- "I can't lie to you about your chances but... you have my sympathies."
- ―Ash (from Alien)
Ash was a Hyperdyne Systems 120-A/2[1] Synthetic and the Science Officer aboard the commercial towing vehicle USCSS Nostromo during 2122. He was serving on the ship during its fateful voyage in 2122 when it encountered a Xenomorph on LV-426, an incident that eventually led to the destruction of the ship and the loss of all but one of its crew.
Ash was ultimately revealed to be a Synthetic sleeper agent who, unbeknownst to the rest of the crew, had been placed on board to ensure the Alien was returned to Weyland-Yutani, for study and use in their bio-weapons division. He was destroyed by the surviving crew.
Biography
Early life
Ash was a Hyperdyne Systems 120-A/2[1] Synthetic that was created for Weyland-Yutani in the early part of the 22nd century. Ash was assigned to the Nostromo when the ship was selected (unbeknownst to the crew) to investigate a signal coming from the planetoid LV-426. He replaced the vessel's existing Science Officer, who had previously served with Captain Dallas on several occasions, two days before the ship left Thedus.[2]
Investigating the signal
When the Nostromo ostensibly discovered the signal on LV-426, Ash ensured the crew investigated by pointing out that failure to do so would incur a total forfeiture of their personal shares in Weyland-Yutani, as per company regulations. It seems Ash, acting in concert with MU-TH-UR 6000, also concealed the true nature of the signal from the rest of the crew — while Ash claimed the message was undecipherable, after landing on LV-426 Ripley was able to determine that it was likely some form of warning and not an S.O.S. as previously assumed. Even so, Ash successfully convinced her that heading out after the search party to warn them would be futile. When Kane was returned to the ship with a Facehugger attached to him, Ash undermined Ripley's command and let the search party back on board, thereby breaching basic quarantine regulations; the move made Ripley suspicious of Ash, suspicions she took to Captain Dallas, but he had no answers for her.
Once the Nostromo left LV-426, Ash notably ignored Parker's suggestions that Kane be put into stasis for return to Earth, where a proper medical team could examine him. After attempts to simply pry the Facehugger from the comatose Kane failed, Ash attempted to surgically remove the creature at Dallas' insistence, but its acid blood almost ruptured the ship's hull. When it later detached and died by itself, Ash began studying the creature intently. He discovered several interesting characteristics, including the Xenomorph's ability to replace its cells with polarized silicon, giving it a prolonged resistance to adverse environmental conditions, but apparently learnt nothing of value in the crew's later attempts to combat the Alien.
Hunting the creature
When the Chestburster ripped out of Kane at the crew's final meal before returning to hypersleep, Ash prevented Parker from attacking the infant Xenomorph with a knife, allowing it to escape into the ship. Ash constructed two tracking devices to help track the creature, but a subsequent search resulted in Brett being killed by the already fully-grown Alien. When Dallas volunteered to go into the Nostromo's ventilation ducts to flush the creature into the ship's main airlock, Ash remained notably calm as the other crew members panicked while Dallas was stalked and attacked.
The truth revealed
- "I can't lie to you about your chances but... you have my sympathies."
- ―Ash (from Alien)
Ash taunting the survivors.
When Ripley became increasingly suspicious of Science Officer Ash's inability to provide any helpful information on the creature she consulted MU-TH-UR directly, finally learning that Ash had been given special orders by Weyland-Yutani to ensure the return of the Alien to the company's laboratories, even at the expense of the crew. When Ripley confronted Ash with this information he attacked her, holding her down and attempting to asphyxiate her by forcing a magazine down her throat. However, Ash was decapitated by Parker before he could kill her, revealing him to be an android. Despite being headless, Ash continued to attack Parker until Lambert stabbed the android in the back with a cattle prod. After the confrontation, Ripley reactivated his remains, hoping to interrogate him for any information that might help in the fight against the Alien, but Ash merely mocked the remaining survivors, gloating that they would not survive the Alien's rampage. After hearing his taunts, Ripley deactivated Ash for good and an enraged Parker incinerated his remains with a Flame Thrower. However, Ash transferred part of his AI programming to the Narcissus,[3] the Nostrmo's shuttle.
Legacy
Ash's betrayal led Ripley to develop an intense mistrust and hatred for androids, feelings notably displayed when she encountered the android Bishop during a return mission to LV-426 with the United States Colonial Marine Corps. The 120-A/2 model became well-known for its tendency to malfunction and led to the introduction of behavioral inhibitors in Synthetics to prevent them from similarly harming humans.[1] Ash's actions on board the Nostromo also imparted Ripley with a mistrust of Weyland-Yutani in general, thanks to their role in Ash's deployment and secret orders that undermined the crew's safety and survival.
Personality and Traits
As an advanced synthetic, Ash could effectively mimic human emotions and mannerisms to the degree that his crew mates were deceived into believing he was in fact human. Outwardly, Ash was calm, collected and intelligent, and seemingly considered himself superior to the rest of the crew, particularly Parker and Brett.
With regards to his secret orders, Ash clearly had no qualms with sacrificing the crew to ensure the Alien was returned to Earth. On several occasions he directly assisted in the creature's progress and survival, although always subtly enough that his actions would not appear to be an outright betrayal of the rest of the crew. Similarly, he would often appear to assist in the fight against the Alien, most notably when he constructed motion detectors following Kane's death, although in hindsight it is clear his assistance was always specifically limited in its effectiveness. Despite his care, Ripley became suspicious as soon as Ash breached quarantine rules by allowing Kane and the Facehugger back on board the Nostromo, something a Science Officer — in Ripley's mind at least — would never do. When discovered, Ash displayed a cruel and sarcastic side, taunting the other survivors and mocking their futile attempts to kill the Alien.
Ash was also an adept liar, successfully concealing from the rest of the crew the fact that Weyland-Yutani had already deciphered much of the transmission coming from the Derelict before they had even left Thedus.[4] He feigned ignorance when the signal was assumed by the others to be a distress call, even though the company had already learned enough from the message to know that the Xenomorph the Nostromo had surreptitiously being sent to retrieve was an incredibly dangerous creature likely to kill the entire crew.
Equipment
As the Nostromo's Science Officer, Ash utilized to the instruments in the ship's infirmary/laboratory to study both Kane and the Facehugger attached to him. Once the creature was loose, Ash used his technological prowess to construct crude tracking devices to help track it.
Behind the Scenes
The prosthetic severed head made for the scene where Ripley and the other survivors reactivate and interrogate Ash was made from a head cast of actor Ian Holm. However, the foam rubber used to make the head shrank as it dried and consequently, the final item bore little resemblance to the real Holm. As there was no time (or budget) to make a second, the production team had no choice but to use the existing model.[5] As a result, the fake head is glaringly obvious on film.
Deleted airlock scene
One notable scene that was cut from Alien was to make Ash's betrayal of the crew complete. Originally, following Dallas' death, the survivors all but succeeded in ejecting the Alien into space through the Nostromo's main airlock. However, at the last moment, Ash activates an alarm in the area, scaring the creature away and subsequently causing localized decompression that seriously injures Parker and Ripley.[6] Ripley immediately suspects Ash, and it was after this incident that she was supposed to enter MU-TH-UR and learn the truth about his secret order.
The scene was cut during filming, although a small portion of it, set on the Nostromo's bridge and featuring Lambert and Ripley, is available as a bonus feature on the Alien Anthology Blu-ray release.
Trivia
- Hyperdyne Systems, the company that manufactured Ash (mentioned in Aliens), is a reference to Cyberdyne Systems, the company responsible for creating the Terminator robots and the Skynet artificial intelligence system in the Terminator franchise; the first two Terminator movies were written and directed by James Cameron, who also wrote and directed Aliens.
- Several lines of Ash's dialogue later inspired the titles of achievements/trophies in the 2010 video game Aliens vs. Predator, including "You Have My Sympathies" and "I Admire Its Purity".
- Similarly, several of the achievements/trophies in the video game Aliens: Colonial Marines are named after dialogue spoken by Ash, including "Structural Perfection" and "Micro Changes in Air Density", as well as "We're Still Collating" from the expansion Stasis Interrupted. Ash is the only non-Aliens character to be "quoted" in the game's achievement list in this way.
Appearances
- Alien/novel/comic (First Appearance)
- Aliens/novel (mentioned only)
- Aliens: Nightmare Asylum (indirect mention)
- Aliens: Colonial Marines Technical Manual (mentioned only)
- Alien: Out of the Shadows
Gallery
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 James Cameron (writer and director). Aliens (1986), 20th Century Fox [DVD]. Cite error: Invalid
<ref>tag; name "A2" defined multiple times with different content - ↑ Dan O'Bannon, Ronald Shusett (writers) and Ridley Scott (director). Alien (1986), 20th Century Fox [DVD].
- ↑ Tim Lebbon. 'Alien: Out of the Shadows', p. 72 (2014), Titan Books.
- ↑ Alan Dean Foster. Alien novelization, p. 201 (1979), Warner Books, Inc..
- ↑ Ridley Scott, David Giler, Walter Hill, H. R. Giger, Dan O'Bannon, Ronald Shusett. The Beast Within: The Making of 'Alien' (2003), 20th Century Fox [DVD].
- ↑ "Weyland-Yutani Archives - Ripley's Nosebleed". Retrieved on 2013-04-29.