How come that Nostromo was able to detect the beacon signal and the colony wasn'

Hey, that's a very good question! I can assume that the beacon, eventually, went to that Radioshack in the sky to hunt with its ancestors in the perennial green electromagnetic fields. Technology doesn't last for ever. Still, they didn't find the ship in 20 years, when it was basically within driving distance.

A quote from James Cameron himself regarding that very question: [img]http://www.alienlegend.com/Alien-Movies/Aliens/DeletedScenes/a2out3p6.jpg[/img] [quote][b]Briggs' next problem was "Why do the colonists not pick up the derelict SOS?" by which I assume he is referring to the acoustic beacon broadcasting a "warning." As some readers may know, scenes were filmed but cut from the final release version of the film which depicted the discovery of the derelict by a mom-and-pop geological survey (i.e.: prospecting) team. As scripted, they were given the general coordinates of its position by the manager of the colony, on orders from Carter Burke. It is not directly stated, but presumed, that Burke could only have gotten that information from Ripley or from the black-box flight recorder aboard the shuttle Narcissus, which accessed the Nostromo's on-board computer. When the Jorden family, including young Newt, reach the coordinates, they discover the derelict ship. Since we and the Nostromo crew last saw it, it has been damaged by volcanic activity, a lava flow having crushed it against a rock outcropping and ripped open its hull. Aside from considerations of visual interest, this serves as a justification for the acoustic beacon being non-operational.[/b][/quote] In early drafts of Alien the crew turn the beacon off.

That's one of the questions that i have. Cameron has stated the above ^^^ was the reason for its deactivation. But, what gets me is that Ash (via MOTHER) would have sent the information back to company HQ before Ripley set the Nostromo to self destruct. The colonists had been there for 20 years before being sent out to the derelict? The information would have been sent via LIGHT speed rather than the speed of sound, or radio.

IMO this is how I see it. In order to find something you have to be looking for something in the first place. In other words the Nostromo, was on the look out for something in the first place and that the company already knew there was something to look for. This is why Ash was put on board, because locating the beacon had been anticipated. Ash spent a lot of time colating with mother after the beacon was detected, and he could have sent messages back to ignore the beacon in future. It is possible the beacon deactivated once the crew of the had entered the craft. As for the age of the technology, over the last 30yrs just look at how morse code is no longer used and how analogue is on the way out for transmitting TV broadcasts. Unless you know to look in a certain frequency range your might never suspect that there is anything there. I'm ignoring Cameron on this because I'd prefer to rely on whats given on film. I also think the beacon has a lot of significance to the plot. Ridley has stated that he would like to explain more about the big guy in the chair, and I have a gut feeling this may be something that will emerge through Paradise with any luck.

Redhead Ripley, that is a very very good question and Cameron's answer makes perfect sense. I had actually never considered that question and that is unusual for me as i am such an ubergeek when it comes to Aliens especially. But Cameron;s explanation is thoroughly plausible and I completely accept it as the best hypothesis. Thanks for the stimulating question!

@nostromo001 ubergeek when it comes to Aliens.....that's a good one:) BUT I think on this website there are plenty of ubergeeks when it comes to Alien and I'm glad for it :)

maybe "line of sight". the derelict was below the horizon and the colony didnt pick it up for that reason. From outer space the signal would easy to pick up. but in saying that the terraformas would of pick up the signal apon approach to the planet. Unless of course there was a daivd 8 there who had the signal blocked!?

necronom 4, I think xeno_alpha answered the question more than adequately. Not only did he quote Cameron, and I remember the scene that Cameron is referring to. Its the third reel of the film that was removed from the theatrical release by Cameron's wife Gale Anne Hurd (now producer of The Walking Dead), his producer at that time, and which was reinstated in the extended release. But crno also pointed out that in an early script for Alien, the Nostromo crew turned off the beacon. This is obviously an oversight in the script for Aliens - lets face it with all the multitude of jobs involved in the production of a film, each of which require a department or team, it would be easy to overlook a continuity error like this, and Cameron drove them at an exhausting pace. However Cameron's description of the derelict ship in Aliens, which by that time had a new rip in its side that mom and pop Jordan used to access the ship as evidence that the ship was damaged, more than adequately and very neatly provides a clever cover of why the beacon was not activated. I found it very intriguing that during Ripley's inquest on Gateway station, none of the Weyland-Yutani committee seemed to have any information regarding xenomorphs after investigating over 300 worlds, and yet later Lt. Gorman claimed that the colonial marines had been trained to deal with situations just like that, and Hendricks asks if it was going to be a stand up fight or another bug hunt, suggesting that they had been through many maneuvers looking for xenomorphs, obviously what the term 'bug' referred to. Why would they train for possible contact with 'bugs' if they didn't have any information on them. My theory is that the company did have previous knowledge about xenomorphs but the information was highly classified and compartmentalized within the bio-weapons and military factions of Weyland-Yutani corp. As we all know by Alien 3, as well as in Alien, the company wanted a xenomorph so bad that entire crews were expendable and Ripley pointed out on Fiory 161 that the company wanted the xenomorph alive and would possibly kill the inmates for just having seen one if they did capture it. So these are my thoughts on both the acoustical beacon missing along with the apparent knowledge of xenomorphs to civilian departments of Weyland-Yutani in the movie Aliens. By the way, Carter Burke did not seem to know about xenomorphs other than what he heard from Ripley and the reality of the derelict space craft when he sent a reconnaissance team, which turned out to be the Jordons, to investigate a grid beyond the Ilium range of LV426 just based upon Ripley's deposition at the inquest,hoping to make a profit for himself. That was his explanation as to why he didn't warn anyone before he sent them out; to avoid a security situation were nobody could profit. Unfortunately for Ripley, she lost it and alerted him to her intention to 'nail him to the wall' by telling on him so he wouldn't sleaze his way out of taking responsibility for killing all the colonists. That's why, sociopathic as he was, he attempted to impregnate her and Newt with Aliens to get two of them past ICC quarantine after he sabotaged the cryotubes of any other survivors so he could jettison the bodies and make up any story he wanted to. It was a major strategic error on poor Ripley's part, who was clearly suffering from PTSD by this point.

@ nostromo001 I think you've raised some excellent points there, especially about 'bug hunts' . To the best of my knowledge I can't recall anyone posting any thing in depth about what a 'bug hunt' actually is. I'll be happy to be corrected about that one. With respect to the beacon, I am convinced the company knew of its existence before the Nostromo got to it.

@nostromo001 its my understanding that the term xenomorph simply means "alien life form".

pulserifle, yes but in this context xenomorph has come to mean the Alien as envisioned by H.R. Giger and used by RS in Alien. The etymology of the word is as follows: xeno - New Latin, from Greek, from xenos, stranger; morph -from Greek morph, form, shape. So technically all it means is strange form, but the Alien franchise has cooped the term to mean the familiar creature that we all know and love mentioned above:)

How are we to know how long between the Nostromo crew lifting off from the planets surface and the eventual collapse of the ship by volcanic rock basalt weight upon its acient hull alloy, seeiningly deactivating the ships beacon? It was by all accounts 57 years since she was last there it may have still broad cast for say another twenty before then finally sucumbing to the overlying weight of the basalt rock formations all around. Gravity disturbances and gravitational flexing from its nearby Gas Giant parent planet and the inner and outer moons of the planetary system as a whole ould all conspire to cause enogh land based geological disturbances that it simply shipfted many loose rock formations and caused various avalanches of basalt rock which in turn came pummeling down upon the wreck of the Derilict/Juggernaught and ended up snapping the Hammerhead section of the ruin ship. This could have caused the singnal to in tur switch off a the ship got hit but I prefer the reasoning abiguiosly proposed in the original ALIEN script but was never committed to film to be seen in the final ALIEN that we know, Dallas and co. find the unassuming mechanism still working and, with one brief action, simply swith it off. It is a sliding bar of sorts, the quote from the script or at least one version of it ( the ALIEN script ) is here to read: _____________________________________________________________________________ DALLAS Over here. They approach. Train their lights along the floor. A machine. On the mechanism, a small bar moves steadily back and forth. Sliding noiselessly in the grooves. KANE Still functioning. Lambert looks down at her direction finder. LAMBERT Automatic recording. Dallas snaps it off. DALLAS Now for a look down below. _____________________________________________________________________________ I seems clear they found a small, simple working bar mechanism designed to last most likely in the most harsh of conditions such as the void of space more than likely, space travel itself and LV-426. It wasn't active before the colonist began arriving over the years because it was simply turned off by Dallas. It is never included in the final cut of the film so being informed that a 'switching off' of some sort of mechenism did indeed occur in the script and was considered as a plot mechanism, albeit very small we viewers of the ALIEN film have to just simply accept and infer that the 'switching off' moment by Dallas just happens somewhere during one of the cuts from one scene/point of view/edit to the next beat in the exploration of the derilict-Juggernaught. Perhaps when Kane says there is something up there if we can get up there maybe we can get a better look up there. Or jusy prior to that when they have just gone into the ship and idle about a little bit there is perhaps the mechanism discovery moment then they preceed to enter what will be known now because of PROMETHEUS [to us viewers at least if not some of the principle characters involved] the Orrery. They discover the Alien Space Jockey and perhaps somewhere here could better have served the moment whereby the metal bar mechanism is discovered due to theAlien Pilots initiation of it possibly tens of centuries ago only to be finally switched off and the "poor alien soul" laid to some kind of dignified final rest and peace of time more than anything else. The Company could have implicit instructions at the time of the colonies first arrivals to avoid what the Company might have designated no-go "quarantine" areas (location were the Derilict/Juggernaught would be), enough numbers arrive and get a foothold upon LV-426 and the colonist simply follow Company orders not to digress off of designated areas until they are told to. Suddenly Newts parents do just that and come across the Alien Derilct and The Company decide that it is inevitable yet time to take this to the next level and test "expose" the colony to the alien egg infestation and see where it goes from there. Its nothing short of a similar exposure albeit slightly differing reasons (we think) that what occured to the ENGINEER "colony" perhaps upon LV-223. Where they also tricked into a manipulated situation to see just what sort of effects it would have upon them by members possibly of THEIR own race too?

@nostromo001. Hate to burst your bubble but "Xeno" is actually a scientific name for a type of ROCK. ASH would have defo sent information back to HQ about the "lifeform". That's one of the main points that Cameron messed up on! Why were the colonists not sent to the derelict for 20 years when that's obviously what the company wanted? Ripley had been drifting in space for 50 something years. HQ would have recieved ASH's transmission by then.

[i]@nostromo001. Hate to burst your bubble but "Xeno" is actually a scientific name for a type of ROCK.[/i] No it isn't. Xenolith (foreign rock) is, however. [i]ASH would have defo sent information back to HQ about the "lifeform". That's one of the main points that Cameron messed up on! Why were the colonists not sent to the derelict for 20 years when that's obviously what the company wanted? Ripley had been drifting in space for 50 something years. HQ would have recieved ASH's transmission by then.[/i] It's not a mess up. Ash simply never sent the data back to the Company. If we'd seen him actually sending it back to Network in Alien - then it would be a mess up.

I am going outside the box here....That is because there was NO transmission. The transmission was a ruse set up by the company to lure Dallas and the crew to investigate the ship. It is not beyond the realm of possibility that the company already knew about the ship, and then Mother faked the radio signal with only Ash knowing. My question is why did Ripley give up on trying to figure out the radio transmission after only getting half way done, especially if it was a warning?

I am going outside the box here....That is because there was NO transmission. The transmission was a ruse set up by the company to lure Dallas and the crew to investigate the ship. It is not beyond the realm of possibility that the company already knew about the ship, and then Mother faked the radio signal with only Ash knowing. My question is why did Ripley give up on trying to figure out the radio transmission after only getting half way done, especially if it was a warning?

Who says she gave up? And everything says they were homing in on the Derelict's beacon. Additionally if there was no transmission - how did the Compnay know about the Derelict?