Corporate Behind the Scenes

You guys are all hitting on the core question that is central to ALL the films including Prometheus, which is: How did the company know of the existence of the xenomorph? That is the single most important question that Scott has to answer, and if he doesn't the entire franchise falls apart. It is obvious from the Special Order that the company KNEW the creature was on LV-426, and they knew what the creature could do. Scott must make that bridge or connection from Promethus to Alien. My theory from the beginning of Alien: The Company selects what basically amounts to 6 misfits to run the Nostromo, a commercial vessel that as Parker says this is not in his line of work. Look at your 6 crew members. A captain who is very weak and just wants to go home, he has his moments of authority but really is not strong. A first officer who is to eager to do everything, it is suggested in Aliens from his record that he was a drug user. He leaps without thinking. A navigator who is useless, I love Lambert, but she is useless. Then two misfit engineers. one of which over reacts and is very impulsive and the other who is a couple of IQ points shy of Jonsey. Then you have the only stable crew member who can think clearly..Ripley. Add to that a robot with his own agenda and the company has what it needs to pull this off. Think about it, individually they are a mess...put them together and its a disaster. I honestly do not believe there ever was a signal from the ship. I believe that from Prometheus the company will find out about the creature. Then the derlict is found on LV-426, the same looking derlict from the trailer. Mother fakes a radio signal to the crew, wakes them up and they go investigate. Interesting how after Ripley discovers that it could be a warning, we never hear of the radio signal again. While on the surface of LV-426, Ash does his calculations, all of that data is transmitted back to earth. The company sets up the false colony on Hadley's Hope for a breeding ground for the xenomorphs and you have Aliens. What no one ever brought up was, how far away was the colony from the derlict? How far away was the "outer ring" as the employee said. We all assumed that the ship was destroyed with the colony, but as Bishop said the blast radius of 30 miles may not have been enough to destroy the derlict. Anyway the company knew all along what was going on, Scott needs to let us know, how the company knew it.

well i think the signal was sent by the remaining survivour of prometheus that could be david or shaw before they are destroyed in a chest bursting sequence inside the jockey suit or possibly the blue guy we assume is the engineer/or affected crew member.

Ok....there's so much to address here, it's hard to know where to start so I think I'll come at it sideways and hope it sticks.... We're reading way too far into all of this...there's nothing wrong with exercising a little imagination, but we're allowing it to run away with us here.... Snorky asked a question that I think answers, in itself, the conspiratorial mess we're all so curious about....and to your original idea @Rick, I'm sorry, but I can't buy it because it's way too involved and it creates far too many holes to fill itsel;f....back to Snorky; here's what he or she posted: "That is the question that needs answering for me, who or what is not allowing WY to directly acquire xenomorph specimens in a controlled fashion, and more importantly why the prohibition?" Now I'll answer Snorky's question with Rick's own words: "There is no way you can go in front of the Interstellar Commerce Commission and your Insurance company in Aliens and say yeah we sent them there to get a specimen and we sent an Android in to protect it. Man the ramifications would be endless." This is all a bit simpler than we're making it out to be. 1 - The Interstellar Commerce Commission's rules and regulations would force the company to approach aquiring any thing like the xeno in a less than straight forward manner. Its Customs regulations would prohibit the trafficing of a hostile organism like that. Having the tug Nostromo investigate rather than an R&D vessel would allow them the chance to "bring back lifeform", as the order suggests, under the radar; smuggled by Ash. Sending an R&D vessel complicates things for the Company with the ICC. Besides, the Nostromo is on its return journey to Earth. Why send a ghost vessel to go all the way out and back with the Nostromo or have it wait for them there at Zeta II Reticuli? They could just land and investigate themselves anyway. And what about the Nostromo is cheap or expendable? That massive vessel, plus the 20,000,000 tons of payload that could be lost? 2 - Whatever happens in 'Prometheus', the Company knows something is out there. Whatever that something is, they're not exactly sure where it is or they would have sent another ship to investigate in the years between 'Prometheus' and 'Alien'. 10 months from Zeta II Reticuli to Earth is a short enough period to warrant something happening between films IF THEY KNEW the exact location....it follows that they don't know an exact location, but it's possible they know a general location or quadrant of space in which the events of 'Prometheus' take place. 3 - Why insert the corporate spy Ash at the last second?....very curious....In 'Aliens', Burke states that "we always have a synthetic on board". It's possible that the insertion of Ash is a covert, company wide roll out of this policy and without the knowledge of its crews; synthetics on every ship to protect company interests, whatever they may be. Also, having a general knowledge of where to look would justify the placement of Ash with the understanding that were any contact made with a '"signal" or evidence of an exact location, Ash would be in a position to act. This also suggests that the clause in the contract, forcing them to investigate "any signals of possible intelligent origin", exists with the Company's assumption that they will eventually be in a position to "hear or pick up" something, a signal...anything at all. 4 - If they did know exactly where to look, then the colonists of Hadley's Hope would have been sent to investigate a Hell of a lot sooner than 30 years in a terraforming project. And if they knew exactly where to look, it certainly doesn't make sense that it would have happened right after Ripley's discovered, right after she gives her depostion and is swept under the rug. It follows that Burke is aware of the corporate secret of "Special Order 937", and now that he knows exactly where to look, thanks to Ripley, he has the colonists look at that particular grid referrence, because he sees $ signs. And also, why would they set up a colony, that massive atmospheric processor and the whole rest of the place just to have it be a rat maze for the infestation of xenos? It's illogical and financially irresponsible. Besides, Burke freaks out when they suggest nuking the site, and not just because of the "new species", but because of the "substantial dollar value" of that piece of machinery; which is the first point he leads with in his objection. 5 - Bishop as spy doesn't track either. If it did, he never would have come back for Ripley and the rest of them once he had the drop ship. He has in his memory, plenty of information about what happened and what he examined in the lab; and knowing that the place is going to blow, there's no reason to go back for anyone, especially the one person in the universe Hell bent on wiping out the xenos that has the balls to stand up to the Company. As to the time alotment he gives himself to bring down the drop ship...Let's see you crawl 140 yards in a pipe that size in under an hour....the 5 minutes to link up?....It's called movie magic or in this case, elapsed time? the 2.5 hours as whole only happens in less than half an hour screen time. It's a pointless nit-pick to suggest he's shaving time on his estimation for sinister reasons. And outside of all of that...with everything he does and everything he says, betrayal is totally out of character for Bishop in this film and would be the greatest covert portrayal in cinema, if it were true. 6 - The marines are not Company agents themselves. They're there as a response by ICC to the loss of communication with the colony having occured chronologically with Ripley's rescue and warning about the xeno. Let's not forget, her deposition is not solely in front of Company suits...you have Company suits, of course, but also ICC agents, insurance reps. and reps. from the Colonial Administration. In light of the timing, they sent marines in to check it out. The Company would be beyond stupid to send a second vessel behind the Sulaco, a government vessel on joint goverment/company/ICC mission. ------------ At the end of the day, if the Company knew exactly where to look, all of the details you refer to, then 'Alien' and, to a much greater extent, 'Aliens' would be so full of plot holes that I think it would be depressingly diffuclt to salvage either in any respectable, reasonable way. All suspension of disbelief in terms plot viability is gone...they would both come off as ridiculous stories.

Also....with such an involved comapny conspiracy...as you've laid out here...why would they ever invite Ripley to come along? That makes absolutely no sense....AT ALL.

@ craigamore - as usual everything that you say makes sense bar one thing, didn't Burke say that Weyland-Yutani had 'influence' throughout the 'board' such as seats on the ICC, funding the USCMC, co-funding the ESCA and their 'shake and bake' colonies across 300 surveyed worlds with their own manufactured atmosphere processors. Surely they have done this, not only for the power and influence it allows, but also to allow unseen passage of any required specimens they manage to obtain. I find it difficult to believe that WY would be part of the mechanism that prevents them from attaining their goal. P.S. I is a he my friend

True Snorky....but even with that influence, I get the sense that there's still enough governmental control in place to prevent trafficing of something like that easy....either way, some official customs barrier has to be in place for these plot points to make sense....you know?

And thanks Snorky...glad to know I make sense to someone other than myself....

Craig, I think we'll have to agree to disagree on this one. You did bring up some good points though. I think the company would micromanage this from the top down and would be that deeply involved. I've had a little bit of time to mull over some information. 1. Communication: Takes 2 wks. (1wk to and 1 wk back LV-426 to Earth Round trip 57 years post Alien) 2. Ash replaced 4 days prior to Nostromo leaving Thedus 3. Since the xeno smoked the crew in 24hrs. (per Ripley in Aliens) 4. SO 937 had to have been a. already in place based on significant knowledge from prometheus and about the xeno b. tailing ship to give Ash orders (why else collate with MUTHUR?) Number 4 pretty much clinches this for me. The company knew from beginning to end. If the Special Order was already there then the company had to have known about the alien and what was aboard the derelict and thus needs to be hands on. If the SO came in during Ash's study and transmission of information to Network (or Corp) then there would be no way for Ash to receive information since everything on the Nostromo took place inside 24hours if there wasn't a ship tailing to transmit orders back to him from someone that was in charge. Its one or the other, but the bottom line is they knew and were hands on. On the conspiracy and corp knowledge would tie all the alien franchise together which is what I thought Ridley was planning on doing with the prequel. The corporation is the only common element that will be present through all of the movies. Ripley isn't born yet, xeno's aren't present in prometheus (not as we know them anyways), Droids ARE present that could be a tie into Bladerunner since I recall someone saying Ridley wants to tie those universes together. Could be xeno DNA that helps reprogram the age barrier with the replicants. (That's just a possible theory, not real conjecture). Anyways just some half inebriated thinking outloud. Regards, Rick

special order 937 is a prime number

GREAT discussion...whoever linked this, tyvm...really good ideas and fun reading in here.

EXCELLENT analysis of the gaps and such!! I've been loosely pondering some of those points for a long time, but never with the incisiveness you did!

Also, I doubt W-Y is the only Corporation/Interest that wants to get ahold of a Xeno, if the Bioweapons market is that hot, there'll be more than a few players.

The prequels take place. The company knows about the aliens but can't find any.

They detect a signal on LV-426. They don't tell the Nostromo crew, which will be flying by it, and change the science officer while it's docked.

When it flies by, Mother re-routes the ship to it and wakes the crew.

The catch with this is that the company already has the coordinates to the signal, which means it didn't need to wait to rescue Ripley to get the location of the derelict ship. And yet it didn't bother to investigate it across the decades the Nostromo was lost.

 

Hi, personally I find this analysis really very interesting!

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