Main cast: Sydney Chandler (Wendy), Alex Lawther (Joe Hermit), Essie Davis (Dame Sylvia), Samuel Blenkin (Boy Kavalier), Babou Ceesay (Morrow), Adarsh Gourav (Slightly), Erana James (Curly), Lily Newmark (Nibs), Jonathan Ajayi (Smee), David Rysdahl (Arthur Sylvia), Diêm Camille (Siberian), Moe Bar-El (Rashidi), Adrian Edmondson (Atom Eins), and Timothy Olyphant (Kirsh)
Director: Noah Hawley
Okay, whose bright idea is it to have kids at the front and center of these new Alien shows? Isn’t Alien supposed to be a horror franchise? Who is that moron?
The only good kid in such shows is one that is designated to be monster chow but come on, we all know how Hollywood works. These kids will have plot armor that nothing can pierce, so they will act annoying and dumb without anyone being able to stop them, ugh.
So anyway, Alien: Earth, because that is what we need: another prequel in the Aliens franchise. I know Alien: Resurrection isn’t everyone’s favorite, but can’t we all move from there? Why are we stuck telling stories that we already know the ending for: they all die?
Neverland is the first episode of a show that takes place about two years before the very first movie Alien.
At least there is one thing this show gets right: while the lighting is way too bright and the dialogues are CW-tier compared to the next three movies that take place after this, the technology level doesn’t seem to be far more advanced than that in Alien.
Basically, it’s 2120. A Weyland-Yutani vessel, the USCSS Maginot, has collected specimens from different planets for the surely benevolent research purposes for that company. Alas, the specimens break free — guess what specimen — and the cyborg officer Marrow designates the ship to crash onto Earth.
Then we are introduced to another corporation, the Prodigy Corporation, led by the CEO Boy Kavalier. Seriously, he can’t give himself a cooler name? As it happens, the Maginot crashes onto New Siam, which is Prodigy territory. Medic Joe Hermit and his squad are sent to check out what the fuss is.
Meanwhile, there are the kiddies, ugh. We are also introduced to “hybrids”: consciousness of kids that are transferred to robotic bodies. The so obvious final girl Wendy was Joe’s terminally ill sister planted into a metal suit, but Joe believes that his sister has died.
Now that Joe is in danger, this annoying little twerp with the mind of a 11-year-old, one with no experience or anything, decides that she is going to go rescue Joe. Instead of telling her to go mop the floor, the CEO sends Timothy Olyphant to give me a reason to keep watching, er, to escort this amazing girl boss to her destination. Naturally, this leads to the obligatory “Who is the man and who is the robot?” talk that seems to be a must these days because subtlety is dead and we need everything spelled out to us.
The episode ends as Joe and friends are trapped in the Maginot and it looks like they may be in danger, snort.
I’d love to be proven wrong and there are actual stakes beyond red shirts dying, but there is something very designed-by-committee in what I’ve seen so far to convince me that there are any, if many, surprises are in store. I’d like to be proven wrong, but so far that 11-year-old creepy-bot girl boss is channeling more of that what’s-her-name in Alien: Covenant cosplaying Alita than Ripley so who knows.
Let’s just see what the next few episodes have in store, shall we?
