The case for Carter J. Burke

Everything else
1

For years, we have looked back at the events on LV-426 with horror and sadness for what happened to the colonist and, later, the tragedy that befell the complement of marines sent to investigate.

We have stood in awe at the corageous example set by one Lt (previously warrant officer) Ellen Ripley, a figure already seen as heroic in our collective mind -and rightly so- because of her actions aboard the commercial towing spaceship Nostromo.

And we have learn to hate and despise the figure of Mr. Carter J. Burke, company man, species traitor, coward, evil corporate puppet.

Does this look like an evil man to you?

However, after reviewing the video and sound files of the LV-426 incident, and doing so with a open mind free of prejudice and judgment, I have come to a startling conclusion: there is a body of conclusive, previously unexamined evidence that suggest Mr. Burke was not only innocent, but the true hero of LV-426 and a victim of Ms. Ripley’s fractured psyche and profound paranoia.

First of all, history has been written mostly from the point of view of Lt. Ripley. We know she was aboard the Nostromo, we know she survived a harrowing experience, we know she is paranoid and probably has bigger, deeper psychological trauma as pointed by the fact she often wakes up screaming from nightmares in which horribly monsters burst out of her chest.


Lt. Ellen Ripley: note the crazy look in her eyes.

We know she thinks she has reason to hate Wayland Yutani corporation as an evil empire bent of getting their hands on a bio weapon, human lives be damned.

Trough Ripley’s eyes, we transfer her mistrusts and hate towards Carter, building a deeply nested prejudice against him. Except there is NO proof whatsoever that WY is an “evil” corporation to begin with!

ALL the “evidence” that Ripley posses as far as WT goes, is that the A2 model android “Ash” stationed at the Nostromo tries to protect the xenomorph even if it means loosing human lives, and it even tries to kill Lt. Ripley herself, another reason for her not to have an objective opinion on the events.

So what we think we know of Weyland Yutani is that they are an evil corporation, willing to sacrifice human lives for a percentage. We transfer this characteristic over to Carter, the embodiment of the corporation. If WY is evil then, surely, Carter J. Burke is evil as well.

However, what we know for a fact is that there was no such tampering conducted on Bishop, the android complement to the Sulaco’s crew.

If the company knows what they will find, if they have ample time to prepare, and if they were truly heartless bastards, they would have rigged Bishop just as they did ASH. They did NOT. And as the android Bishop remarks, the older A2 models where “notoriously twitchy”.

Part 2 follows

2

Now, as I said, Lt. Ripley is profoundly traumatized. She wakes up almost every single night dreaming of aliens bursting out of her chest, she has a miserably life, she abandones Jonesy the cat.


Yes. That’s NOT a disturbed person right there.

Carter makes himself available to Ripley, goes with her to the company hearing, gets her top notch medical treatment and helps find her daughter Amanda Ripley-McClaren. He has been a friend and never gotten so much as a “gee, thanks” from her. And if he is skeptical about her account, well, he was every right to be as there is no proof whatsoever about what happened on the Nostromo.

If point of fact, Carter only wants to have her on this expedition because, having seen her psych profile, he wants to help her face and conquer her demons, and he states so clearly: “you need to get back on that horse”

She doesn’t REALLY need to be there. As mentioned later, they have every single item of data she has provided on record, aboard the Colonial Marine starship Sulaco’s computers and available to each and every marine, commanding officer Lt. Gorman and, of course Carter himself, who by now has probably heard the same sob story a thousand times already.

So we know Lt. Ripley is not in a sound state of mind, we know there is no real proof for the “evil corporation” story, and therefore we know Carter is not an agent of evil, but rather a nice guy, just trying to get by in the competitive corporate world.

Part 3 follows

3

So Lt. Ripley’s paranoid about YT already, despite all that Carter has done for her.

That view colors her interpretation of what happened on LV-426, now renamed Hadley’s Hope by the colonists that have been living there for the last 20 years with NO incident of alien abduction, impregnation or chest bursting.

It is here that Carter makes an error of judgment of course, but only because of his willingness to give Ripley the benefit of the doubt. He contacts the colonial authority in Hadley’s hope and asks them to check out the area where, presumably and only if Ripley’s story holds true, a huge alien ship has spent all this time unnoticed.

Now, later on her account Lt. Ripley would accuse Carter of knowingly sending the colonials there to get infected. As it turns out, the ones doing the checking would be Rebecca “Newt” Jorden’s family, and her father would be the first infected. Now, do we know for fact that Carter called Mr. Jorden and said “hey pal, got a surprise for you, go to X and Y coordinates and you’ll be set for life!”.

NO.

We know he contacted the colonial command on Hadley’s hope, and THEY decided, according to their protocols one would think, to send the single, unprepared and untrained prospecting unit.

When Carter hears about the lack of communication from Hadley’s Hope, he immediately reports the problem to the proper authorities. We know this because, well, only the proper authorities can authorize the deployment of a warship (the Sulaco) and a full complement of marines to investigate. Furthermore, and possibly feeling guilty, Carter decides to join the expedition himself.


I just want to know one thing: where they are. Way to prep for action!

It should be noted at this point Carter has no responsibility whatsoever in the deployment of one of the worst military units in history. Not only are they woefully under trained (we would learn later a child survived seventeen days with no weapons or training while the marines drop like files) but they disobey direct orders, smart-talk their superior officers (admittedly inexperienced as they might be) are prone to friendly fire and cowardice, and lack even common sense.

You send a group of heavily armed buffoons to check a potentially deadly situation, with them a paranoid schizophrenic as a consultant, an inexperienced officer, no back up plans, no RL communication whatsoever with any military base and you have a recipe for (nuclear) disaster.

In fact, I will point out now how Carter J. Burke, despite no training, despite being way in over his head, is actually the only one of the whole group to act sensibly and keep it together.

First, when Lt. Gorman loses his cool (he was giving sensible orders just a second ago mind you) and Lt. Ripley decides that with NO military authority, training, knowledge of the area whatsoever she must take command and drive the combat vehicle to reach the dying marines, she would not have saved them if Carter hadn’t stop Lt. Gorman from trying to get back control!

That’s right. Carter is directly responsibly for saving their lives. AND he did it without taking any credit, and acting with bravery and resolution and a clear head: when the vehicle catches fire inside, it is he who takes a extinguisher.

When corporal Hudson is crying like a baby after they’ve just gotten out of the first disastrous fight, it is HE who reaches for a medkit to tend to Hudson’s wounds. Carter is all over the place.

Part 4 follows

4

Now, after getting their butts kicked, the marines still have the option of getting out of the planet, notify the proper authorities and be done with the damn thing. Note that at this point there is NO argument from Carter against doing so, and what happens next is, again, certainly not his fault.

This falls squarely on Lt. Ferro’s shoulders. She is the squad’s pilot, and when co-pilot corporal Spunkmeyer finds some goo inside of the dropship, she orders him to shut up and seal the ramp instead of doing a bit of searching.


Seal the ramp you idi…oh snap.

They both die shortly after, and the survivors are marooned on the planet.

screenshot-med-222.jpg824×464

Game over man! game over!

Now we come to the point on Lt. Ripley’s account where the truly heinous charges against Carter J. Burke are leveled. To wit: he argues against the idea of nuking the site from orbit, he tries to get both Ripley and Newt impregnated so he can get his hand on a bio weapon, he cowardly escapes and locks the door behind him so the survivors can’t follow.

Let’s de-construct the charges:

  1. First of all, when Carter argues they do not have the authority to blow up LV-426 from orbit, he is right. He even points out it is “an emotional moment for all of us” and he is right, they have no business deciding the use of tactical nuclear weapons in their frame of mind, having just seen their friends torn to pieces by xenomorphs and having their commanding officer unconscious.

  2. He argues that the Aliens are an important species and they don’t have the right to exterminate them. Of course, he is RIGHT again. We are talking about exterminating a whole species. Should we have done that to the lions after the Tsavo incident? nuke them from orbit is the only way to be sure?

At this point, note, he has tried the larger picture: he has noted both the chain of command, the responsability on using nuclear weapons, and the fact that they are talking about genocide.

Realization dawns on him: these people will NOT listen to reason. They are feverish, they are scared witless, they have given de-facto command of a military operation involving nuclear weapons to a heavily disturbed civilian.

He is in trouble.

Part 5 (final) follows

5

Looks like love at first sight.

Oh, and bets Carter J. Burke just pulled the plug on QT3 for a while? Sounds like his level of sabotage.
;-)

6

As for the more grave accusations, let’s consider what happened and Lt. Ripleyś line of reasoning. She went to the med lab to join Newt Jorden and catch some shut eye. She put her rifle on the bed above, she woke up to find the place locked and the face huggers free.

Now, consider Lt. Ripley is tired enough to fall immediately asleep, so tired in fact she does not hear the one would assume heavy ruckus created by the tubes containing the face huggers crashing to the ground. Could she not have misplaced the rifle herself?


well, shit, where DID I put my rifle?

After they barely escape, she accuses Carter under this line of reasoning: WY is evil, therefore Carter Burke is evil. Since he is evil it MUST have been him that knocked over the tubes containing the facehuggers. And if he did that he planned to get me and newt impregnated. And that means he would sabotage the survivor’s stasis chambers, and then he was going to jettison them all into space.

That is a LOT of guessing in that story. A whole lot of speculation, and they will convict a man over it and punish him with death? Carter puts it right: “listen to yourselves… it’s paranoid delusion!”.

However, on that basis they are willing to execute Carter summarily. How very rich of Lt. Ripley to talk about “which species is best” when she and the gun-ho brigade are preparing to lynch a man.

Consider we do NOT know for a fact Carter took the rifle, we do NOT know for a fact he locked the med lab doors (hell, the marines have been doing all kinds of tinkering with the electronics in the base), and when he turns off the monitor in which Ripley was screaming, well, it could just as easy have been a case of “oh no that bitch going mental again I can’t deal with this shit right now”. An honest, even warranted mistake.

However, that’s speculation on motives. I have saved my most demolishing proof for the end. A CLEAR piece of evidence towards Carter’s innocence. When Lt. Ripley wakes up and sees the cristal tube in the ground (which implies the face huggers have escaped)… said tube is STILL MOVING.

The face huggers have JUST escaped, which is why they haven’t impregnated newt or Ripley yet. The tube is still moving and Carter is WAY BACK in command, next to corporal Hicks. There is no way Carter J. Burke could have been the one to set the face huggers free!

Say it again, with me: if the tube is moving, his innocence is proving!.

After that, well. Did he run? maybe. Did he lock the door behind him? probably. Can you fault him? if the xenomorphs don’t get him, it has been made very clear the humans will. He is trapped, alone, the only beacon of sanity in the hell that Hadley’s hope has turned into.

Lt. Ripley’s account has damned Mr. Carter J. Burke for the ages. I am telling you, it’s time to set the record straight and salute the man, the unsung hero of LV426, the voice of reason, the one not to descend into animalistic behavior in the face of horror.

The one who was human to the bitter end.

Carter J. Burke: hero

A final note on Lt. Ripley’s “heroics”:

By her own account, when first confronted with the huge beast known as the “alien queen” or “you bitch”, Ripley threatened to destroy the eggs around her, prompting the queen to order two of her xenomorphs out of the room, clearing the way out for Ripley and Rebecca to escape.

Lt. Ripley would break this unspoken pact though, and set the eggs of fire (a totally petty, unnecessary act as the whole plant is about to explode, the eggs AND the queen are toast anyway!), enraging the queen enough to come after her all the way to the Sulaco, and presumably laying in there the eggs that would eventually kill Corporal Dwayne Hicks, Rebecca “newt” Jorden and infect Lt. Ripley herself.

Later, this would also result in the eath of a number of prissioners and staff at the Fiorina ‘Fury’ 161 prison compound.

Consider her account, hell consider her actions, and then consider those of Carter J. Burke. It’s time to clean his name.

7

and when he turns off the monitor in which Ripley was screaming, well, it could just as easy have been a case of “oh no that bitch going mental again I can’t deal with this shit right now”. An honest, even warranted mistake.

um, if she was screaming, carter should have either left the vid on (there’s no sound so it’s not like she’s being distracting) or alerted hicks to her breakdown near the child. so either he’s guilty of trying to kill her or guilty of child endangerment.

the tube could easily have rolled after being touched by the facehuggers or they drank some water from them recently. have you ever seen insects searching for food? they zig zag around, fly left and right, go in circles. they almost never head the way you think they would to the food. i’ve put food in front of hungry dogs’ mouths and noses and they can’t find it right away. so there was plenty of time for carter to get back to hicks unless you want to credit human level intelligence to the facehuggers.

carter confessed to having sent the colonists out there to get whatever was out there and said it was worth money to the bio weapons division. good job saving this important species so they can be vivisected and used against humans!

so juan, who’s your alternate suspect? did the canisters just roll off by themselves?

by the way, how do you know this is genocide? it’s a small group of dangerous creatures. they are not native to lv-426, so there is no doubt there are other specimens out there to find. unless you translated the space jockey language and it turns out he was their version of the epa protecting an endangered species. the only species in danger of genocide on lv-426 was human.

8

OH IT’S ON NOW

9

You know what word I’m not comfortable with? Nuance. It’s not a real word. Like gesture. Gesture’s a real word. With gesture you know where you stand. But nuance? I don’t know. Maybe I’m wrong.

10

Juan, this was awesome. Thanks for the laugh.

11

Yes, he did. Under duress mind you. But even if you take such a “confession” as true, think about what it entails “I contacted the colonists” does not translate to “I contacted Rebecca’s parents”. Carter is a company man and what he did was contact the colonial authority at Hadley’s hope.

And why should we fault him for it? on the one hand we have this crazy woman talking about some killer species, never before encountered by humankind, and the only evidence of its existence is her testimony. On the other hand you have people living for 20 years in LV-426 with NO incident whatsoever. What would you believe?

One more thing: the reason he brings up the money argument is because he has already exhausted other options. He has talked about authority, he has talked about conservation, he has talked about how people should not be making decisions about nuclear weapons in a moment of emotional turmoil.


Forget love and all that crap im just tryin 2 keep my pockets fats

Being a WY man, we can assume he has the company’s experience of dealing with commercial crews, and the reason he mentions money. A truism he brings to bear as his last resort: commercial crew always want a bigger share of the pie. Right?


Right

Canister! yes, much better word than “tube” for what I want to say, thanks :) As for your argument, well, I don’t want to defend Carter’s innocence by way of accusing others, so I would offer another explanation. The facehuggers escape, on their own.

As we’ve learned from the accounts of the USM Auriga incident (where the United Systems Military had hoped, foolishly and tragically to breed xenomorphs) the creatures are quite smart and capable of finding their way out of the best containment facilities. Said incident also brought us the creature know as the “newborn”, of which the least said is better.


[Xvarts]“Ataaaaaack!!!”[/Xvarts]

Not THESE insects man. What we know of the creatures is, they will go straight for your face. And then they will hug it. They just scurry around merrily until they see someone’s mug and then jump straight at it.

This is actually an argument against Carter freeing the monsters. I think now that Ripley in fact wakes up to the sound of the canister falling. This neatly explains: a) the canister is still moving and b) her face isn’t being hugged.

You know these creatures will go straight for their victims, if, say, more than a minute had passed since they escaped, would Ripley and “Newt” Jorden really be untouched? would the creatures really stop immediately to drink water (after being, you know, immersed on it for god knows how long) or go for the pretty faces under the bed and in a direct line of sight from the fallen canisters?

What? the human race is in good health and spreading around the Galaxy. Now, with the benefit of hindsight (and the USM Auriga incident 200 years later of course) we all know the Xenomorphs aren’t native to LV.426.

But at the time of the events we are considering, nobody knows. The only fact is they have never been encountered in any other part of the galaxy, and therefore for all intents and purposes, killing them all IS genocide.

The defense would take “guilty of child endangerment” in a heart beat :)

This, I feel, is the crux of all the accusations against Carter, and I agree, it’s the most damning. I can offer no real explanation for what happened, or what was going through Carter’s mind at the moment.

I can only say that, given how flimsy all other charges against him seem, taking into account Lt. Ripley’s craziness, the breakdown of the chain of command (with the chaos that it implies), and the level headed if not outright heroic behavior of Carter up to that point, it’s unfair to immediately jump to the most terrifying accusations: that of a species traitor in our midst.

12

“I say we grease this ratfuck sonofabitch right now.”

13

Ahh, but do you believe in his innocence now?

note: I was watching the movie yet again last week, and suddenly I thought “you know, Burke is not quite a douche for most of the movie”. And then of course I notice the canister (or tube, or whatever) was moving…

14

ripley most definitely did not wake up due to noise. check the records yourself. i had the volume turned up.

you keep calling ripley crazy. i’m not quite sure you know what that word means. the reason people think she’s nuts is because of her story about an alien that grabs onto your face and then lays an egg to hatch an alien that comes out your chest. given the events shown in both movies, perhaps you’d care to revise your statement?

However, what we know for a fact is that there was no such tampering conducted on Bishop, the android complement to the Sulaco’s crew.

If the company knows what they will find, if they have ample time to prepare, and if they were truly heartless bastards, they would have rigged Bishop just as they did ASH. They did NOT. And as the android Bishop remarks, the older A2 models where “notoriously twitchy”.

only because the new droids are first law safe. the third law is yet to be verified and the second law is iffy since bishop told ripley that burke wanted the specimens kept when she asked for him to destroy the specimens. instead of saying, screw you and destroyin gthe specimens he just kept quiet, only saying something when ripley did some due diligence on the crazy dangerous facehugger issue.

How very rich of Lt. Ripley to talk about “which species is best” when she and the gun-ho brigade are preparing to lynch a man.

actually, people who saw the movie know ripley tried to stop said greasing of said ratfuck by hicks. btw, since the aliens are animals, how did the power go out? it was through the power loss that burke was able to avoid being greased. i think burke may have arranged something ahead of time.

Not THESE insects man. What we know of the creatures is, they will go straight for your face. And then they will hug it. They just scurry around merrily until they see someone’s mug and then jump straight at it.

um, they were in medlab for quite a while making a huge racket and didn’t get attacked for several minutes.

Yes, he did. Under duress mind you. But even if you take such a “confession” as true, think about what it entails “I contacted the colonists” does not translate to “I contacted Rebecca’s parents”. Carter is a company man and what he did was contact the colonial authority at Hadley’s hope.

and failed to warn them about any possible biohazards that may arise from something valuable to the bioweapons division. they didn’t even have a surgical mask on. they brought their kids.

15

I would need to see Carter J. Burke’s long form birth certifcate to be sure of his innocence.

16

So you checked the records yourself? good, due diligence is nice before condemning a man’s name for all eternity. Sadly the Hadley’s Hope crew didn’t care for that.

Yes actually, I take back crazy and go back to in a state of deep emotional disarray and heavily perturbed, borderline nutso. In any case, whatever word we use, the fact is she is hardly of a mind to make the right decisions, as proven by the needles provocation of the alien queen.

Ah, then you are asserting that the 3 laws are, in effect, inviolable in the android Bishop’s case. We have no reason to believe that other than what he says (and might be programmed to say so) just as we have no reason to believe the same wasn’t true of the Ash android. What we do know for a fact is, he wasn’t tampered with, in any way, shape or form

Yes, Ripley was going to stop a maddened, angry, heavily armed mob after she did the riling? could be she has a change of heart at the very moment I grant you, but she is nevertheless the one that instigates the summary trial and attempted execution. My point stands.

How do you know? from all the accounts we have, what we know of the crazy dangerously facehuggers is, well, that they are crazy dangerous because they don’t take a time to consider their options, they just straight jump at you and hug your face. To me, this proves they had escaped just seconds before Lt. Ripley awakened.

Fail to warn them? again, this is speculation. He contacted them, that we know for sure. Could it be they broke their own security measures after 20 years of nothing happening, in their hurry to strike big?

Look at said ratfuck’s face. Can you not see the innocence?

Now you are going all Hudson on it. We don’t know they are just animals, we don’t know what kind of intelligence they posses. A hive mind? fierce individual cognition? sheer bovine stupidity? we do not know, one of the many reasons NOT to nuke Hadley’s hope from orbit.

And honestly, your bias against Carter shows “I think burke may have arranged something ahead of time”. Jesus. The man was caring for Lt. Gorman, or moving stuff around with the Jorden girl.

On a related note, I wish we had another one of these, but more Alien than Aliens, or any of the next films. It’s been 30+ years since the original, and it holds up SO WELL. Wonder if it would work for today’s audience. I

17

Unfortunately, unable to find said documents in the records.

18

Yes, Ripley was going to stop a maddened, angry, heavily armed mob after she did the riling? could be she has a change of heart at the very moment I grant you, but she is nevertheless the one that instigates the summary trial and attempted execution. My point stands.

change of heart? her immediate reaction was to stop the execution. this is not the act of a disturbed person in disarray but a sane, very moral person.

so yes, you do want to change your bullshit story! remember, burke was planning to get through icc quarantine somehow. he said they wouldn’t know. please take what he says he was planning to do and then ripley’s deduction and find the discrepancy or an alternate theory. was he planning to superglue them to the hull? was he supposed to do hypnosis to make everyone else forget? there is no other theory.

Ah, then you are asserting that the 3 laws are, in effect, inviolable in the android Bishop’s case. We have no reason to believe that other than what he says (and might be programmed to say so) just as we have no reason to believe the same wasn’t true of the Ash android. What we do know for a fact is, he wasn’t tampered with, in any way, shape or form.

your theory was “bishop wasn’t tampered with, thus, ripley was wrong, and the corporation is aok.” glad we agree that particular piece of evidence had more gaping holes than that live chick they found after the chestburster finished up.

his actions show them to be quite inviolate: bishop was quite willing to risk/volunteer his artificial neck to crawl through a pipe and stay out in the open remote piloting the ship with those things running around. then he stayed near the platform even with the danger involved to pick up ripley. then he let let go of the grating floor with one of his hands to grab newt. probably federal legislation forced upon the corporation.

HE WAS MOVING STUFF AROUND. NO MAN WITH THE WEIGHTY BURDEN OF A GUILTY CONSCIENCE COULD POSSIBLY HAVE THE STRENGTH, NAY, REDOUBTABLE COURAGE TO MOVE SOME STUFF AROUND.

but seriously, a “ps. some lady said there was some fucked up shit out there” would have saved hundreds.

19

I think russellmz is talking about the earlier scene, when they first discover the facehuggers in the canisters - the “love at first sight” scene.

Regardless of Burke’s innocence/guilt, I always wondered why, if Ripley was so worried about those things, she decided to take a nap with Newt in the same room with them, lying on the floor.

20

Carter Burke is John Galt.