And Sgt Apone died recently, so we’ll never get the answer from the horse’s mouth.
Well, Sgt Apone dies in the future before now but current timeline Apone, Al Matthews, died about two weeks ago.
The sentence before the sentence previous to this sentence makes sense if you think about it.
I was there. It was the original version.
I thought it seemed short without the missing scenes. But it was still great.
As long as you don’t remember what happened in the next movie.
Ripley, Hicks, Newt (and 1/3 of Bishop) lived happily ever after.
I prefer to forget the other movies.
Did any movie, or comic, or anything ever give an indication of what year these movies take place in?
Not that I remember, although this wiki has birth and death dates for Ripley: Ellen Ripley | Alien Anthology Wiki | Fandom
That should count, but those don’t seem far enough in the future for all the things going on in the Alien universe. FTL and off world colonies by 2100?
Yes, Blade Runner had off world colonies in 2019. And flying cars. It was set too close as well, IMO.
That cite gives her death year as 2179 (and incidentally reports she was a “Warrant Officer, demoted to Lieutenant 1st Class” which sounds backward to me), but isn’t there a reference in Alien 3 (which depicted Ripley’s death and therefore is set in 2179) to there being no cases of cholera for “two hundred years” or something? It’s possible the character is mistaken; cholera is still around in 2018 and did not disappear circa 1979.
Another question.
How fast is their drive system?
Obviously FTL, but it must be pretty slow, if they need suspended animation. On the one hand, I’d say 1-6 months for an average trip (to make it worthwhile to sleep through it). But, OTOH, when Ripley asked how long until they are considered overdue, Hicks said 17 days, and people acted like “17 days - maybe doable”, not “17 days, and then a month of travel time”. If you can travel to LV426 in one day, more or less, why sleep through it?
Was the Narcissus traveling FTL? It had to be, otherwise it would be within spitting distance of where the Nostromo blew up, not “drifted through the core systems”.
Somehow, I get the impression Hollywood writers don’t know how BIG space really is.
Agreed. I guess I always assumed the lifeboat *Narcissus *was traveling sublight, though.
I think we have to assume FTL travel and communications for any of this to make sense, but if I was going to fanwank, possibly the trip only does take a few days for a fast military vessel (compared to ten months for an antiquated civilian tug), but the humans have to be put in hibernation because FTL travel has a variety of negative medical and/or psychological effects.
Also, I think Ripley’s phrasing was along the lines of “How long before we’re overdue and can expect a rescue?” Hicks knew a second squad was scheduled to launch 17 days after the first, unless the first squad sent a cancel order.
I think this is vaguely supported by some dialogue in the extended scenes. Two colony administrators are talking and one says it takes “two weeks to get an answer out here.” So the first squad flies FTL for two days, arrives, and a signal is automatically sent to verify that the crew has woken up safely. This signal takes 14 days to get back to Earth. The squad has one day to assess and respond to the situation and if they don’t send an “all clear”, a second squad is ready to go and will also take two days to arrive.
It may seem counter-intuitive that one could go from Point A to Point B faster than one could send a message from Point A to Point B, but I’m open to alternate interpretations.
That makes sense. (For various meaning of “sense” in the Alien/Predator universe. 
) Except for the message. If “subspace radio” takes two weeks, and a ship takes one or two days, you’d use an Uber-Messenger service. Ships doing nothing but flying messages back and forth.
That might depend on the relative cost of both, and the urgency of the message. “Subspace radio”, or whatever it is, is probably cheaper than even a minimal ship, and so if you can afford to wait two weeks, then you wait two weeks.
“Space is big. REALLY big. I mean, you may think it’s a long way down to the chemists, but that’s peanuts compared to space.” - Douglas Adams
John Scalzi in his Old Man’s War series (excellent military sf, for those who enjoyed Aliens) has no “subspace radio.” His starships use a FTL “skip drive,” a jump drive similar to that of the Star Wars movies. Small, unmanned “Skip drones” are used to carry messages to and fro. Every starship seems to carry several of them.
It belatedly occurred to me that if my above fanwank theory is correct, the bugs must have been worked out by the time of Alien Resurrection, since it’s implied the ship travels rapidly back to Earth and all the characters who have survived to that point are conscious the entire time. Hibernation apparently still exist for humans who are passengers (or cargo), but it seems to no longer be a requirement for a ship’s crew.
The Auriga, the USM warship aboard which the xenomorph experiments were being carried out, was orbiting Pluto in Alien Resurrection. So close to Earth (relatively speaking), there was no need for hypersleep.
Then again, Gorman says something about not having time to brief them before leaving gateway station, so maybe they have some kind of ‘stargate’ solution. Military emergencies, routine messages, and space truckers might have hugely different timing.
Lt. Gorman and the Sulaco were in a hurry to get to Hadley’s Hope to see why the colony had gone silent. Once the Marines were aboard, the briefing could wait until near arrival.
I always thought that the “5 by 5” reference was the writer misusing a bit of jargon to make the scene sound more realistic
“… the ship that made the Kessel run in less than 5 parsecs.” Retconning and hand-wavey explanations aside, the writer did not know what a parsec was, but it sounds spacey.
“I read you 5 by 5” is something you’d hear in old military communication. So 5 by 5 must mean good.
Here’s one guy’s breakdown:
Alien Covenant - ALIEN TIMELINE EXPLAINED (All Alien Movies!)
