Alien: Earth will premiere on Wednesday, August 13, with the first two episodes available to stream on Disney+ in the UK. A new episode of the 8-episode season will premiere each following Wednesday on Disney+.
Synopsis
In the year 2120, the Earth is governed by five corporations: Prodigy, Weyland-Yutani, Lynch, Dynamic and Threshold. In this Corporate Era, cyborgs (humans with both biological and artificial parts) and synthetics (humanoid robots with artificial intelligence) exist alongside humans. But the game is changed when the wunderkind Founder and CEO of Prodigy Corporation unlocks a new technological advancement: hybrids (humanoid robots infused with human consciousness). The first hybrid prototype named “Wendy” marks a new dawn in the race for immortality. After Weyland-Yutani’s spaceship collides into Prodigy City, “Wendy” and the other hybrids encounter mysterious life forms more terrifying than anyone could have ever imagined.
Review
Over the course of almost 5-decades the Alien franchise has traversed the galaxy in search of new horrors. In that time it has experimented with body-horror, psychological terror and even flirted with the philosophy of life. Now, under the watchful eye of Fargo and Legion showrunner Noah Hawley, the franchise is returning home to Earth and to television screens. This week Disney+ launches new eight-episode series Alien: Earth and I’ve seen six episodes in order to bring you my thoughts.
It’s always an ambitious endeavour bringing a much loved franchise to a new audience. Fede Álvarez did a pretty exciting job of it last year with Alien: Romulus, showing the franchise still has bite on the big screen. But how about bringing a traditionally theatrical franchise in to the streaming space. Turning two-hour narratives in to episodic, story-of-the-week chapters is not mean feat. But that’s why we love Noah Hawley. His ability to identify the human angle in any story, tapping in to the zeitgeist and creating something unique and exciting is unparalleled.
Alien: Earth is still a pretty ambitious undertaking though. The franchise has spent little time on Earth. Even less outside of the critically maligned Alien vs. Predator movies. Hawley decides to stack the dice against himself by bringing the franchise home to Earth and setting it two years before the events of Ridley Scott’s 1979 classic. The resulting prequel story has the job of enticing audiences new and old without causing irreparable damage to franchise canon. But it would be Noah Hawley if there wasn’t an unreasonably high bar to aspire to.
The series starts big. Hawley quickly establishes that Earth has done away with much of the politics of our era and replaced them with five warring corporations. One of those is the infamous Weyland-Yutani, the company featured in every Alien property. Their biggest competition – and our central focus of the season – is Prodigy Corp. setup by the genius mind of Boy Kavalier (Samuel Blenkin). It seems that each of these companies is experimenting with technology to augment the human race. Wetland-Yutani has their synthetics and cyborgs. Whilst Prodigy is perfectly an all the more disturbing procedure to transfer human consciousness in to a synthetic body. Enter Wendy (Sydney Chandler), a synthetic adult female body which houses the consciousness of a now formerly terminally ill young girl.
Hawley uses this technology to setup a very contemporary argument about what it means to be human. The question of humanity seeps in to almost every aspect of the series storytelling. Underpinning all of its science fiction and horror with ruminations on A.I. and its impact on our everyday lives.
Meanwhile, as it matters weren’t already morally complicated enough, a Weyland-Yutani ship crashes in to a city owned by Prodigy Corp. Boy Kavalier see’s the crash as an opportunity for a spot of corporate espionage but gains more than he bargained for. The Prodigy rescue team sent to surveil the wreckage and assist with recovery and survivors finds the ship was carrying extraterrestrial samples. Five of them to be exact. One of which will be more than a little familiar to franchise fans and plenty of causal audience members. Wetland-Yutani was bringing a Xenomorph, several eggs and plenty of other weird and wonderful creatures to Earth for its own research purposes.
The series is a dizzying mix of sci-fi, horror and human drama. Hawley’s determined efforts to open up the franchise to a television audience pays off with bountiful rewards. Alien: Earth will have its detractors for sure. But it is certainly versatile in its approach to genre and storytelling. The atmosphere of Ridley Scott’s original film is mostly replaced to reflect the Earth-bound setting. But both the set design and production design of the show remains incredibly faithful to what has come before. Much of the tension which exists in the films is still present also. Some of it has shifted to come from the human drama. But the series certainly knows how to lean in to the feeling of Alien movie when it needs to.
The ensemble cast is pretty sprawling but is filled with rich characters. Boy Kavalier leaps from the screen with moustache twirling glee. His motivations aren’t always clear. But both Boy and actor Samuel Blenkin’s ability to command a room are clear from the very beginning. Never an outright villain, he’s one to be cautious of and that ambiguity is delightful to watch. He stands out in a crowded world as someone who demands audience attention.
Wendy, on the other hand, is a deeply compelling character for very different reasons. Chandler brings so much to this conflicted and ultimately unique character. She’s able to find the innocence on the young consciousness adjusting to life in a new body. But through that Chandler finds a fun and authentic way to explore Wendy experimenting with her new found strength and abilities. As the leader of the Lost Boys she commands a subset of the ensemble cast who has a wonderful affinity when working together. Each character is adjusting to their new body differently and Hawley finds ways to give each their moments to explore that on camera as more than simply a supporting player in the story.
Whilst there will be those less keen on the episodic approach to Alien, nobody will argue about its production values. The series is entirely cinematic in every approach. It’s beautifully shot and also clear that the budget is more than satisfactory for a visual effects heavy property. Episodes aren’t always a high stakes and huge scale as the first. But it also doesn’t need to be. That versatility of storytelling I spoke about means there’s more than ample opportunity for the series to flex its muscles in different ways. There’s new alien creature designs, all of which are interesting and visually diverse. There’s also a raft of future tech which needs to be brought to life. Ambitious is a word I’ve used over and over again to describe this series but its true, particularly when referring to its visuals.
Verdict
Alien: Earth is an ambitious and largely successful reinvention that brings the franchise home to Earth without losing what makes it terrifying. Hawley’s blend of human drama, corporate intrigue, and classic Xenomorph horror creates something versatile and cinematic, even if it won’t satisfy every longtime fan.
⭐⭐⭐⭐
