Like Hicks, I don't find an empty galaxy the least bit frightening, any more than I'd find an empty desert unsettling. It's just an
absence. Something to fill, potentially colonise, but not to fear.
To me, the parts of '
Alien' which were most memorable, setting-wise, were to do with the derelict and egg chamber. All that stuff about ancient tombs once made by a civilisation which wasn't even human... There is a great piece of Ron Cobb concept art of an astronaut shining a torch around such a room and, while unused, it's stayed with me to the present day, every bit as much as the unused Giger hieroglyphics have. That stuff is eerie because it echoes of old 'here be dragons' and 'where even angels fear to tread' proverbs.
Is the continuity devoid of intelligent life? No. Arcturians are canon and even Rico Ross recently opened up in a recent interview that some of that dialogue was ad libbed with a sexually attractive
species in mind, not mere human colonists (which wouldn't really fit with the mention of 'male', as opposed to a more believably informal 'guy').
I don't want them explored in novels, however. Those should be left for the films to examine, for canonical reasons.
So, we then have to ask ourselves whether the continuity
should be represented as
largely devoid of intelligent life. This is a more interesting and relevant question.
While I can't personally accept them as canon, the recent novels seemed to at least get the balance right, so far as I'm concerned. Humans keep mostly to their own affairs, but we've encountered other races - plural. The galaxy is f**king
huge - and that's assuming some other species hasn't got access to technology which allows them to traverse galaxies as easily as individual planetary systems!
For the sake of realism, alone, I found '
Babylon 5' and, especially, '
Farscape' as highly believable, in terms of species and cultural diversity. Would this necessarily be reflected in '
Alien' continuity? Well, we've only glimpsed a small fraction of it, haven't we? A disused prison and secret military research ship aren't exactly likely places for other species to populate. Hadley's Hope? It was only just starting off. Gateway Station? Small -
and orbiting directly outside of Earth. Colonial Marines? Well, they'd be Earth-centric, too.
So, yes, it very well
could be that humans freely intermingle with other species. We just haven't really been anywhere that would be appropriate to
reflect on screen.
What about dialogue? In this sense, we need to look at context. Aside from the mention of Arcturians, there are two prime candidates for this.
* Ferro commenting to Vasquez about who Ripley is.
"
Apparently, she saw an alien once."
There's a vague hint of sarcasm in her tone. Ambiguous, but it strikes me that the implied meaning of it is that a civilian who's seen another species is
not all that special. Especially when Hudson immediately chimes in with his unimpressed whoopy-f**kin'-doo moment.
Personally, I find it easier to interpret that scene as Ferro and Hudson not finding Ripley's experience the least bit unusual. It's the
nature of what she's faced which, later on, proves to be unique. Not the fact that she's encountered another species.
* Dallas speaking about the signal.
To me, the context of this is even more telling. Ripley, without dropping a beat, asks if it's human. None of the others crack a joke at her expense for doing so - and her manner is quite clearly serious. Likewise, Dallas doesn't frown in confusion or anything like that. He treats the question honestly and just shrugs his shoulders. Why aren't at least Parker and Brett eventually making digs at her for asking such a question?
The scene is presented, not as someone asking a bizarre notion, but as a concern which should be treated realistically.
In both of these scenes, they make more sense, not less, if humanity has encountered at least one other species in the past, if not several. Quite what level we might be socialising with them is open to question - and wouldn't dilute any focus on future human characters, at all (any more than it has in '
Babylon 5', '
Farscape' or, more recently, the great '
Mass Effect' games).
So, what about science?
Well, there's the Drake Equation:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equationIt seems obvious that
open alien contact will be declared at some point, especially if space travel gets increasingly common, as shown in these films.
Then there's the Fermi Paradox:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradoxIt states, basically, that if intelligent life is truly common, why haven't we found it yet? That could, of course, be worked around within a story's context, but there's always the more obvious potential answer that we
have found life or even been visited, but that the public has simply not been informed about it.
And, like it or not, the '
Alien' films do actually lend themselves to that... Albeit in a veiled way.
LV-426? It's set in the same system which the Grey-like creatures declared as their home planet, in the famous Betty and Barney Hill abduction case. Dan O'Bannon never clarified whether it was set there for that purpose, but it could be likely.
And the Engineers from '
Prometheus', if we want to accept that as part of the continuity, do now force us to look up the many examples of dark legends which point to ET intervention in our history. Part of what I lamented about that film was that it only made a superficial attempt to explore that side of things, but, nevertheless, it's there. The moment you look into that type of thing and accept intervention as having happened, then you also have to accept several
different species were visiting us in the distant past, not just the one.
This should, ideally, be what the sequel to '
Prometheus' should explore: What made the Engineers? Were they just drone-like servants for a different civilisation? Were they just one of many which have been visiting Earth through prehistory? And was it, in fact, the Engineers who made us or were they left
behind on the planet Weyland went to? Were they just
prototypes for humanity, as opposed to our creators?
As was written earlier in this discussion, at the very
least, the Engineers (or whatever had made them) must have been making and experimenting with life on numerous other worlds. If their goal was to create something with recognisable intelligence, then the only real question is how many of those other species were wiped out through environmental catastrophe, war and so on. How many others reached the level of humanity or even beyond?
Those would be the ones we might be encountering in the future.
So, on balance, yes. It's likely that ET life with technology either in advance of our own or, perhaps, in parity with it, would be out there. By the time of the Nostromo and Sulaco are we now openly interacting with Greys, Nordics and other species reported in UFO encounters? Maybe, maybe not... But it's interesting to note that 'Arcturians' are actually mentioned in some contactee cases.
In another sense, we also have to examine why the Colonial Marines even exist, in the first place. It would cost a
lot of money to keep a galactic force out there in spaceships and equip them with advanced weaponry, up to and including whole
nuclear weapons. They aren't mere rescue specialists, as in '
Event Horizon'. These are hardened combat veterans who travel around on even lowly troop transports which are kitted out to engage and destroy other craft.
Purely for defending against other human governments? Maybe. But, again, maybe not.
And they've routinely been going into Arcturian territory, if nowhere else...
