Lieutenant Scott Gorman was a United States Colonial Marine officer on the USS Sulaco in Aliens, service number A09/TQ4.0.56124E3. He commanded the rescue on LV-426 with 38 simulated drops behind him and only two real ones, including that trip. Weyland-Yutani's office on Gateway put the young lieutenant in charge so Carter Burke could ignore him. He froze in the APC when the hive attacked, took a head wound on the way out, then went back for Jenette Vasquez and died with her in the vents.
Thirty-Eight Simulated
No book or comic gave Gorman a childhood, an earlier unit, or a fight before this one. Apone's squad already had those stories in Aliens: Bug Hunt, and Gorman was not in them. The film and Alan Dean Foster's novelization only give the drop count: thirty-eight in training, and almost no real combat. Foster counts two earlier landings and treats LV-426 as the third. The film counts this trip as one of two. Neither source names the earlier landing. He woke on the Sulaco already lean, dog tags on, medical pads still stuck to his chest, then went through the locker and shower line with the rest of the unit. He looked fit, and he had not been tested in a real fight.
At breakfast he sat with Burke, Ellen Ripley, and Bishop instead of with the squad. He was older than half the troopers, but the neat hair after hypersleep, the sharp creases, and the polished boots still marked him as an outsider. The Aliens Colonial Marines Technical Manual later explained why a new lieutenant held that job. Company talk out of the Gateway office called him a wet-behind-the-ears academy wonder put in charge after Burke got Ripley her flight status back. Gorman did not know about the plan to take a live Alien home. He was the officer Burke could ignore. The Leading Edge Colonial Marines game used him as the example of a school lieutenant sent out before he had real combat time.
Briefing And Drop To LV-426
On 5 July 2179, Burke brought Gorman to Ripley's cabin on Gateway after contact with Hadley's Hope went dead. Gorman barely spoke. He promised she would only advise, and said the Marines were trained for this kind of job. In Alien: River of Pain he took the coffee, smoothed his buzzcut, put his cap back on, and led Burke out. Once she signed on, he sat through the Sulaco briefing in an officer jacket while Apone's squad sat in fatigues. He put up the colony map, said an infestation of xenomorphs was only a possibility, and tried to keep the meeting informal. Hudson asked if it was a real fight or another bug hunt. Vasquez asked how many combat landings he had done, and Drake watched him answer.
After the briefing they loaded the APC into the dropship. Gorman rode inside the carrier on the way down, pale, eyes shut, hands working the backs of his knees. Ripley sat across from him and asked about his combat time. He tried to treat the landing as routine. Ferro flew a circle over the empty roofs, then set them down. Gorman moved to the console as the ramp dropped, and Apone took the Marines out into the rain.
Command From The APC
Gorman stayed in the M577 while Apone walked the colony. He sat at the console with a headset and watched the suit cameras and heart-rate screens instead of the rooms themselves. Ripley saw that he could run the console even after the sick drop. A fear of heights looked like the only problem, until the hive started.
He sent the first team forward, put Hicks on the rear, and put Vasquez first through the empty lock. Hudson opened the main door. The colony was already dead. They found spent casings, piled furniture, and motion tracker hits that led under the atmosphere processor. Gorman called the area safe too early, then drove the APC to the south lock and walked in with Burke, Bishop, and Ripley once Hicks met them. Burke had company rank on paper. Gorman still gave the orders in the field.
Hive Ambush
Near the reactor, Gorman ordered them not to fire the pulse rifles. A stray round could crack the cooling system and blow the plant. Apone had the magazines and grenades taken. Vasquez and Drake hid spare smartgun batteries anyway. The floor opened into resin and cocooned colonists, then the Warriors came off the walls. In the APC, Gorman froze. He could not give a clear order. Hudson ignored him and kept firing. Ripley took the wheel, drove the carrier into the nest, and pulled Hicks, Vasquez, and Hudson out.
The Technical Manual later called that no-fire order a command failure once the Aliens tore the section apart. Bishop's audio log still had the Marines unloading, then switching to infrared while the hive stayed dark on the screens. By then Apone was already gone into the dark, and Drake died covering the retreat.
Head Wound
In the film a cargo box slammed Gorman as the APC tore out and knocked him out. That head wound is what the bandage covers for the rest of the holdout, and it kept him out of the first fight for Operations. James Cameron's 1985 script and Foster's novelization add a second wound the film never shows. A Warrior ripped the small gun hatch behind Gorman, dragged him out to the waist, and drove a four-inch tail stinger into his shoulder. Hicks then used the roof cannon to blow the Alien off the carrier, and Burke dragged Gorman back inside. Ripley opened his tunic on a bloodless purple hole. Foster adds that the wound had already sealed, and that Hicks read him as paralyzed rather than only stunned. Vasquez blamed him for the disaster, then gave command to Hicks once Apone was gone and Gorman was still down.
Medlab And Operations Battle
Gorman woke with the bandage still on and a hell of a hangover. He was on his feet again when Burke locked Ripley and Newt in the medlab with two live Facehuggers. One wrapped its tail around Ripley's throat. Gorman, Hicks, and Vasquez held it back until Vasquez shot it. Hudson killed the other.
When the Warriors broke into Operations, Gorman was up with a VP70. Vasquez loaded grenades, and he told her not to fire them in that room. She fired anyway, then they fell back into the colony ducts. Vasquez went in wounded, still shooting, and Gorman turned around for her instead of leaving the shaft.
Death
A Warrior dropped from an upper tunnel, and Vasquez pinned it until acid burned through her ankle. Gorman crawled back, grabbed her under the arms, and pulled until more Warriors closed from every side. He primed an M40 grenade. V. Castro's Aliens: Vasquez tells the same last stand and adds no earlier life for him. He called her name, emptied the pistol at a Warrior coming through a wall, and neither of them closed their eyes. Her last line in Aliens and in Pat Cadigan's Alien 3: The Unproduced Screenplay is the same: she called him an asshole, then put her hand over his. Foster's novelization uses "stupid" instead of "asshole," and has Gorman whisper "Cheers" while they click four grenades together. The film keeps one grenade and Vasquez's line.
In Alien 3: The Unproduced Screenplay, Hicks was still alive four years later on Anchorpoint, and he still judged people against that last stand. He had heard the last line through the vents. To him Gorman was the lieutenant who would not eat with his squad, then died beside Vasquez after the others were already gone.
Death In The Comics
Gorman dies with Vasquez in at least three Alien comics. Each one changes a few details of the last stand. The outcome stays the same. He also appears in the early pages of the comics that retell the film, still sitting in the APC.
Aliens: Newt's Tale
In the 1992 Dark Horse comic Aliens: Newt's Tale, Vasquez asked for a couple of grenades, and she held several at once with Gorman. The blast likely knocked Newt off her feet, but she did not fall into the vent from that explosion. She slipped later on her own, and that fall is what let the hive take her, which sent Ripley back into the nest and later left the Sulaco survivors dead on Fiorina 161 in Alien 3.
Aliens: What If?
In Marvel's Aliens: What If?, the vent stand played out almost as it does in the film, down to the same last line. The blast was hinted to travel through the hive, where Burke was already cocooned, and that shock let him break free of the resin, get off the planet, and live through the later film events.
Aliens: Halál
Aliens: Halál is a semi-official Hungarian Aliens adaptation. Tentacle Xenomorphs grabbed Vasquez there, one wrapped around her neck, and the grenade then threw pieces of the creatures and the humans through the air. Gorman died in that blast with her, same as the film.
Weapons And Equipment
Gorman never put on M3 armor for the colony search. He stayed in the officer jacket, patrol cap, and headset at the APC console, with Colonial Marine tapes on the chest. After the wreck he still had the bandage and the VP70, the same pistol Frost had carried before the hive, and he used it in Operations and in the ducts. The last charge was the M40 he primed beside Vasquez. Aliens: Colonial Marines later listed that VP70 as a pickup called Gorman's Pistol. The game did not give him a multiplayer skin the way it did Apone, Hicks, Hudson, and Drake.
Behind The Scenes
William Hope is a Montreal-born actor who trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London after three seasons with the National Youth Theatre. In the mid-1980s he turned down a major role in Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket to play Gorman for James Cameron at Pinewood. The marine cast trained together on that lot. Hope later told The Movies That Made Us that Cameron's pressure got bad enough that he rehearsed knocking the director down, then watched the Pinewood crew stop work after Cameron and producer Gale Anne Hurd fired assistant director Derek Cracknell. Sigourney Weaver stepped in for the crew, Cameron apologized for pushing too hard, and the shoot finished under agreed hours.
Hope came back to the franchise as Dr. H. G. Groves in Aliens vs. Predator (2010), as station doctor Kuhlman in Alien: Isolation, and as Gorman again in the Alien: River of Pain audio drama. He also played Kyle MacRae in Hellbound: Hellraiser II two years after Aliens.
Merchandise
NECA never shipped a movie-likeness Gorman the way it did Hudson, Hicks, and Vasquez. Kenner's 1990s Aliens Series and Space Marines line also skipped him, so he has no packed Dark Horse mini-comic and no Kenner card art. The figure that does exist is a Gale Force Nine 30 mm hard-plastic miniature in the Heroes of Hadley's Hope set for Aliens: Another Glorious Day in the Corps, item GF9ALIENS16. The 15-figure box puts him on a grating base in fatigues and patrol cap, pistol in both hands, unpainted, with Ripley, Apone, Hicks, Hudson, Vasquez, Drake, and the rest of the Sulaco drop. The 2020 promo card used his film line about being trained for situations like this next to the green prototype sculpt.
Famous Quotes
- "I can guarantee your safety."
- "We're trained to deal with situations like this."
- "Thirty-eight... simulated."
- "Two. Including this one."
- "All right, the area's secured."
- "I told them to fall back."
- "Ripley, what the hell are you doing?"
- "That's an order!"
- "All right, I guess. One hell of a hangover."
Conclusion
Scott Gorman was the Sulaco lieutenant who had the rank, and not the combat time. Weyland-Yutani put him over a veteran squad so Burke could run the mission. He froze in the APC, then went back for Vasquez and died with her in the vents.
Appearances
- Aliens (1986)
- Aliens novelization by Alan Dean Foster (1986)
- Aliens Colonial Marines Technical Manual by Lee Brimmicombe-Wood (1995)
- Alien: River of Pain by Christopher Golden (2014) - Gateway visit and first sweep only
- Alien 3: The Unproduced Screenplay by Pat Cadigan (2019) - remembered
- Aliens: Vasquez by V. Castro (2022) - death only
- Aliens: Newt's Tale (1992)
- Aliens: What If? (2024)
- Aliens: Halál - Hungarian adaptation
- Aliens: Colonial Marines (2013) - Gorman's Pistol
External Sources
Tag Categories: Alien Universe Characters | Colonial Marine Characters | Colonial Marine Lore | Alien Lore
