Alien Earth: Mr. October

"Fear's for animals. You are not animals. Now move."

Now that we've spent more time with our main characters, I'm starting to get a feel for this show and it is definitely unique.

The three stories have already merged into one with Hermit connecting with Wendy and Morrow doing his best to contain the situation. Of course I'm not sure how they are going to contain this situation. The aliens on display are pretty disturbing and incredibly invasive. Beyond the Xenomorph which is starting to feel like a serial killer with a penchant for dismemberment, there's also Mr. Eye which... um... yuck! I'm not sure about the flower thing yet, but I assume when it does show its nature, it is going to be horrible.

We are also getting a better sense of the kids. Slightly is the one that can never keep a secret. Curly seems calm and confident in her new body. Smee is still goofy and very much an eight-year-old in an adult body. Nibs is just doing what she's told but is terrified of everything. Rachidi I haven't quite noticed as much, but seems to be adapting fairly well. Lastly Tootles feels like that one kid who is curious about everything and has almost no fear about it. He's the one that stared down that flower creature as though it couldn't hurt him.

Kirsh also seems to have no fear about anything. Combined with that data port on his arm makes me think he is Synthetic, although it's curious they haven't said it explicitly yet. He definitely took on the role of mentor/father for these kids, and Wendy has practically adopted them as her little siblings, or perhaps more accurately Lost Boys. Of course her real focus is on Hermit, or as she calls him, Joe. I didn't quite expect them to reunite this early, or for him to find out her identity. But I think it works given the pace of the show so far. But what exactly is Wendy? As Kirsh reminded us, the kids are not human, they do not feel fear through biological responses anymore. Is Wendy still Hermit's sister? I guess that's the big question the series is framed around.

Speaking of Hermit, his encounter with the Xenomorph went about as well as I thought it would go, except he survived. Saved by Morrow of all people, after the massacre of the world's stupidest rich people. I'm curious if Hermit is going to be tackled by the Xenomorph on the regular, as maybe a running gag. Because how is he going to survive that last moment? Did we just lose Hermit? Somehow I doubt it, but having the monster dive for him felt really weird, but with the fall and the alien on top of him, how can he possibly survive?

Morrow had some good moments in this, as he managed to easily subdue the Xenomorph as though he had done it a thousand times. It was almost comical how quickly he took it down and then cocooned it as though it were nothing more than a stray cat he was taking to the pound. I was almost worried they were blunting the teeth of the Xenomorph, and then Morrow was discovered by the search and rescue crew, who put him in cuffs and then all hell broke loose. Again almost comical in how quickly and brutally the Xenomorph took out that team, with the hallway ending up looking like a macabre Jackson Pollock painting afterwards.

Which brings me to an interesting theory, because the creature didn't attack Morrow when it had the chance. Why wouldn't it attack someone who had captured it? Is it because he is a Cyborg? Do the Xenomorphs just not recognize synthetics, which makes sense because it didn't attack Wendy or Slightly? Or is there something else going on here? It might be a plot way of allowing Hermit to live, maybe? Either way it was a curious moment, with the Alien threatening Morrow like that but not closing in for the kill. Hell, even Morrow seemed surprised by the fact he wasn't killed, too.

I should probably talk about the cat. Mr. Eye and the cat zombie was one of the best, as in gag worthy and nightmare-inducing, horror moments yet, the kind of imagery that horror fans get excited about and bring up years later as moments they love from their favorite films. There are a bunch of ways of doing horror, and usually less is more. The Alien franchise in particular has always been better when the Alien is lurking in the shadows and you're not sure if that shape is moving. Yet here we seem to be exploring the various subthemes in the horror genre, playing with what can be done with both creepy and grotesque imagery. I applaud the boldness of the direction, but I worry it might become tonally confused down the line. Horror is almost always better when there is consistency, mostly because the human brain can only handle so much of that kind of tension and stress.

Bits:

The blue energy beam over the Xenomorph eggs is straight out of the original movie. I have to assume Morrow duplicated the technology to keep the eggs in stasis or modified Weyland-Yutani technology to do the same.

The song at the end is off one of my favorite albums of all time. Tool: Stinkfist. You can find it on their album Ænima.

I'm not sure of the significance of the whole Reggie Jackson 1977 game baseball scene, but it felt important.

Boy Kavalier seems to have done all this illegal experimentation on children to have a good conversation. He's awful already. I can't wait to see where he falls on the Burke scale of villains.

Quotes:

Siberian: "We're search and rescue. Let forensics Agatha Christie this shit."

Morrow: "Just so you know, I'm the least of your problems."

Dame Sylvia: "We ended death. Now we have to make their quality of life better. Otherwise, all we've done is make consumers immortal."

This was an interesting follow up to the first episode and did explore the characters some more, which was sorely lacking in the first episode.

3 out of 4 Scattered Body Parts

Samantha M. Quinn spends most of her time in front of a computer typing away at one thing or another; when she has free time, she enjoys pretty much anything science fiction or fantasy-related.

• Alien: Earth season 1
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