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The eighth and final episode of Alien: Earth has dropped with a loud clang. Looks like we made it. Look how far we’ve come, my baby.
Great, I’m quoting Shania Twain lyrics. Alien: Earth has finally driven me over the edge.
It’s fair to say that episode eight, as well as the season overall, can be summed up by a single line of dialogue uttered by one of the Maginot crew back in episode five.
‘Another victory for the enemy of reason.’
I’ve been saving that line, hoping I wouldn’t have to use it. But here we are. It sounds like a disgruntled screenwriter’s cry for help.
Without further ado, let’s dive straight into the review of Alien: Earth episode eight, before taking a look at the series overall.
Spoilers, roight ahead!
Alien: Earth Episode 8: The Real Monsters
Anyone want to take a stab at who the real monsters are, according to Alien: Earth? No, you’re way off. It’s people! Who saw that ground-breaking twist coming?
The screenwriters have Wendy spell this out for us because the writing isn’t good enough for the inference to speak for itself. That’s because almost every character in this show is monstrous in some way. Humans, synthetics, hybrids, cyborgs, aliens. All of them. But according to Wendy, the alien isn’t a monster because it is ‘honest.’
Being honest doesn’t mean you can’t be monstrous. They are not mutually exclusive qualities. If I tell you I’m going to kill you before I kill you, my honesty doesn’t excuse my behaviour. Does it? Has anyone tried this defence in court?
Episode eight starts with Wendy and the Groovy Gang in prison on Prodigy Island. Morrow is in another prison with Joe. Morrow has been fitted with a metal sleeve so he can’t use his bionic arm. Did his captors just happen to have one of those in stock? Are robot-armed cyborgs such a common problem in the future that this invention is necessary?
What happened to the other Weyland-Yutani soldiers that Morrow arrived on the island with? Don’t know. We never see them again.
Prodigy Island has been cut off from the outside world. Morrow’s troops destroyed their undersea communications cable and Weyland-Yutani is blocking their satellites. Wendy Sue (a term coined by Super Nintendo Chalmers – thank you) is manipulating the internal electrical systems with that magical tech-whispering ability she has. I don’t know. Girl power.
Probably shouldn’t have put her in a prison next to a computer terminal, huh?
Jailbreak 1 – Morrow and Joe
First, Wendy uses her tech skills to trap a group of soldiers in an elevator and sets off a phony self-destruct sequence. The soldiers panic. As if an elevator would have a self-destruct device. Then…nothing. The elevator goes back to normal. No point whatsoever.
Next, Wendy uses her tech powers to release the lock on Morrow’s prison cell. Morrow beats the guard with his massive metal sleeve. So the security measure designed to make him less dangerous has turned him into fucking Fisto from He-Man? How is that safer?
I couldn’t find a good image of the sleeve, so let’s go with this
The guard has the key to the sleeve, so Morrow removes it. He then visits the lab for his much anticipated showdown with Kirsch. The show has been building to this, but the fight is as dumb as we have come to expect from an Alien: Earth action scene.
Kirsch hears Morrow enter, turns and shoots, but the bullet ricochets off Morrow’s gun (I think) and breaks the glass of one of the cages. Morrow reels backwards but in the very next shot he’s rushing towards Kirsch with his gun pointed at him. Somehow Morrow falls upon Kirsch before either of them can get another shot off.
Another victory for the enemy of reason. It would take seconds of thought to fix this scene. Just have Morrow retain the metal sleeve and Kirsch’s gunshots could ricochet off that. It would also explain why Morrow goes through the whole fight without activating his knife arm, which would have ended things real quick. Forget, did he?
The fight ends in a tie, with Kirsch paralysed and Morrow choked out. But at least we’re about to get some explanation for Kirsch’s actions this season. We’ll find out why he allowed Slightly to be manipulated by Morrow. We’ll discover why he helped Slightly and Smee escape with Arthur’s face hugged body. Surely we’ll receive closure on why he risked the alien falling into Morrow’s hands.
Er…no, actually. They don’t explain it at all.
You know what? Maybe it’s my fault for having a brain.
Jailbreak 2 – Wendy and the Lost Boys
Kavalier visits Wendy in prison and she uses her tech skills to open the cell door. Sure, she could have done it earlier, but it’s so much more theatrical this way.
Kavalier tells the hybrids that he built a synthetic at the age of six and used it to kill his dad. That’s less believable than slave boy Anakin Skywalker creating C3PO.
Cool story, bro
There is no point to this trillionaire origin story, and now may be a good time to point out that many of the conversations in Alien: Earth have been rambling and pointless. The dialogue itself is okay, but there’s little logic to how it flows. Characters talk past one another like they didn’t hear what the other person just said.
It’s a shame because several good ideas have been floating around Alien: Earth from the start but the writers can’t seem to harness them into something coherent. We’ve been waiting for it to make sense but it just doesn’t.
Anyway, Nibs kills Kavalier’s bodyguard after he shoots at her and misses from point blank range. Wendy lets Kavalier go because she’s going to set the alien on him instead. But not to kill him – to capture him. Which she could have done right then and there.
As well as manipulating the electrical systems, Wendy has been whistling to her pet alien, even though it is outside and way out of earshot. It still hears her somehow. Are they telepathically connected? Jesus, who cares. Let’s just go with it. Another victory for the enemy of reason.
Wendy tells the alien to find Kavalier and instructs the Lost Boys to round up the soldiers, Morrow, Kirsch and Dame. Wendy says ‘nobody touches my brother’ but everyone has already left at this point. Who is she talking to?
Jailbreak 3 – The Evil Eye
Things are finally looking up guys because the evil eye is back! Kavalier releases the sheep from its cage and Atom locks Joe in a room with it. The eye attacks but Joe does something smart for a change and jumps into the sheep’s empty cage and closes the door.
The eye enters the cage via a food flap. Wait. If the cage has a food flap, couldn’t the eye have gotten out earlier? Unless it’s a one-way system. Let’s go with that.
Joe scurries out of the cage and if he’d just shut the damn door then the eye would be trapped inside, but he leaves it wide open!
Wendy comes to his rescue (of course).
Atom returns and overpowers Wendy, but she uses her magical powers to stop him in his tracks. He’s a synth – presumably the one that Kavalier made when he was six to kill his dad.
Wendy explains that Atom is connected to the network, so she can control him like the cameras, elevators and doors. Yeah sure, okay. I guess she can just do anything. Why have any kind of struggle or adversity in life?
Wendy and Joe then have one of those rambling dialogue exchanges I was talking about earlier. Episode seven ended with Wendy being upset with Joe for tasing Nibs. Following this ‘conversation’ they’re okay again now, I think.
Jailbreak 4 – The Plant Creature Thing
Remember the soldiers trapped in the elevator? They’re still wandering around, but it isn’t clear what they are meant to be doing. At first it’s about evacuating people, then it’s about visiting the armoury for bigger guns, then it’s about protecting Kavalier.
Anyway, the plot requires them to enter the lab so they can get killed, so that’s what they do. When Kirsch shot at Morrow earlier (in a lab filled with glass cells housing hostile creatures), the ricochet broke the window of the plant creature. It has now escaped.
The plant did it
How many jailbreaks is that for the series? I’ve lost count. But at least we finally get to see the plant in action. It’s pretty cool, actually. I’ll give them that.
How Does It End, Spoiler Boy?
There’s no way this series was designed as a standalone miniseries because nothing gets resolved. I’m not even sure what needs to be resolved. The episode starts with a bunch of people in prison and ends with a bunch of mostly different people in prison.
Kavalier, Atom, Morrow, Kirsch and Dame are all banged up. The alien and alien junior are guarding them. The eye and the plant have escaped. Not sure about the acid spewing flies, but if they haven’t figured out that they can melt the metal frames of their prison by now I doubt they ever will.
I almost forgot! The Evil Eye finds a new home in Arthur’s corpse, which has washed up on the beach. I can’t wait to see him stumbling around in season 2 like a Weekend at Bernie’s reboot.
I requested Thunderstruck for the inappropriate rock song at the end. We get Animal by Pearl Jam instead, which is cool with me, I like that one.
Overall Verdict
Let’s review all the episode scores:
Episode 1 & 2: 4 stars
Episode 3: 2.5 stars
Episode 4: 2 stars
Episode 5: 3.5 stars
Episode 6: 2.5 stars
Episode 7: 1.5 stars
Episode 8: 1 star
Average: 2.5 stars (rounded to the nearest 0.5)
That’s generous, to be honest. This show doesn’t even feel bang average to me right now.
My overall feeling is a familiar sort of disappointment that I’ve felt ever since Alien Resurrection cross bred a perfect organism with a human and created a white dog turd with Down’s Syndrome.
Matt Damon!
You know how sometimes the whole can become greater than the sum of its parts? Alien: Earth is the opposite of that.
I could go on but I’m tired, boss. Dog tired.
See you for season 2!
Season rating:
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