Dr. Bartholomew Reese was the Weyland-Yutani science director at Hadley's Hope in Christopher Golden's novel Alien: River of Pain. He ran a team whose secret mission was to find alien life on Acheron, and when colonists brought a Facehugger back from the derelict in 2179, he enforced the company's capture-for-study orders while the colony died around him. He kept live specimens, argued that the creatures had produced a Queen, and tried to reach a hidden escape ship with Dr. Mori. He never made it: on 26 June he shot his infected assistant, then turned the gun on himself as an alien seized him. Alexander Siddig voiced him in Audible's 2017 audio drama adaptation.
Biography
Science Director At Hadley's Hope
Dr. Bartholomew Reese led the small science and medical team at Hadley's Hope, the terraforming colony on Acheron, the moon once catalogued as LV-426. The colony was a joint venture between the Earth government and Weyland-Yutani, and Reese answered to the company. His team, with senior biologist Dr. Mori and Dr. Elena Hidalgo, had a public job of collecting samples and monitoring the moon as terraforming went on. They also had a second mission that the colonists were never told about: searching Acheron for remains or signs of alien life.
For that second mission the company had hidden an evacuation ship at the colony, kept off the books of colonial administrator Al Simpson, so the scientists could leave with their samples if anything went wrong. When Brackett challenged him, the birthmark on Reese's jaw and throat darkened almost to purple and his small eyes glittered with contempt. Mori warned the more cautious Hidalgo that unless she changed her attitude before Reese arrived, he would shut her out of the real work, and her years of tolerating disagreeable colleagues on Acheron would be wasted.
The Burke Coordinates
In June 2179 Mori came to Reese's quarters grinning, with a message that might answer the Nostromo mystery. A company executive, Carter Burke, had sent the colonial administrator and both scientists grid coordinates for a site to be investigated immediately, after Ellen Ripley was recovered at Gateway Station. Reese and Mori recognized the coordinates as the old Nostromo landing site and saw the job as the specimen opportunity they had been waiting for. Hidalgo worried about sending colonists to an alien artifact unwarned, but nobody told the surveyors what might be there.
On 19 June 2179 Simpson sent wildcatters Russ and Anne Jorden to the coordinates, and they took their children Tim and Newt with them in a family crawler. Captain Demian Brackett had already ended Marine escorts for civilian surveys, so the family went alone. Inside the derelict a Facehugger sealed itself onto Russ, and Brackett's team brought the family back to the colony on 22 June. Before the parasite struck, Anne and Russ had passed fossilized crew remains in armored carapaces on the way to the egg chamber, and the family radioed the find home, prompting other wildcatters to head for the site.
The Facehugger In The Garage
Reese was waiting in the garage when the Jordens came back, and when he saw the parasite on Russ's face he smiled. The children noticed at once. Newt asked why he was smiling and whether he was happy it had happened, and when Marines tried to reassure her, Tim answered with a curse. Later Lt. Julisa Paris comforted Newt and told her that Dr. Reese was surely as worried as everyone else. Russ went to Medlab, where colony doctor Komiskey treated him first.
When Anne begged for Russ to be released, Komiskey told her there was no way Reese would allow it, since they were dealing with a newly discovered and possibly endoparasitic species. Russ died in Medlab when a Chestburster tore out of his chest while Tim and Newt watched from a vent, and the creature escaped into the ducts. At the same moment new wildcatter patients came in on stretchers with Facehuggers attached, and the colony's crisis passed into the hands of Reese's science team.
Capture For Study
Reese, Mori, and Hidalgo took over Medlab and pushed Komiskey out of her own ward. Following the company's capture-for-study standing orders, which placed any newly encountered alien species under study rather than destruction, the team collected live Facehuggers and sealed them in specimen tanks, the same specimens later found in Aliens. Captain Brackett wanted every one of the creatures killed and ordered over the comm that no other creature leave the lab alive, but Reese's team kept pulling authority back toward capture.
Reese's lab assistant Khati Fuqua joined Brackett's hunts for the escaped creature, quoting the edict that the facility was under Weyland-Yutani's operational control. As more Chestbursters emerged, Private Joplin Konig died in Medlab, and the slaughter that followed killed Sergeant Coughlin and dragged away science assistant Wes Navarro. During the hunt for the first creature, a laundry worker was pulled up into the air ducts, leaving only a bloodied shoe behind. Colonists were taken from their quarters at night, and personnel data transmitters showed that the creatures were carrying them to a nest under Atmosphere Processor One.
The Queen Theory
As the body count climbed, Reese rejected the idea that a single Queen egg had been brought back from the derelict and argued that one of the early Facehuggers had undergone a metamorphosis to produce a Queen. In his view, egg production inside the colony now explained the rising number of victims, with no need for constant trips back to the derelict. On 26 June Brackett prepared an assault on the nest with Simpson and his Marines, and Hidalgo volunteered to go with them as a medic and adviser. Mori told her that he and Reese were taking their data and samples and leaving Acheron.
Reese answered Hidalgo curtly, calling her Theresa and warning that if the Marines seemed unable to do the job, the scientists would leave with her or without her. Hidalgo told him to do what he had to do, and added that looking after themselves was what he and Mori had always done best. The nest assault failed almost immediately, and Hidalgo was fatally burned by acid blood, but before she died she told Brackett about the secret ship and that the company had treated the colony as expendable.
Death Near The Escape Ship
Reese and Mori headed for the hidden ship through a secret passage, Reese carrying a case of samples. They did not realize that Khati Fuqua, who had been impregnated, was following them. She fell on the stairs, and when she began to buck in pain, Reese realized what was happening. He snatched the gun from Mori, climbed halfway up the steps for a vantage point, and shrilly blamed Mori for not shutting the door. At first he could not make himself pull the trigger, even though he told himself it would be a mercy.
Frozen by her screams, he finally shot Khati half a dozen times in the chest, and the creature inside her went still before it could break free. A ricochet struck Mori in the left shoulder. As Reese started back down the steps, an adult alien seized him from behind by the shoulder and throat; knowing it was futile to run, he screamed and turned the gun on himself. Mori fled wounded and left Acheron with Brackett, Paris, and Luisa Cantrell on the ship Reese had meant to escape in.
Personality And Traits
Reese put scientific discovery and the company's orders above every human life on Acheron. He smiled at a Facehugger on a colonist's face in front of the man's children, refused to let Anne Jorden take her husband home, and gathered specimens at the cost of the patients in his care. He kept a hidden escape ship ready for himself and his colleagues while the colonists were left unwarned. Even when Mori begged him to leave, he insisted the company would still want a living Xenomorph, or at least one of the eggs.
Under pressure his composure broke. On the stairs to the escape ship his voice turned shrill with panic, he blamed Mori for letting Khati follow them, and he could not at first bring himself to shoot her, although he believed it would be a mercy. In the 2017 Audible audio drama, Alexander Siddig described Reese as a monster and a kind of Frankenstein in space, a man who puts science above everything and risks everyone because of it. Siddig said he had tried to find a heart in the character but was not sure there was one.
Famous Quotes
- "That's why you're here, Captain. There are two Colonial Marines out there, and you people never leave one of your own behind."
- "Not everything we wanted, though. The company will want a living Xenomorph—one of the ovomorphs at least."
- "I am in control of this situation, Dr. Mori."
Conclusion
Dr. Bartholomew Reese was the company scientist behind the specimen agenda that helped doom Hadley's Hope. He knew what the Burke coordinates might lead to, took over Medlab to keep Facehuggers alive, and spent the outbreak planning his own escape with Mori and the samples. The plan failed on the stairs to the hidden ship, where Reese shot an infected Khati Fuqua and then turned the gun on himself as an adult alien seized him. The ship he had kept for himself carried Brackett, Paris, Mori, and Luisa away from Acheron instead. Newt stayed behind in the ducts for the Marines of Aliens to find.
Appearances
- Alien: River of Pain novel by Christopher Golden (Titan Books, 2014)
- Alien: River of Pain audio drama directed by Dirk Maggs (Audible, 2017), voiced by Alexander Siddig
Tag Categories: Alien Universe Characters | Alien Universe Scientists | Alien Lore
