Poll: Was it stupid of the Prometheus crew to take off their helmets?

[CrystalShadow]

Hell ya it was, as soon as that happened I filed the movie under "one time watch" - your on an alien planet and a little machine says the air is fine? It's an Alien Planet?!?!, you don't know if everyone died due to the fast acting air borne virus, or if the spores of the mushrooms cause your skin to melt.

They said the air was breathable. So that mean's it's contagion free as well. Why would an advanced society/civilization have something that has a yes/no breathable meter scanning device that doesn't include air born viruses too?

How would technology be able to identify alien organisms as contagious viruses? Their ALIEN, as in unfamiliar.

If you ever find yourself in a hazmat suit, and some idiot with a tricorder says: "Hey instead of being safe lets all simultaneously remove our protective headgear."

Their working with the aliens, kill them with fire.

Well, that depends on how well the designers of said tricorder understand human biology. Of course, in the real world, we don't, which is largely why you can't test for everything. (That, and many tests we do have require raw materials which are consumed in the process, time and lots of equipment to perform.)

Assuming you know enough about biochemistry, and had scanning equipment capable of correctly identifying things at the molecular level, you could at least divide things into 3 groups:

1. Stuff known to be harmful
2. Things which are known to be inert
3. Items which have not been encountered before.

(And you could divide number 3 up into groups based on how closely they resemble something which is known).

Of course, that's all well and good, but it does still leaves several obvious holes:
Firstly, you have to assume that the planet does not contain anything that defies the known laws of physics and chemistry. It's one thing to detect an unknown virus by it's chemical structure. Quite another to detect an object composed of an entirely unknown form of matter that wasn't even known to exist theoretically.
Secondly, you would have to assume there is nothing in the environment that the scanners missed because of some random chance, or because of how they're configured. (For instance, if a scanner functions by performing a 2d sweep across the field of view, you would be in trouble if there was something moving around that just happened to move away just as the scanner passed it.)

Since encountering that defies known science, while not impossible, isn't very likely, that means
the last one is the real killer. Because it means you would have to be able to scan an entire planet in one go, with no room for anything to slip through the cracks because of some quirk of how your scanning equipment functions.

As such, being able to determine with a handheld scanner such as a tricorder that an environment is completely safe is incredibly unlikely.

However, something like a biofilter as you sometimes hear about on Star Trek when they use the transporters is far more plausible. If you have to scan someone down to a sub-molecular level anyway, determining if there is something unfamiliar in their system is probably not that difficult. (The more you know about what they are supposed to be like normally, the easier it'd be to determine if they've picked up anything along the way.)

 

[AngloDoom]

Considering it was an alien planet never before visited by humans, trusting the scanners to tell you the air is clean is like asking a vegan if the milk smells off.

Plus, they were looking for creatures that were known to be remarkably similar to humans on even a genetic level, it's not that unreasonable to assume that any local diseases could make a jump to humans, especially when they later discover the two are (somehow) genetically identical.

 

[Secret world leader (shhh)]

It was dumb, but I suppose it made sense in terms of character.

 

[Casual Shinji]

snip

This too, but I feel that everyone else was just following the leader, David took it off because he needed to seem more like the crew, to seem more human, just like why he wore the helmet. Fifield and Milburn didn't know much about procedure, being they were a geologist and a biologist.

Yeah, but seeing as this was a trillion dollar funded expedition you'd think they would bring the best of the best who were damned sure of falling in line and doing what they're told.

A lot of what happens in the movie does makes sense when you realize that everything is simply a front for Weyland to get to the aliens. Like how there's only one spacecraft on this expedition and not a whole fleet considering this would be a first contact, and thus a pretty big deal. And since companies seem to be in total control in this future, the government wouldn't have anything to say regarding the matter.

 

[DaKiller]

I'd like to make it clear that I don't find many of the characters in the movie particularly bright: some characters die in ways that are very easily avoidable with some common sense. The fact that they decide it's a good idea to take off the helmets doesn't surprise me because it is a stupid to do. Any number of things could have gone wrong from undetectable bacterium to a malfunction in the suit readings (because come on, there was a woman who has an auto surgeon tube in her room that's meant to operate on men, I don't expect them to be using the suits entirely correctly either)

 

[LawlessSquirrel]

I actually think it is more of a characterisation thing than anything else. Shaw and Holloway are portrayed as being rather impulsive and are trained archaeologists/anthropologists/whatever and not all that big on playing things safe. The only rule enforcing character being Vickers is not physically around, and so when Holloway sort of peer pressures everyone into taking off the helmets, they comply. Just because your in space doesn't mean overbearingly inquisitive people are going to suddenly follow structured procedure.

My agreement goes here. It was definitely stupid as far as I can see, but it's completely in-character.

People do reckless things all the time. They don't EXPECT to be living in a movie where bad things happen to reckless people.

 

[Bertylicious]

It was incrediblly stupid and made no sense whatsoever. Saying that though:

Spoiler

 

[Lee Black]

It's purely a decision based on cinematics, to make their faces more visible.
It was pretty moronic from a number of viewpoints, chiefly that the were going looking for a life form that was at least in some way related to them which makes the odds of a pathogen astronomically higher, also just because the air is breathable here and now it doesn't mean the next room isn't filled with cyanide gas.
But what really struck me was how careful they were with the "quarantine" on the stuff they brought back to the ship AFTER they'd already exposed themselves to got knows what.

 

[Slayer_2]

Main characters don't wear helmets unless in a vacuum. And even then, they try to minimize the time, to save their styled hair.

 

[Me55enger]

Pffft, didnt help Fairfield to have it on, did it?

 

[fix-the-spade]

Of course it was daft, how could they know the air wasn't also full of aggresive funghal spores or some hitherto unkown toxic substance? Silly, but ah well, movies.

What I find dafter is that the Prometheus had no offensive options. Mr Weyland had obviously considered the possibility of the Jockeys not being entirely friendly as the ship had guns and flamethrowers aboard, why did the ship itself have no weapons of any kind? A gatling gun and a few Hellfires (or timeline equivalent) could have saved a hell of lot of trouble.

Pffft, didnt help Fairfield to have it on, did it?

Ah, his weakness was being nice to Milburn, who was evidently a moron.

 

[Samus Aran but a man]

I assumed that if David says it's OK, then it was ok.

The movie was ok.

 

[Neyon]

Let's face it. Every character in horror movies is completely retarded. Even if they are the smartest person in the world, they are retarded.

 

[Hawk of Battle]

Yes, it was fucking stupid, like much of the movie. Hell, we can't even go to other places on this planet without needing vaccinations and not being allowed to drink the water there, why the hell would you think the air on another planet is safe to breathe?

That said it was probably the smallest of the stupidity in the film, worse offenders include stupid scientists touching the obviously alien space worm, the archeologist cave explorer getting lost in the cave HE JUST MAPPED and everyone forgetting about the giant space parasite in the lab.

 

[Ralphfromdk]

Well, remember the two guys they left behind in the storm?

One got his face melted of even with the helmet on.
The other had his suit punctured (and arm broken) even with his fancy helmet on.

So much for helmets helping you stay safe

 

[Dumbfish1]

-Minor? Spoiler Alert-

On the other hand, it was brought to my attention on tvtropes that the likelihood of a a space bacterium or contagion evolving separately and naturally would have an almost zero percent chance of being compatible with humans, or any other species from earth. Now we as the audience know that the inhabitants of the planet are related to humans, but an expedition would assume quite the opposite.

That would be fine if it was any old planet, but the whole purpose of the trip was they're looking for the Aliens that created life on Earth. They know as well as the audience does that whatever they're going to find is related to life on Earth somehow.

 

[Shocksplicer]

There was a lot of stupid stuff in that movie. However, the helmet thing was the least of them. David did say that it was fine, so just assume it was ok.

One thing about the breathable air tht WAS retarded though: the Engineer ship was, um, engineered to have breathable air, so one can logically assume that the Engineers require Earth-like atmosphere to survive. The surface of the planet, however, does not have breathable air.

So how did the Engineer make it from the crashed ship to the escape pod at the end of the movie?

 

[Weentastic]

There was a lot of stupid stuff in that movie. However, the helmet thing was the least of them. David did say that it was fine, so just assume it was ok.

One thing about the breathable air tht WAS retarded though: the Engineer ship was, um, engineered to have breathable air, so one can logically assume that the Engineers require Earth-like atmosphere to survive. The surface of the planet, however, does not have breathable air.

So how did the Engineer make it from the crashed ship to the escape pod at the end of the movie?

That's a really good point, I didn't think of that. I'm sure someone will try and rationalize it as "space adrenaline".

And as for the other people, I'm talking about in-universe logic, so a director making a character take off his helmet so the girlies in the audience can swoon doesn't count one bit, especially when you are in a series that prides itself (at least the first two) on their attention to detail.

 

[zelda2fanboy]

Yeah, it was kind of stupid. I did like the lines of dialog of the other person yelling at them to not do that at least.