Saturday, April 26, 2025

Xenotopia

Prompt: A photorealistic film quality xenomorph wearing a tuxedo, drinking a martini as he stands by the buffet which is populated with alien eggs

Care of: https://deepai.org/machine-learning-model/text2img


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Imagine this.


You're aboard a star ship. An M-class starfreighter. Specifically the CM-88B Bison model space tug. 


Over a morning cup off coffee, you read on the news net that a decade ago, a similar space tug of the exact same class and model detonated its reactor core during an emergency manoeuvre, somewhere in the vicinity of star system LV-426, (near Beta Reticuli) some seventeen years distant (97 light years) from the Sol system just outside of the hyperspace lane network.


Much like your own vessel, this detonated ship whose atoms were now scattered to the boundaries of humankind's incursion zone into galactic space, it was crewed by seven technicians and labourers, all  now listed as missing.


You feel as a sudden sharp pain in your stomach as you read the report, and decide to quell the onset of  malady with a sip from your coffee cup.


Suddenly and without warning, the pain grows to immensity, as you feel something thrashing at your insides trying to escape. 


You drop your cup to the floor, though the sound of its shattering is silenced by your rising screams, when all of the sudden:


BURP!


A mixture of gas escapes through your mouth in the form of a burp, rendering you much needed relief.


You consider that in the future, you won't mix delicious Moo Goo Gai Pan and Tequila (with the worm in the bottle) again as you had the night before.



Welcome to Alien Day 2025, and in lieu of the fact that I so irresponsibly missed Earth Day 2025.


Thanks to our friends at Disney+, we'll be doing a watch party of the classic Alien today to make up for it. 


I mean, it makes sense, doesn't it? The incredible metaphor that wouldn't come to full fruition until thirty years later, when it could be seen as a sort of environmental crisis sneaking up on humanity and of our own making given the modern version of the film's lore. This was of course long before we'd started raising the alarm with regard to our planet's environmental health.


The movie Alien was originally written by Ronald Shusett and Dan O'Bannon, the latter of whom worked with the legendary director John Carpenter on their film school project Dark Star. Dark Star is a low budget cult classic which heralds many of the same themes explored in the movie Alien.


Director Ridley Scott worked with legendary artist H.R. Giger on the art direction and production design, while making changes to O'Bannon's and Shusett's original script. The crew of the Nostromo was originally all male, but Ridley Scott made the decision to modernize the crew, reflecting humanity's shared destiny in space and certainly in support of women's rights, giving us one of the most iconic female characters of all time: Ellen Ripley, and cementing Sigourney Weaver as a heroic icon who would go on to play the female lead in many critically acclaimed dramas and action blockbusters and whose body of work we'll explore in a future watch party.


Veronica Cartwright (who plays the character Lambert) complements Sigourney's role and the two become part of one of the missed plot elements of the movie, as a scene between Weaver and Cartwright was edited from the film in the final release that illustrates the two women as having suspected the character Ash (Ian Holm) as having ulterior motives that might compromise the safety of the crew.


The film itself solidified the careers of its cast, seeing many of them return to the genre several times throughout the course of their careers.


Tom Skerritt, who plays Captain Dallas in the film, whose career by that time was already considerable, went on to play one of the key roles in the film adaption of Carl Sagan's book Contact, where he turned in a great performance as character David Drumlin.


Harry Dean Stanton (Technician Brett) was by the time of the release of Alien, carving out a career in one cult classic after another, including the punk classic Repo Man. He also went on to work with  director David Lynch, appearing in several of the legendary director's films.


Ian Holm (Science Officer Ash) gives a creepy performance, taking the themes illustrated in Arthur C. Clarke's and Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, and modernizes them in one of the greatest plot surprises in Sci-Fi history.


John Hurt (Kane), comes to the film and takes part in perhaps the greatest surprise in Sci-Fi and Horror film history. John Hurt who had already a considerable career both on stage and film by that time, went on to many film classics of a variety of genres, including playing the role of Winston in the film adaption of George Orwell's 1984, opposite Richard Burton (who played O'Brien).


Yaphet Kotto (Parker) delivers a role reflecting the values of union representation and the labour movement, which by that time in the fictitious future has been mostly overpowered or usurped by corporate interests in the guise of Weyland-Yutani. He both portrays a get the job done attitude, while adding a measure of union arrogance, despite their lack of power in this very different dystopian future. 

What's ironic about his character's values is that the very ideas his and Harry Dean Stanton's character represents are exactly what becomes the threat in Aliens in the form of a hive based collective in James Cameron's sequel to Ridley Scott's Alien. The interests of the one versus the many, a crisis of social values that found its way into many films from the 1970s onward, including the film A Beautiful Mind.

This aspect of the plot unfolds on many levels, in the form of the individual versus the whole, the company versus the workers, the androids versus the humans, the aliens versus humanity and greed versus annihilation.


So, heads up, because we're watching this not-so family friendly classic (family friendly if you're an Alien Queen cuddling up on the sofa with your xenomorph babies that is and I say that fully with sarcastic intent), while in the background and offscreen, I play a session of Larian Studio's Baldur's Gate 3, trying to prevent an alien of another type (namely an Illithid) from hatching from my character's body.


All of this connects up with Canada in a roundabout way, as the production and set design of Alien was made possible by members of the same production crew as 2001: A Space Odyssey thirteen years earlier. Both films sourced their production design of the ship interiors from the imagination of architects and designers who were part of Expo '67, which highlighted the future of interior design, including the future of technology and living spaces by some of the brightest minds of the time, like visionary Syd Mead, who later worked with Ridley Scott on Blade Runner. Expo '67 was hosted in Montreal, Quebec, Canada over the summer of 1967 and had a lasting impact on artistic design and film production from that time forward.


Showtime starts at 3:30 PM today (Saturday April 26, 2025), so if you're interested, just sync up and start watching on your end at the same or roughly the same time. Maybe in the future, more streaming services will provide the web tools to create true watch parties in much the same and innovative way that Amazon Prime Video used to do so. 

That would allow us to promote a watch party from one central location on the web and synchronize it all without violating the public broadcast terms of copyright and publishing licenses. Disney, if you could figure this out, it would probably help to unify the audience and create weekend parties where hundreds if not thousands of people could simultaneously watch content in sync with one another, while still supporting content production financially by way of our streaming memberships.


Well its off to watch the movie and play a little Baldur's Gate 3 for the weekend. Sunday will be about getting the office cleaned up and getting ready to vote on Monday in Canada's Federal Election 2025, the best way to contribute to shaping the future, not to mention one of the best ways that I know of keeping the gremlins and identity thieves at bay.


See you soon!

Brian "rolls a natural 1 on a d20" Johns ;-)


This post was produced in Toronto, Ontario, Canada at 200 Sherbourne Street Suite 701 under the Shhhh! Digital Media banner.

Disney, Amazon, Alien and Aliens are protected under the rights of the respective copyright and trademark holders.


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