Quote:
Originally posted by MetalAlien
Neither answer makes complete sense. If the company knew about it beforehand why send space truckers? Why not a company ship just for Alien harvesting? If they didn't know why the sudden change of the Sci officer?
I see two possiblities.
1) they were starting s blanket campain to find Alien life and were placing their andriods on all of their ships to take action in the case of finding signs of life. The Nostromo just happened to win the lottery from hell.
2) The company detected the signal, but had it's hands tied by goverment regulation, and had to act in it's own interests and make the discovery and recovery seem like a chance happening. Crew expendable. |
That is a good point - if the company knew of the aliens, why send a team of "space truckers" (wasn't that a movie, too
), instead of a dedicated team? Perhaps LV426 was simply too far out for it to be worthwhile sending a ship out there just to investigate a rogue signal of unknown origin. But by putting Ash onto the first ship that was scheduled to intercept the planet, they thought they could get their sample of alien life with minimal effort? Clearly they underestimated the aliens!!
I'm not too sure about the "lottery from hell", although there is nothing to disprove that... We don't know how prevalent androids were at that time, nor do we know how many mining ships were out there, etc..
I got the impression that the company was too big to be stopped by any government, in fact I rather got the feeling that they were more or less the government. I forget what was said about the demise of the company in Resurrection...
It doesn't strike me that at the time of the "Alien" the company was obsessed with obtaining an alien, but perhaps when they detected the signal they just diverted the Nostromo out of speculation. Okay there was the whole "crew dispensable" order, but maybe it was the excitement of finding an alien life-form that prompted the company to risk the lives of a small mining crew to obtain it. After that crew failed to report back, and the alien signal presumably stopped transmitting, LV426 was forgotten about, until the terraformers arrived. Without the signal they didn't find the derelict, but when they did find it, it was already too late....
Most of that if off the top of my head, please forgive if I've been a little inaccurate, it must be time to get the box set out (am waiting for the chance to see Alien in the cinema to be honest!)