Spoilers Before the last episode of “Alien: Earth”.
“Alien: Earth” by Noah Hawley is remarkable for several reasons, one of which is that it does not seem (so far) to be all that concerns the fact of being a prequel to the film franchise “Alien”. Certainly, he also does not try to deviate just as far; Located two years before “Alien”, the series clearly attempts to have its visual aesthetic stick closely at the film by Ridley Scott in 1979. Nowhere is it more apparent than the design of the production of the USCSS Maginot, the ship whose mission condemned and the accident landing on Earth launches the action in the show. While Hawley and the other directors of the series certainly impose their own styles of distinctive shooting and cutting on their episodes, the design of production and the lighting of the Maginot deliberately and constantly remember the Nostromo of Scott’s film. Indeed, the references to “Alien” felt at the height of the Property course, especially after the “Alien: Romulus” from last year, filled with heads to almost all the other “Alien” films.
However, “Alien: Earth” can have additional reasons for keeping the Maginot so similar to Nostromo. On the one hand, Hawley seems to invite many direct comparisons between the characters and the situations of “Earth” with the “Alien” films. For example, the only survivor in the Maginot is Morrow (Babou Ceesay), a person who loses a child outside of space and is considered by the Weyland-Yutani Corporation as a consumable, who makes him remarkably similar to Ellen Ripley. For another thing, the series seems to tackle aspects of the “Alien” tradition which has not been previously extended by films. One of these subjects is the hierarchy and the political situation on earth itself, in particular with regard to Weyland-Yutani Corporation and its continuous influence. Thus, while “Alien: Earth” certainly seems to be mainly concerned about his own autonomous characters and scenarios, he could plan to explain how Weyland-Yutani has become a majority power in the future of the “Alien” franchise, and Maginot’s mission could be the key.
The meaning of the Maginot
Even before digging from where the name of Maginot comes from, the choice of name itself breaks a little with the “extraterrestrial” tradition. The majority of space names in the “alien” universe derive from the works of Joseph Conrad, thanks to Scott who chooses the name Nostromo for the ship of the first film, which was taken from the novel by Conrad in 1904 of the same name. When James Cameron made “extraterrestrials”, he continued tribute to Conrad de Scott and took the name of Sulaco from a city of the same novel for the main ship of his film. Although “Alien 3” does not take place in a spaceship, the ship of the company sent to recover Ripley is called La Patna, which is a ship in Conrad’s novel “Lord Jim”. From there, Conrad’s references ended for a certain time, with “Alien: Resurrection” calling his ship the Auriga after a constellation (and it is not a Weyland-Yutani ship, anyway), and the ships in “Prometheus” and “Alien: Covenant” having eponymous names, which highlight these films for religious mythology. “Alien: Romulus” had it in both directions; Its main space station is named for the Romaulus and Remus Roman mythology figures, and the film’s spaceship is called The Corbelan, which is the name of another character of “Nostromo” by Conrad.
For “Alien: Earth”, Noah Hawley deliberately avoids appointing his spacecraft after a character from Joseph Conrad, which indicates that the nickname of the ship has more weight than what we could expect. The name Maginot is most likely a reference to the French Minister of real life of France in the 1920s, André Maginot, a man who was most famous for having encouraged a project known as Maginot Line. This project sought to establish fortifications, obstacles and weapons facilities to prevent Nazi Germany from invading during the first days of the Second World War. Unfortunately, the line was not finished as planned, and it had enough weaknesses for the German soldiers to flank it, which contributed to the conduct of the invasion and the allied forces of France requiring an evacuation. In short, the failure of the Maginot line has led to a disaster, enough for the name itself to signify “a barrier or a defensive strategy that inspires a false feeling of security”. Thus, the USCSS Maginot in “Alien: Earth” was condemned as soon as it was baptized, and a xenomorph standing out on crafts and having it crashing on land in the middle of a populated city should not have surprised so many Weyland-Yutani.
Could the world go to the corporate war in extraterrestrial: land?
But while the name Maginot could simply be a cheeky reference to the unfortunate trip of the ship, there is potentially another reason for its name, the one weyland-yutani may have done. Although the mission of Maginot (which, unlike that of Nostromo, seems to have been openly communicated to its crew) to obtain and transport the eggs of xenomorphs to Earth is that which was essentially a main interest from Weyland-Yutani in the whole “extraterrestrial” franchise, we never had a succinct explanation on the reason why society is so bad. Of course, the notion of an unscrupulous society that wishes to wedge the market on a biological weapon does not need too much development, but “Alien: Earth” paints a broader political image than the simple greed of companies. We are told in a scene in episode 4, “observation”, that the system of individual governments of the old world “did not work” and that five societies came to power: Prodigy, Weyland-Yutani, Sheshold, Dynamic and Lynch. Although we have not yet seen (still) the last three companies in the series, competitiveness and the obvious animosity between Prodigy and Weyland-Yutani implies that relations between the five are not so friendly.
Seeing how the USCSS Maginot obtained not only the xenomorph but four other aggressive and aggressive extraterrestrial species, it seems that Weyland-Yutani does more than the collection or construction of a zoo. Five extraterrestrial killers and five large companies could be Hawley by doing an ironic allegory, but that could also indicate that Weyland-Yutani is actively preparing for war with other societies, and he decided to make these deadly creatures his primary weapons, perhaps because of their history with the missions Prometheus and the Alliance. After all, we still do not know where all these species have been taken; Perhaps the Maginot visited the planet 4 after the alliance, or perhaps David 8 finally reached Origae-6 and did more twisted scientific experiment. All we know about future “extraterrestrial” payments is that Weyland-Yutani seems to have majority control on earth, exploitation places like the Gateway station and be so omnipresent that the characters simply call it “society” and not as one of the five. In addition, although the prodigy hybrids seem to be a priority for Kavalier (Samuel Blenkin) only for his own fun, it is possible that he secretly considers them as the main weapon of his business in an upcoming conflict. Anyway, it is sure that in the future of the “extraterrestrial” universe, people will eventually shout, whether in space or on earth.
New episodes of “Alien: First Tuesday on FX and FX on Hulu.
