In 1982, three years after directing the space-horror classic Alien (and following a failed attempt to adapt Frank Herbert’s Dune into a film), Ridley Scott came back down to Earth. His follow-up film, Blade Runner, started with a concept Alien only briefly touched on — a robot masquerading as a human — and exploded it into a moody noir sci-fi set in a perpetually rain-soaked future version of our Los Angeles.
Now, more than 40 years later, the Alien franchise is following Scott back to his home planet. The new FX series Alien: Earth, premiering on Aug. 12, shifts the setting from distant outer space to Earth in the year 2120, making it a prequel to the original film by just two years. For showrunner Noah Hawley — creator of the Marvel Studios series Legion, as well as the Fargo TV show — it’s both a natural progression for the franchise and a chance to explore similar territory as Blade Runner, without replicating it too closely.
“It was Ridley who made Alien and then went to make Blade Runner,” Hawley said at a virtual press conference attended by Polygon. “He introduced this idea of synthetic beings, and then he went on to explore that in more depth in Blade Runner. What I would say is, by exploring the synthetic beings in Alien, I’m certainly not trying to make Blade Runner, but I understand how the comparisons can be made, certainly aesthetically.”
The most notable synthetic in Alien: Earth is Kirsh (Timothy Olyphant), a white-haired robot tasked with looking after Wendy (a new type of synthetic/human hybrid played by Sydney Chandler). Early on, Kirsh delivers a chilling monologue about humanity’s precarious spot at the top of the food chain, warning that a lack of fear may ultimately bring our species down from its current perch. It’s the first clue that this robot guardian might not be quite as benevolent as he seems — a classic trope in the Alien movies, but also one that fans clearly never tire of.
The biggest difference between Kirsh and previous synthetics like Ash (Ian Holm) and David (Michael Fassbender) may be in the way they relate to their non-mechanical counterparts. While Ash and David mostly seem to feel disdain for their human shipmates (and David reveres his creator Peter Weyland like a god), Kirsh has a more nuanced relationship with the other characters in Alien: Earth.
“We talked a little bit about the programming that goes into a Kirsh, and this idea that maybe, not only is he programmed not to harm his boss in any way, but disagreeing with the boss is also discouraged,” Hawley said. “Getting angry at the boss is verboten. If you don’t seem to see eye-to-eye, maybe just give him a little smile and tell him ‘Fuck you’ with your eyes.”
It’s probably only a matter of time until Kirsh turns on his human handlers. This is Alien, after all, even if the setting has changed. That said, while Olyphant’s character with his bleached-white hair would probably fit right in in the cyberpunk dystopian world of Blade Runner, Hawley says he tried to ensure his show’s depiction of Earth wouldn’t look like that movie. Instead, the world of Alien: Earth is surprisingly bright and sunny — at least until the titular xenomorph arrives.
“You could look at Blade Runner and think, Well, that must be what Earth looks like in Alien. It’s raining all the time, etc,” he says. “But I would say to the department heads, ‘If you find yourself making Blade Runner, you’re making the wrong Ridley Scott movie.’”
The eight-episode first season of Alien: Earth debuts on FX on Aug. 12 with a two-episode release. New episodes roll out on Saturdays through Sept. 23.