Why O'Bannon was right . . .

The mystery left by the unanswered questions in 'Alien' does not hurt the film. A true plot hole does not have plausible logical possibilities to answer a viewers concern. The unanswered questions in 'Alien' have numerous logical possibilities and the fact that these questions are not answered makes the tension of the film all the more frustrating in a positive way...it's the point of the thing. - The signal is most certainly real. If it were not, they wouldn't be able to home in on it and they wouldn't be able to track in on the ground...the entire reason Lambert is part of the exploratory group, she uses tracking tech in the novel to hunt in down and give them direction in the planet's hostile environment.....In the novel, they even find the source....it's pointless thing to debate.... - The reason for sending the Nostromo has always been an attempt to hide the aquisition of dangerous alien life from government officials and stringent customs policies. That is entirely logical.....why send out an R&D vessel, that's departure will logged, and will most definately be examined thoruoghyl upon its return?.........By waiting for the opportunity to have the next commercial vessel passing through that quadrant investigate, you keep a low profile, you don't raise any eyebrows by the clear and sudden departure of an expensive R&D mission, and any rrisk of failure can be chalked up to a small commercial crew following policy or you can just humiliate and personally eviscerate any possible survivors for their crazy story (which is what happens to Ripley in 'Aliens') and the whole thing gets smoothly, neatly swept under the rug....all of which is reasonable and plausible from a heartless perspective. - What's wrong or ridiculous or silly or implausible with the idea of a corporate entity being greedy, over zealous, heartless, cold, calculating and....oh.....evil and stupid. Yes, not all of them are, but some have been and there's no reason we shouldn't believe Weyland-Yutani would be. People can be evil...it does happen. And the company's absense makes its duplicity all the more oppressive, increasing the tension and making the horror of the film more effective. The audience is meant to loath not just the creature, which is acting on pure instinct, but the company, an nebulus entity of human construction that should treat its emkployees with value and dignity, but CHOOSES not to. Which is more horrifying, the instinctive alien or the willfully indifferent human entity? - How does Ash's presence kill the isolation? If anything, it makes the isolation more suffocating, more oppressive, intrusive and hope deflating. When all members of the crew are in a fight, together, to find and eliminate the alien, they at least have each other. That simplistic reality is a hopeful one; at least they have that. The presence of Ash as inhuman wolf in sheeps clothing, doing the bidding of the company in protecting what hunts them all....kills that hope. What chance do you have when you can't even trust one of your own and at the ass end of space where no one can help you but yourself. In space, no one can hear you scream, can come to your aid or make things right, because...even if one or more of them survive, the company's still going to write the whole thing off and get away with it. There's a plausible horror in that transcends the natural fear of a living threat like the alien. That you can confront, that, if you can kill it, you can survive....you can't lash out at the company, you can't fight back at it, you can't take it down. It's out there, across the gulf of space and whatever happens aboard the Nostromo WILL NOT TOUCH THEM. There's nothing worse than that kind of reality. And killing Ash doesn't change that, which makes his reveal that much better.....the entire film is shrouded in a cloud of betrayal and absent menace that is never lifted, even in Ripley's victory. Where's the plot holes? Any thing you don't know makes all of that more intriguing, more horrifying, more to the point of the intended affect and none of it leaves an unanwsered question you MUST have answered for it to make sense. We don't always have to know everything....if we did, we'd be God's ourselves and where's the fun in that?

The mystery left by the unanswered questions in 'Alien' does not hurt the film. A true plot hole does not have plausible logical possibilities to answer a viewers concern. The unanswered questions in 'Alien' have numerous logical possibilities and the fact that these questions are not answered makes the tension of the film all the more frustrating in a positive way...it's the point of the thing. - The signal is most certainly real. If it were not, they wouldn't be able to home in on it and they wouldn't be able to track in on the ground...the entire reason Lambert is part of the exploratory group, she uses tracking tech in the novel to hunt it down and give them direction in the planet's hostile environment.....In the novel, they even find the source....it's a pointless thing to debate....Ash and Mother not being able to decipher it is a simple lie the other crew can never find out, because they don't have access to Mother. Ripley starts to translate, but by the time she get's anything, Ash tells her 'What's the point?' by the time she gets there, it would be too late anyway and he's right. There's no reason for her to suspect anything yet and it isn't on her mind when all hell breaks loose anyway. - The reason for sending the Nostromo has always been an attempt to hide the aquisition of dangerous alien life from government officials and stringent customs policies. That is entirely logical.....why send out an R&D vessel? It's departure will be logged, and will most definately be examined thoruoghly upon its return.........By waiting for the opportunity to have the next commercial vessel passing through that quadrant investigate, you keep a low profile, you don't raise any eyebrows by the clear and sudden departure of an expensive R&D mission, and any risk of failure can be chalked up to a small commercial crew following policy or you can just humiliate and personally eviscerate any possible survivors for their crazy story (which is what happens to Ripley in 'Aliens') and the whole thing gets smoothly, neatly swept under the rug....all of which is reasonable and plausible from a heartless perspective. - What's wrong or ridiculous or silly or implausible with the idea of a corporate entity being greedy, over zealous, heartless, cold, calculating and....oh.....evil and stupid. Yes, not all of them are, but some have been and there's no reason we shouldn't believe Weyland-Yutani would be. People can be evil...it does happen. And the company's absense makes its duplicity all the more oppressive, increasing the tension and making the horror of the film more effective. The audience is meant to loath not just the creature, which is acting on pure instinct, but the company, a nebulus entity of human construction that should treat its employees with value and dignity, but CHOOSES not to. Which is more horrifying, the instinctive alien or the willfully indifferent human entity? - How does Ash's presence kill the isolation? If anything, it makes the isolation more suffocating, more oppressive, intrusive and hope deflating. When all members of the crew are in a fight, together, to find and eliminate the alien, they at least have each other. That simplistic reality is a hopeful one; at least they have that. The presence of Ash as inhuman wolf in sheeps clothing, doing the bidding of the company in protecting what hunts them all....kills that hope. What chance do you have when you can't even trust one of your own and at the ass end of space where no one can help you but yourself. In space, no one can hear you scream, can come to your aid or make things right, because...even if one or more of them survive, the company's still going to write the whole thing off and get away with it. There's a plausible horror in that transcending the natural fear of a living threat like the alien. That you can confront the alien, that, if you can kill it, you can survive is everything....you can't lash out at the company, you can't fight back at it, you can't take it down. It's out there, across the gulf of space and whatever happens aboard the Nostromo WILL NOT TOUCH THEM. There's nothing worse than that kind of reality. And killing Ash doesn't change that, which makes his reveal that much better.....the entire film is shrouded in a cloud of betrayal and absent menace that is never lifted, even in Ripley's victory. Where's the plot holes? Any thing you don't know makes all of that more intriguing, more horrifying, more to the point of the intended affect and none of it leaves an unanwsered question you MUST have answered for it to make sense. We don't always have to know everything....if we did, we'd be God's ourselves and where's the fun in that?

Ghost Solitaire What is canon keeps changing so much I am just going with the latest ideas Scott himself has had, one of them being Blade Runner and Alien being in the same universe. I think so much has been added and played with that the whole thing falls apart if you even look too logically at even just the first two movies. The explanations for the continuity of Alien to Aliens are tenuous at best.

Tenuous? really?

Craigamore Yes, tenuous. The problem with the Ash subplot is that there are too many ifs/variables and that corporate actions are rarely based on wicked ends but on profit, damaging to employees if need be, but only if need be. If, as many have pointed out here, the company can hide the whole Prometheus mission (that remains to be seen), then they can certainly hide a much smaller vessel going to LV-426 with a crew of androids. Remember, the Nostromo is not redirected to LV-426 but is sent there specifically once it leaves Thedus. No time is saved by using the Nostromo as opposed to assembling a smaller mission. And with this secret agent bit, the risks involved are too great if the crew should learn of the corporate plan and learn how to kill the alien. There are too many variables for it to make sense. If it means being able to keep a huge haul such as the Nostromo has translating into profit and sending a ship to pick up an egg and study it on site before making the next move, also translating into profit, any CEO would pick the latter. There is nothing wrong with showing a heartless company. It is just that the heartlessness usually involves an amorality in which the higher-ups may not care about employees but rarely set out intentionally to kill them. In fact it is usually amorality combined with stupidity. Much more frightening and believable to me would be a company which sends the crew there to investigate a signal it thinks MAY be dangerous but just isn't sure. With an android that is given too much independence leading to disastrous results. Which is why I think O'Bannon has a point.

"Remember, the Nostromo is not redirected to LV-426 but is sent there specifically once it leaves Thedus." @dallas!dallas!....The opening title sequence tells us that the Nostromo is in the return phase of its trip.....they didn't send the Nostromo directly to the planet.....the flight plan's proximity to Zeta II Reticuli makes this commercial vessel the ideal ship to PLACE Ash on for the interception of the signal that triggers Mother into waking them out to check it out as their contracts require.

"...the flight plan's proximity to Zeta II Reticuli makes this commercial vessel the ideal ship to PLACE Ash on for the interception of the signal that triggers Mother into waking them out to check it out as their contracts require" The title sequence is what the "official" destination is but that is my point. Unofficially, it is clear the Nostromo is being sent to the source of transmission. This was not a snap decision. The company placed Ash on a ship that was going to be near Zeta II Reticuli when they could have just as easily have launched a ship that would have gotten there even more quickly. In O'Bannon's original script, the crew is still 250 years away from earth. In the Giler/Hil rewrite, roughly 10 months (I think), when they hit LV-426. Considering the distance in either case the Snark/Nostromo was when leaving Thedus, it would have been much easier to launch from a colony closer to LV-426. Actually, the 250 year window would make more sense for the placement of an android as opposed to drawing up a whole new mission as the cost-benefit analysis is clearly more logical. Way, way too much time to wait when we have plain old light speed. But thanks to faster than light travel, the distances and time are much smaller in the final screenplay which just adds too much risk. So in the end I find Weyland Yutani to be guilty of murder and stupidity. But this is a debate that has gone on for some time and probably will for time to come. On a purely subjective level, I think the idea that the company is unaware just how dangerous the organism is makes more sense than the old chestnut of "secret plans for some kind of weapon". I also think the Snark crew's excitement to be the first humans to make contact with intelligent life is something that is missing in Giler/Hill. Scott must have felt the same way, because that trope is one of the driving forces of Prometheus.

Yes, the opening sequence does let us know what the crew (minus Ash) and the audience gets as the official destination but the problem is that the Company has planned long before the Nostromo enters Zeta II Reticuli to have it obtain the organism, so the real destination is LV-426. Which is fine except when we look at the time involved. When the crew hits LV-426 they are around 10 months distance from earth according to Lambert. Now, when Ripley asks Dallas about Ash he mumbles that before they shipped out his original science officer was replaced with Ash. It is unclear if he means from Thedus or Earth but it must be Thedus as then the company would be absolute imbeciles. So we'll safely assume Ash was placed while on Thedus. And this was not a snap decision but one carefully thought out. The question is, how long from Thedus to LV-426? Based on O'Bannon's sketches. despite the long 10 month journey to earth still ahead, the bulk of the trip has been accomplished, thanks to faster than light travel. So it would take longer to wait for the Nostromo to reach LV-426 than to send a ship, with no risky humans, from a colony outside our solar system. Quicker, less risk on every level. Time is money so they say. It just makes little sense: when you can have a 10 month journey or less with virtually no risk of detection why you would opt for a longer wait with more chances for everything to go wrong. Actually, if they kept O'Bannon's original idea of a 250 year window b/w earth and Thedus, it would have made more sense. That would be clearly too long to wait. Unless my math is wrong. If so, then gladly stand corrected. On a totally divergent note, I also like O'Bannon's crew motivated by the excitement of being the first humans to encounter intelligent life.

I could have been an error someone made. The directive sent in error, compounded by further mistakes. Anyone who works in a large organisation knows the score with these kind of FUps

Whether you enjoy Ash being added or not, you have to admit that Ian Holm was the best of the 7 actors. He was perfect in that role, especially when Dallas is telling the crew about the signal and Ash is pacing in the background, you can almost tell what Ash is thinking. The best line in the entire movie....Ash looking up at Ripley with the "you have got to be kidding me your questioning what I am doing look" and says with such dripping sarcasm that the device he made reads the changes in air density. I think people don't have a problem with the character of Ash because Ian played it so brilliantly.

@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