From: ccoprdj@prism.gatech.EDU (Jorge Diaz)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.movies
Subject: Re: Alien biology
Date: 9 Nov 92 01:30:17 GMT
Organization: Georgia Institute of Technology

In article <alien.00vs@acheron.amigans.gen.nz*> alien@acheron.amigans.gen.nz (Ross Smith) writes:

*>   I've been doing some serious thinking about the life cycle and caste
*>system of the Aliens, inspired by some reading on the social insects.

This is your first mistake. ;-)

Before we go on:  I'm one of the ones that felt that Aliens was not entirely
consistent with Alien.  However, I don't think that Ridley Scott is god (I
wasn't all that impressed with Blade Runner), nor do I think Aliens is
crap.  I think it's a great movie, not necessarily a great sequel.

*>   Now that I've made it clear that this should only be read by people
*>interested in a rational discussion of Alien biology, we can continue.
*>Please keep in mind that this is just my suggestion for how the Aliens
*>live, based partly on the movies, partly on the Dark Horse comics, and
*>partly on pure speculation.  If anyone has any different ideas, share them
*>with us!

OK, sounds good.  Nothing wrong with speculation, nor with using outside
references (like the Dark Horse comics).  However, I hope you won't mind
if I do the same and make references to cut scenes that appear on the
LD.  After all, if the LD cannot be considered 'canon' then, I don't
see how the DH comics can be.  Not saying that they are not a valid source
of info, I just want to make sure it's OK to discuss *everything*.

*>   When people hear "hive creature", they tend to think of the simplest
*>possible hive system :  a single queen who does all the reproducing, and a
*>whole lot of workers who are sterile (I'll get to the question of males in
*>a minute).  This is the sort of thing we're familiar with from the more
*>familiar kinds of ants, bees, and termites, but it's certainly not the only
*>way to organise a hive.  Among Earth's insects, you can find every
*>imaginable variation on the hive theme, and a few that nobody would have
*>imagined.

I'd say that the reason most of us think that way is because that's exactly
what we were supposed to think after watching Aliens.  "So who's laying
all those eggs?  That would have to be something else, something we haven't
seen yet."

A little while later, viola!, we've seen it.  I think that it was every
intention of the director that the Queen be the only fertile member of the
colony, who lays all the eggs (with or without the help of males, as you
have pointed out below).

*>   In some cases only the queen reproduces, but in others the workers can
*>lay eggs too.  Sometimes worker eggs develop in the same way as queen eggs,
*>but in many cases there are restrictions :  in some ants, for example,
*>workers can lay only male eggs.  In other ants, most worker eggs are
*>infertile and are used as food for the larvae.  In some wasps, multiple
*>queens can share the same hive.

I see no problem with this.  In the LD we are shown that the workers
(warriors?) can also 'lay' eggs.  They don't necessarily lay them, but they
can create them.  The end result is the same:  the hive can continue without
a Queen.  The Queen is certainly the more efficient method of producing eggs,
but she isn't necessary.

"But why is she the more efficient method, Jorge?"

I'm glad you asked. ;-)

Without a Queen, it takes two (2) victims to produce one Alien.  One to
become the egg (and the facehugger), and one to host the new Alien.  With
a Queen, it only takes one (1) victim to produce the Alien.  The host.  The
Queen can lay the eggs without a victim (we assume).  This makes it the
most efficient, because you can get one Alien per host, instead of one
Alien per 2 hosts.  The result is a hive twice the size.

*>   In most hive insects, the reproductive castes have both male and female
*>members, with the males dying (or, as in bees, being killed by the workers)
*>after mating, while the females live on as queens.  However, there are some
*>(mostly solitary) insects in which reproduction is largely or entirely
*>parthenogenetic (female only, without fertilisation), and males are rare or
*>nonexistent.

I think we both agree that the Alien is one of the latter species.

*>   Many people have commented on the contrast in behaviour between the
*>creature in A1, which cautiously hid itself away and attacked only one or
*>two humans at a time, and those in A2, which on one occasion simply threw
*>themselves en masse at the Marines' automated gatling guns.

Yep, that was me.

*>I think this
*>can be explained if we remember that the first Alien knew it was alone, out
*>of touch -- possibly forever -- with its Queen, while those in A2 were in a
*>hive and under the Queen's control.

This is where I disagree with you.  We have no reason to believe that the
Queen actually controls the Aliens.  I don't know if this is speculation on
your part, or if you got this from the comics, but I'm sticking to my guns
here.  There's just no 'canonical' reason to assume that this is true.

I can accept that the Aliens don't eat more easily than I can accept that
they are all under the control of the Queen (at least we have evidence to
support the former in all three movies).

*>   I suspect that, if the first Alien had survived and reached an inhabited
*>planet, it would have founded a new hive.  It wouldn't have become a Queen
*>itself -- I'm assuming that, like Earth insects, an adult Alien can't
*>change caste -- but it would have laid eggs, and one of those eggs would
*>have carried a genuine Queen embryo.

This is a perfectly logical assumption.

*>Actually, several of them probably
*>would, but only one would have survived to adulthood; we know from the DH
*>comics (especially "Genocide") that there is strictly one Queen to a
*>planet.

Whoa!  We *know* from the DH comics?  We were told in the DH comics.  Big
difference.  Just a minor nit, I know.

*>The common Alien caste (the one we see in A1 and A2 -- I'll call

and in A3

*>it the Warrior caste) may or may not lay eggs in a normal hive (probably
*>not, for a reason I'll explain later), but they can, I think, if there's no
*>Queen around and Warriors are left to their own devices.

Fair enough.  Again, I don't think 'lay' is precisely the right word.  Let's
say they 'create' eggs.

*>   How many Alien castes are there?  We know of three from the movies --
*>Warrior, Queen, and the one in A3.

Well, this is something that's subject to interpretation, I guess....
I think the one we saw in A3 was the same as the ones from A1 and A2, except
that it acted differently because it came from a different host (ie, a dog).

We are told in the LD that the Alien does indeed 'borrow' genetic material
from its host.  So the Alien in A3 could very well be a typical Alien, just
like those in the other movies.  It acts the way it does because it comes
from a dog.

*>This was produced by the same
*>facehugger that implanted the Queen embryo in Ripley (I think -- it's been
*>a while since I saw A3, but that's how I remember it),

Um, that's the problem.  We don't know.  Because they did a bad job of
explaining things like how the eggs got there, how many there were, etc,
we just don't know.  It's logical to assume that the possibility exists
that one facehugger can plant two embryos, or even that one egg can hold
two distinct facehuggers.  Not enough evidence.

*>whereas the one that
*>got Kane in A1 carried only one embryo.

Again, this is an assumption.  We don't know if anything was left inside
the egg when Kane got jumped. :-)

*>My explanation for this is that
*>the creature in A3 was of a highly specialised caste that exists solely to
*>protect the young Queen until she's produced enough Warriors to establish a
*>hive.  A Queen-bearing facehugger, unlike a Warrior-bearing one, carries
*>two embryos -- the Queen herself and the protector creature (let's call it
*>a Nurse caste).

Umm.  Well, I *guess* you can look at it that way.  I don't really see the
need for such a creature, and I like to keep things as simple as possible,
so I still believe that there are just the two castes.  But hey, we're into
pure speculation now, so I guess anything is possible.

*>   We can guess that there may be other castes that we haven't seen yet.

Yes, aren't sequels wonderful? :-/

*>   One objection to my claim that Warriors can reproduce when they need to
*>is the DH story "Aliens vs Predator", in which the Predators scatter
*>Warrior eggs over worlds so that they can have the fun of hunting the adult
*>Warriors (killing an Alien is an "initiation ritual" for young Predators).
*>They carefully remove any Queen eggs from the mix so that the infestations
*>won't get out of hand (except on one occasion, when their source of eggs --
*>a captive Queen -- outsmarted the egg-sorting machinery and managed to
*>sneak a Queen egg in among the Warriors).  This suggests that the Predators
*>know that Warriors can't reproduce.

Or that the guys writing the comics needed a good story, and made it
up. :-)

*>   But the Predators don't strike me as being the sort who'd be big on
*>scientific research.

Scientific research.  Pretty nebulous phrase.  I hope you don't mean
technological research.  They seem pretty damn big on that. :-)  Not sure
exactly what you mean by that, so I can't comment on it.



Now, I know that I am one of the ones who was saying that he didn't like the
idea of a 'hive' and a Queen, and that it was inconsistent with Alien.  However,
the fact remains that the movie was filmed, and it is canon, so I have to
accept what happened in that movie, as stupid as I think it might be.  So,
everything that I've stated in this post is assuming that we do have a hive
being ruled by a Queen, which is what we saw in A2.  Just because I'll argue
the point doesn't mean I have to like it.

-- 
Jorge Diaz                       | "I want you to remember, Clark... in all
Georgia Institute of Technology  |  the years to come, in your most private
Office of Information Technology |  moments...my hand at your throat.  I want
ccoprdj@prism.gatech.edu         |  you to remember the one man who beat you."
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