The Cutprice Guignol

After two weeks of slow, character heavy episodes, it felt like Alien: Earth really needed to throw some gas on the fire. There are multiple predatory alien species on Prodigy Island, there’s a Xenomorph back in play for the first time since the crash site of New Siam – things are poised for some more chaos. So, what does Noah Hawley do? He takes us back to the Maginot to show us how scheming, panic, and, yes, stupidity, caused the crash in the first place. My question is – didn’t we already know this stuff?

Despite having a house style as iconic as Star Wars and Blade Runner, the Alien franchise has attracted directors with different styles and temperaments. It means that there is no film in the series that doesn’t have some artistic merit, thanks to the filmmaker wanting to do their own version of these haunted-house-in-space stories within the parameters set by Ridley Scott and James Cameron. This is the only reason I can think of for the clunkily-titled In Space, No One…, because, fundamentally – we already saw how this story ended, and it strips this episode of much of its urgency as a result.

One of the most refreshing aspects of the first episode of Alien: Earth was that it showed us enough of the Maginot disaster, a sequence that could fit easily into any Alien film or be a film itself, to tease us. The fact that it was just a set up for the crash, where Hawley could introduce the familiar iconography – the Xenomorph – along with his new creations gave the show a distinct identity of its own. I, despite enjoying this episode in places, don’t feel it needs to exist and, slightly worse, it fully drops the momentum of the main plot to a zero when it seriously needs it.

What have we learned from this episode that we didn’t already know? The most important part would be that the ship was sabotaged by a crew member rather than due to the aliens killing the crew – that is something, especially as it was due to Boy. The problem is that the identity of the saboteur never felt like it mattered, or that it was even the central conflict to this episode. Even when it was revealed to be an engineer who was faking his time in the sleep pods, it is a character that we have spent about a minute of screentime with, and it comes dumped in the middle of the second end. The sleep pod reveal would have been clever if it was an instantly recognisable character, but as it was, it’s purely perfunctory.

As far as any other new information, there is that of the alien behavioural patterns, to be entirely fair. I understand why this couldn’t happen on Prodigy Island – because all of the creatures need biological organisms to feed off of or procreate in. Ms Eyeball (as confirmed by one of the scientists) is territorial. Its attempt to warn the scientist about the blood-sucking worms was less an act of altruism and more “back off, she’s mine”. Speaking of the blood worms, not only do they procreate inside living tissue, they have a nifty defensive gas attack that kills their attackers.

And that is it for new information. The rest of the episode is a standard Alien story with whodunnit elements and very little of the Xenomorph that we haven’t seen already, plus a climax we saw as the opener to this entire season. While I’m not sure this episode needs to exist at all, I do think if it’s placement in the show was better, then I would have less of a problem with it. If the series was purely linear and this was the first episode (which I think would have been really bold), or even placed between the end of the crash site and before the return to Prodigy Island, I would feel kinder to it.

As it stands, though, it feels too indulgent to justify its own existence, a side-step from the decidedly ponderous plot that we’ve spent two episodes waiting to kick into high gear once more. In the end, despite the excellent production and acting that has become a series hallmark, In Space, No One… feels inessential as it spends too much time going over the old ground of the series – but, more importantly, of the franchise as a whole.

By Kevin Boyle

(header image via Rolling Stone)