Ridley Scott’s original Alien movie from 1979 was an all-time sci-fi/horror classic, and even an endless stream of sequels and spin-offs – Aliens, Alien 3, Alien Resurrection, Alien vs Predator, Prometheus, Alien: Romulus et al – hasn’t diluted the electrifying impact of the original.
Now FX and Disney have shovelled a shed-load of money into this glossily-produced series for TV, written and directed by Noah Hawley (Fargo, Legion etc). But can it boldly go where no Alien-related product has gone before?
Er... not really, it's more a case of reshuffling themes from previous incarnations. Alien: Earth transports us to 2120, two years before the events related in Scott’s original movie, to an earth getting used to the idea of accommodating various kinds of humanoid life forms (eg cyborgs, synths and hybrids). The planet has become a kind of hi-tech dystopia, divided up between a quintet of vast corporations, one of which is Prodigy, run by a giggling megalomaniac (and the world’s youngest trillionaire) called Boy Kavalier (Samuel Blenkin, pictured below). When a spaceship belonging to the rival Weyland-Yutani organisation crashes back to earth in New Siam – a city owned by Prodigy – Kavalier refuses to give it back to its rightful owner.
What he doesn’t yet know is that the ship, called Maginot (presumably intended to evoke a defensive line doomed to failure), contains a cargo of biological specimens gathered from some God-forsaken parts of the universe. This is an excuse for the special effects department to devise all kinds of ghastly slithery, wriggly things which might, for instance, slip down the back of your neck and start burrowing into your innards. The poor old ship’s cat has been colonised by a kind of octopus thing with a giant eyeball for a head.
Inevitably, the worst news of all is that the Maginot has brought back some specimens of the eponymous Aliens, and there’s an android called Morrow (Babou Ceesay) on board programmed to protect these blasted things at all costs. Shades of the treacherous Ian Holm character from the original movie.
Meanwhile, there’s a counter-narrative developing featuring Wendy (Sydney Chandler). She used to be a young girl called Marcy, but she was suffering from a terminal illness and her consciousness has been transferred into a synthetic body which gives her capabilities which vastly outstrip the humdrum old human form. “We ended death!” gloats one of the Prodigy scientists who brought this marvel into being. Wendy has a group of similarly synthetic young colleagues who are doubtless destined to play key roles in the unfolding drama.
Wendy’s relationship with her brother Joe (Alex Lawther) will also be key. He works as a medic for the Prodigy Corporation’s security force, and he’s among the first responders who rush to the scene of the Maginot crash. He believes his sister has died, so he has a bit of problem getting his head round the idea that she’s been scientifically reincarnated. For the moment, though, he has to contend with the even more disturbing fact that there’s a rampant alien pursuing him around the crash site (pictured above, Timothy Olyphant plays cyborg scientist Kirsh).
The first two episodes of Alien: Earth are available now, with a further six waiting to be unveiled at weekly intervals. Maybe it will pull in an audience which doesn’t remember, or never saw, Scott’s original, but veteran alien-watchers may come away feeling underwhelmed. The main surprise in the show is the rather incongruous presence of Adrian Edmondson as a Prodigy employee called Atom Eins. Apart from anything else, despite all the future-shock angst and techno-trickery, it’s far too obvious that the (admittedly still hideous) alien is a bloke in a costume with a giant head and a mouthful of steel teeth perched on top.
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