Alien: Earth, Ep 1 - Climate Report Card
Aug. 24th, 2025 08:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
labingiI enjoyed episode 1 of Alien: Earth. It seems a pretty good show, but for this post I'm just going to evaluate its performance on addressing climate breakdown. I've only seen this ep. once and wasn't taking notes, so feel free to chime in with what I missed.
Baseline: the show is set in 2120, about 100 years from now, i.e. in the middle of dealing with either a) voluntary radical change in how civilization lives on the Earth and/or b) involuntary climate breakdown, with much of the Earth being uninhabitable. How is the show doing with that reality?
* Handicap point: It's trying to maintain continuity with Alien's timeline, which is from the 1970s. (+1)
* Massive technological advancement with no sign of climate impacts on industrial infrastructure, etc.: -1
* Paradisal, verdant island forested with mature trees many of which are probably over 100 and no signs of climate damage or commentary (that I caught) on how this can be: -1
* Community that looks like it has adjusted to significant sea-level rise: +1
* Metropolis with flawless skyscrapers, greenery and no sign of climate damage or slowdown in materials extraction. (To match physical reality, it must have one or the other.): -1
* Massive department stores with many aisles of clothing and splashy ads suggesting that marketing-driven, fast-fashion culture has persisted unchanged for over 100 years without resulting in biophysical ruin for much of the Earth. -3 (This is projection grotesquely out of step with all realistic projections.)
TOTAL: -4
For research I'm drawing on, see the first two sections especially of this bibliography.
Baseline: the show is set in 2120, about 100 years from now, i.e. in the middle of dealing with either a) voluntary radical change in how civilization lives on the Earth and/or b) involuntary climate breakdown, with much of the Earth being uninhabitable. How is the show doing with that reality?
* Handicap point: It's trying to maintain continuity with Alien's timeline, which is from the 1970s. (+1)
* Massive technological advancement with no sign of climate impacts on industrial infrastructure, etc.: -1
* Paradisal, verdant island forested with mature trees many of which are probably over 100 and no signs of climate damage or commentary (that I caught) on how this can be: -1
* Community that looks like it has adjusted to significant sea-level rise: +1
* Metropolis with flawless skyscrapers, greenery and no sign of climate damage or slowdown in materials extraction. (To match physical reality, it must have one or the other.): -1
* Massive department stores with many aisles of clothing and splashy ads suggesting that marketing-driven, fast-fashion culture has persisted unchanged for over 100 years without resulting in biophysical ruin for much of the Earth. -3 (This is projection grotesquely out of step with all realistic projections.)
TOTAL: -4
For research I'm drawing on, see the first two sections especially of this bibliography.
