As the Nostromo crew fell victim to the alien one by one, the surviving members became increasingly
desperate in their attempts to destroy the creature.
One attempt, omitted from the final film, depicted the alien being spotted by the Nostromo's
airlock, and narrowly escaping being blown out into space, but losing a limb in the process
and creating further danger due to its acid blood.
Though some portions of this sequence were actually filmed, it was never completed and
ultimately scrapped from the final version, but it does remain in tact in certain drafts
of the film's screenplay, and in Alan Dean Foster's novelization.
The scene was meant to take place after Dallas' failed attempt to subdue the alien in the
air shaft, when Parker goes off to refuel the flame units.
What follows is a passage from the novelization, outlining what we may have seen if the sequence
had been finalized.
"Parker checked the level on the first methane cylinder, made sure the bottle of highly compressed
gas was full.
He did the same with a second, resting nearby.
Then he hefted the two heavy containers and started back up the companionway.
It was as lonely on B deck as it had been below.
The sooner he rejoined the others, the better he'd feel.
In fact, he wished now he'd let Ash accompany him.
He'd been an idiot to run off for the cylinders by himself.
Everyone who'd been taken by the alien had been alone.
He tried to jog a little faster, despite the awkward weight of the bottles.
He turned a bend in the corridor, stopped, nearly dropping one of the containers.
Ahead lay the main airlock.
Beyond it, but not far beyond, something had moved.
Or had it?
It was time for imagining things and he blinked, trying to clear mind and eyes.
He'd almost started ahead again when the shadow movement was repeated.
There was a vague suggestion of something tall and heavy.
Looking around, he located one of the ubiquitous wall 'coms.
Ripley and Lambert should still be on the bridge.
He thumbed the switch beneath the grid.
Something indecipherable drifted out from the speaker set in Ripley's console.
At first she thought it was only localized static, then decided she recognized a word
or two.
"Ripley here."
"Keep it down!" the engineer whispered urgently into the pickup.
Ahead of him, the movement in the corridor had suddenly ceased.
If the creature had heard him…
"I can't hear you" Ripley exchanged a puzzled look with Lambert, who looked blank.
But when she spoke into her pickup again, she kept her voice down as requested.
"Repeat… why the need for quiet?"
"The alien."
Parker whispered it, not daring to raise his voice.
"It's outside the starboard lock.
Yes, right now!"
Open the door slowly.
When I give the word, close it fast and blow the outer hatch.
"Are you sure…
?" He interrupted her quickly.
"I tell you, we've got it!
Just do as I tell you."
He forced himself to calm down.
"Now open it.
Slowly."
Ripley hesitated, started to say something, then saw Lambert nodding vigorously.
If Parker was wrong, they had nothing to lose but a minuscule amount of air.
If he knew what he was doing, on the other hand…
She threw a switch.
The inner airlock door moved aside.
The creature came out of the shadows and moved toward it.
Several lights were flashing inside the lock.
One was an especially bright emerald green.
The alien regarded it with interest, moved to stand on the threshold of the lock.
Come on, damn you, the engineer thought frantically.
Look at the pretty green light!
That's right.
Wouldn't you like to have the pretty green light all to yourself?
Sure you would.
Just step inside and take the beautiful greenness.
Just a couple of steps inside and it can be yours forever.
Just a couple of steps, God, just a couple of steps.
Fascinated by the steadily pulsing indicator, the alien stepped into the lock.
It was completely inside.
Not by much, but who could tell when it might suddenly grow bored, or suspicious?
"Now," he husked into the pickup, "now."
Ripley prepared to throw the emergency close.
Her hand was halfway to the toggle when the Nostromo's emergency Klaxon wailed for attention.
She and Lambert froze.
Each looked to the other, saw only her own personal shock mirrored in her companion's
face.
Ripley threw the toggle over.
The alien heard the Klaxon too.
Muscles contracted and it sprang backward, clearing the threshold of the lock in a single
incredible leap.
The hatch door slammed shut just a fraction faster.
One appendage was pinned between wall and door.
Liquid boiled out of the crushed member.
The alien made a noise, like a moan or bellow made underwater.
It wrenched itself backward, leaving the trapped limb pinned between metal.
Then it turned and rushed down the corridor, blind with pain, hardly seeing the paralyzed
engineer as it lifted and threw him aside before vanishing around the nearest corner.
Above the crumpled Parker a green light was flashing and the words INNER HATCH CLOSED
showed on a readout.
The metal of the lock continued to bubble and melt as the outer hatch swung open.
A puff of frozen air appeared outside the lock as the atmosphere that had been contained
within rushed into space.
"Parker?"
Ripley spoke anxiously into the pickup, jabbed a switch, adjusted a slide.
"Parker?
What's happening down there?"
Her attention was caught by a green light winking steadily on her console.
"What's going on?"
Lambert leaned out of her seat.
"Did it work?"
"I'm not sure.
The inner hatch is scaled and the outer hatch has been popped."
"That should do it.
But what about Parker?"
"I don't know.
I can't get a response out of him.
If it worked, he should be screaming fit to bust the speakers."
She made a decision.
"I'm going down to see.
Take over."
She slipped out of her chair, raced for B corridor.
She nearly fell a couple of times.
Once she stumbled into a bulkhead and nearly knocked herself out.
Somehow she kept her balance and staggered on.
The alien was not uppermost in her mind.
It was Parker, another human being.
A rare enough commodity on board the Nostromo now.
She raced down the companionway onto B corridor, headed up toward the airlock.
It was empty, except for a limp form sprawled across the deck: Parker.
She bent over him.
He was groggy and half conscious.
"What happened?
You look like hell.
Did…?"
The engineer was trying to form words, had to settle for gesturing feebly toward the
airlock.
Ripley shut up, looked in the indicated direction, saw the bubbling hole in the lock door.
The outer hatch was still open, ostensibly after blowing the alien out into nothingness.
She started to rise.
The acid ate completely through.
There was a bang of departing air, and a small hurricane enveloped them.
Air screamed as it was sucked into a vacuum.
A flashing red sign appeared in several recesses in the corridor walls.
CRITICAL DEPRESSURIZATION.
The Klaxon was sounding again, more hysterically now and with better reason.
Emergency doors slammed shut all over the ship, beginning with the breached section.
Parker and Ripley should have been safely sealed in a section of corridor… except
that the airtight door separating them from the airlock vestibule had jammed on one of
the methane cylinders.
Wind continued to tear at her as she hunted for something, anything, to fight with.
There was only the remaining tank.
She raised it, used it to hammer at the jammed cylinder.
If either one of them cracked, a slight spark from metal banging on metal could set off
the contents of both bottles.
But if she didn't knock it free, quickly, the complete depressurization would kill them
anyway.
Lack of air was already weakening her.
Blood frothed at her nose and ears.
The fall in pressure made Parker's existing wounds bleed afresh.
She heaved the bottle at the trapped cylinder a last time.
It popped free as easily as a clean birth.
The door slammed the rest of the way shut behind it, and the howl of disappearing wind
vanished.
Confused air continued to swirl around them for several minutes more.
On the bridge, Lambert had seen the ominous readouts appear on her console: HULL BREACHED–-EMERGENCY
BULKHEADS CLOSED.
She hit the 'com.
"Ash, get some oxygen.
Meet me at the main lock by the last of the sealed doors."
"Check.
Be right there."
Ripley staggered to her feet, fighting for every breath in the atmosphere-depleted chamber.
She headed for the emergency release set inside every bulkhead door.
There was a stud there that would slide the door back, opening onto the next sealed section
and fresh air.
At the last instant, as she was about to depress the red button, she saw to her horror that
she was fumbling against the door leading not down B corridor, but to the empty vestibule
outside the lock.
She turned, tried to aim herself, and fell as much as walked to the opposite door.
It took precious minutes to locate the panel on it.
Thoughts swam in her brain, broke apart like oil on water.
The air around her was turning foggy, full of the smell of roses and lilac.
She thumbed the stud.
The door didn't move.
Then she saw she was pushing the wrong control.
Sagging against the door for support, trying to give her rubbery legs some badly needed
assistance, she fought to gather her strength for another try.
There wasn't much air left worth breathing.
A face appeared at the port set in the door.
It was distorted, bloated, yet somehow familiar.
It seemed that she knew that face from sometime long ago.
Someone named Lambert lived behind that face.
She was very tired now and started to slide slowly down the door.
She thought distant, angry thoughts as her last support was taken away.
The door slid into the roof and her head struck the deck.
A rush of clean air, ineffably sweet and refreshing, swept over her face.
The mist began to fade from her eyes, though not yet from her starved brain.
A horn sounded the return of full internal pressurization as Lambert and Ash joined them.
The science officer hurried to administer to Parker, who had collapsed again from lack
of oxygen and was only now beginning to regain consciousness.
Ripley's eyes were open and working, but the rest of her body was dysfunctional.
Hands and feet, legs and arms were sprawled in ungainly positions across her body and
the deck, like the limbs of a slim, not particularly well-crafted doll.
Her breath came in labored, shallow gasps.
Lambert set one of the oxygen tanks down next to her friend.
She placed the transparent mask over Ripley's mouth and nose, opened the valve.
Ripley inhaled.
A wonderful perfume filled her lungs.
Her eyes closed from sheer pleasure.
She stayed that way, unmoving, sucking in long, deep draughts of pure oxygen.
The only shock to her system was of delight.
Finally she moved the respirator aside, lay for a moment breathing normally.
Full pressure had been restored, she noted.
The bulkhead doors had automatically retracted with the return of standard atmosphere.
To replenish that atmosphere,, she knew, the ship had been forced to bleed their storage
tanks.
They'd deal with that new problem when they were forced to, she thought.
"Are you all right?"
Ash was querying Parker.
"What finally happened here?"
Parker wiped a crust of dried blood from his upper mouth, tried to shake the webs from
his brain.
"I'll live."
For the moment, he ignored the science officer's last question.
"What about the alien?"
Ash tried again.
Parker shook his head, wincing at some sudden pain.
"We didn't get it.
The warning Klaxon went off and it jumped back into the corridor.
It caught an arm, or whatever you'd like to call it, in the closing inner door.
Just pulled itself free like a lizard shedding its tail."
"Why not," commented Ash, "with its inbuilt talent for regeneration?"
The engineer continued, sounding every bit as disappointed as he felt.
"We had the bastard.
We had him."
He paused, added, "When it pulled free of its limb, it bled all over the place.
The limb did.
I guess the stump healed over fast, lucky for us.
The acid ate right through the hatch.
That's what caused the depressurization."
He pointed shakily toward the door sealing off the airlock vestibule from the rest of
the corridor.
The moments following this ommitted scene lead into another deleted scene, in which
Ripley, growing all the more suspicious of Ash's intentions regarding the Alien, questions
Lambert about her relationship with him, asking the curious question if they had ever slept
together, finally leading into Ripley accessing MOTHER and discovering the truth behind Special
Order 937.
One thing worth noting about the deleted airlock sequence, and the events that followed it,
is that Ripley's nosebleed during her confrontation with Ash, would have a little bit more context,
appearing in the aftermath of her injuries instead of happening out of nowwhere- though
it still of course works as an eerie occuronce in a tense scene in the final film.
The Airlock scene was deleted, most likely, for budgetary reason, and while it certainly
doesn't interfere with the pace of the film, it would have been nice to see a completed
version of this sequence restored into the film.
Above all else, it creates a fascinating element to the alien's abilities, displaying regenerative
properties in the creature's biology.
Considering the fact that some parts of the sequence were filmed, and that Ridley Scott
has already tweaked his original version in 2003 with a director's cut including new footage,
do you think it would be worthwhile to make an attempt to bring this scene back?
Scott himself has said in interviews that he's considered bringing Ripley back into
his Alien series using motion facial capture and CGI technology, and whatever went unfilmed
here could be filled in using such special effects.
I think the 1979 version is great as is, but I also feel the director's cut is a compelling
alternate version.
The original isn't going anywhere, of course, so I'm always welcome slightly alternate versions,
as long as the original version is still available *ahem* George Lucas.
Anyway, I may be alone in this, but let me know your thoughts?
Would you like to scene the scene restored in some way?
Comment below and share what you think.
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