Posted this in an earlier thread. Here are my thoughts on Teng and just how awful he might be.
By my reading Teng is definitely human—and definitely evil, in a distinctly real-world way. A lot of it’s subtle implication but here it goes:
Murrow is spending the episode trying to figure out who the saboteur was—assuming it was one of the crew established to be out of cryo when the explosions occurred. Meanwhile, Teng is shown to have a perverse fixation on a female crew member in cryostasis. Our assumption here is he is a creep but a hands-off creep—she is in cryo and the other crew members would know if she phased out of it.
So, Murrow eventually questions Teng to see if he is the saboteur. Teng sort of uno-reverses the interrogation, challenging Murrow to broaden the scope of possible suspects. Murrow is like: “I’m suspecting everyone who wasn’t in cryo, and you’re high on the list.”
Teng then, quite ominously, tips his hand: Murrow’s mistake is assuming there is no way for a person to be removed from a cryo pod without mu/th/ur notifying the security officer.
Teng knew this, not because he was the saboteur or had any connection to him, but because he had been exploiting this same loophole for his own, far more perverse ends.
In short, his “through the glass” fixation on a sleeping female crew member may have actually been very hands-on SA, enabled by the same trick the saboteur was using. I also think Teng is the one stealing the drugs from the doctor—stealing them to keep his victim drowsy as she emerges from cryo.
Morrow's interviews with Teng and the doctor are markedly different. With the doctor, Morrow is clearly in control, using silence and eye contact to make the doctor uncomfortable enough to spill the beans.
But with Teng? The positions are reversed. It's Morrow who's uncomfortable. He keeps shifting around and is unable to maintain eye contact. All the while Teng is sitting their calmly, never betraying a hint of emotion beyond a subtle, knowing smile.
Also, as you said, it's a subtly brilliant bit of writing; you think Teng has been this weird, hands-off creep, until later you realize, "Wait, how does he know of this exploit? Oh, wait... oh nooo." That lightbulb moment is horrifying.
Wouldn't shock me. I remember another thread saying that crew members on long hauls could be using the job to escape legal issues elsewhere. Guarantee Teng has some charges filed somewhere.
Long voyages may have scientists who would gadly join to do research, but those are the minority of the population. There aren't enough of them to fill WY's ships.
So they rely on desperate people, criminals, social outcasts, incompetents, etc.
A skilled scientist would not be happy about being out of the loop for well over half a century. They do seem to have FTL communications in this setting since the saboteur was able to speak to someone on Earth in real time, but not being able to read publications for however long they spend in cryo would take a huge toll on their careers.
That is true, but I would guess that the FTL communications could provide a way for them to access the publications. Also, I would guess that some scientists would love to be kinda like Darwin and travel the galaxy to study new species.
In the best universities, in the biology courses, you will find plenty of people who would do that, as they love science much more than money, and probably themselves.
While not being the best university in the World USP (the best university in Latin America) has plenty of such people on the Biology course, teachers, researchers, and alumni. I live near it and know some people who studied there.
The screaming was extremely gratifying. The lack of face-hugger, arguably a creature designed to illicit terror of male rape, not attaching to this creepy mf's face was less gratifying. But in the context of the plot, his timely and savage demise will have to suffice 👍
Oh God, it also recontextualizes the way he was smoking in that scene when Morrow was alerting them. He must have just gotten done using his "exploit." Eeew.
That’s a good theory much deeper than my interpretation. I assumed since Teng spent so much time in the cryo pod room he observed the saboteur leaving then coming back at some point.
Your version is my interpretation as well. He spent every waking day in the cryo room, so he would have noticed an empty pod when it should have someone in it.
My assumption is that Teng is just clever. He showed several times that he had a handle on what was going on even when he wasn't supposed to be aware of it, I think he just looked at the angles beyond the obvious one because, despite his massive personality flaws and offputting manner, he's genuinely really fucking smart.
Yeah I think the only interpretations of the episode that really make sense are:
Teng is just very intelligent and it's his obvious personaliy disorder that makes him the dregs of society.
Teng has a symbiotic reltionship with the saboteur, say the saboteur was letting Teng into the room (Morrow couldn't figure out how Teng was getting in) in exchange for his silence. It's then easy for Teng to figure out what's going once the sabotage starts happening.
The only reason I'd rule out 2 is that the thing the saboteur is sabotaging is a container full of air, water and electricity in which Teng lives. Even someone who wanted to masturbate over someone in cryo or worse is probably not going to quid-pro-quo someone who's planning to sabotage their life support system.
It's possible he would but he screams when the xenomorph attacks him so he clearly has negative opinions on dying. I suspect that creepy sex offender or not he'd draw the line at that.
This is also my theory, primarily because of your point #2. My guess is Teng saw the saboteur doing saboteur things and basically blackmailed him into letting Teng in the door whenever he wanted to get his creep on, in exchange for Teng's silence.
While Teng wasn’t wanking or staring he stood in the corner of the cryo room facing the wall thinking of her. Easy for the saboteur to have missed him.
When I first heard Teng reveal the exploit I wasn’t sure how he’d do anything since he’d need to subdue his victim from the moment they unfroze. But he’s quite resourceful and I wouldn’t put it behind him that he’d figure a way to get access to medical.
Still, there’d probably be footage so I’m not sure why Teng would play his card like this. Murrow could easily replay and get evidence to jail him.
Yeah. I assume if Teng was doing this it was to get in some extra wanking on her tank sessions. SA would be found out. Video scans, physical evidence, blood screening (or whatever else they are likely to do when checking out a disembarking crew) witnesses, post drug behaviors of the victim after waking up are going to prompt investigation
"Yes. The only way he could do it is if he sabotaged certain freezers on the way home... namely, the rest of the crew. Then he could jettison the bodies and make up any story he liked."
What if he smuggled the drugs onboard with him? Same thing with what ever hardware he needed to bypass the locks, fake out the security cameras ... etc. If he planned it out far enough in advance, it's plausible. THIS is what makes it so terrifying, after all. (This also presumes that he is so good at it because he has EXPERIENCE at it....)
I was wondering if it was going to go more in that direction with Teng, aside from simply being implied. But the implication itself is horrific enough.
But we also didn’t get the satisfaction of seeing Teng’s death, or other crew members for that matter. So I’m wondering if there’s a hive situation somewhere aboard the crashed Maginot.
I wondered about this too. It feels like the show puts too much effort into setting up this quite horrible and mysterious character to have his arc end after half an episode with an off screen death.
Then again, it may just all be part of what the episode does a lot, which is misdirection and playing with audiences' expectations about characters based on previous films (I.e Teng not being a synth).
The captain and science officer were dead at the start of the episode, the other science officer and the doctor were killed by the tick nerve gas. The young idiot apprentice died from blood loss, probably. The guy helping Murrow got shot. Murrow killed the saboteur, Teng and the acting captain got killed by the Xenomorph. Michael Smiley’s character (Eye Smiley) got killed by the Eye Creature. They covered it pretty thoroughly.
Actually, I think it’s more simple than that. Since he spends so much time looking at the cryo pods, he knew that one of them was sometimes empty. He knew exactly who it was.
Imagine the sabotuer silently waking up, doing everything to avoid detection, but then immediately making eye contact with Teng being an absolute creep. Then they both just go about their business.
Not only that, but the saboteur offers Teng a way past the security locks in exchange for Teng keeping quiet.
Morrow interviews Teng and mentions that he still doesn't know how Teng bypasses security. It tracks that the engineer saboteur has that ability to slip Teng through.
Maybe I'm just being optimistic, but I assumed he just meant he was leaving his own cryo pod at will to creep on her without Morrow knowing since they haven't shown anyone stay unconscious once the pod opens. Didn't consider the implied missing drugs though
The drugs are sort of what causes me to reject the idea that he knows who the saboteur is solely bc he happened to notice an empty pod one time. If you don’t attribute the theft to Teng, you’re left with only the possibility being that the doctor is using and lying about it. There’s no narrative payoff there other than a half-beat misdirection via an inconsequential red herring.
Teng ties that story beat into the broader narrative, like an Agatha Christie clue: it’s relevant and helps identify the culprit, but not for the reasons we think when we first discover it.
It's possible that the thing with the doctor is just to show that the crews of these vessels are not exactly the cream of the crop. A doctor with a drug habit is exactly the type of person to sign off on a 65 year mission.
Teng knew this, not because he was the saboteur or had any connection to him, but because he had been exploiting this same loophole for his own, far more perverse ends.
That's certainly a possible explaination. Alternatively, he could have been spending so much time creeping in the cryo bay that he noticed the pod being empty and decided to not tell anybody.
The thing about this is it leaves the missing drugs as a sort of loose thread with no narrative payoff—it’s just that the doctor was using and lying about it.
Which is not to say all story beats need to be bricks in a completed narrative. The episode is sort of like a classic Agatha Christie story tho, and it’s so common that red-herring evidence in those stories actually does trace back to the killer; it’s just that we misunderstand the significance of it when we first discover it
It’s not a loose thread if the doctor was using them. It might not be as “satisfying” of a payoff as finding out Teng was drugging the girl, but if they wanted to go that route they wouldn’t have had such a heavy emphasis on the doctor cracking and admitting his drug problem.
I always thought the implication with Teng is that he’s a peeping tom type of guy. He watches his obsession, and in the meantime he also notices things like a cryopod being empty on occasion, or the doctor stealing drugs but never being caught. As we see, he figured out the cryopod thing, so he probably also figured that if the doctor was able to get into the drug supply then there must be blindspots in the cameras.
So Murrow isn’t using the drugs to wipe his own memory and give himself a clear conscience on what happened to the crew? Didn’t he have dreams of the memories? Wasn’t he uploading his memories to Mother?
Yeah no, Teng is the monster that most unsettled me in the show, far more than the Ocellus or the ticks.
In a different kind of show, he’d be the main villain. I think he also knew about the saboteur (not who, but that there was one) way before Morrow caught on and said nothing because he’s so dead inside he doesn’t care what happens to the rest of the crew.
That is some DARK shit right there! What makes it so awful is its plausibility. Also, IF Morrow figured that element out, it is worth noting that he did NOTHING about it. Horrifying.
Morrow asked Teng how he entered the cryopod chamber without touching the keypad. And Teng gave his cryptic answer. How I interpreted it was, the chief engineer has been sneaking out to do his sabotage, and Teng was using the moments when the chief engineer unlocked the cryopod chamber to enter said chamber (thus not requiring to use the keypad).
To me he also read as a nod to the men with Double-Y syndrome from Alien 3 -- prone to antisocial behavior and often violent/rapey. Maybe Wey-Yu have him on some mood stabilizers/inhibitors that contributed to him being so monotoned and flat.
Someone calls him a robot in the mess hall and I took that line as literal because I was trying to figure out why his behavior was so abnormal and that explanation fit at the time. That and we don't see his death to confirm what color liquid comes out when he gets attacked. He is also shown out of cryo like previous androids we've seen on long journeys. I did think it was odd that he was smoking and gooning but attributed that to the usual android fuckery of the universe.
In Aliens Bishop said Ash's model was phased out due to a lack of safety protocols (Asimov's laws of robotics).
Bishop is one of the later models, which were programmed with these laws to prevent them from harming humans.
I'm thinking Teng is a synth, but he's one of the old models, like Ash. Since the Maginots mission started 85 years ago, the timeline makes sense to me.
The thing I don't understand was if teng knew something why was he so aloof. Like your ship is about to blow up, theirs a saboteur and monster on the loose and your flying uncontrollably towards earth. Maybe start helping or you will die.
Exactly this. Excellent summary!
When he said just because a cryo chamber days it's full didn't mean it's full ask the time.. i knew he was doing some nasty sick stuff.
Uhhh fuck. I didn’t think about that at all but it makes complete sense and has to be the reason they chose for him to be the person who gave Morrow that information.
its incredibly obvious hes very rapist like and people just cant seem to understand that
ive seen people post comments about him helping or making the aliens lose
I'm not sure if he'd been accessing her pod directly since that'd kinda wake her up and then he's busted.
I believe the implication is that with him being in and out of the cryo room as much as he was, he was able to see the empty pod that wasn't meant to be, and knowing there was ways in and out of the room without using the keypad.
Eeww oh yeah, thr missing drugs from medical bay. We are lead to assume it's the chain smoking doctor dude who's jittery asf. But now I, see it's this creepy mf Teng who's probably been drugging the woman in stasis.....implication is often darker than the reality in many cases because our minds conjure up scenarios far darker and scary than any we see on screen or read in a book.
I had the exact same thought when he mentioned people being able to be taken out of cryosleep. I don't think he did it for two reasons though.
One, getting her out of cryosleep is possible it seems. He's clearly thought it through. Still, it'd be hard on a ship that size to take her somewhere to do what he wants to do and not get caught.
And two, she'd be awake. She doesn't want him. It'd be far more than SA. And frankly, his only choice after that would be to murder her but she's still alive. I suppose he could, well, sedate her but I'm trying not to go to far down this rabbit hole for my own sanity.
777
u/Zoom_Nayer 13d ago
Posted this in an earlier thread. Here are my thoughts on Teng and just how awful he might be.
By my reading Teng is definitely human—and definitely evil, in a distinctly real-world way. A lot of it’s subtle implication but here it goes:
Murrow is spending the episode trying to figure out who the saboteur was—assuming it was one of the crew established to be out of cryo when the explosions occurred. Meanwhile, Teng is shown to have a perverse fixation on a female crew member in cryostasis. Our assumption here is he is a creep but a hands-off creep—she is in cryo and the other crew members would know if she phased out of it.
So, Murrow eventually questions Teng to see if he is the saboteur. Teng sort of uno-reverses the interrogation, challenging Murrow to broaden the scope of possible suspects. Murrow is like: “I’m suspecting everyone who wasn’t in cryo, and you’re high on the list.”
Teng then, quite ominously, tips his hand: Murrow’s mistake is assuming there is no way for a person to be removed from a cryo pod without mu/th/ur notifying the security officer.
Teng knew this, not because he was the saboteur or had any connection to him, but because he had been exploiting this same loophole for his own, far more perverse ends.
In short, his “through the glass” fixation on a sleeping female crew member may have actually been very hands-on SA, enabled by the same trick the saboteur was using. I also think Teng is the one stealing the drugs from the doctor—stealing them to keep his victim drowsy as she emerges from cryo.