Alien: Earth Review: A Tired Sci-Fi Trope Hinders Noah Hawley's Inventive Series

The thing about Ellen Ripley is that she rules. It's difficult to overstate how strong an influence Sigourney Weaver's heroine, first introduced in Ridley Scott's seminal Alien, has had on sci-fi, on horror, on film as a whole. Ripley appeared in the first four Alien films, though the franchise has continued without her. But her presence is always felt; the sequels and prequels that have brought in new leads in her stead have made attempts to replicate the formula of her character. By that I mean these films have cast a thin, white, conventionally attractive brunette protagonist and put her through various hells, like Noomi Rapace's Shaw self-aborting her alien fetus in Prometheus and Cailee Spaeny's Rain facing off with Alien: Romulus' deformed Offspring.

It's an unfair bar, of course, but unsurprisingly, none of these characters has proven to be anywhere near as timeless as Ripley. What makes Ripley so uniquely memorable is that she plays like a person, not a self-conscious feminist symbol. (It's also worth mentioning that she was originally written as a man.) Weaver's performance, Scott's directing, and Dan O'Bannon's writing were able to speak for themselves. Weaver even famously saw the scene toward the end of Alien in which Ripley strips down to her underwear as sensible rather than exploitative: "After five days of blood and guts, and fear, and sweat and urine, do you think Ripley wouldn't take off her clothes?"

The latest installment in the Alien franchise, the Noah Hawley-created Alien: Earth, premiering Aug. 12 on FX, somewhat inevitably brings the Xenomorph to television, and with its arrival comes yet another thin, white, conventionally attractive brunette protagonist in Sydney Chandler's Wendy. The series, set two years before the events of Alien, imagines Wendy as the prototype for a revolutionary new program created by Boy Kavalier (Samuel Blenkin), the wunderkind CEO of the Prodigy Corporation. (Get it? Because he's a child prodigy.) Kavalier fancies himself Peter Pan, with a program that allows him to create his own Lost Boys by uploading the consciousnesses of terminally ill human children into synthetic young adult bodies, which he calls hybrids. The Lost Boys weren't necessarily designed with the intention of being used as child soldiers, but it's what they become after they're sent to serve as a rescue team for a Weyland-Yutani ship that mysteriously crash lands in a densely populated city on Earth in the series' propulsive first episode. 

7.8

Alien: Earth

at Hulu

Like

• Most of the characters are richly developed
• The aliens are horrifying
• It sets itself apart from the other franchise installments

Dislike

• Wendy's character needs some work

In that respect, Alien: Earth wastes no time getting right to the story. Wendy volunteers the kids to excavate the spacecraft when she learns that her medic brother (who, Timothy Olyphant's bleach blond synthetic Kirsh is quick to clarify, is "from her old life") is at the site of the crash with his tactical unit. Wendy and her brother, Alex Lawther's Joe, haven't spoken since before she was even called Wendy, with Joe believing his sister succumbed to her illness years earlier. She sees this mission as a two-birds, one-stone type of opportunity: put her new synth strength to the test and get Joe back in her life. But since this is the Alien universe, it's not exactly that simple. Obviously, there's more lurking in the wreckage of the ship than just an estranged brother. Alien: Earth follows through on its promise of Xenomorphs, but the series takes the opportunity to introduce its own nightmare-inducing creatures as well, like the parasitic eyeball that skitters around in search of a host. 

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While Alien and its direct sequel, James Cameron's Aliens, wrestled with similar musings on humanity, the dangers of corporate greed, and unregulated technological advancements, Alien: Earth posits what those ideas look like under a modern lens. In the distant future imagined by Hawley, Prodigy and Weyland-Yutani are two of five corporations that rule over Earth. Kavalier's insatiable quest for power is what brings the aliens under Prodigy's care, as his team extracts them from the ship and angers Yutani (Sandra Yi Sencindiver) in the process. The fate of humanity rests in the hands of squabbling rich people, which feels appropriate. Of course the show's main antagonist is a young tech genius who's dedicated his life to innovating AI, who's blinded by hubris, who harbors a desire to live forever. Greed is the age-old conceit of the Alien movies, one the later installments in the franchise have particularly leaned into; never forget Guy Pearce in Prometheus, hidden under prosthetics and begging the pale, dead-eyed Engineers for the secret to eternal life.

But all that careful adaptation can't stop the series from luxuriating in one of the most pervasive tropes of the sci-fi genre: misogyny disguised as heroism. Even Hawley, a TV veteran who gave us Fargo and Legion, couldn't resist evoking "born sexy yesterday" with Wendy's character. The best thing that can be said about her is that she's not a Ripley rip-off, but she also has none of Ripley's grit and originality. Her name is inspired by Peter Pan's girl Friday, and she's explicitly referred to by the other Lost Boys as Kavalier's favorite, a point that is proven by his special treatment of her, as well as the way he frequently watches her on the various cameras set up around Prodigy's facility. Hawley has spoken about the innocence of children being a driving inspiration for the series, but the full breadth of Wendy's arc is one that you can see coming from a mile away.

Still, Alien: Earth has plenty to enjoy. It's sincerely weird in the best way, and compellingly inventive. The alien designs are appropriately haunting and disgusting, the show packed with the franchise's signature wet, skittering sounds as the aliens burrow their way inside the depths of Prodigy HQ. Many characters — like Joe, whom Lawther plays with cautious optimism and bone-deep exhaustion; and Olyphant's dryly funny and fastidious Kirsh; and Babou Ceesay's single-minded company man Morrow — have rich backstories for the actors to dig into. The younger cast are fun to watch, especially Adarsh Gourav and Jonathan Ajayi, whose characters are Alien: Earth's answer to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. As disconcerting as it is to watch adults behave like children, the actors sell it, leaning into the Lost Boys' innocence without forgetting their intelligence. While the series is forced to indulge in the repetitive imagery standard to the franchise (obviously there are going to be chestbursters and facehuggers), Alien: Earth makes a remarkable effort to do its own thing as it spins toward an ending that seems more inspired by Animal Farm than by Peter Pan.

And yet. Wendy spends much of Season 1's eight episodes questioning whether she belongs with the humans or the machines, which is a compelling enough idea, if one that's been done and redone. As she tries to figure out what purpose would even look like for someone like her, her character follows an almost Handmaid's Tale-esque arc, one that also recalls the stories of the female protagonists in recent sci-fi films like Ex Machina and Poor Things: Man creates hot baby woman, is shocked when hot baby woman starts having thoughts. Plenty of elements of this show are fun revisions on a classic, but Wendy's story is enough to make you wonder if science fiction will ever get a new gimmick.

Premieres: The first two episodes premiere Tuesday, Aug. 12 at 8/7c on FX and Hulu, followed by new episodes weekly
Who's in it: Sydney Chandler, Timothy Olyphant, Alex Lawther, Samuel Blenkin, Babou Ceesay
Who's behind it: Noah Hawley
For fans of: The Alien films
How many episodes we watched: 8 of 8