What if the Nostromo crew had never gone into the egg pit? It would be scary enough to learn humans are not alone in the universe while on that huge scary ship. If someone had said "let's not go down there, it might be dangerous", what then? I am sure WY would have learned the location of the derelict ship once the Nostromo crew returned safely. WY could then send its own scientific and mercenary teams to the ship secretly.
shareThey seem to go down there on account of finding out more about what happened on the ship - but also out of fear of losing their salary if they are not thorough enough on their investigation! WY would say - you didn't do enough, so no money for you... So no matter how scary it was to go down there, they kinda had to send someone. Kane is of course volunteers for the task, as he was the first to say he is going out to explore the planetoid as well.
"I am sure WY would have learned the location of the derelict ship once the Nostromo crew returned safely. WY could then send its own scientific and mercenary teams to the ship secretly."
There is no proof in the movie, but we can infer that the company knew more about the signal and its source than they initially let on. Special Order 937 explicitly mentions "specimen", so they knew there is an organism involved - and that's exactly what they wanted to bring back to Earth.
I always subscribed to the theory that this is a conspiracy inside WY, an off the books operation to plant Ash on board, reroute the Nostromo (to have them cross the path of the signal), and pretend they accidentally received the alien transmission. So at your second point, I'd say no. They can't send their own scientific and mercenary teams secretly, since that would involve too many people in the conspiracy. It would seem suspicious if they reassigned full teams to this task, not to mention that would have cost money, and if it pans out to be nothing useful, it's a loss, even if it was done in secret. Doubly so, as the suits then have to explain themselves and take responsibility on where all that money went...
No, it makes sense that they would send an untrained crew to make it look like they accidentally stumbled upon the signal and send them to investigate - for free. Added bonus is that if the crew finds nothing useful, WY can even gain money by withholding their salary! :-))
Thanks for the detailed answer, I enjoyed reading it.
shareLet me add two bonus facts which I originally wanted to, but hit the gorram character limit.
1. The novelization supports the outline I presented in the previous post. In the book when they re-activate Ash's head, he goes into detail about how much the Company knew. It is revealed that they deciphered the content of the signal, and they knew the signal was a warning well before they decided to involve the Nostromo in their plot. Also, the signal contained a brief story about how the Space Jockeys found the eggs on this planetoid, how it slaughtered the crew and how the signal itself is a warning. The novelization is a good read anyways and has some other extra scenes included which go into more detail about certain points in the plot.
2. The boardroom scene in Aliens also supports the idea of a conspiracy inside WY. Likely all traces of Special Order 937, Ash's programming and the rerouting of the Nostromo were wiped from company records, as the boardroom guys could not find anything in support of Ripley's claims. Even though it's not spelled out in the original film, Cameron came to the same conclusion, that this event was orchestrated by a handful of conspirators who failed 57 years prior, and they abandoned their plans (i.e.: did not send scientific / mercenary teams to LV-426, did not reroute another ship) and covered their tracks to not raise suspicion.
Fascinating info. . .thx. It's just too bad the subsequent movies made such a mess of the backstory. They events in Covenant & Prometheus require truly torturous abuses of logic to make any of this make sense.
Ah well.
Uhhhh, don't get me started on Pro and Covenant... Their greatest sin is plot structure and filming style. Ridley Scott seems to have forgotten everything that made his original film great, and settled for worn-out, tired cliches. Also, he destroyed the Space Jockey mythology in the process. Yaaay...
The saddest thing about these movies is that they were directed by Scott himself. Baffling to see how he fell from grace.
I think that theory makes a lot of sense. This crew was 'expendable' per the Special Order, so WY personnel figured it was no big loss if they crew died while collecting the specimen. But - I doubt WY realized how dangerous the Xenomorph actually was. If Nostromo had returned with a live specimen aboard, it would have been difficult to actually use it for biological warfare.
shareInteresting to speculate on what happens if the mission is a "success".
I think the best case scenario for the WY conspirators would be if the crew finds a way to safely handle the alien, and they bring it back to Earth.
A slightly worse case is if some crew members die, but the rest can contain the alien. Oh well, they were expendable anyways.
A slightly worse case is if all crew members die, but Ash remains functional and found a way to contain the alien.
A much worse case is if all crew members are dead, Ash remains functional but could not find a way to safely contain the alien. He is still there to give advice on the approach however before the WY crew steps foot on the ship.
The worst case scenario is if all crew members die and Ash is incapacitated / destroyed. In that case, the WY crew is on its own when boarding the ship, as the alien is running rampant on it. Possibly even two of them, if Brett is morphed into an egg, and Dallas is facehugged... There is a very real possibility of massive loss of life until the aliens are contained somehow. Of course if it's eventually contained, it's still a win for the conspirators, as they aren't really bothered by casualties.
i assume if the crew returned empty-handed (or faced) Ash would've found some excuse to gather the evidence
share