Sifu Fox

Update: Show has improved from episode three onward. Still pending further judgement, but updating to 3 stars out of fairness. Very rough start though (see below): As an OG Alien fan, Alien and Aliens—plus the expanded universe comics and novels—were a huge part of my childhood and creative inspiration. This show should be for me. On the surface, it nails the aesthetic: the sets, the lighting, the atmosphere—they look right. But that’s where it stops. The story feels like a strange fever dream of an Alien tale, or one of the weaker expanded-universe side stories. The xenomorph is just… there. It runs around killing people at random, without harvesting, nesting, or showing any of the predatory intelligence that defines it. This breaks one of the core tenets of the Alien universe—its biology and behavior have always been consistent, and here, they’re just set aside for generic slasher violence. Worse, the main characters seem bizarrely unconcerned. They behave as if the creature is some distant rumor instead of a present, active threat. This undercuts any tension or horror, leaving the Alien as background noise in its own franchise. Instead, the focus is on a disjointed main plot that could be set in any sci-fi universe. The philosophical undertones feel hollow, like they’re trying to mimic the deeper themes of the originals without actually weaving them into the story. It’s surreal—but not in a good way. Kids in Android bodies as the main characters? A guy that nearly gets eaten by alien to reminisce about baseball moments later and not even mention the creature to the next person he meets? Some nerd "boy genius" messing with Weyland Yutani? What happened to cool hardened rough necks and colonial space marines? Main characters you could respect and care about and reflected the dark universe they came from? People whose traits you could respect and look up to? Villains that weren't over the top, but gritty and real? And a monster that took center stage because it made you face existential dread? The visual tone is spot on, but the writing is erratic, the Alien is wasted, and the story feels fundamentally disconnected from what makes this universe compelling.