Alien: Earth ★★★½
What’s hungrier? An apex predator such as the Xenomorph, the nightmarish creature that populates the Alien movies, or the franchise itself, which is almost 50 years old and now launching a television series after a slew of movies. Whichever way you lean, the unnerving Alien: Earth manages to mostly satisfy creative and corporate pangs. Slotting into the Alien universe while bringing new elements to bear, the show’s first season is rich in science-fiction horror: unchecked creation, terrifying destruction, and unnerving responses.
Sydney Chandler as Wendy in Alien: Earth, which is a prequel to the Alien film franchise.
Alien: Earth’s creator, Noah Hawley, has some experience with this, having built the Fargo series out of the Coen Brothers film. But that was an anthology inspired by the movie, whereas this is entrenched in the terrifying mythology established by original director Ridley Scott. We know the Xenomorph cycle, from face hugger to gleaming beast. Thankfully, Hawley doesn’t just tinker with Alien lore, he adds to it, while devising new creatures your subconscious will adore.
The most crucial addition is a new kind of human. Alien: Earth is set in 2120, two years before the original film, and while it teases with a doomed spaceship and its escaped cargo, it’s just as focused on humanity’s progress. In a world run by corporations, the spaceship crash-lands in a city owned by Prodigy, the firm of reckless young genius Boy Kavalier (Samuel Blenkin). Boy sees the crash as a chance to field-test his secret new invention: hybrids. A human child’s mind allowed to grow in a powerful machine body.
The first synthetic ever, as opposed Alien’s more common cyborgs (humans with an augmented body) and synthetics (androids), is Wendy, a transformative evolutionary leap tellingly played by Sydney Chandler with adolescent openness and otherworldly agency. Hawley, who wrote or co-wrote each episode and directs several, layers scientific exploitation with children’s book imagery – at night, Boy reads Peter Pan to his newly created hybrids, which he has named for the story’s characters. It’s a very different Neverland, full of body horror and flawed practices.
Timothy Olyphant as the inscrutable synthetic Kirsh in Alien: Earth.
Alien: Earth has a show’s worth of interwoven threads, from the rival corporation Weyland-Yutani, which wants their invaluable “specimens” back, to the inscrutable synthetic Kirsh (Timothy Olyphant, perfectly cast against his laconic gunslinger roles), who is supervising Wendy and the other hybrids. But do Aliens fans want creator hubris and existential conundrums? Or are they just after bloody scares? Hawley cannily delivers both, albeit in an unconventional order. The show’s approach might occupy an uncomfortable middle ground for some, but the creative energy is undeniably inquisitive and genuine. Keep feeding the Alien franchise.
Alien: Earth is streaming from August 13 on Disney+.
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