[This review contains spoilers for the fifth episode of Alien: Earth, “In Space, No One…”]
For a show that has been quite comfortable dwelling in its thematic ideas, the fifth episode of Alien: Earth is almost a gigantic ball of plot, serving as prologue to everything we’ve seen thus far. It’s an episode that lets us see a bit more of Morrow’s motivations, but it also explains what exactly happened on board the Maginot before it crashed into New Siam. It’s the kind of episode that could have functioned as the pilot, but likely would have lost viewers by the end since A) almost everyone dies, and B) it isn’t really what the show is about. Aside from the pilot, this is the only episode showrunner Noah Hawley directed, and it feels like his way of paying full homage to the original Alien right down to the title, which is a reference to the original’s famous tagline.
All we knew from the show’s first episode is that the xenomorph broke containment, the crew (except for Morrow) was dead, and the ship was about to crash into New Siam. “In Space, No One…” breaks down the severe level of dysfunction on the ship starting when a couple of facehuggers attack the captain and a crewman. The episode is tricky because Morrow and acting captain Zaveri (Richa Moorjani) appear to know what a xenomorph is, but no one seems to be aware that they have acid for blood. But hey, no shade because when they try to put the host and facehugger into cryosleep (which is the protocol!), they (and we) learn that facehuggers aren’t bothered by the cold. It’s a neat little twist showing that while Ripley wasn’t wrong wanting to follow protocol in the original Alien, it wouldn’t have changed the outcome of the Nostromo’s fate.
How the creatures got out in the first place sends Morrow into an investigation where he says that a fire breaking out and the facehuggers getting loose was either a matter of sabotage or incompetence. This episode replies, “Why can’t it be both?” As Morrow works to find out how the facehuggers broke containment, we see that science officer Chibuzo (Karen Alexis Aldridge) must have gotten her degree from RFK Jr. University of Do Your Own Research. I’m not saying that scientists never eat in the lab, but maybe, just maybe, don’t eat your lunch around the dangerous parasites as you run experiments on them. Instead, she’s got all sorts of creatures just hanging out, underestimating their intelligence, and indifferent to any sort of best practices. It kind of makes you root for the aliens, especially as they stage their little prison break.
Chibuzo being blithely unaware of what’s happening her lab does pull back to one of the show’s central points about the nature of observation. Just as she’s casually running an experiment while oblivious to what the creatures are truly doing, so is Morrow’s investigation filtered through his cold, pragmatic approach to the mission. The episode’s most interesting scene comes as Morrow watches the security footage to see who unleashed the facehuggers and sees Zaveri having sex with Bronski (Max Rinehart). This is cross-cut with Zaveri mourning Bronski’s fate as the facehugger sucks the life from him. Morrow doesn’t see the love between these two people. Clinical pursuit tends to overlook messy humanity, especially for Morrow who almost sees his crewmates as impediments to the mission.
Why is that mission so important? The episode tells us that it’s basically all Morrow has left. He went on the Maginot when his daughter was a child knowing he wouldn’t see her again for 65 years but comforted by the fact that his mission would provide for herHowever, she died in a fire when she was only 19, so what was it all for? Morrow’s backstory demonstrates the difference between cyborgs and synths. As remorseless as he can be, he’s motivated not by programming, but by a sense of grief and duty.
During his investigation, he learns that the saboteur is chief engineer Petrovich (Enzo Cilenti), who has been moving through the ducts while he was supposed to be in cryosleep. While I assumed Yutani had purposely downed the Maginot in Prodigy’s backyard as an act of aggression, I had it backwards. The crash wasn’t an accident, but it was engineered by Boy Kavalier, who wants the specimens for himself. Petrovich knows about the hybrid program and wants a new identity as his reward, but Kavalier shrugs and basically says, “Well, if you make it back alive, we’ll see what we can work out.” Morrow learning about the hybrid program is also a valuable plot point since it explains how he understood Slightly was more than just a synth when they met.
Despite learning that Petrovich is the saboteur, it doesn’t really matter because everything is going to hell on the Maginot. Three alien species are loose, Zaveri doesn’t seem to know what she’s doing, and everyone is dying horribly as the sabotaged ship makes its way back to Earth. It’s hard to say there’s a sense of tragedy here as none of the Maginot’s crew really wins us over with maybe the exception of Michael Smiley’s gruff but empathetic engineer Shmuel. But even the eyeball alien gets him, and the fact that we’re not shown the alien burrowing into his eye socket makes me think that they’re saving that moment for Boy Kavalier. Also, I had assumed the eyeball alien would go all the way in there and look like a normal eye, but when it has control of a human host, it looks more like Daria’s history teacher.
The episode ends where it must: everyone’s dead but Morrow, the ship crash-landed, and now we wonder what’s next. We do get a bit of moving the larger story forward with Morrow meeting the younger Yutani at her headquarters. It’s a scene that evokes a samurai returning to his master, his only obligation to honor his lord. He reiterates his drive to reclaim the specimens by any means necessary and adds that he will kill Kavalier. From what we’ve seen of Morrow, this doesn’t feel like an act of avenging his fallen crewmates as much as it’s for causing so much trouble. But given that Kavalier is almost as careless with the specimens as the late Chibuzo, Morrow may find that the aliens got the prodigy CEO first.
For everything that happens in “In Space, No One…,” it also feels like the least interesting version of the show. The outcome is ordained, most of the crew is alien fodder, and even as a kind of bottle episode, it only highlights how much we’ve invested into Wendy, Hermit, et al. Morrow isn’t enough to power the show, so I’m eager to return to our world of conflicted hybrids and the aliens among them.
Stray observations:
Morrow does not care about the cat. He would not have saved Jonesy in the original, in case you needed another example of Morrow being a heartless bastard.
Here’s the thing about the Yutani corporation: if you really want to get all those specimens back safely, then don’t do experiments in the middle of transit. Even if there had been no saboteur on board, there still would have been a containment outbreak.
Yes, it’s cool that Morrow has a retractable blade in his hand, but it should either be bigger or he should have three of them. Be Baraka, be Wolverine, or be nothing, I say.
Can’t have the eyeball alien take control of you if you ain’t got no eyes.
Alien: Earth airs Tuesday nights at 8pm ET on Hulu. Look for recaps of the latest episodes here within the next day. Matt Goldberg is a film critic who lives and works in Atlanta. If you enjoyed this review, check out his newsletter, Commentary Track.