Claw Room - Temple Environment

Leading from 
The Nostromo

a) The Claw
Originally the Nostromo was to have undercarriage featuring tapered rollers, then it was changed to a landing foot and later that became a claw and Ridley wanted a huge claw room down in the bilge of the ship where the ships feet would be retracted during flight, like an anchor cable tier on an ocean liner

The Claw (images taken from the film and merged on Photoshop)

b) The Temple Environment
Ridley Scot decided to transform the landing leg room of the Nostromo into a temple environment
Roger Christian went out and bought two Canberra bombers and dismantled them.  The jet engines became the columns of the room which gave it the feel of a temple. Inspired by the way the Apollo Lunar Lander was partly covered in gold foil, the walls of the room accompanying the vehicle; land crawlers, helicopters and other flying machines and equipment that the crew would use in their work on and around the refinery, and when they land on various planets. were covered in gold paint would become like "the Egyptian treasures". Tutenkhamun's treasures would still have been fresh on the minds of the public at the time

c) The Claw as an Idol
The landing leg itself becomes the idol that almost filled up the room but remained suspended in the air. Ridley wanted to see the landing leg, the "claw" the idol seen through the gap between the massive doors as big as the wallls. The "claw" would be so big that it almost touched the walls but was still hanging in the air.

The Claw as seen from the rafters (image taken from the film)

d) Reference to Heath Robinson
He also mentioned Heath Robinson in his comparison, an artist who drew cartoons featuring unlikely machines, and so his name entered the language as a description of any unnecessarily complex and implausible contraption.

Heath Robinson cartoon

e) Connection with another temple environment
As it happens, the derelict space craft is also a temple in this way, with the space jockey as a central idol (which becomes interesting in view that the Space Jockey chair and occupant are inspired by the Henu Barque which would have taken central place in its own chapel) and becomes connected to the claw room temple by a piece of music played in both environments.

Space Jockey a central idol of a temple environment

Source quotes:

1. Fantastic Films: In the film the landing foot is a claw like thing, but in the storyboard it's a tapered roller
   
   Ridley Scott: This is how these things change. After I thought about it for a while I decided not to have these huge steel rollers. Eventually it developed into a foot and the foot became a claw after a while longer. We ended up using the claw in two places. Somehow when one does a storyboard, you can suddenly work out a method to show how big the ship is( Fantastic Films #11, p28)
2. Ridley Scott: I wanted a huge claw room down in the bilge, where the ship's feet would be retracted during flight, like the anchor cable tier on an ocean liner. (Fantastic Films #11, p34)
3. Ridley Scott: As I was working with the art director I decided to make it feintly glittery, I wanted to have anodized gold everywhere. Not steel,gold. Did you know that space landing craft are covered with gold foil. Amazing! So I thought, Why make this out of steel? Let's make it all warm, oppressive, massive and gold. (Fantastic Films, #12, p25-26) 
4. Ridley Scott: We got hold of marvelous actual parts of actual huge jet engines and installed them, and they're like coppery metal with some steel. We used them as four main supports, like columns, and they give a lot of feeling of a temple. We played the same music we used in the derelict alien craft and we had two temples. The idol I wanted was through these massive gold doors which were as big as a wall, with a gap in them through which the claw can be seen, When the set was dressed, it looked like Aladdin's cave. (Fantastic Films, #12, p25-26)
5. Ridley Scott: The visual idea I had in mind was to fill the entire room with the "claw" so that it almost touched the walls and floor, but is still apparently hanging free in the air.  Just outside the claw room is a huge maintenance area, a garage, filled with the equipment that the crew would use in their work on and around the refinery, and when they land on the various planets - land crawlers, helicopterers, other flying machines. (Fantastic Films, #12, p25-26) 
6. Ridley Scott: A lot of the stuff we used here, see that egg crating , that's all just standard, um, industrial pallets, we just created most of the sets out of the pallets, and the rest were tube and exotic looking pipe work and conduits from aircraft. In fact, at one stage, Roger Christian went off and bought two Canberra  bombers and just (58:00) dismantled them. And of course on each bomber is millions of parts.(Alien director's commentry dvd)
7. Ridley Scott: These are jet engines standing on end. And we used all the stuff as essentially real, so I just got stuff. And this is like, I always thought was like Egyptian treasure.. treasure trove, this room, so I said the whole room should be gold, and so we made it, sprayed it all gold, and I got that really off the first moon landing vehicle which of course had all that, it looked like what I call in English Heath Robinson, kind of a simple lashup with a lot of copper, tin foil underneath to protect it and er, so we kept that in mind. (Alien director's commentry dvd)
8. Ridley Scott: Just the remains of a helicopter there sprayed gold, er, jet engines there sprayed turned on end and sprayed gold with gold foil on them just to make it more peculiarly , um, hi-tech.  (Alien Quadrilogy and Blu-Ray commentary dvd)