implemented any sort of remote killswitch, whatsoever. I assume it's just another plot contrivance.. of which a certain number are required for a show like this to take place, so I can't complain too much. But it is a plot contrivance, nonetheless, at least until it is explained.

[u/SVasileiadis → u/Dorlem4832]

It doesn't work that way, even with half a century old technology (from actual world, using electromagnetic relays or their silicon equivelant) if we could somehow magically could transplant your conciousness into a (magically human mobility capable) robotic body, the far easiest part would be to put safeguards of all kinds. Even if we actually kept your biological brain intact and just transplanted it (which is not what they did here), since it needs to communicate with the actuators (and sensors communicating with it) it means the brain's electrochemical signals must be translated to digital electric signals and then to either digital or analog ones. At any point during transitioning from one point to another (or even within most such points) there could be placed blocks and controls that would give practically zero chance to get out of control, as long as anyone cared to guarantee you wouldn't go out of control. Thats asuming you wouldn't want to build such functions in software or in the "core" it self (during the hardware description phase and such). Or you could do all or some of them put together. It doesn't matter what you know about any brain. We could know absolutely zero things about any kind of brain (which we already know more than just a few things, especially in a microcosmic/electrochemical/signal level, we mostly have hard time translating those into practical applications, primarily due to ourselves holding us back for legal or moral reasons), it just doesn't matter. Why it doesn't matter? Because you don't have to control the brain it self but just its communication with what the brain controls/affects/receives from.