generalisation

             Ripley’s first failure was one

             of generalisation: that one alien’s

             elemental viciousness could be ascribed to all.
gambler’s fallacy

             that the late acid savagery of

             subsequent samples was similarly brutal

             proved nothing.  Repeatedly.
divine fallacy

             the Giger-counter leap at intuition:

             designed brutality, made monstrosities,

             but evolution is its own hidden actor.
two wrongs make a right

             after the Nostromo was scoured

             and the crew had been killed by the alien, in turn

             Ripley punched it into space.  Wrong follows wrong.
slippery slope

             but Earth must be saved: fragile teardrop,

             one alien loosed there, like cognitive bias

             becomes the seed of doom.  Certainty from assumption.
appeal to emotion

             smudged waif stalked by demon

             and my favourite of the movies.  Ripley rasping

             get away from her, you bitch.  My gut flips.
appeal to motive

             psychopathic automaton, then self-sacrificing

             robot helper, androgynous and anodyne companion,

             homunculus hubris.  Each robot different – all suspect.
false analogy

             sleek futurism and vicious intent,

              ‘strong’ women battling impossible odds, but

             Alien is not Terminator, Sigourney not Linda.
appeal to morals

             in direct proportion to their moral infamy,

             bit parts snatched into crawl spaces, darkness.

             Death comes last to crims with golden hearts and innocents.
post hoc ergo propter hoc

             was it in the misty unfolding of an egg, a cause

             for all the disasters that ensue, that suffocating hand

             or hidden machinations, the static SOS disturbing their sleep?
argumentum ad hominem

             every time, she is Cassandra prophesying

             but the three-movie deal was so good she made a fourth.

             sometimes from the mouth of madness, sanity speaks.