Alien: Earth Season 1, Episode 3
"Metamorphosis"
Writer: Noah Hawley and Bob DeLaurentis
Directors: Dana Gonzales
Cast: Sydney Chandler, Timothy Olyphant, Alex Lawther, Samuel Blenkin, Essie Davis, Adarsh Gourav, Kit Young, David Rysdahl, Babou Ceesay, Jonathan Ajayi, Erana James, Lily Newmark, Diêm Camille, Adrian Edmondson
This is a moist one, so gird those loins.
Hurt Locker
I don't have the best mental map of the crash site, but it seems odd Wendy didn't simply leap after the xenomorph that snatched up her brother. She instead sprints in the opposite direction to descend in the OSHA-approved fashion, employing her best Tom Cruise run. She follows Joe's screams to a refrigerated meat truck where he's been partially cocooned to the wall. Joe calls it out for the obvious trap it is. And, yeah, this particular xenomorph, having previously eviscerated a costume party in a matter of seconds, is really toying with the siblings. Curious.
Ultimately, the alien impales Joe with its tail before Wendy can lure it away and sever its secondary jaw beneath a pneumatic door. It manages to pull her inside, leaving Joe struggling to raise the door again. When he finally gains access, Wendy stands over the decapitated alien, her blade dripping with neon acid blood. The thing must've battered her though. Milky synthetic blood trickles down her cheek. She collapses. Brother and sister lie together, grievously injured.
Meanwhile, Kirsh and the hybrids lock things down in the Maginot lab. Nibs is accosted by images of her transition and the creepy eyeball monster. Is it influencing her in some way? She pouts over the Lost Boys naming convention and Wendy's favored status. Curly points out that Wendy was the first. Some relative maturity from Curly here. We'll revisit that later.
Boy Kavalier instructs Kirsh to secure the alien samples and bring them to Neverland for study. Screw Yutani; this is infinitely valuable R&D. Kirsh is hesitant. Between the logs he's downloaded from the Maginot and recent first hand experience, the android has reason to question this directive. Kavalier is alarmed to learn Wendy's gone off alone to find her brother. Though Kirsh assures him Slightly went along to help, Kavalier dismisses Wendy's fellow hybrids as children. As if there were any doubt, this episode does a lot to reinforce that reality.
Slightly stands guard over the "omelette" of alien eggs in the scariest room anyone's ever seen. Seriously. Flickering lights. Smoke. Chains. These quivering eggs arranged like Stonehenge. And what's this he's just stepped in? Oh, the greasy discarded husk of something very wet and growing. An approaching Smee's cacophonous footfalls only add to the ambience.
"Bro!" Slightly groans.
"Bro," says Smee, by way of greeting.
These two are adorable together. They compare notes on the murderous creepy crawlies they've encountered like two middle-schoolers trading Goosebumps paperbacks.
Unfortunately a very sweaty Morrow interrupts the party, almost immediately clocking both their synthetic composition and incongruously childlike behavior. Morrow's not even sure what city he's in. We'll soon learn he's been off-world for over 60 years. Once he realizes the two rambling hybrids don't pose a threat, he holsters his gun and goes about connecting to a Mother interface for a hefty data transfer. He unburdens himself of some trauma, recounting the fate of the Maginot, how they found and secured the eggs. An outbreak. Mother's voice telling him not to intervene. So Morrow's cybernetic components extend, at least partially, to his mind. Weyland-Yutani governs his actions, but he's still prone to guilt. Now that … that's fucked.
"Are you a robot?" Slightly asks of the man with blinking Philips Hue light strips plugged into his temples.
"Wouldn't that be nice?" Morrow chuckles. "To be all machine, instead of what I am. The worst parts of a man."
Bro.
Fortunately, Kirsh arrives to rescue his charges from this cyberpunk edition of Scared Straight. But not before Morrow ejects a tiny tablet from beneath his thumbnail and surreptitiously plants it on Slightly's neck, where it dissolves into his flesh. He throttles the terrified boy.
"When is a machine not a machine?" Morrow wants to know.
Kirsh dresses Morrow down, likening the Maginot to a ball lost to his yard. At this point the android knows everything about the cyborg and what happened on the ship.
"Lost a lot of friends, did you?"
"I don't have friends," Morrow replies, backing toward the eggs and the sizzling hole in the wall.
"Everybody needs friends," volunteers Slightly.
Morrow insists that Yutani won't allow Prodigy to make off with her samples. She's sunk too much money to let it go. Too many bodies. When the nearest egg shows signs it's close to opening he dives through the same hole where the alien made its escape.
Prodigy Corp takes full control of the crash site. Wendy and Joe are airlifted to Neverland along with the samples, including the slain xenomorph.
Playing Favorites
Kavalaier observes the arrival of the samples like a child on Christmas morning, right down to his million dollar striped pajamas. He trades barbs with Dame Slyvia and her husband as they assess the damage to an unconscious Wendy. Kavalier invites confrontation. He knows he's Teflon and they're anything but. They know it. He knows they know it. He decides to take a victory lap in the lab, but when he waltzes right up to one of the eggs, Kirsh ushers him back to the door. They agree that only synthetics should have access to the space. Not that we've seen androids fare much better when it comes to outbreaks.
Creepy manservant Atom Eins confronts Smee and Slightly in the plush conversation pitt, informing them he can (and does) observe everything they do because their eyeballs are video cameras. He's particularly curious about their interaction with Morrow and what he'd said to Slightly when he was strangling him.
"When is a machine not a machine?"
Smee timidly asks the man if they need to be worried about Morrow coming after them in the night. Ein reminds them they're in a secure facility in the middle of an ocean, which only serves to remind us all kinds of carnage is about to go down and the outside world will never know. He finally retreats to whatever Renfield cellar he inhabits in his off-time, leaving Smee and Slightly to cuddle together for support.
Curly visits Kavalier in his office and we're quickly reminded that, despite her poise during the field trip, this is still a young girl. She wants to assert herself as the trillionaire's new favorite like an upstart high school freshman trying to insinuate herself into the conversation as potential lead in the spring production of South Pacific. She insists she's not like the other girls. Kavalier encourages the hybrid's overture, promising to send her some reading material in advance of a promised "play" date. Given the power dynamics and Curly's age, I think you'll agree this is easily the most disturbing scene in an episode rife with entrails, mucus, and sphincters.
Meanwhile, Morrow navigates New Siam, calling in to Yutani. It's an old code, but it checks out. As a reminder, unbeknownst to him, he's been off-world for sixty-some years, so he's surprised to find a new Yutani in charge. This is the granddaughter of the woman who gave him his marching orders. She expresses interest in getting her samples back. Refusing to come in, Morrow insists he'll retrieve them himself. He likely suspects anything less would result in his retirement to the scrap heap.
Later, we find out the device Morrow planted on Slightly's neck allows him to communicate with the hybrid from all the way in Prodigy City. He reminds Slightly what he'd said about everyone needing a friend. So, that's creepy. Given the kid's history with keeping secrets, this should go swimmingly.
Kirsh and his hybrid assistants break out their scalpels and go to town. They excise a facehugger from one of the eggs and start exploring. There's the acid sac. There's … I guess we're calling that a larva? Kirsh opts to drop that into a tank where they've been storing one of Joe's lungs to keep it pumping while he's being kept alive elsewhere. That's odd. Seems like they have plenty of other tubes and vats around that they wouldn't need to double up like that.
Oh. Oh.
Wendy stirs from her sleep and wanders out into the hallway, seemingly drawn to the lab where Kirsh has been working. Her head throbs as she gets closer to the eggs. She collapses to the floor, twitching, as the alien larva wriggles between the lobes of Joe's disembodied lung.
Next week I fear something terrible is going to happen to a sheep, among other things.
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