Alien originally explained that the android Ash was aboard the Nostromo to keep the Xenomorph safe for the Weyland-Yutani Corporation, a clever idea that any upcoming Alien franchise installment should revisit. Released in 1979, Alien was a huge hit with audiences and critics alike. An ingenious “haunted house in space” horror story, Alien was a fusion of sci-fi and scares that led to director Ridley Scott being trusted with the ambitious proto-cyberpunk outing Blade Runner.
However, while Alien’s lean, intense horror core was pivotal to the movie’s success, there was more to the terrifying space-set slasher than scares. As Alien 3’s return to pure horror proved, the franchise’s first film also needed an engaging backstory to succeed, and Scott’s original movie provided one via the Weyland-Yutani Corporation. Although the nefarious company’s dirty dealings are not properly exposed until the movie’s first sequel, 1986's action-heavier James Cameron outing Aliens, the original Alien did make it clear that the corporation had a part to play in the presence of the titular killer aboard the Nostromo.
However, Alien originally pitted its human crew members against their robotic interloper Ash in a tense face-off akin to John Carpenter’s later sci-fi horror classic The Thing, and the ensuing deleted scene was a tense bit of paranoia-inducing back and forth that the series should revisit. In the original early drafts of Alien, android Ash had a bigger role, and one scene that was filmed for the movie but later deleted according to fansite Xenopedia reveals that he was placed aboard the Nostromo to ensure that the Weyland-Yutani Corporation didn’t miss out on any “key products” because the crew refused to retrieve them. As Ash isn’t revealed to be an android until late in the movie, the original Alien's missing scene never answered the question of whether he would have stepped in to stop the crew if they succeeded in collectively removing the Xenomorph from the ship. It’s a potentially interesting angle that the Alien series still hasn’t explored, despite Prometheus and Alien: Covenant both featuring android characters far more prominently.
Alien’s Cast Distrust Ash (Believably)
The cast of the original Alien is a mostly civil bunch, but from early on in the movie, it is clear that none of them fully trust Ash. This is evidenced later in the above-mentioned deleted scene when Ash suggests that the remaining crew members bring him back online to defeat the beast, and they understandably opt to take another option as none of them trust the android to act in their best interests. It is a believable choice, with the crew members banding together and opting to trust each other rather than a machine, and one that raises questions about why the characters of later Alien prequels Prometheus and Alien: Covenant is so trusting in comparison.
Prometheus/Alien Covenant’s Cast Trust David Too Much
Whether it is Prometheus’ Shaw repeatedly buying into David’s tricks (and eventually dying between movies as a result), or the brutally bleak ending of Alien: Covenant seeing its heroine doom the survivors by trusting Walter (who is actually David) with their lives, the cast of the Alien prequels seem to trust androids as a rule, and not realize that they value the corporation’s interest over the crew’s. The reason for this is unclear but, as the prequels are set significantly earlier in the series timeline than the original Alien, it could be argued that the crew doesn't realize androids can be malicious actors yet, whereas the cast of Alien are savvier to the likes of Ash and know that robots allegiances lie with their employers and not their human colleagues.
There is another reason that the original Alien’s crew may trust Ash so much less than the cast of the prequels trust David, and that is their relationship with the Weyland-Yutani Corporation itself. In Prometheus (and, to a much lesser extent, Alien: Covenant) many of the ship’s crew members are faithful to the vision of the company and truly believe in its benevolence, while in the original Alien, many of the cast are simply working stiffs who have no loyalty to their employer and don’t trust the corporation for a second. This idea is revisited in the sequel, wherein the marines realize Weyland-Yutani are willing to sacrifice even their lives to secure access to the Xenomorph, and Ripley delivers an iconic line claiming the company is even more lethally bloodthirsty than the movie’s titular threats. Where Prometheus depicts the Corporation via the fatally arrogant but ultimately well-intentioned Peter Weyland, Aliens features Paul Reiser’s slimy company man Carter Burke as its representative of Weyland-Yutani, meaning no sane character would trust the company’s android employees when even their human employees are duplicitous bad-faith actors.
The Alien Franchise Should Pit Androids Against Humans
While the series has not yet taken advantage of this possibility, the Alien movies should pit the android employees of Weyland-Yutani against their human counterparts in a plot that sees the crew members attempt to dispose of a Xenomorph and the androids step in to stop them. For one thing, any character can turn out to be an android in the Alien movies (as proven by Ash), providing this plot with a The Thing-style sense of pervading paranoia. Furthermore, the Alien series needs a secondary antagonist to keep the Xenomorph feeling fresh (an issue the second sequel famously struggled with, as Alien 3’s lone Xenomorph had to kill off 17 characters without another villain’s support).
Pitting androids against the humans would be a perfect paranoia-inducing plot that could create tension before the titular beast even arrives, and could make the crew’s inability to escape the monsters all the tenser afterward. The first Alien had an easy time making Ripley’s plight palpably scary as viewers had never seen a Xenomorph before, while the first sequel needed only to increase the number of monsters to multiply their threat level. Now, introducing a secondary antagonist in the form of Weyland-Yutani’s emotionless androids could make the next Alien sequel uniquely scary, as it would pit the heroes against two enemies at once. Already, the Alien series has missed out on one android/human/Xenomorph face-off by cutting the horrific fate of Prometheus’ Shaw at the hands of David, but the franchise can still renew interest in the series by revisiting this plot in the next installment.