Alien (film) disguise imaginative poverty". In a 1980 episode of "Sneak Previews" discussing science fiction films of the 1950s and 1970s, critics Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert were critical of "Alien". Ebert called it "basically just an intergalactic haunted house thriller set inside a spaceship" and one of several science fiction pictures that were "real disappointments" compared to "Star Wars", "Close Encounters of the Third Kind", and "", though he did compliment the early scene of the "Nostromo" crew exploring the alien planet as showing "real imagination". However, the film later made it onto Ebert's "Great Movies" list, where he gave it
Spaceship Zero explains, the game is based on a 1950s German radio play ("Raumschiff Null" being a direct translation of "Spaceship Zero"). The German radio play was based on a 1930s American moviehouse serial called "Spaceship to the Stars" (which eventually became an American television show in the 1950s). The German radio play eventually spawned a German television show (of the same name) that aired from 1978 to 1980. And all this has spawned an American film production. The game plays off the ruse in a variety of ways. For instance, a section of the book is devoted to episode summaries from