Quote from: No Name on Jul 01, 2018, 09:10:13 AM
You cannot compare this situation reliably with real life. I don't think it'd be unreasonable to have at least one additional layer of safety precaution of wearing hazmat suits when dealing with dangerous alien lifeforms. The point on the Marines receiving some intel by Ripley is contradictory. If the intel is anything to go by, it would be presumptuous on the part of the USMC to assume the threat is entirely physical with no chance of any viral attributes developing overtime in such an organism. Didn't Ripley mention they have acid for blood?
It is not unreasonable no, but given the Marine's attitude and the intel they have been given from someone who has been exposed to the Alien with no ill effect, it is understandable that they didn't consider a possible viral outbreak. Ripley mentioned more than that as her talk with the marines was only a brief summary, the marines were given a more indepth file or something.
Quote from: bb-15 on Jul 01, 2018, 02:24:38 AM
Quote from: Still Collating... on Jun 30, 2018, 03:39:05 PM
This. I personally don't have a big problem with their behavior, even though I'm longing for smart characters more and more, but Scott can't just insist that they are scientists and the best in their fields when he does not portray the characters like scientists at all.
In the Alien movies the scientists/science officers/knowledgeable characters sometimes don't act in a reasonable way (imo based on my university education).
- These films have fictional characters which serve the story.
Their behavior may imitate actions by people in our world but just as often the characters are following horror/action/adventure cliches.
* Any time a space alien creature is in contact with humans there is a chance of airborne infection. Space aliens can have viruses / bacteria where a human can have no immunity.
- One of the first alien / human science fiction contact stories was "War of the Worlds". And in that novel, the aliens died because of this problem, disease from a different species which for them was humanity.
** Let's apply this idea of virus / bacteria precautions in some Alien movies.
* "Alien"; Xenomorph is inside the ship. No one is wearing helmets. (I'll put Ash aside since he didn't care if the crew died.)
But Ripley is no dummy and she had expertise with quarantine protocols.
This is elementary science to try to prevent airborne infection.
Precaution fail.
* "Aliens"; the Xenomorph Queen is found which is an unknown alien creature.
Again, Ripley knows quarantine procedure. But she, Newt, the Marines, Burke don't wear helmets on LV-426.
Precaution fail.
* "Prometheus"; here we have the only test of the air in the tunnels for bacteria / impurities with the instruments of David, Ford and Holloway.
It turned out that Holloway's theory was right, the air was being cleaned by Engineer tech. David confirmed the safety of the tunnel air later in the movie with Weyland.
This was the only time where the air in an Alien franchise movie was tested and found to be safe.
Precaution win.
* "Covenant"; There is an unknown planet and the instruments show that the air is clean.
What is the problem? Deadly mold spores infected with black goo. It's not an air problem but an animal attack problem.
This is similar to a classic Star Trek trope where the crew goes to a planet; it seems to be safe but some plant attacked the crew.
Precaution fail.
* But the worst scientist fail I leave for "Alien 4" where a scientist puts 3 Xenomorphs in the same cage for an experiment.
Xenomorphs carry a large set of razor sharp teeth which could easily cut into the flesh of another creature even by accident causing it to bleed.
The Xenos also have acid blood which can eat through any substance made by humanity, even futuristic / advanced humanity.
- Logically from a science perspective, the experiment would never have more than one Xeno in a cage.
Triple precaution fail.
* But taking all precautions is not the purpose of these movies. Almost all of the characters are supposed to die.
So the story has certain basic precautions being ignored.
(Also, no helmets allows characters to be more easy to see.)
Sometimes precaution fails are there so the characters will die.
* Considering that; I don't see "Covenant" or "Prometheus" being any worse that the previous Alien films in terms of the crews taking unnecessary risks.
The first two movies however did have a character repeatedly acknowledge quarantine and bring up safety measures/warnings but Ripley was undermined/ignored three times. First by Ash in the first movie and secondly by the company board in the second movie and later by gorman in "the area is secure" scene.
In both those movies as well, there was factors working against the quarantine/safety. Ash and Burke. Not to say the first two movies didn't have issues but the set ups do give an understandable context. The marines for example, are veterans but are very unprofessional and undisciplined,. I mean they fire their armor piercing ammo filled guns from the hip!. Which is highly dangerous and reckless.
Also Dallas and Ash did wear masks when they has the Facehugger inside so there is that little tidbit but no one else does later on, probably because what's done is done.
Covenant did have Daniels question Oram about his decision but after that and brought up the issues that they had only trained for Origae 6 after that however, she doesn't raise any quarantine or safety issues if I recall, in fact she tied herself to the an airbourne lander and could have gotten herself killed numerous times. In real life, I am pretty sure the force of being yanked around like that could either kill you or severly injure you.
I agree that Resurrection was hopeless , I mean these guys went through eight clones and probably decades worth of attempts just to get their hands on the Xenomorphs and they don't even prepare or have any precautions for their acid. Well the fact that they just left the bodies of the hosts to rot in a room without disposal shows their laziness. And you can't they didn't know about the Aliens because they seemed to know Ripley's history so they must have read her reports and any other reports on it.
