Alien: The Weyland-Yutani Report Preview

In June 2015 Insight Editions and Sideshow Collectables released Alien: The Weyland-Yutani Report, an in-universe fictional report detailing the events of the Prometheus and Alien films (with some minor tip of the hats to the recent Dark Horse and Titan series) written by the legendary Stephani Danelle Perry. For those who aren’t aware, Danelle Perry is the author of numerous Alien/vs. Predator novels: Aliens – Female War, Labyrinth, Berserker and Criminal Enterprise along with Alien vs. Predator Prey and War. She was responsible for helping give birth to the Yautja culture.

The closest release that fans of the Alien franchise have had to something like this is the Colonial Marines Technical Manual from the 90s, a fictional in-universe detailing of the Colonial Marines. However, this isn’t just an ordinary book – this is a high-end collectable book, something of a first for Alien fans. So let’s take a look at just what we’re getting in Alien: The Weyland-Yutani Report.

Alien: The Weyland-Yutani Report arrives in a very swish box, reminiscent of collectables such as the Hot Toy figures or the more recent special figures from NECA. The first thing you’ll notice is just how heavy this beast is! And how big! Cracking open the box you’ll find the book protected by additional packaging and after some careful lifting you’ll find yourself faced with the terrifying face of an Alien reaching out the book trying to get some tasty human grey matter.

The “cover” is actually a sculpted “cover” designed by none other than Markus Pansegrau, whom members of the community will know better as Locusta. The sculpt itself was done by Patrick Pigott with paints by Don Bies and Anthony Mestas.

It’s actually less of a cover and more of a container and provides the majority of the weight and bulk that you feel in the package. It is absolutely gorgeous though. You can really feel the quality of it! It’s the kind of thing you really want to put out on display and show off.

When you pick up the actual book you can also feel the physical quality of that too. The paper stock feels really nice and all the pull-outs are pretty damn nice too.

Upon opening The Weyland-Yutani Report we’re greeted by an in-universe warning advising us that if we don’t have proper clearance and are found in possession of the documents enclosed that we’ll be in serious trouble. The book maintains the in-universe narrative throughout and is full of lovely little extra details such as providing the e-mail address for Weyland-Yutani Corporate Security. It adds an extra level of immersion that I really appreciated.

Alien: The Weyland-Yutani Report is neatly organized into several sections, a Statement of Interest, a Company Timeline, Basic Life Cycle information on the Xenomorphs, the Proud History of Weyland-Yutani, a section for each of the five films (Prometheus is included although no Alien vs. Predator films) and then a “theoretical” section detailing potential usages for the Xenomorphs, called New Beginning.

The Company Statement of Interest brings the reader up to date on the state of play in the post-Alien Resurrection universe and also offers some insight into what caused the downfall of Weyland-Yutani in the first place. Whilst not an explicit reference, it’s a nice little tie into one of the Titan novels, Aliens: Sea of Sorrows (the other two novels are referenced obviously later on in the report).

The Company Timeline is a two page spread that details specific events over a 400 year span and adds in extra details to help flesh out the evolution of the Weyland Corporation to the fall of Weyland-Yutani and the last encounter aboard the Auriga. The Timeline also acknowledges some entries in the Weyland Corporation Timeline used during the promotion of Prometheus, the events of Alien Isolation and the most recent Dark Horse series, Fire and Stone.

The Basic Life Cycle section is a 23 page spread that covers all aspects of the Alien life cycle. Whilst these sections feature a lot of details we know from the films, instead of simply being a retelling of what we already knew Danelle Perry goes into quite some detail about how the various stages function. For example in the facehugger section she, or rather the report author, talk about how the facehugger uses a substance related to azathioprine as an immunosuppressive.

Extra tidbits like this are apparent in all the information in the life cycle section. The chestburster section talks about how it’s theorized that the embryo releases an enzyme that softens the tissue and bone that surrounds it to help expedite the birth of the chestburster. The report also goes on to talk about how aboard the Auriga the scientists witnessed the chestbursters forming a sort of cocoon around them as they grow.

The Weyland-Yutani Report also goes into details about the behavioral differences between the various Alien encounters, spinning theories and including various pieces of in-universe reasoning such “anecdotal evidence” to suggest “that in the absence of a queen, a single drone or worker can transform into an egg-producer” which is a tip of the hat to the deleted egg-morphing scene in Alien. Various parts of the report read like the ever impressive Anchorpoint Essays and serve to expand our knowledge on how the Xenomorphs function.

Following the Life Cycle section is The Proud History of Weyland-Yutani, a brief overview of how Sir Peter Weyland rose to power and the various technologies that he was responsible for; the majority of this section focuses on androids – or artificial persons as they are referred to throughout the report. It also briefly talks about atmospheric processing, cryostasis, FTL and etc.

After this we reach the incident reports. All of these follow a similar format such as detailing the various technologies that are present in the film (or encounter) in question – the most impressive of which are the multiple illustrations drawn by the amazing John Mullaney of the equipment used by the Colonial Marines  are easily the simply fantastic cross-sections of the APC and dropships.

Each section also includes information on the people present at each incident. Danelle Perry also included backstory not present in the films (but sometimes had been available via other sources) such as Drake and Vasquez’s history and their enlistment being in lieu of prison time. The prisoners from Fury were also given crime details. The book also attempts to delve a little further into the background of Dr Gediman and provide a little bit of character development for him.

Another small detail here that made me smile was that the report notes data corruption issues for why some character bios didn’t come accompanied by a picture. I assume the real world reason being the actors not allowing their likeness to be used in the book but I enjoyed the in-universe reasoning that was included in the report.

I mentioned “new” details added to the Alien biological chapters earlier. This continues throughout the encounter (film) sections. One particular addition I’m quite fond of is a message from Burke to his seniors laying out details of his plans with Hadley’s Hope. Another instance of the new material early on is in a transcript of a conversation between Ripley and Bishop prior to them entering hypersleep at the end of Aliens. They talk about the fight with the Queen and theorize over her intelligence.

Other examples of this include “quotes” from Ripley’s deposition, a conversation between Bishop and Hicks on the dropship, part of a sermon delivered by Dillion and more. These kinds of inclusions helped ensure that the book didn’t just become a straight up retelling of the films.

One section I was curious to see expanded was the Prometheus information. However, expectantly this section is largely devoid of theoretical information pertaining to the Engineers or the creatures featured in the film. Obviously this is to avoid conflicting with anything in Prometheus 2 (the Fire and Stone series was reworked due to this same issue) but it was somewhat disappointing. That said, there are sections that increased the immersion like redacted (whited out) comments that related to Shaw’s next encounter.

It does expand on some elements though – such as a translation of what David said to the Engineer they encountered aboard the Juggernaut or that the Engineers may not have actually created us but have been a “brother” race but it would have been nicer to see more.

Spread throughout Alien: The Weyland-Yutani Report are numerous pull-outs. The most commons ones are pieces of transparent “paper” which includes an x-ray of Kane showing the growing Alien chestburster or just notes. Others included items physically “glued” onto the pages. Again, this is along the same sort of content as notes or reports.

The most unique of these pull-outs is Space Beast, the book written by Morse following the events of Alien 3. The Alien Resurrection novelization is the only source so far to have talked about this book and I can’t lie – I was pretty excited when I saw it was going to be included as part of Alien: The Weyland-Yutani Report. It’s a short pull-out book written entirely from the point of view of Morse and it really does feel like it was written by the last surviving convict from Fury 161. I was a bit disappointed that the short book was supposed to be the entirety of Morse’s book and would have preferred it to have been presented as an extract.

I’ve already mentioned the amazing John Mullaney’s illustrations but I haven’t really spoken about Markus Pansegrau’s artwork that literally fills Alien: The Weyland-Yutani Report. Members of the online Aliens community will know Markus better as Locusta and will have undoubtedly seen his CG artwork online, even if they didn’t know it was his.

Near enough two thirds of the book feature artwork from Markus and those of you who are familiar with Markus’ work will be happy to see plenty of new models and artwork from the talented man. It was a pleasure to see his work on my screen and it was wonderful to see his work on the paper in front of me. Between John and Markus, this book is an absolute visual delight.

After detailing the events of the last 5 films, Alien: The Weyland-Yutani Report then goes onto to discuss theoretical future encounters with the Aliens and potential science and military uses for the Aliens themselves. It’s a bit of a short section but it does have some interesting notions in it such as armor enhanced with elements of the Alien exoskeleton or utilizing the eggs as a form of external incubation for human embyros.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is Alien: The Weyland-Yutani Report! If what you’ve seen here has interested you, you can purchase the book from the Sideshow website. There are several different purchase options available. You can also see more of John and Markus’ work over on Facebook – John R. Mullaney Illustration and Locusta Art. Below you can check out our gallery of the book.