Why did everyone on the Sulaco go down to LV-426?

Question

In Alien, it made sense for the whole crew to land on the planetoid. The crew was relatively small (and got smaller as the story progressed) and you might expect the Science Officer (Ash) to go as well as both engineers (Parker and Brett).

It doesn't stretch the imagination to imagine Kane, Ripley and Lambert wanting to go (although perhaps not Lambert). However, in Aliens, does it make sense for the whole crew of the USS Sulaco to land on LV-426? Surely it would have made sense to have some crew remain on the Sulaco?

Answer 1

It is made abundantly clear that everyone on earth underestimates the menace of the Aliens.

This is shown in several occasions from the way the corporation receives Ripley’s story, to the attitude of the crew or the size of the crew itself. Not to mention the fact that they include a civilian and a bureaucrat in the party. They simply are not evaluating the threat to be high. The story grows darker and more sinister as it evolves, drawing the marines slowly into realizing where they’ve gotten themselves into.

Tactically, given the crew size, with a fully capable and armored jump ship and the ability to remote control another one, it would make little sense to leave anyone behind. The advantages are very few and with a reduce crew it makes sense to have the whole team with you. You’re thinking of it in retrospective based on the outcome but from their point of view, bases on what they know, it makes complete sense. There’s just no benefit on leaving anyone behind.

It would have made a lot more sense to use the Sulaco as a command centre if there were several units that would act on different places or there was the need for strategic deployment and control from orbit over a more serious threat or even if nuke from orbit was an option considered in advanced (it’s only considered after, when they realize the actual threat level)

Answer 2

It might help if you think of the Sulaco and the dropship as a single unit. The Sulaco doesn't need a separate crew since it's just being used as a glorified transport vessel, to get Gorman's military unit from A (Earth) to B (LV-426). The comms officer, the pilots and the science officer that fly the ship are all part of that same military unit.

As such, there's no useful purpose in having extra personnel set aside simply to remain on the Sulaco. It's not clear what they'd even do while the military unit is doing their thing down below and in the very unlikely event that they need something from the ship, the ground troops can just travel back up to the Sulaco and load it with only a few minutes notice. They can use the remote uplink (or the colony's satellite) to communicate with Earth if an extreme need arises and the spare dropship can be remotely piloted by Ash if (as happens) the first dropship is disabled and pilots are incapacitated.

In short, lugging around extra people makes no good sense, either militarily or financially.

Answer 3

Remember, the real goal was not to investigate what was happening, save anyone, or fight the xenomorphs. In Aliens, as in Alien, they wanted to bring alien samples back alive. That is what Burke is there for.

Since he's meaning to gull everyone else on the mission, killing them if need be, Burke wants everyone as close as possible to his domain of control. He doesn't want an independent group of people making decisions without his immediate presence. When he tries to get back on to the orbiter with alien organisms in tow, he doesn't want anything to resist his entry and return to civilization. (Remember, Ripley wanted to keep the alien out in the first movie.). Ultimately, it boils down to Burke (and his bosses) deciding that was the best way for him to control the situation.

Answer 4

Not maintaining a human presence on the Sulaco (the marines' only interstellar transport (of huge dollar value)) is, in my honest opinion, what you might call a 'plot hole'. But a necessary and forgivable one, I think.

If you take a step back from the movie itself and think of James Cameron writing the script, he has often in interviews stated the importance of creating suspense. He does this right from the point that Ripley agrees to return to LV426. She knows and we the audience know that there is likely to be trouble ahead. From there on the level of suspense only grows more overwhelming - that's why Aliens is such an immersive experience. You have to watch right to the end before a level of safety/equilibrium is restored to the lives of the main characters - the ones we've learned to care about.

Anyway, back to the Sulaco being left unmanned. If there were crew present on the mothership, which in real life would always be the case (no matter the level of automation), then the marines on the planet below would have a potentially quick and painless way to escape their pressure cooker of a situation.

Let's say for argument's sake that the Sulaco was controlled by a powerful AI (as the Nostromo is in Alien) then surely it would be monitoring the activity at the colony site below? Not only that but it might conceivably compute in a microsecond the action it needed to take to save the marines i.e. send the second dropship down?

If there was a caretaker crew left on the Sulaco, then they could send the second dropship to the surface. This would have significant consequences for the logical flow of story events. Bishop would not need to make his constricted crawl along the service pipe. And, crucially, there would be no descent into the hell of the alien hive for Ripley, and no splendid finale face off with the dreadful queen.

So, as I said earlier, it's all about maintaining a level of suspense, i think. By eliminating the easy solutions one by one, the marines are left in an ever more precarious scenario.

Just my opinion, but happy to contribute my thoughts.