In its very first moments, FX’s Alien: Earth feels like nothing so much as, well, Alien.
Here we are once more aboard a Weyland-Yutani spaceship, the USCSS Maginot this time, watching a rumpled crew emerge from cryogenic hibernation. Here they go now gathering around the canteen, trading jokes and complaints. And here again is a crewmember examining way too closely the creepy-crawlies they have encountered on their travels.
You can fill in the rest from there — and indeed, Earth trusts you to do just that, initially offering only brief, jarring teases of the crew’s expectedly gruesome fates.
But if the prologue confirms that creator Noah Hawley can faithfully replicate the superficial trappings of this franchise, what comes next suggests he gets something of its spirit, too. Because Earth, as it turns out, is mostly not about rehashing Alien at all. Instead, like all the series’ most interesting follow-ups, it treats that familiar template less as a formula than a launchpad for its own ambitions — in this case, a heady, sprawling, occasionally unwieldy but eventually thrilling epic about personhood, hubris and, of course, the primal pleasure of watching people get absolutely rocked by space monsters.
As the title might suggest, the real story is happening down on Earth. Specifically, it’s in the region of Southeast Asia controlled by Prodigy, which as of 2120 (two years before the events of Ridley Scott’s 1979 original, not that it matters) is one of five corporations controlling the globe.
On the remote, Edenic island of Neverland, terminally ill 12-year-old Marcy (Florence Bensberg) is having her consciousness uploaded into a cutting-edge synthetic form with humanoid adult features, enhanced physical capabilities and, most important to Prodigy’s stake in the race to “cure” mortality, a theoretically infinite lifespan.
When the Maginot crash-lands in nearby New Siam, Wendy (Sydney Chandler), as the hybrid has rechristened herself, sees the opportunity to flex her new gifts. She and five of her fellow prototypes head out on a rescue mission overseen by Kirsh (an icy Timothy Olyphant), a more traditional synthetic à la Alien’s Ash. But once it becomes clear the vessel was carrying a veritable zoo of fearsome outer-space creatures, Prodigy’s founder, the obnoxiously but appropriately named Boy Kavalier (Samuel Blenkin), cannot resist the opportunity to claim them for himself.
Most of this is laid out in the thrilling if overstuffed premiere, written and directed by Hawley. It takes at least two more episodes to bring the various supporting characters into focus and seed the season’s smaller subplots, and it’s not until the fourth or fifth (out of an eight-part season) that the series reaches the turning point from setting things up to paying them off.
But Earth is never dull, even at its most expositional. Stomach-churning violence and queasy conversations are scattered regularly enough to keep viewers on the edge of their seats. The production design by Andy Nicholson, pretty but purposefully cold, looks real enough to touch and expansive enough to explore. A sardonic rock playlist (Black Sabbath, Tool, Pearl Jam) sends each chapter off under a dark spell.
Xenomorphs in their various forms show up early and semi-often, along with several new beasts with their own deliciously horrible ways of killing. (My favorite is an impish octopus-like critter with an eyeball for a head; I will not spoil its sickening signature move.) Novel gradations on the man-machine scale — in addition to classic synthetics like Kirsh and cutting-edge hybrids like Wendy, we also encounter a cyborg with a human body but enhanced parts — add a slight twist to the usual philosophical quandaries about intelligence, emotion and what counts as human.
While the enormity of the cast means some of the characters inevitably go underdeveloped, performances are compelling across the board. Chandler and her fellow Lost Boys — Adarsh Gourav as Slightly, Jonathan Ajayi as Smee, Erana James as Curly, Lily Newmark as Nibs, Kit Young as Tootles and, yes, also all names from Peter Pan — adopt a restless preadolescent physicality that never allows us to forget that these are still children inside grown-up bodies: naive, scared, impressionable and manipulable.
Among the proper adults, standouts include Alex Lawther, who brings a much-needed warmth to this bleak milieu as Wendy’s soldier-medic brother, Hermit; and Babou Ceesay, who injects surprising pathos into Morrow, the Maginot’s ruthless and relentless security officer.
On the far other end of the likability spectrum, Blenkin is marvelously repulsive as Boy Kavalier, whose arrogance might be more toxic even than xenomorph blood. If the way he sneers lines like “Just assume I’m ahead of you, always” isn’t enough to make you wish a face-hugger would shut him up already, the way he sinks into an office chair — legs spread, dirty bare feet on the table, what’re-you-gonna-do-about-it smirk on his face — just might.
The comparisons between Boy Kavalier and other former tech wunderkinds like Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk and Steve Jobs are not subtle, but then, neither is much else about Earth. Lest a viewer somehow fail to catch the first 500 nods to Peter Pan, Boy Kavalier reads entire passages from the J.M Barrie books in voiceover.
Debates about whether hybrids like Wendy are still people are frequent and explicit, as are instructions to prioritize xenomorph eggs over human lives or scientific “progress” over the hybrids’ agency. When one character pays lip service, late in the season, to the rights of androids, the only surprise is that he’d bother lying at all.
Perhaps the bluntness is only fitting for the mask-off era we’re living through, in which real-life villains aren’t much bothered to hide their motives either. Or maybe there just isn’t much point in playing it coy when there’s never been anything remotely subtle about the franchise’s signature creature, an elemental predator to whom all humans (and indeed all living things) are just food.
If the first few hours of the season can feel like a slow burn, the last few let all hell break loose with glorious, gory abandon. Suffice it to say that once the dust settles, the monsters have been fed and the fans will have been, too.
