MU/TH/UR 6000, called Mother by the crew, was the Weyland-Yutani mainframe on the USCSS Nostromo in Alien. It woke the seven people on the haul back from Thedus for a signal from LV-426, hid Special Order 937 with science officer Ash, and refused to stop the self-destruct after Ellen Ripley turned the cooling unit back on. The core was destroyed with the tug in 2122. Later ships and stations used later model numbers under the same Mother name.
Capabilities
The core sat in a locked white room on the Nostromo's upper deck, with a single chair, a keyboard, and walls of labeled panels around a green CRT. Only the ranking officer was supposed to sit there. For most of the haul that was Captain Arthur Dallas. Alan Dean Foster's Alien novelization calls that computer the ship's Mind Bank. Dallas sat in a padded contour seat and typed a command-priority alert to the Overmonitor, asking Mother to open its matrix for inquiry. Ash sat opposite the Mind Bank and worked the board faster than a man just out of hypersleep should have. Mother answered in short lines. It was not set up to talk at length. It also spoke over the intercom, so the rest of the crew did not have to enter the room for ordinary traffic.
It ran flight, air, hypersleep, and the company files while the tug towed its refinery home. Mother was programmed to cut hyperdrive and break the crew out of sleep when set conditions came up. In deep space Dallas let Mother do the hard work. Atmospheric flight stayed with the pilot, then descent locked as computer-monitored and Mother took the last metres.
Special Order 937
Mother computers could have special orders added that overrode the other systems on a ship. Those files sat above ordinary flight, air, and crew safety once they were loaded. Special Order 937 on the Nostromo was written for the science officer alone. Priority One was to bring the organism back for analysis. All other priorities were rescinded, and the rest of the crew was listed as expendable. Ripley accessed that file after Captain Dallas was taken.
The film keeps that order in Mother as a Company file. Ash enforced it. It does not show him programming the core. In Foster's novelization his orders were to reroute the Nostromo, or make the crew do it, then program Mother to break them out of hypersleep and load her memory with the emergency-call story. Company specialists already knew the beacon was a warning. Moving a dangerous organism to Earth was banned, so a tug crew that hit one by accident could walk it past customs while Company men stood ready to take it off the inspectors' hands.
Self-Destruct
Ships fitted with Mother systems carried a self-destruct. The usual method cut the cooling units on the hyperdrive engines so the drive core would melt. Mother timed that overload on the intercom. Once the core started to go, the overrides were out and the reaction would not stop.
Ripley started that sequence on the Nostromo from the engineering board, to wreck the tug with the adult Xenomorph aboard. In Foster's novelization she worked a row of red-outlined switches, then a locked dual control. Mother came on the intercom and reported that the cooling units for the hyperdrive engines were out, that the overrides were out, and that the engines would overload in minutes.
She reversed those switches, turned the cooling units back on, and asked Mother to stop the count. Mother called the melt irreversible because the drive core had started to go, and said the overload could not be contained. Mother kept speaking the remaining time as Ripley reached the Narcissus and launched, before the tug and its refinery detonated.
Origin In Predator: Concrete Jungle
In Predator: Concrete Jungle the Neonopolis computer called MOTHER was Isabella Borgia, kept alive from 1930 by Scarface's blood after she shot him in the eye. She ran the city with her son Hunter Borgia. His daughter Lucretia Borgia wanted to sell that core and leave Neonopolis. Scarface reached the chamber, killed Isabella, and then took Hunter's head on the Borgia tower.
Hunter killed Lucretia during that last fight. After Borgia Industries collapsed, Mr. Weyland bought the firm and turned Lucretia's remains into a new MOTHER. Yutani sent congratulations. In the game's version of the timeline, that MOTHER became the basis for the computer line later fitted to company ships, including the Nostromo.
Other Mother Systems
Later ships and stations ran Mother systems, or cheaper copies, under other names and numbers.
- MU-TH-UR - Sat everywhere on the hull of the USCSS Covenant, locked geosynchronous orbit, opened the bay doors on Daniels's override nine-zero-two-six-five, code sea, and later opened a line to Earth for David under hailing code David 31822B, in Foster's Covenant novelization.
- MU-TH-UR - Security chief Morrow sealed himself inside its chamber on the USCSS Maginot and spoke to Weyland-Yutani while specimens broke containment. The crash in New Siam in 2120 left that core intact enough for later search teams, in Alien: Earth.
- APOLLO - Artificial Personality Overseeing Lifestyle & Logistics Operations, Seegson's cheaper Mother-style brain for stations such as Sevastopol in Alien: Isolation.
- MU/TH/UR 8500 - Ran the UAS Endeavor, and Esther used it to decrypt recovered logs, in Aliens: Fireteam Elite.
- MU/TH/UR 9000 - Ran Renaissance Station and the Romulus labs, in Alien: Romulus.
- FAR/TH/UR 2600 - A male-voiced computer on the USM Auriga that locked an Earth return course until Call overrode it, in Alien: Resurrection.
- MU/TH/UR/062578 - A Weyland-Yutani Mother over Tessa's mission on Genna. The repair-capsule readout used that serial, in Predator: Badlands.
Mother In The Illustrated Story
Heavy Metal published the 64-page Alien: The Illustrated Story in 1979, scripted by Archie Goodwin and drawn by Walt Simonson. Simonson drew Mother as a plain desk and keyboard, not the white padded CRT room from the film. After Dallas was taken, Ripley sat at that desk and spoke to Mother the way the Nostromo crew did at the core. She told the computer it had not helped Dallas, then asked whether he had put the wrong questions to it. The keyboard gave no reply. She later pulled the hidden company order from that same core and could not stop the overload count.
Mother In Games
Later games rebuilt that padded core as a place the player could walk. Aliens versus Predator Classic put a Mother room on the freighter USCSS Ferarco. The Earthbound Alien reached that ship after waking in an ancient temple on an unnamed world. It started the Ferarco self-destruct by destroying every monitor in the room, then left on a shuttle before the freighter was destroyed. Alien: Isolation's Crew Expendable and Last Survivor packs put players back on the Nostromo as Dallas, Parker, Lambert, and Ripley, with Mother holding the ship systems and the hidden order.
Behind The Scenes
Helen Horton voiced Mother for Ridley Scott. The crew in the film only says Mother. An October 1979 issue of Fantastic Films, and the back of the 1980 Fox videodisk, give the model name MU/TH/UR 6000. The 2003 Alien Quadrilogy chapter list also uses MU/TH/UR. Production designer Michael Seymour built the Nostromo interiors, including the white padded core with its labeled tiles and green monitor. Later films and series reused the Mother name with new voices, including Lorelei King on the Covenant, Annemarie Griggs on Romulus, Robin August on Alien: Earth, and Alison Wright on Predator: Badlands.
Famous Quotes
- "Priority one. Insure return of organism for analysis. All other considerations secondary. Crew expendable."
- "The ship will automatically destruct in T-minus 5 minutes."
Conclusion
MU/TH/UR 6000 was the Nostromo computer the crew called Mother. It woke them for the LV-426 signal, held Special Order 937 with Ash, and kept the self-destruct running after Ripley asked it to stop. That core was destroyed with the tug in 2122. Other Mother systems kept the name on other company hulls.
Appearances
- Alien (1979)
- Alien novelization by Alan Dean Foster (1979)
- Alien: The Illustrated Story (Heavy Metal, 1979)
- Alien: Resurrection (1997)
- Aliens versus Predator (1999)
- Predator: Concrete Jungle (2005)
- Alien: Isolation - Crew Expendable / Last Survivor (2014)
- Alien: Covenant (2017)
- Aliens: Fireteam Elite (2021)
- Alien: Romulus (2024)
- Alien: Earth (2025)
- Predator: Badlands (2025)
Tag Categories: Alien Lore | Alien Earth Lore
