All fiction is metaphor,” wrote Ursula K Le Guin. “Science fiction is metaphor.” The writer, most famous for her Earthsea fantasy novels, captured the civil rights movement, second-wave feminism and the rise of environmentalism in her fiction from the 1960s through to her death in 2018. “What sets it apart from older forms of fiction seems to be its use of new metaphors, drawn from certain great dominants of our contemporary life.” Now, as we live through the greatest acceleration in technological development since the advent of automation, it’s on science fiction, once again, to probe and provoke. That’s a role that Alien: Earth, the first TV instalment in the Alien franchise, takes very seriously.
A spaceship bearing alien specimens has mysteriously crash-landed on Earth, parking up unceremoniously in the fictional city of New Siam. Onboard, predatory creatures stalk the poorly lit hallways, offering the Prodigy Corporation – a shadowy multitrillion-dollar Really Big Tech firm, led by precocious CEO Boy Kavalier (Samuel Blenkin) – a chance to test its new “hybrids”. These aren’t cyborgs (enhanced humans) or synths (humanoid robots) but a new breed: human consciousness in a perfect synthetic body. “We’re something different,” Wendy (Sydney Chandler), a 12-year-old girl piloting, in true Hollywood style, the body of a sexy adult, informs the audience. “Something special.” Even with the huge teeth and drooling maws of the aliens wreaking havoc on the spaceship, there is nothing more chilling in Alien: Earth than these topical questions about the nature of being.
