No one expects a boat load of horrors, just some corpses and corpo secrets to loot.
And there's where the show wants to have it both ways. It should just be a plane crash to everyone, but Wendy, for some reason, makes an impromptu sword to take with her as though she knows she's going to have to hack something up. And that's weird because, given it's an improvised weapon, that scene could happen later when she does have reason. It seems like it's only there to draw more parallel to the "Lost Boys" Peter Pan theme, but we've got scenes from the Disney film by then and read passages from the book, her name is Wendy. No need for more references unless they're pulling double duty and dong more in the plot. Otherwise it's just a "gearing up cool" scene.
And the marines, who also should only think of it as a plane crash, enter the building with guns up and move like they're clearing for hostiles. You could interpret that they think maybe the Weyland folks will be hostile to them, but that doesn't quite sell with how the rest of the world seems to work or the way they're talking to each other. The two companies don't seem to be actually warring nations, they don't seem to be battling directly at all (as of ep 2, still haven't watched ep 3) except in the legal or competitive corporate sense.
What you're suggesting is far more hackneyed and obvious, rebel kids are a dime a dozen.
See, but I'm not talking about novelty. Novelty is not the only quality in writing. If it were, we'd have to start talking about all the visuals in this show that are only there to make you think of prior Alien movies and serve little other function (and in some cases, also take me out of the action, like the alien who wastes a half dozen marines in seconds but then pauses for drama to hover over Morrow's shoulder, alluding to a scene in Alien 3 that's actually a plot point, and not just drama).
For me, I'm talking about a protagonist being a more active driver of plot. If it works for you that's cool. For me it seems out of character for Kavalier, and makes Wendy more passive as a character. At the same time it makes the conversation earlier about simulated, possibly unstable adolescence not as important. Like, the scifi concept underpinning the series is child minds in adult robo-bodies.
I'm interested in what a simulated adolescence might mean. That was one of the more interesting lines in the pilot, and I want to drill down into that in the show. This seems to me like a way one could start to interrogate that idea. And a lot of lines int hat first ep imply there's ground there they want to uncover, like the line from the book about mother's cleaning out their children's minds when they sleep. It's ominous, but also, seems like a thing that might also be true. I get they're physically different, but show me some of the mental stuff too.
And also, while rebel kids might be a dime a dozen... who are the actual Lost Boys in the story the show is constantly alluding to? They're the MOST rebellious kids of all. They don't listen to adults. They literally refuse to grow up. (this would be a reference that does pull double duty, because it would make characters DO things).
I don't see it that way at all. The "indestructible" kids are the best way for him to get a trillion dollars in alien R&D in his mind. To him, he'd be crazy not to.
That just seems flimsier to me. He doesn't know what's on the ship, just that it's potentially important to WY. Send one. Send three. Don't send your
entire investment into a building that might collapse at random. Like, they're tough, but I don't think I'm meant to believe a skyscraper falling on them is something they'll shrug off. And he's gunning for literal immortality. Setbacks matter (at least, they should since he's trying to acquire something money can't buy, time).
It's ok with me if the show works for other people. But a lot of it feels clunky, feels like a first draft to me. It's not that I hate the places it's going, it's that I'm taken out of the fantasy by how we're getting there. And everybody feels that way about something. There's some really popular genre thing out there other folks love that you just can't suspend disbelief for. This might be mine.
