“Are we people, or something else? Because I don’t want to be ‘people’ any more, if this is what people are.”
(SPOILER WARNING!)
It’s back to the main story in Alien: Earth this week, after last week’s well-crafted (but sort of pointless) prequel-to-a-prequel remake of Alien. This is a thoughtful, contemplative ep that focuses mainly on the characters and concepts, but laced with dread throughout. And it’s clearly the calm before the storm that will presumably be unleashed in the final two episodes.
Once again, the beasties took something of a back seat to the real villains of the piece – the corporations who want to use them for profit. Corporate nastiness is very much to the fore this week, as we witness a summit between Boy Kavalier and Ms Yutani about who gets to claim the “specimens” the Maginot brought crashing to Earth.
Samuel Blenkin’s Boy Kavalier totally chews the scenery here, resting his dirty bare feet on the immaculate polished table before climbing up to sit on it in the lotus position while totally owning the shifty Yutani. His intellectual sparring is so much fun that you have to actually remind yourself that he’s the villain (though Yutani is no better). His faux concern for the people of “his” city, and the safety of Earth are so obviously fake gambits in his game to best Yutani that he doesn’t even bother to make them convincing. It’s all just part of the accepted motions that the corporations smirkingly go through in the name of public relations.
Elsewhere, Adrian Edmondson’s cold, brutal Atom Eins – the iron fist to Kavalier’s velvet glove – shows the real face of corporate domination with his insistence that the “malfunctioning” Nibs should have her mind, and personality, rewritten for the sake of appearances. It may be unspoken, but it instantly called to mind the line from ruthless executive Dick Jones to the titular Robocop – “you’re not people. You’re product”.
And indeed much time is spent this week on the show’s intellectually interesting concerns about artificial life. Joe’s soldier colleagues are openly sceptical about the Hybrid Wendy really being his sister, while the man himself is plotting to rescue her from the island. Doctor Sylvia is horrified at the idea that, having created artificial life, the company can change their entire personalities on a whim – a very real ethical concern. Wendy, meanwhile, having observed all this backbiting and infighting, has correctly deduced that people are the real baddies here, and mulls over whether she even wants to be considered one.
As do Kirsh and Morrow, who get an electrifying, spite-filled two handed scene together where each explains why he despises the other for what they are. Each thinks they’re superior, and yet the half-cybernetic Morrow also seems to envy the fully synthetic Kirsh, even while testifying to how much he loves killing Synths. Kirsh, for his part, is coldly dismissive of the “inferior” Cyborg, raising the question of how much real emotion a totally synthetic person could have. It’s a brilliant scene, marvellously played by Babou Ceesay and Timothy Olyphant.
In fact, Kirsh’s sense of superiority, even to his makers, is reminiscent once again of Roy Batty in Blade Runner, who he so clearly resembles. The question is, what game is he playing? His monitoring of the lab shows him to be clearly aware of all the chaos that’s starting to unfold, yet he keeps it entirely to himself, not letting on to his egotistical boss that all hell is breaking loose on the island. Perhaps, like Ash in the original Alien, he actually admires the “purity” of the creatures, and prefers them to the flawed, corrupt human race.
Because after a whole ep of suspenseful machinations, the beasts are finally loose – and once again, it’s all due to human greed and stupidity. To be fair, that can be somewhat excused in the cases of Tootles and Slightly, who are, after all, just little kids in synthetic adult bodies.
But it’s a clear indication of the intelligence of the scuttling eye (still resident in a sheep) that it distracts Tootles at just the right moment for him to get shut in with the “fly” creatures that just happen to eat non-organic minerals and metals – making him their perfect meal. It’s presumably a homage to Cronenberg’s 1986 version of The Fly (which is also the title of the ep) that they spew acidic digestive enzymes on their food, leading to a truly nasty “death” for the likeable Tootles.
Slightly has less of an excuse, though to be fair, he’s petrified about Morrow’s threat to his mum. Having creepily (and unsuccessfully) tried to lure Joe Hermit into the egg chamber earlier, he ends up exploiting the actual stupidity of the conscience-stricken Dr Sylvia, who can’t conceive of his creations being duplicitous and ends up with a facehugger attached to him as a reward for his compassion. Unfortunately, Slightly’s spur of the moment actions have plenty of the typical kid’s lack of understanding of consequences, as he’s also left open the door containing the metal-eating flies. That’s going to be awkward for the Synths and the other Hybrids.
This was a slow but thoughtful ep, advancing the series’ intellectual concerns while still giving us a suspenseful progression of the plot. There were some great character moments and performances, particularly from Samuel Blenkin, Babou Cessay and Timothy Olyphant, and this is obviously just a breather before the final two episodes, which I expect to be an action-packed resolution to the story. With the creatures on the loose, Kirsh actively plotting against his creators, and Wendy apparently now able to actually speak to the almost-fully grown Alien, it looks like being an interesting conclusion.
Simon’s Incoherent Blog 