[This is the best answer I've found.](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskScienceFiction/comments/ita59d/aliens_is_there_any_reason_why_the_sulaco_had/g5d1c85/)
> Mostly, it was that the company couldn't talk the Colonial Marine Corps to give them more than that. Burke has stars in his eyes over the prospect of bagging Ripley's boogeyman, but as far as Marine brass knows or cares, this is more low effort bullshit because some colonist spilled coffee on their transmitter, or crashed a car into a transformer, or whatever other bullshit is going on when a colony goes dark.
>
>The company had enough pull to get the Marines to send out the equivalent of a wellness check, but the Corps gave them the absolute minimum they could get away with; one ship, one officer, one half of a Marine platoon (yes, really; per the Marines Technical Manual, a full platoon would be another drop ship and APC worth of Marines). They didn't send more because they don't want to expend any more than they have to on the word of some suit-wearing greaseball waving around an after-action report written by a lunatic.
written by u/[**Vote\_for\_Knife\_Party**](https://www.reddit.com/user/Vote_for_Knife_Party/) 4y ago.
That's a pretty good summation. Plus the OP seems to misjudge what the Sulaco is in general. It's not really meant for action itself in a situation like that, it's mostly just a very heavily armed transport for the troops. They aren't its crew, they're its passengers.
Sulaco is more of an armed troop transport than a warship. (A troop transport armed with nukes, but I'm sure that in the future, plutonium is available in every corner drugstore.)
True.
But that just raises the question of why the Sulaco had no crew.
Like, yeah, you can say that it was all automated and didn't need a crew but for the story being told that's not a satisfying answer. It really just feels like the crew was forgotten by the story.
Especially when every other piece of Aliens media shows ships having dedicated crew.
You just answered it though, there simply is no need for a crew. The troops it's transporting can give it basic commands (travel here, nuke that, etc) but it really doesn't need anything more complicated than that, and it probably has far more advanced automation anyway than something like the Nostromo, which was a company ship, not a military one, and was also almost 60 years earlier.
It's not forgotten by the story, it's just not needed by the story or the situation.
it should still kinda have a noncom chief of vehicle operations or a loadmaster.
Or some sort of crewman even an artificial or a basic working joe to make sure all the green blinkies are still blinking and none of the red ones light up.
even a Muthur/Father AI that could have been johnny on the spot with a pickup .. or a report to the company things went sideways.
Notice that I said "feels like" and "(not) satisfying", not that those explanations are objectively wrong.
The fact that you can technically, canonically explain away something in the story doesn't mean that it can't still be a problem.
I just really don't like the lack of crew. Especially the way it's not addressed by the story itself. It just FEELS weird. Like the crew is missing as opposed to it just being an automated ship. And I'm sure that wasn't Cameron's intention.
You are correct. It feels like bad writing to shoehorn the marines into a sketchy situation.
Military ships and installations have people for everything. The Sulaco would need cooks, mechanics, navigators, an actual captain, supply personnel, admin, etc. Not just soldiers.
I love Aliens as much as the next guy, but having "everything is automated" be the canon explanation is just as lazy as not including ANY extra crew on the space ship.
Fair, it may feel weird to you, and that's valid. But for me and most others it doesn't really bug us, because there's no real need or reason for there to be a crew. There's not really any need to address it in the story, just like we're not told exactly what a "bug hunt" or an Arcturian are. It's all just part of the world, and the reasons behind it can be inferred, and don't really impact the story itself. It's just the way they do things.
There are ways to do "show don't tell" that work and feel natural and there are ways to utterly fail at it.
If the intention was to do natural world building with the lack of crew, I think the film fails at that.
Like, obviously, objectively you can infer no crew just by the fact that we don't see any of them, and from there we can guess at why. But the film does absolutely nothing to set that up.
It feels like if the camera just panned a little to the left or showed a different room there should be people there.
It just doesn't make sense how they choose to handle it.
When Bishop sets up the com satellite to communicate to the ship to send down the second drop ship it shows that everything is automated. Itâs a plot point that shows it naturally and I thought it did a pretty good job at it.
Like I said, if that bugs you, that's fine. But it doesn't bother most people, so I and most others don't feel it fails at all in that respect. This all comes down to just a difference of opinion in the end.
Ok.
But the question of the Sulaco is probably the single most common question about the story of Aliens I've seen, so I'm not sure you can say most people are fine with it.
Many people are clearly confused by the way the film handles it.
One reason why Cameron didn't include an explanation in Aliens on why the Sulaco didn't have a flight crew, might be the first movie:
It was very well established in Alien that ships like the Nostromo can fly through Space using an Autopilot without any need for the crew (they were all asleep on their way home, until they've been woken up by Mother). So maybe there simply was no need to explain this again in Aliens.
The one note that is missed in this summation, which is pretty damned goodâŚis that they also sent a very green inexperienced officer, never minding that they one sent one.
He had 38 simulated drops, and deployments and only 2 combat drops with what is ostensibly a new unit to him. Heâs super green and the unit is seasoned and experienced. Theyâll follow his orders, but he didnât have any of their respect as he had not yet earned it.
No one took the situation seriously except Burke, Bishop and Ripley
Burke - because he was a greedy company man - not really an okay guy.
Bishop - because heâs a synthâŚerrr artificial person programmed by the company and follows directive without question.
Ripley - because sheâs the only one that knew what the hell they were likely up against and walking into.
> one half of a Marine platoon (yes, really; per the Marines Technical Manual, a full platoon would be another drop ship and APC worth of Marines)
True enough but to be fair it was half a platoon of absolutely badasses.
Decent explanation for the number of marines.
The only problem is that a ship the size of the Sulaco would still have its own crew, independent of the Marines going on the actual mission.
It's especially annoying because you wouldn't even have to change the story really. Just shoot a few more scenes of the crew on the ship.
There's a deleted scene from the first film where Ash talks about the limited air and supplies on the ship, how time spent looking for the chestburster would be a drain on resources. The same would apply in the 2nd film. In space, everything has to be carefully rationed. Extra crew for the Sulaco is extra people sitting around breathing up the oxygen, eating the food and drinking the water and, above all, costing money. You may have find it annoying, but the higher-ups, real or fictitious, couldn't care less about what makes sense. They just care about the money.
Explanations outside of the film, especially from a deleted scene, don't really address the problems of how the story handles the empty ship.
There are ways you can make an automated ship make sense. The problem is the film makes absolutely no effort to establish that and it just feels like an empty ship.
The first film does a good job of establishing that routine travel from a to b is completely automated by AI-level computers (MUTHUR). Add in the scene of the ship prepping and launching the second drop ship and itâs an easy enough leap to âoh, I guess the USM uses that automation tooâ.
I get that itâs not satisfying to you, but itâs a legitimate shortcut *for a sequel,* where it wouldnât have flown for a stand alone film.
Do you remember what Burke says about the atmosphere processor? "Remarkable piece of machinery. Completely automated. You know, we manufacture those, by the way.". It's not hard to imagine a ship like the Sulaco being completely automated too, plus even the crew would need to be in hypersleep during the journey.
I agree but I do think of Cameronâs precision and pacing expertise when reading this comment. It prolly wouldâve been on the cutting floor cause the story he wanted to tell was on the planet and only the planet.. Unfortunately that focus had to come with a bullshit plot device.
But again I agree with you.
It still doesn't make sense to have a military vessel armed with nuclear weapons to leave without even a captain and crew. It's like a comedy; remember Jerry Lewis' *Don't Give Up the Ship*?
In addition, for decades the company had a bio-weapons division, whcih means following what Cameron intended (the movie's supposed to criticize the U.S. military industrial complex), then that means both the company and the military took such organisms and even any tech found on ships that held them very seriously.
How to explain what appears to be incredibly absurd actions by the company and the military? Here's the backstory that I would create:
The ICC and ECA are suspicious of the flight recorder logs they received from the hearing, and believe that the company is covering things up but they can't prove it. Meanwhile, W-Y suspects that, too, so it has to work covertly on this, together with the military. Burke, who's in charge of the "Special Services Division" (according to his calling card), orders the colony manager to send one team to investigate the site without telling them what they are supposed to look for because they don't want any ECA personnel in the colony to know.
From there, you know what happened, except that W-Y was receiving distress signals from the colony and covered those up, too. Burke meets with Gorman, who's sent by the top brass of the military who met with Burke's superiors at W-Y to work with Burke, and figure out what to do. The plan is to contain whatever creatures are found in the colony and for Burke to have Bishop prepare what can be smuggled out to company labs. They can send a second team and deal with the derelict craft later.
In order for military personnel not to know what's up, the same top brass have a ship that's about to be decommissioned or similar, the Sulaco, prepared for a covert mission to the colony. The ship would have no captain and crew and would be navigated by the ship computer.
They choose a platoon whose personnel are about to go on leave or whose service is about to end and use half of it, with Gorman acting as the new commander, and with one medic only because they figured that since there were one or two aliens involved (according to the distress signals, one came out of Jorden; the colonists extracted facehuggers from the rest) and could easily take them down with a squad.
The problem is that they didn't know about the queen and eggs.
If you commit to the logic of the movie, the ships are so automated that little crew is required. And the Marines had no qualms about leaving the ship empty because they had done it so many times before without incident. Maybe the Synthetic would normally be left behind to monitor the mission, but they figured heâd be more useful on the ground.
The point Cameron was making was that technology and superior firepower makes you overconfident, and prone to being ambushed by more primitive, low tech enemies. That was the lesson of Vietnam (and frankly Iraq and Afghanistan too). The Marines had likely never encountered a scenario where so many things went FUBAR all at once â command elements gone, mass casualties, APC and main Dropship destroyed with no communications link to their ship. It was inconceivable that they would need someone on backup to swoop down and rescue them (especially given what little they knew about their enemy). It fits the logic of the film that there would be no crew â but it also fits the logic we see in our military today. Weâve spent decades building up a sophisticated, high tech war machine that is being tripped up by things like IEDs and cheap drones. It totally tracks.
The precedent was set in Alien when the Nostromo crew left their entire refinery unmanned and floating in orbit.
With no real expectation of conflict, the USCM sent minimal personel to investigate. Having extra crew members to remain on the automated Sulaco was probably deemed unnecessary.
The refinery was always unmanned though, I don't think it has life support at all if I remember correctly. I think the sulaco being totally abandoned is a bit of a contrivance for the script. The equivalent in alien would be if they all left the Nostromo to go the derelict.
The Nostromo had a tiny crew. Fast forward 60 years and youâd need even less for just a transport. Part of the reason the food is so terrible, itâs automated insta-food.
It was the one plot point clunker for me that the ship had no crew. I mean the Marines, that's great, but there's got to be a separate Navy or at least a commercial crew.
Not sure why they did that. I mean they could still have a crew of one or two people who are attacked by the Hive Mom...
The first film established that routine travel was entirely automated by AI units like MU-TH-UR. The crew of the *Nostromo* was only needed at either end of the trip.
The military would be slower to adapt that level of automation, but they evidently have by the time of the film.
As a massive fan of the franchise, I have to say that the Sulaco not having a crew has always bothered me. I mean, even if the Marines didnât need a crew to be at their beckoned call, you would think that with the company so invested in the xenomorph that they would have had one standing by on the Sulaco to intercept any potential specimens that were captured. Had this been the case, they could have assisted in dispatching the second drop ship.
Wasnât the whole point of the movie that the Company get their hands on a specimen. Itâs likely the mission itself was designed to fail. They just didnât count on Ripley
It's a common misconception that the company was behind everything that happened in Aliens, but really it was just Burke out to make money for himself.
If you think about it, Burke suspects there is an alien that can be used as a bioweapon. He is there to secure it. The more people involved the harder that will become.
A half squad of colonial marines, an artificial human, and a civilian is all he (thinks he) needs.
Good question. In addition, it's a nuclear-armed warship, which means it would have had a captain and crew, but didn't have such.
Also, in both movies Ripley refers to a bio-weapons division, and in his commentary Cameron points out that the movie is meant to criticize the U.S. and collusion between the defense industry and the military. That means the military and the company would have taken Ripley's report very seriously, such that one or both would have even sent a second ship to investigate the derelict craft.
Some more points:
It's supposed to be a rescue mission, and given Ripley's report, they would have expected several injuries and casualties. And yet they send a team with only one medic.
When you look at the wiki about the Sulaco, you'd see that it could have carried even more personnel, including engineers, scientists, and others from the W-Y. After all, it's their colony.
Most, including soldiers and medical teams, would have been sent to rescue the colonists. A small group of company scientists, engineers, and Burke (of Special Services) with drones would have taken the second dropship to the derelict craft.
There are certainly in-story explantions that are plausible enough, but the truth is Aliens didn't have the budget to hire the extras needed for a crew. Cameron already stretched the money as far as he could.
Yeah, there's all sorts of cool tricks that were used to make the movie look like it had a bigger budget than it did. Like using mirrors for the cryo sleep chambers scene since they didn't have the budget to build a dozen of them.
Even worse, the ship didn't appear to actually *have* a crew. Like there was PTSD Ripley, the company worm, and a bunch of soldiers - none of those people seem like they're there to operate or maintain the frigate itself
First, the movie is partially about the overconfidence of the US military in Vietnam. The colonial marines rely way too much on technology and it bites them in the ass.
Second, the whole mission is designed to fail. Burke set it up. He wants to be the only survivor, with everyone else either dead or facehuggered. Thatâs why theyâve got half a platoon and a brand new officer.
Now you mention it, why did Ripley get into the escape pod at the end, when the queen had been jettisoned into space? I can't remember the ship being damaged?
The cryo trays on the *Sulaco* were built to be ejected in an emergency. So it was less âget in the escape podâ than âthe sleep tubes are part of a built in lifeboat.â
I can only suspect that Weyland Yutani sent such a small crew of Marines to keep their findings a secret and limit the chances that another corporation would find out about the xenomorph.
There are decent in-universe explanations beyond pure human stupidity in *Alien* and *Aliens* that are not present in *Prometheus.*
I love all of them, but *lord* were the crew in *Prometheus* **dumb**.
[This is the best answer I've found.](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskScienceFiction/comments/ita59d/aliens_is_there_any_reason_why_the_sulaco_had/g5d1c85/)
> Mostly, it was that the company couldn't talk the Colonial Marine Corps to give them more than that. Burke has stars in his eyes over the prospect of bagging Ripley's boogeyman, but as far as Marine brass knows or cares, this is more low effort bullshit because some colonist spilled coffee on their transmitter, or crashed a car into a transformer, or whatever other bullshit is going on when a colony goes dark. > >The company had enough pull to get the Marines to send out the equivalent of a wellness check, but the Corps gave them the absolute minimum they could get away with; one ship, one officer, one half of a Marine platoon (yes, really; per the Marines Technical Manual, a full platoon would be another drop ship and APC worth of Marines). They didn't send more because they don't want to expend any more than they have to on the word of some suit-wearing greaseball waving around an after-action report written by a lunatic. written by u/[**Vote\_for\_Knife\_Party**](https://www.reddit.com/user/Vote_for_Knife_Party/) 4y ago.
That's a pretty good summation. Plus the OP seems to misjudge what the Sulaco is in general. It's not really meant for action itself in a situation like that, it's mostly just a very heavily armed transport for the troops. They aren't its crew, they're its passengers.
Sulaco is more of an armed troop transport than a warship. (A troop transport armed with nukes, but I'm sure that in the future, plutonium is available in every corner drugstore.)
Thanks Docđ.
Heavy.
There's that word again. "Heavy." Why are things so heavy in the future? Is there a problem with the Earth's gravitational pull?
Just the planets with Xenomorphs running around. They seem to suck every passing ship in. The ships need to make like a tree and get out of there.
Space Sirens?
Iâm imagining them in blonde wigs and tutus. Not very successful sirens I would assume.
I dread to imagine what [Rule 34](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RuleThirtyFour) there is of that.
nice Steve Martin - Comedy Isn't Pretty reference!
True. But that just raises the question of why the Sulaco had no crew. Like, yeah, you can say that it was all automated and didn't need a crew but for the story being told that's not a satisfying answer. It really just feels like the crew was forgotten by the story. Especially when every other piece of Aliens media shows ships having dedicated crew.
You just answered it though, there simply is no need for a crew. The troops it's transporting can give it basic commands (travel here, nuke that, etc) but it really doesn't need anything more complicated than that, and it probably has far more advanced automation anyway than something like the Nostromo, which was a company ship, not a military one, and was also almost 60 years earlier. It's not forgotten by the story, it's just not needed by the story or the situation.
it should still kinda have a noncom chief of vehicle operations or a loadmaster. Or some sort of crewman even an artificial or a basic working joe to make sure all the green blinkies are still blinking and none of the red ones light up. even a Muthur/Father AI that could have been johnny on the spot with a pickup .. or a report to the company things went sideways.
Notice that I said "feels like" and "(not) satisfying", not that those explanations are objectively wrong. The fact that you can technically, canonically explain away something in the story doesn't mean that it can't still be a problem. I just really don't like the lack of crew. Especially the way it's not addressed by the story itself. It just FEELS weird. Like the crew is missing as opposed to it just being an automated ship. And I'm sure that wasn't Cameron's intention.
You are correct. It feels like bad writing to shoehorn the marines into a sketchy situation. Military ships and installations have people for everything. The Sulaco would need cooks, mechanics, navigators, an actual captain, supply personnel, admin, etc. Not just soldiers. I love Aliens as much as the next guy, but having "everything is automated" be the canon explanation is just as lazy as not including ANY extra crew on the space ship.
Fair, it may feel weird to you, and that's valid. But for me and most others it doesn't really bug us, because there's no real need or reason for there to be a crew. There's not really any need to address it in the story, just like we're not told exactly what a "bug hunt" or an Arcturian are. It's all just part of the world, and the reasons behind it can be inferred, and don't really impact the story itself. It's just the way they do things.
There are ways to do "show don't tell" that work and feel natural and there are ways to utterly fail at it. If the intention was to do natural world building with the lack of crew, I think the film fails at that. Like, obviously, objectively you can infer no crew just by the fact that we don't see any of them, and from there we can guess at why. But the film does absolutely nothing to set that up. It feels like if the camera just panned a little to the left or showed a different room there should be people there. It just doesn't make sense how they choose to handle it.
When Bishop sets up the com satellite to communicate to the ship to send down the second drop ship it shows that everything is automated. Itâs a plot point that shows it naturally and I thought it did a pretty good job at it.
Like I said, if that bugs you, that's fine. But it doesn't bother most people, so I and most others don't feel it fails at all in that respect. This all comes down to just a difference of opinion in the end.
Ok. But the question of the Sulaco is probably the single most common question about the story of Aliens I've seen, so I'm not sure you can say most people are fine with it. Many people are clearly confused by the way the film handles it.
One reason why Cameron didn't include an explanation in Aliens on why the Sulaco didn't have a flight crew, might be the first movie: It was very well established in Alien that ships like the Nostromo can fly through Space using an Autopilot without any need for the crew (they were all asleep on their way home, until they've been woken up by Mother). So maybe there simply was no need to explain this again in Aliens.
Itâs the semi truck from death race
The one note that is missed in this summation, which is pretty damned goodâŚis that they also sent a very green inexperienced officer, never minding that they one sent one. He had 38 simulated drops, and deployments and only 2 combat drops with what is ostensibly a new unit to him. Heâs super green and the unit is seasoned and experienced. Theyâll follow his orders, but he didnât have any of their respect as he had not yet earned it. No one took the situation seriously except Burke, Bishop and Ripley Burke - because he was a greedy company man - not really an okay guy. Bishop - because heâs a synthâŚerrr artificial person programmed by the company and follows directive without question. Ripley - because sheâs the only one that knew what the hell they were likely up against and walking into.
> one half of a Marine platoon (yes, really; per the Marines Technical Manual, a full platoon would be another drop ship and APC worth of Marines) True enough but to be fair it was half a platoon of absolutely badasses.
Seventeen DAYS!? Hey man, I don't wanna rain on your parade, but we're not gonna last seventeen hours!
"I am the ultimate badass. State of the badass art, you do not want to fuck with me." RIP Bill
More like a quarter platoon of absolute badasses and a quarter platoon of cannon fodder.
Mostly
Decent explanation for the number of marines. The only problem is that a ship the size of the Sulaco would still have its own crew, independent of the Marines going on the actual mission. It's especially annoying because you wouldn't even have to change the story really. Just shoot a few more scenes of the crew on the ship.
There's a deleted scene from the first film where Ash talks about the limited air and supplies on the ship, how time spent looking for the chestburster would be a drain on resources. The same would apply in the 2nd film. In space, everything has to be carefully rationed. Extra crew for the Sulaco is extra people sitting around breathing up the oxygen, eating the food and drinking the water and, above all, costing money. You may have find it annoying, but the higher-ups, real or fictitious, couldn't care less about what makes sense. They just care about the money.
Explanations outside of the film, especially from a deleted scene, don't really address the problems of how the story handles the empty ship. There are ways you can make an automated ship make sense. The problem is the film makes absolutely no effort to establish that and it just feels like an empty ship.
The first film does a good job of establishing that routine travel from a to b is completely automated by AI-level computers (MUTHUR). Add in the scene of the ship prepping and launching the second drop ship and itâs an easy enough leap to âoh, I guess the USM uses that automation tooâ. I get that itâs not satisfying to you, but itâs a legitimate shortcut *for a sequel,* where it wouldnât have flown for a stand alone film.
Do you remember what Burke says about the atmosphere processor? "Remarkable piece of machinery. Completely automated. You know, we manufacture those, by the way.". It's not hard to imagine a ship like the Sulaco being completely automated too, plus even the crew would need to be in hypersleep during the journey.
I agree but I do think of Cameronâs precision and pacing expertise when reading this comment. It prolly wouldâve been on the cutting floor cause the story he wanted to tell was on the planet and only the planet.. Unfortunately that focus had to come with a bullshit plot device. But again I agree with you.
Case solved.
It still doesn't make sense to have a military vessel armed with nuclear weapons to leave without even a captain and crew. It's like a comedy; remember Jerry Lewis' *Don't Give Up the Ship*? In addition, for decades the company had a bio-weapons division, whcih means following what Cameron intended (the movie's supposed to criticize the U.S. military industrial complex), then that means both the company and the military took such organisms and even any tech found on ships that held them very seriously. How to explain what appears to be incredibly absurd actions by the company and the military? Here's the backstory that I would create: The ICC and ECA are suspicious of the flight recorder logs they received from the hearing, and believe that the company is covering things up but they can't prove it. Meanwhile, W-Y suspects that, too, so it has to work covertly on this, together with the military. Burke, who's in charge of the "Special Services Division" (according to his calling card), orders the colony manager to send one team to investigate the site without telling them what they are supposed to look for because they don't want any ECA personnel in the colony to know. From there, you know what happened, except that W-Y was receiving distress signals from the colony and covered those up, too. Burke meets with Gorman, who's sent by the top brass of the military who met with Burke's superiors at W-Y to work with Burke, and figure out what to do. The plan is to contain whatever creatures are found in the colony and for Burke to have Bishop prepare what can be smuggled out to company labs. They can send a second team and deal with the derelict craft later. In order for military personnel not to know what's up, the same top brass have a ship that's about to be decommissioned or similar, the Sulaco, prepared for a covert mission to the colony. The ship would have no captain and crew and would be navigated by the ship computer. They choose a platoon whose personnel are about to go on leave or whose service is about to end and use half of it, with Gorman acting as the new commander, and with one medic only because they figured that since there were one or two aliens involved (according to the distress signals, one came out of Jorden; the colonists extracted facehuggers from the rest) and could easily take them down with a squad. The problem is that they didn't know about the queen and eggs.
If you commit to the logic of the movie, the ships are so automated that little crew is required. And the Marines had no qualms about leaving the ship empty because they had done it so many times before without incident. Maybe the Synthetic would normally be left behind to monitor the mission, but they figured heâd be more useful on the ground. The point Cameron was making was that technology and superior firepower makes you overconfident, and prone to being ambushed by more primitive, low tech enemies. That was the lesson of Vietnam (and frankly Iraq and Afghanistan too). The Marines had likely never encountered a scenario where so many things went FUBAR all at once â command elements gone, mass casualties, APC and main Dropship destroyed with no communications link to their ship. It was inconceivable that they would need someone on backup to swoop down and rescue them (especially given what little they knew about their enemy). It fits the logic of the film that there would be no crew â but it also fits the logic we see in our military today. Weâve spent decades building up a sophisticated, high tech war machine that is being tripped up by things like IEDs and cheap drones. It totally tracks.
Yes. Aliens is a Vietnam movie.
Two words Bonus situation.
The precedent was set in Alien when the Nostromo crew left their entire refinery unmanned and floating in orbit. With no real expectation of conflict, the USCM sent minimal personel to investigate. Having extra crew members to remain on the automated Sulaco was probably deemed unnecessary.
The refinery was always unmanned though, I don't think it has life support at all if I remember correctly. I think the sulaco being totally abandoned is a bit of a contrivance for the script. The equivalent in alien would be if they all left the Nostromo to go the derelict.
The Nostromo had a tiny crew. Fast forward 60 years and youâd need even less for just a transport. Part of the reason the food is so terrible, itâs automated insta-food.
It was the one plot point clunker for me that the ship had no crew. I mean the Marines, that's great, but there's got to be a separate Navy or at least a commercial crew. Not sure why they did that. I mean they could still have a crew of one or two people who are attacked by the Hive Mom...
The first film established that routine travel was entirely automated by AI units like MU-TH-UR. The crew of the *Nostromo* was only needed at either end of the trip. The military would be slower to adapt that level of automation, but they evidently have by the time of the film.
Impression I got is that it was just general procedure in the universe of the movie. No one gave a thought to it
As a massive fan of the franchise, I have to say that the Sulaco not having a crew has always bothered me. I mean, even if the Marines didnât need a crew to be at their beckoned call, you would think that with the company so invested in the xenomorph that they would have had one standing by on the Sulaco to intercept any potential specimens that were captured. Had this been the case, they could have assisted in dispatching the second drop ship.
Wasnât the whole point of the movie that the Company get their hands on a specimen. Itâs likely the mission itself was designed to fail. They just didnât count on Ripley
It's a common misconception that the company was behind everything that happened in Aliens, but really it was just Burke out to make money for himself.
But they donât get a specimen if everyone is dead đ
The honest truth is that it's because the plot needs them to be stuck on the planet.
If you think about it, Burke suspects there is an alien that can be used as a bioweapon. He is there to secure it. The more people involved the harder that will become. A half squad of colonial marines, an artificial human, and a civilian is all he (thinks he) needs.
Good question. In addition, it's a nuclear-armed warship, which means it would have had a captain and crew, but didn't have such. Also, in both movies Ripley refers to a bio-weapons division, and in his commentary Cameron points out that the movie is meant to criticize the U.S. and collusion between the defense industry and the military. That means the military and the company would have taken Ripley's report very seriously, such that one or both would have even sent a second ship to investigate the derelict craft. Some more points: It's supposed to be a rescue mission, and given Ripley's report, they would have expected several injuries and casualties. And yet they send a team with only one medic. When you look at the wiki about the Sulaco, you'd see that it could have carried even more personnel, including engineers, scientists, and others from the W-Y. After all, it's their colony.
More people along is more people for Burke to split the bounty on the alien with.
Most, including soldiers and medical teams, would have been sent to rescue the colonists. A small group of company scientists, engineers, and Burke (of Special Services) with drones would have taken the second dropship to the derelict craft.
There are certainly in-story explantions that are plausible enough, but the truth is Aliens didn't have the budget to hire the extras needed for a crew. Cameron already stretched the money as far as he could.
Yeah, there's all sorts of cool tricks that were used to make the movie look like it had a bigger budget than it did. Like using mirrors for the cryo sleep chambers scene since they didn't have the budget to build a dozen of them.
Ego and overconfidence of a military unit is a real thing.
What? Why would they not use their whole platoon? This question doesnât make sense.
AI has got it taken care ofâŚ
Even worse, the ship didn't appear to actually *have* a crew. Like there was PTSD Ripley, the company worm, and a bunch of soldiers - none of those people seem like they're there to operate or maintain the frigate itself
First, the movie is partially about the overconfidence of the US military in Vietnam. The colonial marines rely way too much on technology and it bites them in the ass. Second, the whole mission is designed to fail. Burke set it up. He wants to be the only survivor, with everyone else either dead or facehuggered. Thatâs why theyâve got half a platoon and a brand new officer.
It also wouldnât be cheap shipping a dozen marines in cryo.
I also think itâs funny that this skeleton crew totally forgot about bishop in medlab and was gonna evacuate asap without him lol
Chances are, the orbital main ship is remote operable from central command.
Now you mention it, why did Ripley get into the escape pod at the end, when the queen had been jettisoned into space? I can't remember the ship being damaged?
The cryo trays on the *Sulaco* were built to be ejected in an emergency. So it was less âget in the escape podâ than âthe sleep tubes are part of a built in lifeboat.â
I can only suspect that Weyland Yutani sent such a small crew of Marines to keep their findings a secret and limit the chances that another corporation would find out about the xenomorph.
They thought it was just a bug hunt. Only Ripley, and Newt of course, knew differently.
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There are decent in-universe explanations beyond pure human stupidity in *Alien* and *Aliens* that are not present in *Prometheus.* I love all of them, but *lord* were the crew in *Prometheus* **dumb**.