Alien: Earth begins where most Alien stories end: with a crew of blue-collar workers realizing that they are, and have always been, doomed. Deemed expendable by their employers over the monsters in the cargo hold (at least the crew of the USCSS Maginot , unlike the Nostromo , knew the monsters were the mission), they are made mortally aware of their place at the bottom of several food chains at once. With the FX show’s fifth episode, cheekily titled “In Space, No One …,” creator Noah Hawley takes us back to the Maginot ’s corridors to give viewers a rendition of Alien in miniature, retrofitting the sturdy bones of Ridley Scott’s seminal film to his own ends.

This may sound like a cynical enterprise, but it’s par for the course for Alien . As Slate’s own Sam Adams has noted

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