Alien: Earth just pulled off one of the best fakeouts in recent TV history. After kicking off the Alien prequel series by introducing an entire crew of Weyland-Yutani employees aboard a ship called the Maginot, showrunner Noah Hawley proceeded to brutally murder all of them in a matter of minutes, leaving only the steely cyborg Morrow (Babou Ceesay) alive. However, in episode 5 (title: “In Space, No One…”) we finally get a closer look at the Maginot’s crew — and what went wrong.
In the process, this hour-long Alien: Earth entry winds up feeling like something between a bottle episode and a self-contained Alien movie. Whether you’re caught up on the show or not, it’s worth watching episode 5, which also happens to be the best stand-alone entry in the franchise since 1986’s Aliens.
Ed. note: Spoilers ahead for Alien: Earth episode 5.
The story begins pretty much where it did in episode 1. The crew of the Maginot wakes up from cryosleep. They’re on their way back home from a 65-year mission into deep space with the goal of collecting various alien life forms for Weyland-Yutani for future experimentation. This means the ship is chock-full of violent aliens (including, but not limited to, the xenomorph species) that are determined to escape from their cages and kill their human captors. And that’s exactly what happens.
Throughout this episode, we get to see a bunch of these monsters in action. That includes a facehugger doing its usual thing, along with the creepy eye alien (which is much sneakier and scarier than we initially assumed). However, the freakiest of the bunch is undeniably a bug-like alien, which manages to sneak out of its cage and lay a bunch of eggs into someone’s water bottle. This all culminates in a recreation of the medical bay scene from Alien only instead of trying to remove a facehugger from the victim, the ship’s doctor is extracting a bunch of giant insects that have latched onto his lungs. Suffice to say, it doesn’t end well. (And, in case you were wondering: We learn that putting a facehugger and its human victim into cryosleep doesn’t stop the gestation process.)
Alien: Earth episode 5 also raises the stakes by introducing a mystery element to the plotline. Someone is tampering with the ship, and it’s up to security officer Morrow to solve the case. This involves one-on-one interviews with the other shipmates, who don’t exactly trust their cyborg interrogator. In the process, we also learn a lot more about Morrow’s backstory, which helps explain his cold, inhuman demeanor. In the end, it also becomes clear that the tech company Prodigy was directly behind the ship’s crash as part of an effort to steal those alien samples from their corporate rival Weyland-Yutani.
While the episode does set up a few plot details that will play out later on this season, what’s so great about “In Space, No One…” is that it really feels like a stand-alone alien movie. More than that, it’s a stripped-down version of the franchise (perhaps due to the budget of a single TV episode) that’s closer to the original Alien than it is to any of the sequels that followed. Episode 5 makes repeated use of each set to the point where, by the end, you’ll feel like you’ve spent more than just one hour aboard the Maginot.
Ultimately, while I’m still not totally sold on Alien: Earth in general (I’m less interested in the central Hybrids plotline than the show wants me to be), episode 5 makes the entire thing worthwhile. It’s definitely one of the best single entries in the Alien saga I’ve ever seen. It might even be better than Aliens, although I’m not brave enough to make that claim for myself.
If all of this proves anything, it’s that if Hawley gets to make a season 2, he should ditch the “Earth” part of Alien: Earth and get back to setting the franchise where it belongs: on a retrofuturistic spaceship where everyone is about to die in the worst way imaginable.
Alien: Earth airs weekly on Tuesdays at 9 p.m. EDT on FX and Hulu.