Originals: Still the best??

[SM]

I imagine a scene like when she threatened the queen with her flamethrower.  In Alien 3, she could have tried something similar by holding a carving knife to her chest as if to stab herself and the queen embryo growing inside her, causing alien to back down and leave her alone. 

Recently got myself one of the complete alien omnibus and one of the stories, a man who was impregnated literally uses a scalpel of knife to carve himself open, he even grabs the chestburster and pulls it out of him....and then it bites his fingers off.  That was a strange story, with a few cartoon characters. Steel Egg I think that particular story was called.

That's really underselling a pretty good passage in a book that was otherwise a tad lacking.

[The Cruentus]

Don't get me wrong, from what I snagged of it, it seemed very intense but its the fact he was able to cut though his chest and the bone so easily and even pull the creature out when it should still be connected either through just an umbilical or amniotic sac as well the umbilical, just gave me a wtf moment. Then its the nurses trying to stop him when they logically should be helping him after they have already witnessed a previous birth. I mean seriously the guy is just trying to avoid dying a gruesome death and they acting if he is utterly deranged just because he is panicking. Mind you I only snagged it on a skim through so I might have missed something.

[SM]

'Help him' as in help him cut it out of himself?  The logical thing was to try and stop him.  And if the one of the chestbursters just birthed then there's no reason to assume the others would still be attached to the host.

[The Cruentus]

Yes, he because he was dead anyway and surgery was his best option. Granted what I mean by help him is  for them to agree to prep him for surgery and not help him cut it out there and then. He might have calmed down then, though considering what he saw, maybe not.

Perhaps.

[Local Trouble]

I haven't read the book, but it sounds like they should have stuck him with a syringe and filled him with sedatives to knock him out.

[SM]

Perhaps if they'd had more time and were more prepared.

[Local Trouble]

Granted, I'm working with limited information about the context here.

[The Cruentus]

Then spoiler alert

Spoiler

three men are impregnated and at this point in the story, the crew strongly believe they are carrying embryos from connecting the dots from a previous video that showed a chestburster erupting from a sentient alien life form and they do absolutely nothing about it except keep them in quarantine. I think they explained there was no hypersleep pods to put them in or something but they did have access to sedatives and never even bothered to prepare for them or considered using them until the very last infected kidnaps a nurse and gets some sedatives himself.

[close]

Mind you I only skimmed through the story just to see if its worth reading as I remember folks on here saying how some of novels were not very good, I think mentioned dna war, steel egg, cauldron and maybe original sin, I can't remember. So I might have got something wrong maybe.

[Local Trouble]

I wonder what Ripley would have done if she discovered the alien growing within her while Clemens was still alive.  Would she have asked him to surgically remove it?  Could he have done it?  Maybe that would have been a better reason for the alien to show up out of the blue and kill him.

[SentryGun]

I wonder what Ripley would have done if she discovered the alien growing within her while Clemens was still alive.  Would she have asked him to surgically remove it?  Could he have done it?  Maybe that would have been a better reason for the alien to show up out of the blue and kill him.

I really like this idea. Always felt that Clemens death was too random. Something like this would give it more meaning.

Clemens sedates Ripley and preps for surgery. The chestburster senses it is in danger and sends out some sort of telepathic S.O.S. signal ( maybe this is a bit corny! ) and has it's big brother come and protect it. All the while Ripley lies sedated on the surgical table! Or the sedative is just kicking in, so she can't move but sees Clemens getting killed and finally loses consciousness with the Alien looming over her.

[The Old One]

No, I strongly disagree- his death, is an extension of what happened everyone who survived the events of Aliens.
Anyone Ellen Ripley gets close to (& By extension the Alien) dies, for no discernible reason.
"Why are the innocent punished? Why the sacrifice?"

[Local Trouble]

Is that nihilistic theme really worth preserving at the expense of an entertaining version of Alien 3?

[SM]

Clemens dies so Ripley is thrust into the leadership - same as when Dallas, Apone, Gorman and Andrews are taken out.

[The Old One]

Yes.

[Local Trouble]

But...Clemens would still die.  He would just die while attempting to remove the embryo from Ripley.  A meaningful death is still a death and Ripley would still get to be the leader.