<em>Alien: Earth</em> Makes Xenomorphs Must-Watch Horror Again

When is a machine not a machine? That’s the central question at the heart of Alien: Earth, the first spin-off TV series of Ridley Scott's iconic monster movies, which use giant killer space scorpions as a way to explore humanity’s reckless pursuit of technology. When Alien: Earth hits FX on August 12, prepare to ask yourself all kinds of wonderful questions, such as: Are our human bodies not a kind of outdated machine? Are the aliens not just a biological inevitability that we don’t yet understand? Does anything matter when they’re ripping us to shreds?

Of course, futuristic concepts around human evolution, cybernetics, and AI have existed in Alien films before. They’ve just never had the time that an eight-episode TV series can grant them. So, it makes sense that FX brought in showrunner Noah Hawley—who has done this exact kind of conceptual episodic storytelling around preexisting IP twice before in FX's Legion (a spin-off of the X-Men franchise) and Fargo (a spin-off of the 1996 Coen Brothers movie). And instead of simply rehashing Alien in a televised form, Hawley picks apart the rules of Alien storytelling one by one, sending the Xenomorphs where no Alien has gone before—Earth, of course. While doing so, he takes a harder look at the planet’s mega-corporations that, in this franchise, have historically treated humanity like lab rats for their crazy experiments. It’s thrilling, surprisingly gruesome for TV, and somehow only the beginning of the story.

Alien: Earth begins in the year 2120 (two years before Ripley’s ship encounters the Xenomorphs in outer space in 1979's Alien, though knowledge of prior Alien movies is not needed), when trillionaire tech genius Boy Kavalier (Samuel Blenkin) has perfected the technology to transfer a human consciousness into a synthetic body. Basically: eternal life. The only hitch so far is that an adult brain is too complicated for the procedure. Kavalier needs less fully formed and more malleable subjects. So, he secretly enlists a group of terminally sick twelve-year-olds and their desperate parents to turn over their children for the sake of scientific progress (and a giant sum of cash). The first among them is Wendy (Sydney Chandler), who takes her name from a video of Peter Pan. The name’s a bit on the nose—especially as Kavalier reads his creations passages from J. M. Barrie’s story over a loudspeaker on his Neverland private island—but Wendy and her fellow hybrids are also quite literally children in confusing adult bodies who will never grow up.

In the beginning of the series, it’s tough to gauge how we should feel about these new characters. The transference from a sick child into an adult body is undercut with an incredibly sinister score. Creating these super-children is surely an act against nature, but the problems that the advanced robot hybrids face are often played for laughs. Pitifully, the one drawback to our tech overlords finally achieving immortality is that you must live forever with a child’s brain. Imagine Ripley’s surprise when she returns home to Earth, only to find it as Xenomorph-infested as the Nostromo simply because a bunch of robot children looked at the aliens and thought, Rad, bro!

So, the first test of their first flight-or-flight response arrives when a rival company's spaceship crashes into one of Kavalier’s skyscrapers. Desperate to claim whatever materials are on board, he sends Wendy and his squad of robot children to check out the damage and steal anything interesting. Kirsh (a more traditional Alien synthetic played by Timothy Olyphant), accompanies them as their handler and parental guardian.

I’ve always been drawn to Kirsh’s type of Alien robot character—think Ian Holm in the original, and Michael Fassbender in the latest Scott prequels—and Olyphant delivers a properly icy performance. If tech experts still believe that we need to first create functioning AI to build an even better AI, well, this character is proof that robots will never prioritize humanity when that time comes.

Blenkin’s tech trillionaire is another standout performance, resembling a cross between Roman Roy and Mark Zuckerberg. He seemingly can’t sit in a chair normally, talk without sounding pretentious, or even wear shoes in a professional environment. The real world is occupied more with obscenely wealthy corporate wackadoos who pay others do the science for them, but I always appreciate a well-acted Joffrey Baratheon to topple. Who knows? Maybe Earth will return to the age of inbred boy kings within the next century.

Sydney Chandler stars as "Wendy," a new human/robot hybrid for the ’Alien’ franchise.

From there, Alien: Earth is a relatively straightforward tale of discovering Xenomorph eggs, (stupidly) bringing them back home, and then watching the monsters absolutely go to town after popping out of someone’s chest. (There’s also one ingenious new direction for the aliens that I certainly won’t spoil here.)

Ironically, as fun as it is to watch the Xenomorphs tear through humanity, Alien: Earth is a much more enticing thriller when the monsters are caged—waiting and learning about their prey. The creatures are better symbols of humanity’s cruelty in the pursuit of science, rather than nature’s inevitable domination over us. Alien: Earth may share much of its DNA with Jurassic Park and Westworld, but there’s much more material to chew on than whether or not the characters survive. Much like creating an Ex Machina-esque AI woman that only serves you if it remains in her best interests, the threat that any little hiccup from our planet’s mega-corporations could unlock world-ending carnage is far scarier than the ensuing bloodbath.

The one problem I have with Alien: Earth is that the name is a bit of a tease. Yes, the Xenomorphs are on Earth. But they’re not exactly haunting the suburbs or catching the subway in New York City. This isn’t A Quiet Place: Day One or The Last of Us. Instead, Alien: Earth’s first season takes places in either the crashed spaceship or a research center on a remote private island. That may change in future installments. Instead of presenting a full beginning, middle, and end, Alien: Earth’s eight episodes so far act more as a prequel for what’s to come. Clearly, Hawley needed to build a house of cards before he knocks it down.

The only aspect of Alien: Earth that may hinder Hawley’s momentum is that it isn’t a series for the squeamish. The newly added parasites range from bloodsucking worms to giant flies that digest their food outside of their stomachs. If the monsters in Stranger Things were too much for you, Alien: Earth’s horrifying imagery will give you insomnia. The good news? Audiences specifically angling for that brand of goopy weirdness will have a field day. Maybe next season, our increasingly chaotic world will fulfill Alien: Earth's titular promise, and we'll peel back our shower curtains—only to find a drooling Xenomorph, waiting to pounce.