Question: What exactly is the space jockey and why haven't we seen it in the other films except its fossilized self sitting in the what I call the laser gun?
Answer: It's another race of space alien that is also subject to infection by the Aliens. This particular one was infected and moved as far as it could from its race's known space and broadcast a warning before it died. The presence of eggs in the hold may indicate that it was a research ship. The race was never used in other Alien movies because it adds a new dynamic to the plotlines: two alien species, locked in mortal combat and neither particularly friendly with humans. In the Alien pseudo-prequel Prometheus we learn these beings are known as the Engineers and have interesting ties with both the aliens and humans as well.
Answer: Other theories, mostly developed in the comics derived from the original franchise, assume the xenomorphs were biological weapons conceived by the Space Jockeys for some interstellar war of theirs. Hence, the crescent-shape derelict was just a bomber, full of eggs and operated by a single pilot to minimize risks of accident with this mostly dangerous cargo. - what just happened though.
AKA, the plot of Prometheus.
Question: How was there a thunderstorm and rain inside the ship while traveling through space?
Answer: That wasn't a "thunderstorm and rain" inside the Nostromo. It was condensation dripping down from the ship's ventilation/cooling system. When searching for the cat, Brett (played by Harry Dean Stanton) removes his cap and stands beneath a cooling shaft, allowing the condensation to splatter like rain on his head and face.
Answer: What scene are you referring to?
Question: How did the company know about the Alien in the first place? Presumably no-one had been there before and the signal they picked up didn't indicate the presence of an Alien lifeform.
Answer: It was never fully explained. "The Company" had a standing directive that any signal detected which indicated alien life was to be investigated and specimens collected and returned. Failure to comply would result in the crew forfeiting their profit shares. The company apparently had previously detected the crashed alien astronaut's warning signal from LV-46 and wanted to search for alien lifeforms without specifically knowing what would be found.
Actually in the movie it is indicated that the company definitely knew about the xenomorphs, given Ash's directive. It is not explained how in this movie but it is in the movies "Prometheus" and "Alien: covenant." The standing directive about investigating signals was just an excuse to use an expendable crew to procure a specimen.
Question: Why did the shuttle craft only have room for two crew members when there are seven of them? The shuttle is mainly an escape vessel if the ship was in danger and their lives were at risk hence the stasis capsules, so there should have been accommodation for seven.
Answer: Considering "The Company" that owned the mining space ship was notoriously cheap (and corrupt) about providing their crew with necessities, it is hardly surprising they had inadequate safety equipment, like enough stasis capsules. Also, the company's real mission (known only to Ash) was to collect the alien creature at any cost while the crew was deemed "expendable," so no need to provide them with a viable escape method.
Question: Is there ANY reason the smaller "lifeboat" ship (think they call it the Narcissus) Ripley evacuates into at the end, couldn't have been used as a lander to travel down to the planet in the beginning too (simply leave the Nostromo in orbit, with or without skeleton crew)? It seems, actually is, much less likely to be damaged in the initial landing, and, for that matter, much easier to take off afterwards (being much less massive). It also would have provided one more layer of quarantine containment for the people who stayed in the lander (who may or not be all the other four, in fact one would probably be just fine (Ripley manages the Narcissus just fine at the end), and it would have been a lot faster for the singleton to simply put on their own spacesuit if/when trouble is encountered, and in so doing, preserve their own personal uncontaminated space). The three explorers and the lander guard could simply see to trouble in Narcissus' sickbay-laboratory, without tainting the three back in the mothership, give Kane first response while taking him up to the main lab on the ship, while giving the orbit people warning to put on their suits/have some form of mobile quarantine ready for him.
Answer: It's not apparent whether the shuttle is capable of landing at all, much less launch itself back into space afterward even if it could.
Chosen answer: The small "lifeboat" ship was not equipped for the entire crew's long-term survival. As they are in deep space, there is no where close for them to land. They would just be adrift in space, as it takes years to travel from one destination to another. To survive long voyages, the crew needs to be in hibernation. The small ship would be a last resort in the hope that any survivors would be found before they died of starvation and/or lack of oxygen.
Question: Why were there so few crew members on this very very large ship? If even one of them had a heart attack, they'd have to maintain the ship with only 80%.
Answer: There are several possible reasons. For one, the ship is fully automated, and the computers perform many technical functions, basically running everything. The crew is barely essential, and is kept in stasis during much of the voyage, awakened only at specific periods to perform specialized tasks or attend to unexpected problems. And though the ship overall is large, its function is simple: hauling a huge payload. Also, the ship is owned by a ruthless corporation wanting to maximize their profits. One way to achieve that is by using minimal personnel. They no doubt assume that if one crew member was lost or incapacitated, the others would manage somehow. On this particular voyage, however, the company intended to find and utilize the alien, and having a small crew, which they consider "disposable" makes it easier to achieve that. It was probably intended that Ash, the robot, would murder the crew or see to it that the alien "impregnated" them with embryos before returning them to stasis, only to die later.
Answer: The question may not be referring to this, but just in case: the ore refinery towers are often mistaken to be part of the ship, but this is actually a load that the ship is towing. What we see detach and land on the planet is in fact the entirety of the ship.
Question: The Alien brings Brett and Dallas back to its nest alive in order to create more Aliens. It seems that Brett had died in the process but Dallas is still alive. How then would the alien impregnate them without facehuggers complete with an egg?
Answer: It's possible that Brett was the only one being turned into an egg and that Dallas was merely stuck to the wall to be the eventual facehugger host.
Dallas is more than just merely stuck to the wall. He is in physical agony, his eyes appear to no longer work properly, and he has barely enough strength to muster more than a couple words. And the words he can get out are him pleading with Ripley to end his suffering.
Rather than burning Dallas to death it would have been more humane to let him blow up with the ship.
Perhaps so, but Dallas was pleading for his suffering to end right then and there. It appeared that the burning was no more agonizing than what he was going through, which means he must have been in immense pain already.
Answer: Actually the alien was using Brett and Dallas to make new facehugger eggs. The scene, only shown in the Director's Cut, shows Brett partway through being turned into an egg and Dallas in what appears to be the very beginning of this process. This scene was cut from the theatrical release and as such, James Cameron did not include this feature of the alien lifecycle in the sequel. Cameron showed the eggs are laid by a queen and the franchise has continued with this approach since Aliens and has never revisited the idea that alien eggs are created from the bodies of humans. Since this scene only appears in the Director's Cut, its status as canon remains in question. However, some fans reconcile this by theorizing that in the absence of a queen a single alien can use human bodies to create more facehuggers.
Question: Why wouldn't the self-destruct system have a stop button? Presumably if you wanted to abort the procedure it should be instant and not have to go through all the rigmarole of trying to shut it down.
Answer: The Nostromo is powered by a nuclear reactor. The self-destruct system simply shuts down the cooling towers, causing the reactor to gradually rise in temperature until it reaches critical mass. The cooling system can be turned back on within the first 5 minutes but after that, the reactor is so hot the cooling liquid will evaporate once it comes into contact with the system. Ripley tries turning the cooling towers back on, and she does so right before the 5 minute failsafe timer is up, but the system was still too hot to cool the reactor. This is why Ripley curses at MUTHUR, she made it back in time but a meltdown is still inevitable. Apparently the 5 minute failsafe timer is not exact to the second and Ripley actually had slightly less than 5 minutes.
I believe she just barely misses the cutoff, rather than making it but still having it be ineffective. She curses Mother out of frustration, and perhaps fury at the computer's cold indifference to her fate.
Answer: It's pretty typical in movies that in a self-destruct situation, once it's started, it is impossible to stop, for whatever reason. It's about plotting and maintaining the tension to keep the audience on the edge of their seats to see if the hero can survive. Considering how corrupt the company was, they'd expend little effort into proper safety procedures.
Question: I recently saw this film at a local cinema and I noticed that there was a scene missing from when I first saw this film as a kid. In the aforementioned scene, Dallas is on the main computer (Mother) trying to get information about how to destroy the Alien. The computer just keeps responding with "Can not compute." He finally asks "What are my chances" and still gets the same response. I was wondering if anyone remembered this scene and knows why its been removed?
Answer: If I'm not mistaken, the scene you're talking about (where Dallas consults Mother before going into the vent) was removed from the Director's Cut version of the film (which did get its own theatrical release in 2003). Perhaps that's the version they showed. I couldn't find the scene in its entirety, but is this what you're referring to? https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=OaoQES6C9ok.
Yes that was the scene. It was longer of course.
Question: One thing that bugged me from a recent rewatch. When Brett comes across the Alien skin that it has recently shed, it in no way resembles what the creature looks like now, and is completely disproportionate with its size a few minutes later when it kills him. Now I know that its methods of 'growing' we are lead to believe are different to those of Earth creatures in that they are more accelerated etc...but if it is following a similar pattern to Earth animals that shed their skin shouldn't it have shed at least ANOTHER skin or maybe two to achieve its near-adult human size? And also why in 'Aliens' were no shed skins in abundance dotted around the place when it is part of the Aliens' natural life-cycle? They don't strike me as the kind of creature that would worry about leaving their shed skin around to cover up their presence?
Answer: The skin Brett finds is presumably the first skin the creature shed based on its size. There might be other skins that were shed all over the place but we never see every inch of the ship. The alien in this film primarily uses the air ducts to move around, but the film only shows the air ducts in one brief scene. There could be other skins somewhere in those ducts we never see. The same is true in Aliens. We never see every inch of the floors of the colony, they could be anywhere. The floor of the hive does have a considerable amount of debris, some of this debris could conceivably be shed skins.
That's a much more logical answer, thank you.
Answer: They shed their skin once, probably some kind of protective fleece around its immature body it disposes of, not actual skin like with a snake. These are smart creatures, yes they would hide their shed skin.
If that's the case why did the first Alien shed skin get found? If as you say they are 'smart' enough to hide their shed skin why was this one left laying around?
Because in later movies the aliens have a lot more space to shed their skins where it can't be found. Maybe they don't actually hide it, but it's logical they hide themselves as their skin sheds because they are vulnerable. The alien in the first movie simply couldn't find anywhere to hide.
Question: After Ripley has set the ship to self destruct, she grabs Jones and hurries towards the shuttle. She then runs into the alien in the corridor, drops Jones and runs away and then tries to stop the self destruct system. Now she'd set the ship to self destruct, needed to get the hell out of there, the alien was in her way, why didn't she just blast it with her flamethrower? Ripley is not like Lambert, she's feisty and brave and I think Ripley would have done just that.
Answer: Ripley is, for the majority of this film, not "feisty and brave." She is written to be an intelligent, capable, but otherwise average person. She is for all intents and purposes an "everyman" character. She does not become the tenacious, bold heroine that defines her in popular culture until her last battle with the alien, and these character traits are solidified in the sequel. For most of the film, she is very much terrified of the alien and the prospect of fighting it head on is the furthest from her mind. At that moment in the corridor, her fight or flight response kicks in and she flees. All of this serves to make her fight against the alien in the shuttle more poignant, as she is forced to literally face her fears and defend herself. Note that while she is trying to get the alien to come out of its hiding place on the shuttle, she is soaked in nervous sweat and is singing a song to calm herself down. Would the Ripley of later films have blasted the alien to kingdom come? Of course. The Ripley in this film has yet to become the no-nonsense, composed heroine we remember at that point.
Question: Why did the last three remaining crew members split up? Surely it would have made better sense to stay together as up until that time the alien had only attacked people when they were alone.
Answer: They felt like they didn't have enough time. Parker and Lambert stayed together to get coolant while Ripley was to prepare the shuttle and set the auto-destruct. They wanted to escape as soon as possible. Staying together would have, in their minds, lengthened the time they were on the ship with the alien.
Answer: Fair point but I don't think that the Alien would have attacked three people because when it moved in to kill Lambert it didn't know that Parker was behind it.
You're basing that on what you know about the alien from watching the films. The characters at this point have no real idea how the alien would behave. For all they know, it could start reproducing asexually and there could be six more of them on the ship.
Don't understand what you mean, sorry.
You are saying that you believe the alien wouldn't attack three people together. That's because you've probably seen the films and have a pretty good understanding of the creature's biology and behavior. The characters in the film have no idea how it behaves or how it will behave the longer it stays alive. The biology of the alien is so different from anything they've seen and they want to get away from it as soon as they possibly can.
Question: Just after Ripley finds out from mother "crew expendable", she has a run-in with Ash, but he doesn't hurt her - she hurts him - so why does she have a bloody nose?
Answer: The reason for the nosebleed was a deleted scene from the film. Ripley, in her attempt to escape from Ash, opened a hatch into a corridor which had been previously damaged by the alien (also a deleted scene) and wasn't supposed to be used. She suffered depressurization and retreated back and closed the hatch before looking for another escape route. That is what caused the nosebleed.
Chosen answer: Some people are prone to bloody noses without actually being physically hurt. Extreme emotional stress or physical exertion can trigger it by breaking small blood vessels in the nasal passages. She could also have bumped her head at some point off screen and had a delayed reaction.
Question: First, thank you to the individual that answered my question: "Why did they wear helmets in the first alien and not Aliens?" However, I am still puzzled though with my question: "How did the facehugger get through Kane's helmet?" The answer given was: "It secreted an acid that "burned" through the helmet." If this is true, wouldn't the acid still on the facehugger have burned Kane's face when it attached itself?
Answer: In the Alien novel it pushed its way into Kane's helmet using just brute force and not with acid.
The question was about the movie, not the novelization. And yes, in the movie the facehugger secretes acid: you can hear a sizzling sound as the creature latches onto Kane's helmet.
Sorry I was wrong about the Alien novel, it did indeed use acid to burn its way into Kane's helmet.
Question: Why would the company need a biological weapon and how would they use the alien as such?
Answer: The company is huge and diverse. Presumably it has a weapons division. An alien creature might give their researchers something to investigate that was unknown to rival businesses.
Answer: The company is in the business of colonizing planets.Now if a rival company were doing the same thing the company could plant an alien on the planet to wreak havoc and make it inhospitable, therefore making their own planets more desirable and ultimately more profitable.A ruthless tactic but the company is ruthless.
I like this answer the best.
Thanks Lionhead.
Answer: The nefarious "militarization" of newly-discovered properties (both earthly and otherworldly) is a common and predictable sci-fi and space-fantasy subplot that is so overused that it has become cliché. Usually, the specific military application is never actually revealed. It's really recycled social commentary, implying that humanity is so materialistic and ruthless that WE are the real "monsters," with no regard for Life (human or otherwise) in the natural world. This creates a dual threat within the movie, with the hero and/or heroine providing the only moral compass between a sensational alien confrontation and an even more terrifying human menace.
Question: In the last scene when Ripley is escaping in the shuttle, why is the Alien wedged awkwardly in the wall? And why is it so mellow about getting out and killing Ripley?
Answer: The xenomorphs are quite intelligent, despite their savage nature. In this scene, for example, the alien understands that the Nostromo is about to self-destruct, and it correctly anticipates Ripley using a shuttle to escape the blast. The alien carefully hides in the shuttle and goes into a dormant state (so as not to alert Ripley to its presence until they are well underway). When Ripley realises the alien is aboard, she dons her pressure suit and sprays the alien with fire-extinguishing gas to prompt a response. After a startled jump, the alien languidly reveals itself because it is emerging from its dormant state, but also because it knows there is no escape for Ripley in the tiny spacecraft. The implication is that it is in no hurry to kill her, which heightens the tension and horror of the scene.
Question: Near the start of the film Dallas goes to mother and on the computer he scrolls down to special order 937 and then asks "what's the story, mother?" When he tapped on order 937, why didn't he see the same message that Ripley saw later in the film?
Answer: Dallas doesn't scroll to Special Order 937, he scrolls down to the "Interface" option which is coded as "Interface 2037." Interface 2037 is the program that allows the ship's captain to ask the computer questions in plain language. Ripley sees the message about Special Order 937 because she keeps pressing Mother for additional information that she is not authorized to see. Dallas probably did see the same message about "Science officer's eyes only" but thought nothing of it at the time. Dallas' dialogue to Ripley about Ash having final word on the alien seems to suggest that he did indeed see Special Order 937 and chose to follow his instructions.
Yes have rewatched it, you're quite right.
Question: A bit puzzled as to why Ash tried to kill Ripley by stuffing a rolled up magazine in her mouth when he could have strangled her in seconds.
Answer: This is just one possibility among many, but Ridley Scott suggested Ash may have been developing latent sexuality that he was not equipped to handle through his programming, and perhaps not physically either; his use of a rolled-up magazine may have come about because he was not constructed with a penis (I had to stop myself from making a pun about "hardware").
I always wondered about this. It always struck me as a little Freudian. Also, notice the picture of the topless lady on the wall - an interesting detail when combined with the phallic paper.
Answer: It actually appears to orient both ways, presumably Lambert is switching back and forth between orientations. When Dallas turns; it shows on the readout as a 90 degree turn. When Dallas goes down the ladder the first time the readout shows the dot travelling downwards on the screen. It can't do both unless Lambert is switching them. And it makes sense that she would, she knows where he is because he is calling out his location as he goes. Lambert likely knows the path Dallas intends to take and switches orientations when he does. This confusing set-up is purposefully meant to disorient the audience, so they, like Dallas, have no idea from which direction the alien is coming. Lambert seems to have also become disoriented (this seems an impossible task with no line of sight) and can't give Dallas a direction to escape. She has the screen oriented so "forward" is to the right, Dallas goes down towards the alien, so she says "No! Not that way! The other way! God!"
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