How did the egg get on the Sulaco in Alien 3?

Galvatron · Post by **Galvatron** » 2002-07-27 04:01am

An age old question.

Shadowhawk · Post by **Shadowhawk** » 2002-07-27 04:56am

Bishop couldn't have smuggled it aboard. He was nowhere near the combat zone underneath the reactor, and spent all his time either in the lab or crawling down a pipe and piloting the spare lander.

The company couldn't have done it, since their only representative was what's-his-name, and he died before anyone got back up to the Sulaco.

The only plausible explination is that the Queen picked one up after she disconnected from her egg-laying tube.

I'm still wondeirng how the hell the Queen got into the landing skid well (we saw the rear skid hit debris and retract without the Queen aboard. AFAIK, the other skids did not hit anything, and, IIRC, the Queen exited from the rear skid) and why Bishop didn't notice a several-ton discrepency in the ship's weight.

RadiO · Post by **RadiO** » 2002-07-27 06:47am

The Company. Because-
Burke was probably at least partially insane, but he wasn't stupid. Well, not that stupid. Knowing that he was going on a mission to capture lethal alien species for his Company's bio-weapons division, Burke left a time-delayed message in the Company's main computer system to alerti his bosses of his actions. By the time the message went out, Burke would be on his way home with the specimens, presenting his superiors with a valuble fait accompli. Cue promotion and big bonuses for all, Burke included.
Ofr course, things didn't exactly go as Burke planned. But the message plays anyway, and the Company decide to intercept the Sulaco to greet their golden boy. The rendezous and subsequent data transfer between the troop carrier and the Company ship reveals the full, fucked-up horror of what went down on Archeron. Faced with the loss of an entire colony, the probable loss of a priceless bio-weapon species, a decimated USCM squad and a dead junior executive, Weyland-Yutani decide to save a lot of public bother by covering things up for the time being. The Sulaco's flight computer is ordered to orbit an unhinhabited world, the survivors still unwoken in hypersleep, until the Company gets a better hold on the situation.
A W-Y ship touches down on the nuke-blasted plains of Archeron. To their intense joy, a mountain range between the colony and the alien ship has attenuated the shock and blast effects of the atmosphere processor explosion. The alien ship is heavily damaged but substantially intact - and so is most of its biological cargo.
The Company has its specimens, and Burke's gambit has finally paid off (though he's considerably past caring). Standard Company flim-flam and bullshit cover the losses on Archeron, but just one loose end remains: the survivors on the Sulaco. W-Y could have just rigged the life support to fail, or simply destroyed the ship. But instead, they try for an early live test of their new toys, planting at least one of their eggs aboard the Sulaco. The ship's flight systems are reprogrammed to take it past several remote and unimportant Company facilities, so that when the facehugger attack takes place and the EEV jettisons on a preprogrammed response, Ripley, Hicks and the others will fall on friendly, easily containable ground, to be met by a Company ship full of heavily-armed goons and scientists. The signal comes through that the EEV has landed on the W-Y prison planet Fiorina 161. But the "rescue" ship runs into a delay... and Alien 3 happens.

Galvatron · Post by **Galvatron** » 2002-07-27 06:43pm

RadiO wrote:The Company.

Not a bad theory. However, if they obtained specimens from the derelict, why was it so important to get the queen from Ripley?

Nooooooooooooooooo!!!!

Pablo Sanchez · Post by **Pablo Sanchez** » 2002-07-27 09:24pm

Moving to Other Sci-Fi.

Shadowhawk · Post by **Shadowhawk** » 2002-07-28 01:24am

RadiO: Ever hear of Occam's Razor?
Your theory requires so much extra crap to happen that my 'The Queen took one with her' is enormously simpler and much more likely.

Shadowfyre · Post by **Shadowfyre** » 2002-07-28 03:50am

The answer is lazy writers put it there.

RadiO · Post by **RadiO** » 2002-07-28 07:38am

Shadowhawk wrote:RadiO: Ever hear of Occam's Razor?
Your theory requires so much extra crap to happen that my 'The Queen took one with her' is enormously simpler and much more likely.

Well, yeah... I'd be perfectly happy with the idea that the Queen simply had the egg with her when she rode in on the dropship. And I'm sure that that's exactly what the scriptwriters had in mind.
But what boggles my mind is what we actually see on screen. How the hell did that egg end up where it is? It's not sitting out of sight behind a stanchion in a dark corner of the dropship bay, it's stuck up near the ceiling of a backlit corridor (which I always took to be the one outside the hypersleep chamber) directly beside a window to a brightly lit chamber. How did the Queen get it there, and how did Ripley and friends not notice the damned thing?
That's why I can come up with a chain of bullshit like I did. Besides, it's fun.

Akm72 · Post by **Akm72** » 2002-07-28 07:53am

The simplist theory is that Bishop brought it onto the drop-ship, if only because he had the opportunity (while Ripley was rescuing Newt). How the egg got from the dropship to what looks like the hypersleep chamber is more difficult, unless Bishop was able to manage it even after he'd been torn in half. Any other theory requires you to add extra characters - either on another space craft, or hiding within the Sulaco itself.

I don't dislike Alien3 by itself, though I do resent what it does to the previous "Aliens", as it's much more difficult to care when you know ALL the characters die in the next film, and most within the first 5 minutes.

Doomriser · Post by **Doomriser** » 2002-07-28 12:43pm

I thought that the real question is how a single facehugger impregnated two people.

Shadowhawk · Post by **Shadowhawk** » 2002-07-28 04:20pm

Er, I don't think it did. Only Ripley was infected. They cracked Newt open on the prison planet to see.

Bishop never had an opportunity to get or plant an egg on the ship. It takes too long to go from surface-to-orbit and orbit-to-surface, and he never got anywhere near the eggs in the first place. And almost immediately after landing on the Sulaco, he gets ripped in two.

TheDarkOne · Post by **TheDarkOne** » 2002-07-28 05:51pm

I agree with Shadowfyre, the answer is bad writers put it there.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2002-07-28 07:33pm

I think this brings up an interesting question about canonicity. Normally, we all agree that a sci-fi writer or producer creates a fictional universe. He gets to say what is and is not part of that universe.

But what about a franchise which is not written, directed, or produced by one person? Alien3 had a completely different crew than Alien or Aliens. Its only connection is franchise legal rights. Is that a valid basis for declaring something "canon"? Could we not argue that Alien3 is a different canon, by virtue of being written and produced by different people?

Let's say somebody buys the rights to Lord of the Rings somehow, and makes a sequel called "Lord of the Rings 2: Judgement Day, the Return of Sauron". Would we seriously consider this canon because this person has the legal rights? Of course not. We would probably tell him to go fuck off and take his sequel with him. So why is legal copyright considered a legitimate basis of canonicity for the Alien series (or Star Trek, for that matter, since Gene Roddenberry's creation is now in the hands of B&B and nothing since TNG can be legitimately said to have GR's fingerprint on it?)

Gil Hamilton · Post by **Gil Hamilton** » 2002-07-28 08:29pm

I don't believe it can be considered the same continuity or canon. I mean (to use your example) if someone legally got the rights to Lord of the Rings and made a sequel series that featured Sauron in it, JRR Tolkien would probably spin fast enough in his grave to cause time dilation. After all, he literally wrote the history of a world with amazing amounts of continuity and consistancy that you'd expect from an expert linguist and complete with something like 9 complete languages (again, for consistancy). People actually study Quenya in college. Then, some suits who want to cash in on a masterwork come along and release a sequel with Cyber-Sauron and his Twin Miniguns of Magic Darkness, plus the Ninja-Nazgûl? The only consolation I'd have is when I join the legions of Tolkien fans as we go Helms Deep on their asses.

Anyway, it's the same reason I don't consider the movie Starship Troopers to be canon. I mean, Robert Heinlein would have told them all where to stick their movie is he'd have been alive, because the movie was the polar opposite of the reason why he wrote Starship Troopers. How can something be considered canon if it completely spits on the original intent of the creator?

Galvatron · Post by **Galvatron** » 2002-07-28 10:45pm

Doomriser wrote:I thought that the real question is how a single facehugger impregnated two people.

A special "royal" facehugger, I'd imagine.

Galvatron · Post by **Galvatron** » 2002-07-28 10:59pm

Darth Wong wrote:But what about a franchise which is not written, directed, or produced by one person? Alien3 had a completely different crew than Alien or Aliens. Its only connection is franchise legal rights. Is that a valid basis for declaring something "canon"? Could we not argue that Alien3 is a different canon, by virtue of being written and produced by different people?

Actually, all the movies were produced by Brandywine Productions Ltd., which consists of Gordon Carroll, David Giler, and Walter Hill. Giler and Hill wrote the screenplays for Alien and Alien 3, based loosely (to varying degrees) on stories by Dan O'Bannon and Vincent Ward, respectively.

Doomriser · Post by **Doomriser** » 2002-07-29 12:03am

Um...the events in Alien Ressurection pretty much make Alien 3 canon...

Galvatron · Post by **Galvatron** » 2002-07-29 12:50am

Shadowhawk wrote:Er, I don't think it did. Only Ripley was infected. They cracked Newt open on the prison planet to see.

You're forgetting about the dog.

Post by **AdmiralKanos** » 2002-07-29 01:01am

Darth Jehovah wrote:Actually, all the movies were produced by Brandywine Productions Ltd., which consists of Gordon Carroll, David Giler, and Walter Hill. Giler and Hill wrote the screenplays for Alien and Alien 3, based loosely (to varying degrees) on stories by Dan O'Bannon and Vincent Ward, respectively.

I just checked the story writing credits at imdb.com:

Alien: Dan O'Bannon and Ronald Shusett
Aliens: James Cameron, David Giler, Walter Hill
Alien3: Vincent Ward
Alien4: Joss Whedon

Dan O'Bannon and Ronald Shusett are in the credits of Alien3 and Alien4 as "character" writers, as opposed to storywriters. David Giler and Walter Hill are uncredited story writers for Alien and screenplay writers for Alien3.

Holy shit, what a mess. No wonder the series is the way it is.

RadiO · Post by **RadiO** » 2002-07-29 07:26am

This is interesting. The start of the Alien3 shooting script (i.e the one that's been doing the rounds on the internet since circa 1993):

FADE IN:
1. EXT. DEEP SPACE CREDIT SEQUENCE
the void. luxuriously veiled in a star field.

BEGIN CREDITS:

1a. quick - a facehugger finger --
2. quick - a face,. under glass, out of focus -- the glass shatters...
2a. quick - a monitor -- A colorful catscan of a tendril. Down someone's throat.
3. quick - acid blood hits the floor, sizzles, eats through insulation wires...
3a. quick - smoke passes a sensor --
4. quick - a panel of lights explode on, flashing, urgent, something is very wrong
4a. quick - blood seeps through white fabric --
5 . quick - an exploding bolt --
5a. quick - hypersleep tube falls away --
6 . quick - hypersleep tube being vacuum sucked along, packed into the EEV
6a. quick - the EEV floats momentarily in its docking, then drops from CAMERA and away ...
7 then - Ripley's face, quiet, peaceful -- moisture blows across her features ...
7a. then - the planet FIORINA 161. grey, lifeless, alone in space
8. then - the EEV tumbles by ...

Notice that there's no mention of where the facehugger came from? That's the way they should have handled this on sceen. Then it'd be up to the viewer to make up his or her own mind - that it came from an egg that the queen tucked inside the dropship's rear undercarraige bay, or from a specimen smuggled aboard by bishop, or The Company did it. Instead, we actually see an egg, but one in a really weird place, begetting years of angst and misery as we concoct ever-more unlikely and outlandish conspiracy theories to reconcile the events of Aliens and Alien3.
Bastards.

Galvatron · Post by **Galvatron** » 2002-07-29 10:18am

RadiO wrote:Notice that there's no mention of where the facehugger came from? That's the way they should have handled this on sceen. Then it'd be up to the viewer to make up his or her own mind - that it came from an egg that the queen tucked inside the dropship's rear undercarraige bay, or from a specimen smuggled aboard by bishop, or The Company did it. Instead, we actually see an egg, but one in a really weird place, begetting years of angst and misery as we concoct ever-more unlikely and outlandish conspiracy theories to reconcile the events of Aliens and Alien3.
Bastards.

Agreed. This should have been the first shot indicating the alien's presence...

RadiO · Post by **RadiO** » 2002-07-29 11:48am

Yeah, that would have been great! It would have fitted into Alien3's "arty" take on the Alien series, I feel.

Wicked Pilot · Post by **Wicked Pilot** » 2002-07-29 04:25pm

Just like Star Trek the Animated Series, and Enterprise, let's just forget Alien 3 and its crappy sequel ever happened.

Wicked Pilot · Post by **Wicked Pilot** » 2002-07-29 04:26pm

The same goes for Star Wars the Holiday Special

Galvatron · Post by **Galvatron** » 2002-07-29 11:50pm

USAF Ace wrote:Just like Star Trek the Animated Series, and Enterprise, let's just forget Alien 3 and its crappy sequel ever happened.

Actually, part me actually likes Alien 3. I think its "money-shot" is on par with any from the rest of the series.