Trevor Steedman wears a Seiko S234 Pulsemeter

Private Wierzbowski does not last long. Trevor Steedman plays him as one of the Colonial Marines who walk into the hive under the atmosphere processor on LV-426, and he is among the first to be taken, grabbed out of the dark and dragged off before the squad understands what is happening. The movie never slows down on him. It certainly never slows down on his wrist.

Which makes this watch a slightly unusual entry, because strictly speaking, you cannot see it.

What you can document is the costuming. For Aliens, James Cameron built his future out of real things: spacecraft and guns modeled on actual hardware, and watches pulled off the Seiko shelf. Ripley got the asymmetric 7A28-7000 chronograph, Bishop the 7A28-6000, Burke the dressy H556-5050 ana-digi. The marines got something plainer. As the watch historian Stephen Foskett puts it, the rest of the colonial marines wore digital Seiko S234 Pulsemeters, the all-black model issued across the squad, its branding painted out so nothing read as a 1980s consumer product.

That watch did real work in the film beyond Wierzbowski's wrist. The same Seiko pulsemeter, modified, became the wrist locator that Corporal Hicks straps onto Ripley so the squad can find her, the device that drives the entire last act when she goes back for Newt. A fitness watch from a sporting-goods aisle, dressed up twice over, once as standard marine kit and once as the gadget that lets the hero be found.

So the honest version is this. We know what the Colonial Marines wore, and Wierzbowski was a Colonial Marine, kitted from the same bins as the rest. The watch on his arm is an inference, a strong one, drawn from a uniform the production documented carefully even for a man with a few seconds to live. The film never gives you the close-up. The costume department gave you the answer anyway.