Community’s Halloween episode saw Troy try to take on a plague of zombies in Ripley’s iconic Aliens armor the Power Loader, but the scene pointed out a logic hole in James Cameron’s sequel too. Ridley Scott’s iconic sci-fi horror Alien remains a high benchmark of space-based cinematic thrills, and the hit spawned a more action-packed sequel in the form of James Cameron’s 1986 blockbuster Aliens. Much like his earlier success The Terminator, James Cameron originally had an even more ambitious script for Aliens, only for the finished film to tone down his wild ideas due to its limited budget.
However, what made it to cinemas in the mid-‘80s remains one of the franchise’s most well-loved installments, a violent and thrilling tale of Space Marines versus an entire hive of the eponymous Xenomorphs. However, even the beloved Aliens is not free from plot or logical holes, as Dan Harmon’s cult sitcom Community accidentally uncovered one of the movie’s missteps in the show’s Halloween episode “Epidemiology.”
In this critically-acclaimed special, lovable jock Troy (Donald Glover) dons a Power Loader costume to take on the zombies like Ripley famously faced down the Xenomorph Alien Queen – and promptly removes the suit when, inevitably, they attack en masse and it only serves to slow him down. It’s a funny moment when Troy admits “I don’t know why I thought this would work,” but it’s also a good point. While she didn’t have a Xenomorph horde to protect her in this case, if the Queen had just rammed the Power Loader and knocked it down, Ripley would have been toast within seconds.
Sure, the mechanical suit is a heavy-duty piece of equipment, which is why it helps Ripley put up a fight against the Queen, but one good knock could have rendered it useless. Ripley is also lucky that during Aliens final brawl the Queen didn’t bleed on the suit, as the acidic Xenomorph blood could have easily have eaten away at the Power Loader. While fans might have loved to have seen a fight scene where Ripley was batting away hordes of aliens with the suit, the Community Halloween speicial proved that they could have easily overwhelmed the Power Loader and taken it down.
Of course, that’s the kind of logic audiences will only pick apart after the fact, and it doesn’t take away from Aliens’ epic final battle. After all, smart as the Alien Queen was, she had never had to battle with a woman in a suit of armor before either. Community may have exposed a fatal flaw in the Power Loader’s design – but it’s still an undeniably cool piece of tech.
