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A L I E N - Director's Cut (for Halloween?)
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[QUOTE]Originally posted by Reverend: [QB] [QUOTE]Originally posted by PsyLiam: [qb] [QUOTE]Originally posted by Triton: [qb] Reinserting the Dallas/Brett scene will also cause continuity problems for James Cameron's "Aliens". [/qb][/QUOTE]Well, I suppose you could make the argument that, in an emergency, warrior xenomorphs are capable of creating eggs out of raw materials (people). Otherwise they would have no way of propogating the species if the Queen is killed. In fact, maybe the warrior drones, in the absence of a Queen, instinctively create a Queen egg out of a poor hapless victim. In that way, everyone wins. Apart from the victim. And the reason that there were two people being converted is that it takes tow bodies worth of resources to create a Queen egg. Or perhaps they make a Queen, and a drone to protect it while it is an infant. [/qb][/QUOTE]Surprisingly this scene is referred to in the Alien<sup>3</sup> novel. It supposes, as you do that an isolated drone/warrior can force a reproductive cycle by converting potential hosts into eggs. This of course would be a very limited way of maintaining a species since it basically halves their birthrate, at least until a Queen is born. The Aliens book also has what I presume is a reference to this encounter with the rudimentary nest. It's when the Marines first encounter the walls covered with the secretions, Ripley notes that she's seen something like this before, just knowhere near on that scale. In regards to how Queens are created, the Aliens novel has some disscussion that draws comparisons with terrestrial bees. If I recall, it states that in a Bee hive it's the drones who decide to make a new Queen, not the Queen herself. Apparantly they do this by feeding a normal developing larva with a substance called "Royal Jelly". In the case of the Alien this would mean a worker would insert this substance (presumably a mix of growth hormones and/or specialised genetic material) into an egg which would in turn filter through to the facehugger, changing the makeup of the embryo within to eventually become a Queen. This would make more sense than the Queen wilfully producing a "Queen-Egg" or the statistical occasionally proposed option of having one such egg randomly produced every so often. For one thing it offers the greater chance for survival of the hive if, so long as there is at least one egg and some hosts, there can a hive. In regards to how long a single Alien can live, I'm heard Ridley Scott suppose that they are very short lived (as little as a few days) because of the rate that they grow and that there darkening colour is due to some form of brusing as the creature ages. Aliens have shown that they can of course live for at least a few months, although they might require reletively long periods of hibernation as evidenced by the behavior of the nest in ALIENS. They're certianly not immortal since there are no Xenomorphs in evidence onboard the deralict and we know that at least one was spawned there (though I shudder to think how formidable THAT particular incarnation would have been, given the size of it's host.) The eggs on the other hand are another matter since it's not clear if the spores seen in the deralict's hold are natuallry long lived (remember the body had been there long enough to be fossilised) or if the 'laser-mist' was responsible. The latter only makes sense if the ship was, as Ridley Scott has suggested, intentionally transporting the spores as bio-weapons. While that seams to be the accepted interpertation, it might be worth bearing in mind that in the original book Ash decode more of the message than is shown in the film. From that he supposes that the [i]other[/i] aliens were noble explorers who picked up the eggs and (obviously) failed to realise how dangerous they were before it was to late, their final act being to force the ship down on an uninhabited planet and set up an automatic warning beacon to prevent the Xenomorphs from spreading. Either explanation is valid as I see it, although the evidence is stacked in favour of the former. I suppose you could say that Ash was intentionally misleading the crew since: - 1. They might not have been so eager to let Kane back inside if they knew that face-hugger was as good as un-exploded ordinance. 2. It's not like anyone else was really qualified to contradict his findings. [/QB][/QUOTE]
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