It doesn’t take long for the monsters to appear in the new series “Alien: Earth.” In fact, they’re the same ones that first started terrorizing Sigourney Weaver when the “Alien” franchise began in 1979. Not the pitch-black, nigh-invincible, gorily lethal aliens known as xenomorphs, with their parasitic breeding and nightmarish visage — though they do play their role in “Earth.” No, these monsters are much closer to home: hubris, avarice, cruelty — all those very human traits that always make a dire situation all the more disastrous each time we return to the “Alien” universe.

“Earth,” which premieres Aug. 12 on FX and streams on FX on Hulu, has many of those same elements, and adds a few new ones to the mix: an Earth-based setting and a story in which the aliens — more than just one species this time! — are rarely the most monstrous thing on screen (though they are pretty horrifying).

Unfortunately, “Alien: Earth” gets the balance wrong. The prequel series, set two years before the events of the first “Alien,” spends too long setting up a story that only barely gets going by the time the eight-episode season comes to an end. Its examination of identity — something the “Alien” movies started tackling in “Resurrection” and the prequel films “Prometheus” and “Covenant” — is less insightful than it wants to be, buckling under the weight of its own unanswered questions. And far too often it feels like two separate plots stitched together, a Frankenstein’s monster of existentialism and aliens ripping people apart.

It’s not that the “Alien” franchise hasn’t dealt with those themes before; it has, just in more concentrated doses. “Earth,” instead, meanders, taking hours to ponder what it means to be human as the story introduces us to the first half of its core concept: hybrids, synthetic beings infused with the consciousness of a human. It’s 2120 on Earth, and governments have gone the way of the dodo. Five megacorporations run the planet now, including Weyland-Yutani, which has long been at the center of most “Alien” crises.

But it’s a new company, Prodigy, that has created these hybrids. Before Prodigy can start selling this tech to the public as a means of immortality, testing must be done. And in “Earth,” that means taking the consciousness of dying children and putting them in synthetic bodies that look like young adults. Wendy (Sydney Chandler) is the first created by Prodigy CEO Boy Kavalier (Samuel Blenkin), a wunderkind with a cruel superiority complex and a deeply unhealthy relationship with “Peter Pan.” A handful more follow suit, all named after the Lost Boys from the novel. (Creepy, I know.)

Alongside that plot is the one that involves the actual aliens. A Weyland-Yutani ship has crash-landed on Earth — in a location controlled by Boy — and it just happens to contain five very dangerous alien species aboard, including the franchise’s best-known monster. (My favorite, though, is a new one, a tiny creature that looks like a fusion between an eyeball and octopus; the implications of the little terror is the most interesting part of the entire show.)

The two threads meet as Boy sends Wendy and the other hybrids to collect what’s on the ship. If you’ve watched any piece of “Alien” media before, you know containment never works in the long run. In “Earth,” part of the fun is waiting to see just who messes up and lets loose the monsters.

Once everyone is in the same place — a secluded island that could have been ripped straight from “Jurassic Park”; in fact, there are more than a few shades of that movie here — the series starts to find its footing. It just takes far too many episodes to get there.

But that’s just “Earth” in general: It’s an uneven experience. It has what may be the most confusing recaps I’ve seen and a xenomorph that looks oddly fake. But then you get an amazing midseason episode back aboard the doomed ship and other aliens that will truly creep you out. The dialogue ranges from legitimate conversations about self and family to over-the-top speeches that come off as cartoonishly diabolical. And as a longtime “Alien” fan (the first film and the video game Alien: Isolation are among my favorite media), I know people do idiotic things, but some of the decisions made in “Earth” make me wonder how humanity ever survived long enough in this franchise to get to space. (Timothy Olyphant’s Kirsh, a purely synthetic being, is the only person with some common sense in all of “Earth,” and I adore every scene he’s in.)

I can appreciate “Alien: Earth” trying something different; you can only do the same shtick so many times. And once the setup is out of the way, there’s enough here to warrant a second season (which “Earth” clearly sets up in its finale). A tighter focus would have gone a long way but it’s hardly the worst “Alien” entry. (Looking at you, “Resurrection.”) We all know that lessons are never learned in the world of “Alien”; let’s hope that’s not the case for “Alien: Earth.”

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'ALIEN: EARTH'

Rating: TV-MA

How to watch: Premieres at 8 p.m. ET Aug. 12 on FX and streaming on FX on Hulu, with new episodes premiering Tuesdays through Sept. 23.

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