Alien III

An Audible Original Drama

By: William Gibson

Narrated by: Tom Alexander, Barbara Barnes, Michael Biehn, Lance Henriksen, Lorelei King, Laurel Lefkow, Keith Wickham

Length: 2 hrs and 16 mins

Publisher's summary

Audible is bringing William Gibson’s uncovered Alien III script to life in audio for the first time, to mark the 40th Anniversary of the birth of the Alien franchise.  

Alongside a full cast, Michael Biehn and Lance Henriksen reprise their iconic roles as Corporal Hicks and Bishop from the 1986 film Aliens.   

Father of cyberpunk William Gibson’s original script for Alien III, written in 1987 as a sequel to Aliens, never made it to our screens, although it went on to achieve cult status among fans as the third instalment that might have been after being leaked online. 

This terrifying, cinematic multicast dramatisation - directed by the multi-award-winning Dirk Maggs - is the chance to experience William Gibson’s untold story and its terrifying, claustrophobic and dark encounters between humans and aliens, as a completely immersive audio experience. 

The story begins with the Sulaco on its return journey from LV-426. On board the military ship are the cryogenically frozen skeleton crew of that film’s survivors: Ripley, Hicks, Newt and Bishop. 

We travel aboard and hear an alarm blare. Our heroes are no longer alone....

Starring: Tom Alexander, Barbara Barnes, Michael Biehn, Cliff Chapman, Samantha Coughlan, Ben Cura, Dar Dash, Harry Ditson, Mairead Doherty, Lance Henriksen, Graham Hoadly, Lorelei King, Laurel Lefkow, Martin McDougall, Sarah Pitard, Michael Roberts, David Seddon, Andrew James Spooner, Siri Steinmo, Dai Tabuchi, Keith Wickham, Rebecca Yeo.

©2019 20th Century Fox (P)2019 Audible, Ltd

Audio Dramatization of the Movie that never was

The original Alien III screenplay (1987) by cyberpunk author William Gibson never reached production. Early director Renny Harlin had rejected it and by the time the final Alien³ (1992) reached production with director David Fincher, the 1987 script (with its Soviet-Union-inspired United Progressive Peoples component of characters) was out-dated. David Fincher had his own ideas on top of an interim Vincent Ward screenplay. The final product ended up being a mixed bag with the studio taking the production away from Fincher to the point that he has disavowed it along with the later re-edits that were made.

For the 40th Anniversary of the original Alien (1979) movie, Audible Studios commissioned an audio dramatization of the Gibson screenplay. Dramatist and director Dirk Maggs has made a fantastic audio enactment of the screenplay and has enhanced it considerably with added scenes and characters. Producing a screenplay without the visuals requires an increased amount of narration and description that was not present on the page*. The main addition is a full 12-minutes of introductory backstory that basically recreates the entire conclusion of the Aliens (1986) film. That may sound unnecessary, until you find out [mild spoiler] that fan favourite Ripley spends most of the Alien III screenplay in a non-speaking comatose state. So that action set-piece was the only way to give Ripley a stronger cameo. Actress Laura Lefkow does a spot-on impersonation of Sigourney Weaver in this role.

No spoilers about the rest of the plot. I will say however, especially in this age of disrespecting fan favourite characters (e.g. Disney Star Wars, Season 8 Game of Thrones etc.), that the Aliens characters get a proper continuing story here (although the reduced Ripley role was surprising, did Gibson think Sigourney Weaver wasn't returning?). Original Aliens actors Michael Biehn and Lance Henrickson return as Hicks and Bishop, with the child character Newt voiced by Mairead Doherty. I did find the increased cast (22/23 voice parts) a bit hard to follow, so I ended up assembling the following Cast of Characters (in order of appearance as best as I could work out) Listing:

Returning Characters from Aliens
Bishop, an android, survivor from LV-426 (Lance Henriksen)
Ripley, 3rd Officer & survivor of Nostromo & survivor of LV-426 (Laurel Lefkow)
Carter Burke, a Weyland-Yutani executive (in brief flashback scene) (Tom Alexander)
Corporal Dwayne Hicks, a Colonial Marine, survivor from LV-426 (Michael Biehn)
Newt (nickname of Rebecca Jordan), child survivor from LV-426 (Mairead Doherty)
Mother, voice of Computer (Lorelei King)

United Progressive Peoples (UPP) Commandos who board Sulaco when it drifts into the UPP Sector
Kurtz, UPP Commando Captain (David Seddon)
Desolas, UPP Commando (called Juanito by the Captain) (Cliff Chapman)
Chang, UPP Commando (Rebecca Yeo)

Crew at Anchorpoint Station, a Weyland-Yutani facility
Jackson, Operations Chief at Anchorpoint (Siri Steinmo)
Tully, Charles A., biolab tech, a crew member on Anchorpoint (Dar Dash)
Spence, crew member on Anchorpoint (Samantha Coughlan)
Rosetti, senior scientist, crew member on Anchorpoint (Martin McDougall)

Weyland-Yutani Weapons Division visitors to Anchorpoint Station from Gateway Station
Kevin Fox, a Weyland-Yutani Corp Weapons Division officer (Keith Wickham)
Susan Wells, a Weyland-Yutani Corp Weapons Division officer (Barbara Barnes)

Further Crew at Anchorpoint Station
Walker, Chief Mechanic, crew member on Anchorpoint (Harry Ditson)
Sterling, biolab team, crew member on Anchorpoint (Andrew James Spooner)
Tatsumi, biolab team, crew member on Anchorpoint (Dai Tabuchi)

UPP Crew at a Cybernetics Laboratory in Rodina Station, a UPP facility
Colonel Doctor Suslov, principal science officer at Rodina Station (Michael Roberts)

Voice Communication from Gateway
Stoddard (voiced by ?)

Further UPP Crew at Rodina Station
Jorje Rivera, Diplomatic Officer at Rodina Station (Ben Cura)
Nevsky, a Science Officer at Rodina Station (Graham Hoadly)

Further Crew at Anchorpoint Station
Halliday, ecotech at the ecomodule in Anchorpoint (Sarah Pitard)

The audio production, foley effects, ambiance and soundtrack music for this was excellent. It would certainly rate a [5] along with the cast performances. I would just bump it down a notch for not providing a cast of characters.

Alien III was available as a free Audible Original for members as of May 30, 2019. It is expected to be one of the free Audible Originals for members in June 2019 (available June 6, 2019) after which it revert to a standard price.

Trivia and Links
*The original William Gibson screenplay is available online at http://www.awesomefilm.com/script/Alien3.txt.
You can read the rather long production story of Alien III (1987) to Alien3 (1992) on Wikipedia here href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_3#1987–1989"

Stays Frosty

For two hours, this is awesome entertainment. The opening ten minutes, in which Bishop recounts the ending to Aliens, complete with sound effects, sets the best possible tone. I was in my car, heading to work and hit play. After a few minutes, I hear the blaring klaxons of LV-426 and a female voice annoucning "You now have two minutes to reach minimum safe distance." I can't lie. I felt a jolt of pure, almost boyish exuberance.

There are some downsides. The actual story is lacking in terms of scope and plot. Ripley is sleeping through the whole story and Newt, although definitely present, is shipped back to earth. Those are the biggest character arc problems I had with this version. Also, Alien III runs with the plot premises that made Alien Covenant so bad. Namely, airborne alien DNA can just recreate the Alien species. I think the queen-egg-chest gestation is still the most horrific biological construct ever, and I don't know why this franchise insists on moving away from it.

The upsides are here too. The new characters are actually pretty good, in my opinion, and the sound effects & production work excel. But there are two things that make this worth the purchase in full. One, Michael Beihn. Every time I heard the real Hicks giving a command, I smiled. It's Hicks, man! We never saw him again after Aliens, so it was instant pleasure to have him alive and well on this audiobook. Two, the book/script is rich with Alien-Aliens lore. The writer understands the Aliens universe and keeps that universe fresh in the settings and dialogue. Alien III "feels" like a true follow up to Aliens. I'll add that while Lance Henriksen doesn't blow me away, he's still an awesome compliment to the story in his reprisal of Bishop.

If you're like me...someone who is still waiting and chasing the thrill of 1986 Aliens...buy the audiobook. It has a little bit of that magic we've all been looking for and haven't found in a long time.

Nearly impossible to follow.. so bummed..

Michael Biehn & Lance Henrikson deserve better. They do their best to carry you through. In fact If Henrikson continued with the narration present in the beginning, the story mightve had a chance to flow better but only up to a point.

I realised a little over an hour in, that things werent sounding good.. it fell apart from there on to the point where as much as i wanted to care, i couldnt.. Ive listened to dozens of audiobooks. None were as hard to follow as this one... again, so bummed.

I can't believe I'm going to say "disappointing."

I may be the most devoted Alien fan in the Midwest. When the movie novelizations came out, I snatched them up and devoured them. When Amazon released the dramatizations... they rocked my world. I would be hard put to choose a favorite, but it would definitely be between the first two dramas (Out of the Shadows and River of Pain), followed by the third. I was so excited to see that this new Alien III dramatization was coming out that I pre-ordered it and L-I-T-E-R-A-L-L-Y counted the hours.

This dramatization fell lightyears short of the first three productions. This was shorter, and it seemed to spend half the production recapping the Aliens movie. Then, it was off to the predictable races... again. Alien stows away, Alien gets loose, Alien infects the crew, Alien annihilates everyone except the chosen three or four, Alien dies and we all look forward to the next infestation on another world, ship, etc. Unfortunately, the story never settles on anything that would make this production its own - the hybrid twist, the Alien v. Hybrid battle, Bishop, more science, anything. I enjoyed the spin on the hybrid Alien, and honestly, I wish the entire drama would have been focused more on them and less on past history. What's more, I was geared up for a huge Alien vs. Hybrid battle only for it to last about two sentences. That was seriously disappointing.

It is hard to admit that this was a true disappointment. Especially since I had wanted it to be so great. It just never seemed to take hold of any one angle, instead, glanced off possible AMAZING plots like a pinball machine - pinging here, there and then down the hole.

I suppose that is my overall review. Perhaps the production wasn't so much "lacking" as it simply never focused, and that made it feel wasted.

Honestly, if I could return this one, I would. While I have listened to the other three dramas at least 50 times each, I won't be listening to this one again.

This should have been the movie that got made.

The voice acting is fantastic! Great sound effects and score. I would have loved to see this as Alien 3. Hopefully Audible will complete the planned two sequels for this with the original actors and current voice actors.

We waited for this....

The story was horrid, with poor detailing. What did the hybrid even look like, pervious books did amazing jobs at detailing the environment and setting the mood. I enjoyed the voice acting but the dialogue was very B horror filmish. I’ve listen to every Aliens audio book, seen the movies numerous of times and read the comics, but this was def. on the poor end of the story telling ladder . At least it was free....but I would have been more than willing to pay for quality.

Two Words: "Cocooned Lemurs"

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is about the most original thing in this turd. Thank god this thing didn't get produced, the special effects person would have stormed off the set after being tasked with making "cocooned lemurs" anything but laughable. This makes the Alien III film that was produced look like a classic. I would have loved to see Sigourney Weaver's face after she read this script: "Am I to understand you want me to reprise my role as one of the most iconic female film heroes of all time in a film where I am unconscious 90% of the time and then shot out to safety behind Newt?" (who gets to go to Oregon!) Rehashes the first two in spectacularly unoriginal fashion, except, I guess, that this time the Xenomorphs can just infect you and have you turn into one of them. Oh, and the new bad guys are the Russians and the Chinese. It is, however, nice to hear Michael Biehn and Lance Hendrickson again, and thing is immaculately produced. But on the whole it's basically a terrible bore, not even worth the price of free. As I have learned over the years, just because it has William Gibson's name on it does not make it good. And Audible, stop littering your bestseller lists with these "originals", it makes it tough to weed through and find the good stuff.

Way better plot than the movie we got.

This was closer to the Aliens plot than the crappy movie we got. Very enjoyable mini show on it's own.

Good production, weak source material

So, yeah. The story is all over the place and very inncoherent. The choises Gibson did with the xenomorphs are... odd. The motivation of the main (human) villain is nonexistant. Overall - I'm glad they didn't shoot this as a movie. say what you will about the current Alien 3 - it is way better than this mess (I am actually a huge fan of it).

All said: really glad Audible did this dramatization, it's a cool idea and us Alien-fans are greatful for having a version of a could-have-been script, nevermind the quality of the story.

Acting is top notch, glad they got two of the original actors to reprise their roles. Good production, good (albeit somewhat overly fastpaced) direction.

outstanding! wish there be of a follow-up to this

outstanding amazing this goes right next to aliens out of the shadows and alien Sea of Sorrow

So, Alien 3 Could have been MUCH better!

Alien was one of my favourite films of all time, few films have had me riveted to the screen quite so absolutely. Aliens, while different in character, was a fine follow-up and since then I've lost count of the number of discussions I've had with friends about which is the better film with us being split fairly well down the middle. What happens if you add Alien 3 into the mix? Well, the answer is that we're still evenly split, half of us with Alien being the best and the other half with Aliens. No-one but no-one ever tries to make a case for Alien 3! It's hard to imagine what they were thinking of choosing the script that they did and now I think we have a definite answer to the big question, yes there were better options out there!

What's great about this is that it delivers another action flick like Aliens albeit only in audio. Maggs / Audible throw their considerable expertise and experience with the franchise at it. There is a lovely solidity to the sound effects, really crunchy, solid sound with the noises made by the aliens particularly impressive. I can't wait to try this again through quality headphones, it sounded great through the Bluetooth so when I put a real bit of oomph behind it I think it will rock! The acting is also extremely good for the most part.

On the other hand, it does rely heavily on repeating things that have been done before and I don't think the story quite hits the heights, nor does Gibson's script use all the surviving characters as well as he could have done. It's also of course quite short for an audiobook though that's not surprising - it is a film script after all!

So, no doubt in my mind that while this isn't perfect, it's a class above the story / script they used for Alien 3 the film. I can possibly see why they didn't plump for this one, what I can't see is why they chose the one they did above it. In any case, I'm more than happy to have spent a credit on it and I am going to enjoy listening to it again at home!

By the way, if you can't remember how Alien 2 finished up then don't worry there is a good reprise of how it panned out at the start of this.

disappointing

This sadly plays out like they're just reading the stage directions from the script and not an actual drama at all. It's not been very well adapted as an audio drama, and the script has some terrible clunking lines in it. The use of Bishop as a narrator doesn't work very well as he is too disapassionately removed. The story itself is also not terribly exciting or as interesting as it's been hyped up to be; certainly no better than the original Alien 3 film.

He's coming in. I feel safer already........

As a 16 year old, my first experience of the Alien series came from watching Aliens on ye olde VHS at a friends house. I was entranced and have been in awe of it ever since. I have bored countless friends and family stupid, reciting lines and reiterating how good it is.

I then watched Alien and subsequently and most depressingly of all Alien 3. Alien 3 just left me feeling hollow. Dead. Apart from a few of Fiorina "Fury" 161’s finest inmates; they just killed everyone. Of the film itself, there were some good performances. I thought Charles Dance was very good. It was different film, some may argue it’s merits but for me, not in a way that either equalled or improved upon it’s predecessors.

Imagine my interest then at Niell Blomkamp’s idea at an alternative Alien 3 – which unfortunately hasn’t gone anywhere – and then the Dark Horse and Audible interpretations of Gibson’s alternative Alien 3 screenplay.

For the Audible version, it’s great to have Hicks (Michael Biehn) and Bishop (Lance Heriksen) back. Since we last saw him; Bishop has developed something of a whistle when he speaks, probably something to do with being ripped asunder by an Alien Queen. Teeth not quite what they used to be. Ripley (Lauren Leftkow) is given little air time in this production by when she’s there, her Ripley is spot on as it is in the other Audible Alien titles.

The story is interesting, I’m glad Gibson introduced some new ideas both political and of the Alien’s adaptability amidst the ever present somewhat pantomime face of the villainous “company” and we all know what they are after.

My only disappointment is there isn’t more of it. It is woefully short and a shame the screenplay couldn’t have been given the novelisation treatment. I have geek-ely (not a word) been waiting 33 years for someone to finally bring this together; the alternative which should have been so thanks Audible but can we please have more.

I can see why this script ended up in the bin

Sorry to say it, but I was really disappointed with this Alien dramatisation. The previous ones were very good indeed, and I'm afraid to say this pales in comparison. It was great to hear Michael Biehn and Lance Henriksen reprise their roles from Aliens, but the story just didn't do them justice. Half the time I had no idea what was going on - where were the characters? Which spaceship or spacestation were they on? Who of the supporting cast were talking (they all sounded the same, except for the Russians and Chinese guys)? And, it is much too short. And the story was pretty pants to boot. Avoid.

Fox made the right choice

I read Gibson’s Alien3 script 20 or so years ago - it’s still widely available on the internet - and gave this a go for old times’ sake.

Sadly, I was reminded of what I thought back then. Gibson’s Alien3 is quite derivative and dull in comparison to the brave decisions made in the theatrical release. It just gives audiences a load more of the same. In fact it’s easy to spot which tired elements were reused in the truly awful Alien: Resurrection.

Far more interesting would be to hear an audio version of Vincent Ward’s original Alien3 script which was superbly challenging and gave life to many of the stronger elements in the released movie.

Retcon the alien franchise.

It’s easy to see why this ambitious unproduced screenplay was pushed aside in favour of more traditional and cheaper movie . The sets would have been bigger and the ships more detailed. The story moves towards the polictical and ethical implications of weaponising the Alien.
If you read this alongside the comic book (recently released under dark horse) it will truly bring the movie to life.
It takes the franchise in provocative and interesting directions. It’s great to have the characters back again and Hicks and Bishop take more of a lead role. I think they were unsure if sigourney would return or maybe fox wanted a male audience.
So let’s forget about Alien 3 and obviously Alien resurrection and cuddle up to some familiar friends and enemies.

Maybe next Audible could explore the wooden planet script and the religious iconography of Vincent Wards script.

Middling effort, way to short

A disappointing entry into the alien folklore. Basic storyline and way to short. Not worth the credit.

The sequel Aliens deserved.

To hear Michael Biehn and Lance Henriksen reprise their roles as Cpl. Dwayne Hicks and Bishop respectively filled me with joy. Although a much shorter audible original compared to the others in the series, it was still very enjoyable from start to finish. I just hope that there is more to come.

Enjoyed, Albeit Short

Great to hear the return of Michael Biehn and lance Henrickson the Aliens universe and a worthy return. Sadly I do feel it was rather short, hope they continue the story line of the end of the audiobook with new material.

Awful

There’s a reason this was never made into a film and it’s even worse as a audio book.