Alien: Earth has been a revelation. A show which arguably delivers on the promise of Ridley Scott’s 1979 Alien film in a way only the immediate sequel, Aliens, managed. In fact the Disney+ show is a prequel to the original, set just before the events on the Nostromo, and follows closely to its gritty design and disturbing tone while also expanding the universe.
In brief, it establishes a future Earth where democracy has disappeared and five organisations rule the world, including Weyland-Yutani, the nefarious Company who prioritised capturing xenomorphs over crew members in the films, and a one called the Prodigy Corporation, led by a young genius with a Peter Pan obsession called Boy Kavalier. These companies are competing in AI and military tech, with Kavalier having invented Hybrids, where dying children are ‘saved’ by having their minds transferred into ‘synthetics’, the robots who we know from the films are “a bit twitchy.” These Hybrids play a key role as a spaceship crashes down to earth full of Alien species – a xenomorph plus some other horrible creatures - which the Companies want for their own ends.
