As a massive fan of the Alien franchise, my respect for Alien: Earth showrunner Noah Hawley is probably only matched by an equally powerful jealousy of the man. I mean, this dude got to go to work in the same building as a xenomorph every day for a couple of months, to say nothing of the fact that he got to actually contribute to the creature’s lore. In fact, to make the FX prequel series, Hawley even got an opportunity to hear the xenomorph history that never made it into the movies… courtesy of Mr. Ridley Scott himself. 

I’m talking about an interview that Hawley did with Yahoo UK published August 13, in which the Legion and Fargo showrunner dove into the conversations that he had with Alien’s co-creator as the series was being developed. Speaking about ways the pair had discussed to make the xenomorph scarier than ever, Hawley dished on an original xenomorph idea that Scott said he ditched.

“There was a moment Ridley told me [about],” said Hawley, “That what he wanted to do was that he wanted to have the xenomorph kill Ripley and then get on the radio and mimic her voice and then head off to Earth. He didn’t do that, but he had that thought, and so I think there is something to that idea. That sort of invasion of the body snatchers idea is still really scary.”

While we doubt that we’ll hear the xenomorph mimicking a protagonist, Terminator 2-style, anytime soon, at least part of Scott’s unused idea did make it into the new FX series. that is, the idea of the xenomorph at last making it to Earth (canonically, we should say for all you AvP fans). That said, there are a host of other creepy crawleys aboard the ship when the xenomorph crashlands, so maybe one of them will have a tricky voicebox?

Either way, I remain jealous of being able to make that call.

Alien: Earth is streaming on Hulu now.Â