The Space Jockey in Alien was dead for a long time before the crew of the Nostromo found him, but it turns out the ship he lives on has to be reconstructed every few years. In a new Alien: Covenant behind-the-scenes video, Adam Savage demonstrates the hard work required to reconstruct this iconic sci-fi set, again.
On Wednesday, during a special livestream event for Alien Day, a new segment of Adam Savage’s web series, Tested, was debuted. In it, Savage visits the set of Alien: Covenant and discovers the ways in which set-builders had to reconstruct the Engineers’ iconic dreadnaught. “This wasn’t stored after Prometheus,” Savage explains. “Even though it was used in Prometheus. They rebuilt it from scratch.” Savage then talked about the “coolest thing in the room … the Space Jockey’s platform.” In the original 1979 Alien movie, this platform was a mystery and was then discovered to be the place where a giant Engineer sat and operated the spacecraft in Prometheus. As a piece of design work, it was one of the most inspiring design concepts from the original film.
David (Michael Fassbender) operates the Engineers' dreadnaught from the famous Space Jockey position in the new 'Alien: Covenant' prologue.
On Wednesday, the new Covenant prologue even shows the Space Jockey platform, recreated with the android David in the driver’s seat. Apparently, at this point, you can’t have a new Alien movie without this famous set. Obviously, Prometheus had to recreate the set in 2012, and now the set has been rebuilt again. Hopefully, before the next Alien movie, the poor set-builders will be spared of having to reconstruct this spaceship for a third time.
Watch Adam Savage on the set of Alien: Covenant below.
Alien: Covenant opens everywhere on May 19.
