The Betty was a battered smuggling ship, and in Alien: Resurrection her crew sold kidnapped sleepers to the USM Auriga. The captain sold that cargo to General Perez with a crew of six: Elgyn himself, his pilot Hillard, Christie, Johner, Vriess, and the new mechanic Call. Soldier Distephano and the infected sleeper Larry Purvis joined the escape but never served aboard, and the Newborn killed Distephano on the Betty. Aliens: Original Sin later put the survivors under Ripley 8 and added new hands, from a pilot and an engineer to a silent armorer, a stowaway reporter, and a young botanist.
The Original Crew
Frank Elgyn
Frank Elgyn captained the Betty and was played by Michael Wincott. He was a reedy, angular man in his mid-forties whose dark eyes and prominent nose gave him a predatory look. Before the smuggling runs he had fought as a mercenary beside Hillard, Christie, Johner, and Vriess, and that old core of the crew trusted him more than any newcomer. On the swampy world of Kawlang, shrapnel lodged in Vriess's spine and Vriess begged to be left behind, but Elgyn snarled at him to shut up and had him carried out. He dealt only in cash and kept very few rules aboard, though the pilot always picked the music.
On the Auriga, Elgyn sold the cryotubes to Perez for stacks of bills. When Dr. Mason Wren accused the crew of smuggling a terrorist, Elgyn spoke Christie's name, and Christie opened fire in the mess hall. After the cloned Xenomorphs broke loose, Elgyn led his people toward the ship with Christie on point. A warrior pulled him down through a floor grate and gutted him, and he was the first of the crew to die. Hillard covered his face. Years later Vriess still remembered him as one of the good people the creatures had snuffed out, and Ripley 8 used the mirror he had left aboard.
Sabra Hillard
Sabra Hillard flew the Betty and was played by Kim Flowers. She was a tall, strong-bodied woman with cropped hair and rough, expert hands, and she was Elgyn's lover. She had flown with Elgyn, Christie, Johner, and Vriess longer than anyone else aboard, and on Kawlang she was the one who tied the wounded Vriess onto Christie's back. On the approach to the Auriga she played a video space battle game while she brought the ship in, called the station's computer Pops, and joked that she never paid taxes. Big stations made her uneasy, because docking felt like being swallowed alive.
When the Xenomorphs got loose, Hillard ran up the corridor to Elgyn's body and covered his face. She mourned in silence for a while and seemed to blame Call and Ripley 8 for his death. Then she rallied, and when Johner wanted to leave Vriess behind, she ruled that nobody would be left, not even Johner. The route to the Betty ran through the flooded galley, and Hillard and Johner were the last to go under. She fell behind, swallowed water, and a swimming Xenomorph caught her ankle and dragged her down. Later, on the Betty, Call and Vriess both wished she were still at the controls.
Gary Christie
Gary Christie was Elgyn's right-hand man, played by Gary Dourdan. He was a massive, handsome man with mahogany skin and a mane of dreadlocks who made any room look small. He wore a mechanical armature of his own design on his forearms, so pistols could slide into his hands where few people thought to look. On Kawlang he packed the paralyzed Vriess out through the swamp on his back, telling his friend over and over not to die. Aboard the Betty he treated the newcomer Call with a gentle, brotherly concern and told her that Elgyn paid them not to think about the cargo.
In the mess hall standoff, Christie flexed his forearms and shot down the soldiers around him, then killed the last one with a ricochet off the ceiling. After Elgyn died he took charge of the survivors, and in the flooded galley he carried Vriess on his back again in what he called the Kawlang maneuver. On the ladder shaft above the water, a Xenomorph spat acid into his eye and grabbed his leg. Christie remembered Kawlang, cut the rope that tied him to Vriess, and fell with the creature so his partner could live. Vriess clung to the rungs and climbed on, determined not to dishonor his friend.
Ron Johner
Ron Johner was the crew's scarred gunman, played by Ron Perlman. He was a tall, thickset man with narrow, ice-blue eyes, and Call did not even know his first name. His scar came from an ambush on Kawlang, just as the crew was getting the wounded Vriess clear, and he blamed Vriess for ruining his looks. He drank his own home brew from a metal thermos that hid a revolver, dropped a knife into Vriess's dead leg for fun, and called Earth a dump. In truth he had never seen Earth and knew it only from old vids and the stories of cargo haulers.
In Original Sin, Johner landed on a New Zealand beach with the other survivors and laughed with Vriess, the old feud gone. Later, on Byzantium Station, he picked a brawl with a huge hauler on purpose so Call could slip into the station's data center. He fought the aliens in the garden colony, and when one got into the cargo bay he ran for the rifle cache beside Krakke. After the colony burned, he poured his home brew for a toast to Rama. He also told Call he would help her free surviving androids whenever she was ready, and Call promised that he would be the first to know.
Dom Vriess
Dom Vriess was the Betty's chief mechanic, played by Dominique Pinon, and some records named him John. He had fought as a mercenary with Elgyn and the others until shrapnel on Kawlang left him paralyzed from the waist down. After that he got around in a motorized wheelchair he had built himself, with a dolly setting for work under machinery and hidden compartments for guns and spare parts. Call liked working with him because he was hardworking, inventive, and cheerful. On the Auriga he survived a Xenomorph alone in the stores, lost Christie on the ladder, and flew the Betty down to Earth.
In Original Sin, Vriess stayed with Ripley 8's crew and kept the Betty running. On Byzantium he hid remote cameras in the station walls as he rolled past, and dropped two of the hauler's friends with a palm-shocker during Johner's brawl. He became the lover of the new pilot, Bolero, and Johner mocked him for staying aboard while the others went into the colony. Vriess cut the opening in the dome that later vented it into space. When the botanist Cody attacked Bolero in the cockpit, Vriess put two shells into his back and found that Cody was an android.
Annalee Call
Annalee Call was the Betty's newest mechanic, played by Winona Ryder. She was secretly an Auton, a second-generation android built by other machines, and one of the few that escaped the government recall. Before the recall she hacked the Defense mainframe and found the plans for the Auriga clones, General Perez's role, and the deal to hire the Betty. She took the berth Elgyn offered as cover so she could kill Ripley 8 before the Queen came out. Christie noticed that she was new and worried about the cargo, and Elgyn told Perez she was only playing at being a pirate.
In Original Sin, Call stayed with Ripley 8 and gave the shadowy organization behind the Xenomorph deals its name, Loki. On Byzantium she plugged into the station through the jack hidden under her mole, cracked the codes for Immigration, and came away from a data center with everything they needed. At the garden colony she helped fight off the aliens and joined the fight in the cargo bay. After the battle the dying android Cody claimed that many androids had survived the purge. Call told Johner she did not believe it, then quietly turned her mind to freeing enslaved androids anyway.
In Aliens versus Predator versus The Terminator, a Dark Horse comic from 2000, Call tracked Ripley 8 to a sewer community and threatened to give the military her location unless she helped. Call's crew reached the science station Typhoon on the freighter Carthage, disguised as a food delivery service. She opened the skull of the Crypto-Terminator Trollenberg and found a hidden recording of John Connor warning about Skynet. She then flew the Carthage to the Black Asteroid, Los Alamos 235. When Ripley refused to leave, Voorman dragged Call back to the ship, and she watched the final explosion and set course for home.
Extended Crew
Ripley 8
Ripley 8 was the eighth clone of Ellen Ripley, grown on the Auriga from blood samples recovered after Fury 161. Military scientists cut the Queen embryo out of her chest and kept her alive as a specimen. She woke with fragments of Ripley's memories, acid blood, and strength and reflexes no human had. She beat Johner and Christie in the Auriga gym, then fell in with the Betty crew when the outbreak began. She was never on Elgyn's payroll, but she reached the Betty, killed the Newborn through a viewport, and landed on Earth with Call, Johner, and Vriess.
In Original Sin, Ripley 8 commanded the Betty, and her pilot called her Captain. She led a hidden war against Loki, which had traded with the pilot's species for centuries and steered Weyland-Yutani to Acheron. On Byzantium she fought her way through the station guards in Immigration. At Domes Epsilon, a garden colony where Loki's partners, the Mala'kak, had planted an alien egg, she hunted the creatures through the jungle domes and rescued Angie. She then pressed the detonator Krakke had rigged and burned the colony with the last aliens inside. Afterwards she let Angie join the crew, knowing Loki would come after the Betty with something bigger.
In Aliens versus Predator versus The Terminator, Ripley 8 had pulled away from people because her Alien side had grown harder to ignore. Hunters took her from the Carthage, drilled into her neck, and used her genetic memory to find the Xenomorphs stored at Los Alamos 235. They blooded her with an Alien tooth on a cord and gave her a bladed weapon. Inside the asteroid she opened the containment hall so Xenomorph acid could melt the hybrid army. She then boarded the original prototype's escape craft, cut her own arm, and burned through a viewport with her acid blood. The craft exploded with both of them aboard, and Ripley 8 died.
Bolero
Bolero was the pilot of the Betty under Ripley 8 in Original Sin. She had slender, dark fingers that she cracked before the Byzantium escape, though her mother had warned her it would give her big, ugly knuckles. Her mother had also said that she would never be happy roaming the space routes in a cargo hauler. She shipped out at eighteen anyway. The day she hooked up with Ripley, she stopped simply dragging cargo and took on a cause she believed she could hang a lifetime on. She was the only real pilot aboard, and she liked to call the crew boys and girls over the shipwide link.
On Byzantium, Bolero sweet-talked the chief traffic officer, Corcoran, and watched the brawl through Vriess's hidden cameras. When the station tried to shut the bay, she flew the Betty out through the closing gates. She became Vriess's lover, and she backed the ship off the colony dome before a Xenomorph could grab the hull. When the botanist Cody seized her controls, she kicked him and jumped on his back until Vriess shot him. After the colony burned she drank to Rama with Johner, Vriess, and Call, and she stayed on as the Betty's pilot.
Rama
Rama was the Betty's engineer under Ripley 8 in Original Sin. He had a deep, cultured voice and a precise way of speaking, and he was no risk-taker by nature. He prided himself on his attention to detail, and that meticulousness was what convinced Ripley to put him on her team. He signed on because it nettled him to know there were uncertainties he had never been aware of, and he itched to eliminate them. He played poker with Call, Johner, and Vriess, complained that Vriess took too long over his cards, and found Simoni a pain.
When Loki boarders hit the Betty, Rama moved through the engine room and injected each unconscious intruder with a quick-acting sedative, because he did not like leaving loose ends. At Domes Epsilon, the stowaway Simoni climbed down the docking chain into the colony to chase a story, and Rama went down after him. A creature shot out of a treetop, latched onto his leg, and dragged him off the chain and through the canopy. Ripley added him to the list of people she felt she had failed. Johner toasted him as the most annoying know-it-all he had ever met, and Call called him one of the bravest.
Krakke
Krakke was a blond gunman and armorer on the Betty under Ripley 8 in Original Sin. He had long hair and a stubbly chin beard and almost never spoke, so Simoni wondered whether he could not talk or simply did not feel like it. He sat for hours in the dim armory, taking apart and rebuilding shock rifles with expert hands. Simoni guessed at a military past, but Krakke never said. On Byzantium his job was to race ahead of Vriess's chair and clear the corridor, and he slipped out of the mess hall with Vriess and Johner as station security arrived.
At Domes Epsilon, Ripley 8 ordered Krakke to protect Angie if the group was attacked. In the jungle he came to Ripley's aid with a burner, and together they charred an attacking alien. He reached the Betty with Angie, Call, and Johner, then rigged the remote Ripley later used to set off the explosives in the colony. When a Xenomorph got into the cargo bay, Krakke ran for the rifle cache and tossed a weapon to Ripley before the creature slammed him into a bulkhead. Angie said he had a bad concussion but would be all right, and he recovered aboard the Betty.
Simoni
Simoni was a freckled, red-haired net reporter who had pursued Ripley 8 for a long time before Original Sin began. He kept a daily audio journal on his personal computer, a habit he had started years earlier. When Ripley fought her way through Byzantium's Immigration, he slipped ahead into the docking bay and stowed away aboard the Betty. The crew caught him and nearly shoved him out of a waste tube until Ripley ordered him let go. He bunked with Rama and Krakke, and Ripley told him about Loki, though he cared mostly about the story that would make him famous.
At Domes Epsilon, Simoni climbed down into the colony against orders, and Rama died coming after him. He dreaded facing the crew afterwards and kept picturing Rama's death. In the jungle he barreled into the flank of an alien that had Ripley pinned, which gave her the opening to grab her burner and saved her life. The creature slashed him with a claw and tore him open, and Ripley found him lying beside a bush. With his last breath he insisted he was not a coward, and Ripley told him he was a hero. Ripley later counted Simoni among the casualties of the colony, and only Johner had really hated him.
Angie
Angie was a botanist at Domes Epsilon and the daughter of Philip Philipakos, who spoke for the colony. She was twenty-four and barely a meter tall, though doctors had found nothing wrong with her, and she wore specially made shoes for a few extra centimeters. When the aliens overran the domes, her father stayed with her until one of them came between them, and she later wished she had never left his side. Ripley 8 took her through the jungle to the Betty, where she later checked Krakke's head wound. Aboard the Betty, Angie asked to join the crew and blamed Loki for her father's death.
Conclusion
Elgyn's Betty left for the Auriga with six people aboard, and only Johner, Vriess, and Call came home to Earth with Ripley 8. Elgyn, Hillard, and Christie died crossing the Auriga, and their old mercenary bond went back to the Kawlang job. In Original Sin, Ripley took command and turned the ship against Loki, with Bolero, Rama, and Krakke as new crew and Simoni as an unwanted passenger. Rama and Simoni died at Domes Epsilon, Krakke survived a concussion, and Angie signed on at the end, so the ship flew on with a crew of seven.
Appearances
- Alien: Resurrection (1997)
- Alien: Resurrection novelization (A. C. Crispin, 1997)
- Aliens: Original Sin (Michael Jan Friedman, DH Press, 2005)
Tag Categories: Alien Universe Characters | Alien Lore
