Metamorphosis basically means a change of the form or nature of a thing or person into a completely different one, and seeing how the timeline of the Alien franchise has twisted and mutated over the years, it proves to be the perfect title for the third episode of Alien: Earth. You see, only three episodes in and it seems that Noah Hawley’s show is seemingly altering the already mutable timeline of the franchise with random details here and there that seemingly contradicts details that we’ve already had laid out in Ridley Scott’s Prometheus and Alien: Covenant. However, even though I’ve been a fan of the series for decades, I have to say that I’m actually enjoying the changes that are occurring (if, of course, they even exist).
But even without potential changes in the timeline, Metamorphosis sees to see the show itself in a state of change as we gradually shift from your typical, running around in strobe-lit corridors, to something more overtly science-y as the show pauses for breath and takes proper stock of its Lost Boys.
The Hybrids contine to explore the creepy depths of the Maginot with varied results – while synth babysitter Kirsh tends to the mini zoo of bizarre lifeforms the ship has collected in its 65 year mission, Nibs starts to question the way her and her fellow Hybrids have been treated and named after characters in Peter Pan – primarily why Wendy has been designated the unofficial leader. Speaking of Wendy, she’s charging into the the depths of the ship to engage the Xenomorph that’s carried off her brother from her human life, Hermit and after discovering her sibling cocooned to a wall as bait, engages in a knock down, drag out fight with the alien that results in the creature decapitated, her brother succumbing to a pierced lung and herself sustaining some significant damage.
Bratty trillionaire Boy Kavalier isn’t exactly happy with this turn of events, but more than making up for it is that billions of dollars worth of Wayland-Yutani extra-terrestrial R&D has fallen into his lap, but as he sets his various synthetic beings to work examining the various, creepy lifeforms (including face hugger eggs), we find that the other Hybrids also are discovering their own agendas. After a run in with Mr. Morrow, the last surviving crew member of the Maginot, Slightly finds that the Cyborg has found a way to communicate with him in an attempt to gain access to Boy’s compound. Elsewhere, Curly is obviously unhappy with the fact that the out-of-commission Wendy is Boy’s favourite of the Lost Boys and vows to change his mind. But most intriguing is Wendy herself, who finally wakes to hear the strange clicking noise she’s been hearing since she first boarded the Maginot getting ever louder – could the sound be coming from the alien eggs? However, the most alarming aspect of all of this is after dissecting a facehugger, Kirsh suddenly has a case of the Davids and decides that the best place to store a Xenomorph larvae is in Hermit’s pre-surgery lung…
While a lot occurs in this week’s episode that finally let’s us spend a little more time with the Lost Boys as actual people rather than the wide-eyed child/robots they’ve been, the main thrust of Metamorphosis is to push Alien: Earth from being a horror show to focusing more on the science fiction side as Kirsh metaphorically rolls up his sleeves and dives headlong into picking apart these funky new creatures. Still, just because the show wants to focus more on it’s Blade Runner style drama over scary drippy things lurking in the dark, it doesn’t mean that the episode doesn’t give the Xenomorph its time to shine. In fact, I really am loving the more robust, muscular version of the Alien that Noah Hawley has given us, especially as it seems to have the sinister grace of the original creature mixed with the animalistic ferocity of Alien³’s dog burster. Not only is it laying traps and lurking menacingly in doorways like Nosferatu, but it gets into a full blown scrap with Wendy as she hooks it by its inner mouth and engages in an inhuman tug of war and while the Xenomorph is ultimately defeated, it comes at a high cost. However, while Wendy and Hermit are temporarily taken off the board due to their injuries, it gives us a chance to spend some individual time with her fellow Lost Boys.
Some have expressed displeasure with the more Blade Runner style aspects of the synthetic beings taking the centre stage, but I have to confess that it’s not bothering for the simple facts that A) the franchise has always been as fascinated with artificial life as long as it has been phallic shaped extra-terrestrials and B) as Ridley Scott directed both Alien and Blade Runner, there’s always been that thematic connection to me.
Anyway, after the Hybrids have come home from their impromptu mission, we find that some of their number have some personal things going on inside their human/synthetic minds. As they mature mentally to become the people they’re going to become, we find that they might not all be the forward thinking, goodie two shoes that we all thought. Nibs seems to existentially questioning everything about her new existence which suggests that she’s deeply unhappy about the rules that comes with her newfound immortality; but on the other hand, Curly is revelling in her Hybrid body and even is making moves behind the scenes in order to surpass Wendy in an act of immature jealousy. While there’s also an interesting plot point involving Mr. Morrow using an implant to groom a horribly naive Slightly to help him possibly infiltrate the lab, it’s Timothy Olyphant’s Kirsh who is proving to be the most facinating character of the show. Sporting a bleached Roy Batty do and displaying all the creepy curiosity of Michael Passenger’s David from the prequels, watching the synthetic go from matter of fact snark to exasperated patenting of the Hybrids in his charge, now that that we’re moving into the more sci-fi leaning parts of the show, he’ll no doubt get to display more of that ruthless, inhuman need to experiment with the creatures under his purview.
However, while the show alters itself to get to the more trippier parts of its ploy (getting up close and personal with the rest of Wayland-Yutani’s menagerie), the question still remains – is the franchise once again being reset as we go. The true answer is: it’s not entirely clear as the origins of the Alien universe is as shadowy and illusive as the creature itself. Does Earth contradict what we think we know from Prometheus or Covenant? Well, that depends on whether anything we’ve learnt from Scott’s prequels was actually the whole story or not – we assume that David genetically built Xenomorphs after studying the black goo from the Engineers, but that doesn’t mean that they didn’t already exit in some form either in nature or by the hands of the Engineers themselves. The long and the short of it is simple; the franchise has always mired itself in deliberate mystery, even when it was supposed to be explaining itself, so a couple of more added ripples in the time-line is hardly surprising.
While I feel the show is still yet to crest into what it truly wants to be, Alien: Earth is continually growing more and more facinating with every episode. With tensions lurking under the surface with the Hybrids, Boy becoming more and more cavalier with every passing moment (he got awfully close to those eggs) and Kirsh apparently dooming Hermit to a chest bursty future, we’ve still got so much more to discover.
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