Obsure TV Shows

Going to the movies is a common pastime in most, if not all, of the world's developed countries.  How many people, after all, haven't gone out to the local cinema with family or friends on a Friday night to catch the most recent blockbuster?  This form of outing has been commonplace for quite some time now.  According to Wikipedia, "the first public exhibition of projected motion pictures in America was shown at Koster and Bial's Music Hall in New York City on the 23rd of April 1896."  Even before the technology needed to capture moving images on film, people would attend plays and dances, which like the movies of today, would usually follow a script or rehearsed choreographed scenes.

     However, today's topic focuses on another form of family entertainment: the television program.  Like plays can be thought of as the predecessor of feature length films, the pastime of the whole family gathering in one room to enjoy a sometimes fictional story for the purpose of entertainment and spending time with one another has been around long before we had actual television sets.  Before the TV, there was the radio, and families, particularly children, would look forward to watching their favorite programs.  As time passed and technology advanced, some of these old radio programs were gradually lost when the TV set was invented.  Some survived the transition so well, their names are still generally recognized in modern times (examples include the Lone Ranger and Abbott and Costello)but many others faded into obscurity.

      Sadly, the same pattern continues to today, with some TV shows disappearing from the air and never being heard from again.  And that is the main purpose of today's installment.  What follows is a list of some TV programs I remember from my childhood that have apparently been forgotten.  With any luck, you too shall remember these programs yourself.

1.    Today’s Special- I guarantee anyone who has seen this show will never look at store mannequins the same way again.  In this show, every night, after closing time at some department store, which was based on the now closed Simpson's from Toronto, display designer Jodie would take a particular mannequin upstairs to the children’s department.  Upon saying the magic words, "hocus pocus alimagocus,” the mannequin’s hat, which was apparently magic, would bring the mannequin to life.  Joining Jodie and the mannequin, whose name was Jeff, were Sam Crenshaw, the security guard, and Muffy Mouse, both of which were portrayed by puppets.  At first, this show was pretty basic, with each episode focusing on simple things such as costumes.  But as the show progressed, we got into more complex themes, such as sacrificing one thing for another.  In fact, there was one episode that even featured alcoholism.  (Show's run-span: September 1982 to July 1987)

2.      Maple Town- Next time you go to the toy store, look for those toys called Calico Critters.  Yeah, cute little things, aren’t they?  Well, did you know that these guys are actually a practical rip-off of a toy that existed in my childhood?  And just to impress on how popular this toy line was, it actually had a TV show.  Have you heard of a Calico Critters TV show?  I didn’t think so.  I am talking about Maple Town, a very early Anime that took place in a fictional world of anamorphic animals.  The show focused on the adventures of Patty Rabbit and her best friend, Bobby Bear, with each episode being introduced by a live-action actress dubbed Miss Maple, who discussed the main theme of the day’s episode.  And before you think that this was just one of those cutesy everyday-dilemma-gets-solved type of shows.. well, you're half-right.  There was also an actual bad guy in this show by the name of Wild Wolf. (Show's run-span: January 1986 to January 1987, with a sequel show running up until December 1987.)

3.      

 Dink the Little Dinosaur/ Denver the Last Dinosaur- Also around this time period, there were two shows that starred dinosaurs.  These were Dink the Little Dinosaur and Denver the Last Dinosaur.  While the titles of these two shows may sound similar, they were complete opposites.  In Dink, we were treaded to the everyday adventures of a group on young dinosaurs who live in Green Meadow; Dink the Apatosaurus, Amber the Corythosaurus, Scat the Compsognathus, Shyler the Edaphosaurus and Flapper the Pteranodon.  The five dinos were advised and looked after by their wise old mentor, Crusty the Testudo atlas.  While I know that description makes this show appear to be a blatant rip-off of the Don Bluth film, Land Before Time, I have no memory of thinking that as a kid.  A particularly positive note is that during the second season, each episode included a short segment that told kids about a certain dinosaur species.  Denver, on the other hand, I pretty much refused to watch as a child, and looking at the intro on YouTube today, I think I understand why.  Not only did this show take place in modern times, since Denver’s hanging around with a group of human teenagers, but the show’s intro actually shows Denver playing an electric guitar.  I know how, even today, there’s a lot of scientific debate on how dinosaurs lived, but even with suspended belief, I don’t see the logic behind dinosaurs playing in a rock band, especially when the intro keeps showing dinosaurs acting like actual dinosaurs.  Overall, I think they would have been better off making Denver a dragon.  After all, he looked more like a dragon than any recognizable dinosaur that I know of. (Dink's run-time:September 1989 to September 1991) (Denver's run-time April 1988 to 1990)

4.      Dinosaucers- Ah, another show about dinosaurs.  As the show intro told us, four kids met a group of dinosaurs from space, and were given magic rings (Captain Planet ripoff, maybe?) Anyhoo, these rings gave their bearers superpowers, such as enhanced speed or the ability to jump great distances.  With these rings, the four teens became the Secret Scouts and joined forces with their alien dinosaur friends, known as the Dinosaucers, in the classic battle of good-vs-evil against the Tyrannos, led by Genghis Rex. In fact, there were even plans to introduce a toy line from this show.  However, these plans were scrapped when the show was canceled after only one season.  So, why was this show canceled anyway?  I mean, it was a show that combined dinosaurs and aliens, two themes that I always saw as a big seller to the younger demographic.  Generally speaking, I would have thought this show would have been a huge hit. (Show's run-time: September 1987 to December 1987)

5.      Wuzzles- Looking back, I can’t help but think that the brains behind this show might have been on something.  The Wuzzles were these bizarre mixes between two different animals.  For example, one of the main characters was Bumblelion, who was half lion and half bumble bee.  If that wasn’t weird enough, we also got a hippo/rabbit combo, a moose/seal combo and an elephant/kangaroo combo, among others.  The Wuzzles spend each day living as typical a life as you might imagine these odd mutant creatures could have, all while trying to outsmart Crock, a Wuzzle who is half crocodile and half dinosaur.  One thing I still wonder about to this day, however, is why all the Wuzzles had wings.  I could understand with Bumblelion and Butterbear, since they were half bee or half butterfly.  But what about the other Wuzzles?  Take Rhinokey, for instance. He was part rhino and part monkey.  So why was he given wings?  It made no sense to me then, and it makes no sense to me now. (Show's run-time: September 1985 to December 1985)

6.     Under the Umbrella Tree- This show was once a favorite of mine, as indicated by the fact that my friends and I used to act this show out.  Basically, a woman named Holly, who lived in the suburbs of Ottawa, Ontario, is the sole guardian of three animals, Jacob the Blue Jay, Gloria the gopher and Iggy the Iguana.  All three animals, which were portrayed by puppets, take up residence in the umbrella tree mentioned in the show’s title, which grows inside Holly’s living room.  To my knowledge, we’re never told why Holly has to take care of the three animal puppets, but I guess it might make sense that this Holly person took the umbrella tree from the wild and planted it in her living room, only then discovering that Jacob, Gloria and Iggy were living in the tree.  Sorta like that famous scene in National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, when they discover the squirrel inside the Christmas tree.  Anyway, getting back to this show, each episode had a main theme, ranging from sports and exercise to the holidays, with various life lessons thrown in. For example, I remember one episode in particular, which featured Jacob, Gloria and Iggy needing to get their booster shots, and how they each came up with ways to overcome their fears tied getting their shots.  (Show's run time: September 1986 to June 1993)

7.      The World of David the Gnome – Another old favorite of mine, this show, which was based on the children’s books written by Dutch author, Wil Huygen.  It was about a species of tiny human-like creatures called gnomes.  The main gnome featured in the show was called David, and he spends most of his life living in the forest, trying to thwart the natural enemies of gnome-kind, the trolls, with the aid of his wife Lisa and his fox friend, Swift.  And there aren’t enough words to describe how much I loved Swift, the fastest fox in the forest, who often allowed David to ride about on his back.  What made this character particularly memorable to me was that Swift, unlike some other animal characters in kid shows these days, didn’t talk. Sure, he did laugh and smile, and do all that other stuff that showed he was intelligent enough to understand David, but apart from that, he didn't do anything you wouldn't expect an actual fox to do.  However, I feel I should warn you in case you’re lucky enough to find this show somewhere.  I have recently found out that the final episode of this show did have a bittersweet ending, so it might be handy to have a box of Kleenex within reach before watching the series finale. (Show's run time: Premiered 1985)

8.      The Raccoons- This is another weird show that I once watched.  It was about a trio of raccoons, Ralph, his wife Melissa, and their live-in friend, Bert, who all live in western Canada, learning lessons of teamwork, friendship, cooperation.  In a nutshell, this was one of those environmental shows, but I don’t think it was as in-your-face about it as Captain Planet was. The show’s main antagonist was Cyril Sneer, a greedy cigar-smoking pink aardvark businessman with a trio of henchmen pigs.  Yes, that’s right; this show featured a pink aardvark.  However, I don’t think I ever realized as a kid that was what Cyril was supposed to be.  What makes it even stranger was that this show was supposed to take place in Canada.  To my knowledge, aardvarks only live in Africa, which is a completely different continent.  Other characters in this show were Cyril’s son, Cedric, and Cedric’s girlfriend Sophia, who were both friends of the raccoons, as well as a sheepdog called Schaeffer and Broo the sheepdog puppy.  I gotta give this show credit for actually showing growth in the characters.  Quite a few shows for children have almost no continuality between episodes.  But in this show, you see the characters growing and changing.  For example, the antagonist Cyril starts off as destructive capitalist, but slowly changes into a likable character who is environmentally responsible. (Show's run time: 1985 to 1992)

9.      Adventures of the Little Koala- Oh, this show!  Like Mapletown, this was a very early Anime focusing on anamorphic animals. Main characters included Roobear the koala and girlfriend, Betty, Floppy and Mimi, the twin rabbits, and even a penguin named Pamie.  And I can honestly say that out of all these shows, this is the one that really stuck with me.  Even when I haven’t seen or thought much about it in years, the instant I saw the intro again on YouTube, I was amazed how much I remembered.  Also, even though this was an apparently cute show with cuddly little animals running around, they actually dealt with some rather serious subject matter.  For example, there was one episode when Pamie Penguin is teased because of her big stomach, and as a result, she becomes anorexic.  Tell me, in this modern world of cartoon censorship to the extreme, how many children’s shows have the guts to do something like that? Granted, Pamie recovers from her eating disorder unrealistically quickly. but what do you expect from a 15 minute story? (Show's run-time: October 1984 to March 1985)

10.  Noozles- And here, we have the third early Anime featured on today’s list. This one was about a young girl named Sandy, whose grandfather had gone missing some 38 years ago in the middle of a shipwreck.  In the pilot episode, the authorities have managed to recover a package that her grandfather had been traveling with, and it is given to Sandy.  Inside is a stuffed koala bear.  When Sandy rubs noses with the koala, the toy comes to life, introducing himself as Blinky.  As we later learn, Blinky had been placed into a state of suspended animation, known as ‘Magic Sleepy Time’ and only an Eskimo kiss, also known as a Noozle, can revive him.  Soon after Blinky is revived, his sister Pinky appears out of thin air, insisting that she and Blinky return to their homewold, an alternate dimension known as KoalaWalla Land.  However, because of Blinky’s refusal, they don’t actually go until halfway through the series, having various adventures in the real world instead.  Once they do finally go to KoalaWalla Land, Sandy has to disguise herself by wearing a Koala mask, since all humans are immediately jailed for entering this parallel world.  From that point on, this TV series eventually develops a rather elaborate plotline that seems to be quite rare amongst other children’s programming.  For that reason, I have to recommend you to watch this series if you ever get the chance (Show's run-time July 1984 to December 1984, with reruns airing up until 1987)

11.  You and Me Kid- Well, I would be lying if I said this show was particularly memorable, but it’s on the list because of the one part I did find memorable: the show’s intro, which, for some reason, I’m always reminded of whenever I come across those cool colored shadow screens.  To get a glimpse of it, just swing by YouTube and look up ‘You and Me Kid Opening Credits.’ Apparently, it was designed by Disney in an attempt to help adults build interactive skills with their toddler children.  This program gained a grand total of 130 thirty-minute-long episodes during its run.  While there are four VHS tapes that were released, they are now quite hard to find.  As for the actual point of this show, while I don’t know if it was successful, I have to give them an ‘A’ for effort.  (Show's run-time: April 1983 to 1986)

12.  Mousercise- Here’s another show from Disney that was designed to be beneficial.  Unfortunately, there’s not much information about it that survived.  The premise was an exercise program for kids, starring Mickey, Minnie, Donald and Goofy.  However, we rarely got to see those familiar faces.  They would pop up randomly throughout the show, but for the most part, all we got was this enthusiastic woman named Kellyn Plasschaert (who sadly passed away in 2009), with occasional segments called ‘Do you Know?’ which gave children safety tips, such as the rules of water safety (Show's run-time: Premiered 1983).

13.  Mouseterpiece Theater- As the title suggests, this was a parody of the PBS program Masterpiece Theater, with children as the target audience.  Each program featured classic Disney cartoons, with host George Plimpton giving viewers background information on the shorts, as well as adding commentary.   Like You and Me, Kid, however, all I can really remember of this show is the song that played in the opening, which was expectedly extremely similar to that of Masterpiece Theater (Mid 1980s, with reuns going into the 1990s)

14.  Elephant Show-This show featured the everyday adventures of Sharon, Lois & Bram, who were a Canadian singing trio.  Joining them was an unspeaking elephant that was portrayed by Paula Gallivan in an elephant costume. This unusual group was always joined each episode by a group of children for some unknown reason.  This show, seeing as how it starred a singing trio, was very musical, with each episode featuring a concert sequence, along with a main problem Sharon, Lois, Bram and Elephant would help the children solve, ranging from parents vaccinating their children against mumps and rubella to UNICEF.  However, the episode I remember the most is the sleepover episode, where one of the kids and Elephant decide they want to stay up all night.  The most memorable bit about this show was the fact that each episode closed with them singing the Skinnamarink Song. (Show's run-time: 1984 to 1988)

15.  Doctor Snuggles- You ever have one of those shows that you watch as a kid, and even though you don’t forget it, you can never remember the show’s purpose or even the name of the show?  All you can remember of that show is one scene, and that one scene isn’t enough to help you track it down years later?  Well, for me, that show was Doctor Snuggles, and part of the reason why I couldn’t track this one down was because I was living under the delusion that this was some kind of animated version of Doctor Doolittle.  All I could remember was this one bizarre scene when they found a crying baby octopus in a tree.  In actuality, Doctor Snuggles was about an inventor who lived in a psychedelic world with his friends, including Miss Nettles the housekeeper.  His arch nemesis, Professor Emerald, is a crazed magician, and, get this, Doctor Snuggles’ main form of transportation is a pogo stick that doubles as an umbrella. I think I don't need to come out and say that this show was obviously a weird one. (Show's run time: October 1979 to 1980)

16.  Welcome to Pooh Corner- With the new movie that was released in July 2011, I see Winnie the Pooh is making his comeback.  Of all our childhood icons, I don’t think any one of them is more recognizable than this honey-loving bear.  However, when I was a kid, Pooh Bear appeared in a non-animated medium.  Welcome to Pooh Corner featured actual actors in costumes, like the ones you can see prancing around in Disney parks.  The start of every episode featured this old man played by Laurie Main, who I think was supposed to be an elderly Christopher Robin or something.  He would be the one to introduce the story in each episode. (Show's run-time: April 1983 to 1986)

17.  Dumbo’s Circus- Who doesn’t remember Dumbo, the flying elephant?  Well, in this show, the only connection to that heartwarming Disney movie is Dumbo.  No one else is there, not even Timothy Mouse.  Instead we get Lionel the lion, Fair Dinkum the Koala, Barnaby Bowser the dog, Q.T. the Orangutan, Lilli the cat and Sebastian, a purple alley cat.  That’s right, a purple alley cat.  As if that wasn’t odd enough, the circus in Dumbo’s Circus are run by these animals!  Dinkim’s the ringmaster, Lilli’s on the tightrope, etc.  Now, I have no idea how this show made sense.  Who would let their children go to a circus that’s entirely run by talking animals, with little to no humans overseeing things?  Thankfully, this show was aimed at kids, and since when do little kids put that much thought into their TV programs?  I know I never did at that age.(Show's run-time: May 1995 to 1996)

18.  The Littl' Bits- I had almost completely forgotten this show, but it still comes back to me every now and again, particularly when I listen to the My Fair Lady soundtrack, on account of the song With a Little Bit of Luck reminding me so strongly of this show’s opening song.  For those of you who don’t know, this was a show produced in Japan which focused on a race of these elf-like creatures called pixies.  They live in a place called Foothill Forest, and the show follows around five pixie children as they interact with forest animals and deal with a bunch of problems.  Once again, I can’t tell you much more than that, which probably means I wasn’t an avid watcher of it, but the wikapedia article explains enough.  Just take a gander at some of these names: Lillbit, Willibit, Snagglebit, and Teenybit.  Very creative naming choice, huh? (Show's run-time: 1991 to 1995 for the original American run; reaired on Cartoon Network from 1993 to 1997)

19.  Brain Games- Ah, Brain Games.  What could be said about this show?  Not much actually, because I don’t remember it lasting that long.  Anyway, Brain Games always presented you with a puzzle that, while you watched it being solved, you had to guess at the answer.  For example: Which animal does nothing special for winter? Weasel, Rabbit, or Bird?  Or which animal lives longest? Human, Parrot, Hippo, or Giraffe?  There were other games, too, such as one when a doodle would be drawn on screen and you had to guess what was being drawn before the doodle was completed.  What I remember most about this show?  The ending.  After each episode, you were treated to this voice that announced “Braingames is now over.”  As the voice said this, it would be constantly breaking, as if the show ending was the saddest thing ever.( Show's run-time: November 1983 to December 1985)

20.  Mother Goose’s Stories-This was a very cozy show, made by the iconic Jim Henson.  Each episode started with Mother Goose’s three unnamed children, who were having some sort of issue.  Mother Goose would then step in and tell them one of her stories, which always seemed to solve the goslings’ problem.  As one would expect from a Jim Henson creation, this show combined live actors and puppets to tell such stories as Humpty Dumpty, Jack and Jill, and the one I remember the most, Baa Baa Black Sheep.  I really liked this show because it always took those nursery rhymes that only take less than a minute to say and turned them into an actual story that lasted about half an hour. (Show's run-time: Premiered August 1990)

21. The Littles- Based on the book series, this show was about the adventures of these strange creatures who lived in the walls.  They looked like very small humans, except with pointed ears and rodent-like tails.  The Littles were a full family group, with the parents, Frank and Helen, the two children, Tom and Lucy, Grandpa Little and Cousin Dinky.  I will admit that it’s been years since I even looked at the books, but in the TV show, the Littles are good friends with a human boy named Henry Bigg.  (Oh, the Littles and the Biggs.  Clever.)  Henry, out of friendship for the tiny people who live in the wall of his house, keeps their existence a secret from everyone else, including his parents.  I also distinctly remember the Littles keeping a pet mouse in the TV show, but don’t quote me on that.  Even though this was a TV show, what I most remember is the movie, called Here Come the Littles, which basically showed how Henry first befriended the Littles.  In the movie, Henry Bigg’s Uncle Augustus takes custody of the boy when his parents go missing in Africa during an archaeological trip. Tom and Lucy Little accidentally are brought along in Henry’s suitcase, leaving Grandpa Little and Cousin Dinky to journey after them in order to rescue them.  Once at the uncle’s mansion, Tom, Lucy, Gradpa and Dinky soon find evidence that Uncle Augustus had forged the documents that named him Henry’s guardian, and that Uncle Augustus also has plans to tear down Henry’s home and build a shopping center in its place.  Thus, the Littles and Henry must work together to stop the evil uncle’s plans.  (Show's run-time: September 1983 to November 1985)

22.  Girl from Tomorrow- I had a very hard time tracking down information about this show, because I had forgotten it actually was a show.  I had thought it was actually a full-length movie.  In actuality, it was indeed a 12 episode long TV series produced by a company called Film Austrailia.  The story begins in the year 3000, with the human race in a Utopian state.  However, half a millennia ago, in the year 2500, there was a catastrophic event of some kind that nearly destroyed the whole world, and mankind is still trying to rebuild the earth after this event.  A scientist called Tulista uses a time traveling device known as the Time Capsule to investigate the causes of this catastrophic event.  However, Silverthorn, a criminal from the year 2500, manages to capture Tulista’s young student, Alana, and escapes with her into the year 1990.  It is here that Alana escapes from Silverthorn and befriends a teenage girl named Jenny shortly afterward.  From what I gather from the Wikipedia article about the show, the rest of the show involved Alana and Jenny working to find a way to help Alana return to her own time, with culture shock hijinks abounding.  One scene that I do remember quite vividly involves Alana mistaking a microwave with an invention from her time that cleans clothes.  It turns out this series also had a sequel series, The Girl from Tomorrow Part II: Tomorrow's End, which aired in 1993, but I don’t think I ever saw it. (Show's run time: Premiered in 1990)

23.  The Legend of White Fang- I can't remember much about this show, just that it existed.  I remember was animated, even though I’m pretty sure each episode began and ended in live action, and that it basically involved White Fang and this little girl who he befriended.  Unfortunately, I can’t tell you more than that.  And the Wikipedia description doesn’t tell me much more than that, simply stating that the main premise was: “12-year-old Wendy and wolf-husky mix White Fang share many adventures in Alaska's rugged Klondike territory. Brave Wendy manages to befriend the wild loner, and together, she and White Fang explore the wilderness, where they encounter wolf packs, gold thieves, American Indians, otter poachers, and treacherous avalanches.”  At first, I thought it would be impossible to be able to see this again, since the only episode of it I found on YouTube was clearly not in English.  However I have seen that there is a DVD release, which is available on Amazon for about $14. (Show's run-time: 1992 to 1994)

24. Kids Incorporated- I remember being really into this show, and it became a routine of mine to sit in front of this TV to watch it after I got back from school, munching on a Little Debbie snack cake.  It revolved around a group of teens who somehow were able to form a rock group that would regularly appear at an establishment called The P*lace (originally called The Palace until the first 'a' in the sign burned out and was never replaced), which, in the show's universe, had once featured performances by big name singers such as Elvis Presley and Frank Sinatra.  As you might imagine, due to the cast consisting of teenagers, there were a lot of predictable themes in this show, ranging from schoolyard crushes and peer pressure and going up into darker territories such as child abuse. Of course, it was also a musical-based show, and not only did the characters perform on stage at The P*lace at the conclusion of each episode, it was not uncommon for someone to randomly break into song. Oh, and I suppose it should be mentioned that at one point, this show starred a young Jennifer Love Hewitt, then credited as Love Hewitt.  (Show's run-time 1983 to 1993)

25. Adventures in Wonderland- Produced and aired by Disney, this was a live action program that featured Alice's every day adventures in her personal world of Wonderland. In this version of the classic tale, first brought to life by Lewis Carroll, Alice is able to travel to and from Wonderland through a magic mirror located in her bedroom.  In each episode, Alice would arrive home from school and vent to her pet cat, Dinah, about some sort of problem she was having, either with her younger brother, a friend or a teacher.  After complaining about the problem, she would head off to Wonderland, where the inhabitants would be facing a similar crisis.  By the end of the episode, Alice would have her own problem figured out.  On the whole, this show was entertaining and educational at the same time. (In fact, this is the show that taught me how to spell arithmetic.)  Some of the topics dealt with over the course of the show's run were also quite mature.  For example, in the episode that first introduced The Walrus, a recurring minor character in the show, the majority of the other Wonderland characters immediately ostracized him due to their prejudices against walruses .  There was also one notable episode in which Wonderland holds an election to choose who would rule Wonderland: the Queen or the White Rabbit.  For this episode, the viewers could even call a toll-free number to cast their own votes in the election.  However, there were some things that confused me about this show even back then.  For example, the Queen of Hearts featured in this show was generally a good person who was actually nice to Alice.  A complete 180 from the Queen that appeared in the animated movie from 1951, which was the version I was most familiar with.  Also, I must mention that I also loved the Cheshire Cat in this show.  While he isn't as awesome as the one that appeared in the recent film of 2010 (really, how many creatures can you name that can successfully be creepy and cute at the same time?) I still loved this version of the smiling feline. (Show's run-time: 1991 to 1995)

And there's my list of Obscure TV shows. If anyone wishes to post their own memories about these shows or can remember a show that didn't make the list, please do so in the comment section below.  hopefully by working together on this, we can make sure the TV shows of our childhood are never cast off and forgotten.

Movie Review: Alien 3

While Aliens is arguably even better film than the original Alien, the second sequel, Alien 3, is when things start to go downhill.  The reason for this decline in quality could possibly be connected to the fact that the script wasn’t even finished when they started filming.  I’m not quite sure why they felt like they couldn’t wait until they had a finalized story at hand before they started shooting, but I cannot think of a good enough reason to excuse this, especially when this is what was produced.

    Like all the other movies, we open in space, where Ripley, Newt, Hicks and Bishop are still in stasis aboard The Sulaco after their ordeal at Hadley’s Hope, the terriforming colony on LV-426.  Almost immediately, it’s revealed to the audience that there’s a Xenomorph egg on board.  Now, this is where the first problem sprouts up, and I think it goes without saying that if you notice problems within the first five minutes of a movie, then it’s usually a safe bet that the rest of the film will be even more disappointing.  Seriously, how did the egg get on The Sulaco in the first place?  The only Xenomorph who could have laid that egg would have been the Queen, as no other Xenomorph was able to reach the spaceship.  But as you might remember from the last movie, the Queen didn’t have much of an opportunity to lay that egg in Aliens, as the majority of her time on The Sulaco was spent trying to kill Newt and fighting with Ripley in the Power Loader.

    Questionable time constraints aside, the Xenomoph egg hatches while Ripley and company are in stasis, and the facehugger emerges, proceeding to attack the stasis tubes.  The attack triggers a fire on the ship, and as a result, Ripley, Newt, Hicks and Bishop are automatically placed in an escape pod and jettisoned off into space.  While all this goes on, we see a brief image on a computer console, which reveals that the facehugger has attached itself to one of the survivors, but it’s not indicated who this unfortunate person is.
    The escape pod eventually crashes on a prison planet called Fiorina 161 where a group of men discover the crashed pod.  Afterwards, we’re shown the results of the crash through the use of some data computer readout.  While Ripley survived the crash, poor Newt is pronounced dead, as so is Hicks.  As for Biship, he’s declared to have negative capability.  And I gotta say, this bites in the worst possible way.  You mean to tell me that after everything those three went through in Aliens, you kill them all off in the first scene of this movie?  Thanks a bunch, you creepoid script writers .
Anyway, because this will be important later: After we get the depressing news about poor Newt, Hicks and Bishop, we see the dog belonging to one of the men who found the crashed escape pod standing in the pod’s doorway, barking like crazy, followed by a quick shot of a facehugger moving around on the crashed pod.  But now, we cut to what I gather is the next day.  Andrews, the warden on the prison planet is informing all the inmates about the crashed escape pod, and how only Ripley survived the crash.  The inmates seem to be irritated by the presence of a woman, since they all apparently have taken a vow of celibacy, and believe that any outsider risks breaking their spiritual unity.  (So, it’s an extremely religious prison?)  Andrews assures the inmates that he has called for a rescue team that should arrive within the week to take Ripley away, and instructs them to simply go about their everyday tasks.
Inside the infirmary, Ripley is still unconscious, but when a doctor called Clemens starts to inject some kind of homemade cocktail into her body, she snaps awake.  Clemens informs Ripley about her whereabouts, and fills her in on how the escape pod crashed.  He also has to tell Ripley about how the others all perished in the crash.  At Ripley’s insistence, Clemens brings Ripley to the recovered escape pod, where Ripley learns how each one of her friends perished.  Bishop was broken beyond repair in the crash and was promptly disconnected and brought to the prison planet’s rubbish heap. Hicks was impaled by a fallen safety support, and finally, Newt drowned in the cryochamber.  As Ripley starts to mourn, she notices a burn mark on Newt’s cryochamber.  Seeing a resemblance to the burn of a Xenomorph’s acidic blood, Ripley insists on seeing Newt’s remains for herself.  Elsewhere, one of the prison inmates finds the dog we saw earlier.  Judging by how the inmate states that he was looking everywhere for the dog, I guess the dog was missing for a while.  The inmate approaches the dog and finds some suspiciously situated wounds on his face.
In the morgue, Ripley is shown Newt’s corpse, and the sight of the little girl’s body visibly affects her.  However Ripley is able to push aside her sorrow in order to keep her head in the game.  Due to her worries that there might be a baby Xenomorph inside Newt, Ripley tells Clemens to perform an autopsy, and when Clemens requests to know why Ripley is so insistent about the autopsy, she tells him that Newt may be infected with cholera.  

The autopsy is performed, but Clemens finds absolutely nothing, not even in Newt’s chest.  While Ripley’s fears have been alleviated, watching the autopsy of the girl she’s come to love was clearly difficulty for her.  Clemens, who is obviously suspicious, asks Ripley once again what it was he was supposed to be looking for, but before Ripley can reply, Andrews the warden enters the room.  Andrews demands to know why Clemens has performed an autopsy without his stamp of approval and also scolds the doctor for allowing Ripley to leave the infirmary and show her presence to the prison inmates.  Ripley, still slightly worried about the possibility of another Xenomorph, requests that the bodies of Hicks and Newt to be cremated.  While Andrews initially refuses, stating that the bodies will remain on ice, Clemens backs Ripley up, announcing that while he hasn’t found any indication of a cholera infection in Newt’s body, he cannot be completely sure that there’s no possibly of a communicable infection without a proper laboratory test.  Andrews then agrees to allow the cremation, instructing them to use the ginormous furnace that’s located within the prison compound.  The cremation of Newt and Hicks commences, with all of the prison inmates in attendance and Andrews giving the last rites.  During this scene, one of the inmates, a man called Dillon, gives a rather deep speech about death and new beginnings.

  

Overlapping with this speech, we see the dog from earlier, who is elsewhere inside the prison.  The dog begins to act strangely, pacing back and forth and barking at nothing.  He then starts to convulse and whine before a baby Xenomorph bursts out of the dog’s chest.  And I must admit, the new design of the Xenomorph is interesting.  While the Xenomorphs of the past walked upright like humans, this new alien has some distinctive canine qualities and walks on all fours.  The explanation within the fan base is that Xenomorphs end up incorporating the DNA of their hosts into their own.  In other words, the Xenomorphs of the past all had a humanoid shape because they’re hosts were human, while this Xenomporph has a canine quality because its host was a dog.  While this kinda makes sense, it does make you wonder if there are any limitations to this.  I mean, what if a facehugger attached itself to a dolphin?  A part of me wants to see what that kind of Xenomorph would look like.
Getting back to the story, Ripley, after she shaves her head, (there was an earlier scene when Clemens told her to do it because of some kind of lice problem that exists on the prison planet) she enters the prison’s cafeteria to get some food.  While she’s there, she notices Dillon and thanks him for his speech at the cremation.  Dillon dismisses her thanks, but they still let her sit down and eat with them, amidst a conversation about religion.  Later on, Clemens fills Ripley in on the history about the prison, and how they became a religious group.  Once again, he asks Ripley about what it was she was looking for during Newt’s autopsy.  Ripley deflects the question, and it’s heavily implied that she and Clemens sleep together.  Meanwhile, some hapless inmate who is later identified as Murphy is cleaning out this very large air duct, and ends up stumbling across the Canine Xenomorph.  The Canine Xenomorph promptly sprays Murphy with some kind of acid spit, and as a result, Murphy writhes about in pain, rolling straight into a large vent fan, with obvious results.  When the ‘accident’ is investigated, Clemens notices a large hole in the floor, which appears to have been created by a corrosive acid.
Elsewhere, Ripley has returned to the remains of the escape pod to check the flight recorder.  While there, she bumps into Clemens.  He tells Ripley about the burn hole he found at the accident site.  Now on alert, Ripley asks Clemens where Bishop the android can be found.  On Clemens’ instructions, she proceeds to the junkyard to fetch Bishop’s remains, but when she tries to leave, she is cornered and attacked by a gang of the inmates, who attempt to rape her.  Before they go too far, Ripley is saved by Dillon.
In another part of the prison, three inmates are walking around for some unexplained reason.  Noticing that some of the candles that have been arranged on the floor are being blown out, they try to see what’s causing this.  Two of the inmates are then attacked by the Canine Xenomorph, leaving the third one, Golic, to run away in sheer terror.
Back with Ripley, she has managed to reactivate Bishop, and asks him to access the data on the flight recorder.  With Bishop’s help, Ripley learns about how an electrical fire started in the The Sulacco, which was why they were ejected in the escape pod.  In addition, Bishop reveals that there was a Xenomorph on board, and that Weyland Corp knows about this.  Bishop then asks Ripley to disconnect him, as he’d rather be nothing than the wreck he’s become.  

Ripley complies, but moments later, Andrews, Dillon and Clemens enter the infirmary with Golic, who is screaming about a dragon.  They try asking him about the whereabouts of Bogs and Rains, the two inmates who were killed in the above-mentioned scene with the candles.  Andrews decides that Golic may have murdered the missing pair and is using the dragon story to cover his tracks, but Dillon defends Golic, stating that while Golic is many things, he is not a liar.  Ripley, who is has overheard everything, steps in and tells Andrews all about the Xenomorphs, but Andrews and his personal assistant, Aaron, are highly skeptical.  Ripley is then shocked to learn that there are absolutely no weapons of any kind on the planet.  Andrews sentences Ripley to be confined to the infirmary until the rescue team arrives to take her away.
In the infirmary, Ripley is kept company by Clemens and Golic.  When Ripley admits to having a sore throat, Clemens prepares a cocktail to help her, and he then decides to open up to Ripley about his sordid past, about how he once got drunk during his residency and ended up killing 11 men by prescribing the wrong pain killer dosage.  The moment he’s done telling his story, the Canine Xenomorph appears in the infirmary and kills Clemens.  It goes for Ripley, but for some reason, it spares her life and vanishes. 

Ripley runs out of the infirmary and makes a beeline for the mess hall, where Andrews is busy telling the inmates about how Murphy was killed in the ventilation shaft due to his own carelessness and how Bogs and Rain are missing and have most likely been murdered by Golic.  When Ripley enters the mess hall, she tries to warn Andrews about the Canine Xenomorph, but her warnings fall on deaf ears, and Andrews simply orders Aaron to escort Ripley back to the infirmary.  At that very second, the Canine Xenomorph pops out of one of the air ducts in the ceiling and grabs Andrews, dragging him up into the roof, where he is immediately killed.
The inmates are now spooked and on edge as they try and figure out what to do now.  They have quite a lot of discussion, about who will be in charge now, as well as an inventory of what they have to work with in order to defend themselves.  Ripley eventually comes up with a plan that will force the Canine Xenomorph into the toxic waste chamber, where apparently nothing can ever get out of.  As they work to set up their plan, the Canine Xenomoph attacks one of the inmates, which results in the trap being prematurely triggered, and a fire breaks out.  Dillon eventually manages to trip the sprinkler system, but many of the inmates are killed regardless.  Ripley, noticing the pain in her chest is not going away, decides to undergo a scan of her bio-functions.  The scan reveals the horrifying truth: there is a baby Xenomorph inside her.
Now, here, we run into a series of issues I have with this movie.  We’ve already established that somehow, the Alien Queen found the time to lay an egg inside The Sulaco.  Even if we can buy that, we’ve already seen that a facehugger attached itself to the dog, which resulted in the Canine Xenomorph that’s now running around.  Now, back in Alien, the facehugger that impregnated Kane dropped dead immediately afterwards.  Therefore, since more than one host was impregnated by facehuggers this time around, there must have been two facehuggers on the ship.  One that impregnated Ripley and the other impregnated the dog.  This would suggest that the Alien Queen laid more than one egg before she attacked Ripley and Newt at the end of Aliens.  However, since I have difficulty believing that the Alien Queen managed to lay even one egg, I’m left with the possibility that the facehugger in this movie can impregnate more than one host before dropping dead.  So why do the facehuggers have a better longevity now?  Well, since it’s later revealed that the embryo inside Ripley is another Queen, maybe this facehugger is a Queen Facehugger?  This might also explain why it’s apparently taking longer for the alien inside Ripley to gestate, since the baby Xenomorph we saw in Alien burst out of Kane’s chest only a few hours after he regained consciousness.  However, if we can buy all that, then there’s one question that remains: If the facehugger that impregnated Ripley is a Super Queen Facehugger who implants new Alien Queens, wouldn’t that make the Cainine Xenomorph a Queen as well?  Or is the dog DNA overriding the Queen gene somehow?  Ugh, this movie.  No, ugh me for putting more thought into this than the people who wrote the script.
ANYWAY, Ripley, now knowing that there’s a baby Xenomorph inside her, instructs Aaron to send word to the rescue team that’s already en route that the entire prison planet is now gone toxic, knowing that this would make them stay away.  Aaron, however, refuses to send the message, stating that his only concern is getting off the planet and returning home to his wife and child.  Realizing that Aaron is not going to help, Ripley leaves to try and find the Xenomorph herself, just as Aaron receives word that the rescue team will arrive in two hours, along with instructions that Ripley must be kept safely quarantined until they arrive.
Ripley continues to search for the Canine Xenomorph in the bowels of the prison compound.  She eventually finds it, but once again, Ripley is spared, since it can somehow sense that Ripley is the host to a Queen Xenomorph.  Ripley then approaches Dillon to tell him about how she was impregnated with a Queen Xenomorph.  She begs Dillon to kill her, as it’s the best way to ensure the baby Queen will be killed as well.  Dillon, after a tense moment, refuses, on the grounds that he needs Ripley to help kill the Canine Xenomorph that’s still on the loose.  However, Dillon gives Ripley his word that he will kill her once the Canine Xenomorph is out of the picture.
In an emergency meeting, Dillon tries to rally together the surviving inmates in order to try and kill the Canine Xenomorph once again.  When the inmates start trashing Weyland Corp for not leaving them any weapons, Ripley speaks up, informing everyone that  the company will not do anything to kill the Canine Xenomorph, as they are focused on obtaining a Xenomorph organism for their bioweapons division.  She tells them how Weyland Corp viewed the entire crew of The Nostormo and even an entire squadron of soldiers as expendable in their attempts to achieve their goal.  Thus, there’s no chance that they would ever show a lick of compassion to a bunch of convicted criminals, even if they have found religion.  Dillon announces his plan to lure the Canine Xenomorph into a mold and drown it in hot lead.  (So now we got a lead works on prison premises?  Do they have a room with a swimming pool and hot tub too?)

Dillon’s plan is put into action, and while it does eventually work, most of the inmates end up giving their lives, until only Dillon, Morse and Ripley are all that’s left of the final army.  (Aaron is still around, too, but he’s off doing his own thing in waiting to greet the rescue team at this point, so he’s no longer relevant.)  In the end, Dillon sacrifices himself to keep the Xenomorph in position long enough for Morse to pour the hot lead into the mold, effectively drowning it.
 So, now the Canine Xenomoph is gone, and Morse and Ripley can celebra…. OH, CRAP!  The Canine Xenomoph survived and jumps out of the hot lead!  Thankfully, Morse comes up with a Plan B and shouts to Ripley to turn on the sprinkler system, since the canine Xenomoph is burning hot because of the lead.  Because of the sudden decline in temperature, the Canine Xenomoph explodes within seconds.
Meanwhile, the rescue team has arrived on Fiorina 161.  They appear on the scene mere moments after the victory.  Ripley is shocked when she sees Bishop among the rescue team.  Knowing her Biship android is deactivated, Ripley concludes that this Bishop is just another version of that model.  This Bishop insists that he is the genuine article, and that all Bishop-androids were modeled after him.  The human Bishop tells Ripley that he’s here to help her and that he wants to remove the baby Xenomorph inside her, with the intention of killing it.  For a few minutes, Ripley appears to consider his honestly, but she quickly decides not to trust him in the end.  Her instincts prove to be correct, as the human Bishop gives himself away by calling the Xenomorph a ‘magnificent specimen,’ and that she has to let him have it.  His words fall on deaf ears, and as Aaron is shot and killed by the rescue team for attacking the human Bishop, Ripley, determined to destroy the Xenomorph race once and for all, willingly throws herself into the fiery furnace.  As she falls, the baby Queen Xenomorph bursts from her chest, but Ripley uses the last of her strength to hold onto it, ensuring that it will also be destroyed.

After Ripley’s sacrifice, the prison is closed down, and Morse is escorted off of Fiorina 161.  In the final moments, we return to the remains of the crashed escape pod from The Sulaco, enabling us to hear the haunting echo of Ripley’s final words from the original movie:
“….Ash, Captain Dallas are dead.  Cargo and ship destroyed.  I should reach the frontier within six weeks.  With a little luck, the network will pick me up.  This is Ripley, last survivor of The Nostromo, signing off.”

This movie… I honestly don’t know what to say about it.  I will admit that there are some pretty nifty elements in the movie, such as the design on the Canine Xenomorph.  The echoes of Ripley’s final words from Alien was also a nice touch, even though it’s not a word-for-word quote.

The original line from Alien:

“….Ash and Captain Dallas, are dead. Cargo and ship destroyed. I should reach the frontier in about six weeks. With a little luck, the network will pick me up. This is Ripley, last survivor of the Nostromo, signing off.”
Plus, at the risk of sounding horrible, I always get a kick of seeing Andrew’s death scene.  However, those points are not enough to make up for the overall plot and plot holes.  How did that Xenomorph egg get on The Sulaco?  How was the facehugger inside the egg able to impregnate more than one host?  And wouldn’t all the impregnated hosts carry Queen Xenomorphs?  I know good Sci-Fi isn’t supposed to answer all the questions, but I do expect them to maintain continuity.  You can’t just change the rules halfway into the game without explaining why they changed.
As for the plot, I still would like to know why they had to kill off Newt and Hicks like that.  Granted the actress who played Newt had aged six years in between movies, and it probably wouldn’t have been a comfortable experience to see her on a prison planet filled with convicted murders and rapists.  But couldn’t the writers have come up with another way to exclude Newt from the main action without resorting to killing her?  For example, let’s run this premise up a flag pole: Ripley, Hicks and Newt begin a life together on Earth after their ordeal in Aliens.  Six years later, Hicks gets orders to serve on an escort team, charged with bringing a prisoner to Fiorina 161.  But when Ripley looses contact with him, she leaves Newt in the care of a neighbor and goes to Fiorina 161 herself to see what’s wrong.  As for how the Xenomorph got on the prison planet?  Well, let’s look back to the Xenomorph in Alien, and the Queen Xenomorph in Aliens.  What if they didn’t die after being jettisoned off into space, and instead simply floated all the way to Fiorina 161?  Yes, I know this is far-fetched, but then again, so is the fact that the Queen Xenomorph managed to find time to lay an egg on The Sulaco!  And didn’t the robot Ash mention that the Xenomorphs have a ‘prolonged resistance to adverse environmental conditions’ way back when?
For all those reasons, I label Alien 3 the worst movie in the original trilogy and a pretty shoddy sendoff for Ripley.  And while I know of the existence of Alien Resurrection, I don’t have the energy to tackle that one just yet, so let’s just say I’ll get to that some other time.

Movie Review: Aliens

While Alien had all the elements of a spectacular horror/thriller, the sequel entitled Aliens really raises the bar by being more action-packed, with a whole lot more at stake.  In addition, the opening doesn’t drag on like it did in Alien.   

 

Aliens opens on the escape pod shuttle Ripley used to escape from The Nostromo in the first movie.  Inside the escape pod shuttle, we find Ripley is still in stasis.  Thus, she is not able to see it when the shuttle’s computer notifies of a proximity warning as a mysterious spaceship connects with the shuttle.  After some sort of robotic probe enters the vessel and does some kind of scan, some guys in hazmat suits step in and discover Ripley and Jones the cat in their stasis tubes.  The hazmat suit guys bring them to a space station, where Ripley is placed in a recovery room that looks like your typical hospital.  Right when Ripley wakes up, some bloke, who clearly is the reincarnation of Paul Buchman from Mad About You, comes in with Jones the cat.  The Buckman clone introduces himself as Burke, and he breaks the news to her that she was in stasis for 57 years.  As Ripley tries to grasp this information, she starts to react to a sudden pain in her chest.  To Ripley’s horror, she sees her chest start to expand as a Xenomorph baby tries to force its way out.

Psych!  It was all a really bad nightmare Ripley was having.  She’s perfectly fine.  However, the part about how she’d been drifting through space for so many years was actually true.  Anyway, an undetermined amount of time later, Burke meets with Ripley to discuss some important family matters.  Ripley had asked Burke to help her locate the daughter who had been awaiting Ripley’s return to Earth during the events of Alien.  At first, Burke tries to dodge Ripley’s questions by telling her to worry about some sort of hearing that’s approaching, but Ripley insists to hear about her daughter.  Thus, Burke has to deliver yet another bombshell.  Ripley’s daughter, Amanda, had passed away two years earlier, at the age of 66.  This is a rather heartbreaking scene, especially when Ripley remembers how she’d promised Amanda that she’d be back home in time for her 11^th birthday.

Sadly, Ripley isn’t given much time to grieve, which is a shame because not only has she just been told that her ten-year-old daughter has just passed away from old age after spending her entire life waiting for a mother that never returned, but she’s also never really been given the opportunity to recover from seeing her former crewmates massacred by the alien.  If anyone deserves time to recover from such grievous emotional wounds, it’s Ripley, but she is nevertheless denied the chance to have a proper mourning period because of that hearing Burke mentioned.  A bunch of committee folk for the company called Weyland-Yutani Corp, which was also the company that sent The Nostromo off to the planet where the alien creature was first encountered, have decided to investigate how Ripley initiated the self-destruct mechanism at the end of Alien.  The committee folk are pretty much dissing her for blowing up The Nostromo, an expensive M-class star-freighter, ‘for reasons unknown.’  Ripley again tries to tell them about the alien that killed the rest of the crew, but because the committee folk have located no physical evidence or record of the alien, none of them believe her story and refuses to listen to her warnings about the hundreds of alien eggs Kane saw on the planet, which is now referred to as LV-426.  They therefore revoke her flight officer license and sentence her to attend a series of psych evaluations.  Ripley tries one more time to warn the head chairman by telling him to look on LV-426, but he once again dismisses her warnings by informing her that there’s a human terraforming colony there now, and no one has ever reported coming across any alien ship or lifeforms in the twenty years since the colony was established.

We now cut to LV-426, where the colony called Hadley’s Hope is located.  Here, we also meet a family of four, who are heading off to some middle-of-nowhere quadrant on Weyland-Yutani Corp orders, in order to see if they can find something.  And find something they do.  They stumble across the very same alien spacescraft Captain Dallas, Lambert and Kane discovered in the first movie.  The mother and father go off into the spacecraft, instructing their young son and daughter to stay in their truck-like transport.  After a considerable amount of time passes and the parents still haven’t returned, the little girl starts to worry.  The instant her brother tries to reassure her, the door flies open and the mother hurries in, grabbing the radio to call for help.  The little girl screams in horror at the sight of her father lying on the ground, a facehugger alien attached to his face.

Back on the spacestation, Ripley is visited by Burke and another man named Lieutenant Gorman.  They inform her that they’ve lost contact with the colony on LV-426.  Understandably, Ripley is not pleased, and is partially offended that they’re coming to her for help now after they dismissed her warnings and virtually questioned her sanity.  Burke offers to restore her flight officer license if she agrees to go to the planet with the military forces as a consultant, but Ripley refuses, stating she will not set foot on that planet again.  However, after she has another PTSD-induced nightmare that night, she contacts Burke and tells him she will only go along on the condition that they agree to wipe the aliens out once and for all, and that no alien specimen is brought back for study.  Burke gives Ripley his word that the company will agree to her terms.

Ripley accompanies Burk and some handpicked soldiers to journey to LV-426 aboard a spacecraft named The Sulaco, with them spending most of the journey in stasis.  When they’re woken up, we get to meet the members of the rescue team, but there’s so many of them, I can’t really remember most of their names.  For that reason, I usually only focus on the core bunch: Hicks, Hudson (whose claim to fame is his almost-incessant whining), a butch Rambo-esque female named Vasquez, and a guy named Bishop, who is shown to be extremely skilled with a knife.  When it’s revealed that Bishop is an android, Ripley, whose experience with Ash left her with a firm prejudice for androids, is immediately disgruntled.  She demands that Bishop stay away from her.

Before they arrive at LV-426, the soldiers are debriefed and filled in on the specifics of the mission.  It’s in this scene that the alien is officially referred to as a Xenomorph for the first time.  Ripley retells the soldiers about her history with the Xenomorph.  When the soldiers start to act cavalier about the whole thing, Ripley is not impressed in the slightest, and angrily tells them that it only took one Xenomorph to wipe out her whole crew in a single day, which seems to sober them up a bit. (But not enough to stop Hudson from making cocky, smart-alecky jokes.)
 

Next, we get a rather boring scene of them loading up one of The Sulaco’s drop ships .  This scene exists for two reasons.  The first is to introduce the Power Loaders, a kind of mechanical suit of armor/forklift combo, which will later play a part in the movie’s climax.  The second is to throw in some product placement by showing off Ripley’s Reebok sneakers.  Once that scene’s done, the soldiers, Ripley and Burke file into the drop ship and released down to the planet’s surface.  When they’re dropped off at the colony, the soldiers head inside while Ripley, Burke and Lieutenant Gorman stay behind to monitor their progress.  The soldiers find the colony completely deserted, with the only sign of life coming from someone’s pet gerbils.  Through the live video feed sent back by the soldier’s cameras, Ripley notices some huge holes in the floor, and ceilings which appear to have been created by some sort of corrosive acid.  However, it’s decided that the place is secure, and Lieutenant Gorman heads into the colony with Burke and a still-worried Ripley.

As they continue to search the colony, they stumble across a laboratory that contains facehuggers that are being kept in large glass tubes, two of which are still living.  Immediately afterwards, they discover a lone survivor, the same little girl we saw earlier.  The girl is understandably petrified and distrustful of them, and slips off into an airduct, but Ripley follows her and manages to calm her down.  They discover the little girl’s name is Rebecca Jordan, and the soldiers try to convince her to explain what happened, but Rebecca refuses to talk until Ripley connects to her on an emotional level, using the motherly instincts she must have used with the late Amanda.  When this connection is made, Rebecca starts talking, starting off by telling Ripley she prefers to be called by her nickname of Newt.  Ripley assures Newt that she’ll be safe with them, and that the soldiers are there to protect her.  Newt responds by saying it won’t make any difference.

 

Meanwhile, Burke and the solders have decided to locate the other colonists using the personal data transmitters that every colonist had surgically implanted.  They discover that all the colonists appear to be gathered in the processing station.  They head out to retrieve them.  (While this is going on, there’s a brief scene with Bishop performing an autopsy on a dead facehugger and calling it magnificent.  This scene was possibly designed to make us wonder if Bishop will turn out to be just another Ash.)  The soldiers go into the processing station.  When they get to the place where colonists should be located, they find a very dark and organic looking ambiance which is reminiscent of the alien spaceship where they Ripley’s deceased comrades found the alien eggs.  As the search continues, Ripley brings a huge oversight to Lieutenant Gorman’s attention.  The soldiers, who are armed with guns that fire off explosive cases, are right under the processing station’s primary heat exchanges, meaning that if they fire their guns, they could rupture the cooling systems, which would trigger a thermonuclear explosion.  To avoid this, the soldiers are ordered to surrender their rifles and grenades and only use their flamethrowers.  After they give up their guns, and commence searching, the soldiers find the colonists.  Unfortunately, everyone has been cocooned and are all clearly dead.  All except for one young boy, who begs the soldiers to kill him.  Before anyone can do something, a chestburster errupts out of the boy’s chest.  The soldiers immediately torch the boy and the newborn alien.  This act alerts the adult Xenomporphs, who have been hiding in the ceiling.  As the soldiers notice the movement on their sensors, Ripley tells Lieutenant Gorman to call them back, but Gorman freezes up as the Xenomorphs start their attack and kill a good number of the soldiers.  Taking matters into her own hands, Ripley takes over the truck-like vessel and drives it into the processing station to rescue the remaining soldiers, namely Hicks, Hudson, and Vasquez.  During the rescue and following escape, Gorman ends up getting hit over the head and suffers a concussion

When they get back to the colony enclosure, Ripley suggests that they cut their losses and just nuke the entire plant, to ensure that they wipe out the Xenomorphs.  However, Burke is reluctant to do so, since the station is worth millions for the company.  He tries to get them to consider the fact that the species in question is an important one, and that they shouldn’t just wipe it out.  The soldiers, on the other hand, all seem to be on Ripley’s side. Burke finishes off by stating he cannot authorize the course of action they’re set on, but Ripley reminds them that this is a military operation, and therefore, with Gorman currently out of commission, Hicks is the highest-ranking officer there.  Hicks agrees to Ripley’s plan.  They signal the The Sulaco to pick them up, but tragically, a Xenomorph has somehow gotten inside the drop ship as it approches and kills the pilot, causing the ship to crash and stranding Ripley, Burke, Newt and the surviving soldiers.  Newt tells Ripley that they should get back inside the colony enclousure, since night is approaching, and the Xenomorphs typically come out when it’s dark. 

On a personal side note, this reminds me of a little observation I made during the first movie.  With the exception of Kane, who was the baby Xenomorph’s host, the crewmembers of The Nostromo who were killed by the alien were attacked in a dark room.  I can’t help but wonder if this is just coincidence, a choice of artistic direction, or if Xenomorphs actually do have an adverse reaction to bright lights, like Gizmo the Mogwaii and his Gremlin offspring in Gremlins.  Then again, perhaps I’m trying to read something out of nothing.

Inside the colony enclosure, the survivors take stock of what they’ve managed to salvage in terms of weapons.  It’s then revealed that it will take 17 days before a rescue ship will be sent to pick them up.  Hudson starts whining again, but Ripley tells him to shut up, relax and do something useful.  To keep the Xenomorphs out, they set up traps at every possible entrance, complete with guns that have been programmed to shoot at anything that moves.  As they continue to get ready to hold the fort, Hicks gives Ripley something that looks like a wristwatch.  He tells her that it’s a locator, and that he can use it to find her if they get separated.

What follows is a rather sweet, touching scene of Ripley putting Newt to bed, with Ripley once again showing her motherly nature.  Here, we get the following poignant exchange:

Newt: My mommy always said there were no monsters - no real ones - but there are.

Ripley: Yes, there are, aren't there?

Newt: Why do they tell little kids that?

Ripley: Most of the time it's true.

            Ripley then gives Newt her tracking device, promising her that she won’t ever leave her.  She then steps out of the room to discuss things with the others.  As they talk, Ripley brings up a vital question.  If all the colonists, sans Newt, are now dead, there is most likely one Xenomorph egg for each colonist.  So who is laying the eggs?  Hudson suggests that they may be like ants, in the sense that there’s one queen who runs the show.  Before Ripley leaves, she tells Bishop she wants him to destroy the facehuggers once he’s done examining them.  Bishop informs Ripley that Burke has given instructions that they’ll be kept alive in stasis for the trip back to the company’s labs.  Ripley, as you might imagine is extremely ticked, especially since Burke had given her his word that they wouldn’t bring any living specimens back with them.  When she confronts him about this, she informs him that she also checked the company log and discovered that Burke was the one who sent to colonists to the original nest site, and therefore was the one who sent the colonists to their deaths with absolutely no warning to them.  Ripley vows to tell everyone what Burke has done when they return home.
 

            Just as Ripley starts to storm off, the alarms start going off, which indicate that the gun traps that were set up to stop the Xenomorphs have been activated.  However, the guns don’t have enough bullets to stop them all, and they quickly run dangerously low on ammo.  Thankfully, the Xemomorphs appear to fall back, but Ripley realizes that they’re simply trying to find another way in.  To make matters worse, Bishop notifies them that he’s discovered that the nuclear processing station is overloading and will blow up in four hours.  After some brainstorming, the heroes realize their only hope of survival is to use the colony’s transmitter to pilot the second drop ship from The Sulaco down to the planet’s surface through the use of a remote control.  However, due to the damages to the uplink tower, the only way to do this is if someone ventures outside to manually align the satellite dish.  With the Xenomorphs on the loose, this has all the elements of a suicide mission.  Bishop, despite admitting that he doesn’t want to go, still volunteers without hesitation.

            Following a bonding scene between Ripley and Hicks, in which Hicks instructs Ripley on how to use one of their grenade launchers, Ripley heads to the infirmary to check on Gorman, who has just regained consciousness after his concussion, but when she goes to see how Newt is, she finds the small girl curled up under the bed.  Ripley decides to lay down and take a powernap next to Newt.  Ripley wakes up sometime later, and is alarmed to see the tubes that held the facehuggers are lying on the floor close by, completely empty.  In other words, there are now two living facehuggers loose inside the room.  Ripley and Newt are both in extreme danger.  The facehuggers start their attack, and Ripley and Newt find that not only have the doors been locked from the outside, but there are also unable to break the glass.  Ripley tries to get help by making urgent hand gestures at the security cameras, but the only one who sees this is Burke, who responds by turning the video feed off.  Thankfully, Ripley manages to set off the emergency fire sprinklers in the room, which automatically alerts Hicks and the others, who come charging in and manage to save Ripley and Newt just in time.

            Ripley, Hicks and the others realize that it was Burke who set the two facehuggers loose, and as they confront him at gunpoint, Ripley starts to figure out what Burke’s master plan was.  He was planning to let Ripley and Newt get impregnated with Xenomorph embryos in order to ensure he could get an alien specimen past quarantine.  Not only that, but to ensure that none of the soldiers would talk and reveal what he’d done, he’d kill the soldiers by sabotaging their stasis tubes.

 
 Before Ripley, Hicks and the others can decide what to do with Burke, the lights in the colony go off.  Ripley realizes that the Xenomorphs have managed to cut the power.  When they check the motion sensors, they see that the aliens have gotten into the complex.  And they’re not just inside the complex, the readings indicate that they are actually in the same room as them.  Instantly, they realize the horrifying truth: the Xenomorphs are in the ceiling.

            Ripley and the others all make a run for it, firing their guns as they go to try and ward the aliens off.  During their escape, Burke manages to slip away, but is cornered and attacked by a Xenomorph soon afterwards.  Likewise, Hudson is also killed.  As Hicks, Gorman and Vasquez try to break through a door in their attempt to escape, Newt gets an idea and tries to lead them through the air ducts, the place where she’d successfully hidden from the aliens before Ripley and the soldiers discovered her.  With Newt guiding them, the heroes head though the air ducts towards the airfield, where Bishop is trying to land the drop ship he’d successfully managed to bring down. 

            Vasquez, in her attempt to fend off the Xenomorphs that had followed them into the airducts, ends up getting her legs drenched in the alien’s acid blood, which inhibits her ability to walk.  Gorman goes back to get her, but the pair quickly find themselves surrounded by Xenomorphs.  To try and kill as many as they can, and possibly because they wish to avoid a long, drawn-out death, Gorman and Vasquez use a handheld grenade to blow themselves and the nearest Xenomorphs up.

            Meanwhile Ripley, Newt and Hicks have reached a shortcut to the airfield, but when Gorman’s grenade goes off, the blast ends up knocking Newt into a vent, and she falls down a chute.  Ripley calls down the vent to her, assuring the young girl that they’ll come get her.  Hicks and Ripley track Newt’s location using the wrist-tracker device that Ripley gave her in an earlier scene, but right before they can get to her, a Xenomorph appears behind Newt.  Within seconds, she has disappeared.

            Ripley refuses to give up, insisting Newt is still alive, but Hicks tells her that they have to get out of there because there are more Xenomorphs on their way.  They manage to make it to an elevator that brings them to the airfield, but Hicks ends up getting injured when he fires at an alien and its acid blood sprays onto his arm.  Ripley helps the injured Hicks get onto the drop ship that Bishop has brought down, but Ripley insists on going back to get Newt.  Before she leaves, Bishop tries to tell her that if they’re not off the planet in 19 minutes, they will all die when the processing station explodes.  Ripley still insists on going back for Newt, and Hicks promises he won’t let Bishop leave until Ripley and Newt return.  As they part, Hicks and Ripley completely lower their barriers and basically give each other permission to use their first names from now on: Dwane and Ellen.

            Ripley tracks the freshly-cocooned Newt down in the heart of Xenomorph territory, managing to save her just in time before a facehugger can latch itself to her face.  As Ripley tries to bring Newt to safety, they suddenly find themselves face-to-face with the Xenomorph Queen, who is in the process of laying more eggs.  Ripley manages to ward off the Queen and her bodyguards by threatening to destroy the eggs with her flamethrower, but when the eggs start opening, Ripley torches the eggs anyway, and destroys the entire nest in the process.  This naturally enrages the Queen, who starts to pursue Ripley and Newt.  Thankfully, they make it back to the elevator that will bring them back to Bishop’s drop ship in the nick of time.  But when they get to the airfield, Ripley is furious to see the drop ship is gone.  But, just when the situation appears to be at its most dire, the airborne drop ship suddenly appears behind them.  Turns out, Bishop only took off because the platform was becoming too unstable.  Thus, Ripley, Newt, Hicks and Bishop all escape before the processing station blows up, and return to The Sulaco.  When they go to fetch a stretcher to bring Hicks up to the infirmary, Ripley starts to make peace with Bishop, indicating that she’s letting go of her prejudice towards androids. 
But at that moment, Bishop is literally torn in two by the Queen, who had managed to hitch a ride in the drop ship by hiding in the landing gear.  Ripley tries to lure the Queen away from Newt, but the Queen soon discovers Newt’s hiding place.  Right when it looks Newt is done for, Ripley reappears, donning the Power Loader we saw her using much earlier.  With the Power Loader, Ripley is on equal footing with the Queen in terms of strength.  Ripley forces the Queen into an airlock, but the Queen manages to pull Ripley in with her.  However, Ripley gets out of the Power Loader and, when the Queen grabs onto her foot, she is forced to open up the airlock.  Once again, the explosive decompression starts to pull everything out, including the Queen with Ripley’s shoe comes loose.  Thankfully, Ripley manages to hold onto a ladder rung by her elbow somehow (suspended belief time, perhaps?) and Bishop’s upper half manages to save himself and Newt.  With the Queen now gone, Ripley is able to comfort Newt, (who touchingly calls Ripley ‘Mommy.”)

            In the epilogue, Bishop and Hicks are placed into stasis for the return trip home, and Ripley and Newt prepare to do the same.  Before doing so, Ripley tells Newt that she can now be allowed to dream. (Earlier, Newt had voiced her desire to keep from dreaming, no doubt to keep from having nightmares.)

 

           

                Out of all the movies in the Alien franchise, I think this is my favorite.  It really builds on the original movie and answers a lot of questions about the Xenomorphs.  Plus, unlike Alien, the characters in Aliens are a bit more fleshed out and it’s easier to become attached to them.  And as much as you grow to like Ripley in the original, in this movie, she becomes a more sympathetic character, as you see her actually grieve for her deceased daughter, and even forms a bond with the orphaned Newt.  While it is possible to think Ripley is merely displacing her love for her biological daughter to Newt, I think it’s a bit more than that, since Ripley and Newt share an important trait: they have both lost their entire families because of the Xenomorphs, and the loss has left a permanent scar on their psyche.  In a way, Newt is practically a much younger Ripley herself.  And taking a step back to look at Newt from the production level, they made a really good choice when they picked Carrie Henn to portray Newt.  For starters, this particular child had a father who was involved in the military, so considering the character Newt spends most of her screen time interacting with soldiers, this probably gave her a significant advantage.  Plus, it has been noted that most of the other children who auditioned for the role of Newt had only appeared in commercials and had grown too used to smiling after saying their lines.  Given that Newt has borne witness to the deaths of everyone else within the colony; it probably wouldn’t have made sense for her to smile in this movie.

            This movie also displays an interesting subplot about prejudice. The instant Ripley sees that Bishop is an android, she immediately decides that he can’t be trusted because her only other encounter with an android was with Ash, who had plotted to kill her and the rest of the crew of The Nostromo.  However, as strong as Ripley’s hatred is, she manages to let it go when Bishop proves his trustworthiness by saving their lives, and it appears as if they might actually be on their way to becoming friends.

            Like in Alien, this movie shows us once again the corruption of Weyland-Yutani Corp.  This time though the character of Burke.  While Ash was an android who was programmed to follow the corporations orders, Burke was a human who purposely chose money and power over the lives of his fellow man.  This makes him an even worse antagonist then Ash was.  And not only is he motivated by greed, he also shows no hesitation in endangering the life of a small child to obtain his goal.

            Finally, while there are some parallels between Alien and Aliens in the ending, with the Xenomorph making a surprise appearance right when it looks like the alien was destroyed in an explosion, finally being defeated for real by being launched into space and the surviving heroes entering stasis to return home, in this movie, it looks like Ripley’s story has reached a more concrete conclusion, and you’re left with the feeling that she will not only continue with her new role as Newt’s adoptive mother, there is also the possibility that Hicks would one day accept the job of becoming Newt’s father-figure, making the three of them a complete family.  Of course, things sadly do not end up like that, as the final movie in the original trilogy, Alien 3, will later reveal.