Alien Earth series review: The eight-episode show is engaging and driven by a legacy

Title: Alien: Earth 
Cast: Sydney Chandler, Alex Lawther, Essie Davis, Adarsh Gourav, Kit Young, Jonathan Ajayi, Erana James, Lily Newmark, Samuel Blenkin, Timothy Olyphant, David Rysdahl, Babou Ceesay, Diêm Camille, Adrian Edmondson, Moe Bar-El, Sandra Yi Sencindiver, Karen Aldridge, Amir Boutrous.
Creator: Noah Hawley
Rating: 3.5 stars
Runtime: S1:8 episodes ( 1 hr each)

The franchise that gave us unimaginable highs and sometimes hit rock bottom with its serial attempts at fan service gets an offshoot expansion in the form of an OTT series. Alien: Earth is a fresh and exciting take on the ‘Aliens’ franchise. The series marries classic horror with modern tech in an intense and vividly engaging way. Artificial intelligence, identity theft, corporate tyranny, a new spin on technology applied toward transferring consciousness, and many other subjects find favour within this narrative. This 8-episode first season is strong on mythology, philosophy and has bone-shuddering imagery accompanying the concentrated blood-and-guts action. 
 
Noah Hawley, the creator of “Fargo” and “Legion,” expands on the hugely profitable property in a unique way - which is at one with what fans already know and love. This show has a sci-fi vision and a chillingly sterile aesthetic that is expansive, disorienting and pretty much horrifying. The familiar introduction leads you into unknown, mysterious territory.
 
Hawley shares Ridley Scott’s conceptual fascination with the xenomorph and uses it to connect to conversations about purpose, freedom, and what it means to be human. He manages to sharply etch nightmarish horrors into the character-focused drama while using the familiar to expand into the unknown. 
 
Hadley's Hope and the doomed voyage of the Nostromo gets a fresh take. This is not a reboot; the narrative plants its hooks into the same stem but branches off into a completely different direction. The world-building feels organic. The focus here is on corporate greed and human fallibility. 
 
Each of the 8 one hour long episodes opens with imagery both old and new while the titles come on. It’s a sort of replay and preview, both at the same time. The unsettling score accompanying it is attention-grabbing. The series is an intriguing exploration of themes surrounding extraterrestrial life and its intersection with humanity. Like the franchise it emulates, the series makes great use of suspense and horror to delve into philosophical questions posed by contact with alien species.
 
A young girl, Marcy, who agrees to be a part of a breakthrough program, dies of cancer, and her consciousness is “transferred” into the form of Wendy (Sydney Chandler). Many other kids have volunteered for the breakthrough experiment and each is named after members of the Lost Boys from the J.M. Barrie classic -Slightly (Adarsh Gourav), Tootles (Kit Young), Smee (Jonathan Ajayi), Curly (Erana James), and Nibs (Lily Newmark). 
 
 Boy Kavalier (Samuel Blenkin) is the man on top. He has a right-hand man, a synthetic named Kirsh (Timothy Olyphant), while Dame Silvia (Essie Davis) and her husband Arthur (David Rysdahl) help manage the technical and emotional aspects of the project.
 
A spaceship carrying space travellers emerging from hyper-sleep crashes into Earth. A cyborg named Morrow (Babou Ceesay), who locked himself in a safe compartment just before impact survives the crash as does his cargo, including aliens. Hermit (Alex Lawther),  Marcy/Wendy’s brother, is among the soldiers who arrive on the crash scene to investigate. Sensing a way for his company to be one-up on the competition in Weyland-Yutani, Boy Kavalier sends his Lost Boys in to retrieve the cargo themselves. 
 
Alien: Earth has philosophical undercurrents and revels in intense action and gore. Hawley introduces new alien lifeforms, but his focus is on the humans and the almost-human soul twins. His visual language is impressive. He is able to utilise tricky camerawork to augment tension. The imagery is shocking and the atmosphere is thick with suspense.
 
The character development is strong and the ensemble performances make it all the more thrilling. The visual and auditory design makes the experience chillingly effective. With its thought-provoking narrative and expansive mythos, Alien: Earth is likely to appeal to both long-time fans and newcomers alike.