Does anyone remember War of the Worlds and how it became a TV show? It kind of ruined the whole idea. Stargate might have done a little better, and the idea of xenomorphs being loose on earth might be kind of interesting, but the idea of Noah Hawley doing this because the other movies were ‘trapped’ is kind of naive since the confinement was part of the terror, and it worked for a while since allowing the audience to imagine being trapped in a limited and confined space with something that could rip a person to pieces or bring them to a chamber where they would be impregnated is kind of the point. But thinking about the xenomorphs loose on earth is kind of hard to imagine simply because it’s difficult to think of a way to do this without having to retcon a lot of the story that’s come before. Hawley has been adamant about not making this into a Ripley story, and that’s all well and good, but in case anyone was missing it, Aliens has actually already torn a hole in this logic since the dreaded Company that Ripley fought against when it came to the xenomorphs had no record on file of the xenomorphs.
Of course, that’s assuming the company didn’t trust everyone in their employ, which could make it likely that xenomorphs existed on earth before the timeline that Ripley originated from. That would still be hard to believe though since the xenomorphs aren’t exactly shy when it comes to interacting with the world around them and seeing as how a queen might pop up at any given time, or a drone might convert to an egg-laying queen perhaps, it’s fair to think that the epidemic that they would create wouldn’t take long to spread. Maybe that’s what we’re about to see with Hawley’s creation, but once again, it does feel that word would get out since the spread of xenomorphs, confined as it has been in the movies, doesn’t feel like something that would halt in an open area.
There is a series of books on the Alien story that sees earth overrun with the xenomorphs as they prove to be highly adaptable to some of the worst conditions where humans can’t thrive, and as they’ve proven time and again they’re adept at stealth and at concealing themselves. But what they’re best at is surviving and reproducing since so long as there’s an egg and a queen about, the xenomorphs have been seen as highly capable of fanning out to find anything and everything that can be used as an incubator. While the creatures might take on the characteristics of whichever host is used, this could possibly make them even more lethal depending on what’s used. We’ve already seen the result of a xenomorph infecting one of the yautja, the species that are shown in the Predator movies, but think about what might happen if the improbable occurred and a face-hugger was able to impregnate a tiger, an elephant, or a gorilla in the wild? It might sound kind of silly, but it also sounds like something that might be used at some point if someone can figure out a way to make it work.
It’s too early to say much about this idea since filming won’t even begin for a while it sounds like, but again, it WON’T be a Ripley story, just to make sure that everyone got that the first few dozen times they saw it online in relation to this TV series. So long as that’s understood then everything else should be okay. Of course, this is assuming that creating a series based on the Alien franchise is still a good idea. There’s a lot to say that something might go wrong, or that introducing the xenomorphs to the small screen might be a bad idea. That’s not definitive to be certain, but at the same time, it does feel as though it might diminish the whole feel of the franchise in some way. Given that the prequels have already been doing that, however, it’s easy to think that despite being able to get worse, it’s a hope that Hawley will be doing everything he can to make certain that this show will be a hit.
If anyone had said at the beginning of this franchise that a show would be coming out based on the idea, and be set in the present day, a lot of people would likely laugh and say there was no way such a thing would happen. Yet here we are, getting ready to see what Noah Hawley can put to work and hoping that it will be something that the Alien franchise has been needing for a while. The movies haven’t been making it work, so maybe it’s time to turn on the TV and see what happens.
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