Doctor Who was back with a Christmas special which actually was pretty rockin’. There were even a few fantastic lines from it, one in particular really stood out:

Speaking of which, if you haven’t seen Alien or Aliens, I highly recommend you do. If you love horror movies, it’s a walk in the park. If you despise horror movies like me, you’ll still get through it just fine.

Not only will you recognize Sigourney Weaver, but you’ll also see a young Ian Holm (Bilbo Baggins), John Hurt (I don’t really know which of his work to use here), and Tom Serritt, who most people only recognize him for his name and maybe not so much for his face. Skerritt has also been in Top Gun and Ted, if that helps. Alien was directed by Ridley Scott and Aliens was directed by James Cameron, so really, you can’t go wrong with either one. And Aliens has Michael Biehn in it, who was also in Terminator (which, if you haven’t seen that, it’s a-whole-nother post altogether).

If you haven’t seen Alien, Aliens, or if you’re feeling particularly adventurous, Aliens 3, we at Larkable suggest diving into that series. We stopped after the third because the quality begins to suffer, but the third installment is pretty bearable because of Charles Dance…and Paul McGann is in it too…and Charles S. Dutton really doesn’t disappoint, either. It’s honestly only watchable because of all that talented face time; the story is really…not good. So none of us managed to get to Aliens: Resurrection, but from where I’m sitting, I get all the Alien references at this point.

Anyways, this post was to lure you in with Doctor Who, but it’s actually about Alien. If you haven’t watched it, watch it! If you have watched it but are now a little bit older and a little bit wiser, I suggest watching it again. It’s fantastic and a whole lot of things will begin to make sense, like New Who (“Last Christmas”, for starters), The Simpsons, Futurama, Family Guy, and Spaceballs jokes. It’s definitely one of those Western culture gold mines and worth your time! Besides, it’s still winter, what else are you going to watch while you’re hibernating on the couch?