Cold War, Fever Dreams

The looming, biomechanical, Freudian image of the Alien franchise may not immediately hint at the Cold War. Certainly, the first few films were made during the 1970s and 1980s, but there's not much in them immediately about the NATO-Soviet clash. Weyland-Yutani might be part of the military industrial complex, but there's little enough that would demonstrate that in Alien. Aliens shows us the Colonial Marines, with all their Vietnam-era looseness of discipline, wildness of manner and military overconfidence, though that's in some ways quite partial. Where we really get a Cold War image is in the un-produced material by William Gibson for Alien 3; this situates the United Americas against the Union of Progressive Peoples (the Soviet Union, Germany, China, Vietnam). Gibson's screenplay is even set in a pair of space stations facing one another along a boundary line. The UPP have continues to crop up in wider Alien material since. So, a Greater US of A and a re-jigged Second World with a patched Sino-Soviet split. All sensical enough, given how Alien has an aesthetic and sensibility continually with one foot in the 70s and 80s. 

But I'm missing something here. Something stranger. In the material of the very first film, we have mention of a 'Three World Empire'. Ron Cobb's notes suggest this as something like a stage of Britain's spacefaring development. One notes the mix of British and American cast in Alien - which was filmed in Britain.
Later material indicates that the Three World Empire is a merging of Japan and Britain (along with a number of Commonwealth and South-East Asian countries). 

In some ways, this is sort of silly. Taking the Weyland-Yutani merger - a name derived from Leyland (the British car company) and a neighbour of Cobb's** - and having the political sphere mirror the commercial. It's a little too close to really convince, without some greater form of detail.***

And yet...the name, with the faintly occult overtones. The Union Flag three-sided vortex, which hints at the British Leyland symbol. The presence of a junior partner in the West of this new Cold War. The fish-hook nerd-bait of 'Okay, but how does this actually work?' I can't help feeling that this should be more interesting to people than it is. There should be fan-art and Woyjak material galore. As it is....well, this is it. 

I have to wonder what more could be done with this 70s-echoing Anglo-Japanese culture and economy. Butskellism on a diet of Bushido, courtesy of the MITI? Morning suits for statesmen imported back to Westminster from the National Diet? Consumer electronics and integrated circuits for both the Atlantic and Pacific? An Anglo-Japanese Concorde? James Clavell was Australian-born: perhaps there would be a BBC version of Shogun; or, indeed, Tai-Pan (would Hong Kong continue to be a flashpoint?). You may debate for yourselves the image of Milton Keynes with Zen gardens. 

***

The real time strategy game Red Alert 2, by contrast, is very much embossed with the Cold War. A branch of the Command and Conquer games, Red Alert (which I never played) supposed a removal of Hitler via time-travel and Stalin attempting a conquest of Europe in his place. Red Alert 2 (RA2) had a rejuvenated Soviet Union try again, with an invasion of the United States. 

So far, so Red Dawn. The main thing to discuss is tone (you can look up a more general review elsewhere). Both Allies and Soviets find themselves developing assorted implausible weaponry: Tesla coils, devastating zeppelins, laser tanks, invulnerability courtesy of the 'Iron Curtain', mind controlled giant squid countered by specially trained dolphins, assorted psychic abilities. There was some of this in Red Alert, but far more in RA2. The bigger difference is tone. Red Alert is (by reputation) far more serious. To my mind, this is only mostly true. My goggles tonight are rose-tinted, but there's a few elements of presentation that skew RA2 away from the full-blown cartoonishness of Red Alert 3.**** 

Both Red Alert and RA2 have the live-action cutscenes that are a C&C, though RA2's, being a few years later, are rather more polished. The characters are more often stereotypes, than caricatures. Ray Wise as US President Dugan is in the lightly comic but not implausible role of portraying a personable politician clearly elected in peacetime trying to grapple with a Second Great War (perhaps I'm reading back from Twin Peaks, but is there an air of hidden desperation?). The assorted plot elements are somewhat wilder, though the destruction of Chicago by nuclear bomb is given a certain weight.

More interesting is perhaps the influence of the gameplay on tone. There's a level of pixellated detail to the cities your troops move through that implies a sufficient urban density. Being able to garrison civilian structures helps - there's an echo of Stalingrad in it all. Units frequently have secondary abilities, can gain experience over time  and benefit from close attention; especially so for the Allied faction, but not exclusively so.  When coupled with a campaign that had a number of limited-unit missions, this gives more weight to the lives of your soldiers. Campaign missions would also end with a victory screen giving your par time - the text given if you are under is rather more positive than if you are over. Compare the two texts for one mission here, another here (comparing the actual screens is difficult; apparently people don't like to show the internet that they didn't make the top of the list).

Is this all enough to make you take RA2 seriously? Probably not. Enough to invest you? I think so.

Anyway, I recently encountered and enjoyed a mercenary generator for TF2. Here's something like it for RA2. 

The Second Great War is over. You were a soldier. You aren't any more. You had a little money and a home. You haven't any more. There's rumour of a supply of gold reserves stashed in a devastated region. Perhaps you and some people with stories quite like yours could put these to better use than whatever's being done with them at the moment.

You were a...[d8]

[1] Bog-standard infantryman (but you do bear a marked resemblance to Clint Eastwood).

[2] Rocket trooper

[3] Tank/APC driver

[4] Airship pilot or jetpack infantry

[5] Spy, saboteur or infiltrator

[6] Armoured exotic energy specialist

[7] Loyal but completely unpredictable dog

[8] Would-be psychic who deserted just before the pioneering brain surgery. You still went through all the training.

You managed to grab a few things from the supply depot...[d10]

[1] Rapid-deploying portable foxhole

[2] Tesla gauntlet (rubber boots not included).

[3] Lots of dynamite with only the shortest of fuses.

[4] Tinnitus-inducing shoulder-mounted flak cannon

[5] Jetpack that was in the depot for vital maintenance

[6] Pyrokinetic focus module (broken targeting lobes)

[7] Plague-dart sniper rifle. Handle with care.

[8] Disguise Kit (might fool psychics, doesn't fool dogs)

[9] Briefcase of highly useful but curiously fragile tools

[10] Gun that erases people from time. You don't know how it works, how much power is left in the batteries or how you got it. But you do know that you really shouldn't have it, and everyone else knows it too.

You also managed to obtain a set of wheels....[d8]

[1] Optical camouflage tank perpetually stuck in the form of a Scots pine. 

[2] Nippy little half-track.

[3] Teleporting supply hauler. It can instantly travel to a certain designated location within 30km, but it needs to be recharged by an industrial generator afterwards. Also really uncomfortable to drive.

[4] An airship. Full fuel tanks, full magazines, just had been fully refitted - but still very slow and very obvious. 

[5] Massive cumbersome tank with a set of propaganda speakers mounted on the rear.

[6] A big flat-bed trailer pulled by two skittering arachnoid terror drones.

[7] Six seats welded to a hovering robot tank.

[8] Truck carrying a big mobile radar jammer.

The Gold is hidden....[d8]

[1] Somewhere at a disused military base in the Adironacks.

[2] In the cellars of the inn of a remote Serbian mountain town.

[3] On an island in the Florida keys.

[4] At an abandoned mine in the Congo.

[5] Not far from a concealed airstrip in the southern half of Borneo.

[6] In a Mayan temple-cum-guerilla camp in the Yucatan.

[7] At a farm in the north-east of Sichuan province.

[8] Beneath a major national monument.

A local militia control the area with the power of.....[d8]

[1] Fleet of lightly-armed but highly mobile stealth helicopters.

[2] A pair of towers firing laser-like 'Prism' rays in a commanding location.

[3] Cloning vats. They can only make one kind of goon, but apparently that's all they need.

[4] Hacked feed to a spy satellite guaranteeing constant intel for the region.

[5] A big electromagnet that can pick up cars from twenty miles away.

[6] A self-propelled cryoshell artillery piece. 

[7] Something that looks like a UFO.

[8] Lots of mobile, customisable APCs - and a machine shop churning out spare parts.

They are led by a warlord....[d10]

[1] A Frenchman who really likes Westerns.

[2] An incredibly handsome Russian nihilist.

[3] Captain Queeg, if Queeg had spent too long watching prism rays light up the dark.

[4] A bombastic Ruritanian cyborg who spends their free time listening to Wagner.

[5] An American journalist from the Midwest pretending to be a CIA agent. Or is it the other way round?

[6] The key member of a Yugoslav stay-behind network.

[7] Hollywood film star who had the money to get out of California at the right time, but not to get back.

[8] Korean submariner deprived of their submarine, and resentful about it.

[9] Peruvian psychic commando who had to spend three nights in No-Man's Land with a damaged interface unit experiencing hundreds of death agonies and went mad.

[10] Politician from a regional legislature who can't recall whether they were a willing collaborator, a mind-controlled puppet, a deep cover agent, was pretending to be one but not the other or just possibly was any of the above at different times - and really doesn't want anyone else to know.

Yes, it's Kelly's Heroes for RA2. Elements of Yuri's Revenge and certain RA2 mods included. The TF2 merc generator could do nicely for comrades or NPCs. 

Détruir tout: c'est une obligation.

***

By way of an ending, I will point you in the direction of S.M. Stirling's Lords of Creation series - which blend the Space Race with Edgar Rice Burroughs-style Sword and Planet fiction, so that you get American explorers dealing with the consequences of the (human, Bronze Age) Venusians getting their hands on AK-47s. The books are acceptable rather than good, but do offer a setting with a certain amount of potential. To my surprise, there's a third one on the way after seventeen years. 

*But then, I have long been of the opinion that David Lynch's Dune has the meme-making scope of the Star Wars prequels. Many do not act as if they share such a belief.

**I've seen that quote a number of times, but never where or when or to whom Cobb said it. I think the origin is in The Authorized Portfolio of Crew Insignias, by one Jeffrey Walker. 

***There is also comparison with Grenville's article on Brexotica: the dreadful rapacious amoral company is the result of the merger of Old-World hierarchy and the inscrutable Orient - against which freedom-loving American protagonists can rage. Not that (by implication) any polity in the Aliens universe comes across very well.

And yes, it seems that there was a Brexit-themed Aliens novel.

****Yes, Yuri's Revenge was rather more B-Movie. That was an expansion pack, and we may consider the base game without it.