A topic I've focused on for other blog posts has been the comparisons of different androids in other films, like the Replicants in Blade Runner, actual robots in Wall-E, and alien races in Star Trek. The presence of non-human life forces in science fiction films is crucial, because it is hard to imagine a future that isn't primarily influenced by technology. There were two foreign beings in Alien, obviously the Alien and then Ash, the supposed human and then android. I guess because this is another Ridley Scott movie, he technically qualifies as a Replicant, but I digress. I think it was interesting that these two were included in the same film, because the reactions to them are quite different.
As we have seen before, humans do not react well to actual aliens. When represented in scifi films, aliens are not human like at all, and most often have far superior physical abilities. The alien in Alien was referred to as the "perfect organism", and it was treated as a huge threat by the crew, rightly so. It systematically hunted the crew in a very successful manner, and although Ripley seemed to dispose of it, the fact that there are sequels proves it wrong.
Ash is first introduced as a human, albeit an odd one. It is in his lack of reaction to the alien onboard that Ripley realizes something is wrong, and his attempts to murder her prove that he is not in fact human. While I don't really understand the whole rolled up newspaper attack, he clearly had no respect for human life and was far stronger than the crew members that came to her aid. Ash as a replicant did not outwardly harm the crew, but it was clear that he would if deemed necessary.
While Star Trek also introduced both aliens and androids side by side, it was to a very different effect than Alien. Neither the alien or Ash in Alien were peaceful, and therefore their roles in the film were very distinct. I believe the reason Alien was so successful in establishing itself as one of the corner stones of the science fiction genre is because it introduced both alien life force and mechanical humanity as equal threats. Both of these ideas seem to be equally terrifying to humanity: the idea that something we create in our likeness will somehow become more advanced than ourselves, and the idea that other beings exist than are inherently superior to humans.
I would have never even thought to compare Alien to Star Trek. They are such completely different movies, with entirely different plot lines that the two together seem worlds apart. The creature in Alien is clearly nothing like the creatures we are shown in Star Trek. Our imagination of the future in space is so varied. In some films we are thriving and making peace with other species and planets, in other films aliens are viscous animal like monsters that hunt and kill us. I feel like the androids in the two films were more comparable than the aliens. Both look, act, and talk almost exactly humans and like men and women today, there are some with morals and some without.
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