WAIT
YOU’RE TELLING ME THAT LAMBERT FROM ALIEN
WAS ACTUALLY TRANS? LIKE THAT WAS CANON??? I THOUGHT IT WAS JUST PSUEDOCANON NONSENSE.
The story as I understand it is as follows:
In the original draft of ALIEN, the characters were all written as gender-neutral. As the script was redrafted, characters were assigned various genders which sometimes changed over the course of the drafting process. Most famously, Ripley was written as male up until the point Sigourney Weaver was cast.
To reflect this, when character biographies were created for the ALIEN LEGACY DVD box, two characters - Lambert and Dallas - were given transgender bios.
Unfortunately, they never made it to the finished product. According to IMDb, the bios were included on a preview that was posted to USENET and soon after, they were removed - apparently due to negative feedback from fans.
Whether or not it’s canon is tricky. It could still be canon so long as nothing else that is canon procludes the possibilty of them being trans. If it is canon, it has some interesting implications for the ALIEN universe. One trans character would be cool, but two (out of a crew of six humans and one android) might suggest that trans people are far, far more common in the ALIEN future than they are presently. It also creates a counterpoint to ALIEN 3, where all the prisoners are specified as XYY males, as well as the banter between Hudson and Vasquez about being ‘mistaken for a man.’
I happen to recall everyone in Alien being written as gender neutral, but I don’t recall the rest. Thank you.
