From memory:
-They look exactly like humans on the outside
-They have white fluid (synthetic blood perhaps?) inside them
-They seem to be made of wet, squashy, slippery stuff, just like humans
But
-They have superhuman strength and speed
-They don’t appear to decay or suffer brain death in the same way as a human would.
So what are they? Mechanical things made of machinery that just happens to be wet and floppy? Biologically engineered organisms? Some combination of the two?
Do they heal if injured?
By extension, we know that the Cyberdyne Systems 120-A/2 always were a bit “twitchy”.
Bishop quietly passes off the pistol Vasquez hands him before he travels down the tube. I’m sure he knew it was dangerous so either androids in Aliens don’t necessarily follow all Three Laws (preventing harm to himself) or else Bishop had no affinity for firearms and wouldn’t have been effective with it anyway.
An argument could be made that Bishop would know a pistol is a futile defense against a lot of aliens but, if he had only come across a single scout or something, it certainly could have helped.
Indeed - in Alien[sup]3[/sup], she revives (part of)him briefly. That suggests that they’re not biological constructs at all, and his ability to remain conscious and act after being torn apart in Aliens suggests they’re not susceptible to trauma in anything like the way humans are.
They don’t seem to have external datajacks or anything. Bishop has to lug a computer down to remote pilot the other dropship instead of, say, plugging a wire into his head. Maybe he didn’t have the internal programming for it but he knew how to work the computer and, for a standard-issue piece of ship equipment, you’d think having the software internal to the ship’s android would be helpful.
What the hell are you talking about? Everybody knows that Ripley got back to Earth, introduced Newt to Jonsie and raised them both with the help of Bishop’s top half (and Capt. Hick’s bottom half, ifn you know what I mean-- nudge, nudge, wink, wink).
They seem to be considered second-class citizens - if even that - by actual human beings. No one seems too upset or offended by Ripley’s initial revulsion towards Bishop. Hudson, the loudmouth, is more than willing to let Bishop undertake a dangerous mission if it will keep Hudson out of danger, if only for a little while. The Marines lean on Bishop to do the mumblety-peg knife trick in a way that makes it pretty clear that he’s not really free to refuse.
Hey, every extra I/O standard you have to support adds cost, weight, design time, etc. Given that Bishop can operate the normal human interface devices and well-exceeds the reaction time of humans, there doesn’t seem to be a need to let him directly interface with the remote.
Plus, the dropship is a military craft, and Bishop is owned by the Company, right? So there’s a good chance that he wouldn’t speak the necessary security protocol to directly access.
