Alien (1979): Nostromo Story, Novel, And Unused Draft

Alien (1979) is a science fiction horror film directed by Ridley Scott that introduced the Xenomorph and launched the long-running Alien franchise. The story followed the crew of the commercial towing vessel USCSS Nostromo as they responded to a mysterious transmission from the moon LV-426. What began as a routine investigation soon turned into a deadly encounter with a previously unknown extraterrestrial organism. The film mixed space exploration with claustrophobic horror and set down many of the themes, corporations, and species that later defined the wider Alien universe. Its success opened the door for sequels, expanded universe stories, and the lasting popularity of the Xenomorph.

Film Overview

Released in 1979, Alien blended science fiction and horror in a way rarely seen in mainstream cinema at the time. The film emphasized slow tension and isolation rather than action, portraying space travel as industrial and dangerous rather than glamorous. Much of the story took place aboard the Nostromo, a commercial spacecraft owned by the Weyland-Yutani Corporation. When the ship's crew investigated a distress signal on LV-426, they unknowingly brought a lethal alien organism back on board. As the creature grew and hunted the crew through the ship's corridors, the surviving members struggled to understand the threat and find a way to stop it.

Plot Summary

The Nostromo crew came out of hypersleep after Mother locked onto a transmission from LV-426. Company rules treated a possible distress call as required work, so Captain Dallas left the ore refinery in a holding orbit and put the tug down on the moon. Dallas, Kane, and Lambert crossed the storm to a derelict ship. Kane climbed into a hold packed with strange eggs.

A Facehugger sprang from one egg and locked onto Kane's face. Warrant Officer Ripley held the airlock shut under quarantine. Science officer Ash opened it anyway and brought Kane inside. When they tried to cut the parasite free, its acid blood burned through deck after deck before it cooled. Hours later the Facehugger dropped off dead, Kane woke, and the crew sat down to eat as if the crisis had ended.

During that meal the Chestburster tore out of Kane and fled into the ducts. It grew into an adult Xenomorph within hours and began taking the crew through the vents. Ash built a short-range tracking device so the survivors could hunt it, but the creature still moved faster than they could seal a compartment.

Brett went looking for Jones the cat and was taken first, in a landing-leg bay. Dallas then crawled the air shafts with a flamethrower, hoping to drive the Alien toward an airlock. The vents swallowed him instead. That left Ripley, Parker, Lambert, and Ash on a ship they could no longer hold.

Ellen Ripley forced Mother to open the hidden file. Special Order 937 told Ash to bring the organism home and treated the rest of the crew as expendable. When she confronted him, the science officer was exposed as a Weyland-Yutani synthetic. Parker wrecked Ash's body. The three survivors then set the Nostromo to blow and went for the shuttle, but Parker and Lambert were killed while they collected coolant for the Narcissus shuttle.

After Parker and Lambert were killed, Ripley initiated the Nostromo's self-destruct, went back for Jones, and launched alone in the Narcissus before the ship exploded. She prepared the shuttle for hypersleep without noticing that the Xenomorph had already hidden in the escape craft. Once she found it, she put on a pressure suit, opened the airlock, and blew the creature into space, then recorded a final message and hoped to be picked up. In the later Director's Cut she also found Dallas and Brett cocooned in the hold, already being turned into more eggs by eggmorphing.

Main Cast And Characters

The Nostromo crew consisted of seven members, each responsible for different aspects of the ship's operation. Their arguments over quarantine, salvage, and company orders mattered as much as the Alien itself once the crisis began.

• Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) - Warrant Officer and eventual survivor of the Nostromo incident.
• Arthur Dallas (Tom Skerritt) - Captain of the Nostromo.
• Thomas Kane (John Hurt) - Executive Officer who first encountered the alien organism.
• Joan Lambert (Veronica Cartwright) - Navigation officer.
• Dennis Parker (Yaphet Kotto) - Chief engineer.
• Samuel Brett (Harry Dean Stanton) - Engineering technician.
• Ash (Ian Holm) - Science officer secretly acting under Weyland-Yutani directives.

The Xenomorph in Alien

Alien introduced audiences to the full life cycle of the Xenomorph species. The creature progressed through several stages, beginning with the egg, followed by the Facehugger parasite, the chestburster larval stage, and finally the fully grown adult organism. This life cycle became one of the most distinctive elements of the Alien universe and remained central to later films and expanded lore. The adult Xenomorph aboard the Nostromo displayed extreme intelligence, stealth, and physical resilience. It navigated the ship's ventilation shafts and maintenance corridors, allowing it to ambush crew members with little warning. Its acid blood and powerful exoskeleton made conventional weapons ineffective, forcing the crew to rely on improvised tactics to survive.

The Nostromo

The USCSS Nostromo served as the primary setting of the film. It was a commercial towing vessel tasked with transporting large quantities of mineral ore across interstellar distances. The ship's industrial design reflected the working-class environment of its crew, contrasting sharply with the advanced technology often depicted in science fiction films. The Nostromo was operated by the ship's artificial intelligence system known as MU-TH-UR, which managed navigation, communications, and mission directives. Unknown to most of the crew, the system also contained secret orders from Weyland-Yutani instructing Ash to secure the alien organism at any cost.

The Derelict Ship and the Space Jockey

One of the most mysterious discoveries in Alien occurred when the Nostromo crew explored the derelict spacecraft on LV-426. Inside the vessel they encountered the remains of a massive alien pilot later referred to as the Space Jockey. The fossilized creature appeared to have been fused into the ship's control chair, suggesting it had died thousands of years earlier. The derelict carried thousands of eggs, either planned to be used as bio-weapons in a "bombing run", or transformed from the ship's crew.

Place in the Alien Timeline

Alien (1979) takes place in the year 2122 within the wider Alien timeline. The events occurred decades after humanity began establishing colonies across multiple star systems under the influence of Weyland-Yutani. The Nostromo incident became one of the earliest recorded encounters between humans and the Xenomorph species. Closest to the first Alien movie in the timeline is Alien: Earth, set in 2120, and Alien: Romulus, set in 2142.

Behind The Scenes

In July 1977, Dan O'Bannon sent H.R. Giger a thousand-dollar cheque with egg sketches and Cobb drawings left from the abandoned Jodorowsky Dune job. The first egg chamber was a pyramid whose rooms followed a Swiss egg carton. Giger gave the Facehugger a tail that worked as a spring, taken from a clockwork jumping toy, and a pincer that forced the mouth open. Fox and Ridley Scott hired him after they saw H.R. Giger's Necronomicon. Gordon Carroll, Scott, and David Giler reached Zurich on 8 February 1978, with Shepperton already booked and a May 1979 opening set. Giger labeled the adult monster Alien III, the part the film had to sell.

Scott cut a plate from that book and asked for an eight-metre pilot fused to the derelict chair. Peter Voysey first modeled the figure in plasticine at 1/25 scale, then a polyester cast on a steel-tube frame was lifted onto a five-foot turntable in Stage A. Giger sat on the scaffold, glazed the transparent body in sepia, and rubbed on thin latex so the skin looked porous and rotten. The same Stage A set had to become the egg chamber within a week. On Stage H, Voysey cut the oval wreck doors from styrofoam and hung them on wood with jute and plaster, with cork chips in the mix so the hull looked weather-eaten. The budget would not cover a single snail-shell corridor from the door to the cockpit, so Scott used the underside of the finished derelict as the gangway.

Scott then shot Alien at Shepperton Studios near London, with the LV-426 surface and derelict exterior built as full soundstage sets. Giger's biomechanical ribs rose out of dark sand and studio fog, and Scott put smaller performers, including his own children, into the bulky EVA suits so the surrounding structure looked enormous. Miniature work for the moon and ships was handled nearby at Bray Studios, where Brian Johnson built three Nostromo models: a 12-inch long-shot version, a 4-foot rear-angle version, and a 12-foot, 7-short-ton rig for undocking. Ron Cobb and Chris Foss designed the tug. Cobb's interiors were one contiguous walkable stage, with clear plastic roofs and flamethrowers used to push light into the corridors. In O'Bannon's draft the warrant officer was a man named Martin Roby. Scott recast the role as a woman before Sigourney Weaver was hired.

Graphic-design student Bolaji Badejo wore the adult Alien suit for the key corridor work, with stunt performers covering extra movement, while Carlo Rambaldi built the mechanical head and inner jaw. Roger Dicken made the foam-rubber facehugger, with Cobb adding the musculature and bone layout, then rebuilt the chestburster after Giger's first "degenerate plucked turkey" puppet proved too large for a ribcage. The mess-hall birth used three Dicken puppets: a hard plaster unit to punch through the chest, a snarling articulated hero with a spring neck and air-driven jaws, and a third for the scramble across the table. John Hurt put his head and arms through a hole while an artificial torso packed with blood and butcher's entrails was bolted in place, and the shirt had to be weakened with acid and razor blades after early takes failed to puncture it.

Novelization

Warner Books published Alan Dean Foster's Alien novelization in 1979, working from Dan O'Bannon's screenplay. Foster woke the crew naked from the freezers, named Mother the ship's Mind Bank, and had Lambert call Antarctica traffic control with registration 180 246 while the tug towed crude oil and a working refinery. Company contract language forced them to investigate any systematic transmission of possible intelligent origin or forfeit pay and bonuses. Ash had been swapped in two days before they left Thedus. The landing wrecked intake 3, and Ash plotted the derelict about 3000 metres northeast. The chestburster had arms and legs, and the adult Alien had eyes.

Comic Adaptation

Heavy Metal published Alien: The Illustrated Story in 1979, scripted by Archie Goodwin and drawn by Walt Simonson. Dallas shut off the derelict beacon, and the chestburster was drawn with a different body than the film puppet. Simonson put Big Chap folded into a compact organic box in Ripley's path as she ran for the Narcissus with Jones. He had seen that unfold in a rough cut and was told it was still in the picture when he locked the pages. The theatrical film dropped it for a brief corridor glimpse, so the sequence survived mainly in the graphic novel.

Original Screenplay Adaptation

Dark Horse published Alien: The Original Screenplay in 2020, adapting Dan O'Bannon's 1976 Star Beast draft rather than the 1979 theatrical cut. Writer Cristiano Seixas and artist Guilherme Balbi put the crew on the commercial starship Snark, registration E180246, a standalone freighter already heading home when it intercepted an alien transmission. That ship was not towing a refinery, and the landing party found a plantlike wreck instead of Giger's biomechanical crescent.

Inside that wreck sat a star-headed Space Jockey, a giant multi-armed corpse in a chair with spikes radiating from the skull like a star over a glowing star-map floor. The landing party took the head back to the Snark and found the eggs in a nearby pyramid rather than the derelict hold. Navigator Dell Broussard was facehugged by a purple tentacled parasite, and a four-limbed hatchling later tore out of him in the mess hall before growing into an adult with a leaner animal silhouette than Kane's Son, a hard carapace, and a long crest instead of the film's industrial tubing. First Officer Martine Roby later found Captain Chaz Standard half-alive in a green cocoon as the Snark became the creature's nest.

Video Game Adaptations

Fox Video Games put Alien on the Atari 2600 in 1982 as a maze chase through the Nostromo. The closest later remake sat inside Alien: Isolation: Crew Expendable and Last Survivor put players back on that ship as Dallas, Parker, Lambert, and Ripley. The 2014 campaign itself followed Amanda Ripley as she hunted the Nostromo flight recorder on Sevastopol Station, then rebuilt Kane's Son as a full digital suit.

Legacy

Alien won the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects for H.R. Giger, Carlo Rambaldi, Brian Johnson, Nick Allder, and Dennis Ayling. Fox issued Scott's 2003 Director's Cut with the Dallas and Brett cocoons restored, and the same Quadrilogy set became the home-video standard for the first four films. Company salvage crews later recovered Kane's Son from space and took that drone to Renaissance Station as research stock.

Sigourney Weaver's warrant officer stayed the through-line of the film series until her death on Fiorina 161, then returned only as a clone. Prometheus recast Giger's fossil pilot as an Engineer, which the 1979 shoot had left unnamed in the derelict chair. The Nostromo's industrial corridors, the life cycle, and Special Order 937 remained the template later films either copied or argued with.

Box Office

20th Century Fox opened Alien on May 25, 1979 against an $11 million budget. It took $3.5 million over the four-day Memorial Day weekend from 91 theaters, set 51 house records, and held number one in the United States for three weeks. The first US run reached $78.9 million. Worldwide totals then split by how later reissues are counted, from about $109.7 million to $188 million. In 1992 Fox listed the worldwide take at $143 million.

Famous Quotes

The 1979 campaign sold Alien with the line "In space no one can hear you scream." The film itself left lines from Ripley, Ash, Parker, Brett, and Mother.

• Tagline: "In space no one can hear you scream."
• Ripley: "If we let it in, the ship could be infected. You know the quarantine procedure. Twenty-four hours for decontamination."
• Brett: "Here, kitty. Here, kitty, kitty. Jones. Jonesy?"
• Parker: "This son of a bitch is huge! I mean, it's like a man. It's big!"
• Ripley: "We'll move in pairs. We'll go step by step and cut off every bulkhead and every vent until we have it cornered, and then we'll blow it the fuck out into space."
• Mother: "Bring back life form. Priority One. All other priorities rescinded."
• Parker: "It's a robot! Ash is a goddamn robot!"
• Ash: "You still don't understand what you're dealing with, do you? A perfect organism. Its structural perfection is matched only by its hostility."
• Ash: "I admire its purity. A survivor unclouded by conscience, remorse, or delusions of morality."
• Ash: "I can't lie to you about your chances, but... you have my sympathies."
• Ripley: "Final report of the commercial starship Nostromo, third officer reporting."
• Ripley: "This is Ripley, last survivor of the Nostromo, signing off."

External Sources

• Alien (1979) on IMDb
• Alien (1979) Official Movie Page
• Alien (1979) on Wikipedia
• Alien (1979) on Box Office Mojo
• Giger's Alien at Titan Books

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Tag Categories: Alien Movies