Razorback Point Whaling Station

"This station was abandoned in 1904. Everyone just disappeared overnight. It was a big mystery back then."

―Lex to Sebastian, regarding the station (from Alien vs. Predator)

Razorback Point Whaling Station on October 10, 1904, with the Emma moored in the bay alongside.

Razorback Point Whaling Station was a Norwegian whaling settlement on the island of Bouvetøya, Antarctica, which had unknowingly been built above a Yautja pyramid located deep underneath the ice.

In 1904, the station became embroiled in conflict between a group of Yautja and several Xenomorphs that resulted in the death of all of its inhabitants and, ultimately, the settlement's abandonment.

Overview

Razorback Point was named after Olavtoppen (Olav Peak), known by the whalers "Razorback", the highest mountain on Bouvetøya at the base of which the settlement was built. The station consisted of little more than a handful of ramshackle wooden buildings and was dominated by its large, carst-iron separating vat, used to render whale blubber down into usable oils.

History

Towards the end of the 1904 whaling season, the Norwegian whalers stationed at Razorback Point noticed strange lights on the horizon and deep tremors underground. Subsequent investigations led to the recovery of a metallic alien pod found in a crater on the ice some distance away, and when the pod was brought back to the whaling station, a lone Predator contained inside emerged and began slaughtering Razorback Point's inhabitants. Between the Predators and the Xenomorphs they were fighting, the camp's inhabitants were all killed and the station fell into disrepair.

In 2004, a Weyland Industries satellite detected a heat bloom coming from the pyramid beneath Razorback Point. An expedition was immediately sent to the island, arriving on October 10th aboard the icebreaker Piper Maru, and the team set up their base camp in the whaling station. The expedition, like the whalers before them, met with death and destruction when they were caught in a battle between Predators and Xenomorphs. Razorback Point itself was destroyed when Scar left his Self-Destruct Device to detonate within the pyramid, collapsing the ice above and dropping much of the station into the void.

Known Inhabitants

• Karl Johanssen
• Bjorn Nyberg
• Sven Nyberg

Behind the Scenes

It was originally planned to construct the Razorback Point set on a soundstage in Prague, but it was ultimately built on a studio backlot. One unintentional advantage of doing so was the fact that steam from the actors' breath was visible without any need for artificiality lowering the temperature of a soundstage, or digitally inserting the condensation in post-production. 15-20 tons of fake snow were used to dress the set. While filming the explosion at the mouth of the ice tunnel, the fireball was considerably larger than anticipated and actually set fire to the set, causing some damage before fire crews were able to extinguish the blaze.

A third-scale miniature of the whaling station was also built, along with a sixth-scale miniature solely for the sequence where the settlement collapses into the ice. Each of the buildings on the sixth-scale model were constructed from pieces that fit together like a jigsaw puzzle, allowing the buildings to disintegrate whilst also providing the effects team with a reasonably quick way of reconstructing the model for multiple takes. The entire miniature was built atop a moveable base that was pulled out from beneath the model at a set speed, allowing the buildings to collapse off the edge in sequence as though the ice was falling away beneath them. Each building had a fully modeled interior with separate furniture and stores, all built to scale. Additional weights to assist the model in collapsing were also included, disguised as 55-gallon oil drums.

Appearances

• Alien vs. Predator/novel

Gallery

A flare lights up the whaling station in 2004.

The destruction of Razorback Point.