Colony Rescue on LV-426

[Skylon]

Was it ever confirmed that the station Ripley was on in the beginning of Aliens actually orbited Earth? The only time I remember it being stated explicitly was in her nightmare, and I do remember Burke stating that she had "drifted right through the core systems," but I think that was also in her nightmare.

It was never stated at all. That line about the core systems was indeed in her nightmare, but so is "57 years." There's no reason to assume the facts in her nightmare were all true up until the alien popping out of her.

Exterior shots of Gateway make it look like it orbits Earth. Also, the dialogue in the directors cut from the workers on Hadley's Hope indicate they got the message to investigate the derelict's location from a guy in a cushy office on Earth (Burke), or something to that effect.

Also, in terms of the distance from Hadley's Hope to the derelict, a more direct route could have been established once Newt's father was recovered. Newt's parents were directed to check out a "grid." Depending how large an area that is, they could have spent days just in the area trying to find the Derelict, when a straight drive to and from the colony could have been less than a day.

[Galvatron]

It was never stated at all. That line about the core systems was indeed in her nightmare, but so is "57 years." There's no reason to assume the facts in her nightmare were all true up until the alien popping out of her.

The scene in which Burke gave Ripley the news about her daughter wasn't a dream, so we know the 57 years thing is true.

[Borgholio]

It was never stated at all. That line about the core systems was indeed in her nightmare, but so is "57 years." There's no reason to assume the facts in her nightmare were all true up until the alien popping out of her.

The scene in which Burke gave Ripley the news about her daughter wasn't a dream, so we know the 57 years thing is true.

Plus Van Lewen mentioning the colony on LV had been there for decades...

[Ted C]

I have a question regarding the assumptions being made for the Federation. The Xenomorphs, when they emerge from the body of a host, take on characteristics of the host in question. The Xenomorph seen in AvP: Requiem took on attributes of the Predators, hinting that the Xenomorphs take on part of the host's DNA to adapt to new situations. Would this therefor result in them being detected by the biofilters? Or would the mix of Xenomorph and human DNA result in the biofilters accepting it and letting it through?

The Federation force will have received Ripley's briefing, like all forces in the comparison, so they will know to look for xenomorph embryos. It's reasonable to assume that the transporter will remove them.

Also, how would the Klingons treat the situation? Reason I ask is because of the Federation/Klingon Alliance. Would the Klingons influence the Federation's tactics? Or would they act independently of the Federation and press their attack against the Xenomorphs?

Klingons are not involved in the scenario. Treat it as a human colony in Federation space; the Klingons have no business there.

[Ted C]

Okay, more specific - Star Trek TNG, Season 1 Episode 25, "Conspiracy". Admiral Quinn has a (macroscopic) alien parasite stuck in his neck, controlling him. He beams up to the Enterprise and the transporter neither detects nor removes the parasite. Hell, he even beams up to the ship with one of the creatures in a suitcase. Biofilters? Did squat.

The biofilters have a pattern of only removing known threats. The xeno-embryos, however, are a known threat because they have access to Ripley's briefing.

[Ted C]

I was speaking to a friend at work last night and I mentioned this thread and the ideas so far. He's a big Warhammer 40k guy, so he said that he would bank on the Imperial Guard or the Space Marines to handle the Xeno infestation with flying colors. His reasoning was thus:

• Space Marines and Imperial Guard will not hesitate to use deadly force.
  Bolters and other heavy guns might not be that safe near the reactor, but individual lasguns are fairly weak.
  Anyone infected by a facehugger is probably going to be executed (Imperial Guard are executed for trying to run away)
  Guardsmen will swarm in and, even if entire squads get killed, more and more will just keep coming.
  Space Marines are supposed to be unkillable (his words), and thus they're more likely to survive a Xeno attack.

Space Marines are trained and equipped to fight aliens threats like genestealers, so I think they would do well against these xenomorphs, which aren't as smart. They wouldn't hesitate to write off the colonists and nuke the place, and they've got the firepower and durability to get out of the reactor. They've also probably got an APC of their own to back them up.

Imperial Guard would potentially lose more people, but they also wouldn't hesitate to take off and nuke the colony. Lasguns aren't the best of weapons against the likes of Orks and Tyranids, but they're probably adequate against xenomorphs, at least with sustained fire.

[Ted C]

Is there any reason the Federation ship can't simply lock onto the colonists' PDTs and beam them out of the atmosphere processing station with the runabout's transporter?

None in particular, although transporters have historically had trouble around such facilities. Was it TNG "Legacy" (the episode with Tasha Yar's sister) that had a transformer preventing her from being beamed out. With the nest directly under the primary heat exchangers of a fusion reactor, Federation transporters would probably be dealing with a lot of interference. If they could get some pattern enhancers down there, they might alleviate such problems.

[Ted C]

Not really... I got the impression they only got around to sending the marines some time after losing contact with the colony. Which gives the Xenos 3 weeks + however long between the first Newts parents got facehugged to the point the marines got called. Either the Xenos were smart enough to cut contact extremely early, the Xenos went undetected for a shocklingly long time or the colonists were terminally stupid not calling for help when the first chestbusters / xenos started mauling people.

The mission doesn't launch until after contact with the colony is lost, but that still leaves the potential for the rescue team to arrive before all of the colonists have been contaminated. It's not clear when the colony's long-range communications went out.

[Darth Wong]

Okay, more specific - Star Trek TNG, Season 1 Episode 25, "Conspiracy". Admiral Quinn has a (macroscopic) alien parasite stuck in his neck, controlling him. He beams up to the Enterprise and the transporter neither detects nor removes the parasite. Hell, he even beams up to the ship with one of the creatures in a suitcase. Biofilters? Did squat.

The biofilters have a pattern of only removing known threats. The xeno-embryos, however, are a known threat because they have access to Ripley's briefing.

Ripley's briefing did not come with any genetic data attached to it, so how would the biofilters identify them?

[Darth Wong]

Xenos are not that stealthy and there is no amount of stealth that justifies colonists not calling for help the moment the first chestbuster erupted.

Not stealthy? Not stealthy?

Did we see the same movies? How many instances of alien-sneaking-up-on-victim do I need to cite?

The environment is also extremely beneficial to the xenos, and poor for us. I think people have forgotten the attributes of the area they were in:

1) Noisy.
2) Hot, so infrared didn't work (a lot of people took that scene to mean that aliens are somehow invisible to infrared, but that doesn't make sense; they were probably just the same temperature as the environment).
3) Walls covered with alien secretions, into which the aliens blend easily.
4) Suspended steel walkways criss-crossing each other and above and below each other.
5) Short sight-lines.

This environment nullifies a lot of the advantages of a high-tech force, and makes it MUCH easier for the xenos to sneak up on people, rapidly jump up or down on them from other levels, etc.

[Ted C]

Okay, more specific - Star Trek TNG, Season 1 Episode 25, "Conspiracy". Admiral Quinn has a (macroscopic) alien parasite stuck in his neck, controlling him. He beams up to the Enterprise and the transporter neither detects nor removes the parasite. Hell, he even beams up to the ship with one of the creatures in a suitcase. Biofilters? Did squat.

The biofilters have a pattern of only removing known threats. The xeno-embryos, however, are a known threat because they have access to Ripley's briefing.

Ripley's briefing did not come with any genetic data attached to it, so how would the biofilters identify them?

Specimens found in the colony medlab would be sufficient, but Ripley's briefing would at least alert them that alien parasites gestating in human hosts are a threat to watch out for. Even if the biofilter didn't remove the parasite, the Federation team would at least know to scan anyone beamed up for one.

[Borgholio]

Ripley's briefing did not come with any genetic data attached to it, so how would the biofilters identify them?

A biofilter is also capable of detecting weapons that are carried by the subjects being transported. A weapon is obviously foreign and not one of the many micro-organisms found in a human body. A chestburster is basically a giant worm residing in the digestive tract...so DNA on file or not, I would suspect a biofilter would at least beep a warning to the transporter operator saying "Hey look at this, it doesn't appear to be normal...what do you want to do?"

Upon receiving the warning, the operator would look at his screen, see a virtual "x-ray" of the thing, and either filter it out or call the bridge for help before finishing transport.

[Darth Wong]

The biofilters have a pattern of only removing known threats. The xeno-embryos, however, are a known threat because they have access to Ripley's briefing.

Ripley's briefing did not come with any genetic data attached to it, so how would the biofilters identify them?

A biofilter is also capable of detecting weapons that are carried by the subjects being transported.

Again, only known weapons. Aliens have smuggled weapons through the transporter before, including bombs and a disassembled Klingon gun.

A weapon is obviously foreign and not one of the many micro-organisms found in a human body. A chestburster is basically a giant worm residing in the digestive tract...so DNA on file or not, I would suspect a biofilter would at least beep a warning to the transporter operator saying "Hey look at this, it doesn't appear to be normal...what do you want to do?"

Upon receiving the warning, the operator would look at his screen, see a virtual "x-ray" of the thing, and either filter it out or call the bridge for help before finishing transport.

They could scan the guy for a large foreign body in his chest cavity, but I still don't see why people assume the biofilter would remove it automatically.

[Galvatron]

Is evidence from Alien 3 admissible in this discussion?

[Ted C]

They could scan the guy for a large foreign body in his chest cavity, but I still don't see why people assume the biofilter would remove it automatically.

I think the biofilter would be capable of removing the parasite once it was programmed to do so. The question is whether it would need a tissue sample first. If a sample were needed, they wouldn't have one until they found the face-huggers in the colony medlab.

[Ted C]

Is evidence from Alien 3 admissible in this discussion?

As it pertains to xenomorph biology, I don't see why it wouldn't be.

[Borgholio]

Again, only known weapons. Aliens have smuggled weapons through the transporter before, including bombs and a disassembled Klingon gun.

Point.

They could scan the guy for a large foreign body in his chest cavity, but I still don't see why people assume the biofilter would remove it automatically.

I'm just going with the idea that plot devices aren't used to arbitrarily gimp one of the defining technologies of a particular series. I would expect that a large animal with different DNA and different physical makeup "embedded" in a human when there's never been any recorded case of that before (minus the Trill) would set off a red flag somewhere. You're probably right though, the biofilter might be set on "safe" mode and not give anybody any notice. Be kinda foolish I think though, given the kinds of bugs you can pick up in the normal ST universe.

It would make more sense to have the biofilter set like a modern antivirus system...maximum security but set exceptions for known programs and processes. Or in this case, known flora and fauna. If something new pops up, it would require the operator to tap a key and add the new specimen to the filter database, or pause the transport and get Sickbay or the command staff involved.

[Galvatron]

I'm not very savvy about transporter biofilters, but does it matter that even Ripley's cryotube was able to isolate and identify the queen embryo in her chest as foreign tissue?

[Borgholio]

I'm not very savvy about transporter biofilters, but does it matter that even Ripley's cryotube was able to isolate and identify the queen embryo in her chest as foreign tissue?

Different tech...it seemed to be more of an advanced x-ray machine than analyzing a person's molecular makeup while in the process of energy to matter conversion. Still though, that's kinda what I mean. There are some things that just aren't...normal...that should stand out at least as a warning to the transport operator.

[Baffalo]

I'm not very savvy about transporter biofilters, but does it matter that even Ripley's cryotube was able to isolate and identify the queen embryo in her chest as foreign tissue?

Different tech...it seemed to be more of an advanced x-ray machine than analyzing a person's molecular makeup while in the process of energy to matter conversion. Still though, that's kinda what I mean. There are some things that just aren't...normal...that should stand out at least as a warning to the transport operator.

I wonder if the filters would detect the super caustic acid that forms the aliens' blood, but that depends on what the transporter's looking for. I'm kinda torn on this because while Ripley would no doubt tell about the acid blood, would they have a sample to use? Or would they instead sample the strange substance and simulate it to find it super caustic and thus a sign of possible Xeno activity?

[Batman]

Given the massively inconsistent behavior of the biofilter throughout Trek I'm not sure there's a safe way to call it-either way.They may let the facehugger through, they may block it out, they may trigger a warning resulting in the transporter operator on duty going 'yeah, whatever' and just slapping the 'Override' button.

[RecklessPrudence]

Hell, it may result in a warning and the transporter operator going 'Gotta get those people out of there!' and overriding it. Starfleet personnel don't seem to consider storing someone in a pattern buffer as a viable means of even temporarily keeping them okay. Especially since, without Scotty's modifications, the pattern buffer seems to degrade in a matter of seconds - see the original movie.

Also, as to the Imperial Guard and Lasguns being puny, I seem to remember some calcs that put a lasgun shot at around a modern 20 or 30mm shell, when hitting unarmoured areas, since 40k's materials tech is so far advanced above their ranged weapons tech - that being why melee is such a viable option. Although the yield is selectable, so they should be able to turn a shot's power down to the point it doesn't blow the reactor and themselves to hell.

[PREDATOR490]

Xeno behaviour is anything but stealthy except when the plot caters to them. As mentioned, they stick to low light environments and shitty areas which play to their wall walking, crawl space jumping patterns but Xenos are anything but subtle.
From the moment the big obvious face spider slaps a poor bastard to the hole they get in the chest and inherrant blood and gore the colonists would have to be terminally stupid not to call for help and the longer the infestation took to overwhelm them, the more stupid it becomes.

Unless the Xenos got insanely lucky with disabling the comm system on day 1... I find it hilarious Aliens 3 had a penal colony able to call for help while the colonists did not. That said, the infestation had to have taken a decent amount of time to occur if we go with the assumption Newts dad was the initial carrier.
Even with an incubation period of hours - day, 158 colonists against 1 Xeno should not end up with an infestation like the one we saw.

[Simon_Jester]

The biofilter/chestburster thing can probably only be talked about in terms of probability- odds of things going well or poorly. It seems like we're looking at three outcomes that are likely and don't involve "durr, our equipment stopped working because we stuuupid..." The chestburster is really too big to miss for any machine that scans a target atom by atom and does the least bit of analysis.

One, biofilter spots big alien parasite and removes it on its own or with operator assistance.

Two, biofilter spots parasite, operator overrides, informs medical. Chestburster is now Dr. NotMcCoy's problem; that should end well.

Three, biofilter spots parasite, operator overrides, does not inform medical. This is only possible because a lot of Starfleet's professionalism is weaker than its technology.

My money is on two, three, and one in descending order of probability if we play this out as being "like a Star Trek episode." More like two, one, three if we imagine this happening without people randomly acting dumb for the sake of the plot.

[Skylon]

Unless the Xenos got insanely lucky with disabling the comm system on day 1... I find it hilarious Aliens 3 had a penal colony able to call for help while the colonists did not. That said, the infestation had to have taken a decent amount of time to occur if we go with the assumption Newts dad was the initial carrier.

Was the colony's transmitter damaged by the drop-ship crash or before the Marines arrived? Remember, Bishop had to go out there and manually operate it to remote pilot the second drop-ship.

In regards to communication, the colonists do have some lines about how long communications between Earth and LV-426 take, I forgot the numbers though.

I would have thought the colonists would have called Earth as soon as an alien organism latched onto the face of somebody, but given communication times they may have assumed it was pointless. The Colonists probably proceeded along the same train of thought as the Nostromo crew. When the first individual got chestburstered, they probably underestimated how long it took to grow and the situation deteriorated from there. The second or third chestburster was probably the Queen, so there would be at least one "warrior" around to protect the Queen while she grew and was able to establish a nest with eggs.