undertones Other commentary focuses more on the sexual metaphors and undertones of the character. Gerard Loughlin notes that Holm's "subtly prissy" performance of the role conveys a sense of "otherness" for Ash. This was suggested yet further by material that never made it into the released film. Ridley Scott reveals, in the DVD commentary, the existence of a deleted scene where the two female characters discuss Ash, where they discover that neither have had sexual intercourse with him. "I never got the idea that he was particularly interested", states Lambert to Ripley (the scene does appear in the novelization). Loughlin observes that this is suggestive of homosexuality on Ash's part, although his true nature is revealed when he attempts to kill Ripley with the pornographic magazine; an act which is both an echo of the way that the alien "facehugger" infests its victims, and a sexual symbol of phallic penetration and rape by an android that, even if it did have a phallus (which is not specified in the film), would probably have been sexually non-functional. Thompson relates the assertion, echoed by Gallardo and Smith, that Ash's use of the pornographic magazine against Ripley "relat[es] pornography to violence against women", but disputes it, stating that this analyses the scene by itself, without taking into account the larger context of the rest of the film. Thompson points out that this is a clumsy and inefficient way to attempt to kill Ripley, as evidenced not the least by the fact that it takes long enough that other characters are able to turn up on the scene and intervene. Thompson states that rather than relating to pornography and the nature of the magazine, Ash's assault is structured as it is by the filmmakers in order to allude to the "facehugger"'s infestation of its victims, as observed by Ash in an earlier scene where Kane is being CT-scanned. Although not in itself explicitly sexual, it does involve the creature's reproductive cycle. Thompson argues that Ash is here simply emulating the creature that he so admires. Ash's instructions from the Corporation, Thompson argues, did not explicitly state that he kill any member of the crew, and it is possible that Ash acquired his notions of the proper way to kill a human being from observing the alien. Thompson qualifies this interpretation by noting that it is not one that is likely to occur upon a