Commentary: ‘Alien: Earth’ Combines Something Familiar With Something New
by Frank Martin
With nostalgia riding high these days, it’s important for studios to bring back popular intellectual property. But they also need to find quality storytelling in order for it to be fresh in new and interesting ways. Some franchises, like Star Wars and Cobra Kai, accomplish this by introducing new characters for a new generation. The Alien film series, meanwhile, never quite had its own characters to build off of. Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) was really the only human character that drove the story, even when later films tried to go on without her. In almost a response to that, Alien: Earth took the idea of introducing new concepts to the extreme.
The series begins as a Weyland-Yutani research vessel filled with alien life forms crashes on Earth, which has become dominated by five megacorporations. It lands in an area controlled by a rival company called Prodigy. In order to secure the ship, Prodigy dispatches a series of prototype Hybrids — synthetic beings that have become the vessels of terminally ill human children. This group, known as The Lost Boys and led by Wendy (Sydney Chandler), manage to secure the alien life forms and bring them back to a Prodigy research station called Neverland. But things take a turn for the worst when the aliens break free, including a highly intelligent parasitic eyeball.
Xenomorphs are undoubtedly the star of the Alien franchise, and while they do have their time in the spotlight, the show succeeds by introducing entirely new elements. While Xeno lore was expanded, it also introduced The Lost Boys as well as the parasitic alien Eye. Other franchises featured something new and familiar by merely introducing new characters to interact with the old ones, Alien Earth explored entirely new science fiction concepts with artificial life forms separate from Alien films of the past. It also introduced entirely new extraterrestrial species to terrorize humanity. More so than any other installment, the series truly went the distance combining the original with the familiar.
Alien: Earth is now streaming on Hulu and Disney+.
