Look, we need to talk. Not as critics, not as "content consumers," but as fans. I’ve been obsessed with the Alien franchise for over thirty years. I’m the person who stood in line for opening nights, the person who defended Ridley Scott’s prequels because, despite their flaws, they were ambitious, gorgeous, and introduced riveting new ideas that opened up the series beyond just pulse rifles and motion trackers. I’ve always trusted that this universe was a sacred baby to its creators.
But that trust has a breaking point, and I think I just hit it—hard.
When they announced Noah Hawley—the mind behind the brilliant Fargo and Legion—was taking us to Alien Earth, I went nuclear with excitement. I expected a genius reinvention, a thematic deconstruction that would take the series into the next dimension. Instead, week after week, I watched Hawley prolifically fumble the bag in slow motion. This isn't a "brilliant deconstruction." It’s a smoldering, eight-week train wreck that reveals absolutely nothing new about the Xenomorph or our own world. We are left with the festering ashes of a show riddled with the worst writing and direction the series has ever encountered.
My Personal Rating: 3.6/10 (and that’s being generous because the title font looked okay).
The "Unregulated Stupidity" is Actually Painful
The strongest DNA in this show isn't the Xenomorph's—it's pure, unadulterated stupidity. It’s like a pathogen infecting every single character and scenario. You thought the crew in Prometheus made bad choices? That was a mere sunspot on the face of the broiling neutron star of idiocy found here.
I actually shouted at my TV when Raheem, the Chief Medical Officer—supposedly on the most dangerous scientific mission in history—was caught chain-smoking in a room full of oxygen tanks. On the Nostromo, they were just space miners, and they at least had the sense to wear protective gear when inspecting the unknown. Here, on a dedicated science vessel, the lead doctor rips a butt in a surgical room with zero protection before getting himself killed by poison gas. It's not just a "bad character choice"; it's a fundamental failure of the show to respect its own high-stakes environment.
And don't get me started on the CEO of a billion-dollar company dangling his face over an Ovomorph with zero safety protocols. He’s the sharpest mind in the world, and he doesn't even bother to put on socks while leaning over the most dangerous organism in existence. The crew of the Prometheus had no idea what they were facing; this guy knows exactly what these samples are. This logically empty approach to television is a trend running rampant in our streaming era, where a "cool visual" comes first and basic logic is a forgotten afterthought.
Why is the World-Building So... Lazy?
If you look at any part of this show for more than five seconds, it disintegrates. Take Neverland Island—a cool concept on paper, but it has the security of a community garden. Wendy, an android with the mind of a child, is allowed to interface with secure computers and wander a high-security facility completely unchecked. Is anyone actually surprised when she releases a Xenomorph? The entire multi-billion dollar facility crumbles within 72 hours of the specimens' arrival because it was never a secure location to begin with.
Then there’s the "Muppet Babies." I get that they are meant to act child-like, but when you have intentionally "simple" characters living in a world that is accidentally written to be stupid, your IQ starts to drop just watching it. Look at Morrow's "Master Plan": he thinks he can secure a Xeno sample by tasking a 12-year-old robot with transporting it across an island. Any real corporation would have teams monitoring every byte of data from those multi-billion dollar androids. The plan only "works" because the script demands the world be broken. It’s exhausting to watch characters succeed only because the world around them is functioning at 0% capacity.
They Turned the Xenomorph into a Joke
This is the part that hurts the most. For the first time in history, the Alien is a joke. The practical creature effects are the worst in the franchise's history, which is staggering considering the $250 million budget. James Cameron made Aliens for $18.5 million in 1986 and created a masterpiece that still holds up. Stan Winston created gods out of latex and slime for a fraction of this cost.
The Xeno here looks dry, shiny, and weirdly like Robocop. Ridley Scott knew how to frame and light the creature to keep it terrifying; Noah Hawley has done everything in his power to demystify, deterrify, and—let's be honest—completely pussify the H.R. Giger design. It doesn't stalk; it carries prey like a baby into a storage unit instead of ripping them to shreds. It spends half the show sitting in a cage looking forlorn. It basically becomes a lap dog for a child.
The tension is completely diffused as two kids play "grab-ass" in a nest that should be a waking nightmare. The bungling extends to the life cycle, too. The idea of a Xeno being born from a human lung is presented as a "new twist," but it robs the creature of its body-horror origins. The terrifying notion of being a living incubation chamber is gone, replaced by a tadpole and a pound of flesh. It feels like the last thing anyone involved in Alien Earth actually cared about was the Alien itself.
The Prequel That Ruins the Original
This show takes place just two years before the 1979 original. If Weyland-Yutani knew exactly where to get a Xeno on Earth two years prior, the entire premise of the Nostromo’s "chance encounter" is dead. Why would they send space truckers to a distant moon to "investigate" something they already had in their backyard?
The logical contradictions are endless. If they knew how deadly these things were after the disasters on Neverland Island, why would they think a handful of truckers could secure a specimen two years later? Why would they put a colony of families on LV-426 years later in Aliens if they had already stripped the planet of its secrets? By ignoring these ramifications, the writers have sided with a "cool idea" without checking if it burns down the house it was built in. The first two films—the legends of the genre—actually make less sense now because this eight-hour turd sandwich exists.
A Finale That Felt Like a Betrayal
The finale was easily the worst episode of the series, exposing the show as utterly directionless. Every Alien film ends with a sense of finality—a hard-won survival. This finale resolved next to nothing and served only as a 40-minute advertisement for a second season.
Mauro and Kirsch fought, but nobody died. The Muppet Babies were "captured" but placed in a prison with the door essentially wide open. Plot armor flowed like wine, as absolutely no one of importance was ever in real danger. The only "resolution" was maxing out the power level of the Mary Sue Robot, who can now apparently control synths, computers, and Xenomorphs with her calculator brain. There was no big battle, no big reveal, and no satisfaction—just a cliffhanger that felt like it ended before it even began.
Final Thoughts: We Deserve Better
Being a fan doesn't mean blindly nodding "yes" to everything with a Weyland-Yutani logo on it. We have every right to be angry when creators who are entrusted with the stories we love effectively destroy them out of hastiness and laziness. Alien Earth is a disrespect to its source material and a joke of bad writing.
If your immersion wasn't shattered by the lore-breaking and the sheer idiocy of the characters, I honestly envy you. But for those of us who grew up fearing the shadow in the corner of the room, Alien Earth isn't just a bad show—it’s a heartbreak. We shouldn't have to lower our mental bar to a degree where writing this bad is acceptable. We deserve better, and we shouldn't be afraid to ask for more from the people paid millions to take our beloved stories and reduce them to their dumbest possible form.
What did you guys think? Am I losing my mind, or was that as bad as I think it was? Do we even want a Season 2 at this point?
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