It seems that if you’re going to be taken seriously as a long running franchise these days, you need some sort of streaming based reinvention to hit home based viewing devices to keep up with the times; but when I first got word that Alien was scampering through the vents that seperate the big and small screens, I did wonder if the change in format would fit the Xenomorph. Even with the announcement that Fargo and Legion honcho Noah Hawley was at the helm, I still wondered how the concept originally spearheaded by Ridley Scott could possibly stretch to convincingly fill eight, hour long episodes.
Well, I guess that’s why Hawley got the job and I’m just sitting here writing about it, because not only does the opening episode of Alien: Earth manage to make the transition seem natural, but we get possibly the most expansive world building the franchise has ever seen as the eponymous extraterrestrial finally touches down on earth (AVP not included).
The year is 2120 (two years before the Nostromo makes its fateful pitstop) and we find a Earth that is no longer separated by countries but instead has been carved up by five different mega-corporations that have also gone on to colonize the solar system. Obviously, one such entity is the Weyland-Yutani corporation and as we join proceedings, the crew of the USCSS Maginot as the prematurely wake four months out from Earth on their return from a mission that’s seen them collecting various invasive species from other planet for scientific study.
Meanwhile, on Earth, the battle for corporate supremacy is being decided by the manufacturer of different types of synthetics with full Synths and half human cyborgs being the most popular. However, the newly founded Prodigy Corporation, led by youthful trillionaire Boy Kavalier, has been working on a bold new approach by taking the minds of terminal ill children and transferring their consciousness into the body of an adult synthetic. The first of these hybrids is Marcy Hermit who takes the name of Wendy after her change and over the coming months she helps other sick kids make the transition as they dodge death and essentially become immortal.
It’s then when the Maginot finally arrives home; but the Wayland-Yutani vessel is in a noticably different condition than when we last saw it as some unfathomable atrocity has occured that’s left the crew in various states of gruesome death. As the ship re-enters the atmosphere, it’s obviously out of control and ultimately crashes down in New Siam, a city owned by Prodigy, and comes to a stop after colliding with a 100 floor tower. However, the property damage and immediate loss of life is the least of Earth’s problems when first responders discover that the various, otherworldly species on board have gotten loose – including the fearsome star beast we recognise as the Xenomorph.
In an effort to tale advantage of the situation, Wendy successfully lobbies Boy Kavalier to let her and the rest of the Hybrids to investigate for personal reasons – one of the first responders is her brother, Joe.
From unimaginable creature designs, to having Sigourney Weaver shave her head, the Alien franchise is no stranger to bold swings, but after it’s phoenix-like return to prominence thanks to the back-to-basics nostalgia of Fede Álvarez’s Alien: Romulus, it truly seems that Noah Hawley isn’t here to just creep around dark corridoors – even though there’s plenty of that. No, it seems that Hawley wants to take the bare bones of Ridley’s classic and move far beyond the confines of stunning set design and verbal asides of corporate dominance and finally cement an entire solar system full of politics around Giger’s iconic creatures. However, rather than starting from scratch, the show takes what already is gospel and expands on it in a way that invokes what Tony Gilroy managed with Star Wars thanks to Andor. The opening sequences on the Maginot resemble the world of the Nostromo so much, it’s virtually perfect; but after starting us off in familiar territory (cryo-tubes, MU-TH-UR computer rooms, analogue keyboards), Alien: Earth expands to give us a first real chance to take a step back an view the universe fully.
Everything is laid out clean. The ubiquitous Wayland-Yutani are only one of five corporations that are all scrabbling for universal dominance and will each seemingly shove mankind into the evolutionary void to get ahead and the tech race is primarily being run by both terraforming as much space as possible and manufacturing the most cutting edge synthetic. It’s here that we meet our leads – a clutch of Peter Pan inspired, formally doomed children with the enhanced, adult bodies of synthetics who very could could be heralding the future of mankind; and while the first episode tends to speed through a lot of this, Hawley’s storytelling is more than sturdy enough to compensate. But not only does the show expand upon everything we know about Synthetics and the political world in which Alien is set, we also find that we’ve more creepy, disturbing examples of alien wildlife to share the screen with the Xenomorph.
Oh don’t worry, those phallic-headed beasties aren’t in danger of being overshadowed – especially as Hawley shoots them as lithe, writhing death machines that the camera can barely keep up with – but as we cast our eye over this bizarre, malformed zoo of eyeball creatures and blood draining bugs, it proves to be yet another intriguing wrinkle that somehow changes the game without making it too divorced from the source material. However, there admittedly is a lot to keep track of. Beyond the cargo and fate of the Maginot, the creation of the Hybrids and all the characters that come with them, there’s the immediate fallout from the disaster that brings the Alien to our planet. This allows Hawley to push things more into Aliens territory as Wendy’s brother (who now believes she died from her illness) is the medic to a team of gung-ho Search & Rescue who started searching the ship for survivors armed with pulse rifles and a soon-to-be-fragile sense of control. If all this isn’t enough, we also have a wild card in the form of the Maginot’s cyborg security officer, Morrow, who seems to be performing some typically dodgy, Wayland-Yutani subterfuge, but while this all seems like overkill for an opening salvo of television, the deft mixture of the familiar and the new held my attention like the grip of a particularly amorous face hugger.
While unavoidably dense in detail, some may be unconvinced at some of Hawley’s bigger swings (the obsession with the movie Ice Age: Continental Drift is amusingly intrusive). However, as a full bloodied attempt to capitalise on the renewed interest of a long running IP, Alien: Earth is as ballsy, huge and downright weird as you’d hope the franchise to be. Still it’s early days yet and with Hawley at the controls, there’s a feeling that things are going to get a whole lot wilder as we go. I mean, a group of immortal children wandering round a crashed ship filled with body violating alien life forms? How could it not?
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