Alien: Isolation - The Digital Series

Alien: Isolation - The Digital Series logo.

Alien: Isolation - The Digital Series is a 2019 web series adaptation of the video game of the same name. It was directed by Fabien Dubois and written by Jeff Juhasz. It was made available through IGN and IGN's YouTube channel, with all seven episodes going live on February 28, 2019.

Cast

• Amanda Ripley ....
  • Andrea Deck
  • Kezia Burrows (likeness & motion capture)
• Axel .... George Anton
• Ricardo ....
  • Richie Campbell
  • Syrus Lowe (likeness & motion capture)
• Marlow .... Sean Gilder
• Foster .... Melanie Gutteridge
• Waits .... William Hope
• Samuels .... Anthony Howell
• Taylor .... Emerald O'Hanrahan
• Verlaine .... Jane Perry

Episodes

Episode	Summary
Episode 1	The story begins in media res, with Amanda Ripley adrift around KG-348 amidst the debris of the destroyed Sevastopol Station. She attempts to call the Torrens for rescue, but gets no response. Alone in space, she begins to transmit a message detailing her recent journey, partly in the hope someone will pick it up, partly to keep herself conscious. Some time earlier, Ripley is approached by synthetic Weyland-Yutani employee Samuels, who informs her that the black box recorder from her mother Ellen's ship has been recovered and taken to Sevastopol Station, and that a team is being sent to recover it. He offers her the chance to join the operation, hoping it may give her a chance to learn of her mother's fate. Ripley agrees, and travels to the station aboard the Torrens, along with Samuels and Weyland-Yutani lawyer Nina Taylor. Arriving at Sevastopol, the group finds the station damaged and communications unintelligible. Unable to dock, Captain Verlaine keeps the Torrens in orbit while Ripley, Samuels and Taylor attempt to spacewalk across to Sevastopol. However, an explosion on the station causes debris to sever their guide line, separating them. Ripley barely manages to enter the station through an airlock.
Episode 2	Temporarily blacking out as she floats around KG-348, Ripley is haunted by nightmares of events aboard Sevastopol. Waking with a start, she continues her monologue, hoping the transmission might reach someone who can save her. Finding herself alone in Sevastopol's spaceflight terminal, Ripley begins searching for assistance, encountering signs of social collapse, including vandalism, people running scared and dead bodies. As she continues through the station, she encounters armed survivor Axel, who tells her something dangerous is loose on Sevastopol, slaughtering its inhabitants. Despite his initial hostility, Ripley is able to convince Axel to help her contact the Torrens in exchange for a ride off of the station aboard the ship. The pair have to avoid more armed survivors, but are caught trying to sneak through their camp. With Ripley's help, Axel kills one of the men and the pair then escape to the nearby transit station, but before they can board a tram and leave Axel is impaled and dragged away by something lurking in the shadows. A horrified Ripley tries to flee, but is cornered by the creature, a Xenomorph Drone, in the transit control room. She manages to stay hidden beneath a desk, and the creature stalks out of the room.
Episode 3	Having eluded the Xenomorph, Ripley watches as it slaughters a group of survivors before disappearing into Sevastopol's ventilation system. Creeping past the bodies, Ripley heads for the station's communications center, hoping to contact Samuels and Taylor, but finds her way blocked by uncooperative Working Joe androids, who bar her access. Sneaking in through the vents, she witnesses one of the supposedly harmless Joes brutally murdering Hughes, a Sevastopol resident, when he too tries to enter the comms center. Reaching the internal comms control room, Ripley succeeds in contacting Samuels, warning him of the homicidal Joes and the alien lifeform that is loose on the station. He in turn informs her that Taylor was injured in the spacewalk accident and cannot be moved without treatment. As she makes her way to rendezvous with them, Ripley recovers a motion tracker and also finds the Nostromo black box, the reason she came to Sevastopol; she is distraught to find that its data has become corrupted and is unintelligible. Pressing on, she is cornered by the Xenomorph in the station's medical facility, but is saved when an explosive trap set for it detonates, driving the creature away. Escaping the ensuring fire, Ripley reaches Samuels and Taylor and finds them with Waits, the station's Colonial Marshal, and his deputy Ricardo. Waits informs her that the Xenomorph was brought aboard Sevastopol by the Anesidora, the ship that delivered the Nostromo flight recorder. With Taylor still in need of medical attention, the group go the the Colonial Marshal headquarters, where Waits has been gathering survivors and where Taylor can be treated. While there, Ripley speaks to Marlow, the captain of the Anesidora, who is locked in a cell and refusing to hand over the access codes for his ship, which is still in orbit around KG-348. He tells her they never found the Nostromo, just its black box; Ripley presses him for information on how the Xenomorph got onto Sevastopol.
Episode 4	Marlow tells his story — his crew discovered the Nostromo flight recorder adrift in space, and began a hunt for the ship itself, hoping to salvage it. Their search led them to detect a beacon coming from an unsurveyed planetoid; setting down on the surface, Marlow and his crewmates Heyst, Meeks and Foster, his wife, set out on foot to locate the source, eventually finding the same derelict spacecraft the Nostromo had stumbled upon fifteen years previous. Within, Marlow and his crew uncovered the vessel's cargo of Xenomorph Eggs, and while investigating Foster was attacked by a Facehugger. Adrift around KG-348, Ripley laments the thought that her mother had stumbled upon the same creatures, and what fate might have befallen her. She realizes that her orbit is taking her around the dark side of the planet, and anyone listening to her transmission may lose her signal, but with little alternative she continues broadcasting her story. With Marlow refusing to divulge any more information, Ripley agrees to assist Waits with a new plan to deal with the Xenomorph on Sevastopol. He arms her with a flamethrower and sends her to meet Ricardo in the SysTech Spire, where they have devised a scheme to trap the creature and lock it down. Ripley triggers the trap, but is accidentally sealed inside with the creature; Ricardo manages to lift the lockdown to allow her to escape, but the Xenomorph gets out too. Quickly devising a backup plan, Waits has Ripley act as bait to draw the creature to the Project KG-348 labs, hoping to jettison the module from the station with the Xenomorph inside. Ripley succeeds in luring the creature but, unwilling to risk it escaping for a second time, Waits betrays her and ejects the module with her still inside. Ripley barely manages to escape the Xenomorph and makes it to an airlock in time to make a risky space jump back to Sevastopol.
Episode 5	As she floats around KG-348, Ripley notices a communication beacon among the debris drifting with her. Realizing it will allow her to dramatically boost the range of her distress call, she begins work repairing her suit's propulsion unit so that she can reach it. Re-entering Sevastopol via an airlock, Ripley and Waits argue their opposing views on his recent actions over the radio. Waits is adamant that her life was a small price to pay for saving what is left of Sevastopol, and Ripley promises they will continue the discussion in person once she returns to the Marshal HQ. However, her journey is interrupted when the station's Working Joes suddenly begin killing survivors en masse; over the radio, she hears Waits die as he is strangled by one of the androids. By the time she makes it back to the Marshal bureau, only Ricardo is left alive, while Marlow and Taylor are missing. Ripley heads for the station's APOLLO mainframe to find out why the Joes are slaughtering everyone, catching up with Samuels, who has gone ahead to do the same. With Ripley's help, Samuels attempts to connect to APOLLO, but is destroyed by the mainframe's anti-tampering defences; he survives just long enough to open a route for Ripley to reach the mainframe herself. Reaching APOLLO, Ripley asks the computer to lift the communications blackout affecting the station, but is denied and learns that Weyland-Yutani now own Sevastopol. Inquiring further, she learns that APOLLO has been programmed with Special Order 939, instructing it to protect the Xenomorph at all costs — the moment Waits ejected the creature in the detachable module, APOLLO deemed all humans on board a threat and thus initiated the Joes' deadly rampage. Ripley points out that the Xenomorph is gone, but the computer refuses to rescind the order. Ripley goes to the station's reactor to initiate a purge to try and resolve the situation, but in doing so discovers several more Xenomorphs are still on the station, which quickly scatter throughout Sevastopol.
Episode 6	Now on the far side of KG-348 and shrouded in darkness, Ripley begins to suspect she will not survive. Increasingly morose, she expresses her anger at the world and acknowledges that she never truly expected to find out what happened to her mother on her fateful voyage, but that her continuing search was merely "an excuse to be broken". Following the reactor purge, Ricardo informs Ripley that the comms blackout has been lifted, allowing Marlow to call in the Anesidora. He also plays her a recording that reveals Taylor released Marlow in return for the precise location of the derelict where his crew discovered the Xenomorph. Realizing they mean to flee aboard the Anesidora, Ripley heads after them. She is forced to crawl through the station's miles of ventilation ducts, where she is hunted by one of the Xenomorphs, although she is able to the creature off with her flamethrower. Reaching the Anesidora while it is still docked at the spaceflight terminal, Ripley boards the vessel and is contacted by Marlow, who reveals that he has in his possession a message from her mother, recovered from the Nostromo black box. He plays it for her, and Amanda finally learns her mother's fate. Marlow goes on to point out that the Xenomorphs need to be destroyed at any cost, even their own lives, and to this end begins overloading the Anesidora's reactor. Taylor manages to knock Marlow unconscious and tries to stop the cascade, but finds she is too late — it has already begun and the ship's destruction is assured. Before she can flee, Taylor is killed by an explosion, although Ripley is barely able to escape the ship before it blows. The blast is not enough to destroy Sevastopol, but it damages its orbital stabilizers and pushes it into a decaying orbit, dooming it. Ripley goes to regroup with Ricardo and finds he has been subdued by a Facehugger, forcing her to leave him behind. She makes contact withe the Torrens and Verlaine instructs her to extend Sevastopol's maintenance rig so that she can get aboard. Despite being hunted by multiple Xenomorphs, Ripley succeeds, although just as she prepares to don a spacesuit and cross over to the Torrens she is ambushed and captured by one of the creatures.
Episode 7	Ripley awakes to find herself cocooned in a small Hive, surrounded by the bodies of those who died birthing Chestbursters. She manages to tear herself free and makes her way back to the maintenance area, avoiding hunting Xenomorphs along the way. Verlaine makes contact once again, telling Ripley that the Torrens is still docked but that the crippled Sevastopol is dragging the ship down with it. Ripley suits up and heads outside to blow the emergency release bolts on the maintenance arm tethering the Torrens to the station, unaware she is being stalked by Xenomorphs. As she prepares to complete the procedure she comes face to face with several of the creatures; she blows the release bolts as the creatures lunge, the blast knocking them all from the station. Moments later, Sevastopol sinks into KG-348's upper atmosphere and explodes. Having tethered herself to the ship before releasing it, Ripley boards the Torrens but is unable to raise Verlaine. To her horror, she discovers a Xenomorph aboard, and is forced to jettison both herself and the creature from an airlock in order to escape it. The story finally catches up to its opening scenes, with Ripley adrift in space around KG-348. Using her suit's limited propulsion capabilities, she manages to direct herself towards the comms beacon, but discovers that several Xenomorphs are clinging to debris lying in her path, inactive and apparently hibernating. She weighs up her options — head down and burn up in KG-348's atmosphere, head up and drift off into space, or press on and take her chances with the Xenomorphs. She chooses the latter, and to her relief the creatures do not stir as she silently drifts past. Reaching the comms beacon, she patches in and begins transmitting a distress call. Some time later, a now sleeping Ripley is awoken by a searchlight shining in her face.

Production

The series consists of the cutscenes from the game with added material to flesh out the game's plot into a cohesive series.