From: jsbell@acs.ucalgary.ca (Joshua Bell)
Subject: Re: Natives Down the River (was re: ALIEN^3 Eggs on Sulaco)
Date: Tue, 18 Aug 92 22:10:59 GMT
Organization: The University of Calgary, Alberta

In article <1992Aug18.204559.14931@u.washington.edu> daynem@byron.u.washington.edu (Dayne Miller) writes:
[snippitysnip]
>	So, assuming an embryo finds itself implanted either first or 
>alone, it develops as a queen. Otherwise, it develops as a 
>worker-warrior. Queen development is much slower than 
>worker-warrior development (and we can guess that maybe 
>Ripley's embryo was further slower by hypersleep). What about, 
>you say, the alien that burst out of Caine on the Nostromo? Was 
Aigh!!!...............................^^^^^

Kane. Sorry, I was going nuts.

>it a queen? YES! THE ORIGINAL ALIEN ON THE NOSTROMO 
>WAS A YOUNG, NOT-YET-MATURE QUEEN!!! Nothing says a 
>queen can't go through a development, pre-pod-laying stage (or 
>at least a stage where egg-laying is secondary to eliminating 
>rivals and cocooning new hosts; perhaps immature queens are 
>only able to lay one of two eggs at a time). 

Nothing says it can, either. Everything we're shown points to the
concept that Queen Aliens are born that way, from special embryos
(and special f'huggers, but that was cut).

>The young alien queen 
>on the Nostromo was able (according to the book (and the 
>Special Edition???) to implant Dallas, thus she must have layed 
>at least one egg, but there wasn't any kind of mass-production 
>effort like in ALIENS.

No evidence that Dallas was implanted... he was cocooned up, and
being... digested. Brett's body was further along in the process
(check Giger's Alien for pics), and was becomming an egg, IMHO.

>	So where did the pods in the Sulaco come from? Just 
>because the alien queen lost her egg sac doesn't mean her 
>reproductive glands weren't still working.

Thats not the problem. How'd the eggs get into the Hypersleep
area, where the eggs were seen? Unless you allow the Queen to run
through the ship, lay eggs, affix them to a bulkhead (or
something. I'm waiting for A^3 to come out on tape. :) run back
to the Dropship, hide in the landing skid bay, tuck her spines
back in, and wait for Bishop, Ripley and Newt to come down... and
for Ripley to completely miss the eggs when tucking Newt, Hicks,
Bishop and herself into Hypersleep... well, momma didn't lay
those eggs.

> The egg sac possibly 
>served only as an aid to maturation of the pods. 

Possibly. IMHO, unlikely. Look at momma termites. This is the
kind of thing Cameron was copying, anyway - bloated form,
immobile mother (after she sheds her wings and has mated,
anyway), tended by warriors and workers, just a giant egg
machine... Leaves no question in my mind as to the purpose of the
sac and the abilities of the queen.

>If you accept 
>the theory that the Nostromo alien was a young egg-laying 
>queen (who didn't have an egg sac), there's no reason to 
>assume that a mature queen can't also lay eggs without the sac. 

Even accepting this, they couldn't be where they are on the Sulaco.

>Maybe depositing a pod or two is even a survival-of-the-species 
>response by the queen to finding herself in a new location 
>without any worker-warriors. 

My personal theory seems to be consistant with the movie, and
oddly enough, Cameron's development of the characters.

1) Bishop wasn't a liar. He would not allow the humans to come to
harm.

2) The eggs weren't aboard the ship when Ripley, Newt and co.
went to sleep. Ripley is paranoid, not stupid.

3) Weyland-Yutani is willing to do anything for a buck, and
doesn't trust the Colonial Marine Corps anyway.

After Ripley & co were in Hypersleep, the Sulaco sent the
dropship back down to the site of the Derilect from Alien. This
was logged in the flight recorder Bishop and Ripley analyze in
Alien^3. Bishop was unaware of this program until he analyzed the
flight recorder.

The dropship simply sat and waited, for any amount of time, with
its hatches open. Perhaps, after it detected intruders, or after
a few days, it closed up again and docked with the Sulaco. Out
crawled some warriors, perhaps some of the smooth-headed drones,
who found the hypersleep chamber. They planted the eggs, and went
into hypernation. (As seen in Aliens, the adults don't seem to do
much to help their children be born, but will certainly defend
them.) "They were with us all along," says Bishop.

When the f'hugger cracked Newt's canopy, and the mayhem ensued,
two f'huggers were dragged along for the ride to the EEV. One
impregnated Ripley (either directly, or impregnated Newt, died,
and the queen embryo migrated to Ripley after Newt died, as in
the Dark Horse Alien^3 adaptation), the other waited until it
found a suitable host (the dog).

Anyone see any problems with this sceme?

>And as for Ripley 
>being dumb enough to not check for pods in the dropship 
>nacelles, well, everyone screws up from time to time. Ripley was 
>lilely in delayed-reaction shock at the time for a while, and after 
>that it just slipped her mind. Maybe she was even subconciously 
>avoiding thinking about the possiblity that the Sulaco was NOT 
>in fact necessarily a safe place to be.

I haven't seen Alien^3 yet. However, many posters have stated
that the eggs were not in the landing skid bay, but in the
Hypersleep area. Ripley is NOT an idiot.

>	So why don't I think there are any fertile male aliens? 
>Because I think the aliens are a created species, not an evolved 
>one.

Possible. I wouldn't vote either way. And many happily evolved
earth species lack fertile males, or any at all. There is a
species of parthenogenic lizards, all female. In many species of
insects, lack of fertilization by males is what determines the
sex of the offspring.

>I find it difficult 
>to imagine a planetary environment where the aliens would have 
>evolved into the form and lifecycle that they have (and if they 
>did, what kind of species evolved as their rivals?) 

I don't. I do imagine that they've been space roaches for
millions of years, so have evolved into space parasites, with
resistance to vacuum, all atmospheres, near-perfect hibernation
(eggs and adults), tolerance to heat and cold...

>Here's the 
>idea. Two races are involved in some sort of interstellar racial 
>war. One of them develops a killer organisn (the alien we all 
>know and love) and attempts to seed it onto the planet or 
>planets of their enemy. The ship we saw crashed on Acheron 
>was POSSIBLY one of the seeding ships, with an architecture 
>designed to transport thousands of the eggs to the enemy. 
>Somehow someone screwed up and miscalculated, and at least 
>one of the aliens got free, killed the pilot, and caused the ship to 
>crash.

A good possiblity. Or, the Space Jockey could have been the lone
victim, and he set up the warning. The Alien that hatched could
have laid the eggs. (Tho I find it hard to imagine a Queen
setting up shop without workers.)

> Alternately, the ship could belong to the original target 
>race, which has been "infested", or even (and this is BY FAR my 
>prefered theory) to a third race which wandered onto the scene 
>after the aliens wiped out both their designated enemies and 
>their miscalculating progenitors. The ship of that race that was 
>infected was at least able to start a warning beacon before it 
>crashed.

I like this as well... tho I have a hard time reconciling two
facts: There are a large number of eggs, and there seems to be
only one host. Or maybe there were 10000 off camera... the ship
was big enough. :)

>       Another reason to assume that there aren't any males is
>that in most species sexual reproduction allows genes from the
>male and genes from the female to (hopefully) combine in a manner 
>that produces an offspring that is more capable of survival. In 
>the case of the alien, the gene-borrowing aspect of embyonic
>development takes care of this. The embryos take what they might
>need from their host, rather than hoping that some male happens
>to provide the right mix of genetic material.

Okay. Gene-borrowing - this I CANNOT accept. The idea that
somehow, some critter could, on a molecular level, manage to
incorporate foreign (alien) material into its genes is improbible
to say the least. There are trillions of ways DNA could be
interpreted, and even assuming that the the Alien metabolism
could incorporate some of that material, and even read it
correctly (maybe it borrows ribosomal translators?), the
'attributes' of the host (eg, quadrapedal vs. bipedal) are only
coded by the vast number of interactions between all the active
genes within an earth organism. Sampling only snips and snails of
a human genome won't tell you diddly about our overall form.

What I can accept is that a growing embryo can detect
electromagnetic sensations (pick up muscle activity), and adapt
its form to meet those (ie, inside the dog it can tell that
quadrapedal life forms are the best suited to its environment, so
it develops into a quadrapedal form, but still biochemically the
same as any other Alien).

> You'd think they'd try to clone the thing or at least examine 
>the genetic structure (though I realize that just because we 
>didn't see them grab any samples doesn't mean they didn't).

Bwahaha. :) Their 'samples' just ended up destroying the ship
they were carried on (Sulaco), and killing the crew (Ripley,
Newt, Hicks, Bishop), just as Aliens are meant to do.

>	I think that covers everything, and should clear up some 
>points. I welcome any Net discussion on the subject.

So discussed. This is getting good, and hopefully away from the
Aliens vs Alien^3 war thats going on. Personally I'm looking
forward to seeing 3, as I don't think the plot is that bad. I do
think (and I've posted a summary of this earlier), that the
script was a horrible amalgamation of cuts, budget constrains and
multiple writers, which SOMEHOW managed to be pulled together
into a mostly cohesive whole.

I still think they shoulda cleared up where the eggs came from
(tho I'm happy with my theory, same as everyone else seems to be
with theirs), and I personally hoped that the sacrifices made to
save Newt and Hicks wouldn't be wasted, but oh well, thats
business...


Joshua
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