Alien Earth Metamorphosis review S1 E3

Metamorphosis was an unusual installment of Alien: Earth — one that relied on atypical actions to keep the story progressing and certain characters alive.

Wendy/Marcie is chasing after her brother, Joe Hermit, who got nabbed by the xenomorph.  This isn’t a new development in Metamorphosis, but it’s really weird that Joe keeps getting stalked and snatched as opposed to just quickly getting killed like everyone else who’s encountered the alien.

It’s clear of course that Joe can’t get killed off — at least not as soon as the third episode so Wendy finds him laced up in xenomorph webbing inside a shipping container. Unless there’s some wacky metamorphosis going on, this xenomorph is not a Queen so why would it go through the effort of setting up a trap? When the xenomorph encountered the renaissance apartment party, it didn’t set aside a few humans for the winter. It just devoured them right away.

Metamorphosis might be one of the more obvious Alien-theme projects where there is a clear do not harm list and it’s affecting some of the drama. Wendy heads into the trap and frees Joe, but the alien knocks the container over to leave them disoriented. Again, it gets the jump on Joe and avoids making anything closely resembling a killing shot before Wendy drags it to another room with a gate. Her hope is to simply trap it behind the door, but it drags her in.

Joe hears the clanging and banging and when he finally gets the door opened, he sees the decapitated alien and a staggering Wendy who looks like she just went through a rough spin cycle.

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Slightly and Smee reconvene at the egg nesting area. Like little children would do in this circumstance, they goof off and play around the slowly opening eggs until Morrow shows up gun in hand.

In the other interactions Morrow’s had with people — including Joe — his first and second response was to blast them. That’s not the case in Metamorphosis. He chats them up long enough to figure out they’re not actually adults although he can’t figure out what they are if they’re not synths. Kirsh arrives prompting Morrow to dive off the platform to the wreckage below.

Morrow gets connected with Yutani though he assumed he would be speaking with her grandmother. Morrow’s been out in space for a few more years than he assumed. While he wants to continue his mission, Yutani wants him to return back to headquarters. Morrow is too committed now and ignores her orders with the realization he’ll have to do everything on his own now.

Meanwhile, Nibs and Curley are debate their names specifically why they had to be named after the Lost Boys since there’s only one girl — Wendy, who just so happened to be the first. Maybe that explains why she’s Boy Kavalier’s favorite?

BK isn’t concerned about the search and rescue efforts. He wants all the alien life forms brought back since there’s trillions of dollars’ worth of R&D in his lap with the spaceship crashing onto his territory. There’s no need to worry about any potential mishaps as they’ve got a full quarantine lab. Well, it’s worked in every Alien-story so far so what’s the harm?

Prodigy paramedic teams bring Wendy, Joe, the dead alien’s body and the various specimens into the ship back to Boy Kavalier, who’s giddy at the prospect of something new to tinker with and explore. Maybe that’s Curley as she’s vying to take Wendy’s spot as BK’s new favorite.

Dame Sylvia and Arthur are busy trying to patch Wendy back up while Prodigy doctors operate on Joe and remove his lung for some reason. Kirsh wants to know what Morrow told Slightly, who knows enough to hold onto that info from his “supervisor.” That proves smart as Morrow digitally reaches out to him happy to know Slightly and The Lost Boy’s true nature. Maybe Slightly would like to be his friend?

Wendy wakes up and starts having a confusing reaction as Kirsh, Curley and Tootles do some minor examination of the egg. She’s somehow feeling all of the prodding and probing Kirsh and crew are doing. At the same time, Prodigy doctors have finished removing the lung, which Kirsh thinks is the ideal spot for that alien embryo he snatched from the egg. Well, that’s definitely not going to get him on Wendy’s Christmas card list.

Metamorphosis has some frustrating elements playing out largely just to keep the show’s slow burn going as it relates to certain subplots, but there’s enough interesting angles to keep it an intriguing sci-fi mystery.

Rating: 7.5 out of 10

Photo Credit: FX

Enjoyed Metamorphosis? Check out the most recent Alien movie, Alien: Romulus now available on Blu-Ray at Amazon.

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