Episode 5 of Alien: Earth was previously hyped to Matt and I, due to being entirely a flashback episode following Morrow, and I will say it was exactly as good as what everyone was saying. I wasn’t entirely thrilled about the episode being about his character, but by the end of the episode I will already say my view on his character has changed.
Right off the bat, Morrow is woken up for an emergency (so dire that he is walking around in his boxers the entire time). He is led to the captain of the Maginot with a facehugger and another deceased crewmember, and is explained the facehugger’s dangerous acid when trying to remove it. I thought it was funny that the second crewmember was just kind of brushed to the side, and the captain being involved passes the torch to the now acting captain, Zaveri.
I personally wasn’t crazy about Zaveri’s character, because I don’t know how in the world she was any sort of second in command to now acting captain because she had super poor decision making skills, as well as cracking under pressure. Then when she is talking to Morrow, he lays it to her straight that if she puts their mission in danger that he can take her place as acting captain (something I feel like would have been a better situation).
It cutting to Chibuzo to the lab with the specimens absolutely killed me. This lady, who is apparently some sort of scientist (who should know better) has a whole sandwich and drink inside the lab as she’s dealing with these creatures. I don’t even work in a lab and I know not to have food and drinks there! As one would expect, one of the creatures gets out of their containment, and sprays eggs into her open container and goes and hides in her sandwich. They end up finding it and putting it back, but the negligence was mind blowing. Granted this didn’t directly affect her initially (since one of the engineers was the one who took a drink out of it and ended up getting infected), but regardless!
This episode also made me wonder if the T. Ocellus is actually working with the humans, because I took it as it was trying to warn Chibuzo about the other creatures trying to escape, but there were other instances in the next episode. Reading online, people mention that it may have been distracting her, which I could also see after being mentioned but I would like to think of it as helping. It could also be a situation of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” because it is against the Xenomorph. Regardless, this is one of my favorite alien species in the show (besides the Xenomorph of course)!
I will say, the Xenomorph looks so good, and I am still thrilled they are giving it more than enough screen time. The only gripe I have is how extremely goofy it looks when it’s standing like a human. I feel like it should either crawl or stay low to the ground, because when it’s standing up it just looks off. That’s my only thought with it, because I love that they are actually giving it screen time instead of just teasing it.
This episode also shows the connection to Kavalier to the ship, showing us that there was some deal going on behind the scenes for these specimens, which also shows why he was so ready to send a group in to retrieve them when they crashed. This just makes me dislike him even more!
Watching this show I have been really enjoying each episode, but this is a change in feelings for me on how I feel towards Morrow’s character (and reinforces how I feel towards Kavalier). I feel like the filming, scenes, character designs, costumes, alien creatures have been pretty solid. Some things are a little cheesy, like the whole Neverland tone, but it’s not something to completely look past this show. To see people knock this show and say how poor the writing and story is… I am side eyeing. Yes there are plot holes or some silliness, but I feel like it’s not a terribly made show.