Recovering drug addicts, ex-cons, hypertense transsexuals, borderline psychotics...all rated to fly expensive spaceships. And that's not even counting the murderous robot.

I'm now on, finally, to the last of the discs in the Alien Anthology Blu-ray set, which is largely composed of archival material greatly extended from the previous Quadrilogy edition. Included in the extras for James Cameron's Aliens are the crew-profile video displays briefly glimpsed behind Sigourney Weaver in her corporate roasting at the start of the movie. The prop-footage, with its characteristic DOS-style green text, would probably not have been legible on the DVD edition even if it had been included (it's barely readable on the Blu-ray), but its full inclusion in the Anthology set gives an astonishing insight into just how messed-up the crew of the Nostromo were. And, what their first names were (with one, perhaps predictable exception)...

But first, some of the more unpredictable back-story elements. Lambert (Veronica Cartwright) was conceived male and had her sex changed in utero by his/her parents. Her profile reads:

Subject is Despin Convert at birth [male to female]. So far no indication of suppressed traumas related to gender alteration...subject's social counts are too low for large crew...and has been routinely assigned small crew cryosleep mode duties which have been performed adequately. Slight hyperactivity and nervousness diagnosed and Loxy-Clav M (oral ingestion) has been successful...moderate intelligence and performance abilities did not substantially increase after security patrol navigation duties and subject was re-assigned long range cryosleep duties on cargo transports and tugs.

So, basically Lambert is most efficient whilst asleep, started out as a man, pops pills for nervousness and flunked an ill-assigned security detail. Lucky Weyland-Yutani weren't downsizing on her watch.

What about that bastion of English stalwartness, second officer Kane, played by John Hurt...? Apparently Kane flunked out of medical school due to a drug problem that he was unable to ever entirely escape...

Under pressure at medical school, subject abused medication (Dylop-Chromium 47) and caused an embolism with [sic] hospitalised subject for 107 days. After psych. reorientation at Mann Hadley's medical clinic, subject responded to career therapy and chose to study for a commercial pilot's licence. After achieving it, subject became an executive officer on a British Hospital ship, but again succumbed to drug abuse and was removed from position for re-evaluation. After diagnosing subject as a Hunter-Selman personality variation of type A, Dylop-Chromium 47 treatment was concluded and was replaced with Carothene Matrix A concentrates. Subject may self-medicate with commercially-made alcohol. Tendencies to alcoholism countered with daily consumption of Selway Digression molecule blenders (SMDBs). This treatment proved successful and subject was rated operational for duty again. After gruelling duty as captain of a medical tug, subject asked for transfer away from medicine-related jobs and went into merchant transport assignments.

You've got to hand it to Weyland-Yutani - they don't give up on an employee easily. Kane is a medical school drop-out taking medication against drug-addiction, and an alcoholic as well. Given his inability to keep his hands off the drugs, why was he twice assigned to medical ships that were stuffed full of pharmaceutical stock, before himself suggesting to the company that this might not be a good idea?

Headstrong chief engineer Parker (played by Yaphet Kotto), was set for a course of meds and a psych evaluation due to poor performance, whilst his grease-monkey buddy Brett (Harry Dean Stanton) came from an unlikely background:

Subject exhibited passive response to violent childhood memories when given the Steiner/Korngold GMF Analysis, which indicates reversal and sublimation of hostility...SPECIAL NOTE: Subject was remanded to company employment from U.S. Federal Rehabilitation Program for Displaced Youth...subject committed a level 8 felony when 17.

Is this a noble community spirit from cuddly old Weyland-Yutani, or did they just like the idea of siphoning cut-price labour from the parole system?

On to noble Captain Dallas, played by Tom Skerritt in Alien...

...preliminary assessment of psych profile indicates subjects [SIC] hostility to authority had been sublimated in such a way as to cause a mild psychosis related to performing executive officer duties...it was determined that a retesting and orientation treatment was due. However, continuity in employment was disrupted.

One would think that a shipping company would hesitate to put someone who hates authority in charge of any ship that they owned, never mind one that (they may have known) was to be sent off-mission into the bowels of Acheron and the grip of terrible danger. The words 'psychosis' and 'captain' are such a tough fit.

There's nothing much in the file for Ash (Ian Holm), not even his first name, and all relevant information is referred to a classified file that requires level 1 security access.

We also get little insight into Ripley herself, except that the date of her daughter's birth doesn't tally with either Alien Legacy or any movie except (ironically) Aliens.

Harry Dean Stanton notes in both the Quadrilogy and Anthology documentaries by Charles De Lauzrika that Ridley Scott had handed him a sheaf of notes detailing the background of Parker's character, in effect an entire backstory. It's not clear who wrote these newly-revealed character presés for Aliens, though I imagine it was likely to have been knocked off by Jim Cameron, with his intense attention to detail. Whether or not Ridley Scott had written similar backstories to Parker for all the characters in Alien, and whether these formed any part of the basis for these Aliens video-matics, isn't clear either.

But the videomatics do reveal the first names of all the characters except Ash:

DALLAS, Arthur Coblenz
KANE, Gilbert Ward
RIPLEY, Ellen Louise
ASH
LAMBERT, Joan Marie
PARKER, Dennis Monroe
BRETT, Samuel Elias

Valequen notes, in one of the best and most under-regarded Alien-centred blogs on the net, that not all of these names conform to the Alien Legacy's attribution of initials (for instance, Parker's Legacy initials of 'J.T.' don't fit with 'Dennis Monroe'. He also observes that some post-facto processing has taken place, insofar, for instance, as the fact that Weylan-Yutani (just a logo on a company beer-can in Ridley Scott's 1979 outing) has now become the more familiar Weyland Yutani, and also that the birthdate for Ripley's daughter is about ten years out (as mentioned above).

Little homages to the creators of the original film are speckled throughout the video footage, such as Captain Dallas's previous assignment with Warrant Officer Shusett (i.e. Alien co-creator Ron Shusett), and his attendance at the 'O'Bannon preliminary school' and the 'Rambaldi High School' (Dan O'Bannon wrote Alien, while Italian prosthetics wiz Carlo Rambaldi created the original xenomorph mechanical head).

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