In the first movie, the Nostromo is awakened from a considerable distance by the distress beacon left by the spacecraft. They investigate the craft, things go bad, simple stuff.
The thing is, I don't recall the crew shutting down the transmission, or even knowing how to. Which is important, because if the craft was still broadcasting there's no way the planet could have been settled without knowing about the signal.
My question is, is there some deleted scene or something explaining this?
As James Cameron said in Starlog #125
As some readers may know, scenes were filmed but cut from the final release version of the film which depicted the discovery of the derelict by a mom-and-pop geological survey (i.e.: prospecting) team. As scripted, they were given the general coordinates of its position by the manager of the colony, on orders from Carter Burke. It is not directly stated, but presumed, that Burke could only have gotten that information from Ripley or from the black-box flight recorder aboard the shuttle Narcissus, which accessed the Nostromo's on-board computer. When the Jorden family, including young Newt, reach the coordinates, they discover the derelict ship. Since we and the Nostromo crew last saw it, it has been damaged by volcanic activity, a lava flow having crushed it against a rock outcropping and ripped open its hull. Aside from considerations of visual interest, this serves as a justification for the acoustic beacon being non-operational.
In this script:
On the mechanism, a small bar moves steadily back and forth. Sliding noiselessly in the grooves. Still functioning. Lambert looks down at her direction finder. Automatic recording. Dallas snaps it off.
So Dallas may have turned off the beacon.
Not sure if it’s canon or not, but in the video game Alien: Isolation this is addressed.
The plot revolves around Ripley’s daughter, who has spent her life trying to find out what happened to her mother. She winds up at a space station looking for the Nostromo’s flight recorder when she comes across the guy who found it. They too were drawn to LV-426 by the beacon and made the mistake of checking out the eggs a bit too closely. But one of them turned it off while they were there:
“Meeks? I’ve found the beacon. I’m gonna check it out.”
The player approaches the beacon.
OBJECTIVE UPDATED — Disable the distress beacon
The player reaches into the glowing sphere.
As they touch something there is a sound, and some kind of internal reaction. The beacon stops glowing.
“Dunno know what happened, but the beacon’s stopped broadcasting.”
Stills taken from VGFAQ’s YouTube video Alien Isolation Walkthrough Mission 9 Beacon Gameplay Let’s Play.
Again, probably not canon but I liked the idea of it.
In the Heavy Metal comic adaptation, there is a frame where a character flips a switch on the space jockey's panel to shut off the beacon.
