Several things about the Alien's behaviour made no sense.

My theory is that the Queen doesn't exist in the Alien universe because the Alien can propagate without having to become a giant eusocial insect.



Requiescat in pace, Krystle Papile. I'll always miss you. Justice was finally served.

I never considered that, though I was somewhat confused about what it was doing with the other crew members that were being used as eggs.

I say f11ck him ! He's an arrogant, people hating ,keyboard glory seeker he has 0 friends! The only friends he got is people who suck his ar5e because he's an internet bully , if this guy ever saw real action he'd react like the piss ant on the stairs in saving private ryan , the guys a drip.

Dude. Don't pick on the Cutty. He gets very defensive about his 'military' past.

A very short lifespan would tie in well with the alien in Alien being primarily a psychopath that actively enjoys killing rather than merely defending itself.

An Alien that could feel itself to have a short lifespan would have no need to go swooping down on Brett, toying with Lambert. The alien didn't need to kill to survive - and its lifespan meant the hurt and effort wouldn't be worth it to anything but a psychopath. The alien'd be dead soon anyway, as if nature itself has always had it on the shortest possible Death Row. This psychopath had nothing to lose in going 'boo' to the captain and killing him. You only have to look at the alien to guess real life inspirations that might have been mashed up in to its design eg panther, spider/octopus, shark, praying mantis, passive cat. In Alien 3 the host itself too of course. In Alien, there is like an 'Unholy Trinity' of the Alien, the Company, and Ash. Only the faceless money men survive intact, just a little money lost on that expedition. To the film's enormous credit, it doesn't need to do anything but imply how the working people will unexpectedly become fodder for the cold hand of capitalism. Was it a coincidence that Margaret Thatcher came to power that year, something that would have been forecastable before then? Americans may scoff and wrongly claim that this isn't largely a British film with international expertise in it. Still, a 'coincidence' that seems meant to be. The class messages are certainly more pertinent to the UK, the Alien as psychopathic bureaucrat, like railway costcutter Dr Beeching, killing former certainties.

Well just ignore what doesn't suit your surface viewing but the Alien is a psychopath. Perhaps one initially scared of the power and cunning of even its own nature at the point of its birth (it may be looking round for its mother for all anyone knows. Aliens certainly makes the mother central) but quickly becoming fully formed psychopathic serial killer.

Any link to Scott's explanation?


I joined the Navy to see the world, only to discover the world is 2/3 water!

Just admit your wrong so the little sailor can sleep sound at night and not wonder into your bedroom cuz he's scared haha

"The writers wanted the alien to have an extremely short lifespan (24 hours)?"
Is that just speculation ? or have you heard that somewhere?


"How can they cut the power! They're animals!"
no , seriously . Isnt it more likely the Aliens just accidentally melted a power line or something , rather than actually being intelligent? There no other signs of them being intelligent.
...and im not counting them stopping running into sentry gun fire as "intelligent" , any animal could do that.
In fact having to take that lesson about 100 times really says the opposite about them.

“ But the crew didn’t know that it would die in 24 hours.”

Well, we don’t know that either. I’m not inclined to take Ridley Scott’s interpretation of the Alien as gospel, considering he also wanted it to bite Ripley’s head off and then speak in her voice into the audio-log.

“The creature went from baby to adult in the matter of a few minutes. So a short lifespan accords with the rapid growth.”

It was more than a few minutes. There is an obvious passage of time between Kane’s death and the rest of the crew gathering into search parties to look for the creature. The amount of time it would have taken them to clean up the mess hall of all the blood and disinfect it, not to mention Ash would have likely performed an autopsy on Kane, before preparing his body for burial, could have lasted a few hours to half a day.

If you say it was in a dormant / hibernating state, then why did it do nothing when Ridley opened the hatch, looked directly at it, screamed, and made a lot of noise?