Ridley's Nostromo and Refinery

leading from

Nostromo

The Queen Mary

FF : How did you view the Nostromo?

Ridley Scott: The thing's like the bloody Queen Mary. Do you get a sense of the scale of the interior? That it's big? We couldn't build the two to three hundred foot-long corridors which it would have but it's supposed to be like one of these Japanese super-tankers. Three quarters of a mile long. The refinery behind it would be God-knows how big. I mean, well.... I dunno, a square mile.

The Queen Mary

FF:  Who designed the refinery?

Ridley Scott: I did. I didn't want a conventional shape, so I drew a sketch and handed it to the model makers. They refined it, as it were, and built the model. I originally drew it upside down, with the vague idea that it would resemble an inverted cathedral.

Japanese supertanker built in 1979

FF: It looks rather like Close Encounters' mothership

Ridley Scott: I soon realized that as well, so it took on another form. But I knew I didn't want to do a conventional shape because I think the machine that they're on could in fact be 60 years old and just added to over the decades. The metalwork on it could be 50 years old because it's only going to grow old to a certain extent

FF: It would never corrode, but just grow obsolete.

Ridley Scott: Yes, absolutely. So it was a sort of conglomerative objective which I didn't want to be spacey in any sense of the word. There's absolutely no reason for streamlining. I would have liked to see it covered with space barnacle or space seaweed, all clogged and choked up, but that was illogical as well

FF: But the Nostromo had to be able to fly both in space and under atmospheric conditions?

The "Close Encounters" mothership

Ridley Scott: I saw it as a gigantic maneuverable jump jet. Therefore it was able to get wherever it wanted on various planets, landing in a quite narrow, rocky terrain. So that's the only streamlined object in the whole thing.  The refinery itself is a conglomerative mountain of technology.

FF: What was the refinery carrying?

Ridley Scott: Ore, I suppose. They'd do all the work inside once the "picker" (the smaller craft) would put the stuff aboard. The ore would be turned into liquid or gas for easier transference back to Earth (Fantastic Film US#12/ GB #2, p20)

The Hawker Harrier Jumpjet