posted
Tahna:"Because they wanted to recreate the Alien, they had to recreate Ripley. Doesn't that sound stupid?"
Exactly. A body-building father does not get muscular kids, so the DNA of a deceased, implanted woman shouldn't contain much viable DNA of the embryo since it is a later-stage addition.
Reverend: I highly doubt they had the time to extrapolate useful "Ripley-persuading"-info from the Sulaco after tracking it down but before finding Ripley.
Besides, how could they know she was impregnated when starting for Fury-161, I thought only she herself and the doctor knew that, and he died!? Who told them???
At the same time, I agree totally with absolutely everything you have said and-HEY!!! Point that toad somewhere else!!!
.. ... Didn't the movie explain the Sulaco's pod-jettisoning with a few drops of acid on the floor from the facehopper melting Ripley's pod-cover?
How did the book explain the Sulaco's motives for throwing out the pods?
quote:I'm not sure but if you watch Aliens you might notice that Bishop isning in the waking up scene in they cryo-room and that IIRC he doesn't show up until the mess hall scene.
Yes he is. He walks by Apone along with everyone else, dressed in skivvies as they were. He was there, probably to better accent Ripley's justified hatred of androids. After all, they can be anywhere.
The bigger quesiton is how he got like he was by the next movie - they basically dumped him into a cryotube at the end, but by the end of the film he was in a plastic bag in a corner of the pod.
As for the elapsed time, I'm willing to bet that not THAT much time passed after A2. The Patna (name from the A3 novelisation) could have been searching for the Sulaco following the accident that ejected the pods, or could have been rushing out to meet her halfway... I was under the impression that they set the ship just to return to Earth, and were I a W-Y rep I'd not rely on a rogue like Ripley to take care of it all. Also, we don't REALLY know how fast the ships in thie universe go...
Regardless of the transit time, fifteen people in cryo still use less air, food and power than fifteen people walking around. Given the economically-minded Company and the apparent reliability of the cryonics process, I don't see why the travel time between Earth and Fury161 can't be a matter of days anyway... It *is* an older installation, and thus could easily be close enough to Earth to warrant the relatively quick arrival of the Patna.
quote: Exactly. A body-building father does not get muscular kids, so the DNA of a deceased, implanted woman shouldn't contain much viable DNA of the embryo since it is a later-stage addition.
I think this has something to do with the Alien's gestation process. Presumably the embrio uses it's host's DNA as a template as it develops (hence the dog-alien and the humanoid-aliens), what ressuraction seams to imply is that the process goes both ways, a sort of genetic bleed if you will. Perhaps this is just an unintentional by-product of genome mitosis or it's a way for the creature to strengthen the host against illness or injury until it can fully grow. Either way it seams that when the doctor took blood samples of her after the crash they contained alien DNA, which is why the Auriga scientists had trouble seperating the two codes.
quote: I highly doubt they had the time to extrapolate useful "Ripley-persuading"-info from the Sulaco after tracking it down but before finding Ripley.
I'm pretty sure that Bishop said that everything that happens onboard the ship gets transmitted to the company, they didn't find the Sullaco first.
It actually just occured to me that the Patna could have been in the area anyways as backup for the Marines, after all Hicks said that a rescue team would come in 17 days. Since it apparantly took months to get from Gateway to Acheron that's pretty close and Fury-161 is going to be closer still so the quick arrival suddenly makes a little more sense.
quote: Besides, how could they know she was impregnated when starting for Fury-161, I thought only she herself and the doctor knew that, and he died!? Who told them???
They didn't initially, it's only after she scanned herself in the EEV that they found out. If you recall there was a message from WY confirming receipt of the scan and giving orders to ensure Ripley's safety...all other priorities rescinded I imagine. Oh and the Doctor didn't know, he was killed before the scan. If you remember it was '85' that opperated the console, so he was the only one to know until she told Dillon.
quote: At the same time, I agree totally with absolutely everything you have said and-HEY!!! Point that toad somewhere else!!!
Oh I'm sorry. Would you like an official brain-slug novelty hat?
quote: How did the book explain the Sulaco's motives for throwing out the pods?
Almost the same as in the film, acid burned through floor, caused electrical fire, computer ejected the tubes into EEV, EEV launched and headed for homebase, Sullaco continued to burn, fire caused a major explosion, (it's a warship remember, full of nukes, knives and sharp sticks!). The blast wave damaged the EEV, EEV makes an emergency course correction for the nearest beacon, nearest beacon happens to be that of 'Fiorina' Fury-161, EEV tried to make a safe landing, systems fail, crash, splash, oh dear.
quote: Also, Reverend, have you read "The Anchorpoint Essays"? Actually, all of you should read it.
I have not and cannot since that link is down temporarily.
quote: Yes he is. He walks by Apone along with everyone else, dressed in skivvies as they were. He was there, probably to better accent Ripley's justified hatred of androids. After all, they can be anywhere.
I stand corrected. They must have altered that in a later draft of the script. In the novel there's a scene with him on the Sullaco's bridge as they come into orbit.
quote: The bigger quesiton is how he got like he was by the next movie - they basically dumped him into a cryotube at the end, but by the end of the film he was in a plastic bag in a corner of the pod.
I'm pretty sure he was in a bag at the end of Aliens. Presumably he ended up in the corner because of the very rough splash-down, which also cost him an arm and half his face if I recall correctly.
quote: Also, we don't REALLY know how fast the ships in thie universe go...
There seams to be some confusion about this within the franchise since in the original novel of Alien, the Nostromo uses a hyperspace engine to travel between the stars (hence the ridiculously huge explosion) while in later films it's seams that the ship only travel in real space and at sublight speeds. However there is enough that has not been specified to allow the writers to make up what they want.
If you want to point out plot holes in Alien3 then you might as well pick the two big ones. How many facehuggers/eggs did the Queen bring up with her and how did she do that without anybody noticing?
posted
This was never much of a loophole for me. Consider the following:
-We DO see a dead, pale alien in A3's opening credits.
-The Queen's glunky transparent egg factory shows eggs at near-full size within. It's reasonable to assume that the eggs are created within the queen proper, and simply grow/mature in the warmth of the gooey goo. This would also help explain their different colouring and smaller size as shown in A3.
-The novelization and probably some versions of the script for Aliens suggest "worker" aliens whose job it is to take care of and move the eggs and stuff around for the immobile queen. Since we don't see any other types of aliens besides the queen and warrior constructs, it is a common supposition that the workers can look quite a bit like the warriors.
So, we have a source for the eggs, and a method for them to get to the cryotubes. The dead alien seen at the beginning could have been a worker, and could have taken eggs with it, or from the queen, on the way up. While Ripley was doing the catfight with the queen, the worker stayed put and guarded the eggs, and later placed them where it could infect the survivors. Following that, it died and got all white. Shortly thereafter, the eggs hatch and start huggin'.
Also, it never seemed to me that subsequent Alien films suggest there wasn't some sort of FTL drive in operation. Only in the DHP comics do they really conisder the trip to LV-426 would take months, as their subsequent indroduction of the "gravity drive" cut the trip down to mere days. Didn't stop 'em from using cryosleep though, for storage and transportation purposes.
posted
I want proof of the dead alien in the A3 opening credits, all I saw was two eggs. Also, I thought aliens couldn't die from age. No one even knows how they eat, the dead colonizers were untouched.
Could it be brains? I am always disgusted and shocked by the way the dog-alien from A3 keeps penetrating and emptying the skull of that dead inmate, during The Chase.
Cruelest thing I've ever seen, short of the removed scenes from "Henry: Diary of a serial killer". My movie-class was invited to the swedish bureau of cinema, got to see their famed shockflick; 45 minutes of the worst edited scenes gathered since 1970. I almost threw up after the house invasion scene of "Henry".
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posted
I no longer have the movie on VHS. But I remember a pan across an empty room on the Sulaco, and when it stops, there's a pasty-white alien on the screen. It's in profile, facing the direction the camera just panned from.
EDIT: Oh, wait. I musta been hallucinating when I saw this hanging from a rack saying "Sulaco". Someone please bop me on the head.
Still, my original supposition stands - there could have been another alien on the ship that came up with the queen. Or, the egg could be hanging in the dropship somehow. Or something like that.
quote:Originally posted by Reverend: If you want to point out plot holes in Alien3 then you might as well pick the two big ones. How many facehuggers/eggs did the Queen bring up with her and how did she do that without anybody noticing?
The Queen we saw fighting Ripley was shot all to hell (she lost half her arms in the grenade's explosions) and was possibly a goner....the Queen probably lays the egg for the new Queen when she's dying (so there's not several Queens) to continue the hive.
The aliens from the first film were being transported somewhere and were not in their natural state (all the eggs were lined up in neat rows with a security laser thingie over them).
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
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posted
Not only is Bishop walking among those coming out of cryosleep, his name is also on the computer screen listing the sleep chambers being deactivated; his is the last name to appear before the scene changes. Makes you wonder why they put him on the ship in the first place if they're going to freeze him like the human crew.
As to whether the ships have FTL drive, I cracked out my DVDs of the first two movies and did some checking. From Lambert's dialogue, the LV-426 system is "just short of Zeta II Reticuli." Zeta Reticuli is a binary system 39.4 to 39.5 light years from earth. Since the dialogue indicates they were short of the system (on an inbound course), I used the larger figure for my calculations. Again from Lambert's dialogue, after taking off from the planet it would take the Nostromo ten months to get to earth, which computes to an average speed of 47.4 times lightspeed.
Moving on to Aliens, after the crew is defrosted you can hear two of the marines in the background talking. One asks about downtime, and another (Hicks, I think), says they just had three weeks on their backs. Three weeks to Zeta II Reticuli figures out to a speed of just under 685 times lightspeed. This makes sense when you figure Hick's later comment that it would take a rescue mission 17 days to arrive after they were declared overdue. It also implies that the original mission had something less than an emergency priority.
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posted
Well, IIRC, the only evidence we have of 57 years having passed is in Ripley's nightmare and then the Dead Daughter bit. Since the Dead Daughter was edited out originally, what's to say she hadn't just been asleep for, say, 10 years?
-------------------- "I'm nigh-invulnerable when I'm blasting!" Mel Gibson, X-Men
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posted
Burke breaks the news about the 57 years to Ripley while she's in the hospital about the elapsed time when he fiest shows up oin the theactrical version too.
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
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posted
Exactly, and just after hearing "57 years, drifting past outer rim bla bla" she starts getting seizures and begs them to kill her, then wakes up at night. So it could've been part of the dream, it was never confirmed.
-------------------- "I'm nigh-invulnerable when I'm blasting!" Mel Gibson, X-Men
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Warships tend to be faster than haulers regardless, I'd imagine. Plus, odds are they can develop faster ships in the 57 intervening years...
Mark
Yes, just like the U.S. Navy lists the "OFFICIAL" top speed of a Nimitz class carrier as "35+" knots. The speculation is that they can EASILY hit 70 knots. The old Midway class could hit 54 burning oil.
There is also the possibility that the size of the system could affect the journey. My theory is you wouldn't just warp right into our solar system.... you would probably need to go at sublight speeds to prevent damage from system "clutter" such as asteroids and other planets if you will. You might be able to go to the next star in a few days, but when you get there you might need to do a couple of weeks to get into the system. Therefor if you are travelling to an inner planet, it would take that much longer than if the planet is alone in the system or farther out.
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