I'll tell you who I wouldn't choose. Bishop. You know why? Because Bishop is just fine, Alien 3 never happened and I refuse to believe otherwise.
However, if I were present following Bishop's tortured reactivation in Alien 3, I would not have said goodbye to him. I would have tried to help him regain his will to live.
Ripley's matter-of-fact, unsympathetic reaction to his plight made it impossible for me to feel anything more then a sense of karmic satisfaction, when she threw herself into the incinerator as Bishop's likeness looked on.
Bishop deserved to, AT LEAST ONCE IN HIS LIFE, have someone acknowledge his worth. He didn't deserve to be perpetually treated like a glorified toaster and then eventually come to accept the idea himself. In Aliens he'd had a sense of self preservation (to which no one else was sympathetic).
In Alien 3 he'd been catastrophically injured and his efforts to protect his human companions had been plenarily thwarted. Understandably he was in immense physical and psychological pain. But, his failure wasn't his fault and his pain could have been temporary. He could have been made useful and happy again. Regardless of not being top-of-the-line.
You can't rather be nothing. If you're nothing you don't know you're nothing. There's no satisfaction or relief in being nothing. There is no experience of being nothing.
And Bishop was a great something.
Actually...he still is a great something. I refused to believe otherwise. BISHOP IS JUST FINE!
