Basically Joss Whedon's dry run for Firefly/Serenity, with added grue and swears. Ripley seems decidedly out of character, and there's some amazing scenery-chewing from the supporting cast. The lab of botched Ripley clones is the stuff of nightmares.
It's interesting how both the original Alien and to an extent Alien3 feel timeless, while this and Aliens feel absolutely wedded to their respective decades. This film could only have come out of the mid/late 90s.