Could the Derelict from LV-426 still be intact?

A friend and I were discussing how we would have made an AVP flick. He likes the theme from the old comic, with the cattle ranchers on the dusty colony, the Japanese female administrator, broken tusk, etc. I had an idea where the "the company", scientists, media and a batallion of soldiers go back to LV-426 about 2 years after Alien 3 to investigate the derelict ship, and find that Predators have turned the place into a hunting ground. Chaos ensues from there.

My friend believes that the derelict was vaporized by the reactor explosion, but I think it survived. We don't really get an idea of how far away Newt's family is when they find the ship, and we certainly don't know anything about the ship's material or construction. If it were more than a hundred miles or so from the colony, there's every reason to believe it's still standing, with thousands of eggs still in perfect stasis.

So, whatcha think? I like the idea. Of course, it would negate the existence of Alien Resurrection, but it's no big loss in my book.

 

it sounds interesting. i don't know exactly if the derelict ship was destroyed in the blast. i think it's implied in the movie with the blast but i'm not sure if it was brought up in EU.

 

I always thought about it. We actually pitched a prequel to alien where we were actually on the Derelict and the end of the movie ended with the space ship crashing.

But i think that i they were to revisit the old ship, it's possible that it still has some juice in it.

dkt

 

i've wondered about that, too. how far away was the ship to the colony?
maybe Bishop II & marnies show up, Preds are there, and mix it up.
THAT shoulda coulda woulda been a better AvP!

 

The Aliens Technical Manual says yes, as it was protected from the blast by mountains between it and the colony. Later there is a transcript of a Company expedition to LV-426 to the derelict site where an "accident" is arranged.

However, its canonical status is uncertain. After Alien Resurrection[/i was released and revealed Weyland-Yutani was folded up we can safely assume the Company got no more xenomorph specimens.

 

It is possible that it was shielded by the mountains from the explosion. But with Alien Resurrection saying that there were no more specimens which it why they have to through the whole cloning thing it would seem to imply that it was destroyed or at least that there were no more eggs left.

 

Yeah, the fourth movie really jacked it up.

 

Yep..

 

Eh... Just ret-con the "Alien" story, to solve that issue. I may be one of the few that defends "Alien Resurrection", but this thread's story possibility sounds the more interesting.

 

Well, yeah, 4 was not the story i'd hope for. The casting was great!
(except Ryder )



IMO they should have cloned Hudson

 

There's no point in taking that seriously as the entire plot arc was to bring Ripley back, not the Alien.

 

If you ignore Alien4 and say it was dream or whatever, you could go in any direction you want. But if you're actually trying to fit it into movie continuity you have to accept the plot point that alien eggs are very hard to find implying the ship was destroyed or plundered already or they wouldn't have to clone anything.

 

Alien Resurrection takes place a hundred years or more after Alien 3. That's plenty of time to explain exactly why there are no more Alien specimens left, and why they had to clone Ripley to get one.

They could do lots of story after Alien 3 and still leave Resurrection as part of the continuity. I would like to see what happened to the Derelict, myself. They're pretty positive in Resurrection that there are no more Aliens.. why are they so sure? At some point, they would've HAD to go back to LV-426, at least to check it out.

 

I agree. Weyland Yutani seemed pretty determined to get an Alien specimen, at any cost. I don't see how they would've left the situation alone if it were at all possible that the Derelict still existed, and they really have no idea. But, how much knowledge do the folks on Earth have about what happened on LV-426? I would assume that Bishop or Ripley would have sent some sort of "mission failed, coming home" transmission before going into stasis sleep on the Sulaco. Earth doesn't hear from them again until the penal colony alerts them that Ripley is with them, right?

 

It's never explained in the movies, but it seems to me that the second Marine ship took VERY little time to get to the penal colony. They were there within two days of receiving the transmission that Ripley was there. So either the Penal Planet was very close to Earth, or a Marine outpost, or there was already another expedition to LV-426 en-route when the transmission came.

After failing to aquire Ripley, and the specimen, did the ship turn around, or continue on?

 

Well I guess few of you have read the interviews with Ridley Scott and James Cameron. In those interviews Scott reveals that if he ever does an ALIEN 5 the plot will revolve around the origins of the 'space jockey' and its exotic spacecraft. Scott states that he feels the xenomorphs from the four earlier films are no longer scary enough. ALIEN 5 would under Scott's direction explore the homeworld of the 'space jockey' species. Ridley Scott was to direct ALIEN 5 and James Cameron would have provided a script. Interviews with Cameron reveal that living 'space jockies' would be involved and a space war is afoot in the galaxy. The 'space jockies' were dropping xenomorphs onto enemy planets thus infecting them. It was a war of a biomechanical nature. Sounds like both Scott and Cameron intended the series to evolve from the sci-fi / horror to all-out space opera. That would have been cool. Might still happen someday. Imagine a human space navy facing the onslaught of the biomechanical 'space jockey' armada.

 

Good question. I wouldn't be surprised if they went there and set up a military lab, and then the **** hit the fan not too long after their first experiments..

 

I've always been intrigued by the creatures that piloted the derelict ship, but I like that nothing has been revealed about them.

After Alien 3, which showed that an Alien egg can take on the physical characteristics of it's host (the dog/ox hatchling), I wonder if the Aliens we know from the movies have taken on some of the characteristics of the Space Jockeys? Maybe the original Aliens looked very different?

 

that would always be an interesting angle to pursue. I remember in some of the talk about the rumored Alien 5 that one of the possible stories would somehow involve the "pilot" species

 

I remember reading one of the alien novels Earth Hive I think and it said that the Space Jockeys were using the Aliens to clear planets for them to take over or something like that.

 

That's an interesting concept, but rather flawed. If the aliens can kill the inhabitants of a planet, then the Space Jockeys must be capable of killing the Aliens - if that's the case, why not just kill the inhabitants yourself in the first place? (rather than take on a planet of freshly born aliens?)

I much prefer the Predator concept of creating a planet of aliens for sport rather than for colonisation.

 

I never got around the reading the novels..

 

Strictly from a canon point of view, reasonable minds could come to but one conclusion that the derelict was completely destroyed when the reactor at Hadley's Hope went critical. Otherwise, as desperate as WY was to obtain a xenomorph, I'm certain that another retrieval mission would have been executed post-haste.

Besides, it would be out of character for Ripley to advocate sterilizing Hadley's Hope, but leave the derelict intact. That's just not her style.

 

Yeah in the movie they do talk about nuking the colony from orbit, so it probably wouldn't be that hard to send a few to take the ship out before they leave.

 

As far as cannon goes, the original novelization of ALIENS makes it clear that a nuclear explosion at the colony would NOT have hurt the derelict. Lest we forget the administration scene cut from the initial release but reinserted later, the boss of the colony says that Newts family were off for a couple weeks at least before they found it, and that was even with exact coordinates given to them by Burke.