(NEXSTAR) — The riveting fifth episode of FX’s “Alien: Earth” takes us back to beginning of the season, honing in on the last horrific hours aboard the USCSS Maginot before it crash landed in the series’ premiere.
The episode, titled “In Space, No One…,” reveals what actually happened on the Weyland-Yutani research vessel in a tight and wonderfully paced bottle episode that harkens back to the atmosphere and aesthetics of Ridley Scott’s “Alien” (1979) and James Cameron’s “Aliens” (1986) while still managing to feel fresh and surprising.
Spoilers ahead for “Alien: Earth” episode five.
The ship hits the fan
Weyland-Yutani cyborg security officer Morrow (Babou Ceesay) unexpectedly awakes from cryo-sleep aboard the Maginot. And it’s gonna be a long day: Morrow quickly learns that not only did a fire severely damage the ship’s engines but two facehuggers got loose in the commotion and attached themselves to the captain and a science officer named Bronski.
Morrow heads to the med bay where he finds the captain dead and the crew in emotional disarray. Medical officer Rahim (Amir Boutrous) explains he’d tried to cut off the creature but it bled across the man’s face/neck, killing him. Bronski, meanwhile, is still alive but still has the other space crab affixed to his face.
The captain’s death leaves crew member Zaveri (Richa Moorjani) as acting captain, to Morrow’s annoyance.
Morrow leaves to assess the situation, encountering senior engineer Shmuel (Michael Smiley), who explains that the fire effectively killed the Maginot’s navigation systems and engine.
“We were a spaceship and now we’re a missile,” Shmuel tells Morrow. “And now we’re heading towards Earth.”
Morrow orders Shmuel and the junior engineer Malachite (Jamie Bisping), a daffy British twink with a bowl cut, to do whatever they can to fix it. The cyborg, meanwhile, sets off for further investigation.
Who’s the saboteur?
After reviewing surveillance footage (and learning some crew communications files had been purged), Morrow realizes the fire was no accident. Blurry footage shows someone sneak up to the glass cage containing the xenomorph eggs and opening it — but Morrow can’t be sure of who it was.
The footage also shows Bronski and Zaveri were hooking up in the containment room before the incident (next to xenomorph eggs, really?) and once again, Morrow calls Zaveri’s leadership into question.
Morrow and Zaveri’s heated exchange ends with Morrow explaining his loyalty lies with Weyland-Yutani, and that nothing — and no one — matters to them besides the cargo getting back to Earth. Refusing to accept this, Zaveri asks Mother for permission to destroy the assets but is denied. Shocker!
Bronski is put into cryosleep in hopes of keeping him alive but an alarm sounds just minutes later, alerting that a cryopod was compromised. Well, it was worth a shot.
The worst working lunch you’ve ever seen
Back in the lab, scientist Chibuzo (Karen Aldridge) is feeding the blood ticks, which are housed in a large glass jar with a screw-top-like lid. Unfortunately, she’s a little distracted by her own lunch and doesn’t seal the lid completely.
The bugs, meanwhile, show off their intelligence, when one of them discovers it can fully open the glass jar’s top by pushing a pin that should have been secured. Unbeknownst to Chibuzo, the creepy crawly creature crawls out and onto the top of her open Weyland-Yutani water bottle where it expels a cloud of baby bugs.
Alexa, play “Yuck” by Charli xcx.
Rahim comes in before Chibuzo takes a sip, helps her return the bug to the jar, and the two part for a meeting in the mess hall.
While all of this was happening, the Ocellus eyeball monster appears to have been inspired by the blood tick’s escape. As our crew members exit, the series’ most terrifying creature slings its body against its cage until it falls over and breaks.
Who’s gonna drink it?
At the mess hall meeting, Morrow gives the crew the gist: One of them has to be the saboteur and he’s going to get to the bottom of it. While Morrow and Zaveri speak, Malachite chokes on a snack and takes a swig from Chibuzo’s water bottle to wash it down.
The script and scene make good use of building up this moment, as viewers aren’t sure whether or not Chibuzo already drank from the bottle (she’s acting kind of twitchy in this scene, probably purposely, for suspense) and she also almost goes for a sip at several points. Ultimately, it doesn’t seem like Chibuzo ingested the tick juice but having Malachite be the unexpected taker was a fun surprise.
In what’s either a flashback or else, a scene that happens sometime after the mess hall (it’s not entirely clear, to be honest), Morrow questions Rahim in a private room. As Rahim answers, water (or is it saliva?) continuously drips from a vent above. While we never know whether or not the xenomorph was indeed hiding there, it’s yet another inspired moment of tension-building director/writer Noah Hawley baked into this already tense episode.
Zaveri and Morrow instruct the crew to sweep the ship and capture the xenomorph.
Bugging out
Back in the engine room, in one of the episode’s best framed/best designed scenes, Shmuel and Malachite are still working at the engine. Here, actors Michael Smiley and Jamie Bisping exchange one of the episode’s best bits of dialogue, as the senior engineer explains to his young protégé that, whether he realizes it or not, he’s exchanging a lot of his life (65 years in space) for not all that much pay.
“Sixty-five years of your life equals a quarter of a share,” Shmuel explains.
Though brief, it’s one of the series’ most human moments. In addition to being one of few things in this series real people might relate to, the scene feels in conceptual harmony with the franchise’s capitalist doomerism DNA. It’s a small moment that says a lot but it’s soon interrupted by Malachite, who starts projectile vomiting blood.
Chibuzo and Rahim attend to Malachite in the med bay, where Rahim initiates emergency surgery to attempt to remove the blood ticks which have been born and are now draining his blood from the inside. We hope the snack was worth it, bro.
As Rahim pulls a tick from Malachite’s organs (which feature some terrific practical effects), the bug releases a gas into the sealed room and Chibuzo, Rahim and Malachite die.
Saboteur unmasked
After an eye-opening conversation with the very odd crew member Teng (there’s just not enough time to get into Teng’s weirdness and the myriad suspicions we have about him), Morrow realizes the saboteur is someone who’s been pretending to be in cryosleep.
Morrow returns to the surveillance room, where the purged files have finally been restored. He quickly scans through the crew’s video calls, we get a glimpse of Bronski’s face (handsome), before stopping at a video chat between crew member Petrovich — who’s talking to none other than (dun dun dun!) Boy Kavalier.
It turns out Petrovich made a deal with “The Boy Genius” to crash the ship into the Prodigy-owned city, as seen in the premiere.
In exchange for giving Prodigy the opportunity to scoop Weyland-Yutani, Petrovich gets a big payday, in addition to becoming a hybrid.
A furious Morrow goes after Petrovich, ultimately fatally stabbing him with his cyborg arm blade.
The saboteur may be dead but all’s still not well.
Monster mash
Zaveri, who’s been (almost comically) frozen in shock ever since Malachite’s deadly surgery, is ambushed by the fully grown xenomorph and she manages to bolt down the hall before it strikes. In a well-shot chase scene through the hallways of the Maginot (also shoutout to “Alien: Earth” set designers!) before taking refuge inside the specimen lab.
Though safe from the xenomorph, Zaveri finds something equally horrifying inside the room: Shmuel, who’s been taken over by Species 64.
Piloting Shmuel’s body, the eyeball monster attacks Zaveri. Morrow arrives to help, attempting to capture Eyeball Shmuel, but the creature gives out a chirpy call that brings the xenomorph bounding back in the room. We hadn’t thought to wonder if the two species could communicate but we got the answer.
It’s a short-lived friendship, however, as the two beasts go after each other (there can only be one star, ya know?) and viewers are treated to a silly but fun monster fight — which gives Morrow and Zaveri just enough time to squeeze out a side door.
‘I’ll kill the one called Kavalier’
Morrow ultimately takes the escape pod for himself, in the full scene from the premiere’s opening. As Zaveri cries for Morrow to open the impact room for her, she’s killed by the creature, which previously fatally stabbed Shmuel with its tail. The xeno next sets its sights on Morrow, who’s racing to get inside the pod before it gets inside.
He makes it in a call so close that some of the alien’s signature saliva drips on his face as the door seals.
Back on Earth, Morrow meets with Yutani at the W-Y headquarters, where Yutani (joined by some very, very cool samurai-styled guards) learns the fate of her ship. It turns out Morrow was previously taken in by Yutani’s grandmother, who helped him attain his arm blade, and that he vows to help Weyland recover their assets.
Then, he says, he intends to “kill the one called Kavalier.”
Yutani offers him her every resource to make it happen.
Grade: A
“Alien: Earth” airs Tuesdays on FX and Hulu.