Alien Explorations

Alien: Inspired by Moebius for refinery platform?

leading from
Alien: The Nostromo

a. ) A major inspiration for Ridley Scott were drawings by Moebius as featured in the comic book Metal Hurlant (and it's American counterpart Heavy Metal) that Ivor Powell introduced him to while while filming The Duellists in Dordoigne.
  1. The writer of this blog recalls from memory of the Memories of Alien interview at the Empire Big Screen, 2011.





b. ) When Ridley made the sudden jump to having Nostromo's refinery platform as a large squarish shape we might ask where Ridley took the inspiration and we can see it clearly enough in this comicbook story a likely answer.

In Moebius' story "It's a small universe" a couple of star travellers travel in a smallish space craft that appears to be a squarish platform with a support pylone extending beneath to connect with the lower horizontal tube which has the cockpit bubble situated at the front of it

The first image from the comicbook story shown here reveals the vessel approaching a planet somewhere out in space and the others of it landing on the planet. This craft comes to rest with the upper rectangle floating in the water with the rest submerged.

sideview of space ship



early Ridleygram of the refinery

c. Ridley's early storyboard known as a "Ridleygram" of the refinery before the planet appears to show a wide straight platform with similar sized attachments beneath the structure held by slanted support pylon
The original Starship Enterprise
d. i. Moebius' spacecraft is most likely a general parody of the original Star Trek's Starship Enterprise, but as a small space ship and with a rectangular top instead.

ii. Star Trek art Director Matt Jefferies designed the original Enterprise, which in series creator Gene Roddenberry's first series outline drafts was named Yorktown. Jeffries' experience with aviation led to his Enterprise designs being imbued with what he called "aircraft logic". (source: wikipedia)

2 comments:

  1. Have a look at this page
    http://www.galactica.tv/battlestar-galactica-1978-news/concept-art-for-the-ragtag-ship-moebius-aka-flattop-ship.html
    and you will see that this moebius design was the inspiration for one of the rag tag fleet ships in the original Battlestar galactica TV series which was made before Alien.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Gosh, well that's good to see

    ReplyDelete