Alien: The Original Screenplay: Plot & Characters

Alien: The Original Screenplay is a five-issue comic series published by Dark Horse Comics from August to December 2020, adapted by Cristiano Seixas and drawn by Guilherme Balbi from Dan O'Bannon's original 1976 script, which was first titled Star Beast. It was part of Dark Horse's "20th Century Fox Uncovered" line. The ships and creatures were designed from the descriptions in the script, as they were imagined before H.R. Giger, Moebius or Ron Cobb joined the project. The story follows the six crew members of the cargo ship Snark, who answered an alien transmission on a lonely planetoid and brought back something that hunted them one by one.

Plot Summary

Waking Aboard The Snark

The commercial cargo ship Snark was returning from a long haul when its computer woke the crew of six from their hypersleep freezers. Captain Chaz Standard, First Officer Martine Roby, Dell Broussard, Cleave Hunter, Jay Faust and Melkonis climbed out cold and stiff, joking that they looked like vampires rising from their graves. They expected to be rich once the cargo was sold, and Hunter talked about buying a cattle ranch. Standard ordered everyone to dress and report to their posts so the ship could find out where it was.

Melkonis scanned the whole sky and found that the Snark was nowhere near Earth. The computer had interrupted the voyage near Zeta II Reticuli, short of the outer rim of explored space. It explained that it had picked up a voice transmission of unknown origin, and that the voice was not human. The crew had been woken because company rules required a ship to investigate any signal of that kind. Most of them were annoyed at the delay, but the transmission was still repeating, and Standard had the computer play it back.

The Signal From The Planetoid

The signal came from a small planetoid about 120 kilometers across, with a two-hour rotation and a gravity of .86, low enough to walk on. At a meeting around the table, the crew argued over what to do. Roby wanted to radio the exploration authorities and let them handle it, while Hunter wanted the credit and the reward for the first contact with a nonhuman intelligence. Roby added that a reply from the authorities would take seventy-five years. Standard decided the matter herself and told Roby she was overruled.

The Snark entered orbit and dropped toward the source of the transmission. From above, the planetoid looked stormy for a piece of rock that size, and Melkonis noted that the clouds were not water vapor at all. The readings showed no moisture content, only dust. Standard put the ship in atmospheric mode and had the lifter guards activated. The crew strapped in while the computer called out the descent, unaware of what the voice on the planetoid was trying to tell them.

Landing In The Dust Storm

The descent took the Snark through heavy atmospheric turbulence and a dust storm. Line of sight was impossible, and radar and sonar gave only noise, until an ultraviolet scan showed a flat plain of basalt rock. The ship came down hard. Its intakes had clogged with dust, the engines overheated and burned out a whole cell, and Faust had to start repairs that would take a long time. Outside it was night, and the rock rotated every two hours, so the crew waited for the sun.

The air outside was 10 percent argon, 85 percent nitrogen and 5 percent neon, with trace elements, and it was unbreathable. Roby found no microorganisms, only rock particles and dust. The source of the transmission was a few hundred meters to the northeast, close enough to walk to. Standard, Broussard and Melkonis volunteered for the exploration party. They put on breathing masks and armored suits, took weapons and stepped out through the outer door, with Roby following them on her board from inside the ship.

Inside The Derelict

The party walked through blowing dust until the signal faded on Roby's screens. Then they found a huge alien spacecraft half buried in the sand, with long spines along its hull. A door hung open and the entrance was choked with debris. Inside, the walls were full of holes, and Broussard said the place looked like Swiss cheese. One shaft went up several decks as if a disintegrator had been fired inside it. The team used climbing gear to reach the upper levels of the derelict ship.

In the control room they found a giant petrified skeleton seated at a console, a star-headed pilot that had been dead for a very long time. Something had been scratched into the veneer beside it. A mechanism stirred, and the startled explorers drew their weapons, but they soon realized that the transmission was only an automatic recording. Back aboard the Snark, the crew studied holographs of the Space Jockey remains. Roby pointed out a detail that bothered her. There had been only one skeleton, and the ship had been built for more.

Broussard Enters The Pyramid

While Faust kept working on the engines, the crew kept a souvenir from the derelict, a clawed limb from the skeleton, and one of them joked "Alas, poor Yorick" over it. At dawn the wind dropped, and Broussard spotted a pyramid on the horizon. Roby opposed another trip outside, but Standard, Broussard and Melkonis set out again. Meanwhile the computer finished translating the alien message. It was not a call for help. The few words it could read were "hostile", "survival" and "advise do not land", a warning to stay away.

Roby lost radio contact with the party, and Hunter took command until Standard returned. He refused to let Roby send anyone after them, because the ship could not spare the people. At the pyramid, Broussard climbed to the top and found an open hole. He insisted on going in alone on a cable, and Standard told him to be out in less than ten minutes. Below the chimney he found a warm, humid chamber with air he could breathe, and he stopped answering the radio.

Pulling Broussard Out

Broussard had reached a tomb lined with primitive carvings and rows of leathery jars, which he took for some kind of religious site. The inner surface of the room looked organic rather than built. Some of the jars were opening. As he bent over one, a creature burst out of it and wrapped itself around his face. Above him, Standard and Melkonis waited past the ten-minute limit and then began hauling him up by his cable when the line went slack.

When Broussard came out of the hole, the explorers saw that something was clamped to his face. The parasite was a purple, fleshy mass with tendrils, and Standard ordered Melkonis not to touch it. They carried him back to the Snark. Roby refused to open the airlock and cited the quarantine rules, but Hunter overrode her and let them in. Standard slapped Roby for trying to leave them outside, and the crew argued while Broussard was rushed to the autodoc.

The Acid Blood

The autodoc scans showed that the parasite had pushed a tube down Broussard's throat. It blocked his nose and mouth, but it was feeding him oxygen and kept him alive in a coma. The crew agreed it could not simply be pulled loose, because it might kill him. Standard put on a mask and made a small incision with a cutter. The parasite did not react, but a yellowish fluid leaked out of the wound and began to smoke as soon as it touched anything.

The fluid ate through the autodoc table and burned a hole in the floor. Hunter shouted that it was eating through the decks and might go out through the hull. The crew ran down through the ship after it, deck after deck, to see how far it would go. Melkonis lowered a probe into the hole and the tip came back dissolved. The acid blood finally fizzled out several decks down, and the crew realized the creature used it as a defense mechanism.

Smoke In The Infirmary

The smoke from the burning fluid filled the infirmary, and the crew doubled over coughing. Roby said the smoke was poisonous, and Hunter could barely stand. Standard tried to see whether the wound on the parasite could be bandaged, but when she looked again the cut had already healed. The creature was still in place on Broussard's face, and nothing the crew had tried had done more than hurt the ship.

Hunter, still angry at Roby, told her she deserved to be slapped. Roby answered that she understood why Standard had done it, and the crew tried to call the matter settled. The parasite stayed on Broussard while Faust kept working on the engines below. None of them knew that the creature had already done what it needed to do. The second issue ended with the crew waiting and Broussard lying still under the autodoc.

Reading The Datastick

When the acid had stopped, the crew looked at Broussard's datastick to see what had happened to him inside the pyramid. The recording showed the hieroglyphs carved on the walls of the tomb. Roby saw that the same thing must have happened to the beings on the derelict. They had taken one of the jars on board and opened it there. At first she had thought the jars were artifacts, but they were spore casings, and the pictures showed the parasites coming out of them.

Soon afterward the parasite let go of Broussard on its own and fell from his face. Its body was already decomposing and gave off acid fumes, so the crew carried it to the main lock and ejected it into space. Standard admitted to Roby that she had been right about the quarantine. Faust finished his repairs, and the Snark lifted off from the planetoid and set course for Earth. Broussard woke up and seemed completely well, and he was hungry.

Death In The Mess Hall

The crew gathered for a last meal before going back into the freezers. Broussard joked with the others at the table and ate well. Then he began to choke and convulse. As the others tried to hold him down, a creature tore its way out of his chest, spraying the table with blood. It was a small, worm-like animal, and it leapt across the food and the startled cat before it vanished into the ship. Broussard died at the table with a hole torn through his chest.

The crew stood over the body in shock. Hunter asked what the thing was, and Roby realized that it had been growing inside him the whole time. The parasite had used Broussard as an incubator, and he had never known it. The chestburster was now loose somewhere on the Snark. The surviving crew of five had a new problem. They could not go into hypersleep with the thing running around, and they could not kill it without its acid spilling through the hull.

Planning The Hunt

Standard pointed out that the ship's supplies were strictly limited and based on the crew spending most of the trip in suspended animation. They had already used up most of their spare time on the planetoid. The crew had about a week, and Standard decided they would flush the creature out room by room and corridor by corridor. They needed to trap it without injuring it and then eject it from the ship, so its acid could not hurt the hull.

The crew decided to cut a section of metallite netting, which would not hold against the acid for long but was strong. Roby suggested electric animal prods. They also built tracking devices that could pick up movement, and Standard gave a standing order that everyone wear helmets from then on. Melkonis spent a quiet moment in the observation dome, talking about water and about how utterly alone the crew was out there. Then the crew split into two teams and began the search.

Tracking The Creature

The two teams moved through the darkened decks with nets, prods and trackers. One tracker picked up something within four meters, and the hunters closed in. The hunters threw a net over the moving target and found that they had caught the ship's cat. One of them said they were making fools of themselves. The crew laughed off the false alarm, but the tension was rising and the trackers kept beeping as they swept through the ship.

Then Standard's team called over the radio. They had the creature cornered at last. Standard said they had got it up there and that it was trapped in the food storage room. She told the others to get up to her fast. The third issue ended with the crew racing to the room, hoping to net the creature and eject it before it could grow any further. None of them had seen the creature since it fled the mess.

The Food Storage Room

Standard had seen the creature inside and slammed the door on it. While the crew argued over whether to open the door and net it, loud crashes came from inside. Standard described the animal as completely different from the first one, more like a worm with legs and tentacles. One of the men wanted to pump poison gas into the room, but Roby reminded them that all their food supplies were in there. Then the noise stopped and the room went quiet.

The crew went in and found the stores torn apart and coated with slime. The creature had escaped through a vent in the wall. Faust checked the ship's charts and found that this section of the ventilator shaft had only two outlets. One end opened into the food storage room and the other into the cooling unit. The crew drew straws to decide who would crawl into the air shaft with a flamethrower, and Hunter drew the short one.

Melkonis At The Vent

The plan was for Hunter to enter the shaft from the food storage end and drive the creature toward the cooling unit, where the others would wait with the nets. Melkonis stood at the cooling unit vent and opened it to see what was happening. A tall, black creature lunged out of the shaft. It was no longer a small animal but a fully grown adult Xenomorph. It seized Melkonis and took off Melkonis's head in a single attack.

The others could only watch as the creature dragged the body into the darkness. Hunter said afterward that Melkonis's body had kept kicking. The crew now understood that the animal grew much faster than any of them had believed, and that their nets and prods were useless against it. Faust left to bring more fuel for the flamethrower. The others went back to the hieroglyphs to find out what the creature would do next and what it had already become.

The Adult Xenomorph In The Airlock

Studying the carvings, the crew worked out the creature's life cycle. The pictures showed spores, the parasite and then the big one, after which the pattern repeated, and Roby feared that more spores were coming. They also realized that the pyramid was a fertility temple, built by a race that had used the creatures in its rituals. Meanwhile, Faust walked alone through the dim corridors toward the main airlock to collect the fuel.

In the main airlock, the adult Xenomorph was waiting over the remains of its feeding. It hissed and attacked Faust, who tried to fight it off. Faust radioed that it was in the lock and told Roby to blow the main lock. Roby hesitated, but Faust repeated the order. With the creature on top of him and no way out, Faust wanted the airlock opened to space so the creature would be blown out with him.

Faust Dies In The Airlock Door

Roby triggered the lock. Faust tried to get out as the doors began to move, and he was caught between them and cut in half. The decompression tore at the ship, and Roby had to close the inner door manually to stop the air from rushing out. When the doors finally sealed, Faust was dead and the crew did not know if the creature had gone with him. They had lost a third member in a single day.

The blowout had cost the Snark much of its air, and only six hours of breathable air were left. Hunter and Standard argued about what to do next. The first idea was to shut down the engine cooling, let the Snark blow itself up and leave in the lifeboat. The lifeboat could not reach light speed, but the ship was already moving at light speed and the colonies would pick them up. Hunter complained that they would lose the minerals in the cargo hold and be broke. Then Roby, holding the cat, said she had a different idea that nobody would like.

Hunter Is Taken

Roby's plan was to rig the lifeboat with explosives, lure the creature inside and slam the hatch behind it. Then they would launch the boat and detonate the charges by radio once it was out in space, saving the ship and its cargo. The crew placed explosives along the lifeboat's wall joints. Someone had to stay by the lifeboat to work the hatch, and the others chose Roby "democratically". She waited at the controls while Hunter and Standard went to herd the creature toward her.

Hunter and Standard followed the tracker into the corridors. Standard ordered Hunter to stay behind her. Moments later, the adult Xenomorph dropped on Hunter and bit into his head. Standard opened fire with the flamethrower and engulfed both the creature and Hunter in the blast. Over the radio, Roby heard screaming and then nothing. She called for Standard and Hunter, but neither answered, so she took a flamethrower and went to look for them.

Standard In The Cocoon

Roby followed the tracker through the dark ship and found scattered bones on the floor. Further on, a strange growth of resin and fibers covered part of a room. Inside it, held in a cocoon, was Standard, still alive. Roby tried to pull her out and promised to take her to the autodoc, but Standard stopped her. Standard told Roby that the bones belonged to Melkonis and that the creature had eaten Hunter. The thing had been feeding on her as well.

Standard said the creature had eaten too much of her to be saved, and she begged Roby to kill her. Crying, Roby lit a flame and burned her captain inside the cocoon. She was now the last member of the crew. Roby fetched the cat and placed it in a carrier. She took a ten-kilo case of tacitum-35 from the cargo, enough, she said, to buy an island on some nice planet, and decided to destroy the Snark itself.

The Snark Explodes

Roby shut down the cooling units for the stardrive engines, and the computer warned that the engines would overload in under five minutes. On her way to the lifeboat, the adult Xenomorph appeared in the corridor and hissed at her. She fled, then tried to turn the cooling units back on, but the computer told her the reaction had gone too far and the core had begun to melt. With the countdown ringing through the ship, she ran.

Roby found the lifeboat hatch already open but could not see the creature anywhere. She strapped in with the cat and launched as the computer counted the last seconds. Behind her, the Snark exploded in a blinding flash and broke apart, taking its cargo and the bodies of her crew with it. Exhausted, Roby slumped in her seat, but the cat would not stop hissing at something behind the lifeboat's panels.

Blowing The Lifeboat Hatch

The adult Xenomorph had followed her aboard. It attacked, and Roby slammed a door between them and pulled on a spacesuit and helmet while the creature tore at the cat's carrier. She shot it with a bolt and hit the hatch release. The decompression blew the creature out of the lifeboat, but it caught hold of the hull and clung to the outside. Roby fired the lifeboat's ramjets, and the blast burned the creature to pieces.

Roby recorded her last log. With luck, she would reach the frontier in about 250 years, and the network would pick her up. She had saved one souvenir, the clawed limb from the derelict, which she hoped would prove she was not a crank. She wished they had met its owner first instead of the creature. Signing off as Martine Roby, executive officer and last survivor of the Snark, she went into hypersleep holding the cat.

Key Characters

• Martine Roby was the Snark's first officer and executive officer. She argued for quarantine and caution throughout, killed the adult Xenomorph with the lifeboat's ramjets and was the only survivor. She was the counterpart of Ellen Ripley in the film.
• Chaz Standard was the captain of the Snark, who led both trips outside and overruled Roby. She was taken by the creature and cocooned, and Roby burned her at her own request. She filled the role later given to Dallas.
• Dell Broussard was the crew member who went into the pyramid alone. A parasite attached itself to his face, and the creature later burst from his chest at the mess table. He was the counterpart of Kane.
• Melkonis was the Snark's scanning officer and joined both expeditions. The adult Xenomorph decapitated Melkonis at the cooling unit vent. The character's role went to Lambert in the film.
• Cleave Hunter was the bald, bearded crewman who wanted credit for the discovery and took command while Standard was away. The creature seized him in the corridors and he died in the flamethrower blast. He was the forerunner of Parker.
• Jay Faust was the engineer who repaired the Snark's engines. Attacked in the main airlock, he ordered Roby to blow the lock and was cut in half by the doors. His film counterpart was Brett.
• The Alien began as a parasite in a spore jar, grew inside Broussard and became a tall adult Xenomorph that killed most of the crew. Roby burned it in the exhaust of the lifeboat's ramjets.

Collected Editions

Dark Horse released the five issues monthly, with cover dates from August to December 2020. The final issue went on sale on December 2, 2020. Cristiano Seixas wrote the adaptation script, Guilherme Balbi drew the art, Candice Han colored it and Michael Heisler lettered it. Balbi and Han also made the standard covers, and Walter Simonson drew variant covers for the later issues with colors by Dave Stewart. Randy Stradley edited the series.

The hardcover Alien: The Original Screenplay was published by Dark Horse on December 2, 2020, the same day as the fifth issue. It collected all five issues in 112 pages. The series was originally planned to launch on Alien Day, April 26, 2020, but the schedule moved during that year. Dark Horse released a matching adaptation, Predator: The Original Screenplay, in the same line. After Marvel took over the license, the series was reprinted in Aliens: The Original Years Omnibus Vol. 4, released on March 15, 2023.

Behind The Scenes

The comic follows O'Bannon's draft rather than Alien (1979). The ship is the Snark and not the Nostromo, the crew numbers six instead of seven, and the six are all different characters with no android aboard. Ash and the subplot about the company's secret orders did not exist in the 1976 script. Mother is simply a ship's computer, and Roby, not a Ripley figure from the start, emerges as the survivor only as her shipmates die around her.

The planetoid holds two alien structures instead of one. The derelict holds only the petrified pilot, and the spore jars wait in a separate pyramid, which the crew identify as a fertility temple. The parasite is a purple, fleshy mass and not the film's crab, and the adult Xenomorph is a tall, spiny creature designed without Giger's biomechanical look. The cocoon scene that was cut from the 1979 film is kept, and the ending replaces the Narcissus shuttle with a lifeboat and a burst of ramjet fire.

Conclusion

Alien: The Original Screenplay is Dark Horse's 2020 adaptation of Dan O'Bannon's Star Beast draft, the script that became Alien. It follows the crew of the Snark from a warning signal on a dusty planetoid to a pyramid of spore jars, and from there to a creature that kills them one by one aboard their own ship.

The story ends with Martine Roby burning the adult Xenomorph off her lifeboat and drifting toward the colonies with the cat and a souvenir from the derelict. It shows how much of the film was already in the first draft and how much was added later, and it is listed among the best Alien comics on the site. Readers who want the film version in comic form can compare it with Alien: The Illustrated Story, and another unmade draft from the series became Alien 3: The Unproduced Screenplay. The O'Bannon creature also joins the other Xenomorph types and the wider list of Alien comics.

External Sources

• Alien: The Original Screenplay HC at Dark Horse
• Alien: The Original Screenplay HC at League of Comic Geeks
• Aliens: The Original Years Omnibus Vol. 4 at the Grand Comics Database

---

Tag Categories: Alien Comics