From: ccoprdj@prism.gatech.EDU (Jorge Diaz)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.movies
Subject: Re: Alien biology
Date: 11 Nov 92 22:33:55 GMT
Organization: Georgia Institute of Technology

In article <1992Nov11.212230.5626@tandem.com> Montague_Kevin@Tandem.com (Kevvy Kev) writes:

>Why?  If she tells them to do something, and they do it, then yes, Virginia,
>she's controlling them.  Maybe we mean different things when we say "control,"
>let me be more clear: controls them the way a sarge controls his troops, or a
>momma her children.  Clear?

OK, good.  :-)

Sorry if I'm being anal about it, I just don't like words like "control".
They imply *way* too much.  So, she rules over them.

>Again, we have to draw from non-canon materials for "evidence," but that's 
>okay, for the purposes of this discussion.  In both books, we Do see the 
>bugs eating.  In the first it eats the ship's stores, in the second, I believe
>they eat the livestock that they don't use for gestation, as well as food from
>the colony.  Again, this is a relatively painless assumption, because (a) it 
>doesn't contradict any of the canonical, or on-screen material, and (b) it 
>makes sense.

OK, this is a reasonable assumption.  I don't actually believe that the
Alien doesn't eat, I was just using that as an example.

>See above. However, let's bring in that wretched third movie here (oblig. slam)
>because I think there's a good point to be made: was the Alien at the end 
>willing to kill Ripley?  Puts a different spin on things.

When it jumped for her you mean?  I still don't think so.  Why would it?  It
didn't know that she was about to kill herself.

UNLESS the Alien sensed that the Queen was ready to come out, and then it
wouldn't matter if it killed Ripley or not.  So, can the drone tell if the
Queen is ready to emerge?  If so, this would seriously affect their treatment
of the Queen's host.

>And I'm saying, we can do better.  If you think about it, this is a knee-jerk
>response, that sounds like cheating.  We can do better than say, "Oh, the 
>numbers don't work out?  Then they must be able to implant multiple embryos."

Well, sometimes NO amount of "reasonable" rationalization can account for
bad writing. :-)

OK, so if they can't plant two embryos, and a single egg can't contain two
facehuggers, how'd the eggs get on the Sulaco?  (deja vu!)

Or do we simply not care about that?

>Shorthand for visible light.  Another obligatory slam at A3, in which our
>"perfect" killing machine relies on the same perceptual tools we astigmatic 
>humans use.  Ugh.

Ah.  Colors of the spectrum.  Got it.  Hmm, yes, again, no way to get around
that bad writing.  OK, so the Aliens don't have eyes.  How do they see?  Or,
how do they sense what's around them?

>Okay, how's this: the alien in the first was a drone that used whatever means
>(help me out here) to turn Brett into an egg, and cocooned Dallas as the next
>host. It then went through the ship, killed the others it ran into, and 
>crawled into the shuttle to die. . .a consequence of its work on Dallas and
>Brett.

OK, sounds good so far.  That's pretty much what the LD says happens.

>The egg that Brett turned into was Huge, *much* bigger than any other
>we see.  The superduper queen f'hugger seen in Fangoria and in outtakes from
                                                ^^^^^^^^  Huh?
>A3 was Huge; obviously it came from a Huge pod; obviously from a host that 
>had been transformed into an egg.

Or....  From the Space Jockey itself.  Not the big facehugger, but the
original Queen.  OK, so there's a little problem with the time involved,
but the Queen is HUGE.  Just like the SJ.  Couldn't she have come from him?

Say....  What if those eggs weren't in the cargo hold when the ship crashed?

What if they were put there later?  Every discussion I've seen involved the
eggs being there already:  Either the SJ's race found them, and was taking
them for obsevation, when the pilot was infected, or else they created them
as a weapon, and were transporting them when the pilot was infected.

What if the Alien that came out of the SJ (say, a Queen) laid all those eggs
*after* the ship crashed?

>Conclusion: the drones can transform a host
>into a queen egg, which releases a queen f'hugger; the Only kind that can
>transform into a queen.  The queen then (remember, queens are bigger faster and
>meaner than drones) cocoons any number of hosts, and lays eggs, and we're off
>to the races.  

Yes, this would make the most sense.  Any drone can produce a Queen, which
can then get the whole hive going.  A drone can ONLY produce a Queen,
in case he only gets one chance - better make it a good one.  That makes
a lot of sense.

>NOW:
>What was that blue film over the eggs in the first movie?

This is what I don't know.  I think that it's a part of the ship itself,
some kind of a containment field or something.  Hmm....

OK, let's assume that the SJ knew what he was carrying, and he knew what
those buggers could do.  The blue field is an alarm of some kind, to let
him know if a hugger hatches and starts trying to get out.  It breaks the
field, and he knows that one is loose.

OK, problems with this theory:

1)  It contradicts my theory above that the eggs weren't there before. :-)
2)  The jockey shouldn't have gotten infected, then, if he knew what they
    were and had an alarm.

But, it does make some kind of sense....  Kane said that the field reacted
when he broke it.  It was *just* over the tops of the eggs....  It would
make a good alarm, a good alarm is necessary for that kind of cargo, what
do you think?

>What happened to
>the alien that gestated inside of the pilot?

Well, my first reaction would be that it died (maybe after laying all the
eggs?  Depends on if they were there before).  I mean, that thing had been
there so long that it had fossilized.  I'm sure the Alien would be dead, unless
it went into hibernation or something.

Assuming that it can hibernate for extrememly long periods of time, it could
very well be the Queen from A2.  The size is just about right.

>And why didn't the colony pick
>up on the warning beacon from the derelict, either before, or during their 
>occupancy of Acheron?

This is the one that bothers me.  Probably poor writing for A2.  But, since
we can't look at it from that point of view (:-), then I'd say it's possible
that the company sent someone over there *before* they sent the terraformers
to shut that thing off.

Or, the terraformers didn't have the necessary equipment to sense the
beacon?

>(. . .We're only guessing.  We aren't dealing with reality.)

Yeah, tell that to Ross. :(

-- 
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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