Alien Works Because Tom Skerritt Went from Lead to Supporting

Too many of today’s filmgoers may not appreciate the breadth of work that Tom Skerritt left when he passed away this week at the age of 93. Skerritt got his start in war movies and TV shows like 12 O’Clock High and Gunsmoke in the early ’60s, but became a regular in the New Hollywood movement, appearing in M.A.S.H., Harold and Maude, and Fuzz. In the ’80s and ’90s, he started playing authority figures, police and military officers in The Dead Zone, Top Gun, and the Emmy-winning TV drama Picket Fences.

Ironically, it may be one of Skerritt’s best-known roles that illustrates the quality of his acting precisely because we take it for granted today. For decades, everyone has known that Sigourney Weaver‘s character Ellen Ripley is the hero of the Ridley Scott sci-fi horror movie, Alien. But for the film’s first audiences in 1979, Skerritt was the recognizable actor in a traditional heroic part, and the rise of Ripley works, in part, because of his ability to step aside and let her take over. It was a shock when his character died halfway through the movie.

Skerritt plays Captain Dallas in Alien, the even-keeled leader of the truckers aboard the commercial starship Nostromo. Even beyond his higher celebrity status at the time, Dallas immediately projects the confidence of a leader. He checks in with the crew as they wake up from cryosleep and gets information about their early rising from the computer MOTHER, which relays orders from the Company (not yet identified as Weyland-Yutani in this film). When the Xenomorph begins attacking the crew, Dallas comes up with a plan to attack it, leading the charge to hunt it in the air ducts.

At the same time, however, Dallas is not a by-the-book heavy. Early on, we get intimations that there might have been a romantic relationship between him and Ripley in the past, and he speaks familiarly with the rest of the crew. Yes, he’s the one who shuts down talk of increased shares from Parker (Yaphet Kotto) and Brett (Harry Dean Stanton), the two people with the lowest status among this group of laborers. But even then, it’s clear that everyone on the Nostromo admires him personally.

That personal connection comes through in the way that Skerritt plays the character. Dallas remains fairly soft-spoken throughout the film, raising his voice only when necessary when things get emotional. In most cases of disagreement, Dallas falls back on repeating orders from the Company, allowing him to remain aligned with the crew people while still moving the crew forward. Yet Skerritt never lets these tendencies read as passivity. He speeds up his lines deliveries when Dallas gives orders. He holds his body in firm resolution when the crew is deciding on plans.

The complexity of Skerritt’s performance is most evident in Dallas’ most pivotal scene when he argues with Ripley about opening the hatch to allow him and Lambert to bring the infected Kane (John Hurt) back onto the ship. At first Skerritt plays it cool but insistent, ordering Ripley to open the hatch while telling the more emotional Lambert to hold her composure. However, as Ripley refuses to allow entry, citing quarantine procedures that require them to wait for 24 hours, Skerritt allows Dallas to get more bothered, almost yelling his orders and gesticulating with frustration at her response.

Of course director Ridley Scott builds on Skerritt’s performance to emphasize the difference between them. Dallas’ voice is distorted by the microphones, the windstorm outside obscuring him further, all of which stops hard when we cut to Ripley inside the ship, her voice clear and clean. Even as the argument grows more heated, Weaver plays Ripley as fairly calm, holding her tone when citing regulations.

For the movie’s first audiences, Ripley seems cruel and detached, and Dallas appears like the hero, the one willing to cut through the BS for the sake of his crew and friends. Yet as we know today, this conversation is the exact moment that Ripley supersedes Dallas as the hero of the movie. Ash (Ian Holm) and the Company may be more at fault for the death of the Nostromo crew members, as they orchestrate the discovery of the xenomorph and its entrance into the ship, but Dallas would have done what Ash did, making him just as guilty, even though it cost him his life.

Today we know Ellen Ripley as one of the greatest heroes in science fiction. But it never would have happened if Skerritt didn’t commit to his role as Dallas, ignoring his ego to fully embody someone strong, human, and totally unsuited for the job ahead of him. Fortunately for cinema history, Skerritt was more than equal to his task.