Carter Burke was a major character in the science-fiction horror film Aliens. A junior executive of the Weyland-Yutani Corporation, he acted as a liaison to Ellen Ripley when she joined the Colonial Marines assigned to investigate the Xenomorph presence on LV-426 in 2179. What no one on the mission knew was that Burke had been assigned by his superiors with securing live Xenomorph specimens to bring back to Earth so that the creatures could be utilized as bio-weapons. He was portrayed by Paul Reiser.
History[]
Carter Burke was dispatched to Gateway Station in 2179 where he was among the first people to meet with Ellen Ripley following her rescue from 57 years drifting in hypersleep. Burke brought Ripley up to speed on the years she had been missing, consoling her regarding the death of her daughter Amanda Ripley-McClaren. As one of the few people she knew following her re-emergence from hypersleep, Burke was also a regular feature in Ripley's nightmares, including one particularly vivid dream where an imaginary Chestburster hatched from her chest just moments after Burke had finished explaining how long she had been in hypersleep. Burke guided Ripley through the tribunal into the destruction of the USCSS Nostromo, and when she was subsequently stripped of her rank and flight status for her role in the ship's loss, Burke remained close.
However, he also secretly forwarded the coordinates for the derelict ship on LV-426, obtained from Ripley's testimony, to the colonists at Hadley's Hope, ordering them to investigate without disclosing what they might discover. As a result, the colony was overrun by Xenomorphs and all but one of its inhabitants, a young girl named Rebecca Jorden — better known as Newt — were killed.
When contact with the colony was lost, Burke used his contacts at Weyland-Yutani to pressure the United States Colonial Marine Corps into launching a rescue operation, and arranged for the inexperienced Lieutenant Gorman to take command of the mission. Burke also requested the standard synthetic assigned to Gorman's unit, a Bishop model 341-B, be replaced with a modified unit that had been stripped of its life-protection imperative and had a Weyland-Yutani loyalty subroutine installed, but he was unable to acquire such an android in time. With the operation assembled, Burke and Gorman approached Ripley, who was now living on Earth, and offered to reinstate her rank if she would accompany a section of Colonial Marines on a mission to investigate. While she initially refused, Burke convinced her that confronting the Xenomorphs and destroying them would help her overcome her ongoing trauma.
Owing to Weyland-Yutani's financing of the Hadley's Hope settlement, Burke also accompanied the Marines to the moon as a corporate liaison. When the main colony complex was secured, Burke, Ripley and Gorman moved inside, quickly discovering Newt hiding in the ventilation shafts and several Facehugger specimens being stored in the medical lab.
When the rest of the colonists were traced to the nearby atmosphere processing plant, Burke and Ripley accompanied the Marines to investigate, remaining inside their APC while the troops moved in. When Ripley pointed out that the armour-piercing ammunition used by the Marines' weapons would likely cause significant damage to the processor, Burke concurred, explaining that the station was a large fusion reactor and any damage to the coolant systems could trigger a thermonuclear explosion. Burke's insistence eventually led to Gorman disarming his men, leaving them with only flamethrowers and sidearms to defend themselves. When the section was subsequently ambushed by Xenomorph drones, their lack of appropriate weaponry caused the majority of them to be killed or captured.
Following the disastrous ambush, Ripley suggested an orbital nuclear strike as the only way to guarantee the Xenomorphs were destroyed, although Burke immediately insisted that such wholesale destruction of a very expensive terraforming colony was unacceptable. He also reneged on his earlier promise to destroy the Xenomorphs without hesitation, insisting that they were an important species and should be studied. He was overruled by the ranking Marine, Corporal Hicks. He tried to speak up, explaining that Hicks had no authority to make the decision to destroy the colony and all of the Xenomorph specimens. Regardless, Hicks overruled him, contacting Ferro for extraction, before declaring his intention to destroy the site using nuclear weapons. As the survivors prepared to leave, he surreptitiously sent a message to Weyland-Yutani informing them of the survivors' plans, and suggested that the company should dispatch a ship to try and recover the situation on LV-426.
When they were stranded on the moon due to the loss of their dropship, the surviving personnel barricaded themselves inside the colony, hoping to hold out for rescue. Ripley later learned from the unit's technician Bishop that Burke had insisted the two live Facehuggers in the med lab be returned to Weyland-Yutani after the mission; after checking the colony's logs, she also discovered that Burke was responsible for the colonists initially discovering the Xenomorphs. She angrily confronted him with this information, happily rejecting his offer of wealth should they give the live Facehuggers to Weyland-Yutani as he had planned. Despite Burke's pleas that his actions had simply been a "bad call", Ripley promised him he would pay.
While Ripley and Newt slept inside the med lab, Burke seized his opportunity to rid himself of Ripley and released the live Facehuggers before sealing the door to the room, additionally hoping that with Ripley and Newt impregnated he would have the perfect means of smuggling live Xenomorphs through quarantine and back to Earth. While he deactivated the security cameras to prevent Ripley calling for help, she triggered the fire alarm in the room and was saved by the Marines.
The survivors confronted Burke in the operations center, Ripley pointing out that, as the Marines would all know about the embryos inside her and Newt, Burke would likely have sabotaged their cryotubes during the return flight to Earth and jettisoned their bodies into space. With no one left to contradict his version of events, he could simply claim they had died on the mission when debriefed. While Hicks and Private Hudson elected to execute Burke for his treachery, Ripley stepped in to stop them, explaining that Burke should be taken back to face justice for his actions. Suddenly, the power was cut from the complex. Gorman was ordered to guard Burke and prevent him from escaping while the others investigated the complex.
Fate[]
The survivors subsequently found themselves set upon by the Xenomorphs. Burke implored Gorman to do something, and as soon as the Lieutenant released him to engage the Xenomorphs, Burke slipped away in the chaos, locking the door behind him and trapping the survivors in the operations center with the Xenomorphs. However, upon fleeing through the med lab, Burke found himself face-to-face with another drone. Burke froze in terror, and was swiftly attacked by the creature. Burke's final fate remains unclear, but it is certain that he subsequently perished — being killed outright by the Xenomorph or taken alive to be cocooned inside the hive.
In a deleted scene, Burke is shown to have been captured and impregnated by the aliens. When Ripley enters the Hive to find the captured Newt, she happens upon a cocooned Burke who begs her to help him. The only help Ripley offers is a grenade, handing it to Burke so he can kill himself and end his suffering. Even if Burke didn't set the grenade off, he would have died when the processing plant exploded minutes later.