In “Metamorphosis”, ‘Alien: Earth’ Becomes TV, For Better And Worse

With the setup of “Neverland” and the movie-in-miniature of “Mr. October” behind it, “Metamorphosis”, the third episode of FX’s Alien: Earth, is the episode where the series truly becomes a TV show, in ways that showcase both the strengths and the weaknesses of the format relative to feature film.

Picking up where the cliffhanger of episode 2 left off (with Wendy’s (Sydney Chandler) brother Hermit (Alex Lawther) tossed off a virtual cliff by a xenomorph), the opening act of this episode quickly resolves the immediate Maginot crash situation — more quickly than I honestly expected. Wendy and Hermit’s fight with the xenomorph not withstanding, the situation inside the Maginot/the building it crashed into seems much more well-in-hand than it did at the end of “Mr. October”, even though little time has passed. Perhaps that’s due to the havoc-wreaking xenomorph being focused on Hermit and Wendy.

That focus serves as the episode’s big action set-piece, and also an example of the limitations of TV — or at least of having to stretch its budget over a larger output than a movie. After the meticulously-crafted Maginot/Prodigy apartment building sets in the previous episode, much of the Wendy/Hermit/xeno action in “Metamorphosis” takes place in relatively non-descript locales, cargo containers-turned-meat lockers and generic basement settings. The image of Wendy literally hooking the xenomorph by its tongue-mouth is pretty awesome, but watching Wendy slice its head in half via her paper cutter sword would have been awesome too; its hard not to watch the final showdown taking place behind a closed door and feel the more restrained budget of the show at work.

From there, the action quickly shifts back to Neverland, and the sense of what this show is going to ultimately look like in terms of story structure becomes clear. Wendy is out of commission, and while sidelining your protagonist for much of the third episode is a risky tactic, it ultimately pays off. With Wendy on a timeout, there’s more room for the rest of the Lost Boys to come into their own, and for a sense of Neverland and its inhabitants to come into being independent of Wendy’s perspective.

Three Lost Boys in particular come into their own here. Slightly (Adarsh Gourav), who got something of a profile boost in the previous episode by being assigned to tag along with Wendy, gets targeted by Morrow (Babou Ceesay) on his way out of the Maginot, with a communication device slipped onto him that allows Morrow to use Slightly as his man inside Prodigy. Though chosen largely by circumstance, it pays off for Morrow, as Slightly is shown throughout the episode to be most overtly childlike of all the (still mentally-children) Lost Boys. While the others are challenging Wendy for supremacy, questioning their fundamental existence or assisting in some ill-conceived dissection, Slightly is watching Blue Sky’s Epic and getting played by Morrow.

Meanwhile, Nibs (Lily Newmark) is on the verge of full-on breakdown. Having earlier questioned why she had to be given a new name and protesting being referred to as a “Lost Boy” despite her status — as both a human child and a Hybrid — as a girl, by the time she’s back in Neverland, she’s struggling more than ever with the circumstances of her existence. The only Lost Boy shown to still be seeing herself as her pre-Hybrid being, by the end of the episode, Nibs looks about ready to just smash her mechanical being into pieces.

Curly (Erana James) is the opposite, taking to her new form and the advantages — specifically in machine learning — it gives her. Approaching Boy Kavalier (Samuel Blenkin), she jockeys for position as Boy’s favorite, in the process tantalizing him with the potential of what he’s insisted he’s wanted to get out of the whole hybrid scenario: an intellectual better. If Slightly is the Lost Boy presenting as the most traditionally-child like, then Curly is engaging in another common behavior of children: doing their best to look and act like an adult (which ironically makes them come across as more child-like).

Throughout the episode, all the Lost Boy actors do a marvelous job of playing children in adult bodies. The extra room they’re afforded to do so in “Metamorphosis” by the absence of Wendy and less of a focus on traditional Alien horror elements showcases the advantages of telling this story in this form, giving the characters more room to breathe and develop, the actors more room to cook. The sort of “new status quo” that settles in throughout this episode as the “plot” of the Maginot gives way to the “plot” of “Prodigy experiments on the aliens” is the kind of TV series can do that movies can’t. Even if the show is still trying to find the right balance between action and character development, horror and philosophical exploration, big budget spectacle and “people in rooms having conversations”, this episode gives us a good idea of what Alien: Earth will look and feel like as a TV show.

Stray Thoughts

• It fits with what we’ve seen before, but this episode confirms that the xenomorph eggs react when they sense humans (or presumably any organic life) nearby, but ignore Synthetics (since they can’t use them as hosts).
• The scene with Morrow, Slightly and Smee (Jonathan Ajayi) is vastly more tense than anything happening contemporaneously with Wendy and Hermit, which speaks well to the show’s appeal as a TV show and less so its ability to function on the level of horror-action film.
• I mentioned wanting to see more of the wider world in my last review, and we get some of that here, with Morrow moving through New Siam to contact Yutani (Sandra Yi Sencindiver) and then get in touch with Slightly.
• Curiously though, it seems like Morrow doesn’t know about Prodigy (based on him paging through the Future Wikipedia pages on the company and Boy Kavalier), but people on the Maginot mentioned it in episode 1.
• Boy Kavalier has a pile of Legos on his desk; can relate.
• The conversation between him and Curly walks right up to the line of making Boy Kavalier a pedophile (in terms of Curly being mentally a child even if she has the body of an adult woman); at this point, it hasn’t crossed it yet, in large part because Boy himself has consistently been presented as child-like and uninterested in…more adult passions.
• Seriously, what is the deal with the wall sprayers throughout Neverland? At first I thought they were just spraying for mold in the tropical climate to add a bit of ambience to the setting, but this episode definitely drew our attention to them.
• So are they going to put the infected-by-a-xenotadpole lung back in Hermit, or is he a cyborg with a robo-lung now?
• So did no one see Wendy pass out in the dissection room? Did they just step over her on the way to infect Hermit’s lung? Was that like an astral projection of her?
• In terms of Peter Pan parallels, this episode makes it clear Morrow is Hook; not only does he have the non-organic appendage but now he’s directly menacing the Lost Boys.
• First Ice Age 4, now Epic; someone in this production team is a big fan of Blue Sky animation.
• Hot on the heels of last episode’s “eat the rich” moment, the series is setting up some more xenomorph-fueled schadenfreude; the more Boy waves away concerns about the aliens, the more I want to see him hoisted on his own petard when all hell inevitably breaks loose.