In space, no one can hear you scream. And, as it turns out, in space, nobody can tell if you’re bad at your job, either. At least, that seems to be the premise of Alien: Earth episode 5, in which we finally find out what happened to the crew of the USCSS Maginot who were first introduced (and then unceremoniously killed off) back in episode 1. Turns out, they’re simply not very good at their jobs.
“They didn’t send the A-Team up there,” showrunner Noah Hawley tells Polygon.
Hawley wrote (or co-wrote) all eight episodes of the Alien prequel series, but directed just the pilot and this one. Clearly, he has some love for the Maginot crew, even as he gleefully insults them.
“They’ve got a doctor with a drug abuse history,” Hawley says. “They have a very idiosyncratic scientist. The captain has died. The chief science officer has died. A lot of these are the supporting players.”
“They’re all a little self-involved”
In many ways, episode 5 (titled “In Space, No One…”), feels like a brief intermission from the core plotline of Alien: Earth. While the main characters back on Earth continue to tempt death in the form of an underground laboratory full of murderous alien species, the show jumps back in time for a story set in space that feels more like the original Alien.
So in the spirit of a halftime check-in, Polygon got on Zoom with Hawley to discuss how he pulled off this unexpected episode, the show’s unique approach to creating its extraterrestrial creatures, and which of them in particular audiences should be keeping an eye on.
Ed. note: Spoilers ahead for Alien: Earth episode 5.
Meet the crew of the Maginot
Hawley shares a writing credit on most episodes of Alien: Earth, but episode 5 was a solo endeavor. He recalls sitting down at his computer and watching the story of the Maginot and its doomed crew leap out of his brain and onto the page like a non-lethal chestburster.
“The excitement of being able to watch the movie as I’m writing it, that’s part of the joy of it for me,” Hawley says. “If you figure everything out in advance, you take some of the imagination out of it.” This even applies to some of the episode’s most gruesome visuals, including one scene where the Maginot’s doctor tries to save his shipmate by removing the alien bugs that have attached themselves to his internal organs. “I was discovering at the same time as you that the ticks lay their eggs in your drinking water, or that there’s going to be a surgery, and they have a neurotoxin that’s a defense mechanism.”
Hawley’s greatest challenge, however, was to introduce the entire crew in under an hour. He certainly takes some shortcuts in referencing and subverting the character tropes established in Alien (the creepy robot, the confident female officer, etc). Alien: Earth episode 5 still does an impressive job of giving each shipmate depth and emotion — before brutally murdering them in the most disturbing ways possible.
And if anything about these characters does feel off, you can blame it on their lengthy voyage through space (rather than the writing or acting).
“They’re all a little self-involved, for sure, but after 65 years, they’re probably all a little crazy, too,” Hawley says. “They probably spent 60 of those years asleep, also, so it must be super disorienting.”
“He basically reached a point where he realized that ethics and morality are a luxury he can’t afford.”
The one character we get to know the most in Alien: Earth episode 5 is the only one who survives: cyborg security officer Morrow (Babou Ceesay). Throughout the series, Morrow has shown an almost robotic allegiance to his employer, Weyland-Yutani. In this episode, we finally learn why: Yutani herself rescued him off the streets as a child and replaced his paralyzed arm with a robot one.
For Hawley, all of those life experiences add up to a character who’s arguably still human, but often seems more methodical and unfeeling than even his fully synthetic counterparts.
“Growing up the way that he did in extreme poverty as someone probably who shouldn’t have survived, he was just so tough,” Hawley says. “He had physical infirmities, and he basically reached a point where he realized that ethics and morality are a luxury he can’t afford.”
Then, when Yutani stepped in to save him, it gave Morrow’s life new meaning.
“His loyalty is there forever,” Hawley says.
More than meets the eye
The Alien movies have a proud tradition of practical effects dating back to Ridley Scott’s original film, although various entries over the decades have relied more on CGI rather than animatronics and costumes to varying degrees. Alien: Earth features a balance of the two, especially when it comes to the “perfect organism” at the heart of the story.
The chestburster in episode 4 might be CGI, but the Alien: Earth team worked directly with famed special effects studio Weta Workshop to come up with several versions of the Xenomorph, ranging from an actor in a suit to a large animatronic puppet named Steve. (The facehuggers are also animatronic. “That was proven territory,” Hawley says.)
Which Xenomorph you get in each scene largely depends on the length of the shot.
“We know in a horror movie, you don’t want to see the monster too much,” Hawley explains. “So if I have a guy in a Xenomorph suit and his tail is on a fishing line, and he’s moving through the hall. Do I believe for a 10th of a second while he’s on-screen that the tail is real? Do I need to create a CG tail? I probably don’t. Let’s try to do it practically.”
As for the various other alien species scuttling around, Hawley confirms that “the new creatures were always going to be more CG than not.” Of course, that doesn’t make them any less scary. If anything, the freedom to create whatever he wanted makes these various other monsters more terrifying, including those poison-spewing ticks and the infamous eyeball (which even attempts to fight a full-grown Xenomorph at one point in episode 5).
When asked about the eyeball (also known as t. ocellus or Species 64) and its true purpose, Hawley plays it coy, but points to another moment from the episode as a potential clue: When those alien bugs escape from their vessel, Species 64 taps on the glass of its own container to get the ship scientist’s attention. But was it trying to alert her to the escape or distract her?
“I think it was creating a distraction to allow the creature to do its thing,” Hawley says. “As you keep watching in the season, one might begin to suspect that this one [species] is smarter than the other ones, and that it thinks in a longer-term way.”
“It’s a voyage of discovery for everybody.”
Case in point: When the show’s Hybrid characters first come into contact with the eyeball, it immediately abandons the dead cat carcass it was reanimating and jumps directly at the closest one — even though it’s a fully synthetic body.
So what gives? Hawley offers a possible explanation.
“If you look at the eggs as an example, you have to get within a certain range before it sort of senses the biological-ness of the life,” he says. “I would imagine it’s similar here. If you’ve hitched a ride in something dead, it’s probably not a long-term solution, optimally. And when something alive walks in, you’re going to upgrade. You never know with these creatures. Having moved through the universe, have they ever encountered a non-biological creature before? It’s a voyage of discovery for everybody.”
On a similarly terrifying note, Hawley warns that when it comes to Species 64, the creature’s goals may be much more complicated (and disturbing) than simply devouring any victims it comes across.
“I do think the concern about the eye is that this may not be a food chain thing for it. There may be some long-term thinking going on that should worry us.”
