Alien: Earth – Emergence review S1 E7

Emergence marked the penultimate episode of Alien: Earth and things manage to go from bad to worse after the slightly chaotic previous episode.

Most of the problems stem from children placed in synthetic bodies while retaining their childlike immaturity. Boy Kavalier thought his mad experiment was going to lead to some breakthrough emergence, but all that’s happened is the children’s worst impulses are being played out in more powerful bodies. Emergence is when his perfect facade starts to come crashing down.

Slightly sat in his room clearly uneasy watching the facehugger wrap itself around Arthur’s throat as it nourished the xenomorph embryo. Like a child would do, Slightly assumes Arthur might be thirsty and tries to give him something to drink, but the facehugger wants no parts of it. Smee realizes his pal is acting weird and is shocked to see Arthur with an alien attached to his face. While this is a very bad look, Smee agrees to help Slightly. If only they had a distraction to get Arthur to the beach…

Kirsh surveys the damage done from the fly’s emergence from the cocoon. Not surprisingly, he’s not at all emotional about Tootles’ death, which he assures Boy Kavalier was not an accident. He shows BK how T. ocellus’ intentional distraction led to Tootles’ death.

Equally not as surprising, BK is fascinated by this and oblivious to any potential harm that could befall from his amusement with T. ocellus instead of outright trying to kill it. He tells Atom he wants to put the T. ocellus into a human’s body so it can talk and he’s got a perfect candidate. Atom probably needs to think about using some of that sick leave right about now.

Wendy arrives and is not feeling Kirsh’s explanation that “Science happened.” Wendy reminds them that you just can’t erase things. Both BK and Kirsh realize Wendy could become a problem if she warns the other Lost Boys. Now, Kirsh is starting to see some problems as he realizes someone turned their trackers off.

Not that it would take that much effort to find them. Wendy convinces Joe that they can’t leave the island until they get the other Lost Boys. Curley is happy staying in Neverland, but Nibs doesn’t want to become a monster and happily goes with them.

Alien: Earth hasn’t had a short season, but one complaint certainly could be that not enough time has been devoted to the mental breakdown of the kids after getting transported to these new bodies. We probably could have done with two or three less BK naval gazing moments to get another few scenes with Dame and Arthur being very concerned about their charges.

Wendy is getting savvier about dealing with BK and his goons and opens up the containment cell of “her” xenomorph to protect her. Just like a kid wouldn’t leave their pet behind, Wendy won’t do that either. Even if her pet chooses to go on a mass killing spree during its escape.

Thanks to Wendy’s distraction, Slightly and Smee can drag Arthur’s body out without anyone noticing. Except for Kirsh. He directs them to a faster path to the beach. This is interesting. Does Kirsh just love the idea of chaos as much as T. ocellus? The boys have to hide when a surveillance team hits their path. When they return, they find Arthur is missing and the facehugger is on the ground. Scratch that, Arthur is back and seems fine? 

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The boys come up with some lame lie that Arthur eventually sees through. He promises that whatever it is, he can help them. Well, Slightly more so, but eventually you will, Arthur.

Man, Emergence is tough. Poor Arthur just wanted to look out for them and he’s the one that gets screwed over the most.  At least he doesn’t have a long countdown clock going as he starts getting stomach pain and moments later, the xenomorph is bursting out of his chest and running into the forest. Poor guy didn’t even get to say anything to Dame. Or at least have a good meal before Hypersleep.

Smee is upset that Slightly lied to him, but still helps him carry Arthur’s body to the meet up spot with Morrow, who’s set up some infiltration teams around the island. Morrow isn’t pleased that he’s got to go hunt down the xenomorph. He has his men take the boys and dump Arthur’s body in the ocean. What a terrible way for the one noble character on the show to go out.

Morrow and his men get caught in a trap set by Kirsh, who taunts him before having his Prodigy soldiers lock him up. As for Slightly and Smee? “You two are grounded.”

Wendy, Joe and Nibs run into Morrow’s second squad, but they can’t handle a synthetic girl and her homicidal alien. Joe is understandably super nervous, but Morrow did blast him the second he encountered Joe so he probably shouldn’t be crying too much. They make it to the boat only to get ambushed by a squad led by Rashidi and Siberian. This leads to one of the best scenes in Emergence as well as the season.

Nibs doesn’t take too kind to one Prodigy soldier ripping her stuffed animal’s head off so she rips off his jaw. Yikes. Wendy starts to summon her pet, but Joe stops her. Torn between his sister and squad, Joe blasts Nibs when she’s about to hit her fatality on Siberian.

Neither Siberian or Rashidi are particularly grateful and order him to put the gun down while Wendy hysterically asks him what did he do? Sometimes, Joe when you try to make everyone happy you make nobody happy.

Emergence sets the stage for what will undoubtedly be a bad time for most of the characters. The odds of many of them surviving aren’t good and with Arthur dead, that might not be a bad thing for the rest of the galaxy if there aren’t any survivors.

Rating: 9 out of 10

Photo Credit: FX

Enjoyed Emergence? Check out the six feature Alien collection including Alien/Aliens/Alien Iii/Alien: Resurrection/Prometheus/Alien: Covenant on Blu-Ray now at Amazon. 

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