My Thoughts on “Alien Worlds” (2020)
Foreword:
This was originally written and posted on DeviantART on Thursday February 16, 2023. This was a show that I had watched and reviewed toward the beginning of 2023. I hadn’t reposted it on my blog last year at any point because I didn’t feel like reposting it then. But now I do because I really want to have another repost on here for the month of January so I can use the foreword as an excuse to talk about the news and the latest political developments in the country that are on my mind right now and have things to get off my chest about. Whenever I don’t write an entire dedicated post to talking about a specific news topic or topics, I use the forewords of the reposts to do it. It’s a very easy and convenient way to do it. I also use them to talk about movies I’ve seen or video games I’ve played that I don’t feel like writing full reviews for.
That’s what I did for Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem, that GameCube exclusive Lovecraftian horror game that was released in 2002 and absolutely failed commercially, only selling 500,000 copies, not even making it a million. I talked it at length in the foreword of my Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones review, which was also a repost from DeviantART and is still currently the most popular post on my blog, though all of those views are from me since Blogger counts the author’s own views as part of the view total. In fact, it was because of the section of that foreword talking about Eternal Darkness and me making additions and edits to it that the post overall accumulated so many views so quickly. If Blogger was more accurate and honest about the views, none of my posts would have any views.
But, my Ruby Gloom review (also a repost) has been blowing up lately, like I’ve getting genuine views from people visiting the blog, not just me looking at the post to check for mistakes or reading it to see the edits I made to it. It’s also overtaken my Ghost and Molly McGee review on the chart of the most popular posts of the blog, there’s three slots and currently the Ruby Gloom review is at #2. If it keeps gaining views, then it might overtake my Attack of the Clones review as well.
But, before I talk about the news that’s on my mind right now, I guess I should a little bit about this show and my thoughts on it as of now, so that this foreword isn’t completely off-topic. It has been a long time since I’ve watched Alien Worlds, in fact I haven’t watched it since I wrote this review, so I can’t say that my thoughts on the show have changed at all since I only watched it once and it’s almost been two years. On February 16 of this year, it will officially be two years. So, I have forgotten a lot of things about it, I had to read the actual review before I started writing this to refresh my mind a little bit on what this series was about and what I actually thought of it. I don’t even know if it’s still on Netflix anymore, it’s been that long. It wouldn’t surprise me in the least if it was taken off of Netflix since Netflix is infamous for removing shows and movies from their service sometimes for seemingly little reason or no reason at all, making them pretty much unavailable anywhere.
I did like it, I gave it a fairly positive review at the time, much more positive than most other reviews of the show that I had seen online. Most of your professional critics (some of whom working for the top publications) were pretty positive about it while your average non-professional film reviewer (“non-professional” as in they’re not working for a newspaper 📰 or any other kind of news outlet or magazine) and science and science fiction enthusiasts was pretty negative about it. I liked most of the alien designs and concepts behind most of the alien species that were featured in the show.
The only ones I didn’t like were the predators (no relation to the Predators, or Yautja, from the Predator franchise) and the grazers, and the intelligent aliens in the final episode that have completely forsaken their biology and have become highly computerized. Like, they don’t really have physical bodies anymore, they’re just collections of neurons stored inside of machines, sort of like brains 🧠 in vats, and they just have robots that they initially built but pretty much build themselves at that point that we see them do all the work.
It’s one of the more boring takes on intelligent aliens that I’ve in any piece of science fiction, and I find that more often than not it’s used by science fiction authors, science communicators, and futurologists to explain what humanity will turn into. Like, some of them argue that far off into the future, long after all of us are dead, humanity will abandon their biological bodies and either just become computer data stored in a bunch of servers floating through space on a spaceship (similar to the robots and androids at the end of Mars Express) or become brains 🧠 or neurons floating in vats on spaceships floating through space while robots to all the work and take care of us.
I don’t think that, I’m not convinced that is the future of humanity and it will ever happen or is even possible. I don’t even see how this would even remotely be a desirable future. Why would you want to reduced to just a brain 🧠 or a bunch of neurons inside of vats or even being computer data stored inside servers, unable to move and pretty much being completely stationary, while robots do all the work and get to have all the fun? Sounds like a pretty boring existence to me, completely inhuman too. Seems far to many people within the sci-fi community, science communication space, and futurology space want humanity to lose their humanity or think they will lose their humanity just so we can go off into space and explore other planets.
The designs of the predators and grazers on the planet Eden weren’t very good because they looked too much like Earth animals 🌎. The predators looked like monkeys 🐒 or lemurs with eyes with weird horizontal pupils, weird looking ears, and maybe four arms but I’m not sure (I don’t remember). There certainly isn’t a lot that’s alien about their design, I’ll tell you that. The grazers just look like rabbits 🐇 crossed with moths, like their bodies look like rabbits 🐇, but their eyes and mouths look more like that of a moth, and instead of having rabbit ears, they have antennae that sort of resemble those of moths. It’s a very lazy approach to alien design that I’ve seen far too many times in science fiction movies, TV shows, and video games.
A lot of criticism directed towards this show from speculative evolution enthusiasts and science enthusiasts (general biology nerds) had to do with the designs of the aliens as well as the ways many of them were depicted, and the science used to explain them. A lot of the science in this dubious at best 🤨 from what I understand, like it isn’t very scientifically accurate (or rather, scientifically authentic or scientifically plausible), and most of doesn’t really make a lot of sense. I remember seeing a lot of people take issue with the flying creature from episode 1 I believe, the flying herbivore on the planet Atlas (my cousin and his girlfriend named their baby boy ♂︎ Atlas by the way). Less criticism was towards the carnivorous flying creature, the one that hunts the herbivore, but a lot of the criticisms directed towards the flying herbivore also apply to the flying carnivore as well.
They questioned how an animal, even an alien animal, could survive and function flying perpetually in the air especially when these creatures are shown to die as soon as they land on the ground and lay their eggs. Only the females ♀︎ of this species land, and only do so to lay eggs. But I didn’t mind the flying creatures on Atlas, I thought they were cool in design and interesting in concept, even neither one is particularly scientifically plausible. But I will admit I like the flying carnivore more than the flying herbivore, it’s a much unique concept and design in my opinion.
Oddly enough, the thing that received the most amount of praise across the board, even from haters of the show, is not the aliens or any of the sci-fi stuff but the actual real scientists and real science that are featured in-between each of the predominantly CGI sequences on the various alien planets featured in the show. They’re supposed to offer real world scientific explanations or real world parallels to what’s being shown on the alien planets with the various extraterrestrial lifeforms, but really they’re only very loosely connected.
Sometimes what’s being shown in the real world science scenes has nothing to do with the sci-fi scenes on the alien planet like when they showed that African tribe that worked with birds to find bee hives to extract honey 🍯 from. That had nothing to do with the aliens or alien planet that were featured in that particular episode, I don’t remember which one it was. But, as disconnected as those scenes were from the alien stuff, they were still better executed and were much better received than most of the alien stuff. I remember people particularly praising the diversity of the scientists featured, and that was worth praising. It was nice to see some scientists that weren’t just a bunch of white guys ♂︎.
There’s also a bit of controversy about the show possibly being a ripoff of a very similar British sci-fi documentary series 🇬🇧 also called Alien Worlds. It went under the title Extraterrestrial here in the US 🇺🇸. Despite them having the same title (at least in the UK 🇬🇧), these two shows are not actually connected to each other at all. Alien Worlds (2020) is not a remake of Alien Worlds (2005), it’s a completely separate that just happens to share the same title. Or so we’re led to believe. People have pointed out a lot of similarities between the two shows, including in the alien designs which they felt were too similar for it to just be a coincidence or an accident. One reviewer went as far as to suggest that Alien Worlds (2020) plagiarized from Alien Worlds (2005).
I have expressed some skepticism towards the idea that Alien Worlds (2020) is plagiarized. I wrote an update, which you’ll see down below where I talk about this other show and discuss the similarities between the two based on what I had seen in that video accusing this show of plagiarism, and I said that I didn’t think that this show plagiarized from that show, and that the claims of plagiarism were exaggerated at best and were driven by hatred towards this series. I said that people were trying to find any reason to hate this show including accusing it of plagiarism. My opinions on this matter have not changed as you can probably because I haven’t actually watched that other show and I haven’t watched this show is really long time. So, I’m not in a position to judge and say if it is plagiarized or not.
If you want to watch a good docufiction (a type of documentary that is pure fiction and not based in reality at all) about an alien planet that explores the ecology of this planet, then watch Alien Planet also from 2005. It’s based on a 1990 book 📖 written by a sci-fi speculative evolution author Wayne Barlowe called Expedition, and it’s basically about these robotic manmade probes named Ike and Leo that are sent to an exoplanet (the technical term for an alien planet) named Darwin IV (named after Charles Darwin, the father of the theory of evolution and natural selection), a planet that has life on it. And the whole film is just the two probes exploring this planet and seeing all the different alien lifeforms that inhabit it, including a primitive yet intelligent species referred to simply as the Eosapiens.
All while the narrator as well as the many scientists being interviewed give plausible scientific explanations for each of the creatures shown on Darwin IV. Since this planet is called Darwin IV, would that mean lifeforms that hail from this planet or anything related to this planet would be called Darwinians or Darwinian? The film also features interviews from a couple of science fiction authors and filmmakers, including George Lucas himself. How did they get George Lucas to do an interview for this film? Because it was 2005, Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith was coming out or was already out by Alien Planet was made, so Lucas was in the public eye at the same time, he was in the spotlight living large, if only to promote the movie. So, it was a lot easier to score an interview with Lucas back then, even for a docufiction such as this, than it would be now, now that he doesn’t have a movie he has to promote.
The alien designs are a lot better, they actually look alien, and the narrative is a lot better. That is a huge criticism that some people levied at Alien Worlds is that it lacked a narrative to each of these events in a cohesive whole. It was mostly just showing the day in the life of these alien creatures while bombarding you with all kinds of information about them in form of narration and interviews. Documentaries (especially docufictions) are just like any other film, they need to have a story. They can’t just spew a bunch of information and give facts, they need to have a story the audience can follow and get invested in. A lot of the best documentaries, the ones that win awards, have stories or narratives that the information and facts are being funneled through. Ideally, a documentary is supposed to entertain you and make you feel something as well as inform you and educate you. Alien Planet does that perfectly, much better than Alien Worlds, Alien Worlds (2020) that is. I can’t comment on Alien Worlds (2005) because I’ve never seen it 😅.
Well, with that out of the way, I can finally talk about what I really wanted to talk about in this foreword: politics 😁. Sarcasmitron hasn’t posted a video talking any of the latest developments in American politics 🇺🇸, so I guess I’ve got to do it myself. It is Tuesday January 21, 2025 at the time that I’m writing this, the day after Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Donald Trump was officially sworn in, so as of yesterday, he is now officially the President of the United States 🇺🇸 for at least the next four years (including this one)…I hope. He may try to stay in office beyond those four years by abolishing term limits for the president or whatever, but legally, he is supposed to only serve two four year terms if he is elected and then re-elected.
But, this is Trump we’re talking about, he has shown that he has nothing but contempt for the law and the traditions and sanctity of the presidency, he has nothing but contempt for our institutions and our form of government, especially since he is the first convicted felon elected to the highest office in the land (as well as the oldest one to be sworn in), but also since he pardoned over a thousand January 6th insurrectionists, domestic terrorists who tried to overthrow our government and keep Trump in office illegally by blocking the certification of the election results, and therefore blocking the peaceful transfer of power, as soon as he took office. It was one of the first executive orders he signed on his first day on the job. One of the few campaign promises he has kept so far unfortunately 😒.
The irony of a man ♂︎ who is anathema to everything Martin Luther King stood for being sworn in on the same day that celebrates him is not lost on me. It’s not lost on anyone. I didn’t watch the inauguration as didn’t many other people who didn’t vote for Trump and strong oppose him and his policies, I just watched one of the highlights of it and other people’s coverage of it. And it truly was a weird day. Whether it was the inauguration being held indoors (supposedly due to weather), whether it was Trump not putting his hand on the Bible while he took the oath, whether it was all the tech billionaires who were present, or whether it was Elon Musk doing a Nazi salute while giving a speech at the post-inauguration ceremony at the Capital One Arena in Washington DC. Two Nazi salutes in fact. It was truly embarrassing 🤦♂️ and dare I say, scary 😰? it really should’ve been Kamala Harris out there getting sworn in as President of the United States 🇺🇸 yesterday 😔.
A lot of Musk fans and MAGA cultists 🇺🇸 tried to defend him by saying that he wasn’t doing Nazi salutes, and even if he did, it was an accident, and even then, Democrats have done that same gesture during their speeches, but no. Those were definitely Nazi salutes that Elon Musk did, don’t let anyone tell you any different. Don’t let these idiotic Musk fans (more like Musk cultists) and MAGA cultists 🇺🇸 take pictures of Democrats out of context and tell you that it’s the same as what Musk did, it’s not. They’re lying to you, it is all propaganda.
It was not an accident, it was not a coincidence, and it is not a one time thing, it is part of a pattern of behavior on the part of Musk that can be traced back all the way back to his upbringing in Apartheid South Africa. Musk has fully embraced far-right politics, or perhaps always was far-right and did a good job at hiding it for many years, and only decided to be more open about it as soon as it was advantageous for him to do so. As some have already noted, Musk has openly and publicly supported the AfD Party (Alternative for Deutschland 🇩🇪) in Germany 🇩🇪, a far-right, fascistic, populist political party that is as close to being a Nazi party as you can possibly get in modern Germany 🇩🇪.
So, the two Nazi salutes Musk gave during his speech at the Capital One Arena were definitely no accident, he’s being brazen about his support for the AfD Party as well as being brazen about the fact he is the real power behind Trump and perhaps even the co-president, and that he and Trump are the American fascists 🇺🇸. Of course, as others have noted as well, the Nazi salute itself is illegal in Germany 🇩🇪 (for obvious reasons), so if Musk was a German citizen 🇩🇪 and done that same salute as many times as he did, he would’ve been arrested.
AfD is not the only far-right populist party in Europe that Musk has publicly supported either. He’s also verbally and financially supported Reform UK 🇬🇧, the far-right populist party in the UK 🇬🇧 led by Nigel Farage, one of the main architects of Brexit 🇬🇧, something that has become quite controversial to support and no one previously called for it and actively campaigned for it wants to take credit for it anymore because of how much of a disaster it has proven it be. He’s also threatened to overthrow the British government 🇬🇧 and install a different government more favorable to America 🇺🇸 (Trump’s America 🇺🇸 that is), and has even called upon the British king 🇬🇧, King Charles III to stage a coup against the current prime minister Kier Starmer and the Labour Party controlled parliament.
Musk’s far-right transformation, or perhaps his recent openness about his already held far-right beliefs shouldn’t be that much of a surprise. This guy ♂︎ was born in South Africa 🇿🇦 during Apartheid, he grew up during Apartheid, and his family personally benefited from Apartheid (I think his father even had connections to the regime if I’m not mistaken), almost directly in fact. So, he was molded by it like a lot of white South Africans 🇿🇦 were before Apartheid was abolished and the country transformed into the Rainbow Nation 🇿🇦 that we know today. It gave a real sense of white supremacy and white privilege, even more than even white supremacists here in America 🇺🇸.
Even if Apartheid itself was inspired by Jim Crow laws in the American South 🇺🇸. South Africa 🇿🇦’s racial caste system was directly inspired by the American South 🇺🇸’s racial caste system. Some have suggested that Musk (and all of his family really) actually misses Apartheid, and wishes it was never abolished, and actually desires to have it restored. Given his recent support for Trump and far-right candidates and movements in Europe, and his support for far-right politics as a whole, I am a bit more inclined to believe that now than I was before.
As mentioned before, Trump’s inauguration yesterday was notable for a couple of things. The first and most superficial is that Trump didn’t place his hand on the Bible while he took the oath of office. It is tradition that when a president is being sworn in and is taking the oath of office, they put their hand on a Bible while reciting the oath. It is yet another tradition that Trump broke, and that Biden tried to otiosely maintain. Of course, him not putting his hand on the Bible while the oath is quite symbolic, if a bit unintentional (even if part of does think it was intentional) because it shows that he has intention of keeping his oath through his second term.
In fact, during the recitation, he didn’t say the part of the oath where an inaugurated president is supposed to say they will defend the constitution from all enemies, foreign and domestic. Even a pathological liar like Trump knows that’s too big of a lie to tell, and there’d be way too much cognitive dissonance with someone who violated the constitution multiple times and intends on violating it again (in fact he said he wanted to terminate it outright), including by inciting an insurrection, saying that they would defend it from all threats foreign and domestic. He already failed to defend it from domestic threats, domestic enemies, in fact he actively sided with those domestic enemies, and still sides with them.
This also proves without a shred of a doubt that Trump is not Christian ✝️, never was, he never read the Bible once, and all those Evangelical Christians ✝️ who voted for him and unironically see him as a “warrior for God” are the real suckers and losers. In fact, everyone who voted for him, voted third party, or didn’t vote at all and intentionally sat this one out are suckers and losers in my opinion. Especially all those vocal Palestine supporters 🇵🇸 who either voted third party or sat the election out as protest against the Biden administration’s handling of the war in Gaza, you’re all morons.
Especially since Trump signed an executive order decriminalizing Israeli settlements 🇮🇱 in the West Bank and Israeli settlers 🇮🇱 who’ve abused or even killed Palestinians 🇵🇸 in the West Bank, meaning the Israeli settlements 🇮🇱 will continue unabated, Israel 🇮🇱 will continue to absorb the West Bank, and more Palestinians 🇵🇸 will suffer and die. I hope you’re happy, I hope you’re real proud of yourselves and what your stupid decisions caused 😒👏.
Trump is not pro-Palestine 🇵🇸, he never was, he didn’t get the ceasefire deal in Gaza between Israel 🇮🇱 and Hamas, and he is not a defender of Palestinian rights 🇵🇸 or Palestinian sovereignty 🇵🇸. He is pro-Israel 🇮🇱, always has been, and the fact that people like Kim Iverson continue to lie and make seem like he is just because this ceasefire deal happened after he gave that speech and said all those vague threats is just sickening to me, it is pure evil. Kim Iverson is pure evil, she is a Trump propagandist (and a Russian and Chinese propagandist 🇷🇺🇨🇳 as well which might as well all be the same thing at this point) pretending to be a leftist, an anti-imperialist leftist at that.
Trump’s presidency just feels different this time. It feels a lot more sinister this time around. He didn’t put his hand on the Bible while taking the oath of office. He didn’t say that he would defend the constitution from all threats, foreign and domestic. The official White House changed its color from a white or lighter blue color to a dark blue color after Biden left office and Trump took over. Even is presidential portrait is different this time around and is much darker and more sinister than his previous one. I thought he was just going to use his same one from his first term since it’s a continuation of his presidency, it’s his second term. But no, he didn’t do that. Instead, he decided to recreate his mugshot and use that his official presidential portrait. In his first presidential portrait, he was all smiling 😁, trying to look friendly and inviting, unassuming, honorable and like a normal president. Most presidents have in fact smiled in their official portraits.
But in this new one, he’s all scowling, looking all mean, and trying to look scary and intimidating. It’s also in darker lighting too, like the background is all dark and blue, and the only light is on his face, his ugly criminal face. He’s given up on any pretenses that he is a normal president, and is anything more than a criminal. We have just elected our first truly criminal president, a criminal prosecuted and liable president, and he is out for revenge, he’s a revenge president. He’s out for revenge against his perceived political opponents, and he is out to break the laws of this country, abusing his power as much as humanly possible. He’s being brazen about it, rubbing it in our faces, like “I’m a criminal and a crook, and you still voted for me again anyway. There’s nothing you can do about it haha 😈.” And the fact that this portrait, this mugshot portrait, is going to be in every federal building in this country so long as he’s president is astonishing to me, I am truly at a loss for words.
He did gave a speech after taking the oath (before, I don’t exactly which order that’s usually in), in which he said pretty much all the same usual nonsense that we’re all used to him saying at this point, except this time he threw a little bone 🦴 to Elon Musk (who was there for the proceedings along with Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Tim Cook, Shou Zi Chew, Sam Altman, Sergey Brin, and Sundar Pichai) by talking about going to Mars and planting the American flag 🇺🇸 on the planet’s surface, something that will never happen at least during our lifetimes. Musk doesn’t care so much about the planting the flag 🇺🇸 part because he’s an un-American douche, but he does care about going to Mars, it’s something he’s talked about ever since he created SpaceX and he’s been promising for many years now that he will land on Mars or even establish a colony on Mars any year now. Don’t worry guys, it’s going to happen this time, Elon means it this time, we’re going to do it this year or in the coming years 😑.
But, there were a couple of things in his speech that caught my interest. He mentioned his desire to reacquire the Panama Canal 🇵🇦 by any times he deems necessary including military force (he still has not ruled out using military force to take the Panama Canal 🇵🇦 if he can’t make a deal and purchase it), and even pushed the lie that it’s being controlled by China 🇨🇳, it isn’t. And he also mentioned his desire to rename the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, which got a laugh out of Hillary Clinton 😆, laughing at Trump’s stupid suggestion to rename the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. He made that official by signing an executive order by the way.
He didn’t mention Greenland 🇬🇱 or Canada 🇨🇦, but it is clear that still wants them as well. He also didn’t mention Mexico 🇲🇽, just that he wants to rename the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America and he wants to designate drug cartels as terrorist organizations, but I still do think he wants a war with Mexico 🇲🇽. Not a trade war, an actual shooting war, with guns, tanks, fighter jets, helicopters, artillery, missiles, and bombs. But for whatever reason, he’s keeping that one close to the chest, which probably means he’s really serious about it.
I still have seen people express skepticism that Trump is going to pursue any of that, that he’s going to try to expand America 🇺🇸’s territory and invade and annex these places, particularly Luke Beasley, a young Gen Z (maybe) political commentator on YouTube who stopped watching regularly and only watch every once in a while; just to check up on him and see what he’s doing. He said in his first video about the inauguration that he didn’t think Trump is actually going to invade Greenland 🇬🇱. To everyone that’s still skeptical even now, all I have to say is that no one thought Putin was actually going to invade Ukraine 🇺🇦 in 2022.
In fact, the majority of people were skeptical of the claims by the State Department that he would (including myself sadly enough 😞), I mean, why would they believe them? It made no logical sense for Russia 🇷🇺 to do so, it would not have benefited Putin politically at all, and would’ve just hurt Russia 🇷🇺’s position in Europe and in the world as a whole, and Putin and the Russians 🇷🇺 (and their simps in the West) kept insisting that Russians 🇷🇺 and Ukrainians 🇺🇦 are one people and there’s no way Putin would attack his own people.
The Russians 🇷🇺 themselves kept denying that they were going to invade, saying it was all just Western propaganda and fearmongering to provoke a war. Plus, people (including myself unfortunately) were operating under the assumption that the US government 🇺🇸, and the UK government 🇬🇧 for that matter (since they did have the same intel about the Russian troops 🇷🇺 on the Ukraine border 🇺🇦 that the US government 🇺🇸 did), had lied about Iraq 🇮🇶, so why should we believe them? Why should we take them at their word? But of course, as we all know, Putin did invade Ukraine 🇺🇦, he is waging a war against Ukraine 🇺🇦 right now, against pretty much all logic. And in fact, all the bad things that people predicted would happen to Russia 🇷🇺 if it did try to invade did end up happening for the most part.
So, do not assume that it can’t happen, or it will not happen, based solely on logic and what makes sense politically. People are basing their logic that Trump won’t invade any of these places on the fact that he’s a pathological liar and he usually fails to keep promises he made, and also on the fact that they think he knows that invading another country, putting actual American boots 🇺🇸 on the ground would lead to a quagmire similar to Iraq 🇮🇶 or Afghanistan 🇦🇫 or worse than either of those two combined. But, dictators like Putin and wannabe dictators like Trump are more than capable of irrationality and making decisions that are illogical and flat out stupid, especially when they believe they can do whatever they want and nothing can or will stop them.
Trump is now in a position where he believes he’s unstoppable and nothing can touch him, and he can do whatever he wants just by the signing of a piece of paper with a pen 🖊️. That’s what all those hundreds of executive orders he signed last night were about. He might just feel embolden enough to start a few wars here and there, even if might cost hundreds or thousands of lives. Another way to think about it is that if Maduro does go through his plans invade Guyana 🇬🇾, then there’ll be nothing stopping Trump from invading Panama 🇵🇦, Greenland 🇬🇱, Mexico 🇲🇽, or even Canada 🇨🇦 since Maduro ostensibly is the Venezuelan Trump 🇻🇪. Hugo Chávez was more of the Venezuelan Trump 🇻🇪 than Maduro is, but Maduro was his successor, and so is kind taken his place as the Venezuelan equivalent to Trump 🇻🇪.
Now, I do all of them are possible, and shouldn’t be ruled out, but which ones are the most likely? I think Mexico 🇲🇽 and Panama 🇵🇦 are the most likely, followed by Greenland 🇬🇱 and Canada 🇨🇦. The reason why I think Mexico 🇲🇽 is the mostly likely to happen is because it was in Project 2025, it was the only real foreign policy suggestion in that entire document, and the Trump transition team already talked about doing a “soft invasion” of Mexico 🇲🇽 (whatever that means).
Plus, as mentioned before, Trump signed an executive order designating Mexican drug cartels 🇲🇽 as terrorist organizations, meaning the US government 🇺🇸 will be able to use military force on drug cartels and treat them as terrorist organizations if they so wish. They can also now treat Mexico 🇲🇽 as if it’s a state sponsor of terrorism if they so wish. That too was laid out in Project 2025, and was one of the first steps taken before a full-on invasion of Mexico 🇲🇽. And of course, he signed an executive order to rename the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, which is a purely imperialist executive order, it is an imperialist move. So, him signing those executive orders are not just the first signs of Project 2025 being implemented, but also signs that he is prepping for a war against Mexico 🇲🇽. He’s laying the groundwork for one.
I also think that Panama 🇵🇦 might happen since the US 🇺🇸 has invaded it before and managed to do it with relative ease and very minimal casualties. Only 25 American soldiers 🇺🇸 died during the invasion of Panama 🇵🇦, and only 325 were injured, and that was out of 27,000 troops sent to Panama 🇵🇦 for Operation Just Cause. So, that was good, for America 🇺🇸 at least, not a lot of young men ♂︎ died during that entire operation, and got to go home to their families (if they had families to go back to) when it was all said and done. Most of the people who died were Panamanians 🇵🇦. Over 516 Panamanians 🇵🇦 are estimated (by the Pentagon) to have been killed during the invasion, over 314 soldiers and over 202 civilians. So, from Trump’s perspective, with such a low casualty rate on the American side 🇺🇸, he might think that an invasion of Panama 🇵🇦 would be easy. Indeed, as horrible as a second invasion of Panama 🇵🇦 would be, it would be less likely to lead to a quagmire than an invasion of Mexico 🇲🇽 would.
Then, there’s Greenland 🇬🇱 and Canada 🇨🇦 which are less likely to happen (thankfully) than Panama 🇵🇦 or Mexico 🇲🇽, but I still don’t think we should completely rule them out. It would irresponsible for us to do so. Of the two, Canada 🇨🇦 and Greenland 🇬🇱, Greenland 🇬🇱 is the most likely because much like Panama 🇵🇦, it’s the one most likely to lead to the least amount of casualties on the American side 🇺🇸 and the one less likely to lead a quagmire that would anger the American people 🇺🇸 😡 and tank his presidency. I mean, they both would probably become quagmires because of the NATO factor. Canada 🇨🇦 is a member of NATO (a founding member in fact) and Greenland 🇬🇱 is apart of Denmark 🇩🇰, which is a NATO member.
So, Greenland 🇬🇱 also receives all the protections of NATO, and the benefits with being apart of NATO. Denmark 🇩🇰 is also a member of the EU 🇪🇺, so Greenland 🇬🇱 receives all the benefits of being apart of the EU 🇪🇺. That’s why I think they should hold off on their pursuit of independence for a while until Trump is longer President of the United States 🇺🇸. Because if they have a referendum and vote to become independent, and then gain independence, then they will lose that NATO protection and they will lose all the EU benefits 🇪🇺. They’d be in position similar to the UK 🇬🇧 after Brexit 🇬🇧, and they’d have to apply to NATO and to the EU 🇪🇺 rather than simply being apart of those alliances by virtue of them being a Danish territory 🇩🇰.
And it would probably give incentive Trump to invade it because hey, Greenland 🇬🇱 isn’t apart of NATO anymore, it’s no longer protected by Article 5, and the US 🇺🇸 won’t have to fight 30 other countries if it attacks it. That’s why so far, Putin has only attacked Georgia 🇬🇪 and Ukraine 🇺🇦, and has not attacked any NATO country, even if some of them were apart of the Soviet Union ☭ or the Russian Empire 🇷🇺. Because he knows that if he attacks a NATO country, it’ll mean war with 30 other countries. So, all of you pro-independence Greenlanders 🇬🇱 out there, wait a little bit, hold off on that until Trump is out of office and until you can work out some arrangement with Denmark 🇩🇰 that will allow you to join NATO and join the EU 🇪🇺 as quickly as possible after you gain independence.
Trump of course signed a whole slew of executive orders his first night in office. I already mentioned a couple of them, the executive order that designates Mexican drug cartels 🇲🇽 as terrorist organizations, something that no doubt lead to a war with Mexico 🇲🇽, the executive order that officially renames the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, meaning that every official map of the United States 🇺🇸 created by the federal government and every official government document will use the name the Gulf of America for that body of water 💦 instead of the Gulf of Mexico, the executive order that decriminalizes Israeli settlers 🇮🇱 that abuse or kill Palestinians 🇵🇸 in the West Bank, and the executive order that pardons over a thousand January 6th insurrectionists, pretty much ensuring that justice will not be served, history will be rewritten, and that right-wing militias across this country will be emboldened to engage in across more political violence during Trump’s second term, on Trump’s behalf. That is one campaign promise he kept, another one is that he ended Birthright Citizenship, by signing an executive order that says that Birthright Citizenship will be banned under his presidency.
Sure, such a thing violates the constitution, it directly goes against the 14th Amendment, but since when has Trump ever cared about what was in the constitution? All those people saying that the constitution prohibits Trump from doing this, or he can’t do this because it’s in the constitution, or that the constitution will stop Trump from carrying out his plan are a bit naïve in my opinion. The constitution is just a piece of paper with words on it. It is not self-executing, none of the so-called “checks and balances” are. It only works if the people in power actually care about it and care about what it says and are willing to abide by it, and as we’ve established, the people who have just entered power don’t care about the constitution or what it says and are not willing to abide by it if they think it gets in their way. They will ignore the constitution and violate it with impunity for the next years (or more 😖) that they’re in power.
In fact, Trump has said that he’s willing to terminate the constitution if he deems it necessary to carry out his agenda, if he thinks it prevents him from carrying out his duties as president, so you know that he will find a way to do that if he really wants to do that in the next four years. Besides, all these people acting like the constitution is some self-executing document or that it’s a safeguard or stop gap to any president who tries to abuse power or consolidate power forget that presidents (and presidential administrations) have indeed violated the constitution in the past and faced very little consequences for doing so.
I mean, just look like George W. Bush if you want a really recent example, or you can back to Richard Nixon if you want, Nixon went against the constitution numerous times just with his prosecution of the Vietnam War 🇻🇳 itself. The Patriot Act, signed into law during Bush’s first term, was a direct violation of the 4th Amendment, and has been deemed unconstitutional by many constitutional scholars. The Patriot Act was the mass surveillance law that was drafted and passed in the wake of 9/11 to “protect Americans 🇺🇸 from terrorists” and to “find terrorists and terrorist cells in America 🇺🇸,” if case you’re not sure what it was. It’s the reason why we have mass surveillance in this country. The Patriot Act as far as I know has never been repealed (much to the chagrin of opponents of the law and of Bush’s War on Terror and response to 9/11 as a whole), it’s still in place, it is still the law of the land, and will remain so as the US 🇺🇸 is slowly (or quickly) transformed into an authoritarian state. And did Nixon and Bush face any consequences for any of this? No, not really.
The only thing Nixon faced consequences for was wiretapping and for ordering the Watergate break-in, which I’m sure did violate the constitution in some regard, but his other constitutional violations went unpunished or were overlooked. But, Bush and Cheney definitely got away Scott free with their constitutional violations. So, Trump is just part of a long line of presidents (Republican presidents especially) who have violated the constitution, sometimes blatantly violating it. It’s just that he’s going further with it and being much more blatant about it than any other president before him. In fact, if he has his way, the constitution will just no longer exist.
He also signed an executive order to deport all illegal immigrants, all undocumented immigrants from this country, beginning his mass deportation plan, which, it happens, it will not only lead to a humanitarian crisis (a humanitarian crisis the likes of which this country hasn’t seen in a very long time), but it will also tank the economy 📉. Every major corporation, every millionaire or billionaire farmer relies on undocumented workers, and if they go, then the agricultural industry will collapse, the meat packing industry will collapse, and grocery prices will skyrocket. Speaking of grocery prices, he did not sign one executive order that had anything to do with grocery prices in his first night in office. Funny how that works, he campaigned on lowering grocery prices day one, and yet so far, as far as I know, he has done nothing to lower grocery prices 🤔.
My suspicions about him taking credit for “saving” TikTok despite him being the one who first proposed that TikTok be banned in the first place and even signed an executive order to do so were correct, as he signed an executive order to extend the deadline for BitDance to sell TikTok another 75 or 90 days, I don’t know which because all the news outlets and Wikipedia give different days. He didn’t actually repeal the law though, the executive order he signed didn’t nullify the law, it’s still in place. BitDance is still required to sell it. All this did was kick the can down the road, and we’ll be in the same position we were in a couple of days ago if BitDance doesn’t sell by the time the deadline comes.
I suspect they won’t sell, assuming that all those articles saying that Trump made a deal with Shou Zi Chew to sell TikTok to an American company 🇺🇸, or an American businessman 🇺🇸♂︎ who’s sympathetic to Trump, or even to Trump himself, are not true, which they might not be, then BitDance will keep TikTok the way it is, and it will still remain in Chinese control 🇨🇳. It’ll be under the thumb of the Chinese Communist Party 🇨🇳☭. And if no sale is made, I suspect Trump will not protect TikTok the second time around and will let the ban go through because that’s what he wanted all along and he no longer needs TikTok. He doesn’t have to run for office, campaign, or win an election ever again.
TikTok was just a useful tool for him in the moment, and now that it has effectively outlived its usefulness, he’ll be more than happy to get rid of it. Especially if he does full dictator, and despite to crack down and any speech that’s critical of him or his administration. He may decide to ban TikTok if the people on TikTok are saying bad things about it. He could just delete those posts and ban those specific users if he didn’t want to spark a similar backlash that Biden faced, but he might go further and ban TikTok out right if silencing specific users doesn’t work.
Either way, this whole drama about TikTok getting banned and then not getting banned made me hate TikTok even more 😠🖕. Just seeing how so many people overreacted to losing TikTok, acting like it was the end of the world, acting it was losing a friend or a family member or a pet, acting like a piece of Gen Z culture had just disappeared (yes I’m looking at you imuRgency 🫵). People are addicted to TikTok, more so than any other social media platform, more so than YouTube, they are so hopelessly dependent on TikTok for everything, for entertainment, news, and socializing. Some people only use TikTok to socialize, and they never try to make friends in the real world or on other social media platforms. They never touch grass as the kids say. They also use it to get into arguments in the comments, start unnecessary drama, and just bully each other (you know, cyber bullying), just on every other social media site.
And the worst part is that none of these TikTok users will care that Trump was the one who wanted to ban in the first place, their short-term memory and even long-term memory has been damaged so much by TikTok and its short form content that they probably forgot that he signed an executive order to ban TikTok back in 2019 or 2020, around that timeframe, if they knew about it at all. And they call him a “hero” for saving it, and act like he’s the greatest president ever just because he saved TikTok. All those bad things he did, all those bad things he promised to do doesn’t matter, all is forgiven just because he saved an app that I like and can’t put down or live without.
In a lot of ways, TikTok is the real bread and circuses. It’s the perfect distraction to keep people, particularly young people, distracted and focused on dumb things or less important things while Trump and his cronies enact their agenda. How can you focus on the real issues at hand when you’re more focused on the latest TikTok trend or drama? This is kind of why Trump would be stupid to ban TikTok, because he’d lose that perfect distraction, that perfect smokescreen to keep the ignorant masses distracted from what he’s trying to do.
But, as we’ve established, Trump is not a very smart guy ♂︎, he’s a very dumb guy ♂︎. He’s narcissistic, he cares about himself and how others think of him, he acts on impulse, and he acts on ego. And if he thinks that TikTok is no longer useful to him, and is in fact a threat to him and his administration because people on there are saying mean things about him or are talking about the bad policies, crimes, and corruption being committed by his administration, then he will ban it.
Just like how Putin banned YouTube, Facebook, and pretty much every major social media site in Russia 🇷🇺 because people were reporting on the war in Ukraine 🇺🇦 and exposing the crimes committed by the Russian military 🇷🇺 against the people of Ukraine 🇺🇦. He doesn’t want the Russian people 🇷🇺 to talk about the war in Ukraine 🇺🇦, he doesn’t want them to know anything about it, so every social media site that gave Russians 🇷🇺 a voice and informed them about what was really going on had to go, they had to be banned. If Trump finds himself in a similar position during his second term, then he will ban it, as he originally planned to do during his first term, and there will no one who will swoop in and save TikTok the second time around. I have never been more ashamed of my own generation (Gen Z) than now 😒.
He also signed an executive order to pull the US 🇺🇸 out of the Paris Climate Agreement after Biden had signed an executive order to re-enter the agreement when he entered office. So, while he didn’t keep his promise to “drill baby drill,” he has eliminated climate protections, which will enable the fossil fuel industry to act however it wants. He did engage in quid pro quo with the fossil fuel industry during the election 🗳️ by the way. Are we just going to do this seesaw back and forth of withdrawing from the Paris Climate Agreement and then re-entering it every time the presidency alternates between a Republican and a Democrat? He also apparently signed an executive order to withdraw the US 🇺🇸 from the World Health Organization (WHO)? What the fuck? So, I guess the US 🇺🇸 is so longer apart of the WHO, great 🙄.
He also signed an executive order that eliminates DEI programs within the federal government. So, the federal government will no longer be hiring people of color or LGBT people 🏳️🌈, and those people who are already working for the federal government and are apart of any of those minority groups will be at risk of losing your jobs. All of these executive orders are really Project 2025 being implemented, these are the beginnings of the policy proposals in Project 2025 being put into practice. And trust me, it’s going to get a whole lot worse from here. All you people didn’t vote for Kamala Harris, or didn’t vote at all, this is all your fault 🫵, you reap what you sow. The government you elect is the government you deserve.
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Yesterday, I watched the Netflix documentary series, Alien Worlds 👽, which explores four different hypothetical alien planets 👽, and their ecosystems, and explains the real world inspirations or comparisons for them. I decided to watch it because I've been on kind of an alien kick 👽 lately, spurred on Evolution, and other stuff like War of the Worlds, Independence Day, and Mars Attacks! Plus, this was also a series that I've been kind of eyeing for a while because I really like speculative evolution, and I just like seeing these hypothetical creatures, whether they're on alien planets or on a future Earth 🌎 or whatever.
I just like seeing concept artists, creature designers, and biology nerds just letting their imaginations run wild, and creating an entire fictionalized ecosystem with fictional organisms of all shapes and sizes, using real world science as their guide and inspiration. It's kind of the same appeal as alternate history, you're creating a fictionalized hypothetical world, using facts as your basis.
For the most part, I would say that I enjoyed this series, I thought it was pretty interesting, and I would recommend it to anyone who is even remotely interested in this kind of stuff. Apparently, it was mostly received positively by critics when it was released, as they enjoyed the designs of the alien creatures 👽, but they seemed to like the real world science more, like they liked the real world comparisons and explanations behind some of the biology choices for the aliens 👽, but not the alien planets or the alien creatures 👽 themselves.
That is kind of a bad sign when you're a science fiction writer or a documentary filmmaker and people say the best thing about your sci-fi documentary (your docufiction), is that the real-world Earth science 🌎 was great, but the alien worldbuilding stuff 👽 wasn't as great, or it was fun, but the real Earth science 🌎 was where it's at it. That is definitely not something you want to hear if a sci-fi writer and you're making a documentary about hypothetical alien planets. Certainly, the real world Earth science 🌎, and explanations about real animals that live on Earth is what gives this show it's creditably.
I really liked that extremely hot alien-looking environment 🥵 in Ethiopia 🇪🇹 that we see in the second episode called Danakil Depression (or the "Gateway to Hell" as it's referred to locally). I've never seen anything like that, it really does look like the surface of an alien planet, just as that exobiologist, Kennda Lynch said. I'm surprised that no one's ever used that place as a filming location for a science fiction movie, like it seems like the perfect place to use as a location in a sci-fi movie. Maybe, it's because it's in Ethiopia 🇪🇹, and Ethiopia 🇪🇹 is a complicated place. It has a lot of crazy politics, and it's in the middle of a civil war; stuff that isn't ideal for a filming location. That, or it's too expensive to film there, I don't see why Ethiopia 🇪🇹 doesn't seem like a place that would be an expensive place to shoot.
However, the series did get a more mixed or negative reception from speculative evolution enthusiasts or just biology nerds in general, who felt that the show lacked a proper narrative to go along with the scientific explanations, the alien biology was sloppily handled and poorly thought, and that real world explanations or comparisons didn't fit with what was happening on the alien planets that they were showing.
The two episodes that I saw get the most criticism are the third episode, on the planet Eden with the grazers and the predators, and the fourth episode on the planet Terra with the intelligent hive mind aliens that have apparently evolved past the need for bodies, or they heavily modified their biology with genetic engineering and/or cybernetics to exist without bodies, and now they are just clumps of neural tissue inside of glass boxes being tended to by robots. The reason why a lot of spec evolution nerds hated the Eden episode is that they felt that the aliens on that planet looked way too much like animals on Earth 🌎, like the predators look too much like primates we have on Earth 🌍 like monkeys or lemurs, and the grazers look like a cross between a bunny 🐇 and a moth.
I too thought that the Eden creatures looked too familiar as Earth animals 🌎, whereas the creatures in the first episodes on the planets, Atlas and Janus, were truly alien; like nothing on Earth 🌎 that we currently know of. But, I did like the grazers' method of reproduction. They basically have these detachable genitals that can move independently from their bodies, and they look like worms 🪱, and when they decide to mate, their worm-like genitals wrap around each other, and merge together, and form a cocoon around themselves, and then fertilize each other and create an embryo inside the cocoon. I thought that was a really cool, and like a truly alien method of reproduction, no animal we know of (or at least, I know of) reproduces like that. Too bad the design of the grazers themselves didn't match.
I also really liked the parasitic Cordyceps-like fungal organisms that infect both the grazers and the predators, I thought they were cool. Cordyceps are kind of back in the public consciousness now thanks to the new live action Last of Us series on HBO Max, which took the whole world by storm and became the most popular and most well praised video game adaptation of all time, pretty much overnight; mostly thanks to its ability to make people cry 😭. But, the episode doesn't show any real Cordyceps, or any other parasitic fungi to compare the alien fungus to. Instead, they show this tribe of hunter-gatherers in Africa 🌍, and how they work together with birds to find bee hives to extract honey 🍯 from. Completely unrelated to what they showing with the parasitic Eden fungus.
All I can really say as far as the alien biology goes, and what's feasible or plausible according to our own natural sciences, is that I'm not biologist. I know the basics of biology, and I understand general concepts, but I am by no means an expert. So, I can't say whether something's right or wrong or makes sense within the laws of biology and evolution specifically. I just know what I think is cool, and I just comment on it.
Now, I really didn't like the last episode, the fourth episode on Terra, and that seems to be everyone else's least favorite episode too. I really thought the intelligent aliens in this were really lame, and not very creative or interesting, like seriously? Digital consciousness or mind uploading? Brains in vats 🧠? That's all you could come up with. I hate it when people decide intelligent aliens to just to be robots or just be computers or brains in vats 🧠 or whatever. Just because we're getting all involved with robotics, artificial intelligence, and cybernetics, doesn't mean that aliens from another planet and from a completely different evolutionary path will do the same.
And even if they did dabble in that stuff, that doesn't that they'll completely forsake their biology and just live a boring and sad existence as a brain in glass box 🧠. Perhaps, we won't forsake our biology either, even if we did become as dependent on robots and AI as a lot of people predict we will. And when you have the aliens abandon their physical bodies to be brains in vats 🧠, and just have them be dependent on robots, and the robots are all we see of them, it stays too far into the robot genre or AI genre, and it's like you're not doing an alien story 👽 anymore.
If you're going to do intelligent aliens 👽, then make them biological beings with full bodies, a real culture, a real language, and their own evolutionary path, not this robot or brain in a vat stuff 🧠. Why not have the aliens 👽 use biotechnology, that's something different, we don't really use biotechnology that much compared to computer or robotics technology. But, imagine an intelligent species with a thousand year head-start from us, using biotechnology as one of their main technology types, where would that get them? There just wasn't a lot of imagination put into these intelligent aliens on this fictional planet, Terra.
But, the part that really doesn't make sense is why do these intelligent aliens bother with terraforming a planet anyway, when they're all just brains 🧠 essentially in glass boxes, inside of domes with an artificially created, self-sustaining habitat? They literally don't have bodies anymore, they're just bunches of neural tissue, they could live anywhere at that point, even in space, inside of space habitats.
Terraforming is just a waste of time and resources, especially for supposedly intelligent beings who have moved the past the need for full physical bodies, are completely stationary, and rely completely on autonomous self-replicating robots that prioritize efficiency. There's also a scientist in this episode, an astrophysicist, who believes that intelligent aliens 👽 will be peaceful ☮️, and that we should try to send messages to them to mark our presence in the cosmos, so we can join some sort of "galactic community." He said that it was just those "silly sci-fi blockbusters" convincing people that aliens 👽 were dangerous.
That to me is very naïve and way too optimistic. I don't like it when scientists just assume that intelligent aliens will be peaceful ☮️ just because they're more technologically advanced than us, and space is a big place and distances between star systems are vast. One of the scientists used the water in a bucket 🪣 argument to argue that the universe is teeming with life. Well, you can also use the ocean 🌊 to completely disprove the argument that intelligent civilizations will be peaceful ☮️ because of long distance travel. The two main oceans, the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific Ocean are both really big place, the Pacific Ocean especially; the Pacific is the largest ocean in the entire world.
People had to travel long distances to get from place-to-place especially before the invention of steam engines or combustion engines, when everyone just to used sailboats ⛵️. It took a lot of energy and resources to get from place-to-place, it was a very treacherous journey; sailors even risked getting diseases like scurvy along the way. Did that mean they were always peaceful ☮️ and always the best of intentions?
No, absolutely not, a lot of times, they weren't peaceful ☮️, and a lot of times, they didn't have the best of intentions. A lot of times, they want to conquer, take more land, extract natural resources for themselves, and get rich 🤑. Even the great Stephen Hawking knew that just because a civilization is advanced, doesn't mean that they'll be peaceful ☮️, and they won't do us any harm. Some of them will be dangerous, and will try to do irreparable harm to our planet 🌎. After all, that is what usually happened in our own history when advanced civilizations met less advanced civilizations.
We should be very careful about what messages we send out into space, and where we send them to, and we shouldn't let ourselves get duped by intelligent aliens wanting to "invite us" into the "galactic community." My story, We Come in Peace is all about intelligent aliens lying to us about wanting to include us in a "galactic community," when really, they just want to conquer us and add our planet to their vast interstellar empire.
Besides, the Arecibo Telescope was destroyed in 2020 (its structural integrity finally gave out, and it collapsed due to its old age), shortly before or after this show was released. So, I hate to break that one optimistic scientist, but we won't be using that to communicate with aliens 👽. Probably for the best. Unless, it is true that the US military 🇺🇸 does have plans and contingencies on how to deal with an alien invasion 👽 (just like they do with a zombie apocalypse 🧟♂️), so maybe we'll be okay if aliens 👽 arrive to take over our planet.
At least one military in the world is prepared and has a plan if Earth 🌎 is ever attacked by alien invaders 👽, unless the Russian military 🇷🇺 and Chinese military 🇨🇳 also have plans, but I highly doubt it, especially the Russian military 🇷🇺. That country's military is corrupt to the core, they couldn't come up with a plan for protect their homeland, Mother Russia 🇷🇺, from aliens 👽 if they tried. More than likely, their only real plan if aliens 👽 attacked their country is just launch as many nukes ☢️ at them as they can, and hope that works and that there's still a country left to live afterwards. Besides, even if they did have plans (most likely from the Soviet era), they wouldn't have the ability to really execute it because their military is poorly trained and disciplined, their troops are poorly trained, equipped, and disciplined. I mean, just look at how they've performed in Ukraine 🇺🇦 so far. Russia 🇷🇺 is the mother of all paper tigers 🐅 right now; paper Siberian Tigers 🐅 😉.
So, this episode was definitely weak sauce, even if it did have some interesting things in it, like the stuff with the octopus 🐙 at the beginning, even if it didn't have much to do with the intelligent aliens that they created for this episode. They should've just made the intelligent aliens look like octopuses 🐙 in all honesty. I did like that they mentioned Area 51 and acknowledged Ufology 🛸 and UFO conspiracy culture 🛸, even if it was just to dismiss it. I mean, I don't really believe in Ufology 🛸 anymore.
I believe aliens 👽 probably exist, but I don't believe that they've been here before or are here right now, and I don't believe most UFO sightings 🛸 or alien encounter stories or alien abduction stories 👽 are credible. But, Ufology 🛸 was a huge part of my childhood, I used to be obsessed with UFOs 🛸, so it is apart of me. I still kind of get sentimental value and nostalgia from this kind of stuff. If I ever get to make We Come in Peace a reality, I will include Ufology 🛸 and UFO and alien conspiracy culture 👽🛸 in there and make them a significant part of the story.
I much prefer the first two episodes of this series, the aliens 👽 in those episodes were probably the most inventive and truly alien-looking 👽 out of all of them. I especially liked the flying predators in the first episode, how they inflate and float in the air like balloons 🎈, and then their air sacks deflate, and then they descend down on their target, the flying herbivores that live entirely in the air, but have to land on the ground to give birth or lay eggs or whatever they do.
The reason they're able to do that is that Atlas is a Super Earth with more gravity than Earth 🌎 does, and thus the air is more aerodynamic I guess, and is able to support life forms that spend the majority of their lives in the air. The air is strong to support sustain lift for longer periods of time, and thus long continuous flights, or perpetual flights like these flying herbivores do.
These creatures spent 99% of their lives in the air, except for when the females ♀︎ have to either lay eggs or give birth, sacrificing their own lives in the process; because the adults of these creatures can survive on land for very long, not even the females ♀︎. Even if the fictional biology of those two creatures drives spec evolution and biology nerds nuts 😤, but I didn't mind it, I thought the biology of these creatures and their unique environment were interesting; even if spec evolution and biology nerds don't think it's the most scientific accurate or scientific plausible.
I heard no complaints about that scavenger creature that's just a blob that eats the babies of those flying herbivores, and are heavily implied to be the sole survivor of a mass extinction on the planet Atlas (caused by an asteroid impact ☄️) however from any spec evolution nerds or biology nerds. I don't know why, I just never saw it, maybe they thought the blob scavengers were the only Atlas creature with biology that made sense and fit in the science of evolution and adaptability. But, I never had any problem with any of the creatures on Atlas, even the flying herbivore that these people seem to complain about the most.
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Note:
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I forgot to mention that this show is British 🇬🇧, and there apparently was a similar show that came out in 2005, also made in the UK 🇬🇧. It even had the same title, Alien Worlds, though it was retitled to Extraterrestrial in the US 🇺🇸. The reason why I bring up that series is that it apparently explored a lot of the same concepts as this series, like an alien planet that's larger than Earth 🌎 and has a higher percentage of gravity compared to Earth 🌎, an alien planet that orbits a red dwarf star and is tidally locked where one side is in perpetual light and is always pointed at the star, and one side is in perpetual darkness and the star's light never reaches its surface, and even an alien planet that has two stars instead of one. Even one of the creatures on the Super Earth in that show very closely resembles the flying herbivore in the Atlas episode of this show. Despite the similarities, despite coming from the same country, and despite having the same exact title (at least in the UK 🇬🇧), these two shows have no relation to another.
It's not as if this show is a remake of that show, it's a completely unrelated show that just happens to explore similar concepts, originate from the same country, and have the same title. One critic of this show even accused it of plagiarism of that other show, but I don't think I would go that far. I've never watched the 2005 series, and if I did, I highly doubt that this 2021 Netflix series ripped it off as much this one critic is accusing it of. Part of me feels like this critic is mentioning this other series and pointing out the similarities, and then accusing the Netflix series of plagiarism as one more spite against this show. Because this critic really hates this show, and was looking any reason to dislike, even an exaggerated accusation of plagiarism.
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