Alien (franchise)/Headscratchers: Difference between revisions

*** This troper's best guess for this would be, that the only transmitter was on the APC because 1) the size of the unit (which was basically a laptop and satalite uplink to fly the dropship by remote (if you look at the shots of bishop's console while he's flying down the dropship you can see what looks like a flight simulator) which would be a bulky load for a marine to carry into a crampt built up area (given the weight of armour, combat load and weapon, flashlights, trackers, and other gear they had it would have seamed like superfulos especially since gorman stayed on the APC for the most part and ferro remained with the dropship while spunkmyer only left it long enough to run some supplies to bishop so he could study the facehugger. and given the nature of their enemy they were not expecting anti armour or anti aircraft weapons so couldn't forsee the events that led to the dropship crash, yet alone the fact it struck the APC, and given that the seccond in command apone was one of the first mariens to die in the nest, even if he had the back up transmitter it wouldn't have been much used to them.

*** They explained this in the movie. Bishop himself said that he is "the only one qualified to remotely fly the dropship anyway". I assume Ferro was also qualified, but she was killed before this point in the movie, causing the said need for the second dropship. As to why they didn't leave anyone on the Sulaco: Who would they have left? They got the Pilot (Ferro), Ripley, The CO, the 2nd in command (Apone), Bishop, Hudson (electronics specialist?), and several grunts. They all had their key roles to play in the mission and it could be that there wasn't enough room to bring anyone else. They were all needed down on the surface, in the mission. So, if Bishop was the only guy who could pilot the thing other than Ferro, why would they want/need more than one, maybe two, transmitters when only two people in the whole mission knew how to even use it?

* Never mind why Ripley put herself into cold sleep. How in the world could there be an egg on the Sulaco at the end of Aliens anyway? And even if there was some way that could possibly have happened, we're supposed to believe that Ripley didn't give the ship a thorough going over before bedding down? The entire premise of the third movie is stupid given the ending of the second movie.

** I suppose you'd have to assume the queen grabbed an undamaged egg and lugged it along with her when she stowed away on the dropship. When they reached the Sulaco the queen jumped off, hid the egg somewhere, then ran back and jumped back onto the dropship again for some reason. All of this in between the time when the dropship arrived on the mothership but before Ripley and the others disembarked.

**** He says that Burke ordered the two face-huggers they found in the medlab returned alive. He may be USCM property, but he doesn't seem to have any qualms with following company orders, especially since IIRC the military is essentially a tool of Weyland-Yutani anyway.

**** The problem is that the script as written leaves it open to implication. Discussions about the two facehuggers after Bishop had analysed them amounted to the following.

'''Bishop:''' Mr Burke gave instructions they were to be returned alive to the company labs. (''beat'') He was very specific about it. }}

**** After that scene, it cuts straight to Ripley confronting Burke over it, and no other mention of the facehuggers is made. Bishop also isn't present during the discussion about whose jurisdiction the mission is under, and he might not be programmed to make a decision about jurisdiction (thus his uncertainty and reasserting that Burke was very specific about it - that's a machine's way of reading out an error result and going back to a command prompt). On the other hand, I don't think it's clear exactly whether he's Weyland-Y property or USCM property: when Ripley confronts Burke about Bishop's presence on the Sulaco, Burke responds "Well, it's common practice. '''We''' always have a synthetic on board." [[Alan Dean Foster]]'s novelisation goes one step further in that Ripley asks Bishop to come with her to confront Burke, then cancels that instruction, which she takes as reassurance that Bishop is not fully under Burke's sway.

** Overconfidence. Up until the Marines go to the atmosphere processor, nothing's happening and Gorman et. al. still don't quite believe Ripley's story about how lethal and silent the Aliens are. Also, the dropship's out on a landing pad where you'd normally presume it's hard for a seven-foot-tall alien to sneak up and secrete itself on the ship - and to top it all off, the landing field's at the Colony, not at the atmosphere processor which is a good hike away from the station. Ferro and Spunkmeyer also look to be pretty "couldn't care less" types.

 

__NOTOC__