TV Recap: “Alien: Earth” Episode 5 – The Truth Behind the Crash

Episode 5 of Alien: Earth is mostly set within the events of Episode 1, filling in the gaps about what went wrong aboard the USCSS Maginot. The crash included sabotage and human intervention. Someone’s been pulling all the strings, and we just found out who.

Episode 5: “In Space, No One…" – Written by Noah Hawley

Flashback - 17 Days Before the Crash

Alarms are going off aboard the USCSS Maginot when Clem (Tom Moya) awakens the head of security, Morrow (Babou Ceesay). There was a fire in the containment bay, allowing some of the specimens to break out. “Two of the clam things got out and the octopus with the long fingers," Clem describes, informing him that Captain Dinsdale died and another man’s life is at risk.

Morrow and Clem arrive in the medical bay, where Morrow gets his first sight of Bronski (Max Rinehart), who is unconscious with a facehugger sealed around his face. The doctor, Rahim (Amir Boutrous), tried to cut the creature off, only to find that the bleed acid, and Bronski’s shoulder is badly burned. Chibuzo (Karen Aldridge) argues in favor of following protocol by putting Bronski and the creature in cryogenic sleep for the remainder of the journey. Nobody knows how the fire started or how the egg crates were opened. Executive Officer Zevari (Richa Moorjani), who is now the acting captain, tasks everyone with making sure the ship is locked down, asking where Teng is.

Morrow finds engineer Shmuel (Michael Smiley) and his assistant Malachite (Jamie Bisping) in the halls. Shmuel informs Morrow that the navigational systems and engine relays were both fried, making the Maginot little more than a missile heading towards earth.

With this information, Morrow heads to the bridge to tell Zevari he suspects sabotage. He wants her to call a shipwide emergency so he can begin the official inquiry process. When she refuses to rule out equipment failure yet, he reveals that he knows she was breaking protocol and hooking up with Bronski. When he threatens to follow policy and take command of the ship, she accuses him of mutiny. He warns her to call the emergency while he heads back to his office.

Rahim has found Teng (Andy Yu), recruiting him to help put Bronski and the facehugger into cryogenic sleep. Rahim catches Teng staring at one of the sleeping female members of the crew, Sullivan (Victoria Masoma), warning him not to molest her or he’ll call the captain. “Captain’s dead," the cyborg responds with creepy calmness.

Morrow inspects the zoo, noting that the panel lights all have a green light, indicating the cages are secure. He inspects a hole in the metal slat flooring, which goes down several levels, seemingly caused by acid. Back in his office, he scrubs through footage, finding an explosion in the zoo that set off the alarms. Watching closely, he sees the captain and Bronski rush in to respond to the alarm as two facehuggers crawl out of their pods. The first latches onto Bronski, and the captain starts to try to save him, only to find himself attacked by the other. Rewinding, barely visible before the blast, is another person sneaking into the zoo. It’s unclear who they are.

Zevari sheds a tear over Bronski’s cryogenic bed. She pulls out a tube of dirt labeled “Utah" and sprinkles some of it on the glass. “Almost home, baby," she tells him, kissing her hand and touching the glass over his face. After she walks away, we see the facehugger’s tentacle tighten around Bronski’s neck. It’s alive.

Morrow goes to the engine room to talk to Shmuel and Malachite, asking for blueprints for crawl spaces and access points that aren’t on camera. Shmuel confirms Morrow’s sabotage suspicion when he tells him the way the systems were deactivated was deliberate. He then goes to Clem, who discovered that the communication logs were deleted, but he’s begun the process of running a recovery program. After Morrow confirms that Clem wasn’t the saboteur, he arms him with a weapon.

Zevari goes into the ship’s control room and enters the code for a command change, informing “Mother" that the captain is dead. The first question asked of her was the status of the cargo. When Zevari asks for permission to destroy cargo to save crew lives, she is told no and asked to acknowledge her understanding of the mission. When she hesitates, the ship threatens to put the Security Officer in command. “Acknowledged," Zevari begrudgingly responds.

We see Morrow taking a break, looking through a little box of effects from his daughter. He shares a memory with us of walking with her along a beach, telling Estelle (Haddy Ceesay) that if she misses him, she just needs to look up to the sky and he will be watching her from space. He sheds a tear over the memory.

Rahim prepares the captain’s body for a space burial and launches it offboard.

In the bridge, Zevari asks Shmuel for an update, and he asks whether she wants the public or private answer, gesturing to Teng, who is sitting in a chair. When she asks Teng to step out, he says he knows someone sabotaged the ship. Zevari ignores him, talking to Shmuel about how they should wake the rest of the crew. They are interrupted by another alarm - “Cryopod Quarantine Breach."

Something burst out of Bronski’s body, breaking through the glass. Rahim wants to wake everyone and assemble a search party. Zevari worries that with how big the creatures can get, killing them on board will leak enough acid to burn through the ship’s hull. Morrow gives her an electric, non-lethal gun. “Capture, not kill," he instructs.

Chibuzo decides to run an experiment in the zoo. She’s released two containers from the wall, one with two blood-sucking bugs they call leeches, and the other with a tentacled eyeball that seems affectionate toward her. With the leeches having been starved for two weeks, she places a dead rat in their cylinder to see if they’ll suck blood without any oxygen in it. She makes a note as one begins to feed. She doesn’t notice that the other crawls toward the top of the tube. As the eyeball taps the glass as if to warn Chibuzo, the other bug is able to twist the lid open and crawl out. When the eyeball begins to tap with more alarm, Chibuzo thinks it just wants attention and gets up to put it away, leaving her water thermos open. The free leech crawls around the brim and drops some eggs into the water, which begin to swim around. Rahim enters, sees the free leech, and grabs tongs to put it back as Chibuzo wonders how it got out in the first place. He tells her Bronski is dead and that they’ve been summoned to the mess hall. Chibuzo brings her thermos.

One of the green lights on the zoo’s control panel goes red. The eyeball begins to rock its cylinder until it falls and shatters, freeing its inhabitant. It takes off in the direction of Chibuzo.

Zevari informs the team that the cryopod didn’t put the creature to sleep, and an early-stage Xenomorph is now loose. She announces that a saboteur is on board, and she orders a shipwide emergency so Morrow can begin interrogations. Malachite is being rude as Zevari talks, possibly a coping mechanism, as he eats something. When he starts to choke, he grabs Chibuzo’s thermos and gulps down some water. Morrow gives them all one hour to get him activity logs and duty rosters before he starts interviewing off-duty personnel. He also instructs them all to travel in pairs and offers extra shares to anyone with information on the sabateur. As they’re dismissed, Chibuzo takes her water bottle and is paired with Zevari.

Chibuzo and Zevari go to the zoo, finding broken glass on the floor. Chibuzo realizes the eye is loose. They decide to emergency seal the zoo. We see the eyeball rushing toward the door as it closes.

Morrow interviews Rahim, asking if the medical officer made any unauthorized calls to Earth. He questions him for being off-screen in the med bay’s blind spot for 10 minutes. But their meeting is interrupted. Rahiim is needed in the med bay. Malachite and Shmuel were in the engineer bay when Malachite began to vomit blood and passed out.

Next, Morrow interviews Teng, who calmly plays a mind game with the security officer. When Morrow asks Teng why he’s still visiting Sullivan’s cryopod when he was ordered to leave her alone, Morrow seems to be under the impression that Teng is using secret passageways through the ventilation system. “Just because the computer says a cryopod is full doesn’t mean it is all the time," Teng smiles mischievously, both confessing to something heinous while informing Morrow of an oversight he missed. Morrow asks Teng who else is awake.

With the communication logs recovered, Morrow begins to look through the files. He quickly runs through lots of recorded calls from the crew to Earth, including Bronski saying that he’s fallen in love with a woman on the ship. At last, he finds a video that explains everything. Chief Engineer Petrovitch (Enzo Cilenti) talks to a rich and powerful young man on Earth. “If the specs you sent are right, you can pull this off," the man tells him. Petrovitch confirms that in exchange, this brilliant innovator can transfer his consciousness into a new body. Boy Kavalier (Samuel Blenkin) confirms that he can, but Petrovitch seems hesitant, fearing he won’t survive the crash after pointing the ship so that it will land in Prodigy’s territory. “Well, that would suck for you, wouldn’t it?" Boy Kavalier taunts him.

Morrow rushes to Petrovitch’s cryopod, finding that while its status is sealed, it’s actually empty. A new alarm sounds, warning of a containment threat in the medbay. He runs there to tell Zevari that Petrovitch is the saboteur. Watching through a window, they see Rahim and Chibuzo scanning Malachite’s body and finding anomalies. With an endoscope, they see black spots in his digestive tract. Rahim says they need to perform an immediate operation to stop the bleeding. But after cutting him open, they find ticks feasting on his organs. Rahim uses tongs to pry one of the bugs off Malachite’s heart, but it responds with a self-defense mechanism, releasing a gas that causes Rahim and Chibuzo to instantly start choking. Morrow and Zevari watch in horror as the medbay fills with smoke. When it dissipates, every human inside is dead. Ticks crawl out of Malachite’s body, looking for a new victim. Clem rushes in to warn them that the Zenomorph has claimed a victim - Teng. Morrow decides they should seal themselves in the bridge, get to Earth’s orbit, shift trajectory, and call in a cleaning team to remove the specimens from the ship.

As Morrow and Clem head off to wake the crew, shots are fired at them by Petrovitch. Clem is injured just outside the zoo, and Morrow unseals the door to duck them inside. Petrovitch fires through the window, killing Clem. Morrow rushes out into the hallway and sneaks up behind Petrovitch, turning a hand into a blade and stabbing him through the middle. “They want their monsters, here they come," Petrovitch says as he confesses to his crime just before dying. The eyeball rushes out of the zoo as ticks arrive to feast on Clem’s dead body.

Zevari comes face-to-face with the Xenomorph in the hall. She reaches for her gun on her hip, but it whips its tail and knocks the weapon from her hand. She runs, giving it a good chase through winding halls toward the bridge. Inside, she starts to seal the door, asking Shmuel to help her. The engineer stands still as if in a trance. He slowly turns around, and Zevari sees that his left eye is bulging. He snarls as his eye bulges. The Xenomorph gives up on getting through the door and crawls up the ceiling to find another way in. That’s when Morrow emerges from a vent, seeing Zevari is in trouble, and breaks through the door. Zevari has been knocked out, and the zombie Shmuel opens its mouth to make a guttural noise. The Xenomorph enters as Morrow witnesses the zombie Shmeul get into a fight with the alien. The Xenomorph destroys the shell of a man, but the eyeball gets away and attacks. As the Xenomorph tries to fight it off, Morrow takes his leave.

Back in the control room, Mother asks for a crew status. As Zevari rushes to Morrow’s door, begging to be let in, he uses his cyborg arm to soder it shut. He responds to the ship’s question. “Crew dead. Collision with Earth unavoidable." Morrow seals himself in the impact room as the alien breaks in. He thinks of his daughter as the USCSS Maginot hurtles toward Earth.

Present

In a skyscraper that serves as the corporate headquarters of Weyland-Yutani, Morrow meets the new Yutani (Sandra Yi Sencindiver) face-to-face for the first time. “My grandmother is very fond of you, you know," she tells him as he informs her he and the cargo were the only survivors. We learn that Morrow was a feral boy with a palsied arm when her great-grandmother took him in.“She always said you were the fiercest thing she had ever seen," Yutanit marvels. “I told her I would bring the specimens home, and I will," Morrow promises. “And then I’ll kill the one called Kavalier." Yutani announces that arbitration between lawyers begins tomorrow, but Morrow won’t be satisfied until things are done his way. She instructs her team to give Morrow whatever he wants to get the job done.

Next Episode: “The Fly" - Tuesday, September 9th, at 8/7c on FX and Hulu

Tensions rise as powerful enemies confront each other, a dangerous plan unfolds, and curiosity leads to deadly consequences.