Captain Bach, an astronaut, is in the hospital after coming down with a mysterious illness following a space-walk. As Bach’s condition worsens, the hospital staff notice worrying signs in her culminating in the discovery that she brought something back to Earth with her…
This episode contains examples of:
- Big Creepy-Crawlies: The alien resembles a large wasp.
- Chest Burster: The alien gives poor Captain Bach an even more gruesome example of this fate than the Xenomorph Chest Burster. By the time her body is found, it looks like it was completely ravaged.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: Captain Bach suffers from her body being poisoned by the alien growing inside of her to the point her skin becomes necrotic. When the alien begins erupting, she goes through the usual horrors that a victim of a Chest Burster goes through.
- Deconstruction: The episode points out the grim likelihood that given the vastness of space, humanity’s first encounter with a real alien will likely be with a parasitic organism than a sentient species looking to make contact.
- Downer Ending: While the nurse survives her ordeal with the alien, it may not matter in the long run. The alien has escaped into the rest of the world and is strongly implied to be capable of asexual reproduction even if it can’t find a host to spread its species to. A hostile, seemingly invincible new species has just been unleashed on Earth, and the government is covering it up for unknown reasons. Things end on a very frightening and uncertain note.
- Expy: The titular alien is a send-up to the Xenomorph of Alien.
- Government Conspiracy: All records of the alien were seized by the government to cover it up.
- Heroic Sacrifice: The doctor tells the nurse to run while he tries to attack the alien with acid, but unfortunately it doesn’t work.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Out of panic, the nurse breaks quarantine protocol and it allows the alien to escape out into the world.
- Non-Malicious Monster: The alien is simply a parasitic organism with seemingly no higher goal than the propagation of its species. Unfortunately, Bach was the accidental carrier of it and it now has a whole new planet to spread into. The accompanying segments also note that humanity will likely encounter a primitive, non-malicious alien creature well before it meets any civilized species.
- Pintsized Powerhouse: The alien is smaller than a lithe adult woman’s torso but it’s still strong enough to overpower and kill armed humans.
- Sealed Evil in a Can: Downplayed. The alien is certainly a hostile threat to other living things, but it’s a Non-Malicious Monster. That said, it’s fair for nobody to want it to escape the hospital once it’s put on lockdown - and unfortunately, it escapes the can.
- To Serve Man: The alien is implied to be feeding on the security guard who fell victim to it.
- Xenomorph Xerox: Uniquely Played With. The alien’s life-cycle as a parasitic organism that violently erupts from its host is obviously meant as an homage to Alien, but this trope usually sees the resulting creature act like the adult Xenomorph. The alien is like an alien wasp rather than a man-sized predator (no pun intended).
