Alien Earth is off to a cracking start with a solid 96 per cent on Rotten Tomatoes, and following the release of episode three, Metamorphosis, the pace is finally starting to pick up.
The first two episodes of Alien Earth, which are set two years before the events of the original movie, saw a Weyland-Yutani spaceship crash into a rival company’s country. Contained inside the spaceship was a menagerie of terrifying creatures, including the iconic Xenomorph and a bunch of those face-hugger eggs. Naturally, the big boss of the company, Boy Kavalier, sends his synth-human hybrid kids to collect the valuable merchandise for research and development.
Whilst dodging eyeball-eating aliens and a fully grown Xenomorph, a few of the hybrids come across Morrow, a cyborg security officer who works for their competitors, Weyland-Yutani. It’s then that he offers the rather cryptic riddle.
Right, so what does ‘When is a machine not a machine’ actually mean?
In Alien Earth’s Metamorphosis, after clocking that the hybrids are synthetic in nature and not organic, Morrow asks them whether they’d follow orders to hurt someone. One of the hybrids, Slightly, questions whether the people they’d be hurting were bad, which concerned Morrow.
“You don’t know? Is that possible?” Morrow questioned, because simply put, a mechanical device is supposed to follow orders without question. “When is a machine not a machine?”
Though not confirmed, there are a few running theories about what Morrow meant in Alien Earth’s Metamorphosis.
The first is that a machine isn’t a machine when it questions orders. Machines are built for a purpose, only operating on the whims of its creator. Essentially, if a machine rejects a request for any reason that isn’t purely logistical, can it truly be considered a machine? Even though their bodies are synthetic, because Slightly and the rest of the hybrids have thoughts, feelings, and biases of their own, can they really be considered machines?
When is a machine not a machine?” from the TV series Alien: Earth………..The answer is: A machine is not a machine when it ceases to follow its designated purpose or commands—when it acts on its own, forms an identity, or operates independently without an operator.
— mark gilmore (@biggilfoot) August 20, 2025
Other people have suggested that Morrow could have been referring to himself. As a human who was mechanically enhanced, leaving only the “worst parts of a man”, is Morrow longing for the full emotional detachment of being a synth?
As is the case with the rest of the Alien franchise, the riddle is also a comment on capitalism, the separation of technology and humanity, and our quest for technological prowess.
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Featured image credit: Disney/Twitter
