Alien Worlds Review
Jan. 3rd, 2021 01:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
citrakayahNo, I'm not warning for spoilers because this is a mockumentary.
I like speculative evolution, so it was with considerable anticipation that I watched Alien Worlds, which Netflix released about a month ago.
After watching it, I don't think it's a work of speculative evolution. I think it's a work of science education, using speculative evolution to explain things--that's why it spent half its time talking about Earthly analogs, and why it didn't address what would, in a work of speculative evolution, be the equivalent of plot holes.
Nevertheless, I'm going to review it as if it was because why not.
Atlas -- This is probably my favorite episode of the bunch. I like the design of the giant flyers and the predators; I was prepared to doubt the ballonts because really small ones tend not to work so well, but they never specified size so I think we can assume these are large enough.
The scavengers--I'm going to call them shoggoths--were a bit odd, mostly because they looked like gibbering mouthers. Or, well, shoggoths. They're kind of like a macroscopic amoeba, and I just don't really think that works translated up to macroscopic size. They don't have anything in the way of recognizable organs--they've got these club things with what might be sensory organs on them. No visible signs of a respiratory or digestive system. I can't shake the feeling that they don't have one, especially since their strategy is to move by rolling and hunt by rolling onto prey.
Janus -- This your classic tidally locked world--one side hot, one side cold, and a temperate twilight zone. We have one species of pentapod--yes, just one--that breeds in the twilight zone and shoots larvae into the atmosphere to be dispersed by wind. The ones that land in the hot and cold zones have unique adaptations to survive there. But the documentary is leaving out some very interesting things, because the only way that the polyphenism they describe could be selected for is if some of those hot side and cold side pentapods make their way back to the twilight zone to spawn.
It's also not clear what the energy source in the hot zone is, given the fact that the entire hemisphere appears to be a totally barren flat. Maybe the blue-green bugs are photosynthetic; I'll assume they are.
Eden -- This is a lush planet. Other people have pointed out the problem with the premise (it would actually be getting less sunlight than Earth). I will not go into detail because I don't feel like putting in that amount of work.
I will, however, point out that the main predator of our main prey species is shown to be arboreal. The cocoons of the prey species hang between tree trunks from thin tendrils with no camouflage shown. Seems weird.
Terra -- This one shouldn't count. I don't consider the dreams of the space cadets to be good speculative evolution, and this was just dripping with it. From everyone being brains in vats, to fleets of AI robots obediently doing everything the creators wanted, to terraforming using giant floating platforms with no visible methods of propulsion other than the giant laser beams they were shooting into the ice caps. It basically looked like someone asked, "Okay, how do we communicate that this species is 'more advanced.'" And then they just did it without regards to sense.
There's really not much to say for it. It's aliens transforming a new planet to be like their old planet because their sun is aging and getting too hot. There, I saved you forty-five minutes.
I like speculative evolution, so it was with considerable anticipation that I watched Alien Worlds, which Netflix released about a month ago.
After watching it, I don't think it's a work of speculative evolution. I think it's a work of science education, using speculative evolution to explain things--that's why it spent half its time talking about Earthly analogs, and why it didn't address what would, in a work of speculative evolution, be the equivalent of plot holes.
Nevertheless, I'm going to review it as if it was because why not.
Atlas -- This is probably my favorite episode of the bunch. I like the design of the giant flyers and the predators; I was prepared to doubt the ballonts because really small ones tend not to work so well, but they never specified size so I think we can assume these are large enough.
The scavengers--I'm going to call them shoggoths--were a bit odd, mostly because they looked like gibbering mouthers. Or, well, shoggoths. They're kind of like a macroscopic amoeba, and I just don't really think that works translated up to macroscopic size. They don't have anything in the way of recognizable organs--they've got these club things with what might be sensory organs on them. No visible signs of a respiratory or digestive system. I can't shake the feeling that they don't have one, especially since their strategy is to move by rolling and hunt by rolling onto prey.
Janus -- This your classic tidally locked world--one side hot, one side cold, and a temperate twilight zone. We have one species of pentapod--yes, just one--that breeds in the twilight zone and shoots larvae into the atmosphere to be dispersed by wind. The ones that land in the hot and cold zones have unique adaptations to survive there. But the documentary is leaving out some very interesting things, because the only way that the polyphenism they describe could be selected for is if some of those hot side and cold side pentapods make their way back to the twilight zone to spawn.
It's also not clear what the energy source in the hot zone is, given the fact that the entire hemisphere appears to be a totally barren flat. Maybe the blue-green bugs are photosynthetic; I'll assume they are.
Eden -- This is a lush planet. Other people have pointed out the problem with the premise (it would actually be getting less sunlight than Earth). I will not go into detail because I don't feel like putting in that amount of work.
I will, however, point out that the main predator of our main prey species is shown to be arboreal. The cocoons of the prey species hang between tree trunks from thin tendrils with no camouflage shown. Seems weird.
Terra -- This one shouldn't count. I don't consider the dreams of the space cadets to be good speculative evolution, and this was just dripping with it. From everyone being brains in vats, to fleets of AI robots obediently doing everything the creators wanted, to terraforming using giant floating platforms with no visible methods of propulsion other than the giant laser beams they were shooting into the ice caps. It basically looked like someone asked, "Okay, how do we communicate that this species is 'more advanced.'" And then they just did it without regards to sense.
There's really not much to say for it. It's aliens transforming a new planet to be like their old planet because their sun is aging and getting too hot. There, I saved you forty-five minutes.
