The Alien franchise’s five-decade journey has crossed genres, intersected the careers of preeminent filmmakers and wavered wildly from classic to culty to catastrophic. With the recent release of the disturbing and philosophical “Alien: Covenant,” we set out to reappraise all the chest-bursting and face-hugging in Part One of our franchise retrospective. [Find Part Two here.] A couple terrific writers joined us, and their “Covenant” pieces are linked below.

2:02 – Noah and Chance give some franchise background, and Noah wonders why “Covenant” is two movies.

14:15 – Vulture’s Kevin Lincoln joins the show to discuss what contemporary franchises can learn from the villainous android David.

29:10 – Chance stands up for the headiness of “Covenant” and Noah makes a superb “Frasier” comparison.

38:00 – The New Republic’s Josephine Livingstone stops by to assess the role of androids in the franchise and their centrality to the new film.

54:10 – Your hosts try to identify if there’s anything wrong at all with 1979’s “Alien.”

1:04:20 – A disagreement ensues about whether “Aliens” deserves classic status like its predecessor.

*Subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud or Stitcher. And if you want to read Chance’s PopMatters essay on “Alien: Covenant”, it’s here.