Why O'Bannon was right . . .

@arrgy We all agree, I think. Holm nails it. I would say every one of those actors was on the same level. Now, maybe we won't see Skerrit doing Hamlet anytime soon, but if you read the script and watch how they play with it, everyone had to be on top of the ball. They really are bouncing, pun intended, off each other. I would love to see that in Prometheus. I doubt I will. But who knows?

i thought Ash had planned to kill the crew when they went back into cryo sleep. or am i confusing Ash with the creepy corporate douche in the second movie (played by paul reiser) ?

@ brockness It is never made clear if Ash has those plans/orders or not. I think Ripley implies in Aliens that Burke (le douche) had some kind of plan that you describe. But I have to re-watch to be sure @craigamore One correction to my earlier reply. It is 250 years, in the original script, b/w LV-426 and Earth making it and even Longer wait! Also, I think it is subjective when talking about what is scarier . . . in this case being out in the back ass of space with humans just coming upon the "ultimate in space terror" (from a Starlog article on the original) by chance or being directed to it by the company. The former is my choice because it implies that humans are utterly powerless and unable to comprehend certain things. The latter adds an element of human control. But Holm is just so damn good as Ash, I would still keep it, just with the change I mentioned: the company picks up the signal shortly before Nostromo leaves Thedus. The company itself knows no more than it MAY be non-human and possibly an SOS. But it might be wrong. So it places ASH on board to ensure the crew investigates it fully and, if actually alien life, to ensure it's brought back as this would be, to quote O'Bannon, "the most important discovery in history" and would make WY bigger than big! Ash then makes a logical decision to place the alien's life above the crew. Remember, it is only in Aliens that the directive to never harm humans is established.

craigamore, all your points make sense, but: -even if the infected crew were frozen by Ash, after arrival on earth this would have stired up too much trouble. too risky for the company. - he could have killed the rest of the uninfected crew and freeze Cane, but risk again. I think, the main key of the logic motives of the company is [i]strictly commercial efficiency.[/i] Everything that could harm that should be avoided. Today´s company work that way. So the use of a commercial trucker with standard crew ( replaceable), his swap with the standard science officer, his extreme tactical, careful actions, story development always in sight.

Kane77.....this is from the novelization of 'Alien'...it details the entire reasoning behind the Company's actions.... Page 248 - 250 "'He's been protecting the alien from the beginning. I tried to tell you.' [Ripley] gestured at [Ash's] corpse....'He was using Kane's life as an excuse, but he was never interested in Kane. He let that thing grow inside him, knew what was happening all the time. And he set of the emergency airlock Klaxon to save it.' 'But why?' Lambert was struggling, still couldn't put it all together. ‘I’m only guessing, but the only reason I can come up with for putting a robot crew member on board with the rest of us and not letting us know about it at the time is that someone wanted a slave observer to report developments back to them.’ She glanced up at Lambert. “Who assigns personnel to ships, makes last-minute changes like trading science officers, and would be the only entity capable of secretly slipping a robot on board? For whatever purpose?’ Lambert no longer looked confused. ‘The Company.’ ‘Sure.’ Ripley smiled humorlessly. ‘The Company’s drone probes must have picked up the transmission from the derelict. The Nostromo happened to be the next Company vessel scheduled to pass through this spatial quadrant. They put Ash on board to monitor things for them and to make sure we followed something Mother calls Special Order 937.’ ‘If the follow-up on the transmission turns out to be worthless, Ash can report that back to them without us ever knowing what was going on. If worthwhile, then the Company learns what it needs to know before it goes to the trouble of sending out an expensively equipped exploration team. Simple matter of maximizing profit, minimizing loss. Their profit, our loss.’” Page 251 – 253 Ash speaking: “‘I was directed to reroute the Nostromo or make sure that its crew rerouted it from its assigned course so that it would pick up the signal, program Mother to bring you out of hypersleep, and program her memory to feed you the story about the emergency call. Company specialists already knew that the transmission was a warning and not a distress signal.’ Parker’s hands clenched into fists. ‘At the source of the signal,’ Ash continued, ‘we were to investigate a life form, almost certainly hostile according to what the Company experts distilled from the transmission, and bring it back for observation and Company evaluation of any potential commercial applications. Using discretion, of course.’ ‘Of course,’ agreed Ripley, mimicking the machine’s indifferent tone. ‘That explains a lot about why we were chosen, beyond the expense of sending a valuable exploration team in first.’ She looked coldly pleased at having traced the reasoning behind Ash’s words. ‘Importation to any inhabited world, let alone Earth, of a dangerous alien life form is strictly prohibited. By making it look like we simple tug jockeys had accidentally stumbled onto it, the Company had a way of seeing it arrive at Earth ‘unintentionally.’ While we maybe got ourselves thrown in jail, something would have to be done with the creature. Naturally, Company specialists would magnanimously be standing ready to take this dangerous arrival off the hands of the customs officers, with a few judicious bribes prepaid just to smooth the transition. ‘And if we were lucky, the Company would bail us out and take proper care of us as soon as the authorities determined we were honestly as stupid as we appeared. Which we’ve been.’ ‘Why?’ Lambert wanted to know. ‘Why didn’t you warn us? Why couldn’t we have been told what we were getting ourselves into?’ ‘Because you might not have gone along,’ Ash explained with cold logic. ‘Company policy required your unknowing cooperation. What Ripley said about your honest ignorance fooling customs was quite correct.’ ‘You and the damn Company,’ Parker growled. ‘What about our lives. man?’ ‘Not man.’ Ash made the correction without anger. ‘As to your lives, I’m afraid the Company considered them expendable. It was the alien life form they were principally concerned with. It was hoped you could contain it and survive to collect your shares, but that was, I must admit, a secondary consideration. It wasn’t personal on the Company’s part. Just the luck of the draw……… ‘……..It was much too late, according to what the translators determined, for a distress signal to do the senders any good. The signal itself was frighteningly specific, very detailed. ‘The derelict spacecraft we found had landed on the planet, apparently in the course of normal exploration. Like Kane, they encountered one or more of the alien spore pods. The transmission did not say whether the explorers had time to determine if the spores originated on that particular world or if they had migrated there from somewhere else. ‘Before they all were overcome, they managed to set up the warning, to keep the inhabitants of other ships that might consider setting down on that world from suffering the same fate. Wherever they came from, they were a noble people. Hopefully mankind will encounter them again, under more pleasant circumstances.’ Interesting stuff, isn't it?

@craigamore This part is gold-- ‘he Company’s drone probes must have picked up the transmission from the derelict. The Nostromo happened to be the next Company vessel scheduled to pass through this spatial quadrant. They put Ash on board to monitor things for them and to make sure we followed something Mother calls Special Order 937.’If the follow-up on the transmission turns out to be worthless, Ash can report that back to them without us ever knowing what was going on. If worthwhile, then the Company learns what it needs to know before it goes to the trouble of sending out an expensively equipped exploration team. Simple matter of maximizing profit, minimizing loss. Their profit, our loss.’” That is what should have been included in the movie." But this is still where it goes off the rails: we were to investigate a life form, almost certainly hostile according to what the Company experts distilled from the transmission, and bring it back for observation and Company evaluation of any potential commercial applications [u][b]It was hoped you could contain it and survive to collect your shares,[/b][/u] but that was, I must admit, a secondary consideration. It wasn’t personal on the Company’s part. Just the luck of the draw………The derelict spacecraft we found had landed on the planet, apparently in the course of normal exploration. Like Kane, they encountered one or more of the alien spore pods. The transmission did not say whether the explorers had time to determine if the spores originated on that particular world or if they had migrated there from somewhere else. ‘Before they all were overcome, they managed to set up the warning, to keep the inhabitants of other ships that might consider setting down on that world from suffering the same fate. Wherever they came from, they were a noble people. Hopefully mankind will encounter them again, under more pleasant circumstances.’ If the crew were able to contain or even kill it, then it would have made sense to make sure Ash just gets the thing on board and then let the events play out. But he is programmed to kill the humans and save the Alien when, clearly, Parker had its number in the airlock. I mean if a crew of space truckers can handle this thing, its commercial application would be questionable. Unless Ash decides himself to kill humans if necessary. That would totally work. That plus the bits from the novel you quoted makes everything fit quite nicely.

@ craigamore And it is possible Ash does decide on his own. Nice work.

Thanks man.......The key with all of this is the diffrence btween what a plot hole is and the absence of logical plot information......A plot hole cannot be explained logically by speculative discourse.....The absence of plot information that is left out of a film either intentionally or unintentionally is legitimate if you can logically specualte as to the absent details as we have done here.....The unanswered questions in 'Alien' [b]don't HAVE to answered[/b].....as they can be logically supposed and speculated.....And also, the absence of these details makes the story in 'Alien' more plausible, more realistic and more in the vein of true lived in experience...As we live our lives, we don't always know or learn the truth or details about the things we expeireince on a daily basis and that is especially true of the most traumatic experiences of our lives...to keep those details a mystery in 'Alien' allows it, along with all of the other detailed approaches, to retain a pragmatic and substantive realism that is imperative to the film's final quality and essential to its consideration as the masterpiece of sci-fi cinema so many of us believe it to be.

@ craigamore To further your point, I looked at the Alien shooting script and Ash states The company "wasn't sure" what the alien was exactly and that his directive didn't mention the crew at all, as being expendable or not: RIPLEY What is Special Order 937. ASH You know I can't tell you that. RIPLEY Then there's not point in talking to you. Pull the plug. ASH Special Order 937 in essence asked me to direct the ship to the planet, investigate a life form, possibly hostile and bring it back for observation. With discretion, of course. And just a second later RIPLEY They wanted to investigate the Alien. No matter what happened to us. ASH That's unfair. Actually, you weren't mentioned in the order. LAMBERT Those bastards. ASH See it from their point of view. They didn't know what the Alien is. RIPLEY How do we kill it. The company is more mysterious here and we just don't know how much of Ash is programming or how much is a sentient being making his own choices. That is the kind of mystery that leaves me as a viewer with all kinds of questions, all interesting. If anything, the movie explains the company a little too well!

Great find dallas!dallas!...that's awesome...thanks man

Well we all know the real reasons for tampering with a script kudos and money lol.