Joan Lambert was navigator of the USCSS Nostromo in Alien, played by Veronica Cartwright. She plotted the detour to LV-426, walked to the derelict with Dallas and Kane, and tracked Dallas in the air shafts. The adult Xenomorph killed her while she and Parker gathered coolant for the shuttle. The Alien Legacy file names her J.M. Lambert, and the Gateway inquiry filed her as Joan Marie Lambert.
Biography
Earlier Life
The hidden crew file on Fox's 1999 Alien Legacy DVD listed her as J.M. Lambert, navigator, born 7 November 2093 in Ontario, in the United Americas. She graduated Ontario University on 12 May 2112 with a master's in astro-cartography, then interned in that department at Ridton Corp in London from 1 June to 18 September 2112. On 7 October 2112 she married Xander Chapman, director of astro-cartography at Ridton. From 28 October 2112 to 5 February 2114 she was a shipping-lane trafficator for Farside Lunar Mining at Plymouth on Luna, and she divorced Chapman on 10 February 2114.
That same Legacy file put her on the Red Star Lines pleasure cruiser Infinity as assistant navigator on the Mars-Orion route from 17 February to 6 December 2114, flight status C. From 29 January 2115 to 1 August 2118 she was navigator and comm officer on the Ridton salvage vessel Leggatt under Captain Leigh. She married the Leggatt's executive officer, Lordan Hessutt, on 13 September 2118. From 11 October 2118 to 19 December 2119 she navigated the Weyland-Yutani scout Adowa under Captain Payne, flight status BC, and divorced Hessutt on 3 January 2120. On 5 January 2120 she joined the Nostromo under Captain Dallas, flight status B.
The Aliens inquiry file on Gateway did not match that career. It listed Joan Marie Lambert as navigator grade NOC-4, five foot four, one hundred seventeen pounds, brown hair and hazel eyes, born 13 September 98. The remarks called her a Despin Convert at birth, a trans change from male to female, and recorded no sign of suppressed trauma from that change. The Legacy file instead listed her sex as female, natural. The inquiry sheet sent her through Heinlein Preliminary School in Winn, Arkansas, Carrol High School in Gordon, Arkansas, and the Florida Aeronautical Institute, where she took a CBS-2 rating in faster-than-light astrogation.
Earlier work on that sheet was navigator on the security cruiser USCS Thedus for nine sub-light transits, then navigator on the USCS Cameron from Titan into Gateway in 2119. Nostromo runs on the same page went through Gateway, Eta Draconis, and Delos. The remarks scored her I.Q. at 4.6 and her personality at 4.2, judged her social counts too low for a large crew, and assigned her to small-crew cryosleep postings that she carried out adequately. They also noted slight hyperactivity, treated with self-administered Loxy-Clav M, and closed the file when the Nostromo was lost on 2/17/34. That sheet also listed Gateway transits from years before construction of the station began.
Alan Dean Foster's novelization brought the crew out of hypersleep into cold fluid, and Lambert came out of her tube wiping it off and calling herself cold. The film's first look at her is the meal after that wake, a towel over her shoulders, eating in the mess with Dallas beside the cereal canisters. The tug was on the haul home from Thedus with a refinery in tow, and she was the navigator who had to plot whatever course Mother handed them once they were up.
The Signal
Mother cut the run home and woke the seven-person crew over a garbled transmission from an unlisted system. Lambert worked the boards, brought the screens up, and read the star they had been pulled toward as outside charted space. In the film she called it out in one line: it was not their system. She treated the transmission as a warning, and Ash recited the contract clause that forced an investigation or cost the crew their pay and bonuses.
In Foster's novel she called Antarctica traffic control with registration 180 246 and got no answer, then counted the tug down from orbit while the others worked the landing. The readout she watched put surface gravity at 0.86. Dallas left the computer with a signal nobody at the table could read as human, and the contract held them to the detour. The inquiry file listed the cargo as a refinery processing 20 million tons of mineral ore. Foster's book had the same tug towing crude oil and a working refinery when she made that Antarctica call.
Landing On LV-426
The descent onto LV-426 went through a dust storm that tore shielding off an intake and left Parker and Brett on hull repairs. Kane took the headset on the way down and called the weather while Lambert worked the course and Ripley hunted for a flat patch. Three was the limit off the ship, so Dallas took Kane and Lambert and left Ripley on the lock, with Ash on the cameras.
Dallas, Kane, and Lambert left the lock in compression suits and walked about 3000 metres of lava toward the source of the beacon. Wind and dust cut the lamps. Lambert held the heading while Dallas checked the range back to the tug, and her finder in the novel tagged a portable transmitter that was running on the rock. She wanted the three of them back aboard, and on the walk she passed along Mother's note that the sun would be up in about twenty minutes.
The Derelict
Dallas, Kane, and Lambert entered a U-shaped hull that Mother could not match to any listed ship. They moved through the dark, ribbed interior and found a giant fossilized Space Jockey fused into a chair, with a hole blown out of its chest. Kane called the other two over to that chair, and they judged the body had been dead a long time. Kane then went down a shaft on a cable while Dallas and Lambert held the line from above.
Kane's lamp showed a closed chamber under the pilot. Leathery eggs were set in rows under a layer of blue mist. He told Dallas and Lambert the cave was shut in and full of those objects, then that something inside one of them was moving. In Foster's novel the eggs stood about a third of a metre high, Dallas had told him not to rush that descent, and a tug on one shell turned it clear over a hand-shaped creature with a palm tube and a coiled tail. In the film he touched an egg with a glove, the four lips opened on their own, and his lamp had not opened it. A Facehugger came out, stuck to his faceplate, and burned through the glass onto his face. Dallas and Lambert hauled him back across the lava with suit air to spare, called the lock for an emergency open, and wanted him in the infirmary at once.
Bringing Kane Back
Dallas and Lambert brought Kane through the ship in the compression suits, the Facehugger locked on his helmet glass. Suit air was enough for the walk back, and they called the lock as an emergency rather than a routine return. Lambert wanted the infirmary at once, and when the inner door opened Kane came through with the Facehugger on his face, in the same air as the rest of the crew.
The Closed Hatch
Ripley held the inner hatch for the quarantine period. Ash opened it from inside the ship anyway. Lambert blamed the warrant officer for leaving them outside with night coming on, and Parker did not take that side. In a deleted scene, Lambert slapped Ripley. He backed Ripley, because Kane had not been able to avoid the thing and nobody knew what it would do once it was in the air.
While the ship waited on Kane, Lambert played a string game with Jones on the bridge. She called it cat's cradle. The cat treated the same loop as work of his own. In the infirmary the crew cut the creature, and its acid blood ate through two decks toward the hull before Dallas and Ash stopped the cut. Parker wanted Kane frozen until a doctor on Earth could look at him, and Dallas would not freeze a man whose condition they did not understand.
The Chestburster
The Facehugger dropped off on its own, and Kane woke with no useful memory of the moon and asked for food. The crew had the refinery back on the tow and a course for Earth, and Kane took a place at the mess table for a last meal before the freezers. Lambert was at that table with Parker and Dallas when a Chestburster tore out of Kane and ran into the ducts. Blood from Kane hit her across the face, and she threw both hands up.
Lambert stood with the others at the lock while Dallas offered them a chance to speak, and they sent Kane's shrouded body out into space. Parker had watched that acid open two decks under the infirmary, and he would not stab the infant at the table for fear of opening the hull.
Search For The Alien
After the funeral, Dallas put Parker, Ripley, and Brett on a hunt through the ship. Ash built a short-range tracker from ship parts, and the first kit was a cattle prod, a net, and that tracker, sized for something about as large as the cat. In Foster's novel Lambert searched with Ash and Dallas, holding one side of a net while Ash carried the other tracker. The film follows Ripley, Brett, and Parker through the lower decks.
Parker and Brett followed the tracker through the damaged lower decks, and the first contact was Jones loose in those same spaces. Brett then went after the cat alone through an equipment bay of hanging chains. The adult Xenomorph came down out of the dark, closed a hand on his throat, and lifted him off the deck. Parker came back and told the others what that body looked like. It was about the size of a man.
Dallas In The Vents
After Brett was taken, Parker wanted a laser, and Dallas and Ash refused, because a wound in a creature that size held enough acid to open the hull. Ash suggested fire, because the cold on the moon had not stopped the eggs and they could not heat the whole ship. Lambert wanted an electrified wire stretched across a corridor so the creature would run into it. Ash turned that down, because the creature was already using the air shafts and was not going to charge a wire laid across an open corridor. Parker built hand-held incinerators from ship stores and fitted one for Dallas to take into those shafts, so they could drive the adult Xenomorph down to a lock and blow it into space.
Lambert and Parker waited at an air-shaft opening in the corridor, the metal grille still over it, and followed Dallas on the tracker. Ripley waited at the hatch they meant to seal behind the captain. Lambert's tracker showed a second signal once Dallas reached a main mixing chamber. The creature took him from under the walk, and Ripley heard one scream down the shaft before the mark faded.
Parker brought Dallas's flamethrower back from the mixing chamber and said there was no sign of the captain. Lambert wanted to abandon the ship on the Narcissus and hope another ship picked them up. Parker told her the shuttle would not take four. She wanted to draw straws for who stayed. He would not draw straws, and he wanted the creature killed on the tug.
Lambert Fights Ash
Ripley reached Mother and pulled Special Order 937. Ash tried to stop her, and Parker and Lambert walked into that fight. Parker fought him off her and hit him with a short metal canister, shaped like a fire extinguisher, until a second blow tore the head loose. Lambert used the cattle prod on him in the same struggle. Wiring and white fluid came out instead of blood, and Parker called him a robot once the insides were in the open.
In Alien: The Illustrated Story, before that attack, Ripley asked Lambert whether either of them had slept with Ash. Lambert had not thought he was interested, and neither woman had slept with him. Back in the film, Ripley burned the locomotor circuits, then had Parker power the severed head on a mess counter. The Company had sent Ash to turn the Nostromo off course, wake the crew, and pass the transmission off as a distress call so they would bring a hostile organism home for study. Their lives were expendable. The three of them burned what was left of him in the mess.
The Narcissus Plan
With Ash gone, the three who were left set the tug to blow and meant to leave on the Narcissus. In Foster's novel Lambert held up a card of red suicide capsules, each marked with a small skull and crossbones, and Ripley refused that end. Ripley went back to Lambert's earlier plan: bleed spare air into portable tanks, load food, leave in the shuttle, and let the tug blow with the creature on it. The film plays that plan over the ship schematics, with Lambert in profile and Ripley holding the drawings.
Ripley went after Jones on the bridge while Parker and Lambert went to the lower deck for coolant to run the shuttle's life support. In Foster's novel they stacked canisters and boxes at the food locker. Parker dropped a load of cartons, the tracker by Lambert turned bright red, and the noise from those canisters may have drawn the adult Xenomorph into that bay with them.
Death
The adult Xenomorph came out behind Lambert in the coolant bay. Parker had a flamethrower and shouted at her to get out of the way. She could not move, and he could not fire without hitting her, so he dropped the thrower and charged the creature with a hook. The alien's tail knocked him down, then the creature pinned him and killed him with a headbite. It turned from him to Lambert in that same compartment. The tail closed on her leg on the grating.
Ripley, on the bridge with Jones, heard Lambert on the open comm while she tried to get the cat into a carrier. The cries went on until that channel failed. She reached the bay and found both of them dead, with Parker slumped over and blood dripping from Lambert's foot onto the grating. In Foster's novel that channel went quiet while she was on the bridge, and she set the last of the destruct timer with the two of them gone.
Versions Of The Death
The Film
In a deleted scene, the adult Xenomorph came toward Lambert in a slow crab walk, low on all fours, then rose onto two legs. In the released film the tail came up between Lambert's legs on the grating in the coolant bay, after the adult Xenomorph had killed Parker. She could not move, and that shot is the picture of her death. The blow that killed her is not in the frame. Ripley heard the rest on the open comm from the bridge until that channel failed.
Alien: The Illustrated Story
Heavy Metal published Alien: The Illustrated Story in 1979, scripted by Archie Goodwin and drawn by Walt Simonson. Lambert stayed the Nostromo's navigator through the landing, the walk to the wreck, and the tracker watch while Dallas crawled the shafts. Simonson drew her with red hair and a yellow vest, recoiling while Parker came in with a flamethrower. In that book she and Parker were gathering coolant for the shuttle when the count ran out, Parker could not fire without hitting her, and the creature killed them both. Ripley then found Lambert hanging by two bare feet, with blood dripping from them. The film shows that same discovery. The shot looks like one bare foot, and the other may be there as well, with blood dripping from the foot onto the grating.
The Original Screenplay
Lambert is not in Dark Horse's Alien: The Original Screenplay (2020). Writer Cristiano Seixas and artist Guilherme Balbi adapted Dan O'Bannon's 1976 Star Beast script, and the navigator on the commercial starship Snark was Dell Broussard, who filled the host role the film gave to Kane. Sandy Melkonis was the communications officer on that crew. Melkonis walked to the signal with Captain Chaz Standard and Broussard, then died in the hunt when the adult Xenomorph decapitated Melkonis and took the body. Another issue showed the head back on the cocooned body beside Standard, and the Snark stayed the creature's nest.
Lambert's Scream
Titan Books released Alien: 40 Years 40 Artists in 2020, a gallery of new pieces for the film's anniversary. Tristan Jones, with color by Simon Gough, contributed Lambert's Scream, their version of the death the film left on the open comm. The piece puts the adult Xenomorph over her in the bay, the tail through her mouth, and the torso opened. It is a single illustration, not a story page, and it shows the blow the movie cut away from.
Last Survivor
In Last Survivor, shipped with the 2014 Nostromo Edition of Alien: Isolation, the player controls Ripley on the last stretch of the Nostromo. She found Lambert dead across the supply crates in the green jacket, with one bare foot showing, and Parker on the floor by the door. Blood on her neck had come from her mouth, not from a cut in the neck, and blood between her legs was where the tail had damaged her. Crew Expendable had left her alive at the mess table, and Last Survivor is that compartment after the coolant bay.
Out Of The Shadows
In Tim Lebbon's Alien: Out of the Shadows, Ripley remembered Lambert hanging in the coolant bay, a hole torn through her face, with Parker dead on the floor. Garcia's body on the DSMO Marion brought that picture back: Lambert hanging, one arm swinging, blood coming off her. In another dream the crew stood around a hospital bed, Lambert crying and Parker angry, with Dallas and Ash among them.
Personality And Traits
Lambert was the most openly frightened member of the Nostromo crew. She became uneasy soon after the detour began and repeatedly expected the situation to get worse. On LV-426, she wanted the landing party off the surface and reacted with alarm to what they found inside the derelict. Her fear became much more pronounced after the Chestburster escaped into the ship. While the others concentrated on finding or killing the creature, Lambert increasingly wanted to get away from it. After Dallas disappeared in the air shafts, she panicked, argued that they should abandon the Nostromo, and eventually warned that they were all going to die.
Her fear did not make her incapable of functioning. She still ran the plots, held the heading across the lava, and watched the tracker while Dallas was in the shafts, and in the mess she used the cattle prod on Ash. Fear could also turn into anger: she blamed Ripley when the quarantine hatch remained closed and later joined Parker in the struggle with Ash. Her panic finally overwhelmed her when the adult Xenomorph appeared in the coolant bay. Parker repeatedly shouted for her to move so he could use the flamethrower, but Lambert froze in front of the creature and could not get out of his line of fire. Her final moments pushed a trait visible throughout the film to its extreme: Lambert understood the danger around her, but by the end she was too terrified to act.
Lambert In Crew Expendable
Alien: Isolation put Lambert back on the Nostromo in the Crew Expendable mission, first shipped with the Nostromo Edition in 2014. Veronica Cartwright returned for the voice and likeness, with Tom Skerritt, Yaphet Kotto, Harry Dean Stanton, and Sigourney Weaver also back. Ian Holm did not return, so Ash used a likeness and a new voice. The mission started after Brett was taken. Lambert was at the mess table with Ripley and Parker while the player took Dallas, Parker, or Ripley into the shafts with a flamethrower and the film-style tracker.
Later Mentions
In Aliens, Ripley stood at the Gateway hearing while the closed crew files ran on the screen behind her. Lambert's portrait was captioned Lambert J.M., file 93776-FGD2, with the inquiry text in green beside it. That text carried the Despin Convert note, the low social counts, and the Loxy-Clav line from the sheet filed under Joan Marie Lambert. The other faces on that board were Parker, Brett, Kane, Ash, and Dallas.
On 4 June 2122, in Christopher Golden's Alien: River of Pain, Ripley remembered the medical bay she had avoided on the Nostromo. In that memory Dallas took Kane and Lambert onto LV-426 after Mother answered the signal, and the three of them went into a ship that was not human. In Michael Jan Friedman's Aliens: Original Sin, Ripley gave reporter Simoni the order of the deaths: Brett, then Dallas, then Parker and Lambert. In that account she and Lambert brought Kane back from the derelict, and she held the hatch shut until Ash opened it.
In Keith R.A. DeCandido's Alien: Isolation novel, Amanda Ripley tracked the Thedus cargo crew and found loader Stefano Vanini in Seattle. He had seen the Nostromo off after the cargo was loaded and finished on time. He remembered Dallas, Ripley, and Lambert as good people. He found Kane hard to like and did not care for Ash. He could not say why the ship disappeared.
Merchandise
NECA released the first 7-inch Lambert in 2017 as part of Aliens Series 11, item 51633. It was the first Lambert figure with an authorized Veronica Cartwright likeness. The box packed the compression suit, a removable helmet, a flashlight, and a second head. Dallas had a pressure-suit figure in the same broader line. This Lambert used the compression suit from the LV-426 walk, with the beige hood and the chest plate.
NECA reissued her in the Alien 40th Anniversary line, Wave 4, item 51711, shipping in 2021. That release used the same compression suit and added a photoreal face deco of Cartwright. The chest plate carries a red LAMBERT nameplate. The same wave updated the compression-suit Ripley and gave Giger's Alien a new paint pass from the original concept art.
Diamond Select put Lambert in the 2-inch Minimates line twice in 2016. The Hastings-exclusive Crew of the USCSS Nostromo box set, released on 8 January 2016, packed her in the ship vest with Dallas, Brett, and a glossy Big Chap, plus a spare frightened head, a flamethrower, and a pistol. Aliens Series 3, in July 2016, then paired a space-suit Lambert with a space-suit Dallas. Eaglemoss followed in 2017 with number 023 of The Alien & Predator Figurine Collection, item ALNUK023, a hand-painted 1:16 metallic-resin figure of her on the walk through the ship toward the shuttle.
Behind The Scenes
Veronica Cartwright played Lambert for Ridley Scott at Shepperton Studios through the summer and early autumn of 1978. She had read for Ripley, and she learned she was Lambert when wardrobe fitted her in London, before the shoot. She won the Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actress for the part. Scott wrote short bios for the seven actors before the shoot, and those notes were expanded into the Alien Legacy file that named the navigator J.M. Lambert. The inquiry screens in Aliens used that Gateway sheet rather than the Legacy bio. Cartwright returned in 2014 to voice Lambert for Alien: Isolation's Crew Expendable mission.
The chestburster take was shot once, with John Hurt's head and arms under the table and a puppet shoved up through a false torso packed with offal. The cast had seen the puppet, and they had not been told that hoses would throw blood across the mess. A jet hit Cartwright in the face. She went backward, her knees hit the banquette, and she flipped, then got back into the shot when she realized the cameras were running. Tom Skerritt said that reaction is the one in the film. The planetoid scenes put her in the compression suit beside him on the stage floor that stood in for LV-426.
Famous Quotes
- "It's not our system."
- "Let's get the hell out of here."
- "Mother says the sun's coming up in about twenty minutes."
- "I say we abandon this ship. We take the shuttle and just get the hell out of here."
- "You admire it."
- "We're all gonna die."
Conclusion
Joan Lambert was the Nostromo's navigator in Alien. She plotted the detour, walked to the derelict with Dallas and Kane, and tracked Dallas in the air shafts. The adult Xenomorph killed her in the coolant bay while she and Parker tried to supply the shuttle, and Ripley left on the Narcissus.
Appearances
- Alien (1979)
- Alien novelization (Alan Dean Foster, 1979)
- Alien: The Illustrated Story (Heavy Metal, 1979)
- Aliens (1986)
- Aliens novelization (Alan Dean Foster, 1986)
- Aliens: Original Sin (Michael Jan Friedman, 2005)
- Alien: Out of the Shadows (Tim Lebbon, 2014)
- Alien: River of Pain (Christopher Golden, 2014)
- Alien: Isolation - Crew Expendable and Last Survivor (2014)
- Alien: Isolation novel (Keith R.A. DeCandido, 2019)
Tag Categories: Alien Universe Characters | Alien Lore
