Ok so I was watching Aliens on Blue Ray last night. In the MU Thru Mode, they explain that the timeline from Newt's father being facehugged to the marines landing on LV 426 is explained in the comic Newt's Tale. I had a copy back in the day but it got lost in many moves between Apartments. So I was just wondering if anyone had read it recently, or remembers how much time passed between the scene with Newt's father being facehugged and the marines landing on LV 426.

Thanks

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I think Gareth's got a copy of Newts Tale. I wasn't sure if that was considered canon,because in the comic books I've read a few different tales and Newts Tale has never been reprinted or collected into a trade as far as I'm aware.

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Sgt. Jake Tucker - 13th Regt. 1st Batt. Freebooters.

um i know i have the 2 issues and i remember from last time i looked at it. they head back and go to medical. once the face hugger is off they are all talkin with the doc and he starts to have pains and the CB breaks out and runs off. others are sent out to the ship to see whats up and come back the same way. once alot have fallen what people that are still alive set up a safe point and try to hold out which fails. once the drones start to breack in newts mother tells her to get in the vents and hide. thats what i can remember as of right nwo stuck at work. hope this helps some.

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SGT Chris Kraemer "BIRD"
S/N: A07/TQ0.0.82154G1 Sgt Kraemer

it does help some, but I interested in like how much time passes, weeks, months etc. I am assuming it is a few weeks like 2 or 3, but would like to find a more specific amount if there is one listed in the comic.

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Just my own guestimation, I think it was around a week or two...considering how many warrior/drones there were when the Marines landed and how long it takes the aliens to reach that point in their lifecycle.

The alien in Alien only took maybe 12 hours to mature.

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"Awww, someone tell me that's a boot!

It's a boot!"

III drops

Well, from when Mom & Dad enter the ship, and then return to the tractor is a span of several hours.
I'd guess-timate 3-6 hours because the kids say they've been gone "a long time." Long enough for a nap while
waiting anyway.

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"A writer needs a pen, a painter a brush, and a filmmaker an army." - Orson Wells.

http://www.rookscastle.com
http://www.alchemyarms.com

I have the comic, when I get the time I will try and dig it out, see what I can find for ya

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Hey, Hicks. Man, you look just like I feel.

I'm pretty sure he's asking how long between when Newt's Dad gets facehugged, to the time the USCM arrives on LV-426.


I never read Newt's Tale or any of the comics, so I don't know an actual EU answer. However my best guess would be in the 5 to 6 week range.

Burke sends the message to check out the grid reference (location of the Derelict). Takes one week to arrive. Jordan family heads out, gets facehugged, returns to the colony etc.

So now at least two weeks have passed since Burke originally sent the message, and one week since the Jordan's have doomed the Colony. Burke is now expecting an answer, but the Colony has gone completely quiet. Let's say he waits one more week before informing the suits at WY and putting together the Marine mission.

It has now been two weeks since the Jordan's encountered the Derelict.

Now the mission is underway and while it has never been expressed in the film, my impression has always been that it takes three weeks to travel from Earth to LV-426.

So total time is now five weeks give or take a day or two.

What always intrigued me is that "last" survivor (the one who pops before they kill her with fire )--- she must have been the unluckiest colonist- Manages to avoid getting Xeno-napped for five weeks only to get grabbed and hugged the same day the Marines arrive.

And what are the chances (since it only took a few hours... maybe 8 to 12 at most before Kane popped) of the Marines showing up just in time to see her chestburst?

Really? They couldn't have arrive a little earlier and saved her? Talk about bad luck!


Kevin

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I told you I'd shoot, but you didn't believe me! WHY DIDN'T YOU BELIEVE ME!?!

Remember the doughnuts looked pretty fresh.......

and "Just one of those things managed to wipe out my entire crew in less than 24 hours..."

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AKA: Simon

Based on the 17 Days overdue conversation "This little girl survived longer than that with no weapons and no training" which suggests that she has been alone in excess of 17 days. Just another little piece to the Timeline jigsaw.

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Cheers

Winch

"Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow I shall fear no evil for thou art with me. And together we'll kick ANY bugs ASS!"
You know who you are!

Good point but I think Ripley said that after Hudson says they're not going to last 17hrs nevermind 17days.

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AKA: Simon

Yeah, but if it takes a week to get a message to WY, I don't think Burke is going to freak out if he recieves no contact for 2 weeks. I'd say a minimum of 3 weeks, no matter what. Let's remember that they went into Hypersleep though, if it was just a quick five hour flight, they wouldn't of put the marines in the chiller.

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Sgt. Jake Tucker - 13th Regt. 1st Batt. Freebooters.

Hypersleep could be SOP for all journeys for safety reasons....... Who knows!

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AKA: Simon

well looked thru both issues this afternoon. and to no luck no real dates. it does show that once the FH is off her dad more are coming back with them on them. like it was said it took them a week to find it but maybe about a few hours to get back do to strrat shot back no serching. then also like said again message traffic is a week each way.so i would say the 15-30 day time frame would be the bast guess. since it take about 12-18 hrs or so for a CB to change into a full Drone. and a FH to implant the embryo is like what 4-6 hrs.

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SGT Chris Kraemer "BIRD"
S/N: A07/TQ0.0.82154G1 Sgt Kraemer

All I remember about timelines was Hudson's line about "four more weeks and out, man!" had the bit "And two of that in cryo!" on it in the book.. so if that can be considered part of it, 2 weeks to get there, plus however long it'd been since her dad got hugged.

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Hey now, don't be mean. We don't have to be mean, cuz remember..No matter where you go, there you are.

But is that 2 weeks to get there OR a Week to get there and a week to get back to Gateway after the mission is over?

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Cheers

Winch

"Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow I shall fear no evil for thou art with me. And together we'll kick ANY bugs ASS!"
You know who you are!

It couldn't be a week, or the "rescue" team wouldn't take 17 days to arrive. If anything we always believed the rescue team would arrive "faster" than the Marines initially did (I mean that makes sense right? The rescue ship gets there faster than the transport ship?).

So regardless of how long it actually did take the Marines to arrive, it wasn't as quick as 17 days.


Kevin

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I told you I'd shoot, but you didn't believe me! WHY DIDN'T YOU BELIEVE ME!?!

Hallo everyone, this is my first post here…….while I was watching the special edition of the Aliens movie I noticed something in the conversation (about 15 minutes from the film start) between two of the colony administrators that might be useful……..the lines: “some guy in a cushy office on Earth” and “it takes 2 weeks to get an answer out here”.

It means that it takes a week to send a message from Hadley’s Hope to Earth (and obviously) a week to get an answer, assuming the manager in “the cushy office” answers the same day that the message arrives.

Hadley’s hope should be on the frontier, far from earth and the marines base from which the rescue is suppose to arrive might be a lot nearer to the frontier, otherwise it makes no sense to have 14 days to get the message to earth and 3 days for the rescue to arrive……then again 17 days is the answer to “How long after we're declared overdue can we expect a rescue?” which does not mean that it takes 17 days for the rescue to arrive, it means after the first team is overdue it takes 17 days for the next team to get there.

Very cool discussion! I'd never really thought about it before and everyone's suggestions shed increasing light on what might have happened. Rest assured that it must have been a hell of a fight.

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-Brian
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"Engineers are merciless men bent on the nullification of art and the worship of functionalism" -Garrison Keilor

I'm not saying that Newt's Tale should be turned into a movie but if I was hired to adapt it to the screen, I'd have the alien takeover start slow with just a small number of warriors abducting/killing one by one before the colonists get the barricades up and the poop hits the fan. I used to have the comics but I don't remember much tension building, just action.

I Estimate that it took about 6 full weeks, and here is why:

Week 0: Carter Burkes sends message to Hadley's Hope Wyland-Yutani Operations Center on LV-424, "Achron".

Week 1: Hadley's Hope Operations Manager gets the message and dispatches "Wildcaters", the Jordan Family to investigate a specific location to see what they see.

Week 2: The Jordan family finds an Alien derelict at the specified location and call it in to the Operations Center to stake a finders claim on the salvage. Papa and Mama Jordan leave the ATV to search the derelict, leaving Newt and Timmy inside the vehicle. Several hour pass and Mama returns to the ATV having dragged Papa back from the derelict with a Face Hugger firmly planted on Papa Jordan’s face. She calls for help. (Now this is from the Newt Tales Comic Book, Part 1) She then drives the ATV back to Hadley’s Hope which takes sometime. The Operations Manager sends a group to check out the location where Papa Jordan got the face hugger to find out more information on what they are dealing with. About 12-18 hour after being face hugged (based on the timeframe that Kane got infected and it fell off), the Face Hugger falls off of Papa Jordan and dies. 25 hours after getting face hugged, Papa Jordan feels fine and wants to leave the sickbay. The Doctor says no, just in time for a few men from the investigation party to be brought in with face huggers of their own. Papa Jordan then convulses and has a bouncing baby chest burster and dies. The alien escapes and they panic and try to get the face huggers off of two of the men and end up killing them in the process. The Alien grows and starts collecting more colonist, who in turn end up with more aliens and so on. Until it becomes such a problem that the colonist barricade the main building and fall back to the lower level storage area. The colonist send a Mayday message to the Company.

Week 3: The Mayday message is received by the Company and somehow Carter Burke is selected as the Wyland-Yutani Corporate Representative. The Marines are contacted and a Squad of Marines under 2nd LT Gorman is assigned to the rescue mission. Flight Officer Ripley was brought on the mission as a consultant. A message is sent back to Hadley’s Hope that the Marines are coming. Time during this week they board the USCM Ship, USS Sulaco and head out on their 17 day trip to LV-426.

Week 4: The message arrives at Hadley’s Hope. The colonist discover where the Aliens have built a nest and decide to send in a group of armed men to deal with the aliens inside the Atmosphere Processing Station. They get wiped out and most of the colonist fall back to the lower storage area and weld themselves in. A pounding at the door, leads many of the men to think that there are men trapped on the other side and they force the door open just to let the flood of alien warriors in and most of the colonist are taken including Mama Jordan and Timmy.

Week 5: The USS Sulaco is still in route while the few surviving colonist are hiding from the aliens and are slowing being picked off one at a time.

Week 6: The USS Sulaco arrives at :LV-426 and goes into orbit around LV-426. The Marines drop in and search the complex. They find the only survivor, Newt. But the last adult colonist was taken early that day. The Marines find her inside the Atmosphere Processing Stataion and get to her just in time to watch a chest burster to make his appearance.

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"Kill it before it dies!"
Daniel "Honcho" Kim
President & Founder
SciFiHero.Net & Alchemy Arms

Honcho, your timeline seems OK but WY seems to react only at the moment that "we have lost contact with LV-426". So where would this have happened ?

I think that was Carter Burke covering his butt. If you take the Newt Tales as being correct, its during week 4 in my timeline, because they would have to get the message back from the Company that "the marines are coming" before the Aliens take out the transmitter, unless they could receive but not transmit. We know from the movie, that the transmitter was down because the Marines had to wait until they were declared over due before a rescue mission would be sent. Its highly probable that the link to the communications tower was destroyed by acid from killing an Alien (or aliens) by the colonist during the Atmosphere Processing Station incursion or the "last stand" in week 3.

Otherwise it would add another two weeks to transmit a message from the company to Hadley's Hope and for a reply to be expected back.

Links to a copy of Newt's Tale Comic Book, Part 1 and Part 2 (on YouTube):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pY3upBCUcLA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bX7KG2v ... re=related

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"Kill it before it dies!"
Daniel "Honcho" Kim
President & Founder
SciFiHero.Net & Alchemy Arms

I don't mean to throw a monkey-wrench into the works, but as much as I would love to think that we can take this fictional 'story' and fit it properly into a realistic timeframe, even if loosely based on future technologies... well, here's the problem I have:

Plain and simply, the time it would take for the Sulaco to leave Earth and arrive on LV-426 cannot be realistically done in only 2 weeks*, and here's why...
(*rounded down from 17 days to keep things simpler for this example)

Radio waves are just another form of light waves, so we'll assume that radio transmissions between Earth and LV-426 cannot travel any faster than the speed of light -- 186,000 miles a second, or 669,600,000 (669.6 million) miles an hour.

For scale/distance comparisons, it takes 'light' approximately 5 hours 32 minutes to get from Earth's orbit to Pluto's orbit at the edge of our solar system.

So if it takes approximately 1 week (168 hours) for a radio transmission (light) to reach LV-426, it must be approximately 112,492,800,000 (112.5 billion) miles away from the Earth -- not accounting for orbital differences.

That said, the Sulaco would have to be capable of travelling at 334,800,000 (334.8 million) miles an hour (basically half the speed of light) to reach LV-426 in only 2 weeks (14 days). That is incomprehensibly fast for a physical spacecraft of any kind -- not to mention extremely dangerous in space.

However, let's just say for the sake of arguement that we did happen to devise some sort of 'super' engine that was capable of propelling the Sulaco at a blistering 100 million miles an hour. At that rate, it would still take approximately 1125 hours -- or 6 weeks 4 days and 21 hours to get to LV-426. Keep in mind that these are 'flat-out' speeds, and do not take into consideration acceleration and deceleration times which will increase the overall time elapsed.

Do we know what the speed capabilities are supposed to be for the Sulaco? Does it have a warp drive? Can it convert antimatter? Does it use wormhole technology? Can it fold space?

Just curious.

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Rick "Ripstick"
A03/TQ3.0.12142E1

Now you're thinking with Portals

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Lt.Forrest- USCM
277th Non-terrestrial Intelligence Bttn.
"Xeno-Heads"