Alien: Earth Episodes 1-2
"Neverland" / "Mr. October"
Writer: Noah Hawley
Directors: Noah Hawley / 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
"OUTER. SPACE." – Adam Driver, Inside Llewyn Davis
The year is 2120, some 16 years since the events of Alien: Covenant and two years prior to the events of Alien. Some familiar lime green retro-future on-screen text informs us that post-human advancements have reached a fork in the evolutionary road; we're looking at augmented humans ("cyborgs"), androids ("synthetics"), and a new wave of synthetics encoded with human consciousness ("hybrids"). This latter batch is the brainchild of Boy Kavalier (Blenkin), barefoot trillionaire CEO of Prodigy Corporation, a rival to those fine folks at Weyland-Yutani.
All of these things are about to collide, swap spit, and violently puree with our friends the xenomorph along with a few extraterrestrial oddities new to the catalog.
The Maginot
Sleepers awaken aboard the Weyland-Yutani research vessel Maginot, and everything from the sets, wardrobe, and slow dissolves harken to our introduction to the Nostromo back in 1979 (or ahead in 2122). There's even a kitty! The crew discuss geo-politics over breakfast, some painfully unaware which mega-corp owns which continent. Not the neatest exposition dump, but we all need to brush up on our oligarchs now and then (with the help of fash cards?). And, oh, are those facehuggers in those specimen tubes? Unlike those things, I'm not getting attached to any of these people.
I'm only going to bother naming the security officer, Morrow (Ceesay), whose company man commitment — and a tiny safety compartment beneath "Mother's" interface room — means he's the sole human survivor of this voyage when the xenos attack. Though he exhibits Ash-level detachment, Morrow is actually a cyborg, not a full-on android. His left arm is upgraded to the T-1000 package. Don't get too excited; they don't call it that, but he can transmogrify his hand into an array of tools and weapons. Looks expensive.
Having betrayed his crewmates (even the cat) to the aliens, Morrow settles in for a crash landing on Earth. Probably not the smooth re-entry Mother intended, especially since the Maginot jackknifes into a New Siam tower block, firmly in Prodigy territory. Then again, these guys are mustache-twirling evil, so I wouldn't be surprised if we learn this was calculated down to the square meter.
Neverland
The Maginot crash serves as the first big test for Prodigy's Lost Boys (and Girls), those "hybrids" of human and synthetic. Let's rewind real quick to their inception.
A terminally-ill 11-year old girl named Marcy (Florence Bensberg) is the first to undergo the transition. Dame Sylvia (Davis) and the android Kirsh (Olyphant in the final stages of his metamorphosis into Jamie Lee Curtis) prepare her for a new life that necessitates leaving her family, including brother Joe, behind forever. Kavalier, not one for subtlety, calls this island facility Neverland. Scenes of the Lost Boys from Disney's Peter Pan flicker overhead. Talk about mega corps; Disney owns the rights to all of this stuff. Before going under, Marcy inspects her new synthetic body, a vision of herself some years older (Chandler). She admires her Marion Cotillard bob and christens herself "Wendy."
Soon enough, precocious Wendy is scaling sheer rock walls around the island and enduring effortless heel-first drops to the ground several meters below. She seems content, though she retains the demeanor of an adolescent girl in the body of a (superhuman) adult. It's the conundrum inherent to the procedure. At this early stage, only the relative neuroplasticity of a child's mind can survive the process, but the goal is for that individual to mature in their permanent adult body. Wendy might find her breasts cumbersome to her calisthenics now, but that won't always be the case. Sylvia and Kirsh aren't on the same page when it comes to hormone injections to mimic human moods and emotions, the android insistent that Wendy is more than human.
We're really building the plane as we're flying here. But that's the human experience, right?
Wendy shepherds other terminally ill children through the same process, and they all have fun names like Slightly, Curly, Nibs, and Smee (the second Smee I've covered in recaps this year). We get some great scenes with the hybrids discussing their new lives, each actor embracing their inner child, both in their speech patterns and the way they move. There's always an underlying note of tragedy knowing these are little kids forced into some very extreme situations, all at the behest of a bored crypto bro making things up as he goes along.
Unsurprisingly, Wendy remains fixated on the wellbeing of her brother Joe, a medic for Prodigy Corp over in New Siam. Joe is played by Alex Lawther, the beating heart of Andor and the voice of its driving manifesto. He also played the young Alan Turing in The Imitation Game, and, as fate would have it, he confronts machine learning here as well. In a nod to the indentured labor system seen most recently in Alien: Romulus, Joe tries to convince a robot to let him exit his current gig seven months early in order to complete his medical training. No dice.
Wendy is able to scrub through the metadata of surveillance footage by poking at the projected images. She uses this to observe her brother's movements in New Siam, offering color commentary for her vast menagerie of plushies. When she realizes Joe is headed to treat the wounded at the crash site, she clips her Beanie Baby walrus to her belt and a short sword to her back. Kavalier takes little convincing to consent to the field trip. He's even more interested when Yutani herself (Sencindiver) calls to tell him not to lay hands on her property.
New Siam
Having barely survived the Maginot grazing their dormitory as the ship plummeted to land, Joe and his team head to ground zero. There they descend a smoking crater that once housed a shopping mall and apartments covering the full range of social strata all the way up to literal powdered wigs (in fairness, it's probably a costume party).
Obviously, no one's prepared for the alien samples on the loose in and around the ship's laboratory. New friends include a multi-faceted eyeball on tendrils, hitching a ride inside the cat; a dangling seed pod the size of a speed bag; and some blood-sucking bugs harboring far worse than West Nile. Kirsh and the hybrids arrive in time to find the remains of Prodigy Security's finest rent-a-cops. The android downloads records from the ship and is a little turned-on by the horrors on tap.
Joe is nearly eviscerated by a rampaging xenomorph that delivers swift and exacting justice to the aforementioned aristocracy at their decadent dinner party. Fortunately Morrow arrives just in time to down the creature with a frankly devastating beam weapon before turning it on Joe. The cyborg bags the xeno in some kind of quick-hardening goo and drags it off. He's momentarily delayed by the local constabulary, but that's enough time for the xeno to unzip from the body bag and tear the arresting officers to ribbons. The thing moves so fast. It's gone before Morrow can even turn around.
Wendy reunites with Joe in a trophy room filled with sports memorabilia, including a Reggie Jackson baseball from the 1977 World Series. Joe explains the episode title. He and his father enjoyed clips from old baseball games. Reggie Jackson, Mr. October, exemplified the old man's view of heroism at a time of testing. Wendy is dazzled. Attempting to check her and Slightly (Gourav) for injuries, Joe discovers they're synthetic. Wendy bristles at the label. They're something more. She's interrupted by Kirsh, who orders them to head to the front section of the ship to secure the aliens. They don't want these invasive species out there breeding. Joe joins them.
Slightly spills the beans of Wendy's identity almost immediately, which is just as well. Who wants to draw out this secret any longer than we have to? Naturally, Joe is shocked his dead little sister is running around in an Audrey Tautou skin suit. They'd had a funeral! Wendy is able to answer all of his password protection questions though, so he squeezes her in a tearful hug.
The trio happen upon a clutch of familiar eggs (though not familiar to them, otherwise Joe wouldn't be pressing his nose right up on them). The eggs glisten and pulsate and quiver. Never a good sign. Meanwhile, something approaches in that ominous first-person perspective.
"Call it in," determines Joe, not keen on the way the eggs are glistening, pulsating, or quivering. On cue, the adult xenomorph rushes him and they tumble into the bowels of the ship.
Wendy instructs Slightly to guard "the omelette" and hurries off in pursuit of her brother.
That's all until next week. I'm sure there'll be more goo, more teeth, more late stage capitalism!
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