Monsters Inc.
Having been very curious about this series since the teasers started dropping years ago, finally here it is. Or, as of a few weeks ago, there it went. The first TV series based on the 46 year-old cinematic IP, ALIEN EARTH is upon us. Camus slowly looks around every dark corner…
“A two-hour Alien movie is a survival story, right?” Hawley said. “Other than how expensive it would be, the obstacle of bringing the franchise to television is what other story could we tell? It’s about monsters and people running for their lives. That’s not a TV show with any staying power. Part of the reason why Alien: Earth worked is because I use the IP as a starting point to explore my own themes and issues, and build a story within the Alien world.”
Showrunner, Noah Hawley1
preface
broad overview
As I mentioned at the start of my Alien: Romulus review, I cannot resist sampling anything derived from Ridley Scott’s exquisite original except perhaps for the Predator crossovers. While almost certain that I will always fail to be as terrified exposed to Alien’s various iterations over the 46 years than I was by the original, my benchmark is, “Show me something new and original that I can get my extended jaws and teeth into, and I may even quite enjoy it.” Even in the original, there are moments of risible stupidity that even now frustrate me. Apologies to regular site readers for what is sure to be turgid repetition. Kane lies prostrate, the face hugger gone from his face. The scene is set in a closed medical bay with only Kane lit, shadows everywhere. “Hey, let’s use magic wands – the smallest torchlights in the known universe – to find it.” “Shouldn’t we just put all the lights on?” “Naaa. More scary this way.” Also significantly dumber but I guess scary always trumps dumb.2
As site admin Slarek remarked to me recently, howlers, lapses in logic or just plain silliness can sometimes pass you by in a work you are fully invested in, something most certainly the case for both of us regarding the original Alien. If there was a line between those people that didn’t mind the baffling character decisions because of how good the TV show was overall and those that found the illogic overwhelmingly distracting and thereby denting the show, I just crossed it. I haven’t travelled far from the line but I have crossed it. Of course, there is the danger that beloved works of cinema will fall under the most penetrating of microscopes because, well, they’re famous as hell and people love them so much they are almost as fond of their mistakes or lapses in logic as they are the whole film and its place in their hearts. Who doesn’t enjoy seeing a stormtrooper clatter into the door frame in the original Star Wars? In fact I was driven to write an alternative screenplay scene to one of the most egregious examples in Scott’s own Prometheus… Have a look here and scroll down to the sixth paragraph.
The first thing to say is how slavish (apologies, ‘overtly reverential’) the production design is to the 1979 original film including its slow reveal, graphic line-by-line title and very familiar sound effects. The reverence is ten times more so than the references to Alien in Alien: Romulus. While this puts Alien fans into a starkly familiar environment, it felt almost too overtly reverential. Don’t get me wrong. It makes perfect sense, narrative-wise for a story set before the events of Alien. Even Ridley Scott, upon seeing the interiors of the Nostr… (excuse me, the Maginot), apparently reacted with “Fuck me, that’s my set!” which must have pleased the filmmakers no end. They even recreate almost all the tropes from the original; long dissolves (the late Alien editor Terry Rawlings did love dissolves), two disgruntled (ad libbing?) engineers, a meal in the mess hall without (an FX friend’s description of the first chest burster) a ‘dildo on a skateboard’ and sleeping petal-cocoons. The only variation was the skin colour of the human-cyborg and its Swiss Army Knife accoutrements, again with the same mission; preserve its alien cargo with the crew, as ever, expendable.
The second thing that I was concerned about was our 46 year-old, original monster itself. The xenomorph – Latin for ‘strange form’, or ‘alien creature’ – is even now a child’s money box, a fluffy toy and a Funko Pop wobble head. Like Withnail’s hippy wigs being sold in Woolworths, time and popular culture have diluted the terror (of the xenomorph not the hippy wigs though they may terrify in their own way). How can a creature, now so familiar, evoke anything other than jump scares anymore? When, in 1979, we barely glimpsed the whole alien until the very last scene and then only a full body shot as it was blown out of the shuttle’s airlock, it was a truly horrific creature, about as relentless and terrifying as anything seen on screen up to that time. Shrouded in dark spaces, it was our own imagination that created the lion’s share of the fear. Kudos to Ridley Scott and editor Terry Rawlings for their restraint in editing choices. We saw just enough of it to imagine how powerful this creature was. H. R. Giger’s design (and original artwork) is still stunning decades on, but we now know what the alien looks like and any iteration (the egg, the face hugger, the chest burster) can only serve as markers of audience expectation, not terrors to be oblivious to, Alien IP tropes to be ticked, and then by their very nature, we know what’s next.
You’d have to be a very creative soul to get mileage out of an ongoing episodic TV series with so many elements so often served up in other less effective movie sequels and prequels. I will say that the series looks like a million dollars. That cliché really needs updating. In fact it looks more like over $250 million and it shows. Despite the viewers’ nagging needle in their suspension of disbelief (you know the one, it’s the little voice that says if what I am seeing cannot be practical, it must be CGI), there is enough superb craft on display here to overlook and utterly ignore that modern irritation. Obviously some of the alien effects are practical and obviously some are not but it’s so well presented and executed that you accept what you get at face-hugging value. And it certainly delivers. You feel every single dime is up on the screen. Someone, creator Noah Hawley presumably, has a lot of love invested in this series.
A brief summary of the overall set-up… Alien: Earth’s Ash character, the human-cyborg Security Officer, Morrow, has allowed the annihilation of the crew of the Nostromo-a-like, the USCSS Maginot and is now trying to preserve its alien cargo. He’s a Company man through and through. It’s not just the egg to face hugger to chest burster to xenomorph they’re carrying. There’s a blood draining insect-creature, a metal eating, corrosive acid spewing giant winged insect and an eye with tentacles, that can morph into multiple eyes that can inhabit a terrestrial creature (that poor cat) and make people distinctly unwell. The ship’s on a collision course for Earth after a probable malfunction. Fascinating name, ‘Maginot’, until I looked it up. In the 1930s, France set up a defensive line at their border to Germany to repel an invasion. If you know your history, it was doomed to fail. You may as well have christened the ship ‘USCSS Bound To Be Overcome’ and let the volunteers for the 65 year-old missions dwindle alarmingly.
On Earth, we have a young self-absorbed genius and his company Prodigy (not that imaginative at naming things though) whose business interests conflict with the Maginot’s CEO, Yutani of Weyland-Yutani, both trillionaires in virtual, visual contact with each other. Yutani wants the alien creatures. God knows why. It’s her ship. Prodigy’s resident genius (still not that imaginative at naming), self-styled ‘Boy Kavalier’ (sigh) does too as the ship has crashed into his properties in built up New Siam. But he’s also consumed with his desire to create a more intelligent humanoid hybrid who can challenge his own intellect. To this end, he recruits a group of children, all of whom are suffering from terminal diseases, and promises them new life hosted in synthetic bodies… Hence the term ‘hybrid’. The children will inherit super strength and virtual immortality without the psychological resources to adapt to their new bodies or adult responsibilities. What could go…
The action is expertly staged and edited and despite what I wrote just a few paragraphs earlier, seeing the starring creature do its thing is still viscerally exciting. In one scene coincidentally, the aftermath of an attack presents us with viscera exiting. Ouch. The mere idea of some of these Gothically gory images premiering on Disney+ makes me think the world is not quite truly dead yet. Uncle Walt may be pirouetting underground fast enough to give Thunderbird’s mole a run for its dollar but at least there are some people left in his declining company who can still promote a show that delivers a 96% score on Rotten Tomatoes. So in the end, it matters not one whit what I bring to the table but in my defence, my gripes make sense to me despite the show’s apparent massive popularity.
The cast is uniformly excellent. Sydney Chandler plays Wendy, the first hybrid, with an adult body, superhuman ability, a profound sibling love for her brother and an evolving mind who can see farther than her creators had ever intended. So much for Boy’s ‘genius’. She possesses the unknown and untapped potential of the series and is the one character who is allowed a relationship with chest burster, adolescent alien and fully grown xenomorph. Throughout the series she makes emotionally driven choices and over the episodes becomes aware that her intelligence is not something required to be checked at the door. Her brother, Private Joseph D. Hermit, played by End of the Fucking World’s Alex Lawther, is a medic for the Prodigy Corporation Security Service. Let’s just say the poor bastard gets hunted by a xenomorph, enough to give him nightmares for the rest of his grandchildren’s lives, and realises with the barest of proof that Wendy is in fact Marcia, his sister in another wrapper and then spends the rest of the series trying to get his sister off Boy Kavalier’s island to some sort of domestic normality.
The focus of most of the characters’ push back is the Prodigy himself. In this role, you have to feel some sympathy for the actor. Genius or not, it’s undisputed that he’s a grade ‘A’ asshole. Samuel Blenkin plays the CEO of the Prodigy Corporation and the world’s youngest trillionaire and he plays him too well. A tangential but parallel Timothée Chalomet in appearance, his barefooted arrogance allied with his unimaginable wealth means that he lords it over all and sundry. Surely if you have great intelligence, you can figure out sooner or later that you’d be less of a complete asshole if you worked with your employees and not just belittled them for being less than you think you are. Kavalier is also an enormous cliché with no character nuance to help us understand him. And no, his line after facing a xenomorph, “I think I pissed myself,” doesn’t count.
The most critically celebrated character of the series, Babou Ceesay as Morrow, the USCSS Maginot ’s human-cyborg security officer, is the one who links all the characters together. He’s after the aliens for his Weyland Yutani boss, he wants to kill Boy Kavalier (don’t we all?) and his blackmailing of Slightly, the Indian boy who’s afraid for his mother’s safety, is a low move but effective enough to bring his reluctant accomplice to enable an alien infection and a date on the beach so Morrow can secure another creature. Like a considerable number of plans in this series, it does not go well.
Morrow’s assumed superiority in the android culture of the time leads us to one of the stand out scenes of the series, something we may call ‘modelism’. Morrow is a cyborg, an enhanced human being. His target for scorn, the lower order android Kirsh, the Prodigy Corporation’s synthetic chief scientist, is played by an actor whose company I have been revelling in for the past few months. Timothy Olyphant’s work had been relatively unknown to me despite my friends banging their heads against a wall trying to get me to commit to Deadwood. I had no such qualms for one of the best written shows out there, Justified, and I’m shocked I came to it 15 years late. The dialogue crackles, there’s not a duff scene in a single episode and the characters are so richly drawn you simply enjoy their company. Of the 73 episodes of 6 seasons, we have only a handful left.
Back to Alien: Earth. Morrow and Kirsh have a short but pointed exchange in an elevator with Morrow pulling the android ‘modelism’ card. As he has more modern parts, he lords his superiority over his blond inferior but gets as good as he gives. His parting words, “I’ll see you soon, old toy.” suddenly put the entire scene into another perspective. It’s Woody and Buzz in a more aggressive argument about who means most to Andy in Toy Story. And then it struck me like a Glock 17 bullet. If you had to get a live action actor to play Woody, Justified-era Olyphant would be perfect casting. Maybe the android makers could include a self-respect chip in the later models instead of their default ‘inferior to humans’ subroutine. The staggering growth of AI at the moment, makes the show’s showrunner’s predictions of where we’ll be in about 100 hundred years decidedly quaint. No imagination on Earth can encompass what might be waiting for us in ten years, let alone 100. We may not even make it that far ahead.
The series is directed by Showrunner Noah Hawley sharing helming duties with fellow directors Ugla Hauksdóttir and Dana Gonzales and it is clear from a unified style that they collaborated closely to ensure visual continuity. Jeff Russo’s score is suitably honorific towards Jerry Goldsmith’s stone cold classic and serves the series well. He’s more known for his work on the latter iterations of what used to be Star Trek but we won’t hold that against him. The special and visual effects are absolutely faultless and special shout out to one of the nicest surprises of the show. In a series about the original alien and many other creepy critters, the scariest one of all is a sheep. And he’s even scarier when he does nothing.
Let’s take a deeper dive…
episode by episode
So, a short synopsis for each episode and my subsequent thoughts. The synopses are bound to feature some spoilers but I’ve kept them vague. But you still may want to skip them anyway.
Episode One: Neverland
100 years in the future, 95 if we are hair-splitting, Earth is under the control of five giant corporations. One of them, Weyland-Yutani, is sending out interstellar ships to seek out alien lifeforms and return them to Earth. Do we know why? Another corporation, Prodigy, has created synthetic bodies for terminally ill children, including Marcie (aka Wendy) named after the CEO Boy Kavalier’s strange obsession with the characters from Peter Pan. On the Weyland-Yutani ship USCSS Maginot, trouble is brewing. A malfunction leaves the ship heading for Earth with no way of stopping it crashing. On board are several alien species. Human-cyborg Morrow, with Ash’s original executive order, stands by while the crew is slaughtered by the aliens. The ship crashes into Prodigy buildings and the ownership of its contents is contested between CEO Yutani and Kavalier. Also part of the rescue crew is paramedic Joe Hermit, Wendy’s human brother. She is allowed to go and keep him safe along with the other hybrid ‘lost boys’. So, I repeat… Kavalier risks his billion dollar hybrid investment, and releases a bunch of children with no training, into alien territory… Uh…
So there’s the initial rub, what some may call original and some may call problematic. Yes, it’s a lovely idea to give life to otherwise doomed children via synthetic bodies they can inhabit. But children are children and you have to accept the idea that the main protagonist is an 11 turning 12 year-old child in a young adult’s body but still a child, as are all in her group, given new life by this boy-genius. There’s a throwaway line about the technique not working on adults. Super-strong bodies are not vehicles for accelerated psychological growth. Kids. Kids with fricking aliens running around. With fricking lasers… Scratch that last part.
‘Boy Kavalier’, however well performed, is a truly loathsome character. It’s a tricky tightrope to navigate writing a ‘genius’ character. How do you prove it without having him announce it ad nauseum all the time? Do you have him perform some feat that no one in the audience (including the scriptwriter) can understand and thereby alienate (sorry) some of your viewers? Is his creation of hybrids enough to sell his abilities? Despite the caution of his underlings (human and synthetic), he’s a monstrous example of the very worst of mankind. But perhaps his fate (I’m still one episode short of completing the series at time of writing this) may serve out some karmic justice.3 Watch this space, where no one can…
Episode Two: Mr. October
Kavalier reveals that Wendy has enhanced abilities, gifted to her in order to create a person more intelligent than her creator. At the crash site, Wendy’s brother, medic Joe Hermit, is chased by a xenomorph whose rampant slaughtering of all and sundry is stopped by Morrow who tasers the creature. Upon waking, it continues its murderous spree but spares Morrow (it’s implied he is able to keep his fear in check). The other children wander into an open alien nest sanctuary and Joe and Wendy meet up and with a few shared memories as proof, Joe accepts his young sister in a grown woman’s enhanced body. The xenomorph snatches Joe and Wendy chases after them.
In episode two of Alien: Earth, there is an example of character idiocy that continues for over ten minutes before events reveal what should have been the first thing out of Joe Hermit’s mouth upon every subsequent human contact. I flailed my hands at the screen, “Tell everyone you meet immediately that there’s an eight-foot tall, bio-mechanical flesh blender running around the place!” OK, earlier he tried to radio it in but comms were down. Quel dommage. Yes, the poor boy had to deal with his introduction to the hybrid rebirth of his believed dead sister so perhaps that was enough of an emotional gut punch to take his mind off an eight-foot tall, bio-mechanical flesh blender running around the place. Still, he might have warned them what they might be up against as they wandered the Maginot’s decks before they ran into the beast with reproduction on its mind. We’ll get there eventually.
I have some sympathy for those who found the alien’s behaviour more like Freddy Kruger and less like ‘kill and eat threats and drag contained threats to facilitate reproduction. But the slaughter is presented extremely effectively and in some cases off camera just allowing us to see the aftermath. I have no idea what the thinking was behind the Regency party going on in a room at the crash site. Are the cos-play dressed inhabitants unaware of the spaceship that has just crashed into the building? Minutes later they become horribly aware of its escaped cargo. The guests simply go to pieces.
It’s in this episode where the children in adult synthetic bodies start acting and talking like children and it’s not exactly endearing. It’s clearly logical but I keep thinking an alien TV show is not where these characters belong. But if you want proof of the awkwardness of the concept of Alien: Earth, look no further than episode three…
Episode Three: Metamorphosis
Kavalier orders the specimens be brought to his Neverland Island for study. Wendy and Joe fight the xenomorph with a meat hook, and Wendy kills it, although both sustain serious injuries. Returning to the island, Joe undergoes surgery. Morrow calls Yutani and insists on retrieving the specimens despite being ordered to return home. Kavalier’s minions dissect a facehugger and introduce its larva to Joe’s compromised lung, removed during surgery. Wendy awakens, seemingly intercepting signals from the xenomorph eggs.
“Wendy kills it…” OK. Let’s concentrate on Wendy (birth name Marcy Hermit). We have already been shown some of her enhanced physical abilities. She can jump off cliffs and land unharmed… Not sure about this. Surely any human shaped object will sustain damage if it’s dropped from a few hundred metres? She can swing six children hanging off her gym-toned, outstretched arms. She has shown no signs as yet of being a genius despite Kavalier’s pronouncements. She clearly has an emotional connection to her brother which is presumably why she puts herself in harm’s way to begin with. But she’s still a child. Right? Wouldn’t a child’s reaction to a hitherto unseen alien creature about to kill her brother be off-the-scale white-out fear, screaming and running away? Perhaps I’m giving away what I might have done as a just turned 12 year-old but to pick up a meat hook (don’t worry, it’s well signposted) and drive it through the alien’s extendable jaw, dragging it kicking and screaming into a storage room and then having an unseen fight, child/synthetic body verses alien… I mean, she’s extraordinary.
Was I the only one surprised and a little bemused to find the alien decapitated – presumably by Wendy’s pre-chosen weapon of choice, a snapped off guillotine blade – and Wendy standing next to the acid-leaking corpse herself bleeding synthetic milky fluid? OK, maybe I just have to accept the premise and stop resisting it. Wendy is a tough cookie. Yes, her hairstyle invites a ton of online derogatory comments but I kept flashing on the Japanese dancers (Avantgardey?) that have invaded my many timelines and expect Wendy to suddenly break out into a synchronised robot number.
My only other comment on this episode is how does scientist Kirsh know how the alien species do their voodoo? He extracts a nascent xenomorph from a face hugger and plants it into Joe’s extracted damaged lung. Did the eggs come with an instruction manual?
Episode Four: Observation
Wendy discovers she can speak the xenomorphs’ language. Uh… What? Prodigy minions Kirsh and Tootles introduce a sheep to the octopus-eye alien who settles into the sheep’s eye socket and wins many prizes for out-staring its captors. Morrow instructs Slightly to take a human near the eggs so they can be infected by a facehugger. Kirsh has been eavesdropping on their conversations. Wendy observes the xenomorph-infected lung as the newborn xenomorph bursts out, and she placates it by communicating. Making Signs’ aliens’ back of the throat clicking noises when you don’t know their meaning is not communicating, just saying.
A couple of things occurred to me after this episode. Alien’s xenomorph was terrifying, unnegotiable, deadly, lightning fast and utterly merciless. Kill for food and kidnap the living to incubate your eggs. It’s a bit like Bruce from Jaws. It’s a killing machine. All this machine does is hunt, kill and prepare a context for its offspring. Yes, it screeched in the original as a response to searing hot steam and as a middle finger to the crew after vacating its host body. But a language? As an aside, do you know who gave voice to the alien in the 1979 original? Animal impersonator, Percy Edwards! No one under 50 is going to be the least bit interested in this fact but it still makes me smile. Right, back to language. Yes, it’s a new idea in the Alien universe and I’m up for those but is it a good one? Does it diminish the creature’s power? As more than one commentator has already put it, this unstoppable, terrifying force is now essentially lining up to be Wendy’s attack dog.
And I’m also aware that we are seeing it brightly lit more often than is good for it. It’s chunkier than the original impossibly slender frame of African student, Bolaji Badejo, more square-jawed with subtle changes to the back tubes. It reminds me of the change in actor performing Chewbacca in the Abrams/Johnson Star Wars trilogy. Peter Mayhew really sold the height of the Wookie in the originals. In the most recent trilogy, Chewy was more chunkier played by ex-basketball player, Joonas Suotamo.
The other consequence when you create a back story for the original film is that you change the DNA and foundations of the original film in subtle ways. Weyland-Yutani already knew of the existence of xenomorphs so the Nostromo, on its way back to Earth carrying an oil refinery through space, was never its primary mission. It was an alien retriever with the crew duped into believing they were simple space truckers. Of course, Ash was the exception. It’s always bothered me that the throwaway Ripley line “…wanted the alien for the weapons division.” was a good enough reason to have the entire crew slaughtered. How do you weaponize a creature like the xenomorph?
Episode Five: In Space, No One…
A flashback shows the events that occurred on the Maginot before it reached Earth. Alien fodder show a reckless abandon of logic and common sense and pay the price. The lone survivor, Morrow locks himself in a panic room and awaits the crash. Back in the present, Morrow meets with Yutani (she’s an actual person), offering to retrieve the specimens and kill Kavalier.
OK, after the greatest hits from the full story of the Maginot’s trip home from episode one, we get the full story. Essentially a variation on a theme (this being Scott’s glorious original), we now get to see Noah Hawley’s version. In some respects, it’s the biggest culprit in terms of “Oh God, don’t do that?!” The argument that the creatures have to get loose because ‘plot’ is fine but be smart about how they get out. Sandwiches, water bottles, glass containers kept on shelves… Any one of those things prompts face palms. But that aside, this is a belter with just enough differences to the dear old Nostromo’s fate to keep you watching. Now Morrow is established as a cutting edge model of cyborg, a human with augmented physicality so who is he mourning, a little girl who calls him ‘dadabear’? It is his daughter, one assumes but it does shed some light on the many conflicting interests he has brewing inside him at any one time.
The crew, of which there are many more than the crew of the Nostromo, seems a little cipherish. They are either victims or hapless and helpless agents in the face of the alien threat. One in particular, the bald-headed Teng the navigator, stands out for all the wrong reasons. He doesn’t survive long enough to be interesting but he is so theatrically loopy, it’s hard not to wish more characters had some sort of defining characteristic – perhaps not as loopy – to make them distinct. Each of the Nostromo’s crew were defined well enough for the drama and their responses to make sense. The engineer played by fan favourite ‘Tyres’ from Spaced, Michael Smiley, breaks through from his own strength of personality but he’s not blessed with the brightest button for an apprentice.
The highlight of this episode, if only for nostalgic reasons, is to see the xenomorph appear from above behind acting Captain Zaveri. Here was something Scott hadn’t had the tech to achieve. Yes, his alien was wisely confined to the shadows but Hawley’s does well and stands up in a stand-off. When it gives chase down the ship’s corridors in beautifully realised CG, dear Ridley may be saying “If only I could have done that!” 1979 was what it was and so glorious for the restraints as much as the opportunities the era represented.
The 1930s singing group, The Ink Spots’ ‘We’ll Meet Again’ – Morrow’s theme for his lost daughter – seems like a nod to Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner’s original trailer which featured the group’s recording of ‘If I Didn’t Care’ (1939), certainly one of the most intriguing sight and sound juxtapositions given the extraordinary imagery on offer. I remember being transported seeing that trailer.4
Episode Six: The Fly
As the xenomorph grows, Wendy works on communicating with it. She finds out Nibs’ memory has been manipulated. Meanwhile, Kavalier meets with Yutani over the ship’s return and outwits her, securing 20 billion in damages while keeping the specimens for 6 weeks due to quarantine. Kirsh asks Tootles to feed and water the specimens which doesn’t go well. Arthur packs having been fired and is trapped in the egg room by Slightly. This doesn’t go well either. Slightly hides along with Arthur’s body in an air vent as the flies leave their cell.
OK, we’re racing to the end now so I’ll take up as little of your time as I can. I just want to bring up one point about this episode (two perhaps, related). One of the alien insect creatures ingests metal. Let that sink in. Acid for blood? Containment possible if you’re at the top of your game. But release or mistakenly release a metal-eater on a metal spaceship or a metal holding laboratory, do you not have a bigger problem? One of the first hybrid deaths occur because an infected sheep headbutted a window and the shock caused hybrid Tootles/Isaac to be locked in with the acid spewing horrors while trying to feed them… very slowly. OK, he may soon die, but the threat is contained.
Remember, metal-eaters. So, the Indian boy, Slightly, is being coerced into setting up a face hugger to plant itself on anyone’s face so he can deliver an alien to Morrow. Arthur, scientist and Dame Sylvia’s husband, finds himself trapped in a wildly dangerous and compromised species containment room. OK, species playroom and lo and behold, a face hugger thrusts its palm tube down his throat and now it’s just a matter of time. So, question. How does Slightly get Arthur and huggeur-du-visage out of the severely fortified alien play room and well hidden (under his bed, classic child’s ploy) in his quarters? Well, there’s an air vent, see. It’s big enough to pull Arthur’s prone body through. It’s also made of metal. See where we’re going, or rather where the alien insects are probably going? And even if this vent was closed… Metal eaters?
Episode Seven: Emergence
Smee discovers Slightly hiding an incapacitated Arthur, and the latter convinces him to help deliver Arthur to Morrow on the beach. Wendy is disgusted by Kavalier’s attitude to Tootles’ death, and convinces Nibs to join her and Joe in escaping the island. Outside, Wendy, Joe, and Nibs are held at gunpoint by Yutani forces, but Wendy calls the xenomorph which kills them. Go Wendy! Morrow’s team are taken captive by Kirsh, who has also captured the newborn xenomorph. Wendy, Joe, and Nibs reach the boat. Nibs, frustrated, brutally kills a soldier, prompting Joe to incapacitate her. A shocked Wendy scolds Joe, as the xenomorph watches in the distance.
OK, Where did all the security people come from? And it’s that easy to clean up a breach? And at the end, again, where did all those security people come from? If we had proof that Kirsh was playing the long game and engineered all the bad decisions in order to get Morrow into custody, then OK. But it’s certainly not obvious. And it does seem that if a chess match was being played, Kirsh is so many moves ahead for a humble viewer such as I to keep up. OK, on to the climax of all these shadows and monsters…
Episode Eight: The Real Monsters
The hybrids have been imprisoned in one cell. Wendy uses her abilities to block the facility’s cameras and communications. Morrow attacks Kirsh in the lab; Kirsh is badly damaged, but ultimately chokes Morrow unconscious. Wendy fights Atom, who reveals himself as a synthetic, allowing Wendy to control his motor functions. With the help of the older xenomorph, Wendy and Joe capture Kavalier and lock him in a cell with Kirsh, Atom, Dame, and Morrow.
So now we enter the economic battleground of modern television production. On one side you want a self-contained season with if not an ending, an emotionally conclusive experience. If you’re lucky to make it work, trying throwing out the promise of what goodies await in further series. On the other side, as the showrunner, you may only be committing to the first run as if this is hard enough as it is without long term planning. If you want to see how series’ finales are done well, taking into consideration that nothing fundamentally needs to be changed to set off the next season, then again, I urge you to watch Timothy Olyphant’s Justified. The trick is to deliver an emotionally satisfying climactic end to the seven hours of a season we’ve committed to so far and having the prospect of an inevitable next series be not such a hollow announcement of profit mongering. Let’s be fair. The corporations cannot win. They are bad guys to want maximised profit but all is forgiven if they make a show that deserves such success. This final episode of Alien: Earth is a hook not a dénouement (which is nicely in keeping with the inexplicable Peter Pan sub-theme throughout).
It is, essentially and unsurprisingly, all change. Power leaks and spurts from the arrogant and cruel and amasses where we’ve most been expecting it to. And so, inevitably, the children shall lead. I’m fairly sure showrunner Hawley knows his Bible references (as opposed to his Star Trek ones) but in the book of Isaiah, a future utopia is imagined where predator and prey co-exist peacefully under a loving Messiah. And… “a little child shall lead them.” I can’t help but be reminded of Woody Allen’s take on this unlikely of futures. “The lion shall lie down with the lamb but the lamb won’t get much sleep.” And you also have to take into consideration what kind of predator we are talking about here too. Am fairly sure that any god in its infinite wisdom would never have created the xenomorph, something truly alien despite the physically human limitations of the character as it was in 1979. But there is something strangely satisfying about a man in a rubber suit that is, 46 years later, still able to push our buttons.
Alien: Earth was always going to be an ambitious project. To base its setting on the shoulders of a film that had one aim, to scare the bejesus out of you, was a brave choice given that you had to expand the running and screaming to include something weightier, ideas that could support a seven hour piece of work. While the ideas were there, not all of them fired as well as they might have and too many times (I can forgive once or twice) did dumb become the mother of reinvention. Having said that, it’s been an entertaining eight weeks and if we get a second season, likely if the ratings are to be believed, then let’s hope we can dial down the silliness and turn up the creativity to obviate the need for it.
Alien: Earth
USA / Thailand 2025 | 155 mins
directed by: Dana Gonzales, Ugla Hauksdóttir, Noah Hawley
written by: Noah Hawley, Bobak Esfarjani, Lisa Long, Maria Melnik, Migizi Pensoneau, based on elements created by Dan O'Bannon, Ronald Shusett
cast: Sydney Chandler, Alex Lawther, Samuel Blenkin, Babou Ceesay, Timothy Olyphant, Adrian Edmondson, Essie Davis, Adarsh Gourav
UK distributor: various
UK release date: 13 August 2025
- https://tag28.com[↩]
- The usual suspects of online criticism have laid into this series and for the most part from my perspective with pretty good reason. If you take a close look at the show, there is rampant and avoidable stupidity everywhere. Extremely dangerous creatures are contained in glass receptacles kept on waist level shelves with inevitable consequences. Locks on some of these receptacles are in no way fit for purpose. Characters enter quarantined areas where alien creatures lurk and seem shocked when the creatures descend on them and punish them spectacularly for their stupidity. The cast of children are in no way psychologically prepared to enter the world of the alien despite their robust hybrid bodies. The list is too long to be repeated here and fully justified. I tried to look past the obvious dumb foolery because I wanted to like the show having placed my faith in the writer/director/showrunner. Was my faith was somewhat misplaced?[↩]
- Undecided. Tune in for Alien: Earth II…[↩]
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eogpIG53Cis[↩]