Step into the shadows of Alien: Earth for an exclusive behind-the-scenes tour of the FX series that's redefining sci-fi horror. Go inside the eerie soundstages and intricately crafted sets—spaceships, labs, and research facilities—each dripping with suspense and detail. Created by Noah Hawley and set two years before Ridley Scott's 1979 masterpiece, this first-ever Alien TV series stars Sydney Chandler, Timothy Olyphant, Alex Lawther, and more. Alien: Earth airs Tuesdays on FX. Stream next day on Hulu.
00:13This is the biggest show I think that's ever come to Thailand.
00:17We're all rolling!
00:18We're on three different studios on 15 or 16 different sound stages at any one time.
00:24Every set is a bit mind-blowing.
00:27It is quite wonderful to walk in and be a part of this world.
00:31The amount of energy and effort that have been made to make it authentic,
00:34it's an incredible thing happening.
00:38The first time I saw Alien, it really grabbed me, the use of spaces.
00:42The simple things like the start-up routine of the Nostromo computer in the opening,
00:47panning silent shots, introducing the whole world of the show.
00:50I was fortunate enough to access a small amount of Disney archives,
00:53both behind-the-scenes photos and about half of the original working drawings done in 1978 and 79.
01:02The Maginot ship that we've built is very much based on the original plans of the Nostromo.
01:07Our ship in the Maginot is the Yutani spaceship.
01:10They have many of these ships, they design them all the same.
01:13So this is a different spaceship to the Nostromo, but the bridge is the same.
01:17It's a common component.
01:18And you'll see the same as our approach to design throughout the Maginot.
01:22Everything around the workstation was kept to be as accurate in terms of dressing.
01:27All of the screens in Alien are old TV screens.
01:31So we got hold of contemporary cathode ray tube TVs and put them in all of the key screens in here.
01:37We had to look very carefully at the surfaces, the way details were pulled out on the original,
01:41and recreate what they were.
01:44So we're walking from the bridge into Mother, the main computer on the Nostromo,
01:48and also the main computer in the Maginot.
01:51The way they made it, it doesn't even feel like a set.
01:54I felt like I was actually walking into a real room in a spaceship.
01:59I was proudest of our art department's work in this,
02:01because we got the working drawings for this after we'd built them,
02:04but studying them really carefully, we got so many things right.
02:07We repeat as accurate as we can these sort of random flashing patterns.
02:11The type of keyboard that we used, there were no original keyboards of the same type,
02:15so we had to make up our own.
02:17Just like in the Nostromo, the computer station swings around to face the monitor.
02:22It's just an amazing thing to look at and be able to recreate.
02:26Designing spaceships, any space you have will be connected to a corridor that connects to another space.
02:33One of the most fun spaces to recreate from the Nostromo on the Maginot was the metal.
02:39It's where we meet the Nostromo crew.
02:41We just recreated the original working drawings.
02:44So this is a millimetrically accurate recreation of that set.
02:53This is the cryo chamber in the Maginot.
02:55Hey, Mara, wake up.
02:56We were able to produce the cryopods from the same drawings that they were built from for the 1979 movie.
03:03Because it was a bigger room, we had to kind of make up more of the room.
03:06I took a lot of the wall details that were in the much smaller space in the Nostromo, expanded them out.
03:12Let's move.
03:14In the mechanical corridor, we paid a lot of attention to the grime and the type of surface dressing.
03:19All of the mechanical components, they were taken from 60s and 50s aircraft, they were taken from scrap yards, pieces of car, different things that don't necessarily make sense, but together it creates a feeling.
03:30We have a containment room that's much like an engine room that you see in the film, chains hanging from the ceiling.
03:37You know, it's very loyal on that level.
03:39But of course, the majority of the show doesn't take place in a Whelan-Yutani aesthetic.
03:44It takes place in a prodigy corporation aesthetic.
03:47I think it's really difficult to balance that retro aspect that Noah's taken from the original films, but also propelling that into having that futuristic aspect.
03:56Because at the center of our story is this unbelievably advanced and sophisticated technology.
04:01The composite Neverland set, it's a combination of domestic living spaces for our synths.
04:06It's got the medical bay. We also have a lobby and an atrium set.
04:10I love the talking room. The beauty of that room mixed with the horror of what they're doing in that room.
04:16The one that made me squeal the most is probably the secure lab. It's quite clinical, but that's where the eggs are.
04:25This billionaire has built this Neverland community. It's state-of-the-art in his mind, but they have a real mold problem.
04:32You think sci-fi and you think shiny, clean, and new, and instead it's like the earth is trying to retake ownership.
04:39And part of that is just to try to create a world that has this underlying sense of dread to it, even as they try to live in the world.
04:45Even as they try to live in the sort of loftier dreams of the hybrid future, biological reality rears its ugly head.
04:54There's a sort of beautiful quality about wanting to make real this nostalgic memory we have of something that existed before.
05:02In Alien, in the first movie, the production design was designed by people who were sort of my heroes growing up in the industry earlier.
05:09I feel very fortunate to have been allowed to recreate those spaces and use them again because it was just a lot of fun. Geeky fun of fun.
05:16We're all in Alien series that the next to fight, but that's what problems we
05:25are seeing over a year.
05:28If you seriously have no known job, it comes to this community's
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