Alien: Building the refinery: Bismarck in Space

Leading from

Alien: Building the Refinery

The battleship Bismarck

However there came a point when the towers of the refinery became grew very elaborate when Ridley Scott was trying to describe what the whole Nostromo ship should look like with the refinery that it was pulling.

His description mentioned lot of turrets and spires and it sounded very much like something out of World War 2

Dennis Lowe asked "you mean like the Bismark in space?"

Ridley replied "that's right , I want it just like the Bismarck in space"

So it seemed that he wanted it just like the German world war 2 war ship.

Dennis returned to Bray studios with the news , and still they were not working with any concept drawings.

"Oh, it's erm, I know what it's like," Dennis told everyone" it's like the Bismarck in space", 
To him it was as if they just needed to get some photographs of the Bismark and adapt them.

It caught on because that's what the refinery eventually ended up looking like until Ridley Scott turned up and looked at it

1. Dennis Lowe: At that same time in the workshop Ridley was talking about his first concept of the refinery and he was describing an actual oil refinery with pipes and spires, eventually the term 'Battleship Bismarck in space' came up to describe the detailing of the model.( Re: ALIEN Makers Documentary June 26, 2009)
2. Dennis Lowe: Ridley Scott was trying to describe what the whole Nostromo ship should be like plus the refinery that the Nostromo's pulling, and in his description he mentioned lots of kind of turrets and spires and er, really like World War 2 type stuff you know and I mentioned,  I said oh I said you mean like the Bismarck in space, and everybody's got a classic idea of what the Bismarck looks like with the kind of spires in black and kind of like a warship and he says that's right , I want it just like the Bismarck in space, I was, I kind of clocked that straight away, I thought, right, (86:00) Bismarck in space, so when I went off to Bray, in some respects they were still fumbling around in the dark because they didn't get a lot of working drawings of the Nostromo and the, and the refinery, and it was still in the concept stage. And I said "Oh" I said "it's erm, I know what it's like, it's like the Bismarck in space", just like, get some photographs of the Bismarck and just like adapt them and I think it kind of caught on, you know with the model makers because their refinery eventually ended up looking like the bloody Bismarck in space and Ridley Scott came over to have a look and he hated it (laughter) and he put the hammer to it, and I think what happened, they all gave me that kind of quiet look (laughter) and I think I had to wear that because I like promoted the Bismarck in space and he came over and said "I'm not having this fucking stuff" (87:00), I thought that was the end of my influence. (Alien Makers IV)
3. Jon Sorensen: There was also talk of a "Victorian" feel on the towers.( Re: ALIEN Makers Documentary June 26, 2009)
   Dennis Lowe: Did Ridley talk about this Victorian feel then? I guess it would be a hybrid between Giger's designs and the refinery brutalism (Re: ALIEN Makers Documentary, June 26, 2009)