In space, no one can hear you dancing on the ceiling. Photos: Handout
Curiosity killed the cat, goes the proverb, one too frequently ignored by characters in horror yarns.In the Alien franchise, characters are like a bipedal version of Schrodinger's cat, simultaneously alive and dead until some morbidly curious (or programmed) individual decides to open Pandora's Box.
Viewers of Alien: Earth don't have to wait too long for the box-opening (and killing) to start, with one actual kitty also falling prey to an extraterrestrial menace in a disconcerting scene – shudder-inducing, even amid the wanton carnage inflicted upon humans in the same episode.
This prequel series to Alien comes to us from the winding corridors of Noah Hawley's imagination.
The showrunner, responsible for such brain-twisting fare as Legion and the consistently gripping Fargo (yes, even Season Four), applies his knack for tightening a noose of creeping, impending doom around engaging characters to a franchise that's... well, already known for applying said noose to such characters (mostly engaging ones, except for the monumentally idiotic "scientists" and "explorers" in Prometheus and Alien: Covenant).
: 'A sinister silhouette behind a fragile-looking barrier? Just another day in corporate bioweapons research.'
Set two years before events in Ridley Scott's 1979 classic – seemingly ignoring most of the aforementioned prequels and the Alien Vs Predator movies – Alien: Earth opens with highly familiar imagery and story beats before shifting gears and throwing us for a loop.
It introduces hybrid beings, human consciousnesses in artificial bodies – specifically, children, because adult brains are supposedly too messed up for the uploading process. Foremost among them is Wendy (Sydney Chandler), a bright 11-year-old transferred into a young adult "synthetic" vessel from her terminally ill body.
When a spaceship crashes in a city, Wendy and other hybrids are sent in for search and rescue as part of a field test. She has an ulterior motive, as her (flesh and blood) brother Joe (Alex Lawther) is also at the scene.
And, you guessed it: it's xenomorphin' time. But the ship isn't carrying just those familiar telescopic-jawed, acid-blooded "perfect organisms". Nope, everyone's favourite evil corporation, Weyland-Yutani, had sent it out on a mission to bring back an assortment of highly lethal life-forms from various corners of the galaxy.
Wendy appears to share a psychic "frequency" of some sort with the xenos cargo, and her corporate owner/employer, Prodigy, orders all specimens brought back to its HQ.
Before you can say "recipe for disaster", Alien: Earth pulls the rug out from under our feet again with a new slant on the old facehugger/host/embryo deal.
The first three episodes (of eight) have been a packed, wild and gory ride, with enough intrigue thrown at us not only for the new ETs but the various enhanced "versions" of humanity too (the crashed vessel's security officer is a cyborg, mostly human parts but with... enhancements).
'Frankly, this scene could have used some cheesy 1970s Six Million Dollar Man sound effects.'
While Wendy and her struggles provide the story so far with its emotional propulsion, it's Timothy Olyphant who anchors Alien: Earth's core theme of people delving where they shouldn't, as the Prodigy synthetic, Kirsh.
Olyphant adds a subtle intensity to the cold detachment of the franchise's synthetics (Michael Fassbender's David, Lance Henriksen's Bishop, Ian Holm's Ash) as he carries out Prodigy's plans for their off-world guests. His actions hint at a private agenda for what should by definition and creation be a subservient corp-slave, and inject a little more unease as we observe the experimentation.
And therein lies the ill-advised curiosity that will inevitably spiral into the previously cited "impending doom" for any, most, or possibly all involved.
Fresh from a five-season binge of Fargo, I'm all strapped in for this crazy ride, Peter Pan references and all, and to blazes with series canon.
New episodes of Alien: Earth arrive every Wednesday on Disney+ Hotstar.
Summary:
Try not to scream your lungs out (IYKYK)
