Wednesday, January 09, 2013

Stormtroopers vs Aliens

See the picture below? I'd see that movie. Scroll down below the picture to see how I think the movie would go. 

Used without permission from Robert Shane

It's a dark time for the Empire. Rebel Bothans having completed a desperate raid on an Empire controlled space station are evading pursuit. As the opening scroll ends the camera pans down to a small, smoking, carbon scored ship desperately trying to dodge shots from pursuing TIE Fighters. They're being forced down onto an unexplored planet. They make a controlled landing, but they'll never take off again without repairs. A strange alien craft is crashed nearby so they turn to it for shelter, parts, and a hiding place. Inside they find a field of organic pods that's strangely familiar to the viewing audience. Naturally, Stormtroopers are close behind. The Bothans are looking for a way off the planet and ignore the pods after a quick "huh, weird". The Stormtroopers report the discovery and receive orders to examine and retrieve samples. Droids take several pods back to a
shuttle. A few Stormtroopers guard the rest of the pods. We know what happens to them. Most continue pursuit. Several Stormtroopers and Bothans are either shot or ripped apart. Unable to get the systems of the alien ship running or find useful parts, a few Bothans sneak back on a shuttle in the chaos and hide. A few Stormtroopers make it back. Some with "indigestion". Some deliberately left behind to slow the alien creatures.

The shuttles and fewer TIE fighters than in the start of the movie all return to the Death Star. Well, a smaller version. A prototype. Proof of concept. With the power to blow up a moon or a Star Destroyer. Droids are unloading pods. The Captain who led the pursuit of the Bothans on the planet wants to know what the higher ups want with the pods. He orders a Stormtrooper to take one of the pods to his quarters. With the ship unloaded the Bothans sneak out of the shuttle. They're looking for a transmitter so they can get their recovered plans to a waiting Ambassadorial Ship. The Stormtroopers with indigestion don't last long and release an alien in general barracks and mess. The Captain finds an open pod in his quarters, but no Stormtrooper. After a brief search and fight the facehugger gets him. When his chest bursts his alien is bigger and badder than those from mere clones. And he's loose on the command deck. The rest of the pods are sent off to Stormdoctors who plan to test a couple on prisoners.

Aliens are shot, acid eats through decks, Stormtroopers die. For some reason there's a cat.

Things keep getting worse, but the mess is working out pretty well for the Bothans. For the most part the station's personnel are distracted. But they do get captured. That's when acid eats through the bulkhead above and drips on top of his helmet. He dies horribly. But the Captain's alien sees the Bothans through the hole and targets them. We see him take off looking for a way to the lower deck. When he eventually finds them he kills all but one Bothan before Stormtroopers manage to open fire on it and actually hit it. The Bothan kills the gravity for that section so much of the acid blood remains as mist and floating globs. It ends badly for the Stormtroopers that charge into the mist in pursuit.

Alternate scenario: The Bothans were captured on the planet, brought back for interrogation, and thrown in the brig. The doctors intend to test the pods on the Bothans. They escape either due to acid eating through from an upper deck and destroying the door or some critical component. Or during a prisoner transfer acid drips on the Stormtrooper's helmet and ... well, what I wrote above.

The final fleeing Bothan finds a storage chamber full of alien webbing and several strung up Stormtroopers and staff. Some with holes in their chest plates. Some with holes pending. When he finally finds a room he can transmit from the Bothan finds a Stormdoctor also making a transmission. He's reporting what a great weapon these creatures would be against rebel planets. They fight. The doctor dies. The transmission of Death Star plans is made. He looks at another panel. It appears to be a motion sensor. Two large groups of dots collide. The scene cuts to a formation of Stormtroopers marching down a corridor. Suddenly... Aliens. On the motion sensor screen most of the dots wink out. That's the scene in the picture.

And the movie ends somehow. Very likely the Death Prototype blows up. Probably using a code recovered from the Captain's body and one good officer (or at least one who recognizes the threat) working together with the Bothan. They might fire on the planet, too, destroying the pods and aliens down there. So the Death Prototype explodes in a manner a physics professor would approve of while orbiting a planet with a sizable chunk of it glowing.

Then, for those who last saw Star Wars in 1977, in a rebel briefing room beside a hologram of the Death Star a woman in white sadly says "Many Bothans died bringing us these plans."

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