SALIENT - An Alternate Prequel to "Alien"

I am currently in the process of drafting a prequel to the film Alien to replace the film Prometheus. I was thoroughly disappointed with the latter film's attempt at leading into the former film, so I have taken it upon myself to write what I believe to be a worthy predecessor. It is called Salient in order to tie in with the theme of including the word "alien" in the title of each Alien film.

Salient takes place in the year 2112, ten years before Alien, and concerns a deadly incident at a secret Weyland Enterprises experimentation and research station orbiting above the ice world NX-1138.

The threat is not the Xenomorph from the other Alien films, but something else equally vile.

Please, please, please no blue humanoid space jockies :crossfingers:

@DuracellEnergizer: Ha! No such ridiculousness will be found in my draft. I looked to Giger's many paintings and picked out subjects that I thought looked cool to be the creatures that appear in Salient. I am doing my absolute best to avoid overlap with Prometheus. I was just as disappointed with that film as you appear to be.

Couple of notes on the setting: I may be changing the year to something a bit closer to the first film, perhaps even less than a year preceding. Salient is meant to tie directly into Alien, similar to how Alien tied directly into Aliens. Certain loose ends from Alien such as the nature of the distress signal on LV-426, the genesis of the Company's bio-weapons program, and the mystery of the Space Jockeys will be addressed in Salient...but hopefully not in a way that ruins the mystique and coolness of the Xenomorphs. You guys get to be the judge of that.

The film opens with the USCSS Aimayer arriving in the orbit of the lifeless ice planet NC-1401.

The ship, a survey vessel retrofitted with advanced scientific suites for studying anomalous artifacts, betrays industrial origins with its hard, utilitarian design. The profile of the vessel resembles a dumbbell, with a narrow bridge connecting the aft engineering section to the fore operations and habitation compartment. It is in this fore section of the ship that several men and women are brought out of hyper-sleep by the main computer, which has detected the world of NC-1401 with its radar proximity sensors.

The Aimayer carries a crew of seven. They are...

Captain Arnold Calvin - The leader of the mission and highest-ranking officer on the ship. A maverick with connections in all the wrong places who was hired for a Company mission because of his extensive experience in operations beyond the established Network and rapport with Executive Officer Albertson.

Executive Officer Fred Albertson - The captain’s second-in-command and overseer of all shipboard operations. A by-the-book man who sees the directives of the Weyland Company as superseding all other concerns. He is not aware of the Company’s true intentions beyond the parameters set by the expedition itself, but is determined to enforce order to the last. He is at odds with Doctor O’Hare for his idealistic, blue-sky worldview and on friendly terms with Captain Calvin due a history of military collaboration.

Engineer Lindsay Cho - The officer in charge of the ship’s maintenance and the workings of all electrical and mechanical subsystems. She displays little real interest in the stated goal of the mission, primarily motivated by the substantial shares promised to her by the Company in exchange for its successful completion. Some time in the past, she ended a relationship with Doctor Hermann. Cho holds playful derision for the ship's libidinous navigator.

Navigation Tech Don Fazio - The officer in charge of guiding the ship through space and back to the Network upon successful completion of the mission. The most personable member of the crew. Fazio is something of a ladies man when he is not busy directing the ship’s course at his navigator’s console, rarely passing up the opportunity to move in on Cho.

Medical Officer Theo Daly - The ship’s practitioner of medicine and primary caregiver to any casualties that may be incurred in the mission’s timeframe. A cold, distant, but dependable doctor. While very observant and calculating, he has a tendency to treat patients as little more than bags of flesh. Daly is at odds with the more gregarious and outgoing Fazio.

Doctor Jason O’Hare - One of two researchers in charge of the scientific expedition, in his former employment a tenured professor with a long history in academia. Despite a wrinkled and weathered exterior, his dream of understanding the anomalous artifact detected on the ice planet NC-1401 lies in a child-like wonderment of investigating the unknown. Doctor O'Hare looks at Hermann as the daughter he never had.

Doctor Anna Hermann - One of two researchers in charge of the scientific expedition, a fresh graduate of doctoral school who studied under O’Hare and once had a close relationship with Engineer Cho. Though derided as a greenhorn by other candidates for the position of the mission’s secondary researcher, Hermann harbors an inquisitive nature tempered by caution in the face of an anomalous artifact that may be alive, and whose intentions no-one as yet understands.