Alien: Covenant/Alien Series thoughts.

[Overly Serious]

I get why this scene was cut such as revealing the whole creature (and it being a man in a suit)

The game Alien: Isolation is an absolute love-letter to the movie Alien, in setting details, atmosphere, feel of the alien hunting you. The one thing the creators deliberately changed and said they chose to, was to alter the alien's legs. They gave it digitigrade legs because they said seeing human style feet walk past you when you're hiding under a table just wasn't scary. They recognized that some aspects of how the alien looked were due to the constraints of special effects in the 70s.

It was a good call. It also makes the alien look fast as Hell which is how it should be.

i know some people hate the engineers and the bioweapon plotline, but personally I dig the idea of stumbling across the decaying remains of a civilisation detsroyed by its own meddling in powers beyond its control. The broadening of the motherhood allegory to include creation in general feels like a good development to keep things fresh and very appropriate given the current concerns re: AI and the environment, but still in touch with the 70s-80s horror and sci-fi ideas (eg terminator, blade runner) regarding technology and the meaning/value of humanity in a world where robots can look just like people. The idea of looking for your maker only to find it already dead and gone appeals to me too. I hope any future movies delve more into these ideas about being dissapointed with your maker and the different ways that the human and android characters deal with this.

I like your take on it and fwiw, though you're right many of the critics seem to fixate on the plot details, I feel the real reason so many condemn it is the implementation. I'm fine with the idea of the engineers and some of those themes are interesting. But I'm sitting in the audience and Shaw is rabbiting about "I don't [have evidence], but it's what I choose to believe" and the DNA logic just doesn't make sense. It could have worked but it was kak-handed.

If they'd done those ideas better, it would have received a lot less criticism of those ideas, imo.

Lambert's death was originally to be that she got so scared she crawled into a footlocker and died of fright. She also originally was supposed to have been torched by Parker in an even earlier death script, since the Alien used her as a human shield. They ran out of time filming it, so used Brett's extended death cuts and it worked real well with ADR. Also Yaphet Kotto demanded rather intensely that his death scene last longer; he was supposed to die instantly from a neckbreak/head smash and he absolutely refused to do that. On the final shots of his death he openly said "I'm killing him today" since he wanted to show he was going down swinging.

Veronica Cartright's performance where Lambert dies is one of the finest pieces of acting I've ever scene. The way she goes to pieces is phenomenal. She's moving her feet like a toddler, regressing to a frightened child. It's utterly convincing. Given the other options you're listing out, I can only say they made all the right decisions. Parker yelling at Lambert to "get out of the way" so he can shoot is a perfect choice.

But then where does your conflict come in? So you send in a bunch of Marines who know it all and have fuck you levels of firepower to wipe out the threat and go home? That isn't compelling. You've gotta have a thread of mystery surrounding the threat.

Yeah, this. The movies have always been as much about humanity as the aliens: "I don't know which species is worse. You don't see them frigging each other over for a goddamn percentage".

And I've misplaced the quote but whoever said the humans always act like idiots, I don't feel that's the case. In the first, most of the "idiocy" has a good plot reason in that Ash is setting them up and overriding them. And Kane's behaviour has already been adequately discussed as more than in-character for him. Besides, people make fun of him for lowering his face over the egg all the time but that just gives the viewer a close up perspective on the egg's interior and we're as curious as he is. Given what we've seen of the face huggers and a room with hundreds of eggs, do we really think the outcome would be different if he'd stood several metres away?

And in Alien 3, a group of prisoners self-organize and come up with a plan to kill it with no weapons, just using their environment.

alien.mp4

The new movies are as lifelike as this replica of ripley.

Um, are those available to buy? (I kid! I kid!)

 

[Drag-on Knight 91873]

But then where does your conflict come in? So you send in a bunch of Marines who know it all and have fuck you levels of firepower to wipe out the threat and go home? That isn't compelling. You've gotta have a thread of mystery surrounding the threat.

That's why I said Alien is a hard writing assignment. As much as I insult Ridley Scott, he is right that the Xenomorph is no longer conductive to making a horror story because it's a known creature that has countermeasures to stop it. It's his choices, both large and small, in how to execute a prequel that leave a lot to be desired. Once you're capable of killing a creature, it stops being scary and you just feel disgust when you look at it.

So, I suppose if I had to come up with a horror premise that has to take place in the Alien universe, it'd be based on how the Xenomorph evolved to function in the way that it has. Given the extremely aggressive way, r selected way it propagates itself, it probably comes from an environment that also creates equally aggressive wildlife that somehow naturally keeps the Xenomorph population in check. Like, the reason why ants or bees or mosquitos don't just devour everything is because everything else can kill them: other bugs, any creature larger than it. I may not want to get stung by a bee, but a bear just doesn't care. Planet Hell, where an entire biome treats the Xenos like the bugs that they are. They don't need to be genetically engineered weapons that went out of control.

 

[Adamska]

And I've misplaced the quote but whoever said the humans always act like idiots, I don't feel that's the case. In the first, most of the "idiocy" has a good plot reason in that Ash is setting them up and overriding them.

In older scripts and in cut dialogue they do an even better job at hiding Ash's motives. In the older script, when Ripley deciphered the warning, rather than commenting that by the time she went out to warn them it'd be too late, Ash also notes they already are at minimum take-off ability and can't afford to risk another person. He also framed his reason to "save" Kane by also noting that refusing to breaks his oath as the crew's medical officer, and actually tries to frame a sense of empathy when he does so.

Conversely, like how deleted scenes showed, Dallas became pretty sure that Ash was trying to protect the specimen for company reasons. It's also hinted that Ash might have intentionally sabotaged the motion tracker to ensure further success.

As for the Colonial Marines? That's actually due to a combination of factors that each match what the characters would do. The entire platoon was overconfident; bug hunts usually never get that serious, being at most taking out some hostile life forms that are fucking up something on the colony. Gorman was established from the start as being inexperienced and dismissive of the rank and file. He never had a crisis, since this literally was his second ever combat drop. His dismissiveness and technicality is why he doesn't explain why they can't fire in the hive.

Apone was doing what an NCO would do; listening and relaying orders from the Lt. He was still getting orders from the higher ups, and he got got since they never ran into something like the Xenos. Them being invisible to thermals was a new complication.

The rest is just due to bad luck and fighting shit with superacids that spray at high pressure from ambush angles and no gear. They got fuddywhackered and the survivors just had scraps afterwards, most of it going off when the ammo haulers got killed or taken.

And Kane's behaviour has already been adequately discussed as more than in-character for him. Besides, people make fun of him for lowering his face over the egg all the time but that just gives the viewer a close up perspective on the egg's interior and we're as curious as he is. Given what we've seen of the face huggers and a room with hundreds of eggs, do we really think the outcome would be different if he'd stood several metres away?

In older scripts he genuinely fought as best as he could to prevent it from grabbing him, getting ambushed by it bursting out from the top of the egg. He passed out when it ate through his mask, causing him to inhale some of the planet's non Oxygen atmo.

 

[Chunky Salsa]

The rest is just due to bad luck and fighting shit with superacids that spray at high pressure from ambush angles and no gear. They got fuddywhackered and the survivors just had scraps afterwards, most of it going off when the ammo haulers got killed or taken.

Also should be noted that they killed fucking dozens of xenos. Even with ~50 rounds each, some nades and a few turrets; they absolutely shredded the xenos once they got them in gunsights. If they had kept the ammo bag; and didn't slag the APC, they could have probably set up the sentries somewhere relatively open; turned the APC into a hardpoint, and used its guns and their own to just eradicate the mature xenos as they came out the cooling towers. Ripley herself at the end of the film takes out three in about ten seconds using the pulse rifle flamer combo. That must have been cathartic. Like giving Laurie Strode a mounted TOW launcher and Michael is walking down a road in Kansas to get to her.

Even trying as hard as they can; the director still don't manage keep the 'horror' of the aliens very well. I'm reminded of the vent scene; where Vasquez is pulling a running retreat against the entire hive, and gets 4 of the unstoppable monsters from Alien. She only actually gets got in the end when she runs out ammo and is ambushed from above. Even then, Gorman kills another one before they both then frag another two with their grenade. It just makes it seem as though any real sort of firearm on board a ship would make xeno attacks a non issue unless you're directly against the hull.

Also Bishop says that the Xenos blood oxidises extremely fast after death, rendering it harmless. Fucking lol, I say Bishop is full of shit.

 

[Oxyjen]

Also, I do have to wonder why no film has ever tried to do the more action-packed Colonial Marine angle seen in Aliens, given how it has been used in comics and video games since.

Considering Romulus seemed to be mainly a remix of “best bits” of Alien films to date, I was surprised that marines or at least corporate bad guys didn’t show up by the end. I was also mildly disappointed that there wasn’t an APC chase or robot loader duel or something.

Cool moments: zero-G pulse rifle massacre of a herd of aliens. The rifle should have had an LED readout of rounds remaining though, not that stupid 5 bar indicator.

Al the 1970s Nostromo computer technology and interior aesthetic, Ash, and so on. I know it’s cheesy at this point but eh, why not.

I liked the Romulus and Remus theme with the space station too, wish they’d shown more of that and the scale of it.

Overall, convoluted yet weak plot, dull characters I just couldn’t really care about.. and it’s just way too fast-paced with too much crammed in. Like facehugger to chest burst in just a few minutes, same with the alien baby gestation. Why not build the tension a bit?

I rate it 5th place after Prometheus and Alien cubed.

 

[admiral]

Besides, people make fun of him for lowering his face over the egg all the time but that just gives the viewer a close up perspective on the egg's interior and we're as curious as he is.

Kane sticking his face over the egg is believable- he's a curious guy and he doesn't know how dangerous the eggs are. It's a silly thing to do but you can believe that he was simply overwhelmed by what he was seeing and forgot to be sensible. It's dumb of them to bring him aboard (AS Ripley points out), but Ash's arguments for breaking quarantine do make sense from an emotional point of view and it's not like they were to know how bad things could be.

Oram is retarded for sticking his face over the egg in Covenant though. By that point in the movie he's seen a crew member die from having something burst out his mouth, he's seen the aliens, he knows that they're not in a safe place, and he knows that David is up to something bad. He and the others should be at their most alert not taking any risks and yet that one jewish bitch just wanders off to take a bath by herself (miles away from everyone else apparently, since no one hears her screaming) and Oram continues listening to David after seeing him try to make friends with the alien.

It's an interesting situation to compare (sticking faces in eggs, that is) as it highlights some of the characterisation and pacing issues which pop up in the new movies. Even in Prometheus the crew are kind of stupid about taking off helmets and touching stuff, but you can explain it as them being ignorant and over-excited about their discovery. I kind of respect Prometheus more for not having a facehugger and doing somehting new (goo in the drink) as the facehugging scene in Covenant feels too reminiscent of Alien, but more sloppy.

I like your take on it and fwiw, though you're right many of the critics seem to fixate on the plot details, I feel the real reason so many condemn it is the implementation. I'm fine with the idea of the engineers and some of those themes are interesting. But I'm sitting in the audience and Shaw is rabbiting about "I don't [have evidence], but it's what I choose to believe" and the DNA logic just doesn't make sense. It could have worked but it was kak-handed.

Imo they should have leaned more on Shaw and Holloway being weird conspiratorial fanatics, something they briefly played with at the beginning and then pretty much ditched. It would have made Fiefeld and Milburn's reactions to them at the start feel more real and less petulant, for a start, and would explain some of the stranger behvaiours that get brought up a lot in cinema-sins type breakdowns of all the dumb things that the characters do.

Like it wouldn't change the plot at all and there's no reason to think that late-life Weyland on his quest for immortality wouldn't fund some ridiculous adventure like this out of desperation. Trying to make Shaw's early-mid film behaviour look reasonable was a mistake, because as you say all of their evidence is pretty flimsy and it's hard to believe that anyone sensible would take any of it seriously.

 

[Adamska]

Also should be noted that they killed fucking dozens of xenos. Even with ~50 rounds each, some nades and a few turrets; they absolutely shredded the xenos once they got them in gunsights. If they had kept the ammo bag; and didn't slag the APC, they could have probably set up the sentries somewhere relatively open; turned the APC into a hardpoint, and used its guns and their own to just eradicate the mature xenos as they came out the cooling towers. Ripley herself at the end of the film takes out three in about ten seconds using the pulse rifle flamer combo. That must have been cathartic. Like giving Laurie Strode a mounted TOW launcher and Michael is walking down a road in Kansas to get to her.

See, that's why I do personally think that Wey-Yu only caring about them for bioweaponry purposes was a bit silly, especially in the comics where they go even more ham in letting installations and expensive shit get blown up more often for just their bioweapon potential. Sure, they'd make decently efficient terror weapons or cleansers, but they can be put down with firearms, just gotta be careful with them. Harvesting them for other aspects, like their blood or silicon, or even their hormones and shit, would make just as much sense too.

Even trying as hard as they can; the director still don't manage keep the 'horror' of the aliens very well. I'm reminded of the vent scene; where Vasquez is pulling a running retreat against the entire hive, and gets 4 of the unstoppable monsters from Alien. She only actually gets got in the end when she runs out ammo and is ambushed from above. Even then, Gorman kills another one before they both then frag another two with their grenade. It just makes it seem as though any real sort of firearm on board a ship would make xeno attacks a non issue unless you're directly against the hull.

Also Bishop says that the Xenos blood oxidises extremely fast after death, rendering it harmless. Fucking lol, I say Bishop is full of shit.

Bishop is full of shit. Yes, their blood oxidizes fast, but even small bursts can rip through several feet of reinforced metal. A small spurt of the shit ate through about two decks worth of flooring on the Nostromo. A full grown adult getting blasted by seismic charges ate through all of Hadley's Hope's flooring and ceiling.

I'd argue xeno attacks are still an issue, but once teams know what they're dealing with, they can take them on with some issue. They are still pretty intelligent on the drone level and difficult to track with sensors.

 

[Bunny Wigglesworth]

If anyone’s interested, this is what Alien 3 should have been:

Alien III - Vincent Ward & John Fasano

 

[74164978231]

But then where does your conflict come in? So you send in a bunch of Marines who know it all and have fuck you levels of firepower to wipe out the threat and go home? That isn't compelling. You've gotta have a thread of mystery surrounding the threat.

The aliens are just props. They arent characters, they dont have motivation etc. Any genuinely good Alien movie needs to have its plot about something else. The aliens are just the fireworks in it.

 

[Drag-on Knight 91873]

I'd argue xeno attacks are still an issue, but once teams know what they're dealing with, they can take them on with some issue. They are still pretty intelligent on the drone level and difficult to track with sensors.

Or do as Ripley said in the beginning and prevent the movie from happening.

 

[not william stenchever]

But then where does your conflict come in? So you send in a bunch of Marines who know it all and have fuck you levels of firepower to wipe out the threat and go home? That isn't compelling. You've gotta have a thread of mystery surrounding the threat.

The Frontlines book series manages to do this pretty well repeatedly. The space marines there are able to put out a lot of hurt and don't act like retards but the Lankies are such a relentless and cunning threat that they are able to win the overwhelming majority of battles. Admittedly the Lankies are a spacefaring race with terrifyingly effective and hard to detect ships, but on the ground they continue to confound the allied forces through their tactical adaptability despite lumbering into combat unarmed, relying only on their massive size in direct ground combat.

 

[Get the rope Macaulay!]

. In the first, most of the "idiocy" has a good plot reason in that Ash is setting them up and overriding them.

i forget the exact details but someone also made a great comparison between the crew and regular blue collar workers, ripley is the safety captain, who's role is to be a hardass and is almost always right but no one gives a shit and still hates her for being a stickler for the rules, yet if they did what she said the entire threat wouldn't have gotten on the ship in the first place. the captain is the usual pushover boss who wants to be everyone's friend. the bonus situation brothers are the union guys/special employees who aren't as connected to the rest of the crew and just care about getting paid. And they made other comparisons, Ash being the newbie was one of them. but it works overall. Kane being the dreamer who pretends to be someone far above his station is another good trope. in general none of the movies had the usual slasher type make ups, they were just normal people thrust into a bizarre scenario

That's actually due to a combination of factors that each match what the characters would do.

This is where Jimmy's career as a trucker probably helped him loads, he probably heard every Nam veteran's story in the 20 years before he directed the thing, much like predator he had a pretty good grasp on what really fucks up a meathead's day.

The rifle should have had an LED readout of rounds remaining though, not that stupid 5 bar indicator.

proto-type, its like Isolation, everything has to be 1970s levels of stupid, it takes way more power to output all those numbers vs 5 bars.

 

[TheHarbinger]

Even trying as hard as they can; the director still don't manage keep the 'horror' of the aliens very well. I'm reminded of the vent scene; where Vasquez is pulling a running retreat against the entire hive, and gets 4 of the unstoppable monsters from Alien. She only actually gets got in the end when she runs out ammo and is ambushed from above. Even then, Gorman kills another one before they both then frag another two with their grenade. It just makes it seem as though any real sort of firearm on board a ship would make xeno attacks a non issue unless you're directly against the hull.

The aliens in Aliens are pathetically weak for plot convenience when Cameron wanted it. They infest or kill 99% of people in the entire colony, over 150 people, except for a little kid. Then a bunch of facehuggers cannot even ambush Ripley and Newt and successfully impregnate them. Newt is captured and conveniently not impregnated so that Ripley can save her (avoiding more horror in the franchise). Ripley's arms can hold the combined force of a power loader and an alien queen being sucked out into space without snapping (slay queen!!). None of the aliens just rush Ripley to save the hive or the queen yet these same aliens were mindlessly running into a corridor to get mowed down. Fans will offer bogus excuses for all of this as this film seems immune from criticism.

Aliens is like an action video game. Run, shoot, kill. An escort mission. Even has boss battles. Weyland not having a containment plan for the aliens would also be a recurring plot in future films in Alien and Predator. With the peak ridiculous version probably being Shane Black's awful film where the Predator breaks out of paper thin restraints and walks into the next room where his weapons are behind display glass. You could practically guess the entire plot of Alien Resurrection within the first few minutes of the film.

i forget the exact details but someone also made a great comparison between the crew and regular blue collar workers, ripley is the safety captain, who's role is to be a hardass and is almost always right but no one gives a shit and still hates her for being a stickler for the rules, yet if they did what she said the entire threat wouldn't have gotten on the ship in the first place.

This is why Ash was so effective as a Weyland spy hiding right in the open. Pitting the crew against each other. Violating orders and protocol. Using leverage of money and bonuses to distract from them being years away from being home. Isolating and splitting the crew up to make it easier for Big Chap to pick them off one by one.

My all time favorite Ash lie is when he says "we can't take the emergency shuttle as it can only hold three". He could easily tell them to leave him alone with the alien at that point and show them he is an android. They leave, he stays with the alien, and waits for Weyland-Yutani to come pick up its prize. But he can't risk them blowing up the ship or informing some rival military or corporation. So he's determined like Hal-9000 to ensure the mission no matter what.

 

[Hazel Motes]

The aliens are just props. They arent characters, they dont have motivation etc. Any genuinely good Alien movie needs to have its plot about something else. The aliens are just the fireworks in it.

You could apply to any great horror film. The Exorcist is a drama about faith and doubt. The Thing is about trust and paranoia. Carrie is about growing up. And The Evil Dead is nothing without its humour. What keeps me watching Texas Chainsaw Massacre, in my opinion the greatest horror film, is its mystery and feeling for the unknown, not at all its kills. Its camera work is on the level of Citizen Kane and I have yet to figure it out.

All great horror films live in a balance between the monster and a drama's believability. Alien's great achievement is to make a movie a science fiction film scary and its drama believable. (I think this has as much to do with Walter Hill, Dan O'Bannon, and Giger as it does with Scott). We do not have androids like Ash, but many work with sociopaths who act like him. The world is more "egalitarian" but only because everyone is forced to be a serf. Films like Alien and Blade Runner invite so many questions that they demand a sequel, but usually we are better off with the mystery.

 

[Oxyjen]

proto-type, its like Isolation, everything has to be 1970s levels of stupid, it takes way more power to output all those numbers vs 5 bars.

But the robot sentry guns in the director’s cut of Aliens had a numeric readout, and it was somehow very cool.

i forget the exact details but someone also made a great comparison between the crew and regular blue collar workers, ripley is the safety captain, who's role is to be a hardass and is almost always right but no one gives a shit and still hates her for being a stickler for the rules, yet if they did what she said the entire threat wouldn't have gotten on the ship in the first place. the captain is the usual pushover boss who wants to be everyone's friend. the bonus situation brothers are the union guys/special employees

You know that’s a very good point. I half remember the film “Blue Collar” (1978 ), which displayed those workplace dynamics and characters. And also starred Yaphet Kotto, now that I look it up. Similar vibe in The Deer Hunter, also ‘78.
Very “of its time” but very appropriate.

 

[Get the rope Macaulay!]

which displayed those workplace dynamics and characters. And also starred Yaphet Kotto, now that I look it up. Similar vibe in The Deer Hunter, also ‘78.

blue collar movies were huge in the 70s overall but especially late 70s, and Blue Collar should be a "cult classic" just for being a film about the evils of unions. another fun connection is that both the deer hunter and blue collar are about polish-americans, a group most people don't give a shit about today but were a huge ethnicity in the 70s, and just in general whites in america "reclaimed their roots" during the 60s and 70s. Like italian americans today, but with everyone trying to embrace their backgrounds. Its crazy knowing polish-americans who don't "know their history" when it was a big deal at the time, and you have multiple good films about it.

To move back to space, Alien is sometimes combined with Star Wars as a new kind of science fiction. instead of following the military and upper class space adventures, the science fiction portrayed the lower classes instead. People even joked about how "ghetto" Tatooine looked, whereas a decade before with 2001 you followed scientists on the verge of a discovery, now you had people trying to just not starve and talking about bills and whining about job prospects and it was a beloved and memorable part of those films and are a big reason why they're so beloved.

Obviously they moved away from that in the film sequels, but the comics and books and especially video games have tried to keep up that spirit.

 

[Eleventyish]

i forget the exact details but someone also made a great comparison between the crew and regular blue collar workers, ripley is the safety captain, who's role is to be a hardass and is almost always right but no one gives a shit and still hates her for being a stickler for the rules, yet if they did what she said the entire threat wouldn't have gotten on the ship in the first place. the captain is the usual pushover boss who wants to be everyone's friend. the bonus situation brothers are the union guys/special employees who aren't as connected to the rest of the crew and just care about getting paid. And they made other comparisons, Ash being the newbie was one of them. but it works overall. Kane being the dreamer who pretends to be someone far above his station is another good trope. in general none of the movies had the usual slasher type make ups, they were just normal people thrust into a bizarre scenario

This is where Jimmy's career as a trucker probably helped him loads, he probably heard every Nam veteran's story in the 20 years before he directed the thing, much like predator he had a pretty good grasp on what really fucks up a meathead's day.

proto-type, its like Isolation, everything has to be 1970s levels of stupid, it takes way more power to output all those numbers vs 5 bars.

A monster-of-the-week series starring someone like R. Lee Ermey as OSHA (literally OSHA, same initialism and everything) head of a corporate colonial security fleet would be great. Lots of potential funny, drama, alien vs marine gore, plus the Ermey character would play both the straight man and the comedy relief by doing the drill instructor bit whenever he sees a safety violation.

 

[XYZpdq Jr.]

Colonial Marines Technical Manual, which actually TALKS about the kit that the USCM use.

iirc there's also a completely separate pile of writeups from the old UK Aliens mag, they had a regular column of a similar tech spotlight

 

[CervixHammer]

When a mysterious space vessel crash-lands on Earth, a young woman (Sydney Chandler) and a ragtag group of tactical soldiers make a fateful discovery that puts them face-to-face with the planet’s greatest threat in FX’s highly anticipated TV series Alien: Earth from creator Noah Hawley. FX’s Alien: Earth original series coming in 2025, only on Hulu.

Uhh.
I hope the part about this being set around the same time as Prometheus was some sort of miscommunication, because keeping a Xenomorph outbreak on Earth so secret that nobody in Alien or Aliens knows about it 30 years or 87 years later seems a little hard to swallow. Unless this is in the AvP-verse, I guess.

 

[Overly Serious]

https://youtube.com/watch?v=sgTBZmqrAIAUhh.
I hope the part about this being set around the same time as Prometheus was some sort of miscommunication, because keeping a Xenomorph outbreak on Earth so secret that nobody in Alien or Aliens knows about it 30 years or 87 years later seems a little hard to swallow. Unless this is in the AvP-verse, I guess.

First I've heard about this. The Wikipedia page isn't that helpful as it's says that Alien: Isolation is a planned movie, amongst other stuff. Says that it will star Sydney Chandler who is apparently her:


Anyone know when this is going to be set? In between movies? After? Modern day? Oh wait, Wikipedia says that it will be set "three decades before the events of the movie Alien". So... we get xenomorphs on Earth prior to the Nostromo even arriving at LV-426?

Ripley: "If one of these things gets down here, then that will be all!"

Apparently not!