Noah Hawley has made the first season of an "Alien" television series, and it's bound to frustrate and disappoint some fans as much as it'll intrigue and delight others. Set a few years before the original "Alien" movie takes place, it follows the fate of a research vessel, Maginot, that crashes on Earth after returning from deep space with alien specimens, including a few familiar critters from the "Alien" movies. Immediately, a conflict arises over the retrieval and ownership of the specimens. Weyland Yutani, one of the five giant conglomerates that rule Earth, owns the Maginot. Unfortunately, it crashes on the property of a different corporation, Prodigy.
As all "Alien" fans know, "Alien" may feature Xenomorphs and Facehuggers as major antagonists, but the series has always really been about the dystopian vision of the future that is populated not only with humans, but with artificial "synths," cybernetically enhanced cyborgs, and a new kind of lifeform being introduced in "Alien: Earth." Boy Kavalier (Samuel Blenkin), the head of the Prodigy Corporation, has created a group of "hybrids" - the conscious minds of terminally ill children transferred into artificial, immortal bodies with major enhancements. The first to undergo the process is Wendy (Sydney Chandler), who is grateful for the chance at a new life, but misses her family, especially her brother Joe (Alex Lawther), who thinks that she died.
The hybrids eventually cross paths with the alien specimens, but more importantly they encounter the dark realities of the world outside the control of Boy Kavalier and his minions, which encourages an unstable situation to spin out of control. The show offers a whole slew of fascinating characters, like the sinister Weyland Yutani cyborg Morrow (Babou Ceesay), human Prodigy scientists Dame and Arthur Sylvia (Essie Davis, David Rysdahl), and starkly inhuman Prodigy Synths Kirsh (Timothy Olyphant) and Atom (Adrian Edmondson). Boy Kavalier names all the hybrids after "Peter Pan" characters, so precocious Wendy is joined by Slightly (Adarsh Gourav), Smee (Jonathan Ajayi), Curly (Erana James), Nibs (Lily Newmark), and Tootles (Kit Young). Lots of good performances here, with Babou Ceesay delivering some particularly good menace.
I expect how viewers react to the hybrid storyline will determine how receptive they are to "Alien: Earth," because Noah Hawley is far more interested in them than he is in the aliens. There are some very impressive creature and action sequences, and I especially appreciate the introduction of some new extraterrestrial menaces to terrify us. There's a freaky little eyeball parasite that's a standout. However, the vast majority of the time is spent watching the hybrids grapple with being kids in synthetic adult bodies, the adults nervously trying to keep them in line, and so much being determined by the hubris of one selfish techbro with way too much power. The aliens are potent chaos agents, but often feel like a secondary concern.
And that's fine with me. What worried me the most about the prospect of "Alien: Earth" was getting something like "Dune: Prophecy," a piece of media too focused on callbacks and evocations of its source material to tell its own story. Whatever "Alien: Earth" is, it doesn't have that problem. Hawley isn't afraid of expanding the "Alien" universe, specifically looking at how Earth functions under the control of a handful of runamok corporations and immoral individuals who like playing God. The themes are similar to the Ridley Scott-directed prequels, starting with "Prometheus," but taken in an entirely different direction. I find the characters here much more compelling, especially the kids rushing to grow up in a hurry, but finding that all their mentor figures - both human and non-human - are terrible.
I enjoyed "Alien: Earth" very much, but there's no getting away from the fact that it feels very truncated, with an ending that is a lot of setup without much payoff. Still, the setup is good enough that I had no issue with the lack of resolution. Either that, or Noah Hawly has pulled this kind of thing so often that I've just come to expect it of his shows. I predict that "Alien" fans who wanted a more straightforward horror or adventure program will be disappointed. Yet, there is a whole episode designed as a homage to the original 1979 "Alien" film, which was clearly made just for them.
And finally, kudos on the Xenomorphs still being guys in suits. Occasionally it looks kinda silly, but it also looks very "Alien."
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