"Alien" Question

[Colonel Midnight]

^ Well, there is the line from Vasquez in Aliens about "another bug hunt"... I've kind of always scratched my head about that one, if there's no other civilizations out there.

Cheers,
-CM-

 

[Extrocomp]

The movies Alien vs Predator and Aliens vs Predator Requiem, and the novel Aliens Steel Egg all involve human contact with aliens before the first movie so the Company was well aware of them, but it's not clear how the Company knew there'd be aliens on the Derelict ship.

In the Alien novelization by Alan Dean Foster, Ash explains that an unmanned probe picked up the signal from the Derelict and the Company translated it, which is how they knew about the alien. In the novel Aliens Original Sin by Michael Jan Friedman (set after Alien Resurrection), Ripley explains that the dead pilot's race (called the Mala'kak) were secretly communicating with humans and told the Company about the Derelict and its cargo. I'm not sure how Ripley found out about it.

The real mystery is not how the Company knew about the aliens during Alien but why they completely forgot about the aliens in the 57 years between the Alien and Aliens. Another huge mystery is how the egg got aboard the Sulaco and how one facehugger managed to impregnate two hosts.

 

[Anwar]

^ Well, there is the line from Vasquez in Aliens about "another bug hunt"... I've kind of always scratched my head about that one, if there's no other civilizations out there.

Cheers,
-CM-

The "Bug Hunt" line is referring to how there are natural lifeforms on other planets colonized by humanity, but they are basically animals, like killing rabbits and stuff to make room for the people. The Jockeys were the first advanced life humans ever encountered.

 

[Colonel Midnight]

^ Fair enough, I guess. Was that in the novelization or something? I don't recall anything like that being said in the movie. 'Course, it's been a few years and a few grey hairs ago...

Cheers,
-CM-

 

[MeanJoePhaser]

Wait, weren't the marines in ALIENS joking about some non-human women?

Hey, I wouldn't mind getting me some more a
that Arcturan poontang. Remember
that time?

Of course, that could just be human colonist poontang.

 

[Professor Zoom]

Good to destroy your enemy, but what if you want to take over the planet? Now you have to destroy the xenomorph.

It's a weapon that could destroy the user.

Certainly, but our own nuclear weapons are hardly a weapon of conquest either.

It's a very similar strategy to the Combine in Half-Life 2 firing shells containing headcrabs at known rebel areas like Ravenholm.

True. But a nuclear weapon is finite. It blows up and it's done. You could blow up a planets ability to wage war but not absolutely destroy a whole planet.

Infecting a planet with the Alien, and well, the whole thing becomes useless unless you find a way to wipe out the aliens.

 

[The Mirrorball Man]

The Jockeys were the first advanced life humans ever encountered.

The corpse of the Space Jockey is the only sentient alien species seen in the Alien series, and we are free to infer that it's the first and only trace of alien civilization that mankind has ever seen in the history of that fictional universe, however:

1) the crew of the Nostromo don't seem particularly surprised to see an alien body.
2) the Space Jockey is never mentioned again by anyone in the series, which would be slightly odd if it were the only alien contact in history.
3) one would think that the Company would be a little more interested in the Space Jockey and the derelict ship if those things were unique.

 

[Hermiod]

True. But a nuclear weapon is finite. It blows up and it's done. You could blow up a planets ability to wage war but not absolutely destroy a whole planet.

Infecting a planet with the Alien, and well, the whole thing becomes useless unless you find a way to wipe out the aliens.

Sure, but the person using the Aliens as a weapon may not care.

Continuing to use the similarities to Half-Life 2 - it was seen as a sign that the Combine were losing control when you start to find the Headcrabs they'd been indiscriminately attacking rebel targets with in their own installations.

 

[Teelie]

Most of the plot holes/inconsistencies can be ret-conned easily enough though it can stretch the limits of plausibility. We don't know what exactly the human race has learned of other aliens in the universe, sentient or otherwise, besides they are not too surprised to encounter it usually.

So it's a guess that they've discovered at the very least alien organisms and maybe semi-sentient ones. For all we know "bug hunt" refers to the equivalent of giant space roaches that infest colonies and colonists freak out and overreact to seeing them if they'd never encountered them before.

The derilict craft and the signal has been pretty much answered. The company learned of it, was able to decipher or take a very good guess at what was contained from the signal itself and sent the crew to pick it up. From what we learn of Ash it's obvious they knew before the crew even left port and that gave them ample time to engineer a plan they thought would work.

How the Company knew is now mostly explained in AVP-R (IMO, the only good thing to come of it was the very ending) and from that point on it might be they learned of more history behind both the Xenomorph and Predator races, albeit they probably never had live or wholly intact specimens to work with.

The Xenomorph itself is tougher to explain since it's intentionally been left murky to their origins. The books show planets that are completely infested and may/may not be their homeworld. The Predators have been hunting them for untold millienia and being a space-faring race they obviously visit several planets. It doesn't have to be the homeworld of the xenomorph for them to find a queen to seed other planets with.

It does still leave how the xenomorph arrived on a non-native planet but we see the Space Jockeys have had their own run-in with them so we can surmise some race somewhere was an unwitting carrier for the Xenomorph. That race could be the Jockeys or the Predators, or some third race we've not seen. Either extinct or just unseen before.

Either way, their true origin can be either a naturally evolved species or a genetically modified/engineered one that got out of control, or was allowed to run loose if you think their originators were intending that kind of chaos.

As before, the Predators using another planet to hunt them on makes more sense than letting them near the home population and possibly escaping or wreaking havoc with their own habitats. For all we know it's happened before and this is a lesson learned by them to go dump them in someone else's backyard.

That link is a good reference but I know the guys behind it and one is kind of a fanatic and has inferred much of his personal theory as fact into some of the murkier areas. Basically, you can take anything not seen in the movies as questionable, the books/comics/etc are semi-canon and hold some water but everything else we are only guessing at or making informed theories on.

 

[Professor Zoom]

True. But a nuclear weapon is finite. It blows up and it's done. You could blow up a planets ability to wage war but not absolutely destroy a whole planet.

Infecting a planet with the Alien, and well, the whole thing becomes useless unless you find a way to wipe out the aliens.

Sure, but the person using the Aliens as a weapon may not care.

True. I guess if you're developing a weapon like the Xenomorph, that may not be the highest of concerns.

 

[Anwar]

The Jockeys were the first advanced life humans ever encountered.

The corpse of the Space Jockey is the only sentient alien species seen in the Alien series, and we are free to infer that it's the first and only trace of alien civilization that mankind has ever seen in the history of that fictional universe, however:

1) the crew of the Nostromo don't seem particularly surprised to see an alien body.
2) the Space Jockey is never mentioned again by anyone in the series, which would be slightly odd if it were the only alien contact in history.
3) one would think that the Company would be a little more interested in the Space Jockey and the derelict ship if those things were unique.

That was part of the message in Alien: Humans had been so commercialized by corporate lifestyle that the prospect of encountering alien life was secondary to the money that could be made from such an encounter. Meeting a dead alien meant less to them than the bioweapon potential or the money from the salvage of the ship.

And the arcturan thing referred to colonists from a planet called Arcturus, not alien women.

Ridley Scott wanted Ash from Alien to be an alien himself, a martian type guy (green, with antennae and the like) until the Producers told him that there weren't other aliens in that universe aside from Humans and the aliens themselves.

 

[Reverend]

Now as big a fan as I am of the Alien/Predator mythos, recently I've been pondering a few aspects of the series and I've uncovered some plot holes. For one thing, in the first Alien film it's made quite clear that the Company that sent the Nostromo crew to LV-426 knew what was lying in wait there and deliberately endangered their lives in order to get the xenomorph......but we're never told exactly how the Company knew, and the rest of the films never follow up on this mystery. So how could this be?

At a guess I'd say Mother automatically relayed the distress/warning beacon to the company while the crew were were still in hypersleep. Given that it took Ripley only a few hours to (somehow) determine the message was a warning, I think it's fair to say, with the company's resources they probably had the whole thing deciphered in a day or two. If the message said something like "crashed with shipment of xenomorph eggs, containment breached, stay the hell away!" then mystery solved.

Also, with the Aliens vs. Predator stories (I'm more a fan of the original literature than the movies), I am somewhat curious as to just why the Predators venerate the xenomorphs so much, and also why they have to infect populations of other planets with xenomorphs in order to hunt them? Why not simply go to the xenomorph's home planet?

Well that's assuming there is a home planet. From what Ridley Scott has said over the years, I get the impression he thought the crashed ship was a weapons delivery system (a "battle wagon" in his words) and the eggs were bio-weapons. In that case, they wouldn't have a natural habitat of their own. As for the Predators, while the films were both shite, I can easily imagine why they might revere a "perfect lifeform" especially in a hunter/warrior culture.

 

[miraclefan]

Ridley Scott wanted Ash from Alien to be an alien himself, a martian type guy (green, with antennae and the like) until the Producers told him that there weren't other aliens in that universe aside from Humans and the aliens themselves.

That can't be true? are you serious?

 

[Anwar]

Yep, he discussed it in an interview a while ago.

 

[Hartzilla2007]

It's a weapon that could destroy the user.

And what makes you think that it didn't already.

 

[darkwing_duck1]

For one thing, in the first Alien film it's made quite clear that the Company that sent the Nostromo crew to LV-426 knew what was lying in wait there and deliberately endangered their lives in order to get the xenomorph......but we're never told exactly how the Company knew, and the rest of the films never follow up on this mystery. So how could this be?

That is going to be covered in the new prequel/remake that is being released.

Already been covered in AvP and AvP:Requiem.

 

[nx1701g]

For one thing, in the first Alien film it's made quite clear that the Company that sent the Nostromo crew to LV-426 knew what was lying in wait there and deliberately endangered their lives in order to get the xenomorph......but we're never told exactly how the Company knew, and the rest of the films never follow up on this mystery. So how could this be?

That is going to be covered in the new prequel/remake that is being released.

Already been covered in AvP and AvP:Requiem.

I meant that how the company knew about the Aliens being on LV-426 was going to be explained.

 

[EJA]

And the arcturan thing referred to colonists from a planet called Arcturus, not alien women.

When talking about the "poomtang" one marine does say to another "The one that you had was a male."

 

[EJA]

At a guess I'd say Mother automatically relayed the distress/warning beacon to the company while the crew were were still in hypersleep.

Ash was planted on board before the Nostromo set off back for Earth, indicating that the Company detected the transmission first and then arranged for the Nostromo crew to investigate it. That was Ash's purpose, to make sure they got the alien back to Earth.

 

[Deckerd]

Well that's assuming there is a home planet. From what Ridley Scott has said over the years, I get the impression he thought the crashed ship was a weapons delivery system (a "battle wagon" in his words) and the eggs were bio-weapons. In that case, they wouldn't have a natural habitat of their own. As for the Predators, while the films were both shite, I can easily imagine why they might revere a "perfect lifeform" especially in a hunter/warrior culture.

You'd think that if it were a transport system for engineered eggs, the manufacturers would have the nous not to have their transport pilot infected with one.