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\u00a9 26 Keys Productions \/ Scott Free \/ 20th<\/sup> Television \/ FXP\u00a0\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n What an exasperating franchise the Alien<\/em> one is.\u00a0 It kicked off in 1979 with one masterpiece, Ridley\u2019s Scott\u2019s Alien<\/em>, and continued in 1986 with another masterpiece, James Cameron\u2019s Aliens<\/em>.\u00a0 But its instalments after that have been, in various ways, maddeningly uneven. \u00a0They\u2019ve contained some intriguing ideas, themes, characters, sequences and images.\u00a0 Yet those good things were nullified by other things that were utterly duff.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n David Fincher\u2019s Alien 3<\/em> (1992) had as its setting a fascinatingly grim, labyrinthine industrial complex that\u2019d been repurposed as a prison.\u00a0 But it was hamstrung by an ill-conceived script wherein most of the interesting characters vanished halfway through and the movie\u2019s interminable final act consisted of indistinguishable bald guys running Super-Mario<\/em>-like through corridors.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Jean-Pierre Jeunet\u2019s Alien Resurrection<\/em> (1998) had some great ideas \u2013 Sigourney Weaver\u2019s Ripley character reincarnated as a superhuman clone containing bits of alien DNA, the setting of a stricken space station that\u2019s basically The Poseidon Adventure<\/em> (1974) in outer space, gripping action set-pieces underwater and on a vertiginous ladder.\u00a0 But it suffered from juvenile plotting and dialogue, a crap-looking new monster (\u2018the Newborn\u2019), and misjudged performances ranging from Ron Perlman\u2019s obnoxious overacting to Winona Ryder\u2019s wan underacting.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n In 2012 and 2017 Ridley Scott returned to the franchise and made two prequels, Prometheus <\/em>and Alien: Covenant<\/em>, which again had some nice touches \u2013 especially Michael Fassbender\u2019s performances as the angelic android Walter and the devilish android David.\u00a0 But the prequels were ruined by their obsession with creating an over-complicated and unnecessary backstory for the aliens.\u00a0 Also, there were some clunking scenes such as the one in Covenant<\/em> where Walter and David meet up, Walter starts playing a flute, and David suggests, \u201cYou blow, I\u2019ll do the fingering.\u201d\u00a0 Ooh-err, missus<\/a>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Recently, we got Fede Alvarez\u2019s Alien: Romulus<\/em> (2024) and, again, some lovely moments \u2013 a sequence where the surviving protagonists have to negotiate a shaft in zero gravity while deadly globules of acidic alien-blood float around them; or a bit where a hitherto nice android (David Jonsson) hooks into some tech in order to open a door, accidentally gets upgraded, and turns into a callous shit.\u00a0 But Alien: Romulus<\/em> blew its potential by paying too much fan-service to the previous films.\u00a0 \u201cPlease,\u201d I was thinking as the film\u2019s big finale approached. \u201cDon\u2019t anyone say, \u2018Get away from her, you bitch!\u2019\u201d\u00a0 But wouldn\u2019t you know it?\u00a0 Someone did.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u00a9 20th<\/sup> Century Studios \/ Scott Free Productions \/ Brandywine Productions<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n You\u2019ll notice I haven\u2019t mentioned the two crossover movies where the aliens encounter the creatures from the Predator<\/em> franchise, Alien vs Predator<\/em> (2004) and Alien vs Predator: Requiem<\/em> (2007).\u00a0 That\u2019s because I regard both films as unspeakable shite that deserves to be fired into a black hole.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Now we\u2019ve just had an eight-part TV series entitled Alien: Earth<\/em>.\u00a0 This was masterminded by Noah Hawley, responsible for five seasons of the Fargo<\/em> TV show (2014-24) inspired by the 1996 movie of the same name made by Joel and Ethan Cohen. \u00a0It pains me to say that I feel the way about it as I feel about the post-Aliens<\/em> alien movies.\u00a0 Alien: Earth<\/em> has some good bits, but those are offset by some crap bits.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Here’s Alien: Earth<\/em>\u2019s set-up.\u00a0 (Be warned that spoilers for the series are coming.)\u00a0 It takes place in 2120, shortly before the events depicted in Ridley Scott\u2019s original Alien<\/em>.\u00a0 Earth is controlled by half-a-dozen super-corporations, including Weyland-Yutani \u2013 \u2018the Company\u2019 \u2013 which featured in the movies.\u00a0 Episode One sees a Weyland-Yutani spaceship, which has been on a mission of exploration and has collected specimens of five different extra-terrestrial species, including some worryingly familiar-looking eggs, return to earth, out-of-control, and crash into a skyscraper in Bangkok. \u00a0Thailand is the property not of Weyland-Yutani but a rival corporation called Prodigy. \u00a0The young, impulsive CEO of Prodigy, Boy Kavalier (Samuel Blenkin), sends in rescue and security teams to secure the disaster site \u2013 but also to seize whatever cargo the spaceship is carrying.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Lately, Prodigy\u2019s big project has been to \u2018upload\u2019 human consciousnesses \u2013 souls, basically \u2013 into super-strong and super-durable synthetic bodies.\u00a0 The results aren\u2019t just \u2018synths\u2019 \u2013 the trendier term for the \u2018androids\u2019, like Ash, Bishop, Call, David and Walter, who appeared earlier in the franchise \u2013 but \u2018hybrids\u2019, which have human ghosts in their synthetic machines. However, Prodigy has only been able to do this with young consciousnesses \u2013 they\u2019ve transplanted the souls of six children, dying from incurable illnesses, into the artificial and enhanced bodies of six adults. The first operation moved the soul of a terminally sick girl called Marcy Hermit into a hybrid Boy Kavalier has christened \u2018Wendy\u2019 (Sydney Chandler). \u00a0He\u2019s a big fan of J.M. Barrie\u2019s Peter<\/em> Pan<\/em> (1911) and insists on naming all his hybrids after Peter<\/em> Pan<\/em> characters.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Boy Kavalier sends the six hybrids, supervised by an enigmatic synth called Kirsh (Timothy Oliphant), to the crash site to test their responses in an emergency. \u00a0What he doesn\u2019t know is that Marcy Hermit\u2019s brother (Alex Lawther) is one of the medics already there \u2013 and, inevitably, Wendy encounters this sibling of her former self.\u00a0 Meanwhile, it turns out that one spaceship crew-member has survived the crash, a science officer called Morrow (Babou Ceesay), who\u2019s unswervingly loyal to Weyland-Yutani and isn\u2019t about to let a rival company steal his alien specimens.\u00a0 Morrow belongs to a third category of non-human or non-quite-human persons in the 22nd<\/sup> century, besides synths and hybrids.\u00a0 He\u2019s a cyborg, part-machine, and has a mechanical arm that can exude blades or work as an oxy-acetylene torch.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Boy Kavalier gets the five specimens off the spaceship and transports them to his island headquarters, where they\u2019re placed in a laboratory for study. \u00a0Predictably \u2013 and due partly to Morrow\u2019s attempts to retrieve them for Weyland-Yutani \u2013 things go wrong and some of them escape. \u00a0The escapees include one from a much-loved, 46-year-old movie franchise\u2026<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u00a9 26 Keys Productions \/ Scott Free \/ 20th<\/sup> Television \/ FXP<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n I\u2019ll start with the show\u2019s shortcomings and my first criticism is an obvious one for fans of the films.\u00a0 The aliens aren\u2019t in it much.\u00a0 Alien<\/em>: Earth<\/em> features three of the H.R. Giger<\/a>-designed beasties, one birthed on the spaceship before it crashes into the earth, one created in Prodigy\u2019s laboratory, and one produced by an egg-released \u2018face-hugger\u2019 that latches onto a human victim in the same laboratory, but in Alien<\/em>: Earth<\/em> they\u2019re little more than a sub-plot. The focus is on the hybrids, synths and cyborgs as they ponder who or what they really are.\u00a0 As such, the show often feels more like a follow-up to another classic Ridley Scott movie, 1982\u2019s Blade<\/em> Runner<\/em>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Also, in Alien<\/em>: Earth<\/em>, Wendy gradually becomes able to communicate with the aliens \u2013 much to the dismay of her new-found brother.\u00a0 First, she behaves like an \u2018alien-whisperer\u2019, but by the last episodes she\u2019s managed to exert full control over them and uses them as attack dogs.\u00a0 This deprives them of agency and \u2013 though it\u2019s unsettling to see her direct an alien to tear a platoon of soldiers to pieces \u2013 diminishes them as the objects of fear they were in the movies.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n And the aliens are inconsistently presented. \u00a0Several times we see one encounter a group of extras, bloodily slash and chomp its way through them and slaughter them all in a few seconds.\u00a0 But whenever an alien bumps into one of the main cast-members, it immediately becomes slower, clumsier, and more incompetent, which allows the main cast-member to escape.\u00a0 Basically, the aliens can be perfect killing machines or can screw up badly, depending on what the script requires at the time.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n And that brings me to Alien: Earth<\/em> biggest problem.\u00a0 Its scripts are so riddled with holes they\u2019re like slabs of Swiss cheese. \u00a0The Weyland-Yutani spaceship plunges towards Bangkok and catches everyone by surprise. \u00a0But weren\u2019t there satellites in space and stations on earth tracking it? \u00a0Didn\u2019t anyone have an inkling it was on the way? \u00a0It slams into a skyscraper and is left sticking out of it, but inflicts little structural damage \u2013 indeed, there are rich people partying at the top of the skyscraper who don\u2019t even notice what\u2019s happened. \u00a0This is a whole, humongous spaceship.\u00a0 <\/em>In 2001, we saw what a pair of passenger planes did to the World Trade Centre. \u00a0Despite dropping out of the sky, the spaceship manages to end up horizontal after ploughing into the skyscraper. \u00a0When people enter it from outside, its floors are perfectly and conveniently level.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Meanwhile, Boy Kavalier sends his six hybrids \u2013 who\u2019ve presumably cost billions of dollars to create – to the crash scene without any briefing, any guards, any weapons, any protective equipment.\u00a0 Led by Kirsh, they just saunter on board, and it\u2019s purely through good luck that at least three of them don\u2019t get splattered or taken over by the extra-terrestrial specimens there. \u00a0The illogicalities surrounding the hybrids continue through the series.\u00a0 At one point, Boy Kavalier\u2019s scientists have to \u2018wipe\u2019 one hybrid of traumatic memories. \u00a0But they don\u2019t isolate her and don\u2019t inform the other hybrids of what they\u2019ve done. \u00a0Afterwards, one of them speaks to her and points out that she\u2019s missing a bunch of memories, and she gets even more screwed up as a result. \u00a0And the scripts turn the hybrids\u2019 superhuman powers on and off depending on the situation. \u00a0They\u2019re meant to be superstrong.\u00a0 Indeed, at one point, we see one rip off a soldier\u2019s jaw in a fit of pique.\u00a0 But hybrids Slightly (Adarsh Gourav) and Smee (Jonathan Ajayi) spend most of Episode Seven struggling to transport a face-hugged body across Boy Kavalier\u2019s island.\u00a0 As they huffed and puffed, I was reminded of Basil and Manuel trying to shift a dead hotel-guest in the Fawlty Towers<\/em> (1975-79) episode The Kipper and the Corpse<\/em>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Speaking of which, Boy Kavalier\u2019s island seems to range in size from being big, with characters taking hours to cross it, to being the size of someone\u2019s back lawn.\u00a0 A young alien, newly erupted from someone\u2019s chest and still in snake-like form, has the whole island and its foliage to hide amid. \u00a0Yet Timothy Oliphant\u2019s Kirsh soon catches it with a small-looking piece of netting. \u00a0The diminutive alien lifeform known as \u2018T. Ocellus\u2019 \u2013 basically a tentacled eyeball \u2013 manages in a short time to escape from captivity, scuttle across the island on its tiny tentacles, and find a human body lying on a distant beach, which it parasitically attaches itself to and takes over.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u00a9 26 Keys Productions \/ Scott Free \/ 20th<\/sup> Television \/ FXP<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n All the alien specimens are highly dangerous \u2013 not just the acid-blooded ones \u2013 so the lack of security protocols around them is head-scratching. \u00a0On the spaceship, scientists eat and drink in their presence. \u00a0They leave alien-housing containers improperly sealed. \u00a0They don\u2019t fasten those containers correctly on their racks. \u00a0When one creature breaks free, no alarm-bells go off. \u00a0In Boy Kavalier\u2019s giant complex, they\u2019re kept in close proximity to one another.\u00a0 Shouldn\u2019t they be all be isolated? \u00a0You never see any guards near them. \u00a0Often, the only people in the Prodigy laboratory with them are Kirsh and the hybrids \u2013 who are, essentially, children.\u00a0 At one point, a single hybrid is left to supervise the specimens alone<\/em>. \u00a0When an external feeding-hatch breaks, he gormlessly opens a door and enters a cell to bring a couple of the beasties their food. \u00a0That doesn\u2019t end well.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Hawley and his writers are simply being lazy.\u00a0 When you write something, especially a science-fiction, fantasy or horror story, you\u2019re confronted by problems of logic, practicality and consistency all the time.\u00a0 A conscientious writer considers those problems and works out ways of solving them.\u00a0 That\u2019s what\u2019s what human creativity is for \u2013 for example, figuring out how an alien creature could<\/em> escape from a laboratory with a working alarm system. \u00a0It\u2019s facile to just ignore these issues and hope the viewers won\u2019t notice while the plot unfolds.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n All this gives the impression I didn\u2019t like Alien<\/em>: Earth<\/em>, but I had some fun with it.\u00a0 For one thing, I thought the show\u2019s retro-futuristic look was wonderful.\u00a0 I loved the scenes on the spaceship, where the set-design nostalgically recreated the style of the Nostromo, the ill-fated craft featured in Ridley Scott\u2019s original.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I also enjoyed the performances.\u00a0 Oliphant and Ceesay are excellent as, respectively, Kirsh the Prodigy synth and Morrow the Weyland-Yutani cyborg, and the scene where they at last square up to each other is the highlight of the final episode.\u00a0 The actors and actresses playing the hybrids do a good job of reminding us that, adult thought they look, these are children: variously na\u00efve, trusting, devious, petulant, confused, frightened.\u00a0 I particularly liked the hapless Laurel-and-Hardy double-act of Gourav and Ajayi.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n And though the character is obviously a caricature of fabulously-wealthy-far-too-young sociopaths like Mark Zuckerberg, Boy Kavalier is played with entertaining, pantomime-villain flair by Samuel Blenkin. \u00a0His Peter Pan<\/em> obsession disturbingly echoes Michael Jackson, another rich and powerful man who gathered children into his lair for unsavory purposes.\u00a0 Also, with his tousled black hair, I thought he bore a troubling resemblance to disgraced fantasy writer Neil Gaiman, now dealing with multiple accusations of sexual assault.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n But Alien: Earth<\/em>\u2019s breakout star is surely the afore-mentioned ambulatory eyeball, T. Ocellus, which in the course of the series plonks itself in the eye-socket of, and takes control of, a cat, a sheep and Michael Smiley<\/a>.\u00a0 No offence to Michael Smiley, but when the thing is embedded in the sheep, it\u2019s most terrifying.\u00a0 The sight of that bloody-faced ewe, with an outsized eyeball, staring impassively from its place of containment, is the stuff of nightmares.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u00a9 26 Keys Productions \/ Scott Free \/ 20th<\/sup> Television \/ FXP\u00a0\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u00a9 26 Keys Productions \/ Scott Free \/ 20th Television \/ FXP\u00a0\u00a0 What an exasperating franchise the Alien one is.\u00a0 It kicked off in 1979 with one masterpiece, Ridley\u2019s Scott\u2019s Alien, and continued in 1986 with another masterpiece, James Cameron\u2019s Aliens.\u00a0 But its instalments after that have been, in various ways, maddeningly uneven. … <\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/bloodandporridge.co.uk\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Al-Rmls-postr-203x300.jpg\")
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