Carter Burke

"I work for the company. But don't let that fool you, I'm really an OK guy!"

―Burke (from Aliens)

Carter Burke
Biographical Information
Rank	Junior Executive Special Projects Director
Affiliation	Weyland-Yutani
Status	Deceased as of June, 2179.
Physical Description
Species	Human
Gender	Male
Hair color	Brown
Eye color	Blue
Other Information
Notable facts	Ordered the exploration of the Derelict Ship on LV-426 in 2179.
Portrayed by	Paul Reiser

Carter J. Burke was a junior executive with the Weyland-Yutani Corporation serving as Special Projects Director for Weyland-Yutani (Space) Corp's Special Services Division. He acted as a liaison to Ellen Ripley after her rescue from deep space in 2179, and later accompanied a squad of Colonial Marines on board the USS Sulaco to LV-426, the moon where Ripley had first encountered the Xenomorph species, to investigate the loss of contact with the colony of Hadley's Hope.

While initially amicable towards the Marines and Ripley in particular, in reality Burke had ulterior motives and his loyalties lay solely with Weyland-Yutani. Burke's continued scheming against the personnel from the Sulaco mission was eventually discovered, and he was nearly executed by the surviving Marines for his treachery. Ultimately, he was taken by the Xenomorphs at Hadley's Hope and implanted with a Chestburster.

Biography

Meeting Ripley

"Ripley, we've lost contact with the colony on LV-426."

―Burke to Ripley (from Aliens)

Burke in corporate suit.

Carter Burke was dispatched to Gateway Station in 2179 where he was among the first people to meet with Ellen Ripley following her rescue from 57 years drifting in hypersleep. Burke brought Ripley up to speed on the years she had been missing, consoling her regarding the death of her daughter Amanda Ripley-McClaren. As one of the few people she knew following her re-emergence from hypersleep, Burke was also a regular feature in Ripley's nightmares, including one particularly vivid dream where an imaginary Chestburster hatched from her chest just moments after Burke had finished explaining how long she had been in hypersleep. Burke guided Ripley through the tribunal into the destruction of the USCSS Nostromo, and when she was subsequently stripped of her rank and flight status for her role in the ship's loss, Burke remained close.

Gorman and Burke waiting outside Ripley's apartment.

However, he also secretly forwarded the coordinates for the Derelict Ship on LV-426, obtained from Ripley's testimony, to the colonists at Hadley's Hope, ordering them to investigate without disclosing what they might discover. As a result, the colony was overrun by Xenomorphs and all but one of its inhabitants, a young girl named Rebecca Jorden — better known as Newt — were killed. When contact with the colony was lost, Burke used his contacts at Weyland-Yutani to pressure the United States Colonial Marine Corps into launching a rescue operation, and arranged for the inexperienced Lieutenant Gorman to take command of the mission. Burke and Gorman approached Ripley, who was now living on Earth, and offered to reinstate her rank if she would accompany a section of Colonial Marines on an mission to investigate. While she initially refused, Burke convinced her that confronting the Xenomorphs and destroying them would help her overcome her ongoing trauma.

Mission to LV-426

Owing to Weyland-Yutani's financing of the Hadley's Hope settlement, Burke also accompanied the Marines to the moon as a corporate liaison. When the main colony complex was secured, Burke, Ripley and Gorman moved inside, quickly discovering Newt hiding in the ventilation shafts and several Facehugger specimens being stored in the medical lab, one of which had been removed from its host, Marachuk, at the cost of his life.

When the rest of the colonists were traced to the nearby Atmosphere Processor, Burke and Ripley accompanied the Marines to investigate, remaining inside their APC while the troops moved in. When Ripley pointed out that the armor-piercing ammunition used by the Marines' weapons would likely cause significant damage to the Processor, Burke concurred, explaining that the station was a large fusion reactor and any damage to the coolant systems could trigger a thermonuclear explosion. Burke's insistence eventually led to Gorman disarming his men, leaving them with only flamethrowers and sidearms to defend themselves. When the section was subsequently ambushed by Xenomorph Warriors, their lack of appropriate weaponry caused the majority of them to be killed or captured.

Survival in the colony

"Hold on a second, this installation has a substantial dollar value attached to it..."
"They can bill me."

―Burke and Ripley, regarding the destruction of Hadley's Hope (from Aliens)

Following the disastrous ambush, Ripley suggested an orbital nuclear strike as the only way to guarantee the Xenomorphs were destroyed, although Burke immediately insisted that such wholesale destruction of a very expensive terraforming colony was unacceptable. He also reneged on his earlier promise to destroy the Xenomorphs without hesitation, insisting that they were an important species and should be studied. He was overruled by the ranking Marine, Corporal Hicks, but as the survivors prepared to leave he surreptitiously sent a message to Weyland-Yutani informing them of the survivors' plans, and suggested that the company should dispatch a ship to try and recover the situation on LV-426.

Burke and the others wait for the dropship.

When they were stranded on the moon due to the loss of their dropship, the surviving personnel barricaded themselves inside the colony, hoping to hold out for rescue. Ripley later learned from the unit's technician Bishop that Burke had insisted the two live Facehuggers in the med lab be returned to Weyland-Yutani after the mission; after checking the colony's logs, she also discovered that Burke was responsible for the colonists initially discovering the Xenomorphs. She angrily confronted him with this information, happily rejecting his offer of wealth should they give the live Facehuggers to Weyland-Yutani as he had planned. Despite Burke's pleas that his actions had simply been a "bad call", Ripley promised him he would pay.

While Ripley and Newt slept inside the med lab, Burke seized his opportunity to rid himself of Ripley and released the live Facehuggers before sealing the door to the room, additionally hoping that with Ripley and Newt impregnated he would have the perfect means of smuggling live Xenomorphs through quarantine and back to Earth. While he deactivated the security cameras to prevent Ripley calling for help, she activated the fire alarm in the room and was saved by the Marines.

Final betrayals

"This is so nuts. I mean, listen- Listen to what you're saying. It's paranoid delusion. How- It's really sad. It's pathetic."

―Burke, after his treachery is discovered (from Aliens)

Burke being confronted by Ripley.

The survivors confronted Burke in the operations center, Ripley pointing out that, as the Marines would all know about the embryos inside her and Newt, Burke would likely have sabotaged their cryotubes during the return flight to Earth and jettisoned their bodies into space. With no one left to contradict his version of events, he could simply claim they had died on the mission when debriefed. The Marines ultimately decided to execute him for his treason, but before they could carry out their punishment the Xenomorphs attacked. Burke slipped away in the chaos and locked the door behind him, trapping the survivors in the operations center with the Xenomorphs, but was himself almost immediately captured by a Warrior. He was taken to the Hive and impregnated with a Chestburster, although he was likely still alive when the Atmosphere Processor went into meltdown and exploded.

Personality and Traits

Burke is a textbook example of a sociopath; a consumate liar and emotional manipulator that lacks any conscience and human feeling save anger and fear. Despite scheming to further Weyland-Yutani's corporate interests, it is clear this was done solely for his own personal gain; the manner in which he kept knowledge of the Derelict on LV-426 from his superiors following Ripley's tribunal, opting instead to send several colonists to investigate on his own initiative, makes it obvious he planned to use the discovery to further himself professionally. When cornered and forced to admit fault for his actions, Burke demonstrates the definitive sociopathic trait of mocking sarcasm to deflect responsibility. Considered ruthless even by his colleagues at Weyland-Yutani, many of his peers nonetheless lamented that he was "executive material".

Burke's deceptions ranged from manipulating Ripley into joining the Hadley's Hope mission in the first place, promising that the purpose was to destroy the Xenomorphs when clearly it was not, to actively attempting to impregnate her and Newt with Xenomorphs so that a live specimen could be smuggled through quarantine within them. He was even willing to sabotage the cryotubes of the other survivors in order to cover his tracks. However, when his deceptions eventually unravelled, he revealed himself to be cowardly and weak, and it was his cowardice that ultimately cost him his life.

Behind the Scenes

Deleted death scene

Ripley finds Burke cocooned and impregnated in a deleted scene.

Originally, Burke's ultimate fate in Aliens was revealed in a deleted scene — as she searched the Hive for Newt near the end of the film, Ripley found Burke cocooned to the wall, still alive and impregnated with a Chestburster. He tells her he can feel the embryo moving inside him, and begs her to kill him. Ripley does not, but leaves him a grenade so that he may end his own suffering. While the meeting between the two was cut, the explosion of the grenade (off-screen) is still in the film — it is the fiery blast that blocks Ripley's path after she frees Newt, forcing them to head deeper into the Hive, where they discover the Queen.

The scene was mainly cut because director James Cameron realised that, given the time frame of the film, Burke would still have had a Facehugger attached to him by the time Ripley enters the Hive. Despite this, it still appeared in the novelization of the film and the comic adaptation Aliens: Newt's Tale. The movie footage was released for the first time as a bonus feature on the 2010 Alien Anthology Blu-ray set.

Trivia

• Burke notably shares his middle initial with another antagonistic government/corporate agent in the franchise, Peter J. Keyes.
• Burke does not exist at all in the original treatment for Aliens. Most of his dialogue while aboard Gateway Station was instead taken by a character called Dr. O'Neil, who was cut from the finished film. With Burke's absence, the sub-plot regarding Weyland-Yutani attempting to obtain Xenomorph specimens from LV-426 was also not present in the initial script, as there is no corporate agent accompanying the Marines to the colony.
• The novelization of Alien³ suggests Burke is actually operating alone and on his own initiative in Aliens, and not carrying out company orders (at least not specifically).
• Several lines of Burke's dialogue later inspired the titles of trophies/achievements in the 2010 video game Aliens vs. Predator, including "Very Tough Hombre".
• Similarly, several of the trophies/achievements in the video game Aliens: Colonial Marines are named after dialogue spoken by Burke, including "Just a Grunt", "Adios, Muchachos", "No Offence" and "Arbitrarily Exterminated".

Appearances

• Aliens/novel (First Appearnace)
• Aliens: Newt's Tale
• Aliens: Colonial Marines Technical Manual (mentioned only)
• Alien Trilogy (voice only)
• Aliens: Colonial Marines/Stasis Interrupted (video game, voice only)

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