Following the release of the penultimate episode of Alien: Earth’s first season, Alien: Earth showrunner Noah Hawley sat down to speak to The Hollywood Reporter to dig into the direction the series has gone. Discussing the controversial aspect of Wendy’s communication and apparent “taming” of an Alien, Hawley spoke to it being another element born out of trying to extend the Alien’s portrayal past the scope of a 2 hour runtime.
“You have to use the monsters in a different way. You certainly want to use them in the classic way, but you also have to figure out how to sustain having monsters in your show when the reality is they would kill everyone, or that you would kill them — and then that would be it. Bringing in other creatures allowed me to take the pressure off the xenomorphs to fill that void.
There’s also this idea of the hubris of people — that classic Jurassic Park thing of “just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should.” And the naiveté of children, as well. There’s a romanticism that can happen in kids. She wants to believe that it’s not these creatures’ fault, that they didn’t ask to come here, and we shouldn’t experiment on them the way that she’s being experimented on. You can understand the rationale. But it doesn’t make it safe to make friends with one.
One of the big question marks was if fans were going to go with this idea. I don’t want her to have [a xenomorph as a] pet. But if it seems like an alliance has been struck, what are the interesting possibilities that we can pull out of that? And because this is a horror story, we have to assume that, ultimately, I wouldn’t bet on this working out.”
It would be fair to say that Alien: Earth’s wholly synthetic character Kirsch has been a standout from the series, brilliantly portrayed by Timothy Olyphant. But even as we start to see some payoff to Kirsch’s actions in this episode, his over all goal still remains an enigma at this point. Discussing Kirsch, Hawley told The Hollywood Reporter:
“That’s interesting to me. And the question of how much is he in control? What are the rules of his programming? Part of what I feel made [Ian Holm’s Alien android character Ash] crazy at the end of that movie was that he had this countermanding programming — the crew’s lives were expendable, but, somewhere in there, he had been programmed to protect human life. Those two conflicting impulses caused him to malfunction.
I think with Tim, there’s definitely this question of how much is he autonomous? How much is he controlled by the programming, and how much is his sense of identity? If he is a scientist and experimenting, he doesn’t seem to have the human morality that others have. He’s probably programmed that he can’t harm Boy Kavalier (Samuel Blenkin). He may be programmed that he really shouldn’t disagree with him, or argue with him. And in these moments where Boy Kavalier is super patronizing and dismissive, maybe been programmed to smile and bear it. And yet: Is he done?”
Be sure to head on over to The Hollywood Reporter to check out the entire piece, where they also discuss the ethics and morality around Wendy’s actions. Thanks to PortugueseXeno for the news.
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Tags: AndroidNoah HawleyTimothy OlyphantWendy
Categories: Alien Earth News | Forum Topic