The same, or different. It’s the line everyone has to walk when delving into creating a new entry in an existing franchise. It’s a line fraught with peril too, because if you stray too far into the new you might lose the feel of the property you’re trying to evoke; alternatively, if you hew too close, what was the point of making it at all if you’re only going to copy what has gone before. It’s a question I’ve been asking of virtually every episode of Alien: Earth to date and while some are happy to complain about franchise inconsistencies and too much android stuff, I have been truly enjoying the serves and curveballs that Noah Hawley’s series has given us thus far.
However while the last installment pushed us further into original territory than ever before (Wendy pacifying a chestburster by talking to it in its own “language” was probably the most seismic twist the franchise has seen), the 5th episode catapults us back into the overwhelmingly familiar with a flashback episode set on the Maginot before it’s fateful crash. Once again, we’re safely in the embrace of Ridley Scott’s Alien, but that doesn’t mean that Hawley still hasn’t got some bold cards to play…
Two weeks prior to all the carnage we’ve witnessed so far, the crew of the Maginot are awakened early when members of the rotating crew report strange occurrences. A fire by mysterious causes has broken out that not only has damaged the navigation controls, but also managed to release two face huggers from their eggs who promptly pounce on the ship’s captain and another member of the crew. Worse, yet, in an attempt to cut one of the facehuggers free from the captain, the creature’s acidic blood managed to kill the poor dude before a Xenomorph embryo could hope to grow.
Snapping into detective mode, Mr. Morrow starts using CCTV and interrogation to try and piece together the events that have led to the mission going so horribly awry, however, the steady stream of shit that’s hitting the space fan is a long way from being over. First, the other embryo has burst forth, meaning that there’s an infant Xeno lurking somewhere on the ship that’s rapidly growing to maturity and elsewhere, the damage to the navigation means that the ship will unavoidably crash down on earth, but while Morrow correctly surmises that they have a saboteur on board working for Boy Kavalier, all the other alien species the crew has been collecting have decided to act up with creepy results.
For a start, the fucked-up space bugs/leeches escape containment and immediately lays it’s larvae in someone’s drinking flask with predictably horrific results, while our old buddy, the Eyeball alien, also stages an impromptu jail break while similarly flexing some repugnant, body horror muscles. However, when the fully grown Xenomorph enters the hunting ground, it finds that it may not be the big dog in the yard we all thought it was.
It’s probably no surprise that the episode that’s handled the balance between new and old with the most capability is, to date, the best entry so far. Usually, breaking away from a cliffhanger as intriguing as Wendy stroking a calmed chestburster like a puppy as she coos to it in clicks and hisses would frustrate the living shit out of me, but what can I say, the old Alien fan in me just can’t resist another cat and mouse chase around an unnaturally gloomy starship. However, while the settings may be overwhelmingly familiar, the action set among them prove to be thrillingly different.
It’s not like we haven’t set foot on the Weyland-Yutani vessel, the Maginot, before; but it still a treat to once again be surroundings that evoke the original Alien right down to a tee. In fact, for some shots, it really could still be 1979 as Hawley’s dedication to Ridley Scott’s tangible vision is thrillingly realised. The blandness of the mess hall, that weird spotlight in the engine deck, the claustrophobic corridors, it’s all here and it still stirs up the good kind of nostalgia to see the ghost of the Nostromo invoked technically two years before a similar disaster struck the crew of that ship. However, while vast amounts of familiarity can be drawn from the sets, Hawley guarantees that he doesn’t simply loose into mindless homage by tweaking things just enough to make them an entirely new animal. Rather than being a simple survival horror where hapless crewmember are picked off one at a time by an alien force, the script muddies the waters to not only put the doomed crew on a ticking clock as their ship hurtles towards Earth, but the majority of the episode actually functions as sort of a whodunit as Babou Ceesay’s Mr. Morrow takes center stage like a space bound Sherlock Holmes with a bionic arm. Another shift is that while the mission of the Nostromo had left its crew a bickering, cynical group, the crew of the Maginot all seem to not only truly despise each other’s company, but their ridiculously long mission has left them all with noticably malfunctioning personalities.
Whether its the pressures of a 65 year mission that’s made them all so petty, childish and virtually impossible to get along with, or it’s the fact that only a mission such as this would attract such a band of unhinged misanthropes, it’s intriguing to see such a dysfunctional crew fall prey to the things that lurk on their ship.
Ah, yes. The things… Arguably the biggest change in the Alien status quo is that the Xenomorph isn’t flying solo anymore and while it creeps and waits in the vents of the ship, the other two main species on board step up to show that the title creature doesn’t have sole claim over grotesque body horror.
We’ve seen the Blood Leeches in action before in the first episode, but rather than having them simply suck another poor bastard dry, the epsiode ups the stakes considerably by having a victim drink a flask full of Leeches larvae and then suffer the grotesque consequences as the babies drain him from within. But more than this, the insidious bugs also display keen intelligence by managing to escape containment with a spot of problem solving and also reveals that it can give off fatal toxic gases to protect itself. Elsewhere, recent fan favorite the Eyeball Alien, continues to strut its squishy stuff by showing enough brains to try and warn the humans about the escaping bugs, bust out of its own container and eventually possesses Michael Smiley’s Shmuel by replacing one of his eyes, but the little critter manages to score even more admiration by puppeteering it’s host into a savage brawl with the Xenomorph. Is the crawly blinker trying to actually to protect the humans from the other creatures? If it is, it’s got a funny way of showing it, but for those worried that the Xenomorph is in danger of getting overshadowed by the other alien, rest assured Hawley has you covered.
Be it riffing on the sort of imagery seen in the Alien: Isolation video game, or having the alien scamper on all fours after it’s prey like the dogburster from Alien³, this show is continuing to give us gorgeous new footage of the Xenomorph in action while looking sleeker and more vicious than ever. Speaking of vicious, while the next episode will no doubt take us back to the main story thread, you can’t deny that Alien: Earth has acquitted itself admirably by teaching an old Xenomorph some stunning new tricks…
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