FX's new series Alien: Earth opens with a scene familiar to any fans of the storied science fiction horror film franchise: A crew of dysfunctional, blue-collar workers waking from extended hibernation in a sprawling spaceship.
In this case, it's the year 2120 — two years before the events of Ridley Scott's classic 1979 film Alien and about 60 years before the time depicted in James Cameron's 1986 sequel Aliens. The crew of the USCSS Maginot is working for Weyland-Yutani, the same corporation that ran everything in those earlier films.
And it becomes obvious that showrunner Noah Hawley — who also masterminded FX's TV adaptation of Fargo — has crafted a program that is, at least in part, a loving callback to the best elements of the original two films, especially Alien.
The area where the Maginot crew gathers looks a lot like the dining hall where an alien xenomorph exploded from John Hurt's chest in the first film. And the well-worn futuristic look of the spaceship in Alien: Earth matches nicely with the '70s-era vision of the future presented in Scott's film.
Turns out, the Maginot's crew has been on a 65-year mission for Weyland-Yutani — one of five corporations that run Earth — to grab up a host of awful alien species from deep space. And when their ship inevitably malfunctions and they crash in an area of Earth owned and run by a different corporation called Prodigy, the creepy aliens get out of their cages and the screaming begins.
All the companies are scrambling to offer life-extending services through different technologies. There are cyborgs — humans with artificial parts — alongside synths, who are completely artificial people, like Ian Holm's character Ash from the original Alien film.
Prodigy is controlled by a young trillionaire, Boy Kavalier (Samuel Blenkin), who acts like a cross between a barefoot Mark Zuckerberg and Dr. Frankenstein. And his company has developed the technology to create a third form — hybrids — by placing human consciousness inside superior, synthetic bodies. They start by putting sickly children into adult bodies — young minds can better handle the transition — creating a small cadre of physically superior hybrid characters with the minds of inexperienced youngsters. These hybrids don't age and, theoretically, won't die.
It's a great stew of different storylines, offering Hawley lots of room to play in. One of the backbone ideas of the Alien franchise, especially early on, centers on the notion of humanity undone by its own arrogance and ambition — so sure it can harness and control forces of nature which eventually rise to annihilate everything. (Sounds disturbingly like the conversations we're having in real life about artificial intelligence.)
Here, Hawley brings those ideas together in an interesting way: As the Maginot crashes in an area of Earth controlled by Prodigy, the hybrid children are sent in to corral the creatures originally captured by the ship's crew. Aliens from nature and creations of human technology meet in a volatile situation.
The children are led and mentored by a synthetic person named Kirsh, played with creepy precision by Timothy Olyphant. In the Alien franchise, the artificial people often bring a spooky contempt for their human masters, and Olyphant delivers — offering a particularly odd treatise on the nature of humanity.
"You used to be food … You built tools and used them to conquer nature. You told yourself you weren't food anymore. But in the animal kingdom, there is always someone bigger or smaller, who would eat you alive if they had the chance. That's what it means to be an animal."
Um, yeah. Looks like Kirsh, with his spiky blonde hair and aloof manner, may have inherited a bit of that human arrogance mentioned earlier.
All this adds up to one of the best TV shows of the year. I saw the first two Alien movies in theaters decades ago, enthralled by the suspense and tension Scott and Cameron cultivated in their work. Hawley evokes those same feelings stretched over eight bombastic episodes, as the characters — and viewers — learn more about these aliens and all their terrible ways of taking down humans.
And many of the franchise's classic themes recur: A modern world corrupted by corporate exploitation of average people. The question of whether technological advancements are meant to serve humans or replace them. The ways deadly threats can reveal the core of a person — are they smart, resourceful or stubborn enough to stay alive, even when the universe throws its worst at them?
Since the Alien franchise encompasses a lot of storytelling, science fiction nerds will spend time wondering about the implications of Hawley's series. Why, for example, haven't we seen hybrid people in Alien movies before? And why did people in early Alien movies act as if they had never heard of the xenomorphs, when Hawley's series shows they crash landed on Earth years before the events of the first film?
The science fiction geek in me is hoping these are questions Hawley gets to answer in subsequent seasons of Alien: Earth, which manages the slick feat of offering a story that feels new, builds on the past and offers loads of tantalizing possibilities for the future.
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