Leading from
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| drawing credited to Dan O'Bannon |
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| Chris Foss's planetoid landscape |
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| detail from above showing Pyramid |
a) Encountering the pyramid
a.i) Nothing to do with the derelict spaceship
In Dan's vision, the pyramid is built by an ancient, primitive civilisation indigenous to the planetoid
In that in the story, it is
completely separate from the derelict spaceship which contained the dead skeleton of an alien pilot from
elsewhere.
So the pyramid and the derelict ship are of completely different design.
a.ii) Ancient pyramid with buried entrance
So
when the astronauts came upon this crumbling structure covered with
ugly angular carvings, they would begin to realised that they were in
the presence of real antiquity.
Walking around, the explorers find no entrance, and so it's understood that any entrance must have been buried in the shifting sands of time.
a.iii) Climbing the side
The character Broussard/ Kane uses his climbing gear to crawl to the top of the monolith where he finds an open shaft going straight down.
a.iv) Entering through the top
He sets up his tripod and wing befoe lowering himself down way below ground level to the floor of this curious chamber
- INTERIOR TEMPLE. This is where the Spore Pods are stored. (Dan O'Bannon's letter to Giger, Giger's Alien, p10, 363E )
- Dan O'Bannon: The pyramid is ancient, primitive, and clearly of a different alien derelict ship. We are dealing with a different alien here: the dead ship appears to be a visitor from elsewhere; the pyramid seems indigenous. Walking around it, they can find no entrance; any entrance must have been buried under the shifting sands of time. So Kane uses his climbing gear to crawl to the top of the monolith, where he finds an open shaft going straight down. (Starburst #19, 1980, Dan O'Bannon's Unseen Alien)
- Dan O'Bannon: And this pyramid was a temple to reproduction. When the astronauts came upon this crumbling structure covered with ugly angular carvings, they begin to realize that they are in the presence of real antiquity. They're unable to find an entrance at the base, so they scale the pyramid and discover at the top a flue that goes straight down from the peak. This is where the character Kane sets up his tripod and winch and lowered himself down - way below ground level - to the floor of this chamber. (Don Shay talks with O'Bannon. Cinefex 1.p48)
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| Looking down the pyramid shaft by Chris Foss |
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| Broussard/Kane being lowered into pyramid opening by Chris Foss |
b) Discovery of birth chamber
b.i) Computer translates the transmission
Meanwhile back at the Earthship Snark (later renamed the Nostromo), the computer has finally succeeded in translating the transmission.
It means: "DO NOT LAND".
It means: "DO NOT LAND".
But the explorers are cut off from radio contact and do not learn of this development, so Broussard/ Kane goes down to the shaft.
b.ii) The bottom of the shaft
At the bottom he finds a bizarre tomb or shrine filled with incomprehensible paintings and hieroglyphics, which appear to have a religious significance.
In the centre of the tomb is an altar, surrounded by egg-like objects .
In the centre of the tomb is an altar, surrounded by egg-like objects .
- The Spore Pods can be seen ranked around the alter in the center of the room (Dan O'Bannon's letter to Giger, Giger's Alien, p10, 363E )
- Dan O'Bannon: Meanwhile back at the Earthship, the computer has finally succeeded in translating the transmission. It means: "DO NOT LAND".
But the explorers are cut off from radio contact and do not learn of this development, so Kane goes down the shaft. At the bottom he finds a bizarre tomb or shrine filled with incomprehensible paintings and hieroglyphics, which appear to have a religious significance. In the centre of the tomb is an altar, surrounded by egg-like objects. (Starburst #19, Dan O'Bannon's Unseen Alien)
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| Chris Foss' pyramid interior |
c) Details about the alien culture
c.i) One thing that was left out
There was a difference in the original script to the film that Dan O'Bannon that thought were significant
After returning to the Snark, the crew studies the films Broussard/ Kane's shot in the tomb.
The hieroglyphs describe the life cycle of the native aliens.
The hieroglyphs describe the life cycle of the native aliens.
c.ii) Hardship in reproduction
Reproduction for them is extraordinarily difficult and complex requiring a host and much supervision.
As a result of this their life cycle has become central to the culture.
c.iii) Why the civilisation went exticnt
The fatal flaw of this species appears to be the biological necessity of overexploitation of the biosphere.
The Earthmen speculate that this may be the reason for the lifelessness of the planet and the apparent disappearance of the species.
- Dan O'Bannon: From
this point there are only two differences in the original script worth
mentioning. (1) After returning to the Earthship, the crew studies the
films
Kane shot in the tomb. The hieroglyphs describe the life cycle of the
native Aliens. Reproduction for them is extra-ordinarily difficult and
complex,
requiring a host and much supervision, as a result of which their life
cycle has become central to their culture. The fatal flaw of this
species appears to be the biological
necessity of overexploitation of the biosphere; and the Earthmen
speculate that this may be the reason for the lifelessness of the planet
and the apparent
disappearance
of the species. (2) At the end of the story is a missing scene which
appears to be well known to the public: the "cocoon" scene, in which
Ripley
finds Captain Dallas spun into a web in the hold of the Earthship. Brett
and Parker have also been spun into cocoons,which are in the process of
metamorphosing
into the very same type of egg found in the pyramid, thus completing
the Alien's life cycle. (Starburst #19, Dan O'Bannon's Unseen Alien)
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| Storyboard by Dan O'Bannon |
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| Hieroglyphics detail from above showing sculptures and mural depicting various life forms |
d) Exploration of the birth temple
d.i.1) Broussard/Kane reaches the chamber below
Expanding on this in the original conception of the alien race, Dan O'Bannon had the idea that the
inhabitants of the planetoid are seen as tough and primitive, and
with an extremely complicated sexual cycle.
Reproduction was very difficult for them and had therefore become central to their religion.
Reproduction was very difficult for them and had therefore become central to their religion.
d.i.2) A temple to reproduction
This pyramid was a temple to reproduction,
the exterior was approximately twenty metres tall and was possibly
the creation of an ancient, primitive and cruel culture.
Inside the building is a room accessed through a vertical tunnel in the roof since the normal entrance has long since collapsed.
Inside the building is a room accessed through a vertical tunnel in the roof since the normal entrance has long since collapsed.
d.i.3) Down at the bottom
Once down in the chamber at the bottom of the pyramid Broussard/Kane would use his suit lights to look around in the darkness.
Then in the middle of the room he finds a stone plinth with blood drains in it and all over the walls are alien hieroglyphs
There these egg like spore pods can be found around the alter in the centre of the room
There these egg like spore pods can be found around the alter in the centre of the room
d.i.4) Examining Broussard/Kane's findings
Here Broussard/Kane is suddenly overcome by one of these creatures that we refer to as a Face Hugger
Sometimes after chaos with the alien creature's life cycle has erupted on the Snark, the next thing to do is for the crew to look at the information from the data stick to decipher what's going on.
d.ii) In the online script
d.ii.1) The Hieroglyphics in the wall
In the script found online version of the script Broussard finds strange hieroglyphics that are carved into the walls.
They have a primitive, religious appearance.
Row after row of pictograms stretch from floor to ceiling, some epic history in an unknown language.
d.ii.2) Religious symbols and stone statues
What could be described as huge religious symbols dominate one wall. And spaced at intervals are stylized stone statues, depicting grotesque monsters, half anthropoid, half octopus.
Looking at the contents of his data stick, the character Melkonis sees that it's a crude symbolic language that looked primit
d.ii.3) No idea what they represent
But in that version they don't seem to have much of an idea about what these things represent.
While the character Hunter wondered if it represented printed circuits but Standard thought that idea seemed fanciful.
d.iii) Difference in the DVD version of the script
d.iii.1) The Statues
In the DVD version of the Dan's early Alien script, the statues are half anthropoid and half insect instead.
Looking at the Broussard's datastick contents.
d.iii.2) Roby's realisation
Roby sees how the hieroglyphs symbolized aliens in a very stylised way and here it could be seen how it was the creature that they were dealing with, loose aboard the Snark.
d.iii.3) Star shaped things and spores
Hunter thought that the star shaped things must have been the same parasite as the one on Broussard's face that we call "the Face Hugger"
The character Roby (later renamed Ripley) looked as the oval design below that with the markings, and thought that it looked like spore casings.
These they decide to refer to these eggs.
d.iii.4) Star shaped things in conjugation with other forms
As they saw the datastick recording as it moved along the pictures on the wall, it
features an oval design with
markings as a spore casing, a star shape as a face-hugger.
More star shapes were shown in conjugation with other forms perceived
as freakish hybrids that looked like gargoyles.
d.iii.5) Worm like things
The character named Hunter identified the worm like
things that we would call the 'Chest Bursters" are then seen
emerging from the hybrids looking as if it was the thing that came out of Broussard.
The next image showed the big one that they identified as a creature
with six legs and tentacles aboard the Snark that killed Melkonis.
Nothing came after that but it repeated.
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| Ron Cobb's illustration of the alien beast aboard the Earthship Snark that had just killed Melkonis |
d.iv Dan O'Bannon's explanation about the lost civilisation
d.iv.i) In need of a third member to reproduce
As
far as Dan O'Bannon was concerned, that although this strange crude lost culture had
two sexes of their own, they still needed a third host animal to
reproduce.
d.iv.ii) Use of the third member
So they'd bring in an animal, put it on a plinth with a spore, and so out the 'face hugger' would come to plant its seed in an available orifice
Then they'd lead the inseminated animal off to an enclosure somewhere to await the birth.
d.iv.iii) Spores lie dormant for incredible lengths of time
But now in the story of Alien, the planetoid was now dead and this civilisation had been gone for a million years.
These things could survive dormant for incredible lengths of time even under the most
adverse conditions.
INT. Pyramid
BROUSSARD
Tunnel's gone - cave or something below
me - feels like the tropics in here, air
is hot and humid ...
Struggling, he releases his purchase on the stone and begins to lower himself on power. He dangles free in darkness, turning slowly on the wire as the chest unit unwinds.HITS BOTTOM
Broussard is standing on a dusty stone floor, surrounded by solid darkness. He flashes his datastick around - the beam reveals stone walls, which are carved with STRANGE HIEROGLYPHICS
These images have a primitive, even a sacred appearance. Line after line of pictograms stretches from floor to ceiling, an epic history in an unknown language. Huge symbols dominate one wall. They could almost be Mayan.
Spaced at intervals are stylized stone statues of strange MONSTERS, half anthropoid, half insect.
Broussard moves his light along the pictures on the wall. They depict other freakish HYBRIDS
BROUSSARD
It's unbelievable! It's like some tomb
... it's like a religion or something!
Hey, anybody there? Do you read me?
Standard!
Annoyed, Broussard yanks off his breathing goggles, and leaves them hanging around his neck. He takes a deep breath of the wet air.(From Dan O'Bannon's early Alien script: DVD version)- INTERIOR - PYRAMID - DAY
Broussard resumes his downward climb. SUDDENLY, HIS FEET LOSE THEIR PURCHASE AS THE WALLS OF THE SHAFT DISAPPEAR. The tunnel has reached its end. Below him is an unfathomable, cavernous space. BROUSSARD (huffing and puffing) Tunnel's gone -- cave or something below me -- feels like the tropics in here; air is warm and humid... (consults his instruments) ... high oxygen content, no dust, it's completely breathable -- Puffing with exertion, he releases his purchase on the stone walls and begins to lower himself on power. Now he is dangling free in darkness, spinning slowly on the wire as the chest unit unwinds. Finally, his feet hit bottom. He grunts in surprise and almost loses his balance. INTERIOR - TOMB - DAY Broussard is standing on a dusty stone floor, with a feeble column of sunlight shining down around him from the tunnel above. Around is solid darkness. He flashes his datastick around. The beam reveals that he is in a stone room. STRANGE HEIROGLYPHICS are carved into the walls. They have a primitive, religious appearance. Row after row of pictograms stretch from floor to ceiling, some epic history in an unknown language. Huge religious symbols dominate one wall. Spaced at intervals are stylized stone statues, depicting grotesque monsters, half anthropoid, half octopus. BROUSSARD It's unbelievable! It's like some kind of tomb... some primitive religion! Hey, is anybody there? Do you read me? Standard! Annoyed, Broussard yanks off his breathing goggles, and leaves them hanging around his neck. He takes a deep breath of the wet air.(From Dan O'Bannon's early Alien script: online version)
ROBY Look
(points) Those are symbolized aliens ... very stylized ... but if you look closely, you can see the creature we're dealing with They lean forward in their seats HUNTER That star shapes thing. The parasite on Dell's face. ROBY And see right below it? The oval design with the markings? It's a dead ringer for the spore casings STANDARD Eggs .... ROBY Eggs. Broussard's datasticks moves along the pictures on the wall. The star shapes are shown in conjugation with other forms ... attaching themselves to freakish HYBRIDS. Gargoyles HUNTER Now that looks like the one that came out of Dell Worm-like things - like the one that hatched from Broussard - are emerging from the hybrids HUNTER (CONT'D) What, are those things? A pause HUNTER (CONT'D) Females? STANDARD Hosts? ROBY Living bottles Roby changes slides ROBY (CONT'D) And .... that's the big one The one that got Melkonis STANDARD So then ... the "tomb" ... must have been some sort of ... egg storage place ... fertility temple. HUNTER What comes after the big one? Roby searches through the paintings and carvings. Click. Click ROBY Nothing. It repeats After the big one: more spore casings
(From Dan O'Bannon's early Alien script: DVD version)INTERIOR - MULTI-PURPOSE ROOM Again we are watching slides in the darkened room. This time Standard, Roby, Melkonis, and Hunter are watching the sequence of photographs taken automatically by Broussard's datastick as he probed the tomb. The camera reveals the "urns." The climax of the sequence of stills comes when THE CREATURE LEAPS OUT OF THE "URN" TOWARD THE CAMERA -- and after that the camera drops to a useless angle and proceeds to show a series of meaningless blurs. Then the reel ends. HUNTER That must have been when he got it. ROBY The same thing must've happened to the creatures on the other ship... except they took one of those jars on board, and opened it there. MELKONIS (clicks back through the slides to a picture of one of the "urns") At first I thought they were jars too, or artifacts anyway. But they're not. They're eggs, or spore casings. Let's go back to the heiroglyphics. CLICKETYCLICKETYCLICK -- Melkonis accelerates through the slides in a blur, stopping at the one he wants -- which shows a strip of heiroglyphs on the wall of the tomb. STANDARD I personally can't make any sense out of it... CLICK. CLICK. Melkonis is changing the slides as they talk, showing different angles on the glyphs. MELKONIS It's a crude symbolic language -- looks primitive. HUNTER You can't tell -- that kind of stuff could represent printed circuits... STANDARD That sounds a little fanciful... MELKONIS Primitive pictorial languages are based on common objects in the environment, and this can be used as a starting point for translation... ROBY What common objects? HUNTER Listen, hadn't somebody better check on Broussard? STANDARD (rising) I'll do it. The rest of you continue. HUNTER (rising) I'll come with you. INTERIOR - CORRIDOR OUTSIDE INFIRMARY Standard and Hunter come down the passageway. STANDARD You know, it's fantastic -- the human race has gone this long without ever encountering another advanced life form, and now we run into a veritable zoo. HUNTER What do you mean? STANDARD Well, those things out there aren't the same, you know -- the spaceship and the pyramid. They're from different cultures and different races. That ship just landed here -- crashed like we did. The pyramid and the thing from it are indigenous. HUNTER How could anything be indigenous to this asteroid? It's dead. STANDARD Maybe it wasn't always dead.(From the online version of Dan O'Bannon's early Alien script)- Dan O'Bannon: Using his suit lights, he looks around in the darkness and in the middle of the room finds a stone plinth with blood drains in it. all over the walls are alien hieroglyphs. Also in there centrally located are these eggs - spores really. (Don Shay talks with O'Bannon. Cinefex 1. p48)
- Dan O'Bannon: So these beings had two sexes of their own, but they needed a third host animal to reproduce. So they'd bring in an animal , put it on a plinth with a spore, and whammo! Then they'd lead the inseminated animal off to an enclosure somewhere to await the birth. But the planetoid was now dead and this civilisation had been gone for a million years. All that remained of it was this pyramid and these spores - which can survive dormant for incredible lengths of time even under the most adverse conditions. That's what I originally saw. And since I made it up, naturally I'm going to like it better: but to me that's a lot more sinister sequence of events and a lot more ingenious than blurring the two cultures together. (Don Shay talks with O'Bannon. Cinefex 1. p48)
e) Trail of the Alien pyramid mystery leads to Clifford Simak's Junkyard?
e.i) Borrowed from Simak
It appears that Dan O'Bannon borrowed the idea of a tower on a planetoid through Clifford Simak's Junkyard, in the form of a primitive stone tower on an asteroid that contained instead of birth temple full of spores a creature at the bottom the size of a melon that stole the memories of creatures that touched it.
e.ii) The melon sized creature
The hypothesis was that the memories would occasionally be collected by an unknown alien race.
The explorers discover that this creature had pipes and wires leading into it from the ground that made the explorers wonder if it were a synthesis of animal and machine.
Why it should have been built in such a primitive way was never discovered by the explorers in the story.
Why it should have been built in such a primitive way was never discovered by the explorers in the story.
e.iii) Confusion about the origin of the pyramid
Likewise we never really work out how once thriving culture who built pyramids could have evolved on a planetoid 120km wide in Alien.
e.iv) Melon sized life form inspired the spore?
The life form inside the tower serves as inspiration for the spore found inside the pyramid, and just as people lose their memories when touching the life form, those who become victims of the facehugger can not remember anything about encountering the spore of being facehugged.
- Dan O Bannon: So
far, so good; but there are also literary sources. To date, no one has
recognized a story by Clifford D. Simak, again from the 1950s, published
in If Magazine and dramatized on the radio on (I think) X Minus One,
entitled Junkyard. In this story, which was much on my mind, space
explorers put down on a blighted asteroid where they find a graveyard of
wrecked alien spacecraft, of different races. Next they discover an
ancient, indigenous stone tower; one astronaut lets himself down through
a hole at the top, and finds something at the bottom that looks like a
watermelon. No fruit, this organism steals minds. By the time the heroes
make it off the asteroid, they've been reduced to near idiocy.(from the "Something Perfectly Disgusting" essay by Dan O'Bannon for tbe Alien Quadrilogy set, 2003)
f) A von Daniken-esque theory pops up
In Dan's script a member of the Earth crew shares a point of view that the pyramid contained fellows of the dead extra terrestrial pilot in a state of suspended animation waiting to be woken up again by their brethren.
The idea near enough mirrors an aspect of the ponderings of Erich Von Daniken when he wrote Chariot of the Gods, that he had about the purpose of mummified bodies in their sarcaphogi in the Egyptian tombs was that the extra-terrestrials would return and revive the mummified people
- Broussard: Maybe the rest of the crew is in there -- in some kind of suspended animation, waiting to be rescued. (source: Online version of the early Alien script by Dan O'Bannon)
- So far this mysterious reawakening complex has only been considered from the religious point of view. But supposing the Pharaoh, who certainly knew more about the nature and customs of the 'gods' than his subjects, had these possibly quite crazy ideas? 'I must make a burial place for myself that cannot be destroyed for millennia and is visible far across the country. The gods promised to return and wake me up (or doctors in the distant future will discover a way to restore me to life again).'(Chariot of the Gods, bt Erich Von Daniken)
- Here we must ask ourselves: did space travellers in prehistory already possess knowledge that we must win anew? Did unknown intelligences already know the methods with which to treat bodies so that they could be revived in X thousand years? Perhaps the 'gods' being shrewd, had an interest in 'preserving' at least one dead man with all the knowledge of his time so that some day he could be questioned about the history of his generation? Who can tell? Is it not possible that such an interrogation by 'gods' who came back has already taken place? (Chariot of the Gods, bt Erich Von Daniken)
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Great Blog!
ReplyDeleteYou could also add another pyramid pic here.
IMO one of the best ALIEN concept drawings: Chris Foss's version of the pyramide:
http://img529.imageshack.us/img529/9403/a1art26eu2.jpg
Thanks, well I've added the picture and also a blowup of the part that shows the pyramid. I think a while ago there was a problem with clicking onto the pictures to make them bigger and for that reason I may have decided not to bother with that Foss painting, but now I have added it. It took a while to add it properly because the software here seems to act a bit like a Rubiks cube at times when adding certain things and suddenly other things go out of position.
ReplyDeleteI've changed the name of this page from "Alien: The Pyramid" to "Alien: Pyramid with birth chamber" on March 27th 2022 and have rewritten much of and re-edited the page. It's a very confusing page to have to deal with. Perhaps other changes will come.
ReplyDelete