Can I pick your everyone's brains for a second?

In Aliens when Hudson says, “Another Bug Hunt” - if the Marines hadn’t encountered aliens up to that point, any ideas on what these pre-aliens snipe hunts could be? I’m kind of drawing on blank on coming up with something compelling... Like, are they just poking around caves on random planets, or deserted/abandoned ghost vessels floating around in space...? I'm sort of operating off the assumption some entities in the company were at least aware of the alien because of the Nostromo (and Sevastopol?) incidents decades earlier, so the Marines were specifically tasked for looking and searching for organic life...

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I think it's a safe assumption that LV-426 was not the only active colony (like... duh!) And we can also see that each colony would have its own share of non-terrestrial lifeforms of either a pestilant or otherwise inimical nature, thus the need for the occasional "bug hunt".

But, I've been wrong once or twice before.

Considering the company has language even in their civilian contractors that "specifically states any systematized transmission indicating a possible intelligent origin must be investigated" (or risk forfeiture of shares), gives a pretty wide birth for what the company 'might know'. Theoretically they could have TONS of "sales leads" from all over the galaxy on a great many of creatures. Even when the 'lead' does not result in 'intelligent life' generating it, one could easily imagine intelligent life called for help from any number of indigenous horrors. Each 'lead' could conceivably result in all kinds of company response from 'well informed' science team adventures to 'need to know' excursions with various levels of military involvement.

The book "Bug Hunt" sort of tried to do this with its short stories, but most of them fell flat for one reason or another. Parasitic insects that moved in swarms around a civilian outpost and flying creatures comprised partially of hydrogen that were aggressive and interfering with the company's mining of a rare gas were the two examples that I remember off the top of my head. The marine involvement was accidental at the bar on the outpost, but the company sent the marines into the mining operation with a pretty clear order to clear out the creatures and extract the gases.

Even if not all the hundreds of surveyed worlds have (intelligent) life, the “Alien Universe” offers plenty of space exploration background with space stations and space travel. Look at the “how a second earth could look like” documentations and we barely scratched the surface of what could be possible. Plants are completely underrated (there is more than the Groots) for example.
I always like the WH40K abandon space ships missions. How a planet/moon/… would be prepared that is cleaned prior to human colonisation is another story. Plenty of bugs (creatures of any shape and size) to get rid off because they are in one way or the other deadly to the civilian human population. And then there are viruses, mutations, disease etc. that could help to create a plot. Besides mankind hasn’t evolved/mutated due to space travel so why not team up with other races like the ships have synthetics already for similar reasons. Alone the questions how to detected “life” would be an interesting one.

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Sgt. Frank Peters 'reload' Smartgun Operator
A03/TQ3.0.12136E1 "It will be no picknick!"
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The "Aliens Adventure Game" (Leading Edge Games) has also some examples for Colonial Marine missions that do not involve Xenomorphs and an additional seven non-Xenomorph life forms:

https://de.scribd.com/doc/250695408/43977962-Aliens-Adventure-Game-Core-Rules-pdf

Cheers,
Stefan

I’m not sure if there’s anything to back this up anywhere, but I always imagined that the main purpose of the colonial marines (pre-Aliens) would be putting down rebellions in the colonies. So perhaps a bug hunt would be something like searching a whole planet to find a few rebels hid out in a cave somewhere?

That was part of it, but I think a lot of the bugs were xeno hybrid animals. The whole time they fought drones. The Yautja were very careful to never release queen eggs.

But before Aliens there was a Russian American conflict that went on that had since been resolved.

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The impossible takes a while longer and goes over budget too...

In the mess hall scene the marines joke about Acturians (sp?) and to me that's always implied that they were familiar with other races but, also demonstrated by confidence and lack of precaution, that they've always handled trouble with other races with only moderate difficulty and no contagious component (no bio hazard precautions).

The marines were primarily problem solvers for issues with human people. I always assumed colonial marines didn't work for the company but as a major defence contractor with many citizen civilians under them, they interacted a lot and the company has a lot of clout.

To me, especially with the dismissive tone Hicks has, "bughunt" suggested a frustrating waste of time and military resources in his mind where they'd be expected to clean up a mess more capable people wouldn't have gotten into.

If I was going to approach it from the perspective of telling a new story that followed the marines, it would be about the opening of a new scope of focus. They've discovered a new danger. They're soldiers. First would be a recon phase, learning the scale, territory, and capabilities of the enemy. There'd be a focus on exploratory missions, reviewing old data to see if they've encountered this before without realizing it (ie, everyone involved died and didn't report back), and trying to acquire samples to study.

That opens things up for exploratory missions, possibly with different races encountered, internal politics of people with different agendas, interactions with the company trying to follow their own profiteering agenda, human allies and enemies, etc.

But back to bughunts...aliens are alien. Define a deadly adversity of the creature's environment, pick their unique survival development, then throw that deadly evolution at some marines. The kind of things they'd run into previous to Aliens would almost certainly be in response to someone else identifying a problem. When people wander out into the galaxy in this setting, they don't seem to be doing that with military accompaniment. So it's a bunch of surveyors and explorers finding useful planets and selling the rights to those planets to companies like WY who will profit from them or planned probes by entities that can afford it like companies or governments. It would be a small, over-simplified setting if WY were the only player on the field, it's just that they're the only one that's been in a movie. They're Coke. Someone out there is Pepsi. But anyways, people just go charging around places in the universe without much in the way of a safety net. I see the marines, in the capacity of dealing with aliens of any type, as the clean up crew not the first contact. Someone has trouble with their survey, prospecting a new world, asteroid mining, suddenly finding a cave full of horror in the middle of digging for diamonds, local vegetation turns out to be flesh eating lizards that only look like plants, etc.

So previous to Aliens I'd see them more as a clean up crew, post Aliens I would expect them to be on the offensive trying to determine to extent and position of the enemy.

Wow - this is all great stuff and super helpful - can't thank you all enough...!

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I highly recommend buying the DarkHorse Aliens Omnibus volumes.

There are books out there as well that can help add a whole back story to give things a better explanation.

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The impossible takes a while longer and goes over budget too...

i always pictured bug huts to be similar to the ones from the book Starship Troopers since that is where James Cameron got his inspiration for the USCM.

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PFC Mike Rizzuto MVM
USS Blackhawk
3rd Batt 12th Regt

The USCM were probably used to clear out civilians in areas that corporate wanted to develop on. so they probably had a few straglers they'd have to go in an eliminate, and refereed to them as "bug hunts"

I would also say that this is not the first time dealing with the xenomorphs. The creature is adaptable and would change upon impregnation to match the physiology and terrain needs.

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The impossible takes a while longer and goes over budget too...

Personally, I'd like to know more about what they do outside of any ET extermination. Are they fighting boarder skirmishes with the UPP? Putting down Colonial rebellions?

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I poked around myself in this many years back. I think Jinx is closest in the regards of how to interpret things. As I see it
ET’s can quickly topple things when envisioning them with everything from (Star Trek) latex heads to furry monster suits (Star wars).

One thing is for sure, Marines see them as cake walks.
Pulling some threads to what the Colonial Maries actually symbolises, using commentaries and interviews from the production crews in Aliens, the marines are very likely to be Colonial Marines of the 17th and 18th century, and not 21st century equivalent to naval assault troops as commonly interpreted in franchise and fan base (this by adding as always; they are most probable a combination.)

Colonial Marines (old school) is the armed garrisons that protects the colonies from inside, and out side threats in the interest of their parent nation. History shows that colonies might go rogue (USA), might be taken over by other nations (almost everywhere), might get killed by natives (North America, pacific, Indian ocean, India etc.) might be attacked by wild animals (well, every thing that has jungle). The whole thing has just moved into space. The Colonial marines is hence a busy bunch and apparently going on wild life chases bores the heck out of them.

In addition (bugs here, there and stompers); as always in the perspective of a fictional “movie”, ie one has to take account of various inconsistencies, question marks etc. and some things just don’t add up. To love it, one just has to accept it. I use to point out that the marines is a serious bunch with a smirk.
I love this one:
They have tactical nukes and seems to be pretty calm about letting a Corporal nuke a planet without regards to chain of command or anything just because…they are pissed. Authority to use tactical nukes is, as it comes down to, by rank. They might have PR’s, APC’s and Dropships but piss them off and a grunt will blow up the planet. Military sense?

So to answer the question of what bugs. I believe some smaller nasty critters and medium, or large animalistic predators as of traditional Darwinistic fauna. Not offensive, 6ft tall, 200lbs, armoured, Gigeresque, highly aggressive alien combat parasites filled with corrosive fluids.

/J

(How do you win over these guys?)

I was actually pondering on this on a project I am working on. What happens if the xenomorph egg reacts with a hosts cancer in odd ways? Could the body also react with necrotic egg sacs as well?

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The impossible takes a while longer and goes over budget too...

There's some speculation in this thread too, so you might glean something. viewtopic.php?f=3&t=17676&hilit=bug+hunt

The idea of the USCM having experience fighting extraterrestrials loses some merit with Ferro's line "Apparently she saw an alien once." I've always interpreted that as there's never been contact with an alien lifeform, though the "Arcturian" thing would then suggest otherwise.

Ferro says it in a way that one of us would say, "Apparently, she saw a bird once." Hudson reinforces it with his "Whoopie-fuckin'-do. Hey, I'm impressed." He's really not; he's just being a sarcastic goofball. They've seen aliens before, but not the Xenomorph.

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I agree. I think the USCM has encountered alien organisms, like semi dangerous insects or bipeds of various sizes, but nothing on the scale or appearent violence of the "xenomorphs". The lifeforms they encountered up to that point had probably been of some degree of trouble, probably killing a colonist here and there, causing damage to machines and mining attempts, hence the "bug hunt" line. Look back to Victorian times when lions were a danger to developing rail lines in Africa. They would have trouble here and there, some workers killed, work halted. So they would send out English troops to hunt down and kill the lion in question and guard the lines till things got back to normal....with a few troops being kept on duty to oversee things. That's why the guys and gals in the movie were all nonchalant about the whole thing. "Oh, a bunch of stupid colonists all scared about one or two little creatures that will take us no time to hunt down and kill with our superior fire power". Except they show up and that isn't at all the situation, they get mowed down and crap their pants at the overwhelming foe.

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It's a boot!"

III drops

Actually I wonder if the xenomorph is only as powerful as its host and surroundings. If it is a scorpion or fish, the development and potential is limited. Also the environment has a factor in the development as well. Perhaps they did encounter weakened variants on rare occasions. LV-426 was a hunt that never occurred. In most all other cases the predators would have eradicated the xenomorphs before the marines arrived. Plus with the hidden partnership with the Yautja I almost wonder if the bug hunts were variants that they considered inferior... Looking at it further Bishop and Burke had access to the same archives and knew the company wanted/needed the specimens to finish R&D efforts.

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The impossible takes a while longer and goes over budget too...

I have no idea what you are talking about but I get that it has something with the franchise to do. If we talk about Aliens -1986 Jim Cameron, Bishop had access to nothing no more then what he figures out during the LV-426 mission. Henriksen himself implies that Bishop was just "activated", hence this was Bishops first mission (he has not learned fully human interaction and thrust yet, he manages to this in the end) and he is of Marine military property (ie not any company etc). What happens later is speculation.

Burke according to script + Cameron was trying to making money under the nose of the Company (Weyland) i.e. he didn’t want to them to intervene or he would lose his rights (“selling” Xenos to the WY Bio-Weap dep.). Reason for him being there is because he was the company representative for Ripley as the company (WY) now has assimilated the earlier, previous company from the first movie (the Company from the first movie that was not officially named hence Cameron didn’t pay further attention) that owned the refinery vessel (Nostromo). He steals the information from Narcissus nav computer that corroborates with Ripleys story and gets the manager of LV426 to send out the Jordan family to the coordinates (IIRC sector 15 according to prop?) of the Derelict to confirm her story. Hence he knows nothing more then what the Nav disc told him, what he finds out on the moon (?), and that ends when the atmosphere processor ‘goes up’.

What other authors, producers, or peoples imagination create in the future is solely up to them.

/Jonsey

Small point - The comnpany was named in Alien : "Weylan Yutani".
Ridley initially DID think of Weyland Yutani, but dropped the D as it was a little too on-the-nose a reference to the British company "British Leyland".

As for bug hunts and continuity; It's one of my pet peeves when post-Aliens entries to the franchise Change things without a valid in-universe reason.
The worst example of which is the timeline, and the company's knowledge of the Aliens.

First off, "xenomorph" is not a term specific to the Aliens we know and love. It's simply Gorman trying to look smart by using scientific terminology. It means "alien".
We just use it as a convenient term, is all. I mention this because I have seen some people interpret Gorman's briefing as his knowing what the Aliens are, and the squad being familiar with them too. This is not the case.


Furthermore, the entire point of Alien, Aliens, Alien3 and Alien : Resurrection was "If these things get back to Earth, we are screwed."
All of the tension, suspense and horror was based upon that core concept.
So when AvP came along, decided "Hey, we COULD tell the Ryushi story - Piece of piss, we'll go to Nevada, make some weird plants, dress up some cows as Rynth and hey! Nice cheap awesome action movie ahoy!... But no. We'll ramp up our budget by moving the story to Antarctica for no reason, and set it on earth in modern times.

...


What do you mean "Continuity"? Whgo cares about that?!"

Then Ridley himself made things even worse by giving everyone full knowledge of the Space Jockeys in Prometheus, and I won't even touch upon how badly he damaged his own ( co)creation with Covenant!
He himself said many times that the word "alien" in the title of the film is NOT purely a noun... The movie isn't called "The Alien", it's an adjective, it describes something that IS alien, in the sense that we cannot understand it.
Lovecraftian horror, eldritch terror, ALIEN.

... Nah, a wonky android was pissing about with a special chemistry set, and made some shit.. Things got a little out of hand.


To swerve back to what a "bug hunt" actually IS - and address the Arcturian issue;
I think we HAVE encountered lesser extraterrestrial lifeforms before, but nothing intelligent, and certainly no apex predators like the Aliens.
If we accept that the two universes ARE one, then it's likely there would be records of the Predator race somewhere, but I'd imagine that knowledge would be kept as hush hush as possible for as long as possible.

Arcturians - Well, we're hundreds of years into the future - Not long enough for human beings to show much /actual/ divergent evolution ( a la The Expanse ), but far-removed offworld colonists might show some adaptations to their environment over the course of a few generations.
It's also possible that Arcturus has a higher than average transgender population, and that humanity has as a whole gotten beyond the disgusting bigotry and transphobia we still see too often today - The grunts being facetious and sarcastic as they are, maybe that line was simply the equivalent of troops in Earth's far east seeking out "ladyboy" prostitutes for a bit of adventure

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Source? Just curious.
As far as I know there was no official comment from Ridley Scott stating the name of the Company until Promethius something or late 1990’s when the franchise had catched up. Even in interviews and directors commentary he refrains from using it a name. The WY(-D) was a Cobb/Mollo set-design detail that appears during the actual production of the movie and Scott just thought it was fun and accepted it. Don’t think its even mentioned in any script either. As I interpret it it was non-official but a back stage thing that later caught on, and IIRC Cameron deliberately added the D in Aliens script to make it more pronounceable.
Also Cobb didn’t have the D in the beginning as far as interviews go and presented it to Scott just as Weylan (at least I have not read anything were he remarks the "D" issue until the addition in post Aliens).

/Jonsey