Brief Story Line
Two years before the events of the movie Alien, earth was led by the Five wealthiest organization including Prodigy Corporation led by its CEO Boy Kavalier (Samuel Blenkin - Mary & George TV series etc) which developed new kind of synthetics and Weyland-Yutani that focused on space exploration. When one of the science vessel owned by Weyland with its Chief security Morrow (Babou Ceesay - Guerilla TV series etc) crash landed on earth, Kavalier decided to send his new team of hybrid synths led by Wendy (Sydney Chandler - Pistol mini series etc) along with her friends that included Slightly (Adarsh Gourav - The White Tiger etc), Nibs (Lily Newmark - Cursed TV series etc) and few others to the crash site. They were accompanied by chief scientist Kirsch (Timothy Olyphant - Havoc, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood etc) who was also the mentor of Wendy & her friends.
This mission was proposed by Wendy who wanted to look for her older brother Joe (Alex Lawther - The Last Duel, Howards End TV series etc), the Prodigy's medic that also went to crash site together with other soldiers. During this time, it was clear that the vessel crash was due to something dangerous that would threaten the lives of everyone.
So what would happen to everyone? You could find out in this series.
End of Brief Story Line
This series started off with something familiar at first but pretty soon it developed into a more complex story and in fact I was having difficulty to grasp. I think it was due to so many groups of people shown from the start, like the group of crew in the Maginot space ship, the people at Prodigy R&D and the security team of Prodigy. In fact during that early part, I was confused who or what I should focus on. Only after the second half of the episode that I finally understand better and also enjoyed it more. Especially since subsequent episodes were suspenseful with strong intensity that I would usually feel when seeing Alien movies in the cinemas.
Although the series did have some intense moments, however I could not help feeling that there were times when pace was slower as the focus shifted a bit to the morality of hybrid synthetic creation. Obviously these are the sort of things that critics view highly which was likely the reason for its high critical ratings. For me though, this was just nice addition to the story line. What I liked more in the series was the characters, particularly Wendy and the Lost Boys (nickname for the hybrid synthetics). The actors/actresses who portrayed them were quite convincing. I also like the character the brother Joe and the mentor Kirsch. Aside from those engaging characters, I also loved the special effects of the aliens which I believed were top notch.
This first season only had 8 episodes overall. My most favorite was the fifth as it was the one most similar to the Alien movies. Coincidentally it was also the highest audience rating. At the moment of my writing, there was no decision yet whether there would be a second season. It would be rather disappointing if it is not renewed cause the ending was not conclusive and there was no tie-in yet to the first Alien movie. The episodes duration was between 45 to 64 minutes with the longest ones episode 1 and 5. I noticed during closing credits the name of Ridley Scott who directed the original 1979 film along with Prometheus and its sequel Alien: Covenant as one of the Executive Producers. The series itself was created by Noah Hawley (writer/director of hit series like Fargo and Legion), which meant he had got proven credentials.
As I said above, the series had many characters to be familiar with. Aside from the names I mentioned above, there were other main cast mentioned during credits including Essie Davis (Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries TV series etc) & David Rysdahl (Fargo season 5 etc) as Prodigy employees Dame Sylvia & her husband Arthur respectively, Erana James (The Wilds TV series etc) and Jonathan Ajayi (Noughts + Crosses TV series etc) as other Lost Boys Curly and Smee, Adrian Edmondson (Bottom TV series etc) as senior synthetic and trusted Kavalieri's employee Atom Eins and Moe Bar-El (The Bureau TV series etc) & Diem Camille (Borderline etc) as Prodigy's security team & Joe's friends Rashidi & Siberian. So as you can see, it was a very large main cast of 14 people. There were even some more recurring characters too like Yutani (Sandra Yi Sencindiver - Geek Girl TV series etc) as Weyland-Yutani's CEO, another Lost Boys Tootles/Isaac (Kit Young - Shadow & Bone TV series etc) plus few guest stars such as Richa Moorjani (Never Have I Ever TV series etc) who portrayed executive officer Zoya on board of Maginot and several others.
In the end, this whole series was really entertaining in term of action and also expanding the universe of Alien. The intensity and suspense when the Aliens were pursuing humans were wonderful and some of the characters were quite interesting, though it did need some time to familiarize the importance of all of them. The pace was something that I thought could have been more consistent. That final episode would have been a fantastic one, but unfortunately the intense moments were not too extraordinary and made the finale a bit underwhelming (probably because it was going to be concluded in future seasons). So if you are interested in watching Alien explored further, then you could definitely give this a try and probably enjoy it as well. Just hope that there would be conclusion to the series and tie it to the first movie's story.
Mike's movie moments rating: 4 out of 5 stars
No comments:
Post a Comment