Space Jockeys VS the Xenomorph Queen and her drones - a fanfiction theory

[red4]

Disregarding Prometheus all together, and using only what we know from Alien and Aliens, I tried to come up with an explanation for the Derelict's presence on LV-426, and the condition it's in. I used visual cues from the movie, and incorporated them into my explanation.
I'm wondering if you guys could scrutinize what I wrote, and point out any plot holes or inconsistencies. I want it to be air-tight.

It helps if you listen to this music while reading: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUo_sTBE3tg

Here it goes...

Using a cargo of eggs to lure the xenomorph Queen aboard their ship, later known as the Derelict or the Juggernaut, a Space Jockey crew executed a last ditch suicidal mission to purge what they believed were the last remnants of the xenomorphs. Once all known xenomorph specimens were aboard, the Space Jockey crew set a course for a random, uncolonized region in deep space. Their plan was to destroy the xenomorphs as thoroughly as they could in an isolated situation. The Space Jockeys were willing to die, as long as the ship stayed on course, rendering the xenomorphs incapable of coming in contact with another life form ever again.

As the ship flew through space, the Space Jockey crew set about fighting the Queen and her drones.

The Space Jockeys managed to trap the Queen in the cargo bay with her eggs, and sealed it off. Their hope was that she would die of starvation after cannibalizing the eggs. Instead, the Queen burned a hole in the ceiling, climbed out, and entered the main cockpit of the ship. During the ensuing skirmish, the ship's autopilot function was damaged, causing it to veer off course, and crash land on LV-426. The Queen overpowered the crew in the cockpit long enough to switch on the blue mist to preserve the eggs, and initiate a distress beacon to attract potential hosts. Once her settings were in place, the Queen exited the cockpit to continue killing the Space Jockeys. One Space Jockey, however, managed to evade the Queen's notice, and made his way back to the cockpit to undo what the Queen had done. His first action was to seal himself inside the cockpit, switch the distress beacon to a warning, and destroy the controls to prevent a reversal. As soon as this was done, however, a facehugger latched onto the Space Jockey, rendering him incapable of switching off the blue mist. The Space Jockey awoke to find himself physically pinned at the wrists by a dozen facehuggers. He remained pinned for the duration of the incubation period, and died when the chestburster emerged.

Any remaining xenomorphs and Space Jockeys died from skirmishes, starvation, and cannibalism.

 

[deserthunter]

Could be a possibility.

 

[crabra comander]

So the Queen knew how to operate machinery?

 

[red4]

So the Queen knew how to operate machinery?

Sorta, yeah. She could kinda figure it out with some quick observation, and a little guess work. I'd say she has almost human intelligence, but not as intelligent as a Space Jockey. Don't forget a Queen operated the elevator in Aliens. She also seems to have a telepathic link with her drones - but that might be pheromones. Seems more like telepathy though. So I get the impression there's advanced stuff going on inside her brain.

 

[crabra comander]

I'm amazed how advanced the jockeys were, yet they had no advanced weapons. No lasers, guns, etc.

 

[red4]

Well, what I theorize is that they were ill prepared for the mission. It was done out of desperation, kinda like Ripley improvising aboard the escape pod when she was half naked, and ejected the xenomorph from the hatch. I'm pretty sure humanity had nukes and laser guns by then, but none were aboard the Nostromo.

 

[crabra comander]

I just meant in general, not even in Prometheus did they seem to want to outright kill the Xenos...

 

[red4]

True, but... eh. Prometheus is full of so many holes.

 

[deserthunter]

Hopefully they improve it if there is a sequel. Suppose to be a different writer.

 

[red4]

That won't matter much to me. There are so many things wrong about Prometheus that would have to be thrown out the window completely for me to want to see its sequel. For instance, the Engineers should be changed so that they're not tall, muscular humans. Instead, they should be changed back to what the Space Jockey was - a truly giant humanoid with a proportionally tiny head. They would also have to say the Engineer ship never fell, because it's too derivative if those damn things keep dropping. The Derelict from Alien should have been the only marooned Engineer ship ever seen in the franchise.

 

[Mr Pink]

"...Once all known xenomorph specimens were aboard, the Space Jockey crew set a course for a random, uncolonized region in deep space. Their plan was to destroy the xenomorphs as thoroughly as they could in an isolated situation. The Space Jockeys were willing to die, as long as the ship stayed on course, rendering the xenomorphs incapable of coming in contact with another life form ever again."

Why not fly the ship into a sun ? That would destroy the Aliens 100%.

"... the ship's autopilot function was damaged, causing it to veer off course, and crash land on LV-426. "

A ship crashing into a plant would leave a nice crater and be pulverized.

 

[red4]

Why not fly the ship into a sun ? That would destroy the Aliens 100%.

Maybe they were headed toward a sun, but never got there, because they veered off course.

A ship crashing into a plant would leave a nice crater and be pulverized.

I don't understand this comment. Did you mean to write "planet" rather than "plant"? Either way, I think it's pretty clear that the ship is made of extremely durable materials, and built with an ingenious design to maximize the strength of the materials. I think it would survive a crash from outside a planet. And even if it wouldn't, we can also assume that perhaps when it veered off course and into LV-426's gravity well, the Space Jockeys attempted to navigate in such a way as to minimize the impact.

As for the crater, maybe it was there, but the angles we see in the movie don't reveal it. Or, maybe it eroded away - when you consider the wind storm that was happening with the Nostromo landed. As well as the perpetual rain storm in Aliens. I think LV-426's surface is constantly eroding rapidly. Craters would erode quickly. Also, if the atmosphere is too thin, or if the planet is in the path of a meteor shower, that's just more stuff to get rid of the large crater created by the Derelict.

I'm suddenly fascinated by the notion that there might have been other Space Jockeys in other parts of the ship; but they were never discovered because the Nostromo explorers had to leave as soon as Kane got infected.

 

[lovelyandy]

red4

This has been a good read and I’ve enjoyed thinking about it and arguing these points, hopefully you enjoy my recourse, it’s a little late, but still…



Disregarding Prometheus all together, and using only what we know from Alien and Aliens, I tried to come up with an explanation for the Derelict's presence on LV-426, and the condition it's in. I used visual cues from the movie, and incorporated them into my explanation.
I'm wondering if you guys could scrutinize what I wrote, and point out any plot holes or inconsistencies. I want it to be air-tight.

It helps if you listen to this music while reading: Jerry Goldsmith - Alien (Complete Score) The Jockey - YouTube

Here it goes...

Using a cargo of eggs to lure the xenomorph Queen aboard their ship

– How would the engineers load up their ship with eggs without them hatching on them? In the AVP comics the predators harvest eggs, but they’re also capable of capturing and holding a queen.

later known as the Derelict or the Juggernaut, a Space Jockey crew executed a last ditch suicidal mission to purge what they believed were the last remnants of the xenomorphs. – Some auto-sentry guns would have done a decent job at thinning the xenos before travel.

Once all known xenomorph specimens were aboard – we talking 10, 100, 1000, 100000?

the Space Jockey crew set a course for a random, uncolonized region in deep space. Their plan was to destroy the xenomorphs as thoroughly as they could in an isolated situation. The Space Jockeys were willing to die, as long as the ship stayed on course, rendering the xenomorphs incapable of coming in contact with another life form ever again.

– Could be, just blowing up the ship would have been far more economical. It’s not as if LV-426 was near anything like the engineers home world or anything so I don’t see a reason it would have had to travel so far before blowing up.

As the ship flew through space, the Space Jockey crew set about fighting the Queen and her drones.

- Would the space jockeys be fighting 1 on 1 like the predators or have a mini gun like the terminator?


The Space Jockeys managed to trap the Queen in the cargo bay with her eggs, and sealed it off. Their hope was that she would die of starvation after cannibalizing the eggs.

- I always got the feeling that aliens would just shut down and hibernate, never got the impression that they need to eat. I read an interesting article re: Prometheus saying the xenos were a form of bio-nano technology that assimilates metal and other materials as ‘food’ and this could explain how quickly they grow, especially in Alien when there was nothing for the chestburster to eat (apart from maybe rats)

Instead, the Queen burned a hole in the ceiling

– Doh

climbed out, and entered the main cockpit of the ship – Sounds too convinient, no bulkheads or force fields or technology or narrow corridors.

During the ensuing skirmish, the ship's autopilot function was damaged, causing it to veer off course

- I hate when that happens

Maybe they were headed toward a sun, but never got there, because they veered off course.

- Oops, missed.

and crash land on LV-426. The Queen overpowered the crew in the cockpit long enough to switch on the blue mist to preserve the eggs

- (in flint lockwood voice) Activating blue mist egg spray

and initiate a distress beacon to attract potential hosts.

- I get that the queen is intelligent, even human level problem solving, but definitely not to the point of using alien technology. An octopus is intelligent but no way it could send a text. I wouldn’t even mind if it went some starship troopers brain bug level of controlling an engineer to do this, but I’m not happy with the queen tapping away on a sponge egg keyboard.

She could kinda figure it out with some quick observation, and a little guess work. I'd say she has almost human intelligence, but not as intelligent as a Space Jockey. Don't forget a Queen operated the elevator in Aliens. She also seems to have a telepathic link with her drones - but that might be pheromones. Seems more like telepathy though. So I get the impression there's advanced stuff going on inside her brain.


- I think there’s a big difference in an animal seeing a person go into a box (lift/elevator) and that box having one button in it to setting a distress signal on a spaceship.
- I think it’s telepathy over pheromones too, though it doesn’t make much difference, the result is the same.


Once her settings were in place, the Queen exited the cockpit to continue killing the Space Jockeys. One Space Jockey, however, managed to evade the Queen's notice, and made his way back to the cockpit to undo what the Queen had done.

- Ctrl + Z

His first action was to seal himself inside the cockpit, switch the distress beacon to a warning

- Just turn it off, or press self-destruct right now, there’s nothing to benefit from not doing wither of those things. A signal no matter what it says is going to attract attention.
-
‘Hey we’ve discovered a signal in space for the first time ever, let’s not go see where it came from.’

, and destroy the controls to prevent a reversal. As soon as this was done, however, a facehugger latched onto the Space Jockey, rendering him incapable of switching off the blue mist. The Space Jockey awoke to find himself physically pinned at the wrists by a dozen facehuggers.

- I like this idea of them working together, but I’d really want the queen to be present to control them, individually I see the face huggers having no intelligence what so ever.

He remained pinned for the duration of the incubation period, and died when the chestburster emerged.

- In your version the engineer doesn’t have a helmet on, that’s his big elephant face yeah?

Any remaining xenomorphs and Space Jockeys died from skirmishes, starvation, and cannibalism.

- Perhaps I’m wrong but I don’t feel the queen would be cool with cannibalism. I think they’d just hibernate until something happened. not really basing that on anything though.


Well, what I theorize is that they were ill prepared for the mission. It was done out of desperation, kinda like Ripley improvising aboard the escape pod when she was half naked, and ejected the xenomorph from the hatch. I'm pretty sure humanity had nukes and laser guns by then, but none were aboard the Nostromo.

- Ripley did a good job of blowing the ship up in a hurry. The nostromo was a mining ship sent to the derelict as hosts for the xenos for WY. That’s a little different to Engineers planning to rid the Xenos forever.


There are so many things wrong about Prometheus that would have to be thrown out the window completely for me to want to see its sequel. For instance, the Engineers should be changed so that they're not tall, muscular humans. Instead, they should be changed back to what the Space Jockey was - a truly giant humanoid with a proportionally tiny head.

- No reason? just because you like them that way? I think the engineers in Prometheus were great, a more evolved species could be like us just bigger stronger and faster, that’s not to say dumpy elephant looking things couldn’t evolve, but the ones with links to humans make more sense.

They would also have to say the Engineer ship never fell, because it's too derivative if those damn things keep dropping. The Derelict from Alien should have been the only marooned Engineer ship ever seen in the franchise.

- I for one am sick to death of seeing Egg > Face Hugger > Chest Burster > Alien. So seeing two derelict space ships is fine by me. I like what Prometheus did with the lifecycle.

- It’s kind alike saying ‘I’m sick of seeing car chases or buildings falling over’ it’s just a thing. The derelicts crashed for two different reasons – Humans getting in the way and Aliens popping out of the chest.

I don't understand this comment. Did you mean to write "planet" rather than "plant"?

- Buuuuuuurn J


Either way, I think it's pretty clear that the ship is made of extremely durable materials, and built with an ingenious design to maximize the strength of the materials.

– Not acid proof though eh.



I think it would survive a crash from outside a planet. And even if it wouldn't, we can also assume that perhaps when it veered off course and into LV-426's gravity well, the Space Jockeys attempted to navigate in such a way as to minimize the impact.

- The timeline kinda falls apart here, so the auto pilot is on, heading to the sun, it gets damaged and it veers off course, the engineer doesn’t have time to turn of the blue mist because he’s steering the ship. He steers it nicely into the atmosphere gets face huggers stuck all over him and it crashes while he’s got an alien inside him. He’s still nicely sat in his seat which I think a crash would have dislodged him. in anycase he would have been trying to do the opposite of a soft landing given that he was trying to fly into a sun.

- I thought also maybe he’d have dead face huggers around him, but I guess they could have crawled away like after Kane.



As for the crater, maybe it was there, but the angles we see in the movie don't reveal it. Or, maybe it eroded away - when you consider the wind storm that was happening with the Nostromo landed. As well as the perpetual rain storm in Aliens. I think LV-426's surface is constantly eroding rapidly. Craters would erode quickly. Also, if the atmosphere is too thin, or if the planet is in the path of a meteor shower, that's just more stuff to get rid of the large crater created by the Derelict.

- If this was the case I’d expect the derelict to be buried under thousands of years of sandstorm dust.

I'm suddenly fascinated by the notion that there might have been other Space Jockeys in other parts of the ship; but they were never discovered because the Nostromo explorers had to leave as soon as Kane got infected.

- Maybe in stasis, or maybe dead in a room slumped over a desk with a space pen in their hand and a book that reads ‘Dear diary, Xenomorphs are like super gross but they are way less gross than Yautja.

 

[red4]

How would the engineers load up their ship with eggs without them hatching on them? In the AVP comics the predators harvest eggs, but they’re also capable of capturing and holding a queen.

Whatever mechanism they used probably contained a portable version of the blue mist or some similar and equally effective technology. The Space Jockeys themselves don't necessarily have to be physically strong. Humans aren't really strong, but we've built gigantic, powerful machines.

Some auto-sentry guns would have done a decent job at thinning the xenos before travel.

As pointed out in another part of this discussion, it's likely the Space Jockeys were working in desperation, in a hurry. Lets assume there were some auto-sentries, we can also assume they became depleted or destroyed.

Once all known xenomorph specimens were aboard – we talking 10, 100, 1000, 100000?

Hundreds of thousands.

Could be, just blowing up the ship would have been far more economical. It’s not as if LV-426 was near anything like the engineers home world or anything so I don’t see a reason it would have had to travel so far before blowing up.

Taking into consideration the likelihood that the Space Jockeys were working in haste, they might not have been carrying anything that could explode like a nuclear bomb. And even if they were, they would want all biological debris to stay away from colonized areas.

Would the space jockeys be fighting 1 on 1 like the predators or have a mini gun like the terminator?

Anything. Both. Let's just assume they're improvising a lot and ill-equipped.

I always got the feeling that aliens would just shut down and hibernate, never got the impression that they need to eat. I read an interesting article re: Prometheus saying the xenos were a form of bio-nano technology that assimilates metal and other materials as ‘food’ and this could explain how quickly they grow, especially in Alien when there was nothing for the chestburster to eat (apart from maybe rats)

That could be. But I have the feintest recollection of reading somewhere that the Xenos eat flesh. It would explain why the larvae need to gestate inside a living animal. And even if they do hibernate, let's assume the span of time between the Derelict crash and Nostromo is longer than the hibernation period - the xenos would have probably died of age by then. Or, we could say they were indeed hibernating during the Nostromo's visit, but were scattered across LV-426's surface, or in caves, and were not disturbed until the events of Aliens.

I get that the queen is intelligent, even human level problem solving, but definitely not to the point of using alien technology. An octopus is intelligent but no way it could send a text. I wouldn’t even mind if it went some starship troopers brain bug level of controlling an engineer to do this, but I’m not happy with the queen tapping away on a sponge egg keyboard.

I definitely think the Queen is extremely intelligent. But her body is too large and clunky to allow her to take full advantage of her intelligence at all times. She makes the most of it however possible. And yeah, she would have done some quick observations about how the Derelict sponge-egg buttons work.

Just turn it off, or press self-destruct right now, there’s nothing to benefit from not doing wither of those things. A signal no matter what it says is going to attract attention.
-
‘Hey we’ve discovered a signal in space for the first time ever, let’s not go see where it came from.’

True, but I like to think the Space Jockeys were not aware of other intelligent lifeforms that wouldn't be able to understand the distress signal. I don't think they were aware of humans. The Space Jockeys would have assumed any other intelligent space travelers would use the same technology and communication methods, thereby minimizing confusion.

I like this idea of them working together, but I’d really want the queen to be present to control them, individually I see the face huggers having no intelligence what so ever.

They probably have no intelligence, but function on honed instincts, such as when the facehugger grabs someone around the neck and keeps fighting them. The facehuggers instincts could kick in when they sense the main infector is struggling with the giant Space Jockey. They instinctively go for the large, flailing arms of the Space Jockey.

In your version the engineer doesn’t have a helmet on, that’s his big elephant face yeah?

Oh no. He definitely is wearing a helmet, as per HR Giger's original notes.
Check out my drawings and notes:
http://fc00.deviantart.net/fs71/f/2012/162/0/0/js1_by_action_figure_opera-d5360ov.png
http://fc03.deviantart.net/fs70/f/2012/162/7/f/js3_by_action_figure_opera-d5360tb.png
http://fc02.deviantart.net/fs71/f/2012/162/5/2/js2_by_action_figure_opera-d5360qz.png
My drawings end above the hips only for the sake of brevity. I do imagine there are legs.

Perhaps I’m wrong but I don’t feel the queen would be cool with cannibalism. I think they’d just hibernate until something happened. not really basing that on anything though.

The Xenos behave in extremely brutal fashion with each other. In Resurrection, 2 Xenos kill a 3rd so that his acid blood burned a hole in their cage. In AvP, the Xenos injur the chained Queen so that her blood burns the chains off. I like the notion that they would be violent and cannibalistic in desperation situations.

Ripley did a good job of blowing the ship up in a hurry. The nostromo was a mining ship sent to the derelict as hosts for the xenos for WY. That’s a little different to Engineers planning to rid the Xenos forever.

It was still a last ditch effort by ill-prepared Space Jockeys. Strip Einstein naked and leave him in the Sahara. You can't expect him to pull a high-tech device out of his butt.

No reason? just because you like them that way? I think the engineers in Prometheus were great, a more evolved species could be like us just bigger stronger and faster, that’s not to say dumpy elephant looking things couldn’t evolve, but the ones with links to humans make more sense.

Linking the Engineers to Earth and humanity shows a big lack of creativity. Completely changing the size and shape of the Space Jockeys shows a lack of integrity. The Engineers are offensive from a plot perspective. They insult my intelligence.

I for one am sick to death of seeing Egg > Face Hugger > Chest Burster > Alien. So seeing two derelict space ships is fine by me. I like what Prometheus did with the lifecycle.
It’s kind alike saying ‘I’m sick of seeing car chases or buildings falling over’ it’s just a thing. The derelicts crashed for two different reasons – Humans getting in the way and Aliens popping out of the chest.

It's too derivative that humans, one 2 unrelated occasions, would bear witness to the event or aftermath of a Juggernaut having landed somewhere unceremoniously. It shows a lack of creativity and integrity by the writers. The chestburster stuff is something that pretty much needs to happen across several movies, because that event drives the plot in a very specific way. But Juggernauts falling out of the sky do not. Also, Prometheus completely discarded the established lifecycle of the Xenos. The blue, coneheaded thing at the end of Prometheus is not a Xeno by any established means. It's random and pointless.

The timeline kinda falls apart here, so the auto pilot is on, heading to the sun, it gets damaged and it veers off course, the engineer doesn’t have time to turn of the blue mist because he’s steering the ship. He steers it nicely into the atmosphere gets face huggers stuck all over him and it crashes while he’s got an alien inside him. He’s still nicely sat in his seat which I think a crash would have dislodged him. in anycase he would have been trying to do the opposite of a soft landing given that he was trying to fly into a sun.

He doesn't steer nicely into the atmosphere or the surface of LV-426. As noted previously, the ship is made of strong materials. So the pilot crashes in a crude and dramatic way, but there is virtually no damage to the ship caused by this hard landing.
In Alien, I think Dallas says that it looks like the Space Jockey is growing out of the chair. I like to think this is an indicator of how thoroughly attached to the seat the Space Jockey is. The bond is so strong, a crash landing would not have thrown him out of the chair. And even if it could, we can still assume the facehuggers acted like multiple seatbelts spread across his body. I don't think the timeline falls apart. I imagine much of this stuff happening within minutes.

If this was the case I’d expect the derelict to be buried under thousands of years of sandstorm dust.

Erosion doesn't just pile up. It also blows and crumples away. There have been a lot of fossils found on the top surface of the ground, exposed by erosion. We can assume there were probably moments in the past when the Derelict was indeed fully buried by erosion, but it was exposed once again when the Nostromo arrived.

 

[The Terminator]

we can also assume that perhaps when it veered off course and into LV-426's gravity well, the Space Jockeys attempted to navigate in such a way as to minimize the impact.

More likely it was the gas giant which affected them, the one LV-426(a moon) is orbiting

The Xenos behave in extremely brutal fashion with each other. In Resurrection, 2 Xenos kill a 3rd so that his acid blood burned a hole in their cage. In AvP, the Xenos injur the chained Queen so that her blood burns the chains off. I like the notion that they would be violent and cannibalistic in desperation situations.

:facepalm and that's where you lost me

What happened with:

only what we know from Alien and Aliens

 

[lovelyandy]

Again another wonderful read, thanks for the reply. Hopefully you’re enjoying it as much as I am, or I’d assumed you wouldn’t have asked for any thoughts.

If you can’t be on with ’arguing’ then please let me know and we’ll agree to leave it there, it’s just such a cool universe and I also think it bears talking about J


lovelyandy said:

​

How would the engineers load up their ship with eggs without them hatching on them? In the AVP comics the predators harvest eggs, but they’re also capable of capturing and holding a queen.
Whatever mechanism they used probably contained a portable version of the blue mist or some similar and equally effective technology. The Space Jockeys themselves don't necessarily have to be physically strong. Humans aren't really strong, but we've built gigantic, powerful machines.

- I like it. I wonder what the blue mist is, and why wouldn’t it work on full grown aliens? Would be handy to just put all the aliens in stasis.


lovelyandy said:

​

Some auto-sentry guns would have done a decent job at thinning the xenos before travel.
As pointed out in another part of this discussion, it's likely the Space Jockeys were working in desperation, in a hurry. Let’s assume there were some auto-sentries, we can also assume they became depleted or destroyed.

- If were’ talking hundreds of thousands then yeah fair enough.



lovelyandy said:

​

Once all known xenomorph specimens were aboard – we talking 10, 100, 1000, 100000?
Hundreds of thousands.

- I have trouble getting my head around how the engineers could ‘herd’ that many let along do it in such a rush they couldn’t send someone to grab a bomb.

- I think they’d either be trying to achieve some goal as a swarm in which case what goal would require thousand of Xenos. Though something world war Z esque comes to mind.
- Or they’re following the queens orders, in which case with her intelligence would she fall for the ole ‘put all your eggs in this spaceship basket’ trick.


lovelyandy said:

​

Could be, just blowing up the ship would have been far more economical. It’s not as if LV-426 was near anything like the engineers home world or anything so I don’t see a reason it would have had to travel so far before blowing up.

Taking into consideration the likelihood that the Space Jockeys were working in haste, they might not have been carrying anything that could explode like a nuclear bomb. And even if they were, they would want all biological debris to stay away from colonized areas.


- I really do have a hard time thinking that the jockeys would do anything involving tens of thousands of aliens in haste.

lovelyandy said:

​

Would the space jockeys be fighting 1 on 1 like the predators or have a mini gun like the terminator?
Anything. Both. Let's just assume they're improvising a lot and ill-equipped.

- If there’s hundreds of thousands of Xenos it’s not really going to make much difference. I’d still expect them to have some sort of large yield weapon of mess alien destruction.


lovelyandy said:

​

I always got the feeling that aliens would just shut down and hibernate, never got the impression that they need to eat. I read an interesting article re: Prometheus saying the xenos were a form of bio-nano technology that assimilates metal and other materials as ‘food’ and this could explain how quickly they grow, especially in Alien when there was nothing for the chestburster to eat (apart from maybe rats)

That could be. But I have the feintest recollection of reading somewhere that the Xenos eat flesh. It would explain why the larvae need to gestate inside a living animal. And even if they do hibernate, let's assume the span of time between the Derelict crash and Nostromo is longer than the hibernation period - the xenos would have probably died of age by then. Or, we could say they were indeed hibernating during the Nostromo's visit, but were scattered across LV-426's surface, or in caves, and were not disturbed until the events of Aliens.

- Again I never got the impression that the larvae was eating the host. Kane seemed fine until it popped out, not like ‘Argh, it feels like theres something chewing away at my insides’ Though I guess any kind of Alien Anaesthetic could explain that.


lovelyandy said:

​

I get that the queen is intelligent, even human level problem solving, but definitely not to the point of using alien technology. An octopus is intelligent but no way it could send a text. I wouldn’t even mind if it went some starship troopers brain bug level of controlling an engineer to do this, but I’m not happy with the queen tapping away on a sponge egg keyboard.
I definitely think the Queen is extremely intelligent. But her body is too large and clunky to allow her to take full advantage of her intelligence at all times. She makes the most of it however possible. And yeah, she would have done some quick observations about how the Derelict sponge-egg buttons work.

- I personally weigh up the queens potential for intelligence with the fact that she spends most of her life sitting laying eggs, unless she’s got an alien equivalent of trashy day time TV.


lovelyandy said:

​

Just turn it off, or press self-destruct right now, there’s nothing to benefit from not doing wither of those things. A signal no matter what it says is going to attract attention.
-
‘Hey we’ve discovered a signal in space for the first time ever, let’s not go see where it came from.’

True, but I like to think the Space Jockeys were not aware of other intelligent lifeforms that wouldn't be able to understand the distress signal. I don't think they were aware of humans. The Space Jockeys would have assumed any other intelligent space travelers would use the same technology and communication methods, thereby minimizing confusion.

- Ah so the signal was more for other space jockeys?


lovelyandy said:

​

I like this idea of them working together, but I’d really want the queen to be present to control them, individually I see the face huggers having no intelligence what so ever.
They probably have no intelligence, but function on honed instincts, such as when the facehugger grabs someone around the neck and keeps fighting them. The facehuggers instincts could kick in when they sense the main infector is struggling with the giant Space Jockey. They instinctively go for the large, flailing arms of the Space Jockey.

- I think as instinctual as they are their instincts are keen enough to go for the face not the arms.


lovelyandy said:

​

In your version the engineer doesn’t have a helmet on, that’s his big elephant face yeah?
Oh no. He definitely is wearing a helmet, as per HR Giger's original notes.
Check out my drawings and notes:
http://fc00.deviantart.net/fs71/f/20...ra-d5360ov.png
http://fc03.deviantart.net/fs70/f/20...ra-d5360tb.png
http://fc02.deviantart.net/fs71/f/20...ra-d5360qz.png
My drawings end above the hips only for the sake of brevity. I do imagine there are legs.

Nice drawings.


lovelyandy said:

​

Perhaps I’m wrong but I don’t feel the queen would be cool with cannibalism. I think they’d just hibernate until something happened. not really basing that on anything though.
The Xenos behave in extremely brutal fashion with each other. In Resurrection, 2 Xenos kill a 3rd so that his acid blood burned a hole in their cage. In AvP, the Xenos injur the chained Queen so that her blood burns the chains off. I like the notion that they would be violent and cannibalistic in desperation situations.

- I on the flip side have a heard time with that, the aliens in resurrection were what a week old? They turned to butchery pretty quick. If they’re that intelligent I’d think they’d wait it out, rather than kill one of their own, but you like that so I’m happy you’re enjoying that side of their character which is obviously present in the later movies.


lovelyandy said:

​

Ripley did a good job of blowing the ship up in a hurry. The nostromo was a mining ship sent to the derelict as hosts for the xenos for WY. That’s a little different to Engineers planning to rid the Xenos forever.
It was still a last ditch effort by ill-prepared Space Jockeys. Strip Einstein naked and leave him in the Sahara. You can't expect him to pull a high-tech device out of his butt.

- My point is Ripley managed it and the last thing she was expecting was to run into an Alien, the engineers I assume had been at war with the aliens for a while before trying some last ditch effort to rid them forever, and thus have put a bit of thought into what will and won’t blow up.


lovelyandy said:

​

No reason? just because you like them that way? I think the engineers in Prometheus were great, a more evolved species could be like us just bigger stronger and faster, that’s not to say dumpy elephant looking things couldn’t evolve, but the ones with links to humans make more sense.
Linking the Engineers to Earth and humanity shows a big lack of creativity. Completely changing the size and shape of the Space Jockeys shows a lack of integrity. The Engineers are offensive from a plot perspective. They insult my intelligence.

- You have to remember Prometheus didn’t explore LV-426 so maybe the Jockey that crashed on that planet was hundreds of thousands of years younger, not as evolved, wearing an earlier version suit or just somehow rotted away into a slump. It’s a stretch but it’s possible, much like an alien finding a skeleton in a WWII flight suit and then one in a space suit and saying ‘they don’t look exactly the same’

- I actually like that the engineers created us, Ancient Aliens ‘n that, it’s fine, it didn’t really do much with that but I like the idea.


lovelyandy said:

​

I for one am sick to death of seeing Egg > Face Hugger > Chest Burster > Alien. So seeing two derelict space ships is fine by me. I like what Prometheus did with the lifecycle.
It’s kind alike saying ‘I’m sick of seeing car chases or buildings falling over’ it’s just a thing. The derelicts crashed for two different reasons – Humans getting in the way and Aliens popping out of the chest.
It's too derivative that humans, one 2 unrelated occasions, would bear witness to the event or aftermath of a Juggernaut having landed somewhere unceremoniously. It shows a lack of creativity and integrity by the writers. The chestburster stuff is something that pretty much needs to happen across several movies, because that event drives the plot in a very specific way. But Juggernauts falling out of the sky do not. Also, Prometheus completely discarded the established lifecycle of the Xenos. The blue, coneheaded thing at the end of Prometheus is not a Xeno by any established means. It's random and pointless.

Nostromo – Infiltrated by alien - exploed
Sulaco – Infiltrated by alien – left adrift
Fury 161 – Infiltrated by alien – shut down
Auriga (?) – Infiltrated by alien – exploded
Betty – Infiltrated by alien – survived

It just happens man, anywhere the aliens go they leave a derelict or an explosive skid mark in space.

I think the opposite, the lifecycle doesn’t drive the plot, the plot drives the plot, the chestburster is fan service mostly, at this point we get it, we know where Xenos come from, you don’t ‘need’ to show it over and over. I find that more pointless.

If we think Aliens the Cut version we just turn up at LV-426 and there’s aliens there. BOOM, nice. I LOVE the deleted scene with Newts parents because it’s really well done, but it’s unnecessary, hense it originally being cut.

It’s been a while since I’ve watched them all but I don’t think there’s any part of any alien movie where the chestburster took us by surprise (ie someone was facehugged off screen and we the audience didn’t see it, not counting alien because that was setting up the lifecycle). IE there’s no scene where one of the main character goes ‘ARGH!’ and a chestburter pops out totally unexpected, because they us every step of the lifecycle over and over.

Haha, I’d love to see Memento the Alien version that starts with Guy Pierce having an Alien pop out of his chest and works backwards.




lovelyandy said:

​

The timeline kinda falls apart here, so the auto pilot is on, heading to the sun, it gets damaged and it veers off course, the engineer doesn’t have time to turn of the blue mist because he’s steering the ship. He steers it nicely into the atmosphere gets face huggers stuck all over him and it crashes while he’s got an alien inside him. He’s still nicely sat in his seat which I think a crash would have dislodged him. in anycase he would have been trying to do the opposite of a soft landing given that he was trying to fly into a sun.
He doesn't steer nicely into the atmosphere or the surface of LV-426. As noted previously, the ship is made of strong materials. So the pilot crashes in a crude and dramatic way, but there is virtually no damage to the ship caused by this hard landing.

- Either it’s inexplicably gentle he survives and gets facehugged, or it’s violent as hell and I’m not sure he’d survive, and if he did would the aliens survive a heck of an impact like that.

In Alien, I think Dallas says that it looks like the Space Jockey is growing out of the chair. I like to think this is an indicator of how thoroughly attached to the seat the Space Jockey is. The bond is so strong, a crash landing would not have thrown him out of the chair. And even if it could, we can still assume the facehuggers acted like multiple seatbelts spread across his body. I don't think the timeline falls apart. I imagine much of this stuff happening within minutes.

- I think this space jockey is a LOT older than 2000 years old and probably has fossilised into the chair or something, maybe his space suit started leaking or melting, like glass is a liquid but a very strong liquid, his space suit could be space glass and has overtime settled.


lovelyandy said:

​

If this was the case I’d expect the derelict to be buried under thousands of years of sandstorm dust.
Erosion doesn't just pile up. It also blows and crumples away. There have been a lot of fossils found on the top surface of the ground, exposed by erosion. We can assume there were probably moments in the past when the Derelict was indeed fully buried by erosion, but it was exposed once again when the Nostromo arrived.

- Fiar enough.

 

[Riceball]

Interesting read but there are 2 things that bug me about this.

1. The queen's intelligence, I feel that you've gone and made her too intelligent and even if she was human level intelligent you're doing the same thing that many Hollywood writers do and that's confuse intelligence with knowledge. It's one thing to be intelligent but that doesn't necessarily mean that you know a lot, for instance, you can be a genius but that doesn't mean that you can look at a physics equation and figure out what it all means if you've never studied physics. Same with the queen, she may be intelligent enough to understand what a distress signal is but there's no way that she could have figured out the Engineers were sending one since there's no direct cause and effect to be observed unless she either understands the Engineer's language, their computer speaks or has a display saying that the distress beacon has been activated.

2. The chestbursters holding the Engineer down, I'm with Lonelyandy on this one, there's nothing to indicate that the chestbursters have the intelligence to do something like this or that the queen could somehow control them. To me they've always seem like purely instinctual creatures that are almost completely mindless and are only good for one thing and that is to impregnate other creatures.

 

[lovelyandy]

Interesting read but there are 2 things that bug me about this.

1. The queen's intelligence, I feel that you've gone and made her too intelligent and even if she was human level intelligent you're doing the same thing that many Hollywood writers do and that's confuse intelligence with knowledge. It's one thing to be intelligent but that doesn't necessarily mean that you know a lot, for instance, you can be a genius but that doesn't mean that you can look at a physics equation and figure out what it all means if you've never studied physics. Same with the queen, she may be intelligent enough to understand what a distress signal is but there's no way that she could have figured out the Engineers were sending one since there's no direct cause and effect to be observed unless she either understands the Engineer's language, their computer speaks or has a display saying that the distress beacon has been activated.

2. The chestbursters holding the Engineer down, I'm with Lonelyandy on this one, there's nothing to indicate that the chestbursters have the intelligence to do something like this or that the queen could somehow control them. To me they've always seem like purely instinctual creatures that are almost completely mindless and are only good for one thing and that is to impregnate other creatures.

totally agree (especially with you agreeing with me :lol) I feel like the queen is probably smart, but not using alien technology smart.

 

[red4]

More likely it was the gas giant which affected them, the one LV-426(a moon) is orbiting



:facepalm and that's where you lost me

What happened with:

I'll be responding to everyone gradually, but first I'll answer your question, The Terminator: I'm more concerned with not contradicting Alien and Aliens. Yes, I said I would only take facts from those 2 movies, but I've already invented so many details like what the naked Space Jockeys look like, and the battles that ensued aboard the ship, and all the theories about erosion, and so many assumptions. I think it's okay to take details from other movies as long as they don't contradict what is established in Alien and Aliens. I haven't taken any details from Prometheus because almost everything from that movie is either too derivative, or it directly contradicts what is established in Alien and Aliens.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

- I have trouble getting my head around how the engineers could ‘herd’ that many let along do it in such a rush they couldn’t send someone to grab a bomb.

- I think they’d either be trying to achieve some goal as a swarm in which case what goal would require thousand of Xenos. Though something world war Z esque comes to mind.
- Or they’re following the queens orders, in which case with her intelligence would she fall for the ole ‘put all your eggs in this spaceship basket’ trick.

When you asked about the numbers, I thought you were asking about the eggs. So I'll be more clear now. I meant hundreds of thousands of eggs, and possibly only several dozen mobile Xenos, and the Queen. I wouldn't go higher than 100 Xenos.

I haven't fully thought through how or why the Queen would bring all her forces aboard the ship. She was trying to save her clutch of eggs, and there was some ingenuity by the Space Jockeys to make sure she brought all of her Xenos aboard. You can fill in those details if you like. The point is, the Space Jockeys did something that lead them to believe they had all Xeno specimens aboard.

Again I never got the impression that the larvae was eating the host. Kane seemed fine until it popped out, not like ‘Argh, it feels like theres something chewing away at my insides’ Though I guess any kind of Alien Anaesthetic could explain that.

I don't mean physically chomping and chewing on the host. More like absorbing their nutrients the way a fetus does. And yeah, an anesthetic is also implied.

I personally weigh up the queens potential for intelligence with the fact that she spends most of her life sitting laying eggs, unless she’s got an alien equivalent of trashy day time TV.

Here is where I would have to go back even further into the creation of the Xenos, which I would rather not. Lets just assume the Xenos are some kind of biological experiment, and that a Queen is born with hyper intelligence. Or maybe the Xenos are a fluke, and a Queen is still born with hyper intelligence.

Ah so the signal was more for other space jockeys?

Yep, or possibly some kind of intergalatic community of multiple intelligent, spacefaring species who have not yet discovered Earth.

I think as instinctual as they are their instincts are keen enough to go for the face not the arms.

The main infector, struggling with the Space Jockey's enormous neck, would instintively send out some kind of SOS pheromone, or something like that. Plants communicate in a very similar way, despite having no intelligence. Plants have been known to gang up on a threat using deterrent odors and pheromones, or some kind of airborn chemical. The facehuggers could have a similar communication system, but act on it in a physical way. Latching on to the arms, instead of the face, can still be attributed to instinct.

But we can still go with your theory. Let's then say that the facehuggers still ganged up on the Space Jockey's face. They could all insert their rape stalks into the Space Jockey's mouth to give him a huge, faster acting dose of anesthetic, while only 1 Facehugger inserts a larva.

My point is Ripley managed it and the last thing she was expecting was to run into an Alien, the engineers I assume had been at war with the aliens for a while before trying some last ditch effort to rid them forever, and thus have put a bit of thought into what will and won’t blow up.

For this, I would have to go further back into the history of the Space Jockeys and Xenos. Let's just assume it was a hush operation. Like maybe there were some Space Jockey scientists who accidentally created the Xenos, and were trying to get rid of them in a hushed and rushed manner, something akin to the Hive in Resident Evil being overrun with zombies, and those pre-STARS forces swooping in to neutralize the problem. Only in this case, the Space Jockey scientists probably didn't have a tactical force at their disposal, or it was overwhelmed.

- You have to remember Prometheus didn’t explore LV-426 so maybe the Jockey that crashed on that planet was hundreds of thousands of years younger, not as evolved, wearing an earlier version suit or just somehow rotted away into a slump. It’s a stretch but it’s possible, much like an alien finding a skeleton in a WWII flight suit and then one in a space suit and saying ‘they don’t look exactly the same’

- I actually like that the engineers created us, Ancient Aliens ‘n that, it’s fine, it didn’t really do much with that but I like the idea.

It's not simply about rotting. The very size and proportions of the Space Jockey are completely different than those of the Engineers from Prometheus.
Take a look:

A fully upright Space Jockey would be about 12 feet tall. The Engineers are 7 or 8 feet at most with camera tricks.

By proportion, a Space Jockey's head is very small.

It just happens man, anywhere the aliens go they leave a derelict or an explosive skid mark in space.

I think the opposite, the lifecycle doesn’t drive the plot, the plot drives the plot, the chestburster is fan service mostly, at this point we get it, we know where Xenos come from, you don’t ‘need’ to show it over and over. I find that more pointless.

If we think Aliens the Cut version we just turn up at LV-426 and there’s aliens there. BOOM, nice. I LOVE the deleted scene with Newts parents because it’s really well done, but it’s unnecessary, hense it originally being cut.

It’s been a while since I’ve watched them all but I don’t think there’s any part of any alien movie where the chestburster took us by surprise (ie someone was facehugged off screen and we the audience didn’t see it, not counting alien because that was setting up the lifecycle). IE there’s no scene where one of the main character goes ‘ARGH!’ and a chestburter pops out totally unexpected, because they us every step of the lifecycle over and over.

I don't mean an onscreen crash. I mean, in the plainest sense, that humans have seen the effects of more than one downed Juggernaut.

A chestburster means a Xeno is born, and that's what drives the plot. The presence of mobile, dangerous Xenos is the point that drives the plot of the Aliens movies. That's why it's not derivative. What is derivative about the Aliens movies, however, is the fact that Ellen Ripley is always involved. I can tolerate that, though, because Signourney Weaver is an excellent actor, and each Aliens movie is better written than Prometheus. Even Resurrection is more coherent and honors the pre-established details of the franchise. Prometheus just has too many weaknesses working against it that render it intolerable by my standards.

- Either it’s inexplicably gentle he survives and gets facehugged, or it’s violent as hell and I’m not sure he’d survive, and if he did would the aliens survive a heck of an impact like that.

Let's also assume there's some kind of internal atmosphere in the ship, or some kind of shockwave dampening system that prevents exterior shockwaves from rattling the interior of the ship.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The queen's intelligence, I feel that you've gone and made her too intelligent and even if she was human level intelligent you're doing the same thing that many Hollywood writers do and that's confuse intelligence with knowledge. It's one thing to be intelligent but that doesn't necessarily mean that you know a lot, for instance, you can be a genius but that doesn't mean that you can look at a physics equation and figure out what it all means if you've never studied physics. Same with the queen, she may be intelligent enough to understand what a distress signal is but there's no way that she could have figured out the Engineers were sending one since there's no direct cause and effect to be observed unless she either understands the Engineer's language, their computer speaks or has a display saying that the distress beacon has been activated.

You're right. I don't know how to get around this.

 

[lovelyandy]

The Terminator said:

​

More likely it was the gas giant which affected them, the one LV-426(a moon) is orbiting

and that's where you lost me

What happened with:
I'll be responding to everyone gradually, but first I'll answer your question, The Terminator: I'm more concerned with not contradicting Alien and Aliens. Yes, I said I would only take facts from those 2 movies, but I've already invented so many details like what the naked Space Jockeys look like, and the battles that ensued aboard the ship, and all the theories about erosion, and so many assumptions. I think it's okay to take details from other movies as long as they don't contradict what is established in Alien and Aliens. I haven't taken any details from Prometheus because almost everything from that movie is either too derivative, or it directly contradicts what is established in Alien and Aliens.

- It’s tough for me to not take details from it personally, in fact I think I may be incapable of not. So I apologise for not fitting the parameters of the discussion. Hopefully the details I try and bring from it will be acceptable.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------


lovelyandy said:

​

- I have trouble getting my head around how the engineers could ‘herd’ that many let along do it in such a rush they couldn’t send someone to grab a bomb.

- I think they’d either be trying to achieve some goal as a swarm in which case what goal would require thousand of Xenos. Though something world war Z esque comes to mind.
- Or they’re following the queens orders, in which case with her intelligence would she fall for the ole ‘put all your eggs in this spaceship basket’ trick.
When you asked about the numbers, I thought you were asking about the eggs. So I'll be more clear now. I meant hundreds of thousands of eggs, and possibly only several dozen mobile Xenos, and the Queen. I wouldn't go higher than 100 Xenos.

I haven't fully thought through how or why the Queen would bring all her forces aboard the ship. She was trying to save her clutch of eggs, and there was some ingenuity by the Space Jockeys to make sure she brought all of her Xenos aboard. You can fill in those details if you like. The point is, the Space Jockeys did something that lead them to believe they had all Xeno specimens aboard.

Right, 100’000 eggs, 500 Zenos. Got it.

I accidentally disturbed an ants nest in my garden once and tic tac sized eggs spilled everywhere, I watched for hours as hundreds of ants streamed in and out in such order picking up eggs and taking them inside the nest. That’s what came to mind. However because of that I can’t get invested in a plan that would have all of the queens drones in one place at one time, it was more like a constant stream of work. So I can’t help but imprint thatall the xenos wouldn’t be in one group but more spread-out thinly but focused on one goal. That’s just my characteristics I’ve imprinted on them though.


lovelyandy said:

​

Again I never got the impression that the larvae was eating the host. Kane seemed fine until it popped out, not like ‘Argh, it feels like theres something chewing away at my insides’ Though I guess any kind of Alien Anaesthetic could explain that.
I don't mean physically chomping and chewing on the host. More like absorbing their nutrients the way a fetus does. And yeah, an anesthetic is also implied.

‘Argh, it feels like theres something disolving away at my’ J


lovelyandy said:

​

I personally weigh up the queens potential for intelligence with the fact that she spends most of her life sitting laying eggs, unless she’s got an alien equivalent of trashy day time TV.
Here is where I would have to go back even further into the creation of the Xenos, which I would rather not. Lets just assume the Xenos are some kind of biological experiment, and that a Queen is born with hyper intelligence. Or maybe the Xenos are a fluke, and a Queen is still born with hyper intelligence.

-


lovelyandy said:

​

Ah so the signal was more for other space jockeys?
Yep, or possibly some kind of intergalatic community of multiple intelligent, spacefaring species who have not yet discovered Earth.

- I still feel like any kind of communication would draw more attention to it, even if it is a distress signal. Though if you’re dealing within the confines of there being a distress signal on Alien it’s not really your fault is it. Unless W-Y put it there to justify going down to the derelict, kind alike planting evidence or saying there’s WMDs down there go check it out.


lovelyandy said:

​

I think as instinctual as they are their instincts are keen enough to go for the face not the arms.
The main infector, struggling with the Space Jockey's enormous neck, would instintively send out some kind of SOS pheromone, or something like that. Plants communicate in a very similar way, despite having no intelligence. Plants have been known to gang up on a threat using deterrent odors and pheromones, or some kind of airborn chemical. The facehuggers could have a similar communication system, but act on it in a physical way. Latching on to the arms, instead of the face, can still be attributed to instinct.

But we can still go with your theory. Let's then say that the facehuggers still ganged up on the Space Jockey's face. They could all insert their rape stalks into the Space Jockey's mouth to give him a huge, faster acting dose of anesthetic, while only 1 Facehugger inserts a larva.

- ‘rape stalks’ oh god.
- Instinct base I think face huggers would sooner fight each other to achieve impregnation than work together, but you think otherwise and that’s also cool.


lovelyandy said:

​

My point is Ripley managed it and the last thing she was expecting was to run into an Alien, the engineers I assume had been at war with the aliens for a while before trying some last ditch effort to rid them forever, and thus have put a bit of thought into what will and won’t blow up.
For this, I would have to go further back into the history of the Space Jockeys and Xenos. Let's just assume it was a hush operation. Like maybe there were some Space Jockey scientists who accidentally created the Xenos, and were trying to get rid of them in a hushed and rushed manner, something akin to the Hive in Resident Evil being overrun with zombies, and those pre-STARS forces swooping in to neutralize the problem. Only in this case, the Space Jockey scientists probably didn't have a tactical force at their disposal, or it was overwhelmed.

- Zombie movie with aliens, nice. When will scientists learn.


lovelyandy said:

​

- You have to remember Prometheus didn’t explore LV-426 so maybe the Jockey that crashed on that planet was hundreds of thousands of years younger, not as evolved, wearing an earlier version suit or just somehow rotted away into a slump. It’s a stretch but it’s possible, much like an alien finding a skeleton in a WWII flight suit and then one in a space suit and saying ‘they don’t look exactly the same’

- I actually like that the engineers created us, Ancient Aliens ‘n that, it’s fine, it didn’t really do much with that but I like the idea.
It's not simply about rotting. The very size and proportions of the Space Jockey are completely different than those of the Engineers from Prometheus.
Take a look:
A fully upright Space Jockey would be about 12 feet tall. The Engineers are 7 or 8 feet at most with camera tricks.

By proportion, a Space Jockey's head is very small.

- Yeah they’re pretty different.
- Ok what if… they have different suits for different things. Pilot suit, heavy lifting suit that kind of think. What if the one on Alien was like an engineer in a power loader. It’s not the best explanation but it’s a start.
- Overall I quite enjoyed Prometheus, it’s not a classic, but it’s better than Resurrection and AVP. However, in the background of a few scenes there’s a big red spacesuit that is made of metal, it looks like it’d be a lot of fun for someone to get in and punch and engineer in the face with….no one uses it, breaks my heart.





lovelyandy said:

​

It just happens man, anywhere the aliens go they leave a derelict or an explosive skid mark in space.

I think the opposite, the lifecycle doesn’t drive the plot, the plot drives the plot, the chestburster is fan service mostly, at this point we get it, we know where Xenos come from, you don’t ‘need’ to show it over and over. I find that more pointless.

If we think Aliens the Cut version we just turn up at LV-426 and there’s aliens there. BOOM, nice. I LOVE the deleted scene with Newts parents because it’s really well done, but it’s unnecessary, hense it originally being cut.

It’s been a while since I’ve watched them all but I don’t think there’s any part of any alien movie where the chestburster took us by surprise (ie someone was facehugged off screen and we the audience didn’t see it, not counting alien because that was setting up the lifecycle). IE there’s no scene where one of the main character goes ‘ARGH!’ and a chestburter pops out totally unexpected, because they us every step of the lifecycle over and over.
I don't mean an onscreen crash. I mean, in the plainest sense, that humans have seen the effects of more than one downed Juggernaut.

- Just because they’re so far the only the third alien race in this universe (we’ve seen, not talking about octurians and all the other species the marines have met) so of course they’re the go to guys. Would you feel better if it was two different ships but from the same race?

A chestburster means a Xeno is born, and that's what drives the plot. The presence of mobile, dangerous Xenos is the point that drives the plot of the Aliens movies. That's why it's not derivative. What is derivative about the Aliens movies, however, is the fact that Ellen Ripley is always involved. I can tolerate that, though, because Signourney Weaver is an excellent actor, and each Aliens movie is better written than Prometheus. Even Resurrection is more coherent and honors the pre-established details of the franchise. Prometheus just has too many weaknesses working against it that render it intolerable by my standards.

- Oh my. I’ve heard people not like Prometheus but never in my days have I heard anyone say Alien Resurrection is a better movie. I need a sit down and a stiff drink.

- Fair enough, not everyone’s gonna like everything. Shame, it’s an OK movie.


lovelyandy said:

​

- Either it’s inexplicably gentle he survives and gets facehugged, or it’s violent as hell and I’m not sure he’d survive, and if he did would the aliens survive a heck of an impact like that.
Let's also assume there's some kind of internal atmosphere in the ship, or some kind of shockwave dampening system that prevents exterior shockwaves from rattling the interior of the ship.

- Haha now all I can think of is a blues brothers style spectacular crash that the space jockey walks away from and dusts himself off.

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Riceball said:

​

The queen's intelligence, I feel that you've gone and made her too intelligent and even if she was human level intelligent you're doing the same thing that many Hollywood writers do and that's confuse intelligence with knowledge. It's one thing to be intelligent but that doesn't necessarily mean that you know a lot, for instance, you can be a genius but that doesn't mean that you can look at a physics equation and figure out what it all means if you've never studied physics. Same with the queen, she may be intelligent enough to understand what a distress signal is but there's no way that she could have figured out the Engineers were sending one since there's no direct cause and effect to be observed unless she either understands the Engineer's language, their computer speaks or has a display saying that the distress beacon has been activated.
You're right. I don't know how to get around this.

- I think the queen pushing a button in a lift is fine but that’s the limit of actually interacting with things. I think the queen could have killed bishop ripley and newt with the element of surprise in a few seconds but I think she wanted to psyche ripley out by ripping bishop apart, so I do think she’s clever, but if she’d got in the drop ship circled round and shot a missile at them then we’d have a problem.