Newt's dad brings back 1 face hugger. I think it's one of the two living ones in the lab. Did they go get 100 more at that point? Did they send 100 people out to the derelict and they all wandered back after the face huggers fell off?
When did the queen show up?
Answer: Just don't think about that. ;-)
Accept the mystery.
I'm sure that's the right answer... Mostly just curious if anyone had any other ideas.
shareIt's a good question. One would assume they did not go back to get more aliens/facehuggers, so the queen must have generated from the first face hugger somehow. The little bugger must have gestated inside Newt's dad and burst out and hid in the colony. In order to reproduce ... seems like a queen is needed so perhaps any alien can turn into a queen if it is needed to lay eggs. Otherwise, where do the eggs come from and how would they reproduce?
Perhaps it is a natural cycle in their lives, and like bees, or perhaps the when one queen exists she gives off some kind of suppressing hormone to the other aliens that keeps them in a worker/drone state and working for her. Once the queen exists and lays an eggs, more aliens would be dependent on random people encountering the egg, looking in and getting face-hugged. That seems kind of ridiculous to me.
Despite all the defense mechanisms and being so fearsome in the alien stage before they have lots of eggs and workers to grab hosts they were very vulnerable to being killed.
That begs the question as to what their natural environment is ... in space or on a planet. The acid for blood thing would only be a problem on a spaceship where it could eat through the hull and vent the ship to vacuum. Other than that it could injure and burn hosts, but I don't see it doing much major damages as it would just eat into the ground until it was neutralized.
It also seems like Ripley's failure to be able to explain this part of the alien's life cycle could have been used in the beginning of aliens to discount the existence of the aliens and project doubt on the truth of Ripley's narrative, explaining why she was treated so badly and could barely survive when she was rescued.
The other side of this was why the incoherent and absurd strategy of "the company" to retrieve the alien by having untrained and clueless personnel hauling billions in resources randomly encounter it and die and lose the cargo? Or programming the synthetic to undermine the humans. How did the company seem to know ahead of time what they were looking for to weaponize?
last two paragraphs are good points!
Presumably The Company always programs to Android to takeover and treat the humans as expandable in any situation, just happened to be Alien this time , ie maybe they didnt know what they were getting into.
Once the queen exists and lays an eggs, more aliens would be dependent on random people encountering the egg, looking in and getting face-hugged. That seems kind of ridiculous to me.
The other side of this was why the incoherent and absurd strategy of "the company" to retrieve the alien by having untrained and clueless personnel hauling billions in resources randomly encounter it and die and lose the cargo?
In the director’s cut of Alien it’s explained that a single alien is able to harvest humans and use them to develop more eggs. It reproduces by laying eggs (using its victims as nutrients for the egg) and is then able to capture more hosts to bring back to be impregnated.Well, like I described, ridiculous.
It wasn’t “the company” sending the Nostromo to retrieve the Alien, but more than likely some lone Wolf executive looking to make a name for himself and avoid any bureaucratic troubles of obtaining the specimen without anyone else’s knowledge.Ah, that might be an interesting speculation, but I did not see a shred of anything that pointed to that or implied it. Did you? share
> In the director’s cut of Alien it’s explained that a single alien is able to harvest humans and use them to develop more eggs.
Where is that "explained". If a single alien does not need an off to reproduce, then why go through all the energy to make a queen and lay them. Also, if it can grow to enormous proportions without eating humans, or anything else, why would it need humans to develop an egg? I mean, if there is some coherent story or logic that parallels the movie, that's one thing, but if they just throw some line out there for the audience to hand-wave an illogical and contradictory life-cycle story that is another. Uber-fans I guess don't care and will accept anything. Just saying, I have not seem anything that makes any sense in this series, and the follow-ons were the same stupid way. Eye-candy and scary monster scenes ... with no purpose, logic or reason - or real plot.
Well, like I described, ridiculous
Ah, that might be an interesting speculation, but I did not see a shred of anything that pointed to that or implied it. Did you?
If a single alien does not need an off to reproduce, then why go through all the energy to make a queen and lay them
if it can grow to enormous proportions without eating humans, or anything else, why would it need humans to develop an egg?
I mean, if there is some coherent story or logic that parallels the movie, that's one thing, but if they just throw some line out there for the audience to hand-wave an illogical and contradictory life-cycle story that is another
this is a good post.
as you said, bees and many female ants have the ability to become queens once their colony's queen begins to give off pheromones showing declining health.
" In the colony's information log, Ripley later reads that Burke sent the colonists to the Derelict Ship directly after hearing about it from her testimony."
shareYeah, I get that. But, there's 150ish colonists and maybe almost that many aliens... So what percentage of the colonists went out to the derelict after Newt's dad came back with the face hugger?
The movie is at least somewhat smart here- they say that Newt's dad doesn't get infected, but dies when they remove the face hugger. Or else a single alien would have killed all the colonists before they ever got any more eggs/huggers/queen.
I'm just missing the step from "wow, it killed that guy, let's go get more" to "whoops, all 100 of these eggs we brought back hugged most of our faces" to "everyone left tried to shoot the aliens and failed... And there's a queen now".
I'm just missing the step from "wow, it killed that guy, let's go get more" to "whoops, all 100 of these eggs we brought back hugged most of our faces" to "everyone left tried to shoot the aliens and failed... And there's a queen now".
you're right, thats quite a missing step.
I guess it depends what was there to start with - was it just a bunch of eggs? (no queen no soldier aliens) ?
first alien out must have dragged living humans back to that nuclear plant nest to host ... wait that doesent work
Based on the first movie, and the colony scenes from the extended cut of the second movie- it seems like it's just a bunch of eggs.
I guess the queen could be hiding out near the derelict this whole time.
If I had to guess, I'd say that the alien lifecycle includes some kind of "is there a queen?" box in a flowchart, and if not, then somehow one of the next eggs, or facehuggers orders up a new queen.
Don't bees or ants do something like that?
" "is there a queen?" box in a flowchart,"
yeah thats what Brux postulated in post above.
We need bee / ant expert to help us! :)
"The movie is at least somewhat smart here- they say that Newt's dad doesn't get infected, but dies when they remove the face hugger."
No, that's incorrect.
On seeing the facehuggers in the lab, Bishop reads a medical report, saying "Removed surgically before embryo implantation. Subject: Marachuk, John J. Died during procedure."
So they aren't even talking about Newt's father here, as their family name is Jordon.
Oh, my mistake then. Now I'm even more confused about what happened to her dad.
I guess if he birthed an alien, that it's possible the colonists were able to kill it before it wiped everyone out
or it ran off back to the egg nest and sat on them for a bit to hatch them.
Although we've only ever seen a face hugger hatch out of an egg when theres a face available,
which makes their lifecycle even more difficult / confusing / unrealistic.
One of those early facehuggers could have spawned the queen. Once a queen was inside the colony, more eggs inside the colony.
shareThere are many novels set in the Aliens universe. There is a three book trilogy, which is excellent. The last book, River of Pain, I think it is called, takes place at Hadley's Hope, during the fall of the colony. The book is great, and you learn how and why what happened. I don't want to spoil it for you, read the book.
shareI'll confess- I'll never read the book. Do you mind spoiling it for me?
shareIt wasn't Newts Dad who died having the face hugger removed.
If you want an idea about what happened then you can read 'Newts Tale' on line.
Audio drama version available well worth listening to it explains a lot.
shareAs opposed to, say, a 5-book trilogy?
shareThe order of events:
—> Some of the colonists come back from the derelict ship with facehuggers stuck to them.
—> Some of these colonists then birth aliens.
—> These aliens escape and grow, to then go about abducting more victims to be used to create more eggs and birth more aliens.
—> At some point one of the alien drones molts into a Queen and begins laying eggs like a production line.
—> Eventually all the colonists are captured or killed.
Makes sense to me.
shareExcellent book, River of Pain. There WERE some marines in the station (maybe a dozen) BTW, but since they were never (ever) mentioned in the movie, I think they were added for backstory/lore. As noted above, the Colonists (and some marines I believe) rushed back out to check out the alien ship, despite knowing about the danger/parasite, and even though they are CAREFUL, they (of course) bring back another dozen of so infected colonists. Thye detach, most escape, and now there are 7-8 full sizen Aliens abducting colonists and bringing them back to the alien ship that still had scores of eggs (plenty). At some point an alien evolves into a queen...there you go.
shareI did not know nothing about this book!
shareYeah. I just figured the first one became a queen and laid more eggs somewhere inside the colony.
shareThe cocoon scene in the first movie would explain it, if Ridley hadn't cut it and left a door open to Cameron's stupid queen idea.
shareHear hear..
The queen was never meant to be, and it's that that ruins this film as an 'Alien' movie. Apparently Cameron knew about the cut scene, but instead of continuing with the original life cycle, he decided to turn the Alien into a space ant.
Aliens is a good movie, but a bad 'Alien' movie.
The queen was there all along. Since the colonists didn't know what they were up against the xenomorphs had time to abduct and breed. By the time the colonists realized the danger it was too late.
shareI just figured one of the first xenomorphs could have grown into a queen. then things would have gone the way you said.
shareI’m not saying it was aliens…but it was aliens.
shareEverybody forgets there is a lot time in between the events in the movie. The time the colonists first get face-hugged until the time the Marines arrive. The loss of communications probably happened mid-invasion.
shareThere are plenty of plausible scenarios, all of which are irrelevant to the entertainment value of the film. By that I mean that I didn't wonder once about this issue the numerous times I've seen the film. There are plenty of badly written movies that these sorts of questions are natural and distracting, but I don't think this qualifies. It's perfectly reasonable, for example, that if the first colonist died from surgical removal of a facehugger that other colonists would go investigate (even without Burke's prodding). The philosophy of a best defense being a good offense sort of thing. Some colonists might have gotten impregnated near the alien ship, and recently birthed aliens went to their outpost with some eggs or perhaps kidnapped them.
share