‘Alien: Earth’ Episode 1 and 2 Review - Slow But Intriguing Start

To give a brief about the history of this sci-fi, Alien: Earth is an indirect prequel to the 1979 film and is set in the year 2120. The first episode begins with USCSS Maginot, a spaceship returning to Earth after a 65-year mission of collecting alien specimens, crashing. Sadly, the containment fails, unleashing a Xenomorph—a strange, alien organism—that kills everyone on board.  However, there is one survivor who survives at the cost of letting his other crew members die. The survivor is none other than Morrow, whose main agenda was to preserve the specimens in the secure areas. On the other hand, in Neverland Island, which serves as the headquarters of Prodigy, young and brilliant trillionaire Boy Kavalier is creating a new type of hybrid human. He aims to create synthetic bodies with real consciousness. For this experiment of his, he chooses Marcy, a terminally ill girl whose mind is transferred into a synthetic body. She is now renamed Wendy.  When I first saw this, I instantly became very intrigued. She is put under the guidance and observation of Kirsh, who is a fully synthetic being. The difference between Kirsh and Wendy is that Wendy still considers herself to be a human, while Kirsh is aware that he is just a machine built being with human mannerisms.

Wendy has a brother who lives across the water in Prodigy’s futuristic city. He, however, believes that his sister, who was already suffering from a terminal illness, has died from it. He doesn’t know that his sister has become this weird combination, which neither makes her a human nor a machine. When the spaceship Maginot crashes near the city, Wendy’s brother Hermit, who is a medic and a soldier, dispatches a squad to get to the deeper happening of things. But the main issue is that from the crashed ship, there are many dangerous creatures coming out, attacking anyone who comes close. Moving forward, we also come to know the real intentions of Boy and why he created the hybrid project. So basically, he wanted to outsmart the AI. He wanted to make Wendy smarter than himself. He also refuses to give away the vessel’s species and warns Weyland-Yutanito not to get deeper into the mystery. Wendy, along with the other synthetics, arrives at the crash site and battles all the creatures. As episode 2 moves forward, we are shown that Hermit eventually comes to know that Wendy is his sister, Marcy, and how they discover Xenomorph’s eggs also exist, indicating a danger that is soon to befall them (a creature from the crash site.

Okay, so first things first, I did find a lot of things interesting. Like Boy’s idea of creating a hybrid. That was the highlight of the show, with Wendy aka Marcy being the showstopper. But other than that, I found this to be a bit childlike. Nothing new. Weird creatures come on the screens and are labeled as alien creatures. I find this to be very superficial, and I found this exact feeling while watching the two episodes.

Also, the pacing is slightly slow. Wendy and her brother could have met earlier, but they didn’t. Alright, I will give that to the makers. But there are certain scenes that drag a lot more than usual. It feels like they are never-ending. And those aliens, they get a lot of screen time. When we talk about the originality of the plot, that’s not there. This is a typical case of a sharp mind that is doing all the wrong things. Even Phineas and Fern had a similar plot. A threat to humanity also seems to be a common plot in most alien movies and shows. So, if you are a fan of aliens and particularly this franchise, you should definitely watch it. Otherwise, apart from a few interesting points, this gets dull.

Final Score- [6/10]
Reviewed by - Neerja Choudhuri
Follow @NeerjaCH on Twitter
Publisher at Midgard Times