Quote Originally Posted by Kraco View Post
Doesn't that actually make sense? If it was a more informed person, he would come up with all sorts of theories and couldn't pick one without much more evidence. But an ordinary grunt will stick to his first idea and believe it's the absolute truth - unless a better alternative is crammed down his throat (literally in Alien's case).
That does seem possible, so most likely I'm annoyed with the character's behavior and that sort of one-track mindedness more than anything. It just appears to be a very specific hypothesis and very much plausible, which didn't fit coming from a grunt. While I don't put 100% faith in the "specialists," it just seemed unlikely that a grunt would figure it out.

Quote Originally Posted by Y View Post
This is a great bit of writing - a serious-minded military guy extrapolating his life experiences out into a framework to understand the world and believing in it with absolute certainty despite no real evidence, in a movie about the dichotomies of science and faith.
What evidence is there that the ship captain was former military? Unless they mentioned that somewhere, the guy could be a merchant marine, a ship captain who just floats from location to location. It's just as likely it was poor writing and you're reading too much into it.