It’s been well over 30 years since the Alien franchise began. And ever since Prometheus started its own run, and eventually Alien: Covenant and all those things, I’ve always wished they would’ve solidified some things.
So for a guy who hates prequels, and that’s me, I realize more and more that I really dig this. I’m talking about Alien: Earth. Have you seen it? It’s not bad. It’s not bad at all.
It’s funny, I had no clue this was going to be a thing. I really didn’t. I had no intention of reviewing it. It wasn’t on my radar. Then all of a sudden it was, “Hey, the show has started,” and I was like, okay. So I put it on while I was working, and more often than not I was watching the screen. I’d be working, working, working, something would catch my attention, and I’d just catch it.
It’s a solid foundation for a story, and it’s definitely expanding the lore.
Two Years Before Alien, and They Waste No Time Aliening
It takes place two years before the events of Alien proper, before the first movie begins, and they’re establishing the world. You get to see Weyland-Yutani. It’s funny, they’re setting it up in a very Game of Thronesian way, and that might be on purpose, and that’s fine. Having come from television, I could even see the pitch: we’re going to get to see the intrigue of Earth, with aliens.
Also, spoilers: they waste no time aliening. Seriously, you get a full-blown xenomorph in the first episode. You get face huggers. And the second episode, same thing. You get to see the full-blown thing, and it’s not too shabby.
The setup is a ship very similar to the one in Alien. In the first few minutes they’re doing this really interesting flash forward, flashback structure. It’s one of the most interesting and creative ways to do exposition, in my opinion, because it got me really wanting to know what was going on. They show you a crew, and it feels very much like the original movie. The aesthetic is there, down to the digital words on the screens, the whole nine yards.
Cyborgs, Synths, and a Mind in an Android Body
Out the gate they introduce three components in the lore, and two of them we already knew. You have cyborgs, which are enhanced human beings. You have synths, which are synthetic human beings, androids, like Rook, or whatever his name was from the first movie.
The synth here is played by Timothy Olyphant, by the way, and he does an amazing job as this character. It’s kind of stupid. He’s got bleached eyebrows, and he really reminds me of Rutger Hauer from Blade Runner, if you ask me. Seriously, just the way he comes across is very that. If they have a scene at all in this series where he’s standing in the rain talking, I’m going to be like, oh, you guys totally wanted it to be that style of character. Got it.
Then there’s Wendy, played by Sydney Chandler. Wendy is actually an artificial person: the body of an android with a human mind downloaded into it. At its core, the young lady she was originally has a terminal illness, and apparently the only way they can create these downloaded synthetic people is to start young. If you’re already a grown-up, you have issues. They explain it very rudimentally:
“Grown-up minds are too stiff, so they can’t make the trip yet. But our minds, kid minds, we fit just right.”
So this allows you to grow into that body, even though the body doesn’t grow. And obviously, because why wouldn’t you build androids this way, they’re stronger, faster, the whole nine yards.
It’s funny, when I explained this to my father-in-law, because he loves this kind of nonsense, I told him you have to understand this show is two parts horror and one part psychological thriller. There are a lot of moving pieces. This is classic sci-fi in a way that makes a lot of sense, and what I really appreciate is that it doesn’t treat us like we’re dumb.
Corporations Are Nations Now
Within this world you hear about the different companies, and I guess some of them we know from the lore, but there’s a brand new one called Prodigy. Prodigy is very much informed, I believe, by the tech billionaires. It’s run by the youngest trillionaire ever on the planet.
Corporations are like nations. Corporations run and control the world, and you get a lot of lore expansion out of that, at least for me. I was never an Alien comic book reader, so I don’t know. I think most of the Alien comics always focused on the actual xenomorphs and their relationship to the Predator and stuff like that.
So seeing this new kid, with his own island, really themed around Peter Pan, makes sense. He’s the brilliant boy and whatever else.
The Weyland-Yutani ship that’s out in space crashes on Earth, and it just so happens to crash into Prodigy’s territory. Meanwhile Wendy’s brother has been told she’s dead, because apparently the parents make the deal with Prodigy, and the deal is: listen, your kid will live, but they can never go back to their old life. And the parents are like, fine, as long as I know my child is alive somewhere. I get that it’s a leap, but I’m here for it. We don’t really get into the human rights of it all, and I feel like that’s just established as part of the world.
There’s even a conversation where the Weyland-Yutani lady calls the head of Prodigy:
“You have something that belongs to me.” “To be fair, it fell from the sky and broke one of my buildings.” “Reparations will be made. Just send us a bill.”
And dude’s like, I don’t know. She says, what if we come anyway? And he’s like, that’s what we have attorneys for, don’t make this a thing. So apparently legal disputes among these corporate states are handled through lawyers.
I think we’re still going to get a Weyland group. I think we’re going to get some actual marine-style people who go in and do a thing. And the Rook of their ship, because all of them are going to be dirty, has essentially given up his crew to the aliens, because they need the specimen. It all comes down to the specimen.
The Prequel Problem, and Where I Think This Is Going
Now, whether they’re going to rewrite history or not, this show falls prey to what everything else does. Strange New Worlds, as a Star Trek prequel, has to deal with that. Star Wars, same thing.
But as we’re expanding the lore and creating this universe, especially with the likes of Predator: Badlands coming and everything else, I firmly believe we’re eventually going to build to an Alien versus Predator that’s respectable, the one we all want.
All that being said, it’s beautiful. The Alien is straight up faithful, and it’s raw. Oh my gosh. It really latches on to the horror elements.
After I watched this, I had to go back and watch Alien: Romulus, because I was like, I want to live in this world. And after Romulus I’m probably going to watch the original again, because that’s what this made me want. It’s this zigzagging of stuff. I don’t know that I’ll ever go back to watch Prometheus, though Prometheus is much better than we remember. It’s kind of aging well with me. And Alien: Covenant I’ve actually never finished. I’ve only watched about two-thirds of it. I need to finish it.
Yeah, man. I’m down. I’m here for it. And if you guys are too, I’ll be happy to review it every week, because I enjoyed watching the show.
The Know-It-All Index
There you go. Now you know. And if knowing’s half the battle, you’re halfway to being a know-it-all yourself.
Alien: Earth’s series premiere, the first two episodes, has me really excited. I really am. I think together they’re building the lore really well. They’ve been hitting on all thrusters so far, and there’s very little that I’m bumping into.
I know a lot of people out there are saying it’s this, it’s the other, it’s whatever. I feel none of those things. Someone put it appropriately: while the show itself is not woke, the show is leaving sockets open for people to interpret it that way if they want, because there’s language like the transition from human body to droid body, the whole bit. That’s the way you want to do it, folks. Writers pour themselves into their work, so I expect there to be a bit of coding to that effect. But at the same time, it wasn’t so blatant that I caught it without someone pointing it out.
For me, this was a wonderful story, laid out very well. I can’t wait to see how they structure the rest of it and ultimately where it’s going to go. I was here for it, man, and I think you will be too. Give it a shot.
I do intend to talk a little more about it on the show tomorrow night, and we’ve done an Alien ranking in the past on a live stream, which is linked in the video’s description.
Never forget, everyone loves a know-it-all.
What did you think of the whole thing? And if you want this one reviewed every week, say so. The conversation lives in the comments on the video above.
