So far it is really nailing the vibes of the first two films. It takes place a couple decades prior to Alien and one of the new plot points is that an up and coming rival corpo city state to Wayland Yutani is porting the minds of terminally ill and disabled children into synthetic bodies.
The cast does a phenomenal job of portraying kids in adult bodies with their mannerisms, humor, and body language and it has all the clicky clack retro sci fi the series is known for an I fucking love it so far.
Definitely a mix of both films in terms of themes and action. There is clearly some Aliens feel with some military grunts investigating a crashed ship and also some Alien vibes with the slow burn of the first couple episodes. I highly recommend for fans of either of those movies.
It feels like Ridley Scott doesn’t commit to lore and backstory in his franchises and just wings it as he goes along. That’s why everything in the Alien franchise feels disconnected from each other aside from the two OG films.
Fortunately this I think has little if any involvement from him and ep 5 really REALLY fucking pays off. It could have been extended into its own proper homage film to the original Alien. It is SO fucking good.