One of the best sci-fi shows of 2025 is finally available to stream next week

One of our favourite series of the year so far, JOE got to speak to some of its stars about how it was made.

Next week, the show will finally make it to screens and having seen the first six of its eight episodes, JOE is delighted to report that it was worth the wait and is truly great.

A prequel to the iconic Alien sci-fi horror franchise, Alien: Earth is set in 2120. This is two years before the original 1979 movie directed by Ridley Scott (who is a producer on the series) and a time when the planet is governed by several corporations.

One of these companies is titled Prodigy and is run by a young tech mogul named Boy Kavalier (Samuel Blenkin, Black Mirror).

While cyborgs (humans with added artificial parts) and synthetics (humanoid robots with artificial intelligence) already exist alongside humans, Kavalier unlocks a new technological advancement: hybrids. These are created by taking the consciousness of human children who were dying and putting them in the bodies of humanoid robots.

The lead character of Alien: Earth is Wendy (Sydney Chandler, Sugar), the first hybrid prototype. As she navigates her new body and grapples with her changing identity, she and the other hybrids (who are dubbed 'The Lost Boys' after the children from Peter Pan) are given a dangerous task by Kavalier.

After a spaceship owned by Prodigy's rival corporation Weyland-Yutani crashes into Kavalier-owned territory, he sends The Lost Boys and their stern, darkly comic synthetic leader Kirsh (Timothy Olyphant, The Mandalorian) into the wreckage to retrieve data that could be valuable to him.

There, however, the hybrids encounter "mysterious life forms more terrifying than anyone could have ever imagined".

We'd argue that Alien: Earth is a must-watch for fans of the classic franchise, with it diving deep into fascinating pockets of the universe that the films hinted at but never quite explored in huge depth.

This includes the corporatisation of Earth and space, the development of AI and androids, how both of these have impacted humanity, as well as what might happen if the franchise's terrifying xenomorphs ever made it to humanity's home planet.

Not only this, but creator, writer and director Noah Hawley (Fargo, Legion) also uses these story beats as a means to explore rich, universal themes about family, scientific exploration and experimentation, and what it means to be human.

That all said, the series is also full of exciting and scary action set-pieces, often shot in the surrealist and hallucinatory style that made Hawley's previous shows so memorable.

Ahead of Alien: Earth's release, JOE had the pleasure of speaking to Blenkin, Olyphant and their co-star Babou Ceesay (Free Fire), with the latter playing Morrow, the bad-ass cyborg who survives the crash of the Maginot, the Weyland-Yutani spaceship.

On what makes Hawley's version of Alien feel so different in a great way, Olyphant tells us:

"As you can see in his previous work, Noah is so willing to swing for the fences. He's willing to take these properties for lack of a better word and really make them his own.

"When we were making this, I remember thinking: 'Wow'. There's a part of the show that's a bit of a metaphor, sometimes I think for Noah, where someone says: 'I will take that and I will make it my friend. I'm just going to take your little franchise and I'm going to do with it what I wish.'

"I love that boldness. It's very inspiring to be around. It makes our job so much easier that the pages are coming from him."

We also predict that viewers of Alien: Earth will be drawing comparisons between Blenkin's character Boy Kavalier and some real-life tech CEOs on account of his arrogant, devil-may-care attitude.

That said, Blenkin states that he did not look to any famous tech moguls for inspiration with his performance.

"I think that those connections are there and present. I just felt it was there in the writing. Noah had taken care of that in the writing, and it's clearly there," he explains.

"And what I love is that [Boy Kavalier] also has his specific obsessions, and it's that kind of thing that really is the scary thing about people like that, which is that they live in their own universes.

"They see themselves as superheroes. This guy thinks he's a superhero. He thinks that he owns everything, and he genuinely believes what he's doing is best for the world, not just best for him; he believes it's best for the planet. I found that really compelling to play."

Timothy Olyphant in Alien: Earth

When we note that Boy Kavalier is one of Alien: Earth's most scary characters in a show full of xenomorphs, Blenkin responds: "I'll take it".

The series is packed with action, which is often focused around the franchise's iconic and terrifying villains: those killer xenomorphs, with their huge shiny bodies, rows of teeth and acid blood.

As the show often utilised practical effects, the actors were on set performing against these creatures, with the latter played by humans in a costume, like in the 1979 film.

For Babou Ceesay, however, these practical effects were a bit too realistic.

"Noah does these really involved screen tests, which are incredible. He shoots it like he's shooting the series," he tells JOE.

"So my first encounter was with an eight-foot-tall xenomorph and that dome [head], that shiny dome.

"[It's] so tall, just coming down into your face - the teeth coming out, the animatronic additional internal teeth, the gloop falling from the mouth.

"Yeah, it was too much. Part of my brain did go: 'This is not a good situation to be in.'

"It was amazing because I really did think to myself: 'Oh wow, I'm feeling something. I know I'm standing there on a set and this isn't going to rip me apart for real.'

"But my subconscious went: 'No, wait a minute.'"

Alien: Earth's first two episodes will premiere on Disney+ on Wednesday, 13 August, while the rest of its eight episodes will drop weekly on Wednesdays.