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Posted by The Old One
 - Mar 05, 2020, 02:18:28 AM
By far the best of the lot honestly, I'd jump out of my skin if Kelsey Taylor got the chance to create a film, first place.
Posted by The Old One
 - Mar 03, 2020, 01:19:14 AM
I've got a theory, each of the films represent a stage in the life cycle intentionally or unintentionally, for example I believe this film ultimately represents:. The Egg and Facehugger
Posted by The Old One
 - Jun 19, 2019, 09:56:26 AM
I agree, very authentic.
Posted by The1PerfectOrganism
 - Jun 19, 2019, 07:38:32 AM
By far the best, hope Director Kelsey Taylor returns to Alien at some point. Although Containment, Alone and Ore are all good, this is the only one that doesn't feel like a fanfilm.
Posted by The Old One
 - May 24, 2019, 11:31:00 AM
Quote from: TC on May 24, 2019, 11:25:58 AM
In the Alien 'verse that we all know and love can we imagine that elsewhere on Planet LV-492 colonial farmers are tilling their fields with ploughs pulled by android-horses, and perhaps closer to the poles other colonists are crossing snowy terrain not on snowmobiles but on android-husky drawn sleds?

Sounds fantastic, would go well with the Vincent Ward artificial planet idea.
But following the line of logic, consider Bishop as military hardware.

You could do better than the human form, but they didn't for a reason.
As stated in Prometheus, comfort.
I imagine the Dog companion is no different,
psychologically they do make a point of showing our Gardner is isolated.
Posted by TC
 - May 24, 2019, 11:25:57 AM
Hang on, aren't we talking about plausibility here? As in, how well what's presented to us in fiction matches up with reality?

In which case, this

Quote from: Erik Lehnsherr on May 22, 2019, 12:47:42 PM
Doesn't appear ineffectual.

Maggie wins, and is apparently good at the job.

is nonsense. You are arguing that Maggie is plausible because in the story she is 'effectual.' Well, of course the writer is going to make Maggie 'effectual' - it would be problematic to his own story if he wrote her any other way.

Your line of reasoning is like arguing faster-than-light spaceships are plausible because there's one called the Nostromo that travels faster than light. (We all understand the difference between fiction and reality, don't we?)

What might be more useful is to take a more specialised definition of 'plausible' in which we examine how well a story invention fits in with the rest of the story-world.

For example, a spider man that can walk on walls is not plausible in a story-world like, say, that which exists in a Merchant Ivory film; but would be completely plausible in a story-world in which radioactive spider-bites confer superpowers rather than radiation sickness, and goblin men hurl pumpkin bombs at people.

So are android sniffer dogs at all in keeping with the rest of the Alien 'verse, as we know it?

Ronoc makes a good point when he says that in the real world mechanised tractors have displaced draught horses and snowmobiles have displaced husky dogs. Like it or not, these are facts. But putting the real world aside for the moment; in the Alien 'verse that we all know and love can we imagine that elsewhere on Planet LV-492 colonial farmers are tilling their fields with ploughs pulled by android-horses, and perhaps closer to the poles other colonists are crossing snowy terrain not on snowmobiles but on android-husky drawn sleds?

Well, everyone can decide this answer for him or herself, but for me the notion seems rather odd.

I would certainly have scratched my head and wondered WTF if the Jarden family had hitched a horse-drawn wagon up to a team of android horses before pulling out of Hadley's Hope on the way to the derelict.

TC
Posted by The Old One
 - May 24, 2019, 07:20:38 AM
Indeed.
Posted by HuDaFuK
 - May 24, 2019, 07:17:23 AM
Remember when VCRs first came out and they were ludicrously expensive?
Remember when LCD TVs first came out and they were ludicrously expensive?
Remember when mobile phones first came out and they were ludicrously expensive...
Posted by The Old One
 - May 24, 2019, 05:42:56 AM
Perhaps they are.
Posted by Ronoc
 - May 24, 2019, 03:04:23 AM
Not ineffectual, suboptimal.
Unless they are dirt cheap to produce

Quote from: Erik Lehnsherr on May 22, 2019, 12:47:42 PM
Doesn't appear ineffectual.

Maggie wins, and is apparently good at the job.
Posted by The1PerfectOrganism
 - May 22, 2019, 12:47:42 PM
Doesn't appear ineffectual.

Maggie wins, and is apparently good at the job.
Posted by Ronoc
 - May 22, 2019, 09:10:08 AM
She's a working dog it seems, and in that case she's a tool, but seems to be suboptimal for the task.
So what if she's not "even a dog anymore". That's not why she's there I'd imagine.
A tractor beats a team of horses, and a snowmobile beats huskies at what they do, no matter how much people like horses and dogs.


Quote from: HuDaFuK on May 21, 2019, 09:36:39 AM
Quote from: Ronoc on May 21, 2019, 09:20:32 AMWhat you've said is all good and well for a recreational dog. For a working animal, being a dog looks like a purely aesthetic choice. You'd at least have to have some place on him to plug in a voice box. And give him some degree of that human-level AI that WY have developed...

Dogs have a longstanding, close-knit social relationship with humans. "Dogs are a man's best friend" etc. There's a perfectly valid argument that W-Y or whoever makes them would prefer to imitate the real thing as closely as possible rather than create a super robo-mutt. If it can speak, for example, is even a dog any more?

If androids like Bishop are seemingly designed to imitate humans as accurately as possible, why not Maggie a real dog?

Regardless, the long-distance transport argument alone makes synthetic dogs perfectly valid if you ask me. How much would it cost to ship five real dogs to LV-426 as opposed to putting five synthetics in the cargo hold?
Posted by The1PerfectOrganism
 - May 21, 2019, 10:17:45 AM
Yeah, I agree.

Maggie rules.
Posted by HuDaFuK
 - May 21, 2019, 09:36:39 AM
Quote from: Ronoc on May 21, 2019, 09:20:32 AMWhat you've said is all good and well for a recreational dog. For a working animal, being a dog looks like a purely aesthetic choice. You'd at least have to have some place on him to plug in a voice box. And give him some degree of that human-level AI that WY have developed...

Dogs have a longstanding, close-knit social relationship with humans. "Dogs are a man's best friend" etc. There's a perfectly valid argument that W-Y or whoever makes them would prefer to imitate the real thing as closely as possible rather than create a super robo-mutt. If it can speak, for example, is even a dog any more?

If androids like Bishop are seemingly designed to imitate humans as accurately as possible, why not Maggie a real dog?

Regardless, the long-distance transport argument alone makes synthetic dogs perfectly valid if you ask me. How much would it cost to ship five real dogs to LV-426 as opposed to putting five synthetics in the cargo hold?
Posted by Ronoc
 - May 21, 2019, 09:20:32 AM
Maybe, but I still think if you have the science to improve something out of all sight, you'd aim higher than a dog.
What you've said is all good and well for a recreational dog. For a working animal, being a dog looks like a purely aesthetic choice. You'd at least have to have some place on him to plug in a voice box. And give him some degree of that human-level AI that WY have developed...
The girl in this story might have appreciated that

Quote from: HuDaFuK on May 19, 2019, 05:12:16 PM
Quote from: Ronoc on May 18, 2019, 03:40:50 PMIt's not nonsense that they can make them, is nonsense that they bother to. Unless it's a significant improvement over a real dog, there'd be no point.

No point, except you don't need to feed it or walk it, it can work 24/7 without sleep, it isn't susceptible to disease or, to a degree, ageing, and is presumably stronger and more durable than a real dog, all of which would make it a better guard dog. Case in point - experience suggests a real dog wouldn't have been able to fight off the Facehugger, but Maggie could.

They'd also be far easier to ship out to a distant colony, as it wouldn't need hypersleep or supplies for the trip.

So it seems to me like there are plenty of good reasons to make them.
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