The ship from Aliens, in the opening sequence, is shown to have been housing an alien egg, no doubt laid during some unseen moment by the Queen.  Which... makes little sense, since from the moment the dropship had landed back on the main ship to the time when Ripley finally offs the Queen, she'd had no time to sneak off and lay anything.  But I digress again.  The crawly hand thing version of the alien hatches, finds the sleeper pods and cracks inside, infesting... someone...

Ripley lands on a prison mining colony made up of "double Y chromosome" inmates, meaning really aggressive guys, led unofficially by underused actor Charles S. Dutton.  Hicks and Newt didn't survive (kind of takes away from the happy ending of Aliens, don't it?), and Bishop's body is even more mangled.  Most of the inmates have, in name anyway, taken vows of celibacy and non-violence that are challenged by Ripley's soon hairless presence.  There's a problem with head lice, you see.

Ripley gets tough with them all and manages to gain some semblance of respect from the inmates.  Meanwhile, somebody's dog was sniffing around Ripley's crashed ship and got something on its face.  The dog later gets the Kane treatment and blows out a dog-like mini alien, which hides and gets bigger.  Inmates start dying.  Ripley knows what's up and is shocked that a maximum security prison has no weapons.  (Apparently she's not too familiar with prison systems).  Her only friend, the ad hoc doctor, gets offed by the alien, but only sniffs her before leaving.

Long story short, Ripley finds out that she got the alien queen egg, so she fluctuates between trying to kill herself and getting tough to make a final stand.  Dutton helps her decide by making her fight.  The alien is lured inmate by inmate to a big section where lead is to be poured.  The chase sequence here, sometimes from the alien's POV (they have eyes??), is nice and suspenseful.  It's Dutton who ends up sacrificing himself in the molten lead, since the alien won't stay in place unless it has a victim waiting for it.

Ripley ends up blowing up the alien by spraying it with cold water after the lead fails to stop it.  It's a temperature difference thing.  One inmate and Ripley are left now.  Then the Company shows up, led by Bishop's designer, who looks like Bishop, and tries to convince Ripley to relax; they're from the government and they're there to help her.  Ripley drops into the molten lead instead, catching the alien queen just as it bursts from her chest.

Okay, so it IS a bleak film. But visually, I like it, and I really liked Dutton's character.  I still don't forgive the writer for killing Newt and Hicks, though.