McFlabbergasty

Eyes open. The comfortable resting place of a cryopod. The glass door opening outward.

The old man looks down at Newt laying in her cryopod.

She is still groggy from hypersleep and needs to be helped out of her pod. She asks the man if they have reached home yet. He tells her that she needs some shots before she can be allowed to come home.

Little Newt asks why Ripley and Hicks haven't been woken up yet, but Portnoy simply shushes her and walks her over to the infirmary. She starts to suspect that not all is right.

Mack decides that the bridge will be the best place to serve as a temporary base of operations. She returns to the Company cruiser attached to the Sulaco's hull and brings back a clear glass cage containing her pet: a boa constrictor named Ahab.

Back on the bridge, Calvin is parsing through navigational and environmental data with Sister. A door slides open and in walks Mack with her pet snake. 

Mack communicates their finding to O'Neill over her headset. The executive's voice tells the two not to go near the egg and that the specimen is very valuable to the Company. Mack and Rodan leave the egg undisturbed and report back to the cryo-pod area.

The cryo-pod area. Ripley, Hicks, and Newt are still sound asleep.

O'Neill tells Portnoy his next assignment: determine the best possible test subject from the three people sleeping in the cryopods and expose them to the Xenomorph egg on the dropship. 

Portnoy casts a glare over the three sleepers.

He decides that the little girl would be the best choice for Xenomorph implantation. 

At first, only Bishop is brought out of hypersleep by the Corporates. Calvin uses a work terminal in the Sulaco's engineering deck to give the bisected android a few minutes of life before permanent shutdown. In his last few moments "alive", Bishop tells the expedition group numerous details of the LV-426 incident.

O'Neill asks Bishop if any Xenomorphs made it onto the Sulaco. Bishop replies by telling him that a single egg-laying Queen stowed away on a dropship. The android ends his account by mentioning that it would be very inadvisable to try to interact with the Xenomorphs in any way besides eliminating them, precluding the Company's goals of capturing and harnessing them as bio-weapons.

Bishop finally gives out. His remains are folded up and stuffed into a storage locker.

Calvin reaches the Sulaco's bridge to get a full assessment of their location and trajectory. He consults the ship's artificial intelligence CISTR (Command Interface and Synthetic Tactical Rendering), or "Sister". This leads Calvin to deliver the news to the other Corporates, who have moved back to the cryo-pod area, that the ship will dock at Gateway Station in just under two days. 

This gives the group a tight deadline to meet. O'Neill delegates tasks to help accomplish the Company's objectives: locate and harness any trace remnants of the Xenomorph presence encountered on LV-426. He orders Mack and Rodan to search the hangar bay, the Queen's former location as indicated by Bishop, for any Xenomorph activity. O'Neill wants the team out of the Sulaco (preferably with something or someone carrying Xenomorph biological matter) before it enters the Solar System so the Colonial Marine Corps will be none the wiser by the time the troop carrier reaches Gateway Station.

The dropship hangar. Where Ellen Ripley faced off against a Xenomorph Queen in single combat. The dropship flown by Bishop rests on the deck.

The shallow puddles of white Synthetic blood still haven't been cleaned up.

Mack and Rodan enter, weapons drawn. They vigilantly scan every nook and cranny they can in anticipation of Xenomorphs, but none appear. Rodan carries a stepladder to the front end of the craft, climbs to the top, then takes out his laser cutter.

After cutting a large hole through the dropship's canopy, Rodan crawls through and scouts the craft's interior. Mack slithers through the hole in the glass shortly after.

The two enter the rear compartment of the craft, a claustrophobic area bathed in red light.

And it is there that the two lay eyes on an unhatched Xenomorph egg.

DAY ONE

The USS Sulaco, on a course for Gateway Station above Earth (by orders of the Colonial Marine Corps) is intercepted in deep space by an interstellar shuttle adorned with the insignia of the Weyland-Yutani Corporation. The only apparent inhabitants of the Sulaco are the sleeping forms of Ellen Ripley, Dwayne Hicks, Rebecca "Newt" Jorden, and the artificial person known as "Bishop", all secure in their cryo-pods. 

The Company cruiser (only about twice the size of the escape shuttle Ripley uses at the end of Alien) matches speed with the Sulaco and extends a docking walkway to one of the military vessel's airlock ports. Four figures in space suits clamber through the walkway, the flexible transparicrete alloy of the unfolding tunnelway being one of only two boundaries separating their bodies from the infinite void of the cosmos.

They reach the airlock to the Sulaco. One of the spacewalkers, whose suit is labeled "MACK", orders another walker, whose suit is labeled "CALVIN", to use a laser cutter to open the doorway.

After thirty seconds of bright light and sparks, the metal bulkhead of the Sulaco topples over like domino. The four walkers enter the ship, taking a second to adjust to the artificial gravity. After Calvin reads a positive check on his wrist-mounted atmosphere scanner, Mack orders the squad to remove their helmets.

Mack, the squad leader, is revealed to be a short-haired blonde female in her late thirties. She readies her pistol, an efficient killing tool of finesse and precision.

Calvin, the technician, is a somewhat diminutive-looking man of bronze complexion.

The third squad member, Portnoy, the doctor, is a balding, bitter-eyed man who appears to be pushing 50.

The last squad member, Rodan, the security operative, is a tall, musclebound, goatee'd black man with a steely look of grim resolve in his eyes at all times. He clicks on the sparker of his flamethrower, ready to meet any threat with a storm of fire.

Mack sends a message to their cruiser's computer, causing another figure to cross over to the Sulaco. This last member of the group is O'Neill, the Company executive in charge of facilitating mission outcomes, a somewhat portly man with an overfriendly demeanor befitting a corporate weasel.

The Company detachment moves down a cavernous, poorly-lit hallway towards the cryo-pods.

The cryo-pod area of the Sulaco.

The four survivors of the Hadley's Hope incident lay tranquil and oblivious.

Then the five Corporates show up, with Rodan taking point. He holds his flame unit at the ready, having heard tales about the monstrous creatures of Hadley's Hope, he keeps his eyes peeled more than the others. 

Rodan is followed by Mack, with Portnoy, Calvin, and O'Neill at the rear. On beholding the sleeping forms of the four survivors, Portnoy begins accessing the cryo-pods' computers. After a brief analysis, the doctor determines that the three human subjects have not suffered any permanent physical injury and can be safely re-awakened. Calvin examines the deactivated Bishop and determines that he can be only be re-activated for a short amount of time.

Calvin wonders aloud what in the universe was strong enough to rip a Synthetic in two like that...

--------------

More to come soon!

I'm working on a concept for a "re-trying" of the third Alien film, because I was rather unimpressed with the one we got in 1992. It's not entirely nailed down yet, but you can enjoy this hastily cobbled-together little slideshow of my idea for the film's title sequence that I made in MS Paint.

This is from a quick little ramble post I put up on Reddit just now. How does it sound?

Newt's pod is jettisoned due to a fire on the Sulaco and crashlands on one of the border worlds. Ripley, Hicks, and Bishop remain in hypersleep. Newt grows up on this backwater planet, a tough and unforgiving type of environment not unlike Fury 161. Newt's life is hell in the mines, but her prior experiences on LV-426 have given her a sharp edge. She escapes the confines of her reluctant foster parents by enlisting in the Colonial Marines, where she takes part in an expedition to recover the Sulaco. Ripley, Bishop, and Hicks are woken up. Soon after the discovery of an expired facehugger on the dropship that Bishop used to fly to the Sulaco from LV-426, Hicks' chest bursts open to reveal an infant alien. This Alien stalks the crew and picks them off, and because it came from a sharp-witted, battle-hardened marine, it is considerably more resilient and resourceful than the creatures of Hadley's Hope or the Alien on the Nostromo. The big hanging threat over the entire movie is that the Alien must be found, killed, and its body annihilated before the Marines' ship returns to Earth.

I just found an absolutely gorgeous piece of fan art that, by chance, matches up exactly to what I have in mind for Episode 7. This would appear to be taken from the moment where Jeni first meets Amnar at the ruins of the Millenium Falcon on Raxus Prime.

Have there been any experimental found footage films that depict life through the eyes of someone in another time and place? Say, for example, the life of a blacksmith in Normandy in the year 875 CE. Or perhaps a Mongol horseman in 1219 CE. 

There would be no background music, not makeup except for what the people of the period might have worn, and intentionally "unprofessional" lighting. I have always wanted to see this. Not to mention these films would be one continuous shot, because real life is one continuous shot. 

Has this movie ever been made? 

Thank you all for your input.

Through a combination of therapy and anti-depressant medication, I've recovered a great deal in the past few months. I'm only intending to continue the meds for as long as I can work through the counseling process. If you have suffered a broken leg, you only wear crutches or a leg cast for as long as necessary for the limb to properly heal. Likewise, I'm going through a healing process for my mind.

Writing Star Wars fan fic and other fiction has helped me cope. It's given me a creative outlet for all these years. I don't know where I would be if I never wrote. I'm hoping to get back to updating my Revenge of the Jedi outline soon, as I have many astounding events planned for Jeni.

I now present the shortest update ever...

Tyrhevius

This has been the shortest update ever. More to come soon.

Han Solo is alive in Disney's Episode VII? I call heresy.

I'll post in this story outline next whenever-I-feel-like-it-because-I-am-being-swamped-by-classes.

The dearth of recent posts is due to the start of a new academic semester...

He returns the slate to his underling, remarking that he always felt that there was something shifty about Dagman. The mercenary grabs a sidearm on his bed as he leaves his quarters. He has to inform master Hossk of this new development at once.
 
Cut to a heavily forested area outside the Talon Strider base. Tyrhevius is walking under a canopy of veshok trees, the sturdy trunks terminating in olive clouds overhead. He holds his blaster at the ready.

I'm delightfully surprised that my work has inspired this kind of discussion, Mrebo. :) 

More Revenge coming soon!

Meanwhile on Verdanth, Tyrhevius surveys a holographic map of the local star cluster. It is projected from a pedestal in the center of his private quarters, a room located in the heart of the Talon Striders’ base of operations. Sporadically-placed glow lamps illuminate various weapons, both blasters and blades alike, as well as mementos wrenched from the dying forms of his previous victims.

As he turns a globe in the palm of his hand, his door lets out a two-tone beep. Tyrhevius waves an idle gesture. The door slides open. A Gran underling enters the gloomily-lit room.

The servant tells Tyrhevius that their eyes and ears on Raxus Prime have sent back word of Dagman’s demise. The human Strider demands more details of the incident. The Gran proffers a vid-slate to his master showing the merchant’s body in an alley, one arm missing. Tyrhevius deduces from the clean, cauterized state of the wound that the assailant used a lightsaber. He knows this from his days as a mercenary under the late Darth Vader.

Now that we're finally off of Raxus Prime, I would say we are about halfway through the film. Let me know what you guys think so far!

More Revenge coming soon. 

I'm thinking of making Jeni's Agr fighter a hobby project started by Chewbacca. Years after his death, Jeni received the fighter as an inheritance, since Chewie was like a godfather to Jeni. Maybe Chewie was into racing and spent his free time tinkering on a custom fighter to maximize its thrust and maneuverability...

Not an important plot detail, but a little bit of background flavor to flesh out the setting.

Jeni decides that before leaving for Verdanth to close in on Hossk, she must return the sack of crystals to Isis. She calls Zero from across Amnar’s dwelling, where the droid was busy scanning objects out of what could be described as curiosity. Zero beeps his assent as he accompanies Amnar and Jeni out of the building into the streets of Raxus Prime.

Cut to the spaceport. Amnar and Jeni split ways outside the landing pad zone after she tells him the coordinates of her destination. Amnar goes to his ship with the intention of following Jeni’s. His vessel is a modified R-41 Starchaser with a pair of concussion missile launchers bolted onto the wings to bolster its already substantial combat capabilities. It packs a heftier punch than Jeni’s craft, a Kashyyyk-produced “Agr” fighter. Her ship, however, bears nigh-unbeatable maneuverability, only further amplified by the Force-sensitivity of its pilot.

Jeni has made all the necessary flight checks and docked Zero into her craft when she sees that her navcomputer has received new holo-messages. She opens the first recording. A tiny hologram of Luke tells her to come home to Corellia because they “need to talk”.

Jeni purses her lips in disgruntlement. Then she views the next recording. In it Luke says that he has felt a tremor in the Force and implores Jeni to return to Corellia immediately.

With reluctance, Jeni messages Amnar on her commlink. She says they will have to make a stop at Corellia before continuing on their mission.

The two fighters lift off from the spaceport and break atmosphere. The persistent soot and haze of the junkyard world gives way to the tranquil void of space. Inside of a minute, their distance from the planet’s gravity well allows Jeni and Amnar to jump into hyperspace, putting Raxus Prime behind them for good.

There's also something else to consider, that Jeni is still forming as a person. She's only sixteen years old. She is in a transitive stage between a child and a full-grown adult, so she is not entirely sure what she wants or who she is yet. This scene is our first indication of Jeni's thoughts about what it means to be a Jedi, her place in the galaxy, how she sees the Force, etc. It might seem heretical to go against the simplistic black-and-white, Jedi vs. Dark Side dynamic of the OT, but I had to give Jeni a distinct emotional and philosophical journey to undertake, not a simple rehash of Luke's path. *

Jeni is ultimately good. She is no Sith. But she struggles with how to express herself in the Force, when the established lineage and rites of the Jedi seem too restricting. She is more of a wild spirit than Luke ever was. In that sense, Jeni truly is her father's daughter. 

*Although his arc was completed in Return of the Jedi, Luke still has a role to play in this trilogy. It is superficially similar to Obi-Wan and Yoda's mentor-like roles in the OT, but with some differences that will become apparent later on.

Jeni asks Amnar how long his obligation towards his clan elders bounds him to her mission. He tells her that it ends when Jeni accomplishes her ultimate objective: the elimination of Hossk. But in their short time together, Amnar has gained a deeper level of sympathy for her cause. It is no longer just his warrior quest that keeps him with the Jedi, but also a burgeoning personal attachment.

What do you guys think of the whole "third way" business? It's based on one of the very few things I liked about the prequels: Qui-Gon's unorthodox, anti-authority stance on being a Jedi. I'm thinking of making this philosophy the linchpin of Jeni's character and worldview.

Note: Amnar does not literally use the term "6 ABY". I wrote that in for the reader's sake, since most of us on this forum are familiar with the BBY/ABY system of dates in Star Wars canon.

Amnar asks Jeni about her quest. Though he is no Jedi sage, he has enough knowledge of the Order to know that Jeni’s personal mission is at odds with their ethos. He asks her how she justifies her quest.

Jeni is at first silent and contemplative about his question. Amnar has by this time finished his work on Jeni’s wounds. She gets up to peer out of the netted balcony towards the busy streets below. The winds of Raxus Prime blow through her long locks of jet black hair.

Jeni turns back around to face the Keshiri. She describes how she reconciles her actions with the beliefs of the Jedi. She says that she is simply doing what the Jedi were meant to do in the first place, guard peace and justice throughout the galaxy.

Amnar plays the devil’s advocate. He knows that she is going after the Striders out of personal vengeance rather than high-minded ideals of justice.

Jeni then puts into words what she has started to believe recently: that the Jedi way might not be the right way. She finds it difficult to say, knowing full well the Dark Side connotations of such a statement. But somewhere within, she contemplates why the wielders of the Force have to be strictly divided into two contrasting moral camps.

Ever since Jeni started thinking these thoughts, she has called into question her own allegiance to the Order. With the revelation of Han’s fate, she openly doubts if Master Luke and Leia are the true authorities on matters relating to the Force.

Perhaps there is a third way. Something beyond the Jedi and the Sith.

Jeni sees some of herself in the warrior. She asks him why he chose Raxus Prime for his initiation duty, a world so far away from his home. He tells her that he wanted to get away from Kesh and see the galaxy at large, Raxus Prime being only the most recent stop on his journey between many worlds. No other aspiring Keshiri warrior has ever gone so far away from the homeworld.

When the New Republic made first contact with Kesh in 6 ABY, the natives were hesitant to join the galactic community. They had already built a small pocket empire in what Republic astrogators call “Wild Space”. The Republic sent an ambassador by the name of Leia to make peace with the Keshiri. Amnar, still a small boy at the time, was captivated by Leia’s tales of adventurers traversing the galaxy and of mystics wielding “the Force”. The last known Force-user on Kesh died centuries ago. Amnar resolved to see a thousand worlds before his dying day.

He says that perhaps it is the will of the Force that he has been brought to aid in the quest of Leia’s daughter. Jeni smiles. She agrees that it is indeed fortuitous that the two of them are now companions.

More Revenge coming soon. We'll finally be off of Raxus Prime within a few posts. I'm thinking of titling Episode VIII The Dark Times Begin, meant to invoke one of Obi-Wan's lines in ANH.

I hope I didn't offend any die-hard Keshiri EU fans with my last story post...:P 

NeverarGreat said:

I like that Han, Chewie, and the droids all died. Their character arcs were pretty well over anyway.

Chewie's.....arc?

DOES

NOT

COMPUTE