ALIEN:1st Lifecycle>How many eggs could be made from one Space Jockey?

[Aquehonga]

I mean the xenomorph's Original Lifecycle. I had to use 1st Lifecycle due to the lack of grammatic real estate in the title bar above.

Being the Space Jockeys are so much bigger than humans & the OL xenomorphs appear to make 1 egg from 1 human being cocooned I figured a captured & cocooned Space Jockey would produce 3, maybe 4 eggs.

In the context of the original idea being the Derelict's crew were turned into eggs it makes sense that 1 SJ could be turned into 3,4 maybe 5 eggs yes? Plus this would explain the great abundance of xenomorph eggs in the Derelict's basement/cargo hold.

A rather horrific scenario may have happened if what I suspect here turned out to be true.

Picture this:

An SJ is captured & cocooned by an ALIEN. This SJ's legs are turned into an egg, yet somehow the SJ doesn't die & her/his upper half are still alive & functioning due to the way the egg-producing process works. Maybe similar to how the facehugger keeps the host alive????

This SJ is still alive & conscious, his/her legs gone, now an ALIEN egg (or 2). You'd see this SJ cocooned, & in agony no doubt. Unless the SJ's endorphins kicked in bigtime. Or alternatively, ALIEN secreted endorphin-like chemicals were injected into the SJ's body enabling & “forcing” the SJ's “co-operation”.

It's legs are now an egg & the egg's tendrils are connected to the SJ's upper torso & the ground.

Then this SJ sees the egg open/hatch & she/he gets facehugged by the facehugger the SJ's own body provided the nutrients & energy for. Later a chestburster explodes from her/his chest.

I'd LOVE to illustrate this scene in classic H.R. Giger style. If & when I do I'll put the drawing(s) up here & in other forums.

What do YOU think of my basic idea here regarding multiple eggs from 1 SJ in the context of the Original Lifecycle?

[Anwar]

Well, in the original ORIGINAL script (back when there was still the Alien Temple) the crew found 6 other eggs on the Derelict, not knowing why they were there. Of course they were the other Jockeys turned into eggs (to parallel the Nostromo 7 crew). Either this original draft didn't have the Jockeys as huge, or the eggs were meant to be really big (to the point they could have multiple huggers in them).

So either you're onto something, or the Jockeys get made into big eggs with multiple huggers.

[Aquehonga]

Thanks for your feedback Anwar.

The Director's Cut of ALIEN came on Fox Movie Channel last night.

The DC may be on again on FMC later in the week but I'm not sure.

If folks don't have FMC, you can see deleted scenes from ALIEN on YouTube or if you rent or buy the DVD of ALIEN.

[Candlelight]

I would say there must need to be a certain amount of nutrients for the eggs to form. Only making them out of legs might not be enough.

As for the number of eggs on the derelict; the ship could've been a sleeper vessel, carrying hundreds of similar SJ species (we only ever saw a corridor, the transmission chamber and the egg chamber).

Then again, I think it's more likely that the derelict was a prison ship, transporting the eggs from it's home planet in a bid to get rid of them. One got free, killed the space jockey (maybe the ship's only occupant) and forced them to crash on the planet. Otherwise if it were a multiple crewed ship, I would think there would be more adults created, unless a single adult's primary mission was to generate more like itself.

[Aquehonga]

Thank you Candlelight for your feedback. You make very good & valid points re: the Derelict, SJs & what may have been the situation re: the xenomorphs.

My gruesome SJ scenario above is pushing the envelope no doubt.

Getting multiple eggs from one SJ is just a speculative darkshot of mine trying to explaih the 1,000's of eggs on the Derelict.

I'd love to draw, or try to anyway, that horrific SJ scenario above. Artwise, it'd be awesome, hopefully in H.R. Giger's style,

[Anwar]

To be honest, there isn't much evidence there really were thousands of eggs on the Derelict. We sure don't see thousands when Kane is down there, and Ripley herself was never down at the ship to see thousands. In fact neither Dallas nor Lambert were down there either (they used the cable to pull Kane up). Kane was the only one down there and he didn't remember anything.

So I don't know where the "thousands" came from since nothing in the first movie even implied that.

[QuasarVM]

The eggs were being transported...they weren't formed from the Space Jockey aliens. Obviously one attacked the pilot of the derelict, but the ship was obviously transporting the eggs and the chamber Kane entered with the eggs was clearly setup to protect the eggs...hence the blue protective "laser barrier" and mist to keep the eggs safe and alive for their destination. I don't know if there were "thousands" of eggs down there, but there were a ton of them -- and they show them in a matte painting of the chamber...

I always wanted to see an Alien 5 film directed by Ridley Scott that had the SJs in it...and a visit to their homeworld.

I don't think most people really understood who the SJs were and what they were doing...some people I know even thought the SJ was one of the Xenomorphs...

[Anwar]

Actually, there's no proof the Derelict was transporting the eggs. The writer of Alien even had the whole backstory thought out where they most definately not being transported by the Jockeys. The Jockeys were collecting them from the planet.

[Sephiroth]

werent the Xenomorphs genetically engineered by the Predators?

[Anwar]

No, that's just some silly FanDumb theory they came up with to justify AvP.

[Reverend]

Anwar wrote:

---

Actually, there's no proof the Derelict was transporting the eggs. The writer of Alien even had the whole backstory thought out where they most definately not being transported by the Jockeys. The Jockeys were collecting them from the planet.

Well there's the laser field for one and the fact that this is exactly what Ridley Scott thinks happened. As for the original writer, well rightly or wrongly others got hold of his script before it made it to the screen, so his original intentions are secondary compared to what ended up on screen. Of course it's rather irrelevant since we're not meant to know exactly what happened, it's a mystery!
We don't know if the crash happened because an egg got loose or visa-versa; we don't know what happened to the Xeno that hatched inside the SJ, though it probably went into hibernation and eventually perished, somewhere on the ship (probably a good thing too since if it followed the pattern of using the host as a genetic template then it must have grown to be bloody huge!) We also don't know why others of it's kind didn't come to salvage or destroy the lethal cargo.
Sure, it dosen't take much imagination to come up with any number of possible theories and rationalisations, but that's all they'll be.

[Anwar]

Well, actually there was a scene that explained what happened to the Alien that came out of the Jockey: On the way to the Derelict, Dallas and co go by this weird looking hill. Upon closer inspection the hill is really the fossilized Jockey-Alien. They didn't put it in the movie because they thought it would be confusing or it would spoil too much.

As for Ridley, note that he started with "I THINK this is what happened" (or something like that), not "this is what happened".

As for why others didn't come to help the Jockeys: Their ship was a mining vessel/prospector vessel. They were on LV-426 to find potential mining resources and instead found the eggs. Since they weren't a real science expedition none of their race knew what happened.

Plus the Derelict and the dead Jockey were millions of years old, their race is long dead by now.

[Reverend]

Well, actually there was a scene that explained what happened to the Alien that came out of the Jockey: On the way to the Derelict, Dallas and co go by this weird looking hill. Upon closer inspection the hill is really the fossilized Jockey-Alien. They didn't put it in the movie because they thought it would be confusing or it would spoil too much.

News to me. I only recall a scene with a hieroglyph/mural type thing depicting the Alien's life cycle. Which in and of itself would support Ridley's way of thinking.

As for why others didn't come to help the Jockeys: Their ship was a mining vessel/prospector vessel. They were on LV-426 to find potential mining resources and instead found the eggs. Since they weren't a real science expedition none of their race knew what happened.

I repeat:-
"Sure, it doesn't take much imagination to come up with any number of possible theories and rationalisations, but that's all they'll be."

Plus the Derelict and the dead Jockey were millions of years old, their race is long dead by now.

Hardly explains why nobody showed up in the intervening eons, but then it hardly matters and you somewhat missed the point of that statement anyway.

[Anwar]

The Hieroglyph was actually from O'Bannon's earlier concepts where the Aliens were intelligent and had their own civilization.

As for why no one went looking for them, no one went looking for the Nostromo in the decades after Alien. They all assumed it was lost and left it at that. They had to wait till they found Ripley by accident to even remember the Nostromo. Same for the Jockeys.

[The Borgified Corpse]

Sephiroth wrote:

---

werent the Xenomorphs genetically engineered by the Predators?

I doubt it. I think that, once they discovered the Xenomorph species, the Predators began breeding them. There's even an implication that the Alien Queen in Alien vs. Predator was being pumped full of hormones and that's why the human gestation phase was so much quicker.