Carter J. Burke was an executive for Weyland-Yutani and liaised between them and Ellen Ripley when she was rescued from space in 2179. He later accompanied her and a squad of Colonial Marines on the USS Sulaco to LV-426, to the colony of Hadley’s Hope.
Initially, Burke was quite nice to Ripley and the Marines but in reality, he had ulterior motives and wanted to take a Xenomorph back with them so Weyland-Yutani could use it in their weapons division. He was either killed by one of the Xenomorphs or taken back to the hive. Burke appears in the 1986 film Aliens and is played by Paul Reiser.
In 2179, a deep salvage vessel rescued Ellen Ripley who was in hypersleep on the Narcissus and brought her to Gateway Station. Burke was sent there on behalf of Weyland-Yutani to find out what happened to the USCSS Nostromo. Ripley is informed that she has been hypersleep for 57 years and that her daughter Amanda Ripley has died in the intervening years.
Ripley begins having nightmares about what happened to her and imagines a Chestburster bursting out of her chest. Burke helps Ripley through the tribunal about the destruction of the USCSS Nostromo where the committee doesn’t believe her about the Xenomorph creature. The tribunal informs her that there is now a colony on LV-426 called Hadley’s Hope.
Burke found the coordinates to the Derelict Spacecraft that Ripley mentioned and secretly sent them to the colonists on Hadley’s Hope to check out. All communication with the colony is lost after that so Burke arranges a Colonial Marines squad to investigate the colony. Lieutenant Gorman is in command of the mission and has a Bishop synthetic assigned to the mission. Burke approaches Ripley to accompany them to Hadley’s Hope, even saying that the company will reinstate her as a flight officer if she goes. She initially refuses but after suffering recurring nightmares about the Xenomorph threat, Ripley agrees to go with them.
The team travels to Hadley’s Hope on the Sulaco spacecraft and comes out of hypersleep. When they sit down for dinner, Ripley realises that Bishop is an android who tells him to stay away from her, given what happened with Ash on the Nostromo. Burke tells Bishop that the previous android malfunctioned and a few deaths were involved but Bishop tells Ripley that this is impossible with the new models. The team prepare by getting supplies and going down to LV-426 in an APC which is in a dropship.
The Marines enter the colony Hadley’s Hope. After the complex was secured, Ripley, Lt. Gorman, and Burke entered the facility. They discovered two live Facehuggers in stasis tanks in the Med Lab. The team continued to explore the complex and discovered something on their motion tracker. It turns out to be a little girl called Newt.
The Marines soon discover that all the colonists are grouped together in the atmospheric processing center which is a huge terraforming reactor pumping oxygen into the air. They travel in the APC and the Marines go inside in search of the colonists. Ripley, Gorman and Burke remain in the APC, keeping in contact with the Marines over the radio and via their video links. Ripley and Burke tell Gorman that the Marines are under the cooling tower and in turn, Gorman tells the Marines to hand over their pulse rifle ammunition and grenades so they wouldn’t rupture the reactor.
The Marines discover the cocooned colonists, along with some Alien Eggs and dead Facehuggers. The Xenomorphs attack the Marines and many are killed in the chaos. Ripley takes over and drives the APC into the Alien Hive. Hicks, Hudson and Vasquez escape in the APC. The APC gets damaged and Gorman gets knocked out by some falling boxes.
The group discuss how to proceed and Ripley suggests leaving for the Sulaco and destroying the colony from orbit. Burke protested, saying that stop and think about it before trying to destroy an expensive terraforming colony. Corporal Hicks overrules him and Burke says that such an important decision should not be in the hands of a ‘Grunt’.
They ignore his protests and send a signal to one of the dropships to pick them up. A Xenomorph snuck aboard and kills Spunkmeyer and the pilot Ferro. This causes the dropship to crash into the Marines’ APC. The group then decides to barricade themselves in the colony complex.
The group managed to salvage some weapons, ammunition and four sentry guns from the APC. Hicks tells them that they have to wait at least 17 days before rescue comes for them. Hicks gives Ripley a tracker so they can locate her if she gets lost and later Ripley gives it to Newt in the Med Lab. Bishop tells the team that the fight with the Xenomorphs has damaged the reactor and they have a few hours before it completely explodes.
They agree to pilot the last dropship from the Sulaco so they can escape but they discover the radio link is down inside. Bishop agrees to go outside and pilot the dropship while the rest of the Marines seal off every entrance to the colony to prevent the aliens from getting in. The Aliens soon attack and the sentry guns’ ammunition almost runs out.
After speaking to Bishop, Ripley realises that Burke had insisted that the two live Facehuggers in the Med Lab be returned to Weyland-Yutani after the mission. After she checks the colony’s logs, she also finds out that Burke was the one who sent the Derelict coordinates to the colony. She confronts him and tells him she won’t allow him to take an Alien back to Earth. Burke says they are worth millions to the bio-weapons division of Weyland-Yutani. Ripley says he’ll never be able to get them past ICC Quarantine and she won’t let him do it.
Ripley goes back to Newt in the Med Lab and goes to sleep. Burke sneaks in and releases the two live Facehuggers. He takes her pulse rifle and seals the door so they can’t get out. She wakes up and notices that the two Facehuggers have broken out of their stasis tubes and attacked them. Ripley triggers the fire alarm with a lighter. This gets the attention of the Marines who break the glass, and save Ripley and Newt from the Facehuggers.
Ripley realises that Burke had trapped them in there in an effort to infect them with an alien embryo so he could smuggle the Xenomorphs through quarantine back to Earth. He was planning to disable the Marines’ cryotubes and jettison their bodies into space. Hicks and Hudson are ready to execute Burke for his betrayal. Shortly, the colony loses power and the team figures out the Xenomorphs have found a different way into the complex. Hudson is tracking the Aliens coming towards them but doesn’t know where they are.
They realise they are using the air ducts to move around and they attack the group from the ceiling. Burke escapes the Operations Center and locks the door behind him. As the others try to get through the locked door, Burke encounters a Xenomorph. His fate is not clear but he is either killed there and then or is abducted and taken back to the hive.
Burke initially was very nice and gave a lot of support to Ripley when she was rescued and taken to Gateway Station. This was all just an act to gain Ripley’s trust. He was very deceptive from the start. He manipulates her into getting the Derelict coordinates and sends the colonists on Hadley’s Hope to check the location out without warning them what might be there. He convinces her to accompany them to the colony.
When Ripley confronts him about his plans to recover a Xenomorph, he locks her and Newt in a room with live Facehuggers so that they would be deliberately infected and taken back to Earth. Burke was going to go as far as to kill all the other Marines in their stasis tubes so he could get the specimens passed the quarantine. Burke also showed himself to be a coward in the end. When the Xenomorphs stormed the Operations Center, he panicked and tried escaping, sealing the doors behind him.
There were a few deleted scenes that included Burke that weren’t included in either the theatrical or Special Edition cuts of Aliens
When Burke is telling Ripley about her daughter, there is a line at the end that has been deleted. He says “Some promises you just can’t keep.” He then looks at his watch, wanting to get to the hearing.
Burke is looking at Drake’s monitor and Drake looks at a messy desk. Burke says “Looks like my room in college.”
There is a key deleted scene from Aliens that reveals that Burke was abducted and cocooned in the Alien Hive. As Ripley is searching for Newt, she finds Burke Cocooned to the wall and has already been infected with a Chestburster. He says he can feel the embryo inside of him and begs her to help him. Ripley hands him a grenade.
This scene was cut because director James Cameron realised that Burke would have still had a Facehugger attached to him by the time Ripley entered the hive. The scene was featured in the Aliens Novelization and the comic adaptation of Aliens: Newt’s Tale. There was a photograph of the scene released at some point but the full deleted scene was first included in the 2010 Alien Anthology set.
In Alan Dean Foster’s novelization of Aliens, Burke appears like in the film. Burke is stung and paralyzed by the Xenomorph, much like Gorman was earlier in the story. Ripley meeting Burke cocooned also appears in the novel.
Aliens: Newt’s Tale is a 1992 comic book adaptation of Aliens that includes many scenes that were filmed but weren’t included, at least in the theatrical cut. Burke in the comic generally includes the same scenes as in the film but with the aforementioned Burke Cocooned scene.
Carter Burke appears in the 2014 novel and 2017 audio drama Aliens: River of Pain which covers what happens on Hadley’s Hope when the colonists receive the Derelict coordinates from Burke. Burke visits Ripley and asks her to go with them. The novel also retells the Marines securing the colony.
In the audio drama, Carter Burke is voiced by Tom Alexander.
One interesting scene takes place in the Audio Drama that wasn’t in the novel. On Gateway Burke approaches Gorman to discuss the mission. Burke tells Gorman all about the Xenomorphs on the colony, giving them details about how they reproduce using human hosts. Burke then asks Gorman for help to convince Ripley to go along on the mission.
Burke even asks if Bishop can be ordered to make sure Ripley follows company orders and reports back to the company about her actions. Gorman said that the Hyperdyne Systems 341-B is not programmed to spy and if anybody questioned Bishop, he would have to tell the truth. Burke suggests that Bishop be reprogrammed but Gorman refuses, saying if he wants an inside man on the mission, he should go himself.
Burke is the central focus of the short story Dark Mother in the 2017 anthology book Aliens: Bug Hunt which recounts his final hours cocooned in the hive. In this version, he believes he can get back to Earth after being infected by a Facehugger and have the Chestburster surgically removed. Burke breaks free of the cocoon and goes after Ripley. After realising he has been left on his own, the Chestburster emerges.
NECA released a Burke action figure in the Hadley’s Hope set in 2017.
