Episode 12: Flaming Hydra recap! ALIEN: EARTH No. 1

A distinguished panel who will be yelling at each other most entertainingly for the next 35 minutes or so about the new ALIEN EARTH series. Editor and writer Maria Bustillos, Leila Brillson, a writer and strategist who used to work in media and then sold out for entertainment and then became CMO of The Onion, and Josephine Reisman, the New York Times bestselling author of Ringmaster and True Believer. Pod producer: Joe MacLeod.

• Birthing the Alien, by Leila Brillson — In Alien 3, perhaps the series’ entry that leans the most into the body horror, Ripley finally finds herself—after all of her friends have fallen—infected by the Xenomorph. She stands in front of the audience of men sent by Weyland-Yutani and jumps, presumably terminating both her and the chestburster inside of her. I think about her a lot. Not the decision to commit suicide instead of becoming a host, but the decision to do it on her own terms, refusing to be co-opted, or to let the company decide her destiny, beating her own body into submission. Sure, she gets Alien’d, but she insists on staying the same, stubborn Ripley.