Nostromo's self destruct system in Alien

Dumbest self-destruct system ever designed (besides "Push this to immediately destroy ship")?

Oh come on, it's a CLASSIC! I loved those posts that pop up, you turn them, push them in... all very tactile and exactly the sort of thing you want to be doing when there's a life threatening emergency going on. Particularly the ABORT sequence with the slow motion movements.

Well whatever you may think of the system, the ship sure destructed the hell out of itself. So it's got that going for it.

I love that scene.

ETA: my L3 rocket has a Weyland-Yutani Building Better Worlds logo on it.

Sad part of that scene is the ship got wasted for no reason other than to cremate the crew's bodies.

Marc_G said:

Oh come on, it's a CLASSIC! I loved those posts that pop up, you turn them, push them in... all very tactile and exactly the sort of thing you want to be doing when there's a life threatening emergency going on. Particularly the ABORT sequence with the slow motion movements.

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Well, you definitely want to make it difficult to enable to avoid accidents, but how about just a tamper-sealed locked door over a keypad. Two person authentication ala Star Trek? And, definitely, an "OK, we've all just evacuated, now start a short countdown" capability. And what the heck is with the strobes and steam in all hallways? Yeah, I know, the movie's system makes it MUCH more exciting, but I can't help thinking how stupid it is.

The system on the Nostromo shuts down the nuclear engine cooling system. In 10 minutes they overheat and go KERBLAMMO!

That's what all the steam was about. The ship was overheating. And that's why when Ripley tries to cancel it (by re-activating the system) it's too late, even though she misses it by a few seconds. The reaction is already running away. When she realizes the cancellation didn't work she desperately yells at the ship that she turned the cooling system back on. Then she runs back to the escape pod.

So she's not just pushing a button. She's shutting down a system vital to the ship. And she didn't just waste the ship to cremate the crew's bodies, she destroyed the entire ore refinery and all the ore the ship was towing. That's why at the beginning of Aliens the company (Weyland Yutani) is so annoyed with her. She nuked a large amount of capital PLUS killed the alien organism they wanted to study and use as a bio weapon.

Maybe we should have posted a SPOILER ALERT in case anyone who hasn't seen the movie in 40 years wanted to see it.

Winston said:

but I can't help thinking how stupid it is.

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Like when the Storm troopers are chasing Leia and Luke through the forest of Endor on their sky cycles, dodging and weaving between the trees? And nobody thinks about flying ABOVE the trees? That's why it's called Hollywood!

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kuririn said:

Like when the Storm troopers are chasing Leia and Luke through the forest of Endor on their sky cycles, dodging and weaving between the trees? And nobody thinks about flying ABOVE the trees? That's why it's called Hollywood!

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Now, now now.. Those speeder bikes, like the training brooms in the Harry Potter universe, have only a limited amount of altitude capability, so they cannot fly above the trees (and there seems to be a few SW vehicles that rely on 'the ground effect' to get them airborne, but not enough to gain any altitude..)

If we start applying too much logic to Aliens, we’re gonna have problems...

dr wogz said:

Now, now now.. Those speeder bikes, like the training brooms in the Harry Potter universe, have only a limited amount of altitude capability, so they cannot fly above the trees (and there seems to be a few SW vehicles that rely on 'the ground effect' to get them airborne, but not enough to gain any altitude..)

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Plus cover and concealment are beneficial.

Exactimator said:

I love that scene.

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I can tell

If anyone hasn't read this, enjoy: https://typesetinthefuture.com/2014/12/01/alien/

It's Hollywood, there's an awful lot of blatant silliness on celluloid. Alien still ranks up there as far as sci-fi goes.

kuririn said:

Like when the Storm troopers are chasing Leia and Luke through the forest of Endor on their sky cycles, dodging and weaving between the trees? And nobody thinks about flying ABOVE the trees? That's why it's called Hollywood!

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Yeah, but those films are so far beyond presenting anything pretending to be realistic, anything will work for me. Alien tries to be somewhat realistic, of course not nearly as anal about that as 2001: A Space Odyssey which was intended to be as accurate as possible. The destruct sequence in Alien was a Lost in Space TV series level of credible, just with a vastly larger budget. It was done for the excitement, which works, but I still think its silly. It's like the designers of it wanted to freak the holy poop out of evacuees while hampering their journey to the exit as much as possible.