Initial Thoughts on Alien: Earth

Noah Hawley Is Expanding The Franchise in All The Right Ways

Alien: Earth

Before I jump into some of my random thoughts on Alien: Earth, let’s rewind just a bit.

It’s been just over a year now since Alien: Romulus, which, in my opinion, is the third best film in the franchise. I very much enjoyed that movie, though if the last 20-30 minutes had been cut I would not have been mad about that (I’m just not a fan of the human/xenomorph hybrids, either in …Romulus or Alien: Resurrection).

The bulk of my thoughts on …Romulus can be found in Kybercast #222, so please have a listen if you have the time! You can find it at the link I posted or on your favorite pod-catcher.

I bring this up because the last 30 years of being a fan of this franchise has not been great. I won’t go into the fact that while technically a good film, Alien^3 is not the right film to follow Aliens, but in and of itself, yes, it’s a very good movie (kind of like how Man of Steel is a fantastic sci-fi film, but a swing-and-a-miss as a Superman film).

And since then the last three decades have been full of a couple noble attempts (Prometheus, and yeah, I liked Alien vs Predator), some downright bad movies (Alien vs Predator: Requiem, also Prometheus), and so much meh (most everything else).

Alien: Romulus was a very welcome bright spot.

Did it right the ship? Yes, but tenuously. As a former science teacher said to me years ago, “one does not a series make.” Making one good film after years of diminishing returns does not mean the franchise is saved. Being followed just a year later by Alien: Earth, a TV show, was, and is, a risk. If the show sucks it could destroy the goodwill of the first good film in years/decades.

I’ll cut to the chase: through three episodes released thus far, Alien: Earth does not suck. In fact, it’s quite good.

Could it suck yet?

Of course! We have five more episodes to go. I’m fairly confident it won’t suck, but I won’t make that call until I’ve seen the entire (first?) season.

What follows are my initial thoughts on Alien: Earth, through the three episodes that have been released, so consider this your warning.

SPOILERS FOLLOW

First and foremost, one of the things I like best so far is the inclusion of four other alien species. Maybe some fans just want to see the ectomorph/ovomorph/xenomorph, but there’s no way that those are the only hostile lifeforms out there in the galaxy. I am eager to see how creepy these new ones are, especially that eye-octopus thing, formally named “Trypanohyncha Ocellus,” or “T. Ocellus” for short.

This allows for expansion of this cinematic universe, if Fox/Disney wants to go that route. Based on the entire film franchise, it is glaringly obvious that Weyland Yutani became obsessed with the xenomorphs, and for the most part, I am good with that. It is what this franchise is about, after all. That doesn’t mean we have to see any of the other creatures in the other films, and it’s more than OK that we haven’t seen these creatures show up again, because as I said above, WY decided that the xenomorph was their focus.

But because The Maginot went to several different worlds, this is something that could be revisited. I’m now very curious about those other worlds, and more importantly, these other horrible monsters that came from them.

It expands the universe very much, and that, I love, because it makes sense.

Another way in which Hawley and the rest of the creative team are expanding this universe is the focus on the various partial or non-human entities: cyborgs, synthetics, and hybrids. We have seen synthetics in each of the franchise films (except the AvP films, but I’m pretty sure those aren’t canon anymore, if they ever were), so those are nothing new, but hybrids and cyborgs are new, as far as I know (at least in the film, and now TV, adaptations; I recognize that they’ve been seen in the comics and novels, but as those are not necessarily considered canon, I’m not acknowledging them). Just in case you’re new to the franchise and Alien: Earth is your first exposure, synthetics, or artificial people, as some prefer to be called, are AI in a pseudo-human shell.

Cyborgs are mostly human individuals that have some machine parts, in this case Morrow and his Swiss Army left arm (so far we’ve seen a very Rambo-esque knife as well as an Aliens-esque blowtorch come out of that thing).

Hybrids are a human consciousness imported into a synthetic body. Synthetics never were human. Hybrids were at one point. Furthermore, it appears only children can have their consciousness uploaded into a hybrid (something about adult minds not being malleable enough). All hybrids are synthetics, but not all synthetics are hybrids.

The question is this: was the consciousness truly transferred over or is it just a copy of memories from which the AI in the body interprets how one would have acted before becoming a hybrid? I think we will see this unfold over the course of the series, though Marcy/Wendy and the rest of “The Lost Boys.”

The series has also established that synthetics (and by implication, hybrids) are stronger and more resilient than humans, making them at the very least long “lived” and trending toward immortality.

I don’t know if they have established how much stronger they are, but during the scene in Alien when Ash is trying to asphyxiate Ripley, he handily dispatches Parker easily, and Parker was a big dude.

But how much stronger/resilient?

Dropping 100+ ft from a cliff and landing onto the sand with no damage? That seems a bit much, but I am thinking that it might be an instance of Chekhov’s gun: that was shown for a reason and we’ll see it play out in the show. At least, we better, because that would be good writing, foreshadowing that near-indestructibility; if that thread is dropped, it’s lazy writing.

That said, this is something that could be easily explained. It could be something as simple as different models for different things. Ash/Rook/Bishop/Andy/David/Walter are all Weyland Yutani synthetics, probably designed for different purposes. Ash, at least, was meant to blend in and hide amongst a human crew.

Wendy and “The Lost Boys” are Prodigy synthetics. What is their ultimate purpose? What is Boy Kavalier’s ultimate plan for them? Super soldiers? Something else?

Perhaps that could explain their superhuman abilities. Notice, also, that Wendy can “hear” the the ovomorphs/endomorphs/xenomorphs “talk” to each other, but it does not yet appear than any of her fellow hybrids can. What makes her special/different?

I am curious what’s going to happen with Wendy’s brain as well. She was not allowed to go through adolescence, but they are trying to mimic that. Will it work, or will she be the reverse of Claudia from Interview With The Vampire, a child stuck in an adult’s body?

Going back to what I said above about possible differences between the WeYu and Prodigy models, that’s yet another way that this universe is expanding and another reason why I am enjoying this show. It’s all been WeYu since the first film, Alien. There were some references to other companies in some of the other films, but always going back to WeYu time and time again. Now we know there’s Prodigy, Dynamic, Lynch, and Threshold as well. There have been quick references as to what company controls what on this future Earth, but this show has created more fresh ground from which to grow this franchise.

Again, organically expanding the universe.

Finally, let’s talk about the titular “Alien” itself.

Seeing the dissection of the endomorph with basically the alien zygote as the little, clear, swimming thing was new, but also makes so much sense. From the previous films it was already well established that the facehugger’s entire reason for existence was to deposit the creature that would ultimately become the xenomorph into the chest of its human victim. We knew that it had a long, tube-like mouth/phallus that penetrated into the esophagus, but what did it deposit there? In the five, main series films we have not seen that until now.

We have also seen evidence that these creatures communicated to each other somehow. There have been theories that they used pheromones (like ants do; lending to their insect-like look), but no concrete explanation has ever been given. We did know that the xenomorphs could speak to the eggs (like the queen did in Aliens, having the egg open near Ripley), so it’s cool to see Wendy hear it as well, but also know what the eggs communicate to each other as well.

Just three episodes into this series I am very much enjoying it, mostly because this universe is expanding in a thoughtful, logical fashion. We, the audience, are learning more about other creatures, the differences in synthetic beings, about the corporations that control the world, and yes, about the life cycle of this creature that has latched onto us over the last five decades.

And that says nothing about the fact that we already know that we’re going to see Weyland Yutani again in Predator: Badlands, so this organic expansion continues.

It’s a great time to be an Alien (and Predator) fan right now.