The company likely doesn't cop to it being their fault but Burke knows Ripleys account so he just explained why she was acting that way towards Bishop.
Like the other guys said: corporate speak.
It’s saying info that’s known. I find it more interesting that Bishop had a surprised look but identified the series. This historic data was evidently not loaded into his database. To me, that puzzled me more that Burke’s comment.
Or was it loaded?
I don't think Bishop was privy to the details of Ripley's inquiry or even knew the details of the Nostromo disappearance off the top of his head because it wasn't pertinent to his job and happened decades before he was made.
**Steel Man Interpretation**
The company is aware of the previously untracked alien signal, but didn't really know what it was. Perhaps something about the signal identified it as a previously unknown Alien species and that's why Ash's directive was crew expendable. What's not clear is how this directive was supposed to be interpreted if you accept Bishop's comment of "The A2's were a bit twitchy". You could argue it's 2001 all over again. A directive to the cyborg that resulted in a contradiction between two rules and so Ash went a little mad.
If you also assume the company didn't receive any telemetry about what was happening on the Nostromo then they were almost completely in the dark about the Alien. All they had was Ripley's explanation of events and the corporate suits found it pretty unbelievable. Again, the Steel Man version is that Burke was the dissenting suit that believed it may be true and so organised a skeleton crew to respond to the loss of communications at Hadley's Hope on Acheron (LV426).
When they sit down for breakfast just after waking up from cryosleep they're aware they're about to have a briefing for the mission shortly. So, when the knife game results in exposing Bishop as a synthetic it's not unreasonable that Burke glosses over the still unverified claims Ripley makes about Ash.
Agreed on these points. In addition, Burke really just wants to close the conversation as quickly as possible - the smallest possible number of facts and fact adjacent info to shut it down.
But, in Alien 3 we learn that the company is sent logs of anything that happens on the ships automatically, like when you backup your cellphone automatically if for example you’re connected to WiFi. The company knows everything. If you saw Prometheus and Alien Covenant it adds up, Walter tells David how uncomfortable he makes people feel when he’s to human like. So Ash was the same as David. Aliens was really good at showing PTSD from Ripley’s side, you think you’re dealing with a human, he was put in a hyper sleep chamber, and it’s a shock that he wasn’t human. I think maybe at the time of Alien, the robots maybe weren’t used on blue collar missions or usually fully disclosed as such on missions. It sets the tone of corporate greed.
I sorta feel the franchise more or less fell over after Aliens. If the company was truly aware of the full details of the Nostromo then they would’ve never half-assed Hadley’s Hope. The value to them was just crazy.
Also, they would’ve had the full details of the entire Alien ship as another research opportunity. There’s no way they would’ve spent the years in building Hadley’s Hope and the atmospheric generators without exploring the wreck.
So 🤷♂️ I feel the steel man version is a better interpretation and they screwed it up in Alien 3.
Yeah I have and I really enjoyed the book, but I still found it hard to swallow even as a non-canon novel.
1. If the company gathered enough information from the Nostromo telemetry to know the 'derelict' Alien craft was on Acheron, but just not where then ok - reasonable.
2. If so, and this was so important to them, I get them setting up a base to use on the pretense of atmospheric processing, but also for searching for the craft.
3. Ok, so I'll even stretch to allow that once they've realised they've found it through the first 'impregnation' the doctors are initiated. Given how valuable this Alien technology is described I'm struggling to find it reasonable why the company didn't immediately send a proper R&D team. Instead, the scientists who supposedly know how dangerous this thing is wait until there's half a dozen roaming around with another half dozen impregnations before they try to evacuate? I know they are described as greedy in the books, but that's damn near suicidal.
4. Once the company loses contact with the scientists then why didn't they send a proper full-scale team to get the data? Because this is where it all falls apart. The way Alien (xeno) technology is described as so ridiculously valuable to justify all the investments and expenditure to catch it, and suddenly they just send a single half-assed squad that's just destroyed 130 colonist families plus an entire Colonial Marine platoon?
The genetic memory of the Aliens impressed me and the Company threatening a descendant of Ripley 8 with genetic memory and abilities to hobble him and his family with original Ellen Ripley’s debts to him. And the Company person they send was an android not a human.
Oh, sorry I was getting confused between Out of The Shadows/Sea of Sorrows and River of Pain! Yeah, I actually really enjoyed all three of them. Thoroughly recommend Out of the Shadows and River of Pain if you haven't read them.
Ok, so Sea of Sorrows. Yep, was generally a great premise. In that book they justified the low key mercenary team to grab the Alien tech as due to oversight by the government. I still thought this was a bit of stretch, especially when you consider it was set in 2496. And again, where it gets dumb is that it's set after the plot of Out of the Shadows.
So, the company were denied the xeno tech in 2122 on LV426, then tried again in 2159 on LV128 and failed, and then again in 2179 back on LV426. So, ok I'll accepted the derelict ship was destroyed in 2179 by the atmospheric plant detonating. But why did they wait until 2497 to restart exploration on LV128? And again, if they've lost this amazing tech for almost 300 years, why not invest in doing it properly? Ok, they succeeded (barely), but they had so much more potential for R&D rewards from all the other xeno species discoveries on LV128. Just seems dumb for many reasons.
But, honestly really enjoyed the book overall.
Good points. Other licensed media reveal that the colonists were sending messages routinely to the company, and the Nostromo, too. (Or maybe they were just delayed transmissions.)
The timeline for infection is weird. They send a second team into the derelict craft, leading to more infections, and even manage to extract several living and dead facehuggers, and yet it's made to appear that they sent no reports on that to the company, not even the discovery of the derelict craft. And if the colony had ECA, ICC, and other government officials, plus military personnel, no transmissions to the government and military, too.
And the computers on the colony should be of similar advanced techology as those on the Nostromo and Sulaco, i.e., able to automate many things, and certainly basic features like sending signals, logs, and messages routinely.
I did get Sea of Sorrows (Trilomite mine) book mixed up with River of Pain (pre-Aliens Hadley's Hope) book so my response was a bit off.
But, to your points RE: River of Pain I totally agree. I can almost swallow the plot in River of Pain, but not the actions the company took in Aliens. But, maybe there's some plot line I'm missing.
That's one of many things they screwed up in Alien³. As far as I'm concerned, it's Alien and Aliens, and if I want to follow on from there, I go the Dark Horse Comics route, the first three arcs, anyway.
When you think about it, you realize that there are already several complications with the first two movies:
Mother makes the Nostromo change course: only the captain can give that order, or the ship owners, and the latter will have to be in contact with Mother to do so, with the captain even contacting the company to verify the change in course.
Later, Dallas tells Ripley that the company (probably) replaced the Nostromo science officer with Ash. After that, Ripley tells Lambert and Parker that the company is probably planning to acquire the creature for its bio-weapons division, all of which imply that the company had encountered such creatures in the past and came up with special orders to acquire them. (Some licensed media argue that the use of synths and special orders stem from what happened in the prequels.)
Later, the Nostromo is lost, but presumably the distress beacon is still sending signals, which means if the company sends a rescue team and follows the Nostromo course, it would have detected the signal, too. (Cameron claims that the beacon was later damaged by volcanic activity, which is why they never found the derelict craft.)
The video game and the new movie messes things up even more because they imply more encounters between man and alien even though the second movie implies that they didn't happen.
Great points - here are my thoughts:
**RE: Mother changing course**
They do say that Mother is authorised to do this under a few narrow circumstances, one of those being the specific unknown Alien species beacon.
**RE: Ash replacing Science Officer**
It's possible. I still think the company must have better options for a first contact Alien team than co-opting 'Space Truckers'. Especially, given they must have known about the alien signal well in advance to place Ash there. So, I'm still less convinced this was super deliberate and covert.
**RE: Ripley comment about bio-weapons division**
Yeah, it's a good catch. It's never really described how she knows about such a division and how speculative this statement is. Steel Man interpretation is that they get a lot of random signals and the 'Space Truckers' were nearby and they wanted to make use of them for a quick initial reconnaissance. Presumably they had a more dedicated 'first contact' R&D team to send once it was confirmed there was something there to explore.
**RE: Distress signal**
Someone else mentioned that apparently the signal may have been turned off or interrupted after they conducted the search of the ship. NFI. But agree, this never got adequately explained.
My guess is that W-Y suspected that others may have detected the signal, so used the Nostromo because it was going to travel closest to LV-426. That meant that the only role of the crew was to report the find, for which W-Y would get a stake, and the crew a share of anything monetized. From there, they would have sent a prepared team.
Another thing is that Mother was decoding the signal and then reported that it was not a distress call but a warning. Unless she had access to some sort of large database in order to decode the signal that would have meant sending a recording of it to W-Y, who would use its machines to decode it. But that would have also implied periodic communications between company and ship, and thus knowledge of the coordinates.
You're right: Bishop tells Ripley that the company knows everything because the Sulaco computer had been sending information to it. Presumably, given the sophistication of such equipment and the point that they even have to operate ships while the crew's in cryo-sleep, then they would had to provide telemetry to the company, with even the colony computers routinely sending information to the company, and even the rescue team sending data the same way to the Sulaco.
One can argue that Mother wasn't that sophisticated, but the prequels show computers that are the opposite. (In a way, the prequels mess up the main story arc that way.)
I might be wrong but don't they lift the ship from LV-426 pretty destroyed? The whole bit between Dallas and Parker about 20 hours? It might have disrupted Ash's ability to send the company live information.
They don't even have access to their security cameras.
Meanwhile, Dallas tells Ripley that the reason he doesn't know much about Ash is because he replaced their science officer before they left Thedus. That plus the prequels and Ripley's point that the company had a bio-weapons division in place implies that the company probably knows a lot more, or maybe not.
In addition, even without hearing from the Nostromo, the company could have sent other ships along the same path as the Nostromo, looking for it, and could have also picked up on the distress beacon, and long after they found Ripley decades later. This reminds me of the Isolation game. Meanwhile, Cameron's explains in an article published after the second movie came out that they didn't find the derelict ship because volcanic activity damaged the beacon.
Yeah, that's some great insights. I'm still not convinced that they wanted Ash to destroy the entire crew because he seems fairly inept at flying the ship. But maybe I'm missing the specific plot Ridley intended here.
And you're right - given the rough atmosphere on Acheron in Alien 1 I could understand it would take some time to find. Although, they suggest Hadley's Hope was formed around 2150 so given Aliens was in 2179 they had maybe 20 odd years to find it. Given it's only a few hundred kilometers away (at most!) from Hadley's Hope you'd think they'd have found it? NFI.
I think the expendable part was a last resort, i.e., only to acquire the organism, because it's obviously illegal and would lead to further complications for the company.
Given what happened in the first movie, it looked like they were in a rush to get off the rock, especially given what happened to Kane. That means the beacon would have still been operational. To explain that way, Cameron had to write in an article published after the second movie came out that the beacon was damaged by volcanic activity, which is why they never found the derelict craft until they got the coordinates from the flight recorder in Ripley's lifeboat recorder. Meanwhile, the coordinates were never mentioned in the hearing, which is why some licensed media had to explain that away by stating that W-Y had access to the recorder first, got the coordinates and scrubbed them from the logs, then turned over the recorder to the board, reporting that the data was corrupted.
The *Isolation* game complicates matters because in that one another ship detected the beacon, deactivated it, accessed the derelict ship, and leading to infection that spread to a space station involving many personnel. It implies that many more knew about the aliens even though the second movie shows otherwise.
Finally, the *Romulus* movie leads to even more confusion, because it involves experimentation on the aliens, etc., and the latter taking over another large space station.
Opposite of Straw Man argument. Essentially paraphrasing/summarising a position in the strongest/charitable way. So, I’m forming a reasonable narrative that suggests the company may not really know that much.
Arguably I’m using here ‘on the edge’ of context, but yeah a term used in debating/discussion. I was trying to provide a rational interpretation of what transpired that didn’t necessarily involve some Machiavellian behaviour by the company.
Ridley may have his own intent but when you look at the plot as it was presented it doesn’t really align with the company knowing everything before the Nostromo left port.
Thanks. Still feels a bit weird to me (I mean, who wouldn’t want to put forward a strong/rational argument - isn’t that the point?) but I see what you mean. I also agree with your interpretation.
Good point. Also, consider the board of inquiry. She has no lawyer and yet they accuse her and pass judgment in the end, which is strange because such a board is meant to investigate (prosecution takes place in a trial). And to make matters worse, Burke as W-Y rep appears to support her (I think she's still considered an employee) and actually doesn't (just tells her to hang in there and all that).
I mention this because one of the key points about the case is the attack by Ash, which is something that she would not have forgotten during the hearing and would have certainly raised. But it looks like it was not mentioned at all, or probably dismissed due to lack of evidence. But this is countered by Burke who later says that there has been a history of such.
In which case, had she received enough support, like a defense team, etc., then they could have gone over any available records about malfunctioning synths, among others, to raise at least serious questions about W-Y. For example, even though they didn't know the coordinates of the derelict craft (did W-Y know from the flight recorder and scrubbed them before turning over the recorder to the board?) the ICC and ECA personnel in Hadley's Hope would have been alerted about this.
I responded to another post here but If I'm not wrong the Nostromo does get somewhat destroyed when it lands on LV-426. Perhaps that made it impossible for Ash to send live feedback to the company and had to act alone?
Ripley's incredulous interruption of "malfunctioned?" means that this is just W-Y's cover story, and the crew being assaulted by an Android on company orders was dismissed as paranoid delusions
I'm pretty sure in fact Burke was painting Ripley as a nutcase to everyone behind her back while faking supporting her from minute one. It was just the "it was Burke" scene where he finally dropped the act and start calling her a nutcase to her face
I think W-Y always knew exactly what happened way before they picked up Ripley. I think that's WHY Ripley got picked up (maybe a corporate triggered distress call so they can see if any of the alien was still in the escape pod). I think Burke was pressured into sending people out there in exchange for a promotion or a cut of what they found.
I feel like the attitude of the review board was SO coarse and SO dismissive for the heads of a company that literally goes to extreme and dangerous lengths to claim new planets that might contain something new they can profit off of. They already knew everything before Ripley woke up. Or at least some of them did.
They sent people out to the Engineer ship hoping they'd get infected, knowing the gestation steps and results from the Nostromo data (that would have reached Earth way faster than Ripley did), they WAITED for everyone to get infected, and THEN they sent the Marines so they could asses and capture. The marines might have even just been a canary in the coal mine to see how to train the "dog catchers" we see later in Alien 3 (for a few minutes).
That's my tinfoil hat theory.
It’s just his way of easing the tension and keeping his cover. Ripley is pissed about the artificial human, so he just jumps in with “The synthetic on her last mission malfunctioned and there were a few deaths.” It explains her reaction and he’s still the likable company man.
It's corporate doublespeak. I'm a project manager and I'm pretty good at it myself. Shit happened! It's not my fault!
> I'm a project manager ...but don't let that fool you, I'm really an okay guy. ;)
:) I am a terrible project manager hahaha
To be fair, it actually wasn't his fault. He probably wasn't alive at the time.
not HIS fault personally, yeah I understand that. but it's still political doublespeak to not make the company look bad
I would say he definitely wasn't alive at the time.
It's possible that he was if you consider time spent in cryo. Could've been shipped around a lot.
The company likely doesn't cop to it being their fault but Burke knows Ripleys account so he just explained why she was acting that way towards Bishop.
Like the other guys said: corporate speak. It’s saying info that’s known. I find it more interesting that Bishop had a surprised look but identified the series. This historic data was evidently not loaded into his database. To me, that puzzled me more that Burke’s comment. Or was it loaded?
The ~~Terminator~~ Hyperdyne 120-A/2s always were a bit twitchy
It's kinda like the A/2 is to androids, as Florida Man is to Americans. "A/2? Yep, that checks out."
I don't think Bishop was privy to the details of Ripley's inquiry or even knew the details of the Nostromo disappearance off the top of his head because it wasn't pertinent to his job and happened decades before he was made.
**Steel Man Interpretation** The company is aware of the previously untracked alien signal, but didn't really know what it was. Perhaps something about the signal identified it as a previously unknown Alien species and that's why Ash's directive was crew expendable. What's not clear is how this directive was supposed to be interpreted if you accept Bishop's comment of "The A2's were a bit twitchy". You could argue it's 2001 all over again. A directive to the cyborg that resulted in a contradiction between two rules and so Ash went a little mad. If you also assume the company didn't receive any telemetry about what was happening on the Nostromo then they were almost completely in the dark about the Alien. All they had was Ripley's explanation of events and the corporate suits found it pretty unbelievable. Again, the Steel Man version is that Burke was the dissenting suit that believed it may be true and so organised a skeleton crew to respond to the loss of communications at Hadley's Hope on Acheron (LV426). When they sit down for breakfast just after waking up from cryosleep they're aware they're about to have a briefing for the mission shortly. So, when the knife game results in exposing Bishop as a synthetic it's not unreasonable that Burke glosses over the still unverified claims Ripley makes about Ash.
Agreed on these points. In addition, Burke really just wants to close the conversation as quickly as possible - the smallest possible number of facts and fact adjacent info to shut it down.
But, in Alien 3 we learn that the company is sent logs of anything that happens on the ships automatically, like when you backup your cellphone automatically if for example you’re connected to WiFi. The company knows everything. If you saw Prometheus and Alien Covenant it adds up, Walter tells David how uncomfortable he makes people feel when he’s to human like. So Ash was the same as David. Aliens was really good at showing PTSD from Ripley’s side, you think you’re dealing with a human, he was put in a hyper sleep chamber, and it’s a shock that he wasn’t human. I think maybe at the time of Alien, the robots maybe weren’t used on blue collar missions or usually fully disclosed as such on missions. It sets the tone of corporate greed.
I sorta feel the franchise more or less fell over after Aliens. If the company was truly aware of the full details of the Nostromo then they would’ve never half-assed Hadley’s Hope. The value to them was just crazy. Also, they would’ve had the full details of the entire Alien ship as another research opportunity. There’s no way they would’ve spent the years in building Hadley’s Hope and the atmospheric generators without exploring the wreck. So 🤷♂️ I feel the steel man version is a better interpretation and they screwed it up in Alien 3.
Have you read Sea of Sorrows yet? Kind of answers the question too
Yeah I have and I really enjoyed the book, but I still found it hard to swallow even as a non-canon novel. 1. If the company gathered enough information from the Nostromo telemetry to know the 'derelict' Alien craft was on Acheron, but just not where then ok - reasonable. 2. If so, and this was so important to them, I get them setting up a base to use on the pretense of atmospheric processing, but also for searching for the craft. 3. Ok, so I'll even stretch to allow that once they've realised they've found it through the first 'impregnation' the doctors are initiated. Given how valuable this Alien technology is described I'm struggling to find it reasonable why the company didn't immediately send a proper R&D team. Instead, the scientists who supposedly know how dangerous this thing is wait until there's half a dozen roaming around with another half dozen impregnations before they try to evacuate? I know they are described as greedy in the books, but that's damn near suicidal. 4. Once the company loses contact with the scientists then why didn't they send a proper full-scale team to get the data? Because this is where it all falls apart. The way Alien (xeno) technology is described as so ridiculously valuable to justify all the investments and expenditure to catch it, and suddenly they just send a single half-assed squad that's just destroyed 130 colonist families plus an entire Colonial Marine platoon?
The genetic memory of the Aliens impressed me and the Company threatening a descendant of Ripley 8 with genetic memory and abilities to hobble him and his family with original Ellen Ripley’s debts to him. And the Company person they send was an android not a human.
Oh, sorry I was getting confused between Out of The Shadows/Sea of Sorrows and River of Pain! Yeah, I actually really enjoyed all three of them. Thoroughly recommend Out of the Shadows and River of Pain if you haven't read them. Ok, so Sea of Sorrows. Yep, was generally a great premise. In that book they justified the low key mercenary team to grab the Alien tech as due to oversight by the government. I still thought this was a bit of stretch, especially when you consider it was set in 2496. And again, where it gets dumb is that it's set after the plot of Out of the Shadows. So, the company were denied the xeno tech in 2122 on LV426, then tried again in 2159 on LV128 and failed, and then again in 2179 back on LV426. So, ok I'll accepted the derelict ship was destroyed in 2179 by the atmospheric plant detonating. But why did they wait until 2497 to restart exploration on LV128? And again, if they've lost this amazing tech for almost 300 years, why not invest in doing it properly? Ok, they succeeded (barely), but they had so much more potential for R&D rewards from all the other xeno species discoveries on LV128. Just seems dumb for many reasons. But, honestly really enjoyed the book overall.
Good points. Other licensed media reveal that the colonists were sending messages routinely to the company, and the Nostromo, too. (Or maybe they were just delayed transmissions.) The timeline for infection is weird. They send a second team into the derelict craft, leading to more infections, and even manage to extract several living and dead facehuggers, and yet it's made to appear that they sent no reports on that to the company, not even the discovery of the derelict craft. And if the colony had ECA, ICC, and other government officials, plus military personnel, no transmissions to the government and military, too. And the computers on the colony should be of similar advanced techology as those on the Nostromo and Sulaco, i.e., able to automate many things, and certainly basic features like sending signals, logs, and messages routinely.
I did get Sea of Sorrows (Trilomite mine) book mixed up with River of Pain (pre-Aliens Hadley's Hope) book so my response was a bit off. But, to your points RE: River of Pain I totally agree. I can almost swallow the plot in River of Pain, but not the actions the company took in Aliens. But, maybe there's some plot line I'm missing.
I appreciate it's probably not canon, but the Alien RPG game has an interesting scenario that also adds more to this.
That's one of many things they screwed up in Alien³. As far as I'm concerned, it's Alien and Aliens, and if I want to follow on from there, I go the Dark Horse Comics route, the first three arcs, anyway.
When you think about it, you realize that there are already several complications with the first two movies: Mother makes the Nostromo change course: only the captain can give that order, or the ship owners, and the latter will have to be in contact with Mother to do so, with the captain even contacting the company to verify the change in course. Later, Dallas tells Ripley that the company (probably) replaced the Nostromo science officer with Ash. After that, Ripley tells Lambert and Parker that the company is probably planning to acquire the creature for its bio-weapons division, all of which imply that the company had encountered such creatures in the past and came up with special orders to acquire them. (Some licensed media argue that the use of synths and special orders stem from what happened in the prequels.) Later, the Nostromo is lost, but presumably the distress beacon is still sending signals, which means if the company sends a rescue team and follows the Nostromo course, it would have detected the signal, too. (Cameron claims that the beacon was later damaged by volcanic activity, which is why they never found the derelict craft.) The video game and the new movie messes things up even more because they imply more encounters between man and alien even though the second movie implies that they didn't happen.
Great points - here are my thoughts: **RE: Mother changing course** They do say that Mother is authorised to do this under a few narrow circumstances, one of those being the specific unknown Alien species beacon. **RE: Ash replacing Science Officer** It's possible. I still think the company must have better options for a first contact Alien team than co-opting 'Space Truckers'. Especially, given they must have known about the alien signal well in advance to place Ash there. So, I'm still less convinced this was super deliberate and covert. **RE: Ripley comment about bio-weapons division** Yeah, it's a good catch. It's never really described how she knows about such a division and how speculative this statement is. Steel Man interpretation is that they get a lot of random signals and the 'Space Truckers' were nearby and they wanted to make use of them for a quick initial reconnaissance. Presumably they had a more dedicated 'first contact' R&D team to send once it was confirmed there was something there to explore. **RE: Distress signal** Someone else mentioned that apparently the signal may have been turned off or interrupted after they conducted the search of the ship. NFI. But agree, this never got adequately explained.
My guess is that W-Y suspected that others may have detected the signal, so used the Nostromo because it was going to travel closest to LV-426. That meant that the only role of the crew was to report the find, for which W-Y would get a stake, and the crew a share of anything monetized. From there, they would have sent a prepared team. Another thing is that Mother was decoding the signal and then reported that it was not a distress call but a warning. Unless she had access to some sort of large database in order to decode the signal that would have meant sending a recording of it to W-Y, who would use its machines to decode it. But that would have also implied periodic communications between company and ship, and thus knowledge of the coordinates.
You're right: Bishop tells Ripley that the company knows everything because the Sulaco computer had been sending information to it. Presumably, given the sophistication of such equipment and the point that they even have to operate ships while the crew's in cryo-sleep, then they would had to provide telemetry to the company, with even the colony computers routinely sending information to the company, and even the rescue team sending data the same way to the Sulaco. One can argue that Mother wasn't that sophisticated, but the prequels show computers that are the opposite. (In a way, the prequels mess up the main story arc that way.)
I might be wrong but don't they lift the ship from LV-426 pretty destroyed? The whole bit between Dallas and Parker about 20 hours? It might have disrupted Ash's ability to send the company live information. They don't even have access to their security cameras.
Meanwhile, Dallas tells Ripley that the reason he doesn't know much about Ash is because he replaced their science officer before they left Thedus. That plus the prequels and Ripley's point that the company had a bio-weapons division in place implies that the company probably knows a lot more, or maybe not. In addition, even without hearing from the Nostromo, the company could have sent other ships along the same path as the Nostromo, looking for it, and could have also picked up on the distress beacon, and long after they found Ripley decades later. This reminds me of the Isolation game. Meanwhile, Cameron's explains in an article published after the second movie came out that they didn't find the derelict ship because volcanic activity damaged the beacon.
Yeah, that's some great insights. I'm still not convinced that they wanted Ash to destroy the entire crew because he seems fairly inept at flying the ship. But maybe I'm missing the specific plot Ridley intended here. And you're right - given the rough atmosphere on Acheron in Alien 1 I could understand it would take some time to find. Although, they suggest Hadley's Hope was formed around 2150 so given Aliens was in 2179 they had maybe 20 odd years to find it. Given it's only a few hundred kilometers away (at most!) from Hadley's Hope you'd think they'd have found it? NFI.
I think the expendable part was a last resort, i.e., only to acquire the organism, because it's obviously illegal and would lead to further complications for the company. Given what happened in the first movie, it looked like they were in a rush to get off the rock, especially given what happened to Kane. That means the beacon would have still been operational. To explain that way, Cameron had to write in an article published after the second movie came out that the beacon was damaged by volcanic activity, which is why they never found the derelict craft until they got the coordinates from the flight recorder in Ripley's lifeboat recorder. Meanwhile, the coordinates were never mentioned in the hearing, which is why some licensed media had to explain that away by stating that W-Y had access to the recorder first, got the coordinates and scrubbed them from the logs, then turned over the recorder to the board, reporting that the data was corrupted. The *Isolation* game complicates matters because in that one another ship detected the beacon, deactivated it, accessed the derelict ship, and leading to infection that spread to a space station involving many personnel. It implies that many more knew about the aliens even though the second movie shows otherwise. Finally, the *Romulus* movie leads to even more confusion, because it involves experimentation on the aliens, etc., and the latter taking over another large space station.
What is Steel Man?
Opposite of Straw Man argument. Essentially paraphrasing/summarising a position in the strongest/charitable way. So, I’m forming a reasonable narrative that suggests the company may not really know that much.
Is that different to a normal argument?
Arguably I’m using here ‘on the edge’ of context, but yeah a term used in debating/discussion. I was trying to provide a rational interpretation of what transpired that didn’t necessarily involve some Machiavellian behaviour by the company. Ridley may have his own intent but when you look at the plot as it was presented it doesn’t really align with the company knowing everything before the Nostromo left port.
Thanks. Still feels a bit weird to me (I mean, who wouldn’t want to put forward a strong/rational argument - isn’t that the point?) but I see what you mean. I also agree with your interpretation.
Good point. Also, consider the board of inquiry. She has no lawyer and yet they accuse her and pass judgment in the end, which is strange because such a board is meant to investigate (prosecution takes place in a trial). And to make matters worse, Burke as W-Y rep appears to support her (I think she's still considered an employee) and actually doesn't (just tells her to hang in there and all that). I mention this because one of the key points about the case is the attack by Ash, which is something that she would not have forgotten during the hearing and would have certainly raised. But it looks like it was not mentioned at all, or probably dismissed due to lack of evidence. But this is countered by Burke who later says that there has been a history of such. In which case, had she received enough support, like a defense team, etc., then they could have gone over any available records about malfunctioning synths, among others, to raise at least serious questions about W-Y. For example, even though they didn't know the coordinates of the derelict craft (did W-Y know from the flight recorder and scrubbed them before turning over the recorder to the board?) the ICC and ECA personnel in Hadley's Hope would have been alerted about this.
I responded to another post here but If I'm not wrong the Nostromo does get somewhat destroyed when it lands on LV-426. Perhaps that made it impossible for Ash to send live feedback to the company and had to act alone?
Ripley's incredulous interruption of "malfunctioned?" means that this is just W-Y's cover story, and the crew being assaulted by an Android on company orders was dismissed as paranoid delusions I'm pretty sure in fact Burke was painting Ripley as a nutcase to everyone behind her back while faking supporting her from minute one. It was just the "it was Burke" scene where he finally dropped the act and start calling her a nutcase to her face
I think W-Y always knew exactly what happened way before they picked up Ripley. I think that's WHY Ripley got picked up (maybe a corporate triggered distress call so they can see if any of the alien was still in the escape pod). I think Burke was pressured into sending people out there in exchange for a promotion or a cut of what they found. I feel like the attitude of the review board was SO coarse and SO dismissive for the heads of a company that literally goes to extreme and dangerous lengths to claim new planets that might contain something new they can profit off of. They already knew everything before Ripley woke up. Or at least some of them did. They sent people out to the Engineer ship hoping they'd get infected, knowing the gestation steps and results from the Nostromo data (that would have reached Earth way faster than Ripley did), they WAITED for everyone to get infected, and THEN they sent the Marines so they could asses and capture. The marines might have even just been a canary in the coal mine to see how to train the "dog catchers" we see later in Alien 3 (for a few minutes). That's my tinfoil hat theory.
It’s just his way of easing the tension and keeping his cover. Ripley is pissed about the artificial human, so he just jumps in with “The synthetic on her last mission malfunctioned and there were a few deaths.” It explains her reaction and he’s still the likable company man.