How could a rescue ship get to Fiorina 161 within a week?

[MrSpaceJockey]

He was important for the mission, but who knows how important he is in the company.

He's just a guy who made androids that looked like himself (not that it matters too much, but I don't think he's special for being chosen as the "Bishop" model, its just that he chose to make these robots look like him) and his relevance to the mission was just that he would provide a "friendly face" for Ripley.

[SM]

I would imagine he was pretty high up. I mean, they made synthetics base on him, and he was sent, or he sent himself, on a mission to retrieve a Xeno. That is a huge deal for the company.

HE made synthetics based on him.

"So God created man in his own image"

[Local Trouble]

Bishop said the company knew everything that happened on the ship, right?  So maybe they knew an alien egg was on board and diverted it to Fury 161, just like they diverted the Nostromo to LV-426.

After all, Fury 161 was a remote, company-owned backwater populated by the dregs of humanity.  Maybe they intended to use the place as a laboratory and the prisoners as hosts.

That would explain how the company ship got there so fast: it was already en route when Andrews requested a rescue team.

[SM]

Kinda farfetched to think that company orchestrated the fire, the EEV launch, crash etc. etc.  Woulda been much cheaper and more beneficial to study the Alien in a controlled environment.

[Local Trouble]

I don't think they orchestrated the fire.  That part was just the alien doing its thing.

I only think they diverted the Sulaco to a location where they could operate without the ICC or Colonial Administration getting wind of it.  That would also explain why it appeared to be in orbit around Fury 161 when the EEV ejected.

[SM]

If that was the case they would've been better off stopping the Sulaco in unregulated interstellar space.  Not an inhabited planet that falls under ICC jurisdiction.

[Local Trouble]

How do we know that Fury 161 falls under ICC jurisdiction?  It was a defunct work prison, not an active mining colony.

The ICC regulates interstellar commerce, no?

[SM]

It's a privately run prison, owned by Weyland-Yutani.  It has to abide by certain business standards laid down by the ICC.  Of course it'll try to get round them, when it suits.  Intercept the Sulaco in interstellar space and you'll still have the military to contend with, but less people involved, less chance of shit going wrong.  And a whole lot of shit went wrong on Fiorina.

[Local Trouble]

Who on Fiorina did the company need to worry about?  Everyone there was either an employee or a convict, and we already know that they consider their employees to be expendable.

Whether or not the ICC had jurisdiction there is actually irrelevant because they had no presence there anyway.  So who's going to blow the whistle and who's going to hear it?

The place was literally a toxic waste dump.

[SM]

It never ended up being a toxic waste dump.

Whether or not the ICC had jurisdiction there is actually irrelevant because they had no presence there anyway.  So who's going to blow the whistle and who's going to hear it?

Oh, I dunno - maybe a witness, a prisoner perhaps, who survived and blabbed about what happened.

Fact remains, there's nothing to support the Company forcing the Sulaco to Fiorina.

It's the same as all the other baseless conspiracy theories about the Company knowing all about the Alien, but leaving it to chance with tug jockies, then building a colony on the same planet but never exploiting the Aliens for the next 6 decades.

[Local Trouble]

It never ended up being a toxic waste dump.

Because they had a room that they never got around to storing anything in?  Ripley was going to tell the rescue team that the whole place had gone toxic so they'd turn away.  Why would she think that'd work unless there was already toxic waste stored there?

Oh, I dunno - maybe a witness, a prisoner perhaps, who survived and blabbed about what happened.

They'd have to a) survive and b) somehow get back to civilization first.  Why would the company have to worry about that?

Fact remains, there's nothing to support the Company forcing the Sulaco to Fiorina.

True.  It's just a theory that doesn't necessarily contradict anything.  Did I suggest otherwise?

[SM]

Because they had a room that they never got around to storing anything in?  Ripley was going to tell the rescue team that the whole place had gone toxic so they'd turn away.  Why would she think that'd work unless there was already toxic waste stored there?

Who knows if she did think that would work, or whether she was just clutching at straws to stop the ship from coming.  The prisoners were there to manage the blast furnace, according to Clemens.  Nothing about toxic waste.

They'd have to a) survive and b) somehow get back to civilization first.  Why would the company have to worry about that?

Why would they deliberately take such a chance?

It's just a theory that doesn't necessarily contradict anything.

It's contradicted by the fact that when the Company has some idea of what they're dealing with, they send in specialised troops - not leaving things to chance with unsupervised Alien experimentation.

[Local Trouble]

Who knows if she did think that would work, or whether she was just clutching at straws to stop the ship from coming.  The prisoners were there to manage the blast furnace, according to Clemens.  Nothing about toxic waste.

Aaron was sure afraid it would work.

And Clemens also told Ripley that the foundry was used to manufacture lead sheets for toxic waste containment.  Besides that, we actually SAW some of it when they showed us all the drums of quinitricetyline.

They'd have to a) survive and b) somehow get back to civilization first.  Why would the company have to worry about that?

Why would they deliberately take such a chance?

Because it hardly even counts as a remotely negligible chance, that's why.  Andrews made it pretty clear that escape was impossible and that no one gets off that planet unless the company WANTS them off.

It's just a theory that doesn't necessarily contradict anything.

It's contradicted by the fact that when the Company has some idea of what they're dealing with, they send in specialised troops - not leaving things to chance with unsupervised Alien experimentation.

I'm not seeing how that's a contradiction.  My theory doesn't preclude the idea of company troops protecting the scientists from an alien outbreak.

[SM]

Aaron was sure afraid it would work.

Aaron wasn't exactly sharp...

Besides that, we actually SAW some of it when they showed us all the drums of quinitricetyline.

I don't know if QTC has ever been confirmed as 'toxic waste'.

[Local Trouble]

Aaron wasn't sharp, but that was also right after they'd managed to accidentally blow the place all to hell.  So maybe he figured she had a point.

And I agree that the explosive sludge was never explicitly stated to be toxic waste, but I can't imagine what legitimate use they'd have for that stuff in a work prison.