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Sergeant David Arthur "Davey" Wilks[1] was a member of the United States Colonial Marine Corps. He was a member of the combat unit deployed to Rim to investigate the sudden loss of contact with the colony there. Stumbling into a Xenomorph infestation, Wilks' unit was decimated and he was the only Marine to escape the planet. His face half-burned by a Xenomorph's acid blood, Wilks fled the infested colony with the sole surviving inhabitant, a young girl named Billie.
Upon his returning to Earth, Wilks was arrested while Billie was sent to live with relatives on the planet Ferro. 13 years later, still in prison and suffering from recurring nightmares, Wilks received a visit from a government agent named Orona, informing the Marine that Billie was now in a mental hospital and due to have her mind wiped. Wilks later broke Billie out of the hospital and took her on the mission. After being held hostage and surviving the disastrous mission Wilks and the survivors made their way back to Earth, which unknown to them was overtaken by Xenomorphs.
Once again on the run; Wilks, Billie and Bueller ended up at the mercy of the delusional General Spears. Wilks later took part in a coup to overthrow Spears, but had to escape with Billie when the general released his "troops" on the base. Heading back to Earth Wilks and Billie managed to escape Spears and make their way to Gateway Station, where the two survivors had a chance encounter with fellow survivor Lt. Ripley.
Biography[]
Early life[]
David "Davey" Wilks was born on Earth in the United States to Ben Wilks and an unknown woman. David's early childhood was marked with tragedy with his father walking out on him at age four and losing his mother at age five. He was put in the care of his aunt Carrie Greene after his mother died. About six years later, soon after his eleventh birthday, there was a knock at the door from a disheveled man asking for David. The man introduced himself as a friend of his mother's named Ben. Ben gave David a birthday present and turned and walked away leaving a stunned David at the doorway. Some years later, Wilks entered in the United States Colonial Marine Corps eventually reaching the rank of Corporal.
Mission to Rim[]
- "My experience-- --has distorted your mind."
- ―Wilks and Stephens
In 2179 Corporal Wilks and his squad were sent to the colony world of Rim to investigate the loss of communications from the colony. When the squad arrived, they discovered the colonists dead except one child, Billie, who survived the creatures that killed the others. As the squad was evacuating the facility, the dropship had a stowaway kill the pilots, destroying the transport. The twelve Marines and Billie had to find another way out of the facility and away from the hostile creatures.
After half the squad was killed and the Sergeant was killed by one of the creatures leaving Wilks, the girl, Ellis, Quinn and Jasper. Wilks was holding Billie when he came to a locked door. Needing to force the door open, Wilks handed the girl over to Jasper so he could use a welder to melt through the locking mechanism. Short on time with the creatures closing in and the reactor going critical, Wilks managed to get the door open to find one of the creatures standing there, set to attack him. Wilks managed to kill the creature, but heard Jasper's screams as a creature got a hold of him, and killed him.
Wilks heard Billie scream as another creature got ahold of her. Wilks then shot out the creature's legs allowing Billie to get away. It's known that before they escaped, Wilks fought and killed a queen and received some injuries to the left side of his face. Wilks and Billie managed to survive and make it back to a space station.
Imprisonment & Offer[]
- "He's as nuts as an orchard of filbert trees."
- ―Colonel H.S. Stephens, regarding Cpl. Wilks (from Aliens: Earth Hive)
After returning from the mission on Rim, Wilks and the girl we put in quarantine to insure they didn't have any alien bacteria or virus. Wilks declined getting his scars removed from the mission claiming women liked men with scars. Cpl. Wilks was eventually reassigned after being released from quarantine during which Wilks turned to alcohol and chems to cope with what happened at Rim. During his binges, Wilks would brawl with Marines and civilians alike and would be repeatedly arrested and detained. During this period Wilks was eventually removed from active duty in the Corps, and imprisoned for having encountered the creatures, as well as his disruptive behavior.
Reunion with Billie[]
- "Yeah, I don't sleep that well myself. Haven't since Rim."
- "It was real wasn't it?"
- – Wilks and Billie regarding their survival.(from Aliens: Earth Hive)
Before leaving for the mission, Wilks visited Billie in the hospital. After seeing him, Billie discovered that the nightmares she suffered were real and asked Wilks to save her from the hospital but the visit was interrupted and Billie was dragged away. Some days later, Wilks returned to the hospital and helped Billie escape, hiding her inside a hypersleep chamber. During the loading, Wilks (now a sergeant) ordered plasma weapons but Colonel H.S. Stephens declined the idea. After the loading they departed in the transport ship The Benedict without knowing that they were being followed by another ship full of altered androids led by a man named Massey.
Betrayal & Fighting Pirates[]
After the platoon of Marines was awoken from hypersleep, Colonel Stephens noticed the plus one on the roster and confronted Wilks on it. The Sergent was amused that he was right on Stephens' incompetence and not being familiar with his troops to pick Billie out. After convincing the Colonel to take Billie along as a "civilian advisor" on the mission and since there were no pit stops to drop Billie off he had no choice to take her along. Stephens was furious, telling Wilks he'll let Wilks twist in the wind when they get back to Earth.
After some time out of hypersleep, Wilks noticed one of his Marines, Bueller was attracted to Billie. Determined to give Billie a heads up on Bueller's "secret" and spare the young woman the heartache from it, He told Bueller to take a hike and made it an order. With Bueller storming off, Wilks tried to give Billie the heads up on Bueller but instead he was rebuked by the furious woman.
Sometime after that, Wilks was in the ship's gym exercising, when he felt the ship jolt like it hit something. Wilks, suspicious of the jolt hit the general alarm to alert the crew to the trouble they were in. Wilks then ran into Colonel Stephens, telling him about his suspicions only to have Stephens pull a pistol on the Sergent. As Stephens lead Wilks to the boarding hatch that the pirate forces Wilks met the man behind the attack, Massey. Stephens then said he held up his end of the deal and demanded his payment, Massey then asked Wilks to move to the side, complying Wilks watched Massey shoot Stephens in the chest killing him.
Now at the "mercy" of Massey, Wilks was led at gunpoint to the communications room. Already figuring he was a dead man Wilks tried to assault Massey only to be beaten by the seasoned assassin. After sometime, Wilks noticed that Billie had gotten away from the patrols on the ship and managed to arm herself. Confronting the pirate, Billie asked the man to surrender and drop his weapons. Wilks shouted at Billie to shoot the man dead, distracting her and giving Massey an opportunity to attack her. Wilks joined the fray to take the assassin out. Billie managed to wound the man as he was attacking Wilks. Defeated, Massey had no intention to go out alone and was arming a grenade as Billie fatally shot the man.
Rescue Mission[]
After Massey was dealt with, Wilks and Billie took down for more of the combat androids patrolling the ship allow themselves to work at rescuing the stranded Marines and crew. Wilks then made contact with Squad One and told them that he was coming down with the spare dropship to rescue the stranded people. As Wilks was talking to Bueller of Squad One, one of the crewmen, was screaming over the com that the creatures were almost at him. Wilks then yelled to Walters to activate his tracking signal so the survivors could be extracted. Squad One then said that they were near the crewman's tracker and decided to head out to get them out much to Billie's protests.
Before Wilks and Billie departed he set a little going away "present" for the planet, a nuclear payload he managed to smuggle on as "miscolanious parts" behind Stephens' back. He set the timer to six hours so regardless if anyone would survive, the planet's Xenomorphs would be dealt with. Wilks and Billie then set out to the planet's surface.
When Wilks landed the dropship near the Hive he spotted three survivors: Bueller, Blake and one of the crew. telling the three to move it with since he had the timer going down. Bueller was momentarily distracted when a xenomorph then ambushed and bisected him. He ordered Blake to hurry up so he could provide cover fire for the three. Wilks had to slap some sense into Billie who didn't know about Bueller's secret, yelling at her that he warned her that it would be nothing but trouble for her to pursue him.
As the three made it to the dropship, the transport was swarmed by xenomorphs pounding and scratching at the hull to get at the five in the ship. Wilks then asked Blake to help him clear off the ship by going outside to deal with the swarm. Wilks asked Blake that should he be hived that she put him out of his misery. Due to her programming Blake responded that she couldn't. Then suddenly the scratching and pounding from outside stopped.
Wilks, Billie, and Blake then opened the hatch to see what was going on outside only to find all the creatures dead and flattened. The three then saw a creature in a spacesuit with a device standing there. Billie then broke down as the creature projected its hatred of xenomorphs on to her reminding her of the time her father was attacked in another one of these creatures ships back on Rim.
With only three hours left, repairs still needed to be done on the dropship to get it working again. They spent the next hour getting the repairs done, much to the discomfort of the ammonia filled atmosphere had on the humans. After getting the dropship going the five made it back to The Benedict for the planet to be bombed back into a primotial stage. Before disembarking off the dropship, Wilks ran the decontamination lasers to make sure they didn't pick up any unwanted guests planetside. The five then went back into hypersleep for the nine month journy back to Earth.
Back to Earth[]
Wilks viewing the devastation on Earth.
After waking from the nine month sleep, Wilks and the survivors started receiving transmissions regarding the infestation that gripped Earth. One transmission was from Orona, who realized his folly in trying to acquire the creatures as a weapons system and killed himself before the creatures could take him alive. The Benedict then received orders to land the craft at a specified stronghold and was told specifically to not damage the ship upon reentry since ships were now very valuable.
When The Benedict landed, Wilks and the others were greeted by a squad of Marines with their weapons leveled at them. A General stepped forward ordering his men to inspect the ship, while his men filed on to The Benedict, the General filled the five in on the state of the planet as well as that the base had anywhere from a few hours to a day before the xenomorphs overrun it. Parks, the surviving crewmember, asked the general what would happen to the survivors. The General apologized stating he had his "orders". Irate at being left for dead, the survivors protested the General, who responded by drawing his sidearm. Blake, who was programmed to not allow any harm come to humans, stood between the General and the humans. Being warned that he had no qualms about killing a few more people Blake was shot twice in the chest and died when one of the shots ricocheted into her main pump. Wilks struck the General in the temple with enough force to kill the man as he fired a third round.
With Parks running off on his own, it was now Wilks, Billie and Bueller scrambling for a ship to escape the compromised base. The trio came across a battered the freighter that was typically unmanned. The three got on board as the sounds from the conflict between the Marines and xenomorphs grew closer. The ship took off in time before any creatures could make their way to the ship and before the stockpile of nukes could be detonated.
Personality & Traits[]
- "I keep remembering Rim. Drake, Vasquez -- even that ass, Quinn -- they were okay. Okay, hell they were buddies. And I let them all die."
- ―Wilks
As a person Wilks was sarcastic, good humored and always trying to look things on the bright side. When in combat he adopted a more serious attitude and cold determination, taking the role of leader if necessary and always trying to keep everyone alive. Wilks believed that he was living in borrowed time and that he was going to die anyway at any moment which somewhat ironically gave him an edge in surviving the most tough situations imaginable.
Equipment[]
David Wilks carried an M41E Pulse Rifle as his primary weapon.
Behind the Scenes[]
Original identity[]
Wilks was originally Dwayne Hicks before Hicks was scripted to die in Alien3.
Originally, the character of Wilks was in fact Corporal Hicks from Aliens; the early comics in which the character appeared were a direct continuation of that film's story, featuring Hicks and Newt continuing the fight against the Xenomorphs. However, following the release of Alien3 in 1992, in which Hicks is killed on Fiorina 161, the character from the comics was renamed Wilks so that the stories in which he features were still compatible with the film series. This change first appeared in the novel Aliens: Earth Hive, an adaptation of the comic series Aliens: Outbreak, while subsequent reprints of the comic books have also adopted the altered identity.
Trivia[]
- Oddly, despite many names from the original series being retconned, Wilks makes mention of marine names that still refer to characters from the original continuity, such as Drake or Vasquez.
Appearances[]
- Aliens: Earth Hive
- Aliens: Outbreak (edited releases only)
- Aliens: Nightmare Asylum (novel)
- Aliens: Nightmare Asylum (edited releases only)
- Aliens: The Female War
- Aliens: Female War (edited releases only)
- Aliens: Genocide (novel) (mentioned only)
- Alien: The Roleplaying Game — Colonial Marines Operations Manual (mentioned only)
References[]
- ↑ Steve Perry and Stephani Perry. Aliens: The Female War, p. 8 (1993), Bantam Books.