I was actually pretty excited when I first learned about Alien: Earth, not because I’m a huge Alien aficionado but because I was really curious to see what Fargo and Legion creator, Noah Hawley, would do with the franchise. Well, the first two episodes of Alien: Earth are out on Hulu now, and while that’s not enough to judge the entire season, I think it is enough to get a solid first impression.
First of all, no, Alien: Earth is not a nature documentary. You will not hear the narration of David Attenborough as he discusses how possible alien life forms could have come to our planet millions of years ago. It sure does sound like that, and I think this is the very first mistake Hawley/Hulu/FX made with this series. Earth is also just a super mundane word compared to, say, Covenant or even Romulus. I get that juxtaposing these two words “alien” and “earth” makes the whole thing sound ironic, but then I think irony is overrated, especially when it comes to marketable titles for TV programs.
All that aside, the show’s first two episodes are wildly uneven. The first episode sets up a really interesting premise and gives viewers some really terrific special effects, costumes and production design. There are scenes that look like they could have been plucked directly from the original film. The cassette futurism / analog-punk aesthetic is on full display here, though Hawley makes a couple grievous errors on this front as well. More on that in a moment.
We’re introduced to two separate storylines in the first episode that end up colliding during the second. The first involves a spaceship, the USCSS Maginot, a Weyland-Yutani C-class deep space research vessel and its crew which is – rather bafflingly – bringing back a number of alien specimens to Earth. Why the corporate bigwigs decide to bring these potentially deadly (okay, almost certainly deadly) alien lifeforms to Earth rather than research them in the research vessels in space remains a mystery.
Things go badly on the ship, though the way this is shown during the episode is quite strange and hard to follow. We get most of it in flashes and I suppose we’re just supposed to fill in the blanks, since we’ve seen Alien already. We get a little bit of the cyborg, Morrow (Babou Ceesay) working to fulfill his mission to return the specimens at all cost. I’m a little puzzled by Morrow’s character. He’s apparently a cyborg, which is a human with enhanced cybernetic anatomy, but he acts more like a full synthetic (or android) blindly following orders without any emotion.
There are also hybrids in this universe, which brings us to the second major storyline. This involves a terminally ill girl named Marcy (Florence Bensberg) who is taken by a trillionaire to his private island where she becomes the first human to have her consciousness transferred into a synthetic body. In this new body she becomes Wendy (Sydney Chandler) and soon the trillionaire, Boy Kavalier (Samuel Blenkin) gives her companions, other very sick kids who are given new synthetic bodies: Children in adult form, essentially. They call themselves The Lost Boys. The research island is called Neverland. How we fail to get a single Michael Jackson track over any of this is beyond me (though we get some Tool).
A few things must now be discussed. As a huge fan of all things Peter Pan, I hate to say it but I don’t think it works here. For one thing, the parallel between these kids and the story of Peter Pan is all wrong. That story is about Wendy leaving the nursery, letting go of her childhood against her will and finally growing up. The Lost Boys are clinging to a fantasy world where they never have to grow up. Peter Pan is the avatar of eternal childhood, refusal to become a stodgy old pirate. But these kids in adult synth bodies are quite the opposite. They feel awkward and ill-at-ease, eager to grow into their new bodies. They don’t want to stay kids forever.
Much more troubling is the inclusion of Peter Pan in the first place, along with a bunch of really bizarre references to the Ice Age movies. This is incredibly immersion breaking. As I noted above, Alien is part of the “cassette futurism” subgenre of science-fiction. Star Wars fits in this subgenre as well. When you think of cyberpunk, you imagine neon lights over slick film noir city streets like tears in the rain. Cassette futurism isn’t neon. It’s CRT monitors and space ships with a thousand buttons and green typewriter text. There are digital processors in there somewhere, but the only thing you can see is analog.
This makes the Earth of the Alien franchise a future stuck in the 70s and 80s in terms of most technology. Only with spaceships that can travel millions of light years, powerful blaster rifles and so forth. This is not an Earth where CGI squirrels chase acorns for seven movies. It’s really weird to have the main character (who obsessively spies on her brother, Joe (Alex Lawther) constantly reference Ice Age. That takes me right out of the alternative world of Alien and plops me down into our own. Besides, while I know people enjoy older movies, I kind of doubt Ice Age will be a really popular cultural touchstone in 2120 when this show is set.
That actually places the show two years before the original Alien film. This makes it the prequel closest to the original film’s place in the timeline, though around thirty years after the events of Prometheus.
In any case, including Disney’s animated features (they own 20th Century Fox so Ice Age counts) in Alien is ridiculous. Might as well put Toy Story in Blade Runner next.
Anyways, other than these weird choices, the first episode is pretty strong. Visually it’s excellent. Then you move to Episode 2 and everything falls apart. The research ship, its crew now dead thanks to being really careless with the alien specimens, crashes into Prodigy City, New Siam, a city run by Boy Kavalier’s corporation. We learn that the world is run by five mega-corporations now, including Weyland-Yutani, Lynch, Dynamic, Threshold and Prodigy.
Somehow, the massive ship crashing into a major city only damages one building and everyone seems pretty chill about the whole thing. Security forces send like…six soldiers to go see what happened. It’s the most bizarrely muted and understaffed mission ever filmed. The Xenomorph onboard the ship now hunts really stupid soldiers in the halls of the building. It also kills some partygoers at some kind of Mary Antoinette-style party. The cyborg, Morrow, also makes things difficult on the Prodigy security forces, still working tirelessly to get the specimens to Weyland-Yutani.
Into this mess goes young Joe, the medic, brother to Wendy. Wendy, who spies on Joe all the time, sees this and demands to go find him. Her synth handler and Prodigy chief scientist, Kirsch (Timothy Olyphant) thinks this is a bad idea (it is, for so many reasons) but Boy Kavalier decides to risk his massive investment by sending a group of totally untrained and unprepared children into harm’s way. It’s one of numerous incredibly stupid choices made by characters in this show as they pass the idiot ball around like it’s going out of style.
Where Alien: Earth succeeds it does so by making us feel like we’re back in the good old days of the Alien franchise, in smokey, grey interiors of space vessels with crewmembers in white tank tops and denim, hurtling through the far reaches of space, danger lurking around every corner. Some of the performances are really great also. Sydney Chandler is perfect as Wendy, an earnest and curious and driven young hybrid. Timothy Olyphant, with his bleached blond hair, looks like he was dragged right out of the 1970s, and makes for a deeply unsettling synthetic. Olyphant is always so charming in everything he does, it’s cool to see him in such a different role.
I also enjoyed learning a bit more about this version of Earth, its megacorporations and technological advancements. But I find myself thrown off by the timeline. Then again, I’ve been perplexed by the Alien franchise’s timeline for years now. The original Alien film works so well because it’s the first time humans come into contact with Xenomorphs. It’s a shocking experience. It forms a good foundation for some sequels, like Aliens, which is much more action-packed rather than the horror-survival of the first film. What doesn’t work as well are prequels. The more instances of human encounters with Xenomorphs, the less sense the original film makes. The less unique Ripley’s horrific encounter becomes. Now we have a Xenomorph on Earth, two years before the USCSS Nostromo found the Derelict.
The bigger problem, I’m afraid, is apathy. I simply do not care for any of these characters; certainly not enough to worry when they’re facing extraterrestrial peril or corporate arrogance and greed. The crew in the research vessel storyline was wiped out immediately and Wendy and the Lost Boys have yet to convince me. I’m not really rooting for or against anyone at this point.
All of which is to say, like so most of the attempts to revive the Alien franchise over the years, this one falls short – at least, so far. Unsurprisingly, I’m disappointed. That’s a shame. But it’s early days. I’m hoping the next six episodes prove me wrong. We shall see.
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