Alien Earth 1×3 Review: “Metamorphosis”

Alien Earth season 1 episode 3, titled ‘Metamorphosis’, served an action-packed opening before settling into more tense moments to expand the lore.

One of the things I am enjoying about Alien Earth is how the writers aren’t making viewers wait a bunch of episodes to answer questions and certain mysteries mentioned during the debut. The first two episodes had Hermit and Wendy reunite with Hermit learning the truth about his sister’s fate, something certain other shows would have likely avoided for a bit. And ‘Metamorphosis’ followed suit as it offered some answers while presenting a bunch of new interesting questions to keep me engaged for what’s to come.

‘Metamorphosis’ had Wendy chase after the Xenomorph that took Hermit. According to lore, Xenomorphs capturing humans and trapping them inside a cocoon-like structure for newborns to be hatched from makes sense. However, seeing the Xenomorph do that to Hermit while it was trying to protect the eggs didn’t feel right. So, from what I could understand, the Xenomorph wasn’t happy about two Hybrids appearing near the eggs. It had observed Wendy’s connection to Hermit and thought kidnapping Hermit would be the best way to separate Wendy from Smiley and take their confrontation away from the eggs. Even Hermit warned Wendy that it was a trap when she finally found him stuck inside a meat container.

I was excited to see Wendy fight the Xenomorph, and we got exactly that during the third episode. Her enhanced strength and speed allowed her to keep up with the alien, even managing to use a hook-like weapon to pull the creature into a storage compartment. Now, while I would have preferred to have seen Wendy decapitate her outworldly foe, I understood the narrative decision to focus on Hermit attempting to hotwire the storage door to try and help his sister in the fight that was taking place behind it.

I liked seeing Wendy being injured enough to lose consciousness and needing repairs. Yes, she’s strong, but she’s not a trained fighter. Hermit’s injuries also caught up to him. And yes, I got the visual of showing a Xenomorph, a hybrid, and a human on the ground together. Alien Earth has a whole lot to dissect for the fans who are interested in discussions about technology, evolution, and humankind.

With Wendy and Hermit being taken to the Neverland research island, we don’t get to see those two until later in the episode, and that’s okay, because the other characters got to do a whole lot of stuff.

Having been left behind to keep an eye on the eggs, Smiley reunited with Smee only for the two to be confronted by Morrow. Actor Babou Ceesay is killing it as a cyborg dealing with his humanity and wanting to stay loyal to Weyland-Yutani. He was understandably intrigued by Smiley and Smee, realizing that they weren’t fully synthetic beings. Even though he went back to his mission to protect the alien specimens, ‘Metamorphosis’ shone some light on his human side, complete with his struggle with the regret he felt for not helping his crewmembers during the initial alien outbreak.

His conversation with the current CEO of Weyland-Yutani helped cement his objective to retrieve the aliens from Neverland because, as of right now, that’s the only thing giving Morrow any purpose. He didn’t have a previous non-cyborg life to return to anymore.

I’m quite excited about the development of Morrow’s relationship with Smiley due to being able to “telepathically” talk to the child hybrid after implanting a device into Smiley. Alien Earth has a lot of gore and scares because of the creepy aliens, but Morrow’s interaction with Smiley made me feel uneasy because it reminded me of how adults managed to manipulate kids in the real world.

I felt the same during Boy Kavalier’s conversation with Curly. He’s clearly manipulating her to create a rival of sorts for Wendy by exploiting Curly’s jealousy over Wendy being Boy Kavalier’s favorite because she’s the first of the hybrids. The moment Curly told him she wanted to not only prove she was better than Wendy (due to not having the “weakness” of wanting to preserve familial bonds), but that she wanted to become smarter than Boy Kavalier himself, I knew she was done for. As the second episode told us, he wants to have a conversation with someone as smart as him, not smarter. Boy Kavalier seems too proud to allow his creations to surpass him.

With Alien Earth continuing to stick with the Peter Pan motif, with certain characters bringing it up themselves, Boy Kavalier is an interesting character to think about. He’s Peter Pan in this scenario. However, unlike Peter Pan and the hybrids, he’s not immortal. He will become an adult, something he seems to consider a weakness because, according to him, the difference between being a genius and a prodigy is that prodigies are kid geniuses fueled by unlimited imagination. Adult geniuses, while smart as heck, don’t possess the childlike wonder. And with him wanting to introduce hybrids to the world to make everyone immortal, I wonder what he’s planned for himself.

Kirsh calling him out on being attracted to the alien specimens because they were new and shiny made me laugh. Oh, the hubris of man to think they can control things they don’t understand, especially nature.

Even though I wouldn’t trust him with my life, I did enjoy how Kirsh handled the situation around the aliens. Having downloaded the data about the extraterrestrial creatures, he was successful in keeping Boy Kavalier away from the eggs by warning him that they were waiting to cling to an organic host. Kirsh also conducted an experiment that allowed him to extract the alien parasite from a Facehugger and have it feed on a human lung. So, yeah, I guess we will get to see a baby Xenomorph being raised without needing to kill a human.

Talking about the lung, it ended up being Hermit’s lung that was extracted during his surgery. I wonder how he’s going to react to being given a synthetic lung while his original lung was being used to grow a baby Xenomorph.

As for his calling Wendy by the name Marcy, it made sense due to the siblings not getting the time to have a conversation about which name Wendy preferred.

The strange ringing in Wendy’s mind was revealed to be the aliens. Again, yay to the show providing answers ASAP. She could hear the Facehuggers scream while one of them was being operated on by Kirsh. I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s able to translate the ringing and be able to communicate with the creatures down the line.

As for Nibs, she’s clearly acting strangely after her confrontation with the Octopus-like alien. She kept feeling her eyeball. She also wasn’t a fan of being given an identity she didn’t get to choose. It’s just a theory as of now, but I think the Octopus-like alien left some kind of tentacle behind her eyeball that might be messing with her mind. She could feel herself being called by the Octopus-like alien to set it free or something. We’ll find out soon enough.

What did you think of Alien Earth episode 3, ‘Metamorphosis’?

Let us know.

Author: Farid-ul-Haq

Farid has a Double Masters in Psychology and Biotechnology as well as an M.Phil in Molecular Genetics. He is the author of numerous books including Missing in Somerville, and The Game Master of Somerville. He gives us insight into comics, books, TV shows, anime/manga, video games, and movies.

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