Alien: Earth, episode 5: Prequels, flashbacks, and irrelevance

That image above is basically my expression when looking at this whole episode, except I was probably displaying more contempt. As noted before, the problem with prequels is that they sap a lot of the potential tension and interest from a story because everyone knows what the outcome is for both plot and characters. It's the equivalent of Roger Ebert citing "fans" as the most boring people imaginable because "they're always asking you questions to which they already know the answers." You know what's worse than a prequel? A flashback within said prequel! Not only do we already know where things are going in a macro sense, but now we do in a micro sense, as well. In that respect, In Space, No One... was something close to the most pointless episode one could think of. All of the events that took place on it a) didn't advance the story and b) didn't tell us anything new, since the main thrust of the plot was discovering the identity of the person who sabotaged the Maginot and landed it in Prodigy territory which is... Petrovich, a guy who was already dead in the first episode and died within minutes of appearing in this one. Knowing this person was completely irrelevant. The events that he caused were the relevant part and we saw those events in episode one. We basically just wasted an hour to see a rerun.

I mean, one thing I guess we learned is that Weyland-Yutani is somehow one of the most powerful entities on Earth despite most of its scientists being incompetent and its engineering staff not improving in 17 years when they attempt to bring back another xenomorph. It must be written somewhere in the crewing regulations that all engineering teams be made up of a crusty, overly suspicious guy and a semi-social idiot. Either that or it's just Hawley and his writers again pandering to the nostalgia of the audience for the original Alien film. And it doesn't stop at simply emulating the cast from the film (Zaveri (Richa Moorjani) is Ripley; Shmuel (Michael Smiley) is Parker; Malachite (Jamie Bisping) is Brett) because we're also given the imagery from that film that isn't already the functional stuff like Mother. No, we get Morrow (Babou Ceesay) dropping his cigar down one of the holes through multiple decks created by the acid blood, just like Brett looking down one of those holes or, for that matter, the Marines doing so in Aliens. At least Morrow has some qualities that make him distinct from Ash. But what that means is that the most interesting member of the entire crew is Teng (Andy Yu), the perv stalker among them. Not only does he see right through the plot and point it out to other cast members, but does so in a genuinely entertaining fashion. However, his role in that plot is non-existent. He doesn't serve any purpose except to entertain people who aren't that fascinated by the rehash of both a 48-year-old film and the episode of this series that we saw a mere four weeks ago.

And why does a scientist somehow forget to seal the containment chamber of clearly dangerous aliens while under no stress whatsoever? Boredom? And if something is contained in a cryo pod, where life is supposed to be suspended for long travel, how is it that a face hugger is still moving and an implanted embryo can break free? The counter-example to Hawley inexpertly filling his plot hole is right there in the film franchise, where Alien³ showed that Ripley and Newt being frozen kept their embryos in stasis just like they were. But, somehow, despite this clearly being the same technology and this crew actually following protocol (From the immortal Parker: "Why don't they just freeze him?!"), Hawley apparently decided that the only way to write oneself out of this corner was to make it all simply not work this one time. Also, the constant references to specific knowledge about the aliens ("It's an embryo that's escaped and is now running around the ship. How big can these things get?") is more fan service than any decent plot should allow, despite this entire episode basically being fan service, since it serves little other purpose. I mean, there's a couple personal background moments with Morrow (who is also an Ink Spots fan) but those could easily have been woven into actual progression of the plot on Earth. And we wrap up this pointless venture with Cherub Rock which, again, has no relation to anything that's going on but is simply another piece of music that Hawley thinks is apparently retro-cool. Or something?

Yeah, if it's not incredibly evident, I'm losing faith quite quickly here. This was series padding in episode five and padding created by continually hearkening back to material that was not only covered almost 40 years ago, but also four weeks ago. One more like this and I'm probably bailing.