Bixby is a veteran sf writer, and he would have certainly read Black Destroyer, which was Van Vogt’s first story, and was one of the stories which ushered in the Golden Age of Astounding. It was also in the classic anthology Adventures in Time and Space.
I always figured the magazine assault was a product of faulty programming. Its “Obey orders from the company at any cost” program conflicted with its “Don’t kill people no matter what” program, and he started acting bizzarely erratic.
I always liked that the android came out of no where. When she starts fighting back, and instead of blood, we start seeing all this white gunk, is almost as good a WTF? moment as the chest burster scene.
In his commentary, Scott says that his idea of the spacecraft where Ripley & Co. find the alien is that it’s basically an “aircraft carrier.” The dead alien in the chair was supposed to drop the eggs on some planet, the aliens would hatch, and run amok over the planet, killing pretty much everything. Then, the creators of the aliens would show up, flip a switch on their gizmo and all the aliens fall over dead, leaving the planet free for the taking.
Frankly, I like that idea better than the whole Alien vs. Predator business.
They meustly come at night. Meustly.
I saw it tonight and will just briefly say the following.
New scenes I noticed:
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Famous Egg Scene: Nice but don’t care to see it again. It does screw up the pacing, with her standing around while the ship is exploding around her.
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The Chain scene with Brett: In this version, the alien is shown a minute before it attacks Brett. This rather ruined the scene for me. It worked so much better when it just comes down behind him. Right afterwards, Ripley and Parker come running in. Nice, but it works better when it cuts to Parker freaked out and retelling it.
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The Message Scene: They listen to the beacon. Nice and doesn’t detract from the film.
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Outside the medical lab: lambert slaps Ripley out of the blue. Interesting, but I’m not sure why it had to be in there, other then to show that Lambert is rather emotionally high-strung(and there’s already enough evidence of that elsewhere).
What bugs me is that the following scenes were trimmed or cut out:
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Dallas mentioning the former science officer and Ash replacing him. This gains a bit of significance once we learn that Ash is an Andriod and about the special order.
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Dallas’s 2nd chat with mother. Not that it makes much difference, but I always kind of liked that scene “What are my chances?”
Okay, yes, when Lampert slaps Ripley - thought that was new. Didn’t like it, because it was kind of wimpy and fake. Agree with you on your other points.
Hey, thanks for that! It just proves I REALLY need to get the Director’s Commentary edition…
I thought that Lambert slapped Ripley because she was angry at Ripley for refusing to allow Lambert, Dallas, and Kane who had the face hanger attached, back into the ship.
I am puzzled though about two scenes.
After Ripley set the ship to explode, she seems goes down into bowels of the ship, discovering Dallas and Brett. Why is she taking this detour when the ship is about ready to explode?
Also why did Ripley go back to the detonation area and start fiddling with it? Was she trying to prevent the ship from exploding? Why? She then started yelling at Mother about coolant. Was lack of coolant related to being able to take off in shuttlecraft?
I’m so confused.
Ripley sent the ship to explode and was making her way to the shuttle when she encountered the alien in the path to the shuttle. Since she couldn’t move past it, she went back to stop the self-destruct (possibly to buy herself some more time to re-think her strategy?).
When she couldn’t turn off the self-destruct, she was forced to make her way to the shuttle again. You can tell how afraid she is when she pauses in the same place she encountered the alien on her first attempt. It takes her a long time to cross the short distance from the corner (where she saw the alien) to the shuttle door.
Oh, I meant to add something about the coolant.
It appears that the way to destroy the ship was to shut off the coolant and the ship would overheat and blow up. When she was trying to stop the self-destruct sequence, she seemed to get the coolant flowing again at the last second, but it was too late.
Thanks, that helps a lot.
Then the alien was stowing away, fully knowing that the shuttle was the means to escape.
Calmecham
The novel by Alan Dean Foster explains this quite well. A company deep space probe had already picked up and translated the warning transmission from the planet. The message was quite detailed about the creature and the company wanted to ensure the safe delivery of the creature for study, the crew was expendable. The novel is quite a good book in it’s own right IMHO.
Not so sure the Alien knew the ship was going to blow up. I always just kind of figured that it was irritated by the fact that all hell was breaking loose, and it couldn’t seem to find any more humans to kill, so it decided to go find a quiet spot for a lie down.
The only place we see that ISN’T howling or honking or spewing steam after Ripley initiates the self-destruct is the interior of the shuttle.
Except, of course, the chamber in the excised scenes that got cut because they slowed things down.
The whole “The Company wants to pick up an alien Predator by using its own crew as bait” rationale has always struck me as pretty damned stupid and unbelievable (it’s also an after-the-fact justification. In the earlier drafts, it was “Mother” the computer that was the machine intelligence on the Alien’s side, not a robot) How likely is it that
a.) The Company is going to be able to decipher an alien distress call – and figure out that fiercely aggressive killing creatures are nesting aboard
b.) Have a crew member lucky/stupid enough to get “infected/impregnated”
c.) That the biological systems of host and alien are compatible
d.) Have the Ship get back safely to Earth without everybody being killed, or someone blowing the ship up, or having the “harvesting” crew that picks it up being killed?
Makes a helluva lot more sense to just send your harvesting crew down to the planet and pick the damned things up.
Actually, it’s just the sound of the face-hugger egg opening.
Yeah, yeah, nitpick. I’ll be back later when I’ve got more time…
My only question is: What does the damn thing eat? It grew to the size of a man before it killed its first victim, and Ash makes a comment as to its “nutritional requirements,” so what’s the deal?>
Cinematic license. After all, Ripley, with the aid of Mother, eventually deciphered that the beacon wasn’t a SOS but rather a warning.
If Dallas/Kane/Lambert returned without a specimen, I suspect Ash would have pushed for them to retrieve an egg for science purposes, or explored some other manner to infect a crewmember.
Wild guess, which turned out to be true. Even if not, then Ash could again try to secure a sample without infecting the crew.
They probably laid their hopes on the crew putting the hypothetically infected person in a sleep chamber, or if the alien manages to kill everyone, have Mother autopilot the ship home and then gamble that a heavily-equipped harvesting crew could capture the alien on the derelict Nostromo.
One argument that I heard about sending the Nostromo on a detour rather than a Corporate harvesting crew is the need for secrecy, based upon Burke’s comments in Aliens - “If I went a made a major security situation out of this, everybody steps in. Administration steps in, and there’s no exclusive rights for anybody. Nobody wins.”
With the Nostromo and Ash acting as a secret agent of sorts, then there’s plausible deniability of “Oh, look, one of our freighters just happened to run across this alien specimen! What are the odds?”
All of this is secondary justification, of course, since the best justification is “it makes a darned good movie to do it this way”.
Okay, by shoving a rolled up magazine down in someone’s mouth, you can force their tongue into the back of their throat, cutting off thier oxygen supply, and suffocate them. Sounds funny, yes, but it works. Why he did it? You guessed it…symbolism! It’s not just a magazine, if you notice, it’s a nudie magazine! Most of the design for the film is all very phalic and vaginal. The alien’s head, the ship, and much of the designs in the corridors are all phalic shapes; the entryway into the ship and the cavers, though, is very vaginal; eggs, a man giving birth to the creature…it’s all symbolic, and the magazine is just another example of all this.
As for Ash’s being an android coming out of left field, I agree about that, but I found it to be a great moment. I don’t know if this was an extended scene or not, but when Ripley goes to confront him about letting the others in against her commands, he’s looking at pictures of the xenomorph embryo and studying skin grafts. “That looks interesting,” and he immediately shuts off the computer monitors. As she leaves, you seem him drinking a glass full of what appears to be milk, but is apparently something else. They drop a few hints here and there, but overall, I thought it was a great scene.
That’s interesting. I read that there was another scene that they never even bothered to film for various reasons that included a scene where they find a diagram or model of a pyramid in the spacejockey’s ship, and when the sun comes up, see said pyramid. It’s in here that they find the hive, which to me, signified that this planet was the xenomorph’s original homeplanet, and that the spacejockey was just a poor soul who got lost on the wrong planet. Did anyone read Aliens: Book One? I believe they had a different story there as well, dealing with the spacejockey being an intergalactic animal collector or something, who picked them up from one planet and got more than he bargained for.
I’m still on the fence on weather or not I like the whole “turns people into face hugger eggs” thing. I mean, it’s kinda bad enough already that the xenomorph has to rely on other beings to breed, but to need two victims as opposed to one is even more wasteful, for lack of a better word. But it is kinda cool to think that there are other ways for them to breed, so that even a single drone can start a colony. Although, I do like the concept of the alien just grabbing Dallas and dissappearing altogether without leaving any trace of him. Leaves you to wonder what happened to him.
I also thought it was rather apparent that Lambert slapped Ripley because she refused to let the scouting crew back in. Lambert screamed something like “You were just going to leave us out there!” or something when she hit her, so as emotional as she is, that slap was pretty well deserved.
As for the Company’s big plan by using the crew as bait plot, I always figured that they initially sent the crew because they were the closest ship there, and that this being the first contact with a possible intelligent lifeform other than human, it was a very important find (not to mention lucrative). It was threw contact with Ash that the Company was kept up to date as to what was going on, and eventually changed it’s plan from “Find us some artifacts/make contact” to “Bring the creature back alive, all else is secondary.”
See, to me, it just looked like a bit hook/spike, and all it did was ride it up her back and stick it in her spine. Apparently, in the novelisation of Aliens, it’s mentioned that the xenomorph have stingers on the end of their tails that sedate their victims so as to make it easier to cacoon them. Both ideas make sense, but like I said, they really seem to be nothing more than a very sharp and jagged point, and that’s all they’ve ever really been used from in other books and stories that I’ve seen…to skewer people and make a mess.
Let’s see 1) I already kinda addressed in my “What does it eat” question. Obviously, the creature has some incredibly fast motabolism or whathave you…it’s gestation period is, what? a DAY? It’s all in the design. Perhaps the novel explains it more.
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It was really their only best bet. The thing’s in the airducts, we have to get it out, so unless you can think of any other way, we have to flush it out step by step. Again, these people were miners and shipers, not military, what the hell do they know about trapping a space alien?
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They did use it multiple times (remember when they found the cat?). The problem is, after Dallas was nabbed, they didn’t have the opportunity, remember. It went Dallas gone…make plans…talk to mother…Ash goes psycho…get things ready to blow the ship…everyone else dies.
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The “Why is it killing?” question is what makes the creature so great! I mean, it doesn’t eat it’s victims, it doesn’t have any other food on board apparently, so why’s it just killing them? That was my big question in Alien 3 I mean, on the Nostromo, you only had six people…if the xenomorph construed them as a threat, why wouldn’t it kill them to keep itself safe? But in 3, there’s dozens of people, it’s best bet is to hide, but instead, it still attacks and kills. Why? Because that’s what it does! It’s a killing machine, it knows nothing else, and it’s just that simple. What more do you want?
skipping five and moving onto 6) I care, because I was the guy who got the whole debate going in that last thread 
For more proof, see the zygote Ash was looking at. It’s got a cute widdle baby mouth, and HUGE CHICKEN EYES!!! MUAHAHAHAHAAAAA!!!
GAH! I had another question, but I forgot it. I’m sure I’ll remember once I hit submit, oh well.
The company did not want any interference from the authorities, that is why they sent Nostromo, it make it appear the alien ship was stumbled upon by accident. In the book Ash states the company did hope the crew would be able to contain the organism and survive to collect their shares, but this was a secondary consideration.
I’m assuming that they’ll release a DVD of the director’s cut of Alien that is currently showing re-released in theaters. Does anyone know of any information on this? I’ve been searching and cannot find anything conclusive. Just speculation.
And what about the extended versions of some of the sequels that have been mentioned in this thread? There is a DVD set that was produced but is not available (see next paragraph). Were those versions extended, or original theatrical versions?
I note that Amazon is out of stock on all the Alien movies, and I have not been able to find any of them at Best Buy in the couple of months I’ve been looking. I wonder if they’ve stopped manufacturing them in anticipation of new versions.