{"id":874995,"date":"2025-10-02T21:29:05","date_gmt":"2025-10-03T02:29:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2025\/10\/02\/alien-earths-beefy-tablets-were-inspired-by-sonys-classic-watchman\/"},"modified":"2025-10-02T21:29:05","modified_gmt":"2025-10-03T02:29:05","slug":"alien-earths-beefy-tablets-were-inspired-by-sonys-classic-watchman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2025\/10\/02\/alien-earths-beefy-tablets-were-inspired-by-sonys-classic-watchman\/","title":{"rendered":"Alien: Earth\u2019s beefy tablets were inspired by Sony\u2019s classic Watchman"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Though technology has always played an important role in the Alien <\/em>franchise, FX\u2019s Alien: Earth <\/em>series<\/a> is the first chapter to really dig into the inner workings of the tech companies responsible for unleashing xenomorphs onto humanity. To corporations like Weyland-Yutani and its competitors, the show\u2019s aliens present an opportunity to develop products that could boost their stock valuations to astronomical new heights. But to show us how powerful these companies already are, Alien: Earth <\/em>spends a lot of time focusing on the tech that made them rich \u2014 things like futuristic guns, space ships, androids, and tablets.<\/p>\n

Because Alien: Earth <\/em>focuses on parts of the franchise\u2019s universe that have never really been explored before, production designer Andy Nicholson needed to dream up a host of new ideas to make the series\u2019 world feel real. With projects like Sleepy Hollow<\/em>, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory<\/em>, and Gravity <\/em>under his belt, Nicholson came to Alien: Earth <\/em>with a deep understanding of how small artistic details can be a big part of what brings fantastical realities to life. To realize an Alien <\/em>series set in the franchise\u2019s distant past, Nicholson knew that he could look to Ridley Scott\u2019s original film for inspiration. But when I recently spoke with him ahead of Alien: Earth<\/em>\u2019s finale, Nicholson told me that the real trick of making Alien: Earth <\/em>feel fresh was to think of the future as it might have been imagined in the late \u201870s when Alien <\/em>first hit theaters.<\/p>\n

\u201cAlien<\/em> was a fantastic combination of things for me because the original film was and still is a very important benchmark for science fiction production design,\u201d Nicholson told me. \u201cAs far as I\u2019m concerned, Alien <\/em>elevated the art form in terms of what sci-fi was at that time because nothing like that \u2014 focusing on space truckers and how they fit into the world \u2014 had been done before.\u201d<\/p>\n

Set two years before Alien<\/em>, Alien: Earth <\/em>chronicles what happens when a Weyland-Yutani spaceship carrying multiple extraterrestrial creatures crash lands on Earth. To most of the citizens living in Prodigy City, the USCSS Maginot\u2019s arrival is a chaotic disaster that leaves many of their homes in ruin. But to Boy Kavaliar \u2014 the city\u2019s owner and CEO of the Prodigy Corporation \u2014 the vessel and its cargo are exciting surprises, and he\u2019s certain that his business rival Yutani (Sandra Yi Sencindiver) doesn\u2019t want him to have it.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s through flashbacks to life on the Maginot <\/em>before it crashed that Alien: Earth <\/em>establishes the strongest visual throughline between itself and the first Alien<\/em>. Shots of the new ship\u2019s hypersleep pods, common area, and Mother System control room immediately evoke scenes from the original film where the crew of the USCSS Nostromo <\/em>are hunted down by another newborn xenomorph. On one level, the ships\u2019 stylistic similarities work as a series of easter eggs. But Nicholson also saw the Maginot <\/em>as an opportunity to emphasize how closely connected Alien <\/em>and Alien: Earth <\/em>really are.<\/p>\n

\u201cI did a combination of studying, absorbing, and refining the first Alien<\/em> to design another ship that could exist as part of that same original fleet,\u201d Nicholson explained. \u201cThe Maginot<\/em> is a Yutani ship, and much in the same way that if you go into three cabins on three different naval vessels, they\u2019re pretty much the same. There\u2019s the bridge where everything is, and a bunch of machines that are all relatively the same because they\u2019re manufactured by the same company.\u201d<\/p>\n

Though Weyland-Yutani looms large in Alien: Earth<\/em>\u2019s story, the series puts much more focus on Kavalier and his team of hybrids \u2014 humanoid robots that have been uploaded with the minds of terminally ill children. The hybrids are meant to be Prodigy\u2019s next big luxury consumer product, but they aren\u2019t the only things that the company makes. Because Alien: Earth <\/em>is set so close to the first Alien<\/em>, Nicholson felt that the best way to develop a signature look for Prodigy\u2019s tech was to think of \u201cwhat the view of the future was back in 1979.\u201d This sent him down a rabbit hole of research that, among other places, led to vintage European automotive design.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you look at the industrial, furniture, and car design \u2014 especially French and Italian car interior design \u2014 from that period, there\u2019s a very clear view of the future,\u201d Nicholson said. \u201cIt\u2019s the first time you saw companies like Citro\u00ebn and Renault making digital dashboards, or steering wheels with just one spoke.\u201d<\/p>\n

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You can see many of Nicholson\u2019s design ideas coming together clearly in the chunky tablets featured throughout Alien: Earth<\/em>\u2019s first season. Nicolson wanted them to feel distinct from similar fictional tech audiences might have seen before, which meant they couldn\u2019t just be translucent bits of CGI \u2014 a personal sci-fi pet peeve Nicholson doesn\u2019t care for \u2014 or something akin to the screens Tom Cruise waves at in Minority Report<\/em>. Alien: Earth<\/em>\u2019s tablets needed to be a fusion of weird, familiar, and a little bit retro, which is where Sony\u2019s Watchman line of portable pocket televisions <\/a>came in.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I was researching tablet technology from the era, our props master Morritz Heinlein brought me a load of things and he managed to find an original, working, black-and-white 4-inch screen Sony Watchman,\u201d Nicholson told me. \u201cIt was basically a CRT tube that projects onto a diagonal screen, and you watch the reflection. We thought the aesthetic of it was great, but \u2018what if we just made it into a tablet?\u2019 So, we took the Walkman\u2019s design language, made it into a big screen, and we gave it a thickness.\u201d<\/p>\n

That design language wound up helping Nicholson add even more narrative texture to Alien: Earth<\/em>, as he was able to use the devices to telegraph some of the differences between the products that Prodigy and Weyland-Yutani make. Prodigy\u2019s tablets have wide screens because Nicholson was inspired by the way Aliens<\/em>\u2019 production design was impacted by the advent of 16:9 CRT screens \u2014 which were developed shortly after Alien <\/em>first hit theaters.<\/p>\n

\u201cAlmost all of the monitors in Aliens<\/em> are 16:9 screens because that was the new thing at the time, and if you\u2019re set dressing a film like that, you\u2019re going to use the most futuristic new thing,\u201d Nicholson explained. \u201cWe made the decision that Weyland-Yutani-produced tech should always feature 4:3 displays whereas Prodigy\u2019s devices would be more like the 16:9 screens you see in Aliens<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Leaning into the Sony of it all gave Nicholson and his team even more ideas about how the tablets\u2019 design could be reflected in other aspects of Prodigy\u2019s technology. Because the Walkman\u2019s screen was lenticular and became distorted when Nicholson pushed onto it, he thought it might be interesting if that kind of visual detail became part of the UI for more of Prodigy\u2019s devices.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat one idea became a baseline for all of the Prodigy screens, and it was great because you immediately recognize and don\u2019t question that these are tablets,\u201d Nicholson said. \u201cThey\u2019re slightly chunkier than what we use, but they\u2019ve got a believable design language rooted in technology that we know, but<\/em> they\u2019re also something interesting that you haven\u2019t quite seen before.\u201d<\/p>\n

Alien: Earth<\/em>\u2019s season 1 finale is set to air on FX tonight.<\/p>\n

Correction, September 25th<\/strong>:<\/em> An earlier version of this piece referred to Kavalier\u2019s team of humanoid machines as \u201csynths\u201d rather than \u201chybrids.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n

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