FX’s Alien: Earth episode 5 functions as its own Alien movie, shedding light on the final, terrible day aboard the USCSS Maginot before it crash-landed on Earth in the very first episode. It’s an episode that provides a slew of WTF moments and one hell of a brilliant performance by Babou Ceesay as the relentless investigator and head of security, Morrow, in a full-on Poirot mystery-solving moment.
“I love the description that you gave, because that’s exactly how I felt, although I’d go for Columbo more, I’m a Columbo person myself,” Ceesay told Mashable.
Both in production style and narrative, the episode feels like a one-hour film worthy of the Alien canon, and one that provides a clever pacing shift from the series linear storyline. Creator/writer/director Noah Hawley sends us flying down the halls of the ill-fated Weyland-Yutani ship — in fact, the team procured the blueprints of the Nostromo, the ship from Ridley Scott’s 1979 original, to build it.
Mashable sat down with Hawley, Ceesay, and executive producer David W. Zucker to unpack the episode, which crafts a mystery around the members of the Maginot’s doomed crew.
“Some of it was the unanswered question of what happened on the ship that made it crash. We kind of cliffhanger this moment in episode 4,” Hawley told Mashable. “But some of it is just, selfishly, I wanted to make an Alien movie, and that’s why I directed it.”
“The beauty of this moment is that there’s a seamless fluidity to the season,” added Zucker. “There’s a lot in [episode 5] that really shouldn’t work. You shouldn’t be able to stop the story in the way that [Hawley] does. And yet, in some ways, it brings a different kind of thrill to the narrative experience, because you are getting so much information that you were exposed to from that initial prologue, and you would never anticipate that you’d then dive headlong entirely in this and meet a whole new crew.”
This whole new crew is one of the best elements of the episode, characters we thought were a flash in the pan in their doomed episode 1 appearance: Maginot Captain Dinsdale (Tanapol Chuksrida), new Captain Zaveri (Richa Moorjani), science officer Chibuzo (Karen Aldridge), crew members Bronski (Max Rinehart), Clem (Tom Moya), Teng (Andy Yu), Sullivan (Victoria Masoma), and engineers Shmuel (Michael Smiley) and Malachite (Jamie Bisping).
“Look, it’s incredible to even have the opportunity to be on the ship for that whole time,” Ceesay told Mashable. “And of course, a whole new cast of characters appeared who are just phenomenal.”
Now, remember, if you’re watching Alien: Earth episode 5, don’t eat or drink.
