In 1979, moviegoing audiences were terrified to learn that in space, no one can hear you scream in Ridley Scott’s Oscar-winning film Alien. Since then, the successful sci-fi horror film has been expanded into a vast franchise, which has included crossovers with Predator and introduced new generations to the formidable xenomorph first seen exploding from a crew member’s chest in the original film. The first official TV series in the franchise imagines a new frightening reality: the arrival of this alien race on Earth.
The first episode of Alien: Earth opens aboard the Maginot space vessel, where the crew awakens from stasis and is quickly taken out by the creatures they are meant to transport as cyborg Morrow (Babou Ceesay) establishes a mysterious but deep connection with the aliens. When the ship crash-lands on Earth, Prodigy Corporation CEO Boy Kavalier (Samuel Blenkin) dispatches his team of synthetic hybrids, which includes Wendy (Sydney Chandler) and Kirsh (Timothy Olyphant), to the crash site to learn more and find the precious cargo so that he can both exploit the alien technology and leverage it to expand his already significant financial resources.
Expectations are certainly high for this series, especially riding a wave of positive reception for the most recent films in the franchise. The involvement of Noah Hawley, who has an impressive history with FX for making something new out of existing beloved intellectual property thanks to Fargo and Legion, only heightens the stakes. The presence of actors who have previously collaborated with Hawley, like Olyphant and Richa Moorjani, will delight fans of his, but it’s also undeniably intriguing to see his take on something that has evolved considerably over the course of the past forty-five years.
The result is startlingly low-tech, a likely deliberate choice made to avoid making a project set two years before the original film look much sleeker and more futuristic. Each episode begins with frightening flashes of events both previously seen and upcoming as green computer text beeps across the screen. What Kavalier has created – and is trying to weaponize – is astounding as a scientific feat, yet the way it’s presented makes it feel like something that has yet to be refined for aesthetic purposes, determined to master the mechanics behind it and unconcerned with the fact that there are certain pieces of a synthetic creature that simply can never feel human. Chandler and Ceesay are the standouts of the ensemble, extracting intense precision from the quietness of their characters.
Having a villain who doesn’t speak and whose sole purpose appears to be the annihilation of anyone in its path continues to be effective decades after its creation, and there is a great deal of vicious carnage that is as visually impressive as ever. The human capacity for self-serving destruction is on full display here, but the title extraterrestrial creatures remain a core source of terror, and there’s no limit to the potential reach they could have and the many unsuspecting humans they might take out as they prepare to colonize a new planet. Even removed from the vast void of space and already familiar to audiences, the xenomorph remains terrifying, which is in itself quite impressive.
Hawley’s projects have always been immensely character-driven, and while he does explore the nature of an alien race who doesn’t communicate with words, the focus on the synthetics is what makes his imprint most interesting. Unpacking the complexities of how these people with mismatched bodies and memories work turns out to be alternately fascinating and frustrating, similar in concept to Legion but not always as consistently gripping or emphatic. There’s plenty of worthwhile content here, merging a cautionary tale about human evolution with action-driven foreboding alien encounters. It just takes a bit of effort and concentration to fully get into it and embrace its slow pacing and tone.
Series Rating: 7/10
