ALIEN: EARTH. Aliens and Technocrats [REVIEW, Season 1]

Although I approached Alien: Earth with a fairly skeptical attitude, after the premiere of the first two episodes I found my doubts to be premature. Noah Hawley’s series seemed like a breath of fresh air in the Alien universe – full of intriguing ideas and characters, aesthetically well thought-out, and interested in more than simply juggling familiar references. Weeks passed, more episodes arrived, and I soon realized that I was increasingly alone in my positive assessment. Unfortunately, the series rather unexpectedly joined Prometheus and Alien: Covenant in the race for the title of the most despised entry in the xenomorph saga.

The list of fan complaints is long: narrative inconsistencies, the caricatured figure of Prodigy’s founder, Boy Kavalier (Samuel Blenkin), the stripping away of the Alien’s remaining mystery, and the squandering of potentially fascinating concepts. While I can understand at least some of these criticisms, I am still unwilling to dismiss Hawley’s work entirely. There remain elements worth salvaging, and flashes of originality that show what the series might have been if handled with more restraint and discipline.

I admit that after eight episodes the vision of an Earth ruled by five vast corporations, each vying for the biggest slice of the pie, still feels underdeveloped. This is especially true because Kavalier, the central villain, is nothing more than a (deliberately) grating caricature of every technocrat in our world. His environment’s parallels to Peter Pan would have been obvious even without the constant quotations, and his Prodigy differs from Weyland-Yutani only in name.

Yet on the other hand, the lower rungs of this social hierarchy are depicted in a somewhat more nuanced way, offering glimpses of complexity often absent from the show’s loftier themes.

Hawley and his team of writers portray life on a corporation-dominated Earth as a perpetual struggle for dominance, for the recovery of control – or at least its illusion. We meet Wendy (Sydney Chandler) and the rest of the “Lost Boys,” the Hybrids: synthetic beings implanted with the consciousness of children, trapped in identity crises and treated as cheap labor or cannon fodder. For Wendy, this burden is compounded by her attachment to her brother Joe (Alex Lawther), conflicting with her emerging sense of self.

Also present are Sylvia (Essie Davis) and Arthur (David Rysdahl), who serve as surrogate parents while molding the children into obedient “workers.” Add to this the enigmatic android Kirsh (Timothy Olyphant) and rival corporate enforcer Morrow (Babou Ceesay), and we find a web of clashing motivations where each character fights for autonomy, only to yield before the corporate gods on their Olympus.

The xenomorph itself, as in earlier entries, functions mainly as a symbol of humanity’s arrogance and greed rebounding against its creators. Confined in a sterile laboratory with other alien predators – including the fan-favorite eye-parasite – it is treated as nothing more than a specimen worth billions. Inevitably, it exacts bloody vengeance on its keepers. This time, however, the Alien is further equated with the Hybrids, who are exploited by Prodigy with the same cold disregard. The parallel underscores both groups’ shared status as commodified life, stripped of agency and reduced to tools.

I have no major issue with the storyline in which Wendy learns to communicate with the xenomorph and turns it into her “guard dog.” On paper, the idea is risky but intriguing, particularly since it adds moral ambiguity to her arc. The execution, however, is far less convincing: the scenes where she unleashes the creature on her oppressors prove once again that the galaxy’s greatest predator works best when not shown in full light.

The beast fares much better in episode five – the only one spared from the fan backlash – which plays as a full homage to Alien. That hour also deepens the character of Morrow, previously a sociopath fixated on delivering the xenomorph to his masters, now revealed as conflicted and unexpectedly sensitive.

Hawley’s series is not without fascinating threads and characters, which makes it all the more frustrating that the finale sacrifices most of them in favor of checking off routine horror tropes. Most disappointing is the conflict between Morrow and Kirsh – two synthetics bound by corporate leashes yet driven by personal motives – which is reduced to a fistfight. The finale also shows how little thought went into characters like Kavalier’s right-hand man Atom Eins (Adrian Edmondson), or Joe’s companions Siberian (Diêm Camille) and Rashidi (Moe Bar-El). Storylines carefully built earlier are either hastily wrapped up or delayed to an uncertain future season.

Although for most of its run I was willing to defend Alien: Earth against the fury of fans, the finale left me feeling somewhat betrayed. So far, Hawley’s series has proven most compelling in its ambitions and starting concepts, yet faltered in staging massacre sequences and resolving key arcs. Even so, I am inclined to give Wendy and her xenomorph another chance – a potential second season will show whether that is loyalty or simple naivety.