Colony Rescue on LV-426

[Baffalo]

Could the communications issue be the result of us simply assuming they had near-instant communications with Earth? Reason I ask is because lots of scifi has instant communication, but I don't think that was the case here. If they're several lightyears away from Earth, and then Earth had to dispatch a ship, that would take a long time to get anything done.

Given that there were 158 colonists, no doubt unarmed or very lightly armed, the Queen might have decided they pose little to no risk, and taken her time in selectively culling them away from the group, infecting one or two at a time, growing her protectors, and grabbing more. The attack by the marines, on the other hand, comes as a threat worthy enough to warrant serious attack by the Xenos to defend the nest, rather than trying to infect one or two at a time.

[Skylon]

Could the communications issue be the result of us simply assuming they had near-instant communications with Earth? Reason I ask is because lots of scifi has instant communication, but I don't think that was the case here. If they're several lightyears away from Earth, and then Earth had to dispatch a ship, that would take a long time to get anything done.

Found the scene I was mentioning: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iusPorC4wZE

At about 1:40 its stated it takes "two weeks" to get an answer from Earth. That number also comes close to Hicks' line that after "17 days" the Marines would be declared overdue.

Edit: So figure a week for a transmission to be sent, and a week to receive a reply.

[Galvatron]

Nitpick: 17 days is how long until they can expect a rescue AFTER they've been declared overdue. Presumably, USCM HQ would keep relatively close tabs on the operation so it wouldn't take long for that to happen, but still...

[Ted C]

Nitpick: 17 days is how long until they can expect a rescue AFTER they've been declared overdue. Presumably, USCM HQ would keep relatively close tabs on the operation so it wouldn't take long for that to happen, but still...

So if the communication delay is a week, then it will take at least ten days for reinforcements to arrive, assuming that they're dispatched immediately after the squad fails to check in.

SGC and the Empire would be able to get reinforcements there within minutes or hours. The Federation would take a few days, or at least several hours if traveling at maximum warp. The message delay for all of them would be less: Essentially zero for the Empire, hours for the Federation, maybe a day for SGC (assuming they're using the stargate to pass messages, and they're declared overdue when it doesn't open back to SGC on schedule).

[Borgholio]

Brings me back to my point that under anybody other than the actual Aliens-verse, most of the colonists would actually have been saved due to the superior FTL and communication capabilities of the Empire, Federation, Earth Alliance, and SGC. Only when you let the infestation go for weeks does it get out of hand. In truth we really don't know exactly how long the infection went before contact was lost. It could have been a month if the Xenos did their work slowly or if the colonists actually had successes in the beginning.

[Galvatron]

We also know that the colonists managed to capture two live facehuggers and surgically remove a few others from their unfortunate victims. Either these people were liberated from the nest (unlikely), were facehuggered on the derelict like Newt's dad (which is exactly what James Cameron SAID happened, but I hate that explanation) or something else entirely that I haven't thought of.

Theories?

[Borgholio]

We also know that the colonists managed to capture two live facehuggers and surgically remove a few others from their unfortunate victims. Either these people were liberated from the nest (unlikely), were facehuggered on the derelict like Newt's dad (which is exactly what James Cameron SAID happened, but I hate that explanation) or something else entirely that I haven't thought of.

Theories?

They could have just snuck into the colony and snagged some poor fool in his / her sleep. Morning comes, the person hasn't been seen, they look into his / her room and find some face hugging in progress. Head to the med bay and cut it off.

[Galvatron]

So I'm guessing then that the live specimens weren't killed or maimed during their surgical removal.

[Borgholio]

Well Bishop was reading the medical log and he only noted one fatality, so it's likely the colonists found a "somewhat" safe way to remove the little facefuckers without them strangling or burning a hole into the host.

[Batman]

For a very generous definition of 'somewhat safe'. We're talking two live facehuggers for one dead colonist (that we know of, it's not like Bishop recites that log in its entirety). That's at best a survival rate of 50% given that dead facehuggers can be collected with impunity from already infected colonists.
That also gives us some insight into the time frame. The colonists apparently had enough time to gather and do some research on the facehuggers before the colony was overrun, including managing to remove two of them before embryo insertion so I think it's pretty clear the colonists were well aware of the threat at least to an extent.

[Simon_Jester]

The communication lag thing is interesting.

For most SF, communication is either much faster than travel, or exactly the same speed because it uses courier boats. Having messages be faster than ships, but only by 50% or so, would be kind of cool.

[Batman]

Just noticed something interesting upon rewatching the movie-after the scene where the Marines are told to turn in their ammunition Vasquez is still on point. Um-she supposedly no longer has anything to shoot so wouldn't it have made a lot more sense to move one of the flamethrower guys up to the front of the formation? Yeah, we as the audience know she essentially ignored that order but presumably Apone did not. Keeping somebody with a weapon that is bulky, heavy and at least for the time being a really awkward paperweight (as far as you know) at the point of your troop doesn't seem like a really sensible decision to me.

[Terralthra]

Just noticed something interesting upon rewatching the movie-after the scene where the Marines are told to turn in their ammunition Vasquez is still on point. Um-she supposedly no longer has anything to shoot so wouldn't it have made a lot more sense to move one of the flamethrower guys up to the front of the formation? Yeah, we as the audience know she essentially ignored that order but presumably Apone did not. Keeping somebody with a weapon that is bulky, heavy and at least for the time being a really awkward paperweight (as far as you know) at the point of your troop doesn't seem like a really sensible decision to me.

Didn't she pass a spare clip (or whatever) to Apone as well? It didn't look big enough to be a clip.

[Batman]

She passed a spare whatever that let them keep using the smartguns to fellow smartgun wielder Drake (and I agree it wasn't anywhere big enough to have been a a magazine unless those smartguns use seriously tiny bullets). Apone, however, was in no way shape or form involved in this.

[Ted C]

We also know that the colonists managed to capture two live facehuggers and surgically remove a few others from their unfortunate victims. Either these people were liberated from the nest (unlikely), were facehuggered on the derelict like Newt's dad (which is exactly what James Cameron SAID happened, but I hate that explanation) or something else entirely that I haven't thought of.

Theories?

According to Bishop (reading a medical record), the two live ones in the medlab were "surgically removed before embryo implantation". Somehow the colonists got to them after the facehuggers attached, but soon after, so they were able to bring them back to the medlab and pull the little bastards off without killing them (although the victims were killed in the process).

The state of the colony shows that the colonists were actively fighting back against a growing infestation and eventually lost. It's unclear when in this process exposed victims would have been recoverable.

[Ted C]

Just noticed something interesting upon rewatching the movie-after the scene where the Marines are told to turn in their ammunition Vasquez is still on point. Um-she supposedly no longer has anything to shoot so wouldn't it have made a lot more sense to move one of the flamethrower guys up to the front of the formation? Yeah, we as the audience know she essentially ignored that order but presumably Apone did not. Keeping somebody with a weapon that is bulky, heavy and at least for the time being a really awkward paperweight (as far as you know) at the point of your troop doesn't seem like a really sensible decision to me.

Apone probably knows his team a hell of a lot better than Gorman, and he may well approve of them keeping their smart guns operational (in a plausibly deniable way).

[Ted C]

Just noticed something interesting upon rewatching the movie-after the scene where the Marines are told to turn in their ammunition Vasquez is still on point. Um-she supposedly no longer has anything to shoot so wouldn't it have made a lot more sense to move one of the flamethrower guys up to the front of the formation? Yeah, we as the audience know she essentially ignored that order but presumably Apone did not. Keeping somebody with a weapon that is bulky, heavy and at least for the time being a really awkward paperweight (as far as you know) at the point of your troop doesn't seem like a really sensible decision to me.

Didn't she pass a spare clip (or whatever) to Apone as well? It didn't look big enough to be a clip.

She passed a spare mechanism (presumably some kind off essential link for the smart gun) to Drake (the other smart gunner), not to Apone.

[Terralthra]

She passed a spare whatever that let them keep using the smartguns to fellow smartgun wielder Drake (and I agree it wasn't anywhere big enough to have been a a magazine unless those smartguns use seriously tiny bullets). Apone, however, was in no way shape or form involved in this.

Whoops, you're quite correct. I remembered the wrong marine.

[Batman]

Just noticed something interesting upon rewatching the movie-after the scene where the Marines are told to turn in their ammunition Vasquez is still on point. Um-she supposedly no longer has anything to shoot so wouldn't it have made a lot more sense to move one of the flamethrower guys up to the front of the formation? Yeah, we as the audience know she essentially ignored that order but presumably Apone did not. Keeping somebody with a weapon that is bulky, heavy and at least for the time being a really awkward paperweight (as far as you know) at the point of your troop doesn't seem like a really sensible decision to me.

Apone probably knows his team a hell of a lot better than Gorman, and he may well approve of them keeping their smart guns operational (in a plausibly deniable way).

Apone inevitably does because Gorman's operational experience is a big fat zero. The problem is the 'maybe you don't want to shoot the place up too badly' didn't come from Gorman, it came from Ripley. I can absolutely see Apone going 'yeah, whatever' if it was just Gorman but he apparently did take Ripley seriously enough to effectively disarm most of his squad.

[Borgholio]

For a very generous definition of 'somewhat safe'. We're talking two live facehuggers for one dead colonist (that we know of, it's not like Bishop recites that log in its entirety). That's at best a survival rate of 50% given that dead facehuggers can be collected with impunity from already infected colonists.
That also gives us some insight into the time frame. The colonists apparently had enough time to gather and do some research on the facehuggers before the colony was overrun, including managing to remove two of them before embryo insertion so I think it's pretty clear the colonists were well aware of the threat at least to an extent.

I think they removed most, if not all of the ones in the medical bay. Why the others died I don't know, but why would the colonists put them in stasis if they were dead at the time they were removed?

[Borgholio]

Just noticed something interesting upon rewatching the movie-after the scene where the Marines are told to turn in their ammunition Vasquez is still on point. Um-she supposedly no longer has anything to shoot so wouldn't it have made a lot more sense to move one of the flamethrower guys up to the front of the formation? Yeah, we as the audience know she essentially ignored that order but presumably Apone did not. Keeping somebody with a weapon that is bulky, heavy and at least for the time being a really awkward paperweight (as far as you know) at the point of your troop doesn't seem like a really sensible decision to me.

According to the novelization / backstory, the smartguns had tracking systems that were extremely accurate, feeding targeting data and images back to the eyepieces Vasquez and Drake were wearing. Thus, they were simply scanning for targets...which would be useful even without ammo.

[Galvatron]

I think they removed most, if not all of the ones in the medical bay. Why the others died I don't know, but why would the colonists put them in stasis if they were dead at the time they were removed?

For scientific study? Maybe the colonists were like Dallas and were so afraid of pissing off their corporate overlords that they actually spent of good deal of time and effort trying to contain the situation before everything went all to hell.

[Simon_Jester]

Yeah Borg, that's an interesting point... but it might not be too smart to have sensor operators that carry no useful weapons on point out in front where they could get shot or eaten by space gribblies.

[Skylon]

So if the communication delay is a week, then it will take at least ten days for reinforcements to arrive, assuming that they're dispatched immediately after the squad fails to check in.

On a side note, does a "sleeper" ship even make sense in that context? Are consumables that much of an issue aboard ships in the "Alien" universe? Presumably it didn't take the Marines more than a couple weeks to arrive at LV-426.

Further, FTL must have taken a leap between "Alien" and "Aliens" because in the first film, Lambert estimates it will take ten months to return to Earth from LV-426 (although her calculation is based on the fuel used diverting to LV-426 in the first place, but still...). In any case, cryogenic suspension makes a lot more sense for a trip that long versus a few weeks.

[Ted C]

Apone probably knows his team a hell of a lot better than Gorman, and he may well approve of them keeping their smart guns operational (in a plausibly deniable way).

Apone inevitably does because Gorman's operational experience is a big fat zero. The problem is the 'maybe you don't want to shoot the place up too badly' didn't come from Gorman, it came from Ripley. I can absolutely see Apone going 'yeah, whatever' if it was just Gorman but he apparently did take Ripley seriously enough to effectively disarm most of his squad.

Fair enough.