Alien: Earth is the best new sci-fi show on TV right now, and fans of the series may have found their Andor equivalent.
The first ten minutes should sell you. Very quickly you realize a primary goal of Hawley here is to make Alien: Earth feel authentic to the late ‘70s/early ‘80s aesthetic of the first two films, from the sets to the costumes to the music to the sound design to even the slow fades between scenes. It’s unlike modern films which often simply use the mythology for a modern-day blockbuster, but given Hawley’s history of Legion and Fargo, this isn’t wholly unexpected. It is brilliantly executed.
Alien: Earth skips the expected. There’s a ship carrying Facehuggers. They escape, they murder everyone. This is not actually shown in any meaningful capacity, only flashes of violence and scenes of the bloody aftermath. So it’s not just a retread of the films that came before it, something I think plagued the good-but-derivative Alien: Romulus as of late.
Another skip is the Xenomorph reveal itself, which I greatly appreciated. No build-up for six episodes finally to show and unleash the alien near the finale. It’s out, it’s running around and murdering everyone it comes across. But one other aspect that stands out is the ship carrying other dangerous specimens like a small eyeball octopus that possesses a host, or little pincher bugs that drain your blood and swell disgustingly to thirty times their size.
