Corporal Cynthia Dietrich was a United States Colonial Marine corpsman on the USS Sulaco in Aliens, service number A41/TQ8.0.81120E2. She dropped on LV-426 with Apone's squad, checked Newt after the colony sweep, and was the first Marine taken when a Warrior peeled off the wall beside her. In the scramble she fired her M240, lit Frost and the confiscated magazines, and was dragged up into the hive as a host. Aliens: Bug Hunt put her on leave with Frost at Sullivan 9 and on the toxic moon Clytemnestra with the same later Sulaco people.
Earlier Bug Hunts
In Matt Forbeck's Exterminators, from the Aliens: Bug Hunt anthology, Dietrich and Frost were on leave at Sullivan 9, a remote Weyland-Yutani refueling station, after six months on a slow transport from the outer rim. They slipped the rest of the platoon and bribed an attendant for the illegal off-site saloon Last Chance. Their weapons were still on the ship. Four locals were already trapped inside. A hard, six-legged creature was glued to Park's chest with acid, not his face.
Park convulsed and a living swarm came out of his torso. Bright gaslight held the bugs until they chewed the gas line. Frost poured unlabeled liquor in a ring and lit it. Bugs on bartender Berto drove him into the burning bar, and Tim and Jesse ran into the dark with the flashlight and died there. Frost then lit a bottle and threw it at the leaking propane tank in front of the bar. Dietrich stood between him and the blast and took the worse injuries. Both woke in a hospital. Frost gave the captain and two company reps the full account, and they treated it as concussion and bad liquor. Park, Berto, Jesse, and Tim were dead. Frost thought they had killed enough. Dietrich wanted a flamethrower next time.
In Christopher Golden's Blowback the same later Sulaco people were on the toxic moon Clytemnestra, under Lieutenant Emma Paulson. Weyland-Yutani wanted glassy black fliers cleared so a science team could take an atmospheric gas. Pulse rounds detonated the fliers because their body solvent was propane, a risk the company already knew about. Stenbeck died in the first blast. Zeller was cut open, poisoned by the air, then burned when Dietrich shot the flier still on him. Vasquez hauled her to her feet and shoved her into the retreat. The book forgot she was a Medic and wrote her as a rifleman. She became a medic after those jobs, not during them, and by the Sulaco wake-up she already knew Frost's habits and the squad's working rhythm.
Drop On LV-426
The Sulaco unit dropped to check the lost colony at Hadley's Hope. Dietrich went in with the rifle team in M3 armor and an M10 helmet, TNR lamp on the shoulder, and stayed close to Apone through the empty rooms. Gorman held the radio from the APC. The colony was empty at first glance: barricades, spent casings, and motion tracker readings that led under the atmosphere processor instead of living colonists.
Checking On Newt
After that sweep, Dietrich sat Newt down in Operations and opened the corpsman pouch. The handheld monitor showed a live waveform. The girl was thin and worn, but the reading was malnutrition, not a wound and not a Facehugger. Hicks and Ripley stood over the table while Dietrich ran that check. She found no lasting damage. That was the last medical work she finished before the processor.
Hive Ambush
They drove the APC to the plant, and near the reactor Gorman ordered the guns cold. Apone had the magazines and grenades pulled, and he gave that bag to Frost. Dietrich kept her incinerator. Inside the dark hive she raised a handheld infrared eyepiece and still could not find the movement the trackers were picking up. The processor floor opened into resin and cocooned colonists. The coating was a secreted resin, and Dietrich moved to a living woman still stuck in the wall. The colonist begged to die. Dietrich started treatment anyway and tried to keep her calm. A Chestburster tore out of the woman's chest. Apone grabbed an incinerator and burned it, the only clear Xenomorph kill among the ground team before the ambush. Seconds later the trackers filled with movement the Marines could not see, and infrared gave her nothing. A Warrior was already on the wall beside her.
Death
The Warrior took her from behind and hauled her up into the dark. Her incinerator fired in the scramble, lit Frost and the magazine bag, and the cook-off killed Private Tim Crowe and wounded Private Trevor Wierzbowski. Survivors later confirmed she had not been killed outright. The hive took her alive as a host. She died there when a Chestburster came out, or when the atmosphere processor detonated. Aliens: Colonial Marines later walked the ruins and found Hudson's cocooned body. It did not give Dietrich a body the way it did him.
Dietrich In The Comics
Dark Horse published Aliens: Newt's Tale as a two-issue miniseries in 1992, written by Mike Richardson and painted by John Bolton. It retold the fall of Hadley's Hope from Newt's side of the vents, including the first hours after the Marines found her. Bolton painted Dietrich with short orange hair and a blue chest plate, standing with Gorman at the Operations desk. Gorman asked for the girl's name. Dietrich read Rebecca off a small card, then the lieutenant pressed Newt about her parents. The comic kept her in that corpsman role and did not give her a later exit from the hive.
Weapons And Equipment
Dietrich went into the processor with an M240 incinerator, the flame unit she had wanted after Sullivan 9. She also wore a Heckler & Koch VP70 in the holster. The corpsman pouch stayed with her through the colony rooms and onto the Operations table for Newt's exam, packed with a handheld vitals monitor and lead cables. The M3 chest plate carried a red no symbol. The M10 helmet had a nurse's caduceus on the front and the words BLUE ANGEL across the back, plus a TNR lamp on the shoulder. The rear of her trousers read KISS MY with painted red lips. In the hive she used a handheld infrared eyepiece when the trackers found movement the lamps could not.
Behind The Scenes
Cynthia Dale Scott self-submitted from a London breakdown chain and first read for Vasquez. The callback sides called for a heavily muscled competitive bodybuilder, so she lifted, then rode her bike through midday traffic to the reading for James Cameron and Gale Anne Hurd. Cameron first cast her as Ferro, then switched her to Dietrich as the medical tech officer because the part had more shooting weeks. The condition was unpaid training five days a week at Pinewood with Mark Rolston, who later played Drake. Scott lived in a squat in Clapham, took the tube to Acton, and rode out with Rolston. The trainer was John Lees, the Yorkshire stuntman inside the power loader. They also took bodybuilder supplements. It was her first film, same as Jenette Goldstein.
The marine cast trained on live pistols, pulse rifles, and flamethrowers with former SAS stuntman Tip Tipping and Al Matthews. Point a weapon at someone's face and the rule was ten push-ups. Scott kept her muzzle down because she could not do one. Full-time firemen stood by when she used the incinerator, and a set fire that day was not hers. She scraped her knee in the rain at the colony lock and fell more than once during the hive grab. Cameron let the marine actors mark their own kit, which is how the caduceus, the BLUE ANGEL helmet text, and the lips on her trousers landed on the costume. She took Blue Angel from the 1930 Josef von Sternberg film with Marlene Dietrich, a nod to the character name.
Cameron's September 1983 Aliens II treatment kept her alive through the hive and the later stand in Operations. In that draft the APC was still intact after the dropship crash. Dietrich reached it first, opened the side door, and a Xenomorph inside pulled her in. Hicks and Vasquez killed the creature, and the carrier blew in the crossfire. The finished film made her the first Marine lost in the hive instead.
Merchandise
NECA never shipped a movie-likeness Dietrich the way it did Hudson, Hicks, Frost, and Vasquez. Kenner's 1990s Aliens Series and Space Marines line also skipped her. The figure that did reach shelves is a Diamond Select 2-inch Minimates from Aliens Series 1, designed by Art Asylum and released in March 2015 as a two-pack with infected colonist Mary, item DEC142213. The blister card packed a pulse rifle, a removable helmet, and an alternate brown hair piece, with DIETRICH printed on the chest plate and 14 points of articulation. Gale Force Nine later put her in the 15-figure Heroes of Hadley's Hope set for Aliens: Another Glorious Day in the Corps, item GF9ALIENS16, as a 30 mm hard-plastic miniature in armor with an M240.
Famous Quotes
- "Not enough to have to wake up to your face, Drake."
- "Physically she's okay. Borderline malnutrition, but I don't think any permanent damage."
- "Looks like some sort of secreted resin."
- "Top, get over here. We got a live one!"
- "Maybe they don't show up on infrared at all..."
Conclusion
Cynthia Dietrich was the Sulaco corpsman who checked Newt, then went into the hive with Apone and an incinerator. A Warrior took her off the wall before she could see it, and her last shot lit Frost and the dead magazines. Bug Hunt put her on Sullivan 9 with Frost and on Clytemnestra with Apone's people. She never made it back to the APC.
Appearances
- Aliens (1986)
- Aliens novelization by Alan Dean Foster (1986)
- Aliens Colonial Marines Technical Manual by Lee Brimmicombe-Wood (1995)
- Aliens: Bug Hunt - Exterminators (2017)
- Aliens: Bug Hunt - Blowback (2017)
- Aliens: Newt's Tale (1992)
Tag Categories: Alien Universe Characters | Colonial Marine Characters | Colonial Marine Lore | Alien Lore
