New FX-Hulu series Alien: Earth is already a must-watch after four episodes

By Zach Hagadone
Reader Staff

The Panida Theater just screened director Ridley Scott’s 1979 sci-fi/horror masterpiece Alien as part of its $5 movie series; and, while there is an entire dark constellation of other films in the franchise to experience (in case that wasn’t enough of a fix), instead check out Alien: Earth, the brand-new series that began streaming its first season Aug. 12 on Hulu.

As of Aug. 26, the FX show has progressed to four episodes — with the fifth coming Tuesday, Sept. 2 at 5 p.m. — and for this lifelong devotee of the near-ish future dystopian universe conjured by Scott in ’79, it’s well worth investing some time to explore.

First of all, show runner Noah Hawley (Fargo and Legion) deserves some major props for his fidelity to the source material. Set in the year 2120 — two years before the events of Alien — the series opens with clear callbacks to the original aesthetics and mood.

Rather than the Nostromo — the deep-space freighter that served as the “haunted house in space” in the ’79 film — the audience for Alien: Earth is dropped into the Maginot. 

All the details from Alien are there: the blinking amber lights of the AI ship interface “Mother,” the design features of the passageways, the clunky CRT computer screens, even the dining area made famous in the original as the scene of the iconic “chest-bursting” incident.

In Alien: Earth, however, we learn that unlike the Nostromo, the Maginot is a scientific research vessel on its way home after a 65-year mission to collect and transport living specimens from other worlds.

Contained within the menagerie on board are “facehuggers” — the second-stage larval form of the Xenomorph at the center of the Alien storyline. The crew wakes up from extended cryo-sleep in preparation for returning home, though the ship’s navigation systems go haywire and the Maginot is barreling toward Earth on a crash course. Making matters worse, in all the mayhem, a Xenomorph is set loose and does what it does: kills (almost) everyone on board.

Meanwhile, viewers are caught up to speed on the politics and economics of 22nd-century terra firma. Basically, all the stuff we’re worried about on 21st-century terra firma has come to pass, with five corporations carving up human civilization into techno-dictatorships and leveraging their inconceivable wealth not only to colonize space but devote most of their energies to achieving immortality.

The corporate overlords have arrived at a trio of essential “fixes” for human life, none of which are really “human”: cyborgs, AI “synths” and “hybrids,” which are well-nigh indestructible bodies into which human consciousness is downloaded.

At the outset of the show, the hybrid program is in the midst of its first success, with an 11-year-old girl suffering from a terminal illness poised to have her essential essence transferred into a young adult body. 

Played by a beguiling Sydney Chandler, she will be named “Wendy,” in a reference to Peter Pan. That’s clever on a few levels, one of them being that the Prodigy Corporation that’s undertaking the hybrid program is owned by the world’s youngest trillionaire, Boy Kavalier (Samuel Blenkin). He is, literally, Peter Pan.

Once Wendy is successfully “created,” other kids follow — all terminally ill children of about the same age, who are plugged into uber-healthy 20-something-year-old bodies, with all the complications that implies. They become the “lost boys,” with Wendy as their leader, and lead she must as the Maginot crashes into Prodigy City in New Siam and Boy Kavalier makes a move to appropriate the deadly cargo, even though it’s owned by his Weyland-Yutani rivals.

Along the way there are gunfights, sword play and jump scares aplenty; blood, guts and gore all over the place; sly parodies of greed and hubris; grit, grime and intrigue; family drama and genuine emotion. And all the above is just a taste of the introductory episodes.

New episodes Tuesdays on Hulu.