Yes, and it was a terrible story, poorly executed by Joss Whedon’s brother. Rhythymdvl’s backstory for Book is better.
Nah. Quite the opposite. Hicks slept through that particular drop because he was bored, having done it so many times before. That’s how I always read that little bit of humor, anyway.
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Bishop: Hero or Villain?
I watched *Aliens *again last night. Here’s Bishop’s time schedule:
- Crawl down an 180 meter conduit - “Call it 40 minutes”
- Patch in and align the dish - “An hour”
- Prep Time: “30 minutes”
- Flight Time: “About 50 minutes”
So he gives himself three hours, plus some wiggle room. I agree with Miller that Bishop wouldn’t grossly over-estimate either the prep time or flight time - the crew would catch an obvious lie there (I don’t think the initial drop scene was supposed to represent real time, either). But I don’t think they’d call him on it if he added 10 or 15 minutes to his guess.
The big question to me is, how can it take an hour to patch in and align the dish? The impression the movie gave was that it didn’t involve much more than connecting some glowing cables and entering some data on the keyboard.
So let’s say Bishop doubled the alignment time and added ten minutes to every activity. That would give him two hours to get the ship down, leaving a hour to get to the reactor, descend to the nest, grab an egg, hide it, and get back. I don’t think he could do it.
The Lion King is a Pan-Africanist fairy-tale that sounds like something written by Marcus Garvey.
The land (Africa) is ruled wisely by benevolent lion (black man) Mustafa. But he’s betrayed by his scheming brother, who cuts a deal with the hyenas (the white man). The hyenas are allowed to over-exploit the land, they’re enforcers for Scar illegitimate rule, and ordinary lions are overworked and starving (colonization). Meanwhile, the true heir Simba is exiled to a far-away land where him comrades encourage him to forget about the past and embrace his current life (American black man). But instead, he recognizes his duty, returns to Africa, kicks the white man/hyena out of the land, and re-takes his rightful place as ruler.
I just thought of something about this today that could explain this anomaly (or at least it’s a reasonable fanwank): You can’t just park a spaceship; it’s got to be in orbit, which means it’s constantly moving. So, when the Marines made their first (four-minute) drop, it makes sense they would launch the dropship when Sulaco was directly over the colony (or from whatever orbital position would actually result in a mimimum flight-time for the dropship–IANARocketScientist). But there’s no guarantee that Sulaco would be in perfect position when the shit hit the fan and they needed the second dropship; a ship in Low Earth Orbit (or Low LV-426 Orbit) will probably make a complete orbit every 90 minutes or so. If Sulaco was halfway around the planet when they remotely launched the second dropship, that could easily account for the order-of-magnitude difference in flight times. (They could park Sulaco in a geostationary orbit so it would always be more-or-less directly over the colony site, but then it would be about a hundred times farther away, so likely no gain and probably a net loss in ability to get timely support from orbit.)
She doesn’t really need to know anything about them to spot the hole in Bishop’s plan. Heck, you’ve never piloted a dropship, either, and you spotted the giant discrepancy between flight times. As a pilot, even one with an out-of-date license, Ripley’s more inclined to pay attention to things like flight times and the performance characteristics of ships she’s on. There’s no way she’d miss something like that, unless such discrepancies in orbital flights are commonplace.
He’s sleeping through the drops now, because he’s been on so many they’re no longer particularly interesting to him.
Eh, I can see “flight time” being used as short hand for, “prep, fueling, power up, system checks, launch procedure, and actual flight time.” These are synthetics, not Star Trek androids. They aren’t flummoxed by difficult verbal concepts like “contractions” or “metaphors.”
But the Sulaco isn’t a support vessel: it’s just a transport. It doesn’t do anything to support the troops. Apparently, they don’t even bother to crew it when the Marines aren’t on board. It’s questionable if its even armed. Certainly, they never mention using it for anything other than a way to and from the planet during the movie, both before the mission goes to shit, and after.
I don’t know, but the pilot at the beginning sure seems pretty satisfied with herself for getting the dropship “in the pipe, 5 by 5.” The scene certainly seems crafted to give the impression that she’s doing something fairly difficult.
Good point, there.
Models and plans for the ship show a bunch of projections (guns?) out the bow, and at least one turret.
:dubious: What? If Al didn’t say anything to Sam Rockwell (he was in porn before, hence the name, that’s my theory) this iteration of him would have killed himself. Al helped him out by getting at least one of the Sam’s out of there and back to Earth.
I always assumed that the nuclear device that would have ensured the eradication of the planets little Alien problem, well, that would have been launched from the Sulaco, so the ship would have had some part to play in the original plan to make absolutely certain that the aliens were killed.
I am not sure why I think the Sulaco would have fired the nuclear device. Perhaps because it was in orbit.
Yeah, that’s why I said its questionable - they never say what’s going to nuke the site from orbit. It might be the dropship that has the nuke, or at least, can be re-equipped with one.
It also occurs to me that there might not be a literal nuke at all: Ripley might just be suggesting they blow the fuck out of the place with conventional explosives, and is using “nuke” euphemistically. As a civilian, I’m not sure if Ripley would even know if there was a nuke on board the ship in the first place.
:dubious:
…
Game over, man, game over. You wins the thread.
There are four big, big holes in this theory, no matter how attractive it is otherwise.
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Simon (with frozen River in tow) and Shepherd Book first boarded Serenity on the very same day at the Persephone space-port. That leaves precisely zero time for Mal & Co. to fight to protect Simon and River against a hypothesized Operative Book.
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During the Operative’s one-man war against Mal, he attacked and destroyed a settlement on the planet Haven. Mal beats feet over there and finds … a dying Shepherd Book.
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At the end of Serenity, Mal told the Operative that if he ever saw him again, he’d kill him straight away.
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During Serenity, Mal consults Shepherd Book about the Operative chasing him. Book provides perspective, specifically that the Operative is “trouble you’ve not yet known”.
I dont think he is saying that Serenity is exactly Books story, not in every detail. Its more that if the characters of Firefly were ever sitting around a campfire listening to Book tell his “story”, perhaps it wouldnt be all that different to that of Serenity.
Yeah, he’s just saying that Book is a similarly-disillusioned Operative.
I think that Ripley was just taking for granted that the Sulaco would have nukes on board, because those were a standard armament for military vessels at the time.
Or, it’s entirely possible that it was said offscreen. I could see her asking for some guarantees from Burke that there is a super-contingency plan. “Don’t worry, Ripley. There will be nukes on the ship if things go really badly. We’re safe? See?”
-Joe
As much as I don’t want to believe it, a part of me does feel this is the case. One of the greatest movies ever.
I know. Gary Oldman is an actor who can disappear into a roll. (also is my favorite actor).
Clothes out of draperies: Scarlett O’Hara, Gone with the Wind.
The Sulaco was definitely armed. From Wiki:
*Syd Mead, a principal conceptual designer on Aliens, first designed the Sulaco as a massive sphere, a “heavily armed cargo ship, outfitted to transport material”. *
It even looks like a pulse rifle!