I don't normally listen to full-cast productions but earlier this year, 'Impact Winter' showed me just how powerful they could be and I decided to try a few. I picked 'Alien: out of the shadows' because it had Rutger Hauer in the cast and because I've enjoyed the 'Alien' franchise since I saw Ripley do her thing on the big screen when the movie was released in the UK back in 1979. It was a stunning movie back then, original, suspenseful, serious Science Fiction with a killer plot, incredible visuals and great acting and of course, Ripley, who changed everything. It got me so jumpy that I was certain there was an alien inside the ship's cat in the final scene.

I listened to the first forty per cent of the book more or less in one go and then real life intervened and I set it down for a while. A while turned into weeks and I realised today that I have no appetite for going back to it so I'm setting it aside.

This is one of those 'It's not you, it's me.' decisions, that I'm resisting the impulse to apologise for.

There were lots of good things in the first half of the performance. The idea is a good one, fresh enough to give the story a twist while remaining strongly connected to the original story by the presence of both Ripley and a version of Ash (played by Rutger Hauer with chilling dispassion) as well as all those deadly aliens ready to kill everyone. The sound effects are vivid. The acting works.

So why didn't I listen to the rest?

I got bored and then I got irritated by little things that I'd have ignored if I hadn't been bored. Despite the twists, the story felt too familiar to be exciting on its own. I found that relying on dialogue and sound effects alone made the re-telling too thin to hold my interest.

That's when the production decision started to irritate me. All that noisy This-is-exciting,-honest music kept distracting me from the story. I also hated the use of the podcast format. The story is split into ten thirty-minute episodes. Each time I reached a new episode, I had to endure more pointless, over-loud, trying-too-hard, music that interrupted the flow of the story. I don't see the point of it and it irritated the hell out of me.

When I went back to audible to delete this (free) podcast from my library, I found that there is a (free) audiobook version, so I've decided to give it a try.

Hopefully, it will be music free.

Not a bad dramatisation which fits into the Alien universe between the first Alien film and Aliens the second in the franchise (it doesn’t appear to at first, but it covers this towards the end). Wanted to listen as Rutger Hauer reads the part of Ash and the woman who reads the part of Ripley sounds remarkably like Sigourney Weaver, which adds to the experience. Not that the story is faultless. A lot reminds one remarkably of characters from the first film, and it’s clear Ripley survives or she wouldn’t have appeared in the second film, so ultimately this adds nothing to the Alien universe. Still, it’s nostalgic fun. ( )

Eh...

The person who did the narration for Ripley sounded amazingly like Sigourney Weaver so that was good. But, though Rutger Hauer was fantastic doing the voice for Ash, that whole aspect of the story seemed very thin to me. Plus the action struck me as just a rehash of the original movies. Oh well. ( )

This was a full cast production offered for free at Audible and I enjoyed it! .

I'm not sure this would have worked as well for me in book form as it did in audio. The actress doing Ripley's voice was dead on, and Rutger Hauer as Ash's voice was also perfect.

Combined with the sound effects of the various ship functions, this production was a lot of fun to listen to: especially for free. ( )

This is an Audible Original, and is not a typical audiobook. There is a cast of players, each playing a single character, as opposed to a single narrator who is the voice of all characters.

The setting for this picks up 37 years after the end of the first alien movie where Ripley escapes from the Nostromo in a shuttle and puts herself into stasis. Her distress call is heard, and her shuttle is found by a ship who has also encountered the aliens. So the battle against the aliens, and the infamous android science officer, Ash, continues.

I did not care for this at all. The characters were one dimensional and insignificant. I think that's by design because the action was likely meant to carry the story. The characters were only remarkable, and not in a good way, because of the I he'd one liners they delivered from time to time. The acting/narration wasn't well done and the story wasn't that engaging either.

The only positive is that the actor portraying Ripley, Laurel Lefkow, did an amazing job sounding a LOT like Sigourney Weaver. Not nearly enough, though, to redeem the story. ( )