Morrow is, without a doubt, the most interesting character in Alien: Earth. Timothy Olyphant’s cool-headed robot “Synthetic” and Sydney Chandler’s immature human-synth “Hybrid” may take top billing on the FX series, but Babou Ceesay’s morose cyborg appears to be stealing the show. Case in point: one cryptic line uttered by Morrow in episode 3 has audiences headed to Google in search of an explanation. When is a machine not a machine?
But while the meaning of this phrase may be less of a riddle and more of a nod from one human-robot mash-up to another, Morrow’s words do reveal how Alien: Earth is subverting the conflict at the heart of the franchise to tell a surprising new story with Ceesay’s character at its center.
“When is a machine not a machine?”
The exchange comes at a heated moment during Alien: Earth episode 3 when Morrow comes into contact with two of the Hybrids (children whose consciousness has been transferred into adult, synthetic bodies) as they explore his crashed ship. While standing amid a small cluster of facehugger eggs, Morrow sizes up these Hybrids and realizes something is off. Their bodies are clearly synthetic, but the way they act seems human, even downright childish. He isn’t able to get a definitive explanation out of the Hybrids, but he clearly feels confident enough to lean forward and whisper those words.
The meaning here is pretty obvious. Hybrids may look like machines, but they’re not. The same goes for Morrow, a human being with mechanical enhancements (including a super-slick blade that he can summon from his hand at any time). I don’t think there’s much to it beyond that. However, Morrow’s quote does get at a bigger question at the heart of Alien: Earth.
“The worst parts of a man”
Despite its name, the Alien franchise has always been about the complex dynamic between humans and robots. From Ash in the original Alien to David in Prometheus and Alien: Covenant, these Synthetics are typically shown to have an uncaring (or downright resentful) attitude toward their human shipmates. Of course, there are exceptions, like Bishop in Aliens or David in Alien: Romulus, who find a way to heroically go against their programming.
Morrow is different. He’s a human man who’s been transformed by the Weyland-Yutani corporation into something closer to a machine. It’s clear through his actions that he is completely subservient to the company and its demands (like Ash in Alien), however, he does have the ability to disobey direct orders (like David in Prometheus). For example, when Yutani commands him to return to corporate headquarters, he refuses, deciding to complete his mission instead.
Speaking to those Hybrids while on board the ship, Morrow describes himself as “the worst parts of a man.” It’s unclear exactly what that means, but there’s no question that he feels some remorse for the human lives he’s sacrificed in the name of corporate profits. So perhaps he means empathy, an emotion Synthetics don’t possess, but Hybrids presumably do — even if they’re all still too immature to really understand its value.
It’s possible Morrow sees a bit of himself in these Hybrids, a natural evolution of his own cyborg design. Speaking to TechRadar before the show’s premiere, Ceesay described his character as “an iPhone 1 in a world of iPhone 20s.” At the time, I assumed that was a reference to the Synthetics that Weyland-Yutani had developed while Morrow was off-Earth on a 65-year mission to collect alien samples. But now, it’s beginning to look like the Hybrids (not the Synthetics) are this world’s shiny new thing.
Where all this leads remains to be seen, but it still makes Morrow and his outdated cyborg upgrades the most interesting part of Alien: Earth‘s sprawling ensemble.
