“All of this happened before, and it will all happen again.” Peter Pan

That Self had the privilege of sitting in on the virtual press conference for Noah Hawley’s latest venture, Alien: Earth, featuring the showrunner, Noah Hawley, executive producer David W. Zucker, and cast members Sydney Chandler (Wendy), Alex Lawther (Hermit), Timothy Olyphant (Kirsh), Babou Ceesay (Morrow), and Samuel Blenkin (Boy Kavalier). Much of the session’s attention focused on the show’s creator and the foundation he’s put in place for the new show.

How do you bring a fresh perspective to something that audiences are so familiar with? It takes the confidence of someone who has already successfully resurrected a cinema-to-television adaptation, as Noah Hawley did with Fargo. The filmmaker seems motivated by more than just the popularity of this particular intellectual property, aiming to bring additional value to its already storied existence: “My responsibility in bringing Alien to the small screen is really to try to create a vision of the future … the characters in the show are working through this question of what it means to be human, and can humanity survive its own sins and maybe brings some optimism to the world.” Hawley remained stoic throughout his answers, his effortless demeanour belying the difficulty of adapting the long-beloved franchise for the idiot box.

Along with science fiction, Hawley has layered many additional genres into his version of the story, with a firm nod to the speculative fiction traits that were sprinkled into previous iterations. At the same time, he ventures one step further, adding fantasy to the mix with a pseudo-adaptation of Earthling tale, Peter Pan.

“Once I started with this idea of bringing children into this story—the human minds transferred into synthetic bodies—then the Peter Pan analogy came pretty quickly after that” said Hawley, who is raising children of his own—part of the reason he chose to use the J.M. Barrie work to guide his arc of the show. “It became clear that the CEO who invents this hybrid technology should be the Peter Pan character himself in Boy Kavalier,” Hawley explained, expanding on an answer from actor Samuel Blenkin, who plays the devious and unpredictably fascistic character. The in-depth answer came after a press question about the collaboration between Blenkin, Hawley, and costume designer Suttirat Anne Larlab, and their choice to have Blenkin’s character go barefoot.

Though Hawley’s particular brand of fantasy brings something fresh to the franchise, fantasy as a concept has appeared in previous Alien works via the android David (Michael Fassbender) in both Prometheus and Covenant. David can be quite childlike in his curiosity and actions, and his eternal youth feels, at the very least, fantasy adjacent. Hawley has now elevated that idea to a foundational trait of this new entry into franchise.

Given that jumping off point, what–if anything–was discussed with the father of the franchise, Ridley Scott? “I started talking to Sir Ridley early in the process. I had done my due diligence in thinking through an idea that I wanted to explore within the show.” On what kind input he received from the veteran filmmaker, Hawley continued: “I wanted to know … what was in his mind going into Prometheus and Covenant?” He praised the knight for his prolific nature, too, pointing out that in the course of making this single season of television, the 87-year-old director had made three or four huge films, including The Last Duel, House of Gucci, Gladiator II, and Napoleon. Timothy Olyphant quipped to Hawley that maybe he’ll eventually have the stamina, too: “In thirty years, you’ll get there.”

Olyphant’s real-life jovial qualities are perfect for his turn as the steely Kirsh in Alien: Earth. “Just like the last one I did with Noah … [this job] was just a joy. It’s child’s play. It’s a ton of fun. The material is great.” His charisma punches through the surface of the principal character’s robotic persona, a well-thought-out move by Casting Director Kate Rhodes James. Olyphant’s Kirsh is the latest in a line of synthetic characters played by the illustrious likes of Ian Holm, Lance Hendriksen, and the previously mentioned Fassbender. These androids often represent a single facet of humanity, or at the very least they cause audiences to question the human soul is.

The press conference never stepped away from the youth, humanity, and ‘Peter Pan’ of the new series for long, and nor do the questions for the showrunner and his new vision for a franchise that has held its place in cinema for over forty-five years. Hawley burrs down to the core of what Alien is about: “Humanity trapped between nature and technology, and they’re both trying to kill us. The question becomes, in an Alien movie, can these two or three human beings survive?” Delving into his venture to change the medium, he added, “in the show, it’s ‘can humanity itself survive,’ which leads to the sort of natural follow up question like, ‘well, do we deserve to survive? Can we rise as a species?’”

The creator then led us back to the fantasy element, highlighting the idea that both Peter Pan (despite its title) and Alien: Earth are really about Wendy (played by Sydney Chandler in the series). So how does Hawley justify invoking the timeless classic (adapted and used as an allegory for over a hundred years) when embarking on something fresh, and in a new format? “The best way to explore [humanity] is to look at the adult human world through the eyes of a child. Because children, of course, you know, they’re bad liars. They don’t know how to pretend. They’re not scared… They don’t take for granted some of the things that adults take for granted.” He expanded, “And so going in through Wendy’s point of view, and the other Lost Boys, really allowed her to have the sort of pure decency at the heart of her that could then confront the sort of complacency, you know, all the way up to the evils of the adult world.” Of all the reprises of Peter Pan, it is refreshing to see this century-old work taken into the future, even if the future is both treacherous and uncertain. It seems appropriate that Peter Pan may never have to grow as old and outdated, in keeping with the theme of Neverland itself.

Hawley ended the session by talking about his duty, not only as the new custodian to the franchise, but to what the sci-fi genre can contribute to the larger picture of the world as a whole: “I think what drew me to this and what I want the audience to take away from it … is my ambition for this genre to be bigger than just entertainment, for it to provide the entertainment, to be a fun show, with all the action and horror we have. But I think science fiction has a responsibility to really look at the issues that we’re wrestling with on this earth and try to envision a future in which we can solve them.”

FX’s Alien: Earth premieres with two episodes on Tuesday, August 12 at 8pm ET on FX and on Disney+ in Canada.