Filming the Nostromo recreation sequence in Alien: Earth Episode 5 required a drone flying "at what felt like 50 miles an hour"

Noah Hawley's Alien: Earth shifted gears with Episode 5, 'In Space, No One...,' by moving its narrative away from Prodigy's research lab to the Maginot. The recent episode in this Ridley Scott's Alien movie prequel series finally featured the final moments on the Weyland-Yutani vessel, before it crash-landed onto Earth's surface.

The intense hour of the sci-fi series also revealed the saboteur aboard the Maginot, who was responsible for unleashing the various alien forms on Earth, leaving them at the disposal of Boy Kavalier.

Additionally, since most of the action in Episode 5 was set on Maginot, the series also paid homage to Scott's Nostromo from the 1979 movie, as it is built quite similarly to the flagship's star freighter's design.

More on Alien: Earth Episode 5 in our article.

Noah Hawley breaks down the Nostromo recreation sequence in Alien: Earth Episode 5

Alien: Earth Episode 5 featured a welcome change in its narrative by flashing back to the events aboard the Maginot, moments before it crashed into Prodigy's Kingdom and unleashed five lethal life forms in its wake. While 'In Space, No One...' was a dramatically long hour in Hawley's sci-fi series, it filled many blank spaces for the Maginot's crews during those fateful moments.

In a recent interview with ScreenRant, Hawley broke down how his team filmed the Nostromo recreation sequence in Alien: Earth Episode 5, saying:

''I had a guy flying a drone down those hallways at what felt like 50 miles an hour. I couldn’t believe he navigated it, but that’s an energy that felt new to me, to add into it over time.''

Additionally, one of the most intense sequences from Episode 5 is when Zoya Zaveri is chased by a Xenomorph, after which she asks the security officer Morrow to rescue her. While Morrow prioritized the creatures over the lives of his crew, Hawley took a different approach to capture Zaveri's final moments and her one-sided battle with the xenomorph.

Breaking down this monumental sequence, Hawley revealed how he used a split zoom with two camera set-ups, where one camera lens zoomed on actress Richa Moorjani (who plays Zaveri) and the other on her enemy in the hallway, ie, the xenomorph.

Additionally, Hawley also took advice from Scott and used his hand-held camera technique to capture Zaveri's fear in her final moments in Alien: Earth Episode 5. While the hand-held camera technique is rarely used in productions nowadays, Hawley revealed how it captured the exact feeling needed in the sequence:

''I’ve never been a fan, in my own work, of handheld, but here it was the right tool in a lot of different places, as things get out of control, the camera feels less in control. That makes sense to me. Doesn’t make sense to me in a Coen Brothers universe, but it made sense to me here.''

Alien Earth Episode 5: The Nostromo recreation sequence was an ode to the original Alien film

Noah Hawley's latest comments about the Nostromo recreation sequence in Alien: Earth indicate that the sci-fi series is honouring Scott's original movie and impressively expanding the franchise. While the first four episodes tapped into the research centre on the Island, the recent episode took us back in time and into the action. Hawley is not only inspired by Scott's techniques, but the dynamic between his Maginot crew also mimics that of Nostromo to a certain degree.

Episode 5 revealed how Morrow was abandoned by his mother, following which his Yutani grandmother took him in and replaced his palsied hand with a mutated part, thus making him into a cyborg. This change in his anatomy also replaced his humanity with machine-like coldness, which ultimately led him to choose the creatures over Zaveri.

Morrow's coldness and moral dilemma are highly reminiscent of Ash's from the original movie, and the series will continue to tap into more lore from the Alien movie.

Alien: Earth Episode 5 is now streaming on Hulu and FX.

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Also Read: Species 64 in Alien: Earth might be a bigger threat than the Xenomorphs

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