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In Aliens, there is a scene when Ripley and Newt wake up and suddenly find two Facehuggers in their bedroom. It's obvious that Burke brought them there.

But the question is - HOW did he do that? Why didn't they attack him in the first place? They were in special glass containers. In order to achieve his plan, he should have been attacked by them when he first opened them. However, he somehow managed to bring them without any harm and noise into the bedroom...

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  • It must have required either some mechanical cleverness or some equipment we didn't see (e.g. laboratory robotics) but I don't think there was a good time to show us without distracting our attention from more pressing matters.
    – Beta
    Commented Oct 23, 2012 at 4:57
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    "In Aliens, there is a scene when Ripley and Newt wake up and suddenly find two Facehuggers in their bedroom." Ripley put Newt into a bunk in the lab. This is made clear when the fire is noticed and one of the characters explicitly states "Fire in the .. lab!".
    – Andrew Thompson
    Commented Oct 25, 2012 at 21:15

3 Answers 3

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He need only to have sealed a door behind him. The steps would look something like this.

  1. Roll the containers in on some cart.
  2. Place near door.
  3. Rig something to knock over the containers while at the same time closing the door behind him.
  4. Remotely open the doors to the room Ripley and Newt were in.

Of course, he was playing with fire and almost certainly too stupid to realize it. These things were inhumanly fast and capable of melting through space helmets. One can only surmise that they were more interested in easy prey.

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  • Remember that they had already attacked colonists before they were captured, so they may have expended much of their limited reserves of energy/acid/whatever.
    – Beta
    Commented Oct 23, 2012 at 5:00
  • @Beta I agree that these facehuggers might have been past their expiration dates. It certainly seems reasonable, after all these were removed at the very beginning, when there was still enough semblance of civilization for them to be removed. That was what, several weeks prior? Even so, you wouldn't catch me taking risks with them. I wouldn't go near the damned things until they were burnt down to ash. Burke was not only a piece of $#&#*$ but stupid beyond belief.
    – John O
    Commented Oct 23, 2012 at 5:03
  • I wouldn't say he was stupid, exactly. He didn't realize just how dangerous they were, but then who would? And if I remember right, his back was to the wall; Ripley had discovered his secret and was going to expose him, so he had to do something, and fast. (And he was a psychopath, but you don't climb that high in Weyland-Yutani if you're a Boy Scout.)
    – Beta
    Commented Oct 23, 2012 at 5:19
  • Ok. So he just ignores everything Ripley says. Hey, maybe she's hysterical and exaggerates. But then the marines roll in. Get their asses kicked. People cocooned up in the walls only to have parasitic aliens burst out of their chests. They hole up in a building where it's obvious the previous inhabitants knew more about the aliens and still couldn't put up an effective defense. He reads the medical reports on the facehuggers too. And yet he decides to mess with them? To release them, after all that? If they had decided to attack him, there's nothing he could have done. He's stupid.
    – John O
    Commented Oct 23, 2012 at 5:27
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    @JohnO: Well, yeah, okay, he had plenty of evidence of how dangerous they were. So trying to smuggle them out was stupid^3. But as for using them to silence Ripley, maybe he just felt that avoiding ruin/prison was worth, say, a 90% chance of death (and the certainty of killing some more people, if he gave that more than a millisecond of thought).
    – Beta
    Commented Oct 23, 2012 at 13:28
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This question is flawed, because the girls weren't in a bedroom. They were in the lab that they visit previously where the live specimens are clearly seen in their glass vessels. So, Burke just rigged the glass containers to break, as well as removing Ripley's gun and locking the doors.

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I think Bishop released them. He was beholden to the Company after all.

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    Any evidence of this?
    – Adamant
    Commented Jul 31, 2016 at 6:34
  • @Adamant multiple, actually; 1) android Ash was doing so 58 years ago; Bishop either: 2.1) faked that he was surprised about the story with Ash, whilst it is obvious all android history is being learned by androids while they are produced; 2.2) or androids are kept naive about their objectives (and previous failures), so that their behavior seems more natural; 3) too many coincidences: facehuggers get into the room; xenomorph gets aboard the shuttle vehicle killing pilots and ruining their attempt to nuke the planetoid LV-426, Bishop successfully operates the remote shuttle
    – ivan866
    Commented Nov 5, 2023 at 14:25
  • @Adamant mother xenomorph gets aboard the second shuttle unnoticed; whole squad gets killed during the course of operation, removing potential witnesses; (all these together seem like a well planned disguised operation held by Bishop, who was studying facehuggers as soon as they arrived at the control station, btw); 4) company employees' behavior about the possible catastrophe of the colony on LV-426 during the investigation on Ripley's case was suspiciously relaxed; 5) a rookie officer was put in charge of this operation ("only 2 combat descends, including this one")
    – ivan866
    Commented Nov 5, 2023 at 14:30
  • @Adamant 6) the very fact they sent Lt. Ripley again; 7) whole plot of "Prometheus" and "Alien: Covenant" proves androids are always instructed to manipulate the crew trust and perform the only important objective, while faking they are just assistants to the crew
    – ivan866
    Commented Nov 5, 2023 at 14:34

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