When I first heard about Alien: Earth, or rather just heard about an Alien TV series, I was sceptical to say the least… until I heard who was helming the show. Noah Hawley is the man behind both Fargo and Legion, two of my favourite TV shows in recent memory, so I instantly became excited, and now all this time later and it managed to meet and possibly even surpass my high expectations. Taking lots of great sci-fi ideas and philosophical subjects and then blending in plenty of Alien horror and gore alongside it was quite the winning combination, though I have to say the Xenomorphs were actually one of the least interesting things about the show, which is weird to say and not actually be upset about… Let’s take a look!
The story mainly focuses on a mega corporation known as Prodigy creating “Hybrids” by digitally replicating terminally ill children’s “consciousness” into synthetic bodies and all the issues and implications that go with it. Our central character (played by Sydney Chandler) was born Marcy Hermit but was given the name “Wendy” by Prodigy’s oddly named CEO “Boy Kavalier” (Samuel Blenkin), and was the first Hybrid before more children were brought into the offices to undergo the same “treatment”, soon getting the names Slightly (Adarsh Gourav), Curly (Erana James), Nibs (Lily Newmark), Smee (Jonathan Ajayi), and Tootles (Kit Young), together being dubbed the Lost Boys, so all very Peter Pan. Now obviously taking ill children and putting them in adult bodies that have greater strength and durability than regular humans and expecting them to suddenly become the next level of humanity is a bit much (apparently they tried it on adults but the process didn’t work) but it’s made worse when Wendy manages to essentially hack into the Wi-Fi that she’s permanently monitored with and find her brother Joe (Alex Lawther) who works as a field medic. The expectation was that once they “ascended” and got new names they’d leave their old lives behind, but this turned out not to be the case.
Wendy hears something off in the distance with her “ears”. Man, those Hybrid bodies have some odd quirks!
Things take a sudden twist though when a spaceship crashes into Prodigy’s private island containing five alien species that Yutani (Sandra Yi Sencindiver) of the Weyland-Yutani Corp (or maybe just Yutani corp at this point, can’t remember…) had secured with the help of the partially cyborg security officer Morrow (Babou Ceesay). The Search and Rescue team sent to the crash site is of course the one that has Joe attached to it, so Wendy asks Boy Kavalier if they can go and help, which he agrees with and lets her do it, to the surprise of everyone around him, especially his right-hand man Atom Eins (Adrian Edmondson! So strange seeing him in something serious after my entire teens being his and Rik Mayall’s crazy sitcoms…). So these literal children are sent into a crashed spaceship with a bunch of bodies and dangerous aliens, with only the full Synth Kirsh (Timothy Olyphant) as a guide. This is where we get a good chunk of Xenomorph action as well as a preview of some of the other alien species, including the now internet meme-famous “Ocellus” (basically an eye attached to some tentacle-like tissue that replaces an eye of its victims and controls their bodies) and some horrible leech-like things. Lots of killing occurs and Wendy reunites with Joe only for them both to get hurt (or damaged, I guess in Wendy’s case) taking out the Xeno. The five specimens, including some facehugger eggs, are taken to Prodigy’s labs to study.
Sadly at no point did Atom kick a Xenomorph in the balls with an over-the-top crunching sound. (Also pictured: Boy Kavalier).
This sets up the rest of the series, with the main focus being on the Lost Boys and their ever-increasing mental instability or child-like gullibility, plus the ADHD-raddled mind of Boy Kavalier and how it effects those around him, especially his top two scientists in Dame and Arthur Sylvia (Essie Davis and David Rysdahl) who the former acts like a mother to the Hybrids and the latter is about the only person in the whole corporation who has issues with some of the ethics involved, especially when Nibs has a rather angry outburst and he’s told to essentially scrub her memory of the bad things she’s seen like editing a database rather than treating them like actual people. Obviously there is also focus on the alien species, Joe’s damaged lung is replaced with a cybernetic one and then they use his actual fleshy one to birth a Xenomorph, and the Ocellus is transplanted into a sheep and shows the ability to think for itself a bit (and intentionally kill Tootles…)
Everyone’s favourite character… No seriously!
All the while Morrow is trying to gain access to the alien species as it was his job to give to his employer and he manipulates Slightly (who he had planted a radio thingy on so he can speak to him) by tracking down his real mother and threatening to kill her if he doesn’t bring at least a Xenomorph sample. Arthur helps Joe out by disabling the Lost Boys’ trackers and then sadly ends up as Slightly’s chosen host as he intentionally leads him to get facehugged. With this knowledge Morrow heads to the Prodigy Island with a Yutani attack force, but while this has been going on not only has Wendy become more confident and seeing less and less reason why she should follow the orders of the regular humans she has also developed a way to communicate with the Xenomorph that was birthed from her brother’s lung (there’s a weird sentence) giving her an even greater leverage over Boy Kavalier and co…
So lots of fun sci-fi/horror stuff but also plenty of dives into the idea of uploading yourself as a “digital consciousness” and asking if that would still be you (punctuated by a scene where some of the Lost Boys discover their old child body graves) as well as child soldiers, rich people doing whatever they want and many other topics of interest, either as a philosophical idea or just a reflection on modern life. The acting is top notch across the board too, especially the “Lost Boys” and their ability to act like children in adult bodies, its often disturbingly convincing. I also want to give special mention to Episode 5, which is entirely a self-contained mini Alien movie showing how the original ship ended up crashing down to Earth. It touches all the cliches of the movies like you’d expect from an Alien film (minus a few other types of aliens, obviously) so it’s like a little treat in the middle of all the extra more thought-provoking stuff the series added on.
Overall Thoughts:
“Cheeeese!!”
Alien: Earth ended up meeting my expectations of one of my all-time favourite franchises being written by one of my all-time favourite TV creators. It manages to tick all the Alien franchise boxes while adding so much more, and so long as the cliffhanger ending if followed up on, it’s going to be a truly great show. If there isn’t a Season 2, then yikes that ending will not be a good way to close out, to say the least!
As Wendy, Joe and Nibs try to escape (using the Xenomorph to tear local security apart) Slightly and Smee try to take Arthur to the meeting point but he gets chest-burst on the way and the Xeno runs off, leading to Slightly having to meet with Morrow and have nothing to show for it, and for Smee to freak out that he just helped his best friend kill a father-figure. Morrow is soon outsmarted and captured by Kirsh and the new Xeno is captured, while Wendy, Nibs and Joe are also captured when the latter has enough of the wholesale slaughtering of the staff and shocks Nibs unconscious, much to Wendy’s anger, showing she really does see the humans other than her brother as lesser than her, thinking nothing of tearing them apart with her pet but gets angry when her friend is shocked. Anyway, the finale sees Joe and Morrow escape but Atom leads Joe to the room where the Ocellus is waiting, but thanks to a swiftly arriving Wendy he’s saved while Atom gets frozen in place thanks to her ability to control the technology in the area and the reveal that he’s a Synth.
Morrow was a fantastic villain throughout, happy he survived into the (hopeful) next season!
Wendy and the Lost Boys basically decide to turn on everyone so while Kirsh and Morrow have one more showdown where the Synth is damaged and Morrow KO’d, and the Ocellus possesses Arthur’s body and walks off the rest of the staff is all rounded up, including Boy Kavalier being intentionally freaked by Wendy’s Xenomorph which was nice to see (he’s a very convincing arrogant prick) With everyone tied up in a cell and a full-on Yutani military force on the way to the island, Wendy declares that she and her fellow Hybrids “now rule” as we cut to credits. Great cliffhanger, so long as there is definitely a Season 2… if there isn’t, then bloody hell, don’t end your shows like that, damn it!
Hogan Reviews 