Some film/TV franchises never die, and a few actually get some new life and energy with the passing of the decades. In the case of the hallowed xenomorph, things are going strong 46 years after they first appeared on the big screen.

Ridley Scott’s Alien, released in 1979, was written and staged in such a way that allows for prequels, which have served the franchise nicely in the 21st century. The alien creature at its center was not explained all that much, giving Scott and other directors plenty of territory for origin stories and deeper dives into lore.

The first four films in the franchise, released from 1979 to 1997, were in chronological order. Ridley Scott returned with a pair of prequels, Prometheus (2012) and Alien: Covenant (2017). Then came last year’s well-done Alien: Romulus, another prequel set between the events Alien and Aliens (1986).

Now comes Alien: Earth, an FX TV series set two years before the events of Alien. It presents a scenario in which xenomorphs made it to Earth before they squared off with Ridley on the spaceship Nostromo in the Scott classic. (For the purpose of this article—and to serve mankind—I will not discuss the Alien/Predator hybrid movies as canon.)

A ship returning to Earth, and overseen by the evil Weyland-Yutani corporation, has a payload of alien species obtained on a long expedition. Just two episodes into the series, it’s not perfectly clear why the mission was launched, but we can imagine the reasons were unsavory. The ship, of course, has a bad time when the aliens escape, resulting in the ship crashing into a city on Earth.

Sent in to mop up the mess are a band of cyborgs—robots with the memories and emotions of children who have died. The cyborgs look like adults, yet act like children, which contributes to some very interesting performances from a solid cast. Leading this crew is Wendy (Sydney Chandler), a new cyborg with childhood memories fresh in her artificial brain. This is a unique twist, making Alien: Earth compelling well beyond the xenomorph activity.

That alien-species activity is plentiful and impressive. Along with the classic H.R. Giger xenomorph monstrosity, there are various new creatures capable of killing in gruesome ways. There’s an evil space tick that can suck the blood out of your neck, sort of like the mosquito that made itself gigantic sucking Will Ferrell’s blood in Land of the Lost.

Writer-director Noah Hawley does a nice job of re-creating the look of the original Alien movie, with a spaceship very similar to the Nostromo, complete with a computer room that looks like a giant Lite-Brite set (a retro toy still available!).

The performances are great, from Chandler’s childlike heroine to Timothy Olyphant doing his best spin on a synthetic human. Babou Ceesay gives a good turn as a synthetic in the mode of Ian Holm’s “walk the company line” variant from the original film. It’s going to be interesting seeing where his character goes in upcoming episodes.

So the Alien renaissance continues, with Romulus and now Earth giving the beasties some new life. While the Scott prequels didn’t set the box office on fire and wound up in a bit of a dead end, they were much better than their receipts implied. Perhaps Hawley’s series will flesh out the story of the engineers, and they’ll find a way to work Michael Fassbender’s David into the proceedings.

Alien: Earth is off to a good start with its first two episodes. I’m curious to see where Hawley is going to take us.

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