After the success of Alien and Aliens, Alien3 should have been a home run of a sequel.

It was not.

Ali-“eh”-n

The film’s production was, in a word, fraught. It burned through 10 different script treatments and began shooting before a final script was completed. David Fincher, in his directorial debut, famously walked out before production ended (after being harassed constantly by the producers) and the studio reworked the majority of the film.

To say it had an uneven box office reception would be kind. It wasn’t until the 2010 Special Edition that we’d finally get a cut that fans felt approached the caliber of the first two movies.

But before all that, there’s William Gibson’s original scripts.

The first is widely known. The full script has been available online for a while now. It’s interesting but bears a lot of similarities to the movie that came before it in the series. The second draft, however, has been a bit of a mystery, rumored to be tighter, quieter, more like the original Alien, but with worldbuilding. No one had seen it.

That’s why I was thrilled when Dark Horse announced they were producing a miniseries based on that second script, giving us a glimpse at what could have been.

Will The Real Chestburster Please Stand Up?

“We are looking at the end of someone else’s arms race.”

Even after I’ve finished the last issue of William Gibson’s Alien 3, that line stays with me.

I’m a child of the Cold War, and I could feel its tendrils in every page of every issue. William Gibson wrote a script that was more than just sci-fi horror. It was a bald-faced allegory of mutual destruction.

In Alien 3 we see more of the motivations of the Weyland Yutani corporation laid bare. Here, their eagerness to weaponize the Xenomorph is given some context as Gibson introduces a second hostile political superpower, the U.P.P., that lives in edge space. It’s they who first find the Sulaco as it drifts home. They who first encounter what remains of its crew.

And, of course, they find more than they bargain for.

What results from the U.P.P. commandos fleeing with the remains of Bishop is an escalating chess match where each side is confident they fully understand the playing field.

The Union of Progressive Peoples is an obvious USSR stand-in (as many opposing powers in fiction were back in the mid- to late-80s), with occasionally ham-handed socialist leanings. But they honestly come out slightly better when compared to the cock-sure, naked greed of Weyland Yutani.

Not that either side comes off looking great. By the blood-soaked pages of the third comic, it’s readily apparent that neither one has any idea what they’re dealing with. The line I mentioned above is a haunting realization that comes far too late.

You Look How I Feel

Gibson introduces a whole host of new characters, but we thankfully have familiar faces to anchor the plot. In addition to Bishop (who gets a new set of cut-rate legs, an unsubtle dig at Soviet technology), Ripley, Hicks, and Newt are all back from cryostasis.

What’s fascinating is how availability of the main cast from Aliens informs Gibson’s script. Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley could be easily lifted out of the plot and you wouldn’t miss a thing other than a few emotional beats. In terms of Aliens cast, Hicks is the star of the show.

He’s playing a familiar role: that of the grizzled vet, someone who knows what they’re dealing with and whose advice is summarily ignored by the powers that be. Avarice winning out over the warnings of someone who’s actually been there.

If One Of Those Things Gets In Here…

While Gibson’s original script took its cues from the preceding movie, this treatment is a satisfying hybrid of both of the prior films. It has the slow burn human drama and tension of Alien, where we see very little of the Xenomorph until the final act. There are also surprisingly few weapons (despite having the Sulaco docked at the space station), making every encounter even more fraught.

The comic also brings context to and rounds out the future Ripley finds herself in when she wakes up in Aliens. With William Gibson’s Alien 3 Weyland Yutani is more than just a greedy corporation. They’re a greedy corporation that’s trying to stay ahead in an escalating arms race. It’s that driving motivation that builds the universe out for me in a way that I don’t feel any of the remaining movies in the series ever did. Certainly not the Alien3 we got on the big screen.

The new Xenomorph that we get from Weyland Yutani’s failed experimentation is horrifying, its contagion-based propagation leading to tension-filled pages where anyone could be a walking incubator. Rather than pervert sexual mores to shock the audience, Gibson uses science-based fears to unsettle the reader.

What Should Have Been

Gibson’s Alien 3 is a much more worthy conclusion to the Alien saga than anything that ended up on film. With the exception of Ripley, who’s treated more as a prop than a character in the script, we’re given satisfying conclusions for the remaining Aliens characters.

More than that, we’re given insight into the broader Alien universe, but not the stubbornly disconnected Progenitor side of things that Ridley Scott insists on focusing on. And instead of taking left turns to end up on a monastic prison planet or dealing with far-flung future geneticists, this treatment slots neatly into the series.

William Gibson’s Alien 3 will make you pine for the cinematic conclusion that should have been.