--Planet AvP | Articles | Dreaming of Darkness: Allusions in the Alien Movies - Part II

Dreaming of Darkness: Allusions in the Alien Movies - Part II Films (Continued) Advertisement There’s a lot of speculation when it comes to connections between Alien and Blade Runner, both of which were directed by Ridley Scott. Each film has androids that are virtually indistinguishable from humans -- in Blade Runner they’re called replicants; in the Alien films they’re called synthetics. Many people claim that Ash, Bishop, and Call could merely be replicants and that the odd and sometimes deadly traits of Ash’s model would correspond with the violent tendencies of the replicants from Blade Runner. This connection is further backed by the fact that Call’s line of synthetics, which are the most similar to humans out of all the ‘droids in the saga, are in hiding - just like the six replicants in Runner. There are also many technical similarities. Remember the vector graphics that appeared on Ripley’s screen showing the undocking sequence for the Nostromo? Me, neither, but those very images were also used during the air-car launch sequence in BR. Also, some of the displays from the Nostromo were used when Scott did BR; you’ll have to look very carefully to find them, though. Here’s one for you techies. Remember early on in Aliens, when the Colonial Marines first stepped into the Hadley’s Hope compound in search for the colonists? Well, they stepped into a science/medical room with several facehuggers, some of whom were dead, some alive in stasis tubes. As a matter of fact, one of them even tries to face-hug Burke through the glass! The actual apparatus used to make that oh-so amiable facehugger whip around was taken from one of James Cameron’s previous films, Piranha II. In that movie, the device was used to make the piranhas fly out of the water. James Cameron meant to throw in an Easter egg regarding his movie, The Terminator, the very film that piqued Fox’s interest in him as a director for Aliens. Bishop, in the actual film, claimed that the synthetic human Ash, from Alien, was one of the “fishy” Hybderdyne Systems 120-A/2. But in the first draft of the script, Bishop actually says Ash was a CyberDyne model android. If you’ll remember, in The Terminator, terminators were created by the corporation Cyber Dynamics - commonly known as CyberDyne. Miscellaneous Okay, so maybe I stretched the truth a bit when I said that I was confining the article to only works of film, literature, and mythology. You see, while I was doing my research, I came up with a few unique allusions that I couldn’t bear to neglect. Alien 3 takes place on the isolated and nearly-forgotten prison colony, Fiorina 161, which is inhabited by neo-Christian inmates. I won’t go on about the religious themes, symbols, and motifs scattered throughout the film, but I did find something rather curious. I looked up “fior” in the dictionary and found out that it’s an acronym -- FIOR -- for Fluid Iron Ore Reduction. This is logical, because the prison colony was once a key ore mining colony before the majority of its prisoners were relocated elsewhere. Unfortunately, I was unable to find anything for the second part of the name, “ina.” Ever hear the AC/DC song called “Shake a Leg,” part of the “Back in Black” album? Well, if not, perhaps you should listen to it, because Hudson’s line, “Stop your grinnin’ and drop your linen,” is a quote from that very song! This next one is interesting if you, like me, are interested in biology. Apparently, the alien life cycle, which revolves around laying eggs in a host’s stomach, in which the embryo grows and later bursts out, is very similar to that of a tsetse fly. This is merely a coincidence, though, because the makers of Alien intentionally based the alien life cycle on that of the spider wasp, which lays its eggs in the abdomen of the spiders it kills. Once the eggs hatch, the young wasps have a fresh spider to feast upon! Dan O’Bannon used to have nightmares of this, which inspired him to duplicate the life cycle in Alien. Here’s something those of you who like astronomy should find captivating. The colony built on planet LV-426 was called Hadley’s Hope. In real life, though, Hadley’s Hope is a channel on the moon that was cut by molten basaltic lava. (It is not really known as Hadley’s Hope, though, but as “Hadley’s Rille.”) The channel winds along the base of the Apennine Front, one of the sites explored by the Apollo 15 astronauts. It’s about 1 mile wide, 433 yards deep, and 60 miles long. The channel’s walls are incredibly steep; even more so than the Grand Canyon’s. Hadley’s Rille was named after John Hadley, an English mathematician and inventor who constructed the first functional reflecting telescope and invented a superior quadrant known as “Hadley's quadrant.” Here’s some more astronomy! Auriga, the ship in Alien Resurrection, is also a large constellation of the northern hemisphere; it's located between DECL=55 degrees and DECL=28 degrees and RA=7h 30m and RA=4h 40m. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find any decent pictures for you readers - sorry. By ::GenoDice:: Comments? Flames? Praise? Mail feedback!