============================================================================ Addendum Issue# 27 - 10th April 2002 URL: http://www.adden.tr.cx/ Author : Steak, we've got [bowl] movemnt! ================= A biological report on Aliens ============================ Have you ever seen the film Alien? You know, the one where the crew of the Nostromo set down on an alien planet and go looking for this ship thing And one of the crew members, Kane comes back with that crab like face hugger on his face and then something comes out of his chest grows up and stars to devoir the crew one by one. What about the sequel? Aliens, the one where riply (the survivor of the first flick) goes back to the planet with a group of marines and they kick some alien butt an meet up with the big queen alien at the end. And the next one? Alien3 where riply goes to this prison planet with a group of no hoper y-chromosomes who have found god at the end of the universe, but an alien is along for the ride. and the horrible Alien Resurrection, Hollywood action flick with a bunch of cooperates that clone Ripley and give her some alien DNA which makes her one bad ass bitch. Well did you know that there is a lot more to these films than meets the eye. There is a lot of information that you probably did not know and some that you probably worked out for yourself. The purpose of this file is to try and explain some of that to you and to give you a better understanding of the films 1. Lifecycle of aliens This I think is where I will start off as it is the thing that you need to know, I will be referring to this throughout this file. I will write this section of the file treating the reader as if they are living some time after the events of alien, aliens, alien3 and alien resurrection and will refer to the information in the style of a 'fantasy history' KEY: Stage [Stage number] : [Stage name] : [Movie(s) the stage can be found in, Alien = 'A', Aliens = 'AS', Alien3 = 'A3', Alien Resurrection = 'AR'] Stage 1: Egg : A,AS,A3,AR The egg is the first stage of the alien life cycle. The egg is 'born' if you will from the egg sack of a gestating queen. They seem to be semi-translucent and react to presence within there local area. When they do react, the top splits open into four pieces and the second stage, the face hugger can be seen inside, the face hugger then jumps out of the egg at the host in a kind of jack-in-the-box way. Stage 2: Face hugger : A,,AS,A3,AR The face hugger is the second stage, it resembles a hose shoe crab with a long powerful tail, it is yellowish in colour and has molecular acid for blood. It jumps from the egg onto the nearest host's face. Once the hugger is in place it renders the victim into a coma like state and feeds the victim oxygen through the large flaps at the bottom of its body to keep it alive. Once it has completed all that it then can get on with its main job in life,, implantation it does this by placing a long tongue like tube down the victims throat into there chest cavity. It will then implant an embryo into the victim and then wait there for a while for the creature inside to gestate enough for it to live on its own, then it will crawl off the face of the victim and die. It has been speculated that in a situation where it is far from the nest and there is a need to implant a second victim it can do so, but in most cases, like a normal nest environment or when there are no other victims present like say a locked medi-lab the face hugger will just die. Once the face hugger is in place it cannot be removed by any means possible, trying to cut it off will cause the blood to spill out and burn instantly through anything that it touches, be it steel, iron, aluminum, skin, bone etc. Stage 3 : Embryo A,A3, It has shown to be variable as to how long an embryo takes to gestate inside a host, it can take from anywhere from an hour to a couple of days the reason for this is unknown, it is thought to be based on the metabolism of the host, what kind of animal it is and maybe other parts that we don't know about During gestation it has been shown that the alien develops some characteristics from the host. In the first reported encounter the alien was tall and thin, just like the human host, the alien walked on two legs and showed very human characteristics like intelligence and a sadistic nature however as a contrast on Fury 161 where the impregnated victim was a dog the alien shown canine characteristics, like the fact it ran on all fours, mauled its victims for a bit before killing them and was very fast. Stage 4 : chest buster a,as,a3,ar The chest buster is more of a "baby alien" than a actual normal part of the life cycle. It has two jobs in life one is to bust out of the victim through it's ribcage and into the outside world, the second is to survive and shed its skin to become an adult Stage 5 : Adult a,as,a3,ar The fifth stage of the alien life cycle is the adult alien, this is usually the end of the cycle for most aliens as the do not reproduce, the are neither female nor male so cannot reproduce. The standard alien is between six and eight feet tall and is a super fast killing machine. it is at least as intelligent as a dog but not as intelligent as a human, they can push switches and remember what they do, as well as remember places and land marks. Aliens behave differently depending on there proximity to the nest, or more precisely the queen, an alien that is alone, like the one that was encountered aboard the nostromo will act violently, crouching in tunnels and hiding, waiting for its prey to come to it, or at least close to it, it will sometimes come away from its relative darkness to hunt prey but not usually. Aliens that have a functioning nest present like the ones encountered in Hadley’s hope on LV-426 will behave differently, they will not kill there prey unless it is absolutely necessary, they prefer to coma there victims and take prisoners back to the nest for implantation, they will stick there victims to the wall and a egg will be moved from the egg chamber near the victim, the victim will wake up out of there coma to an opening egg, the face hugger will do its job and the alien will be "born" right there inside the nest. However, an alien on his own that is near a queen or a host carrying a queen, like the one encountered at Fury 161 will do its best to protect the queen or the queens host, being violent and acting like an alien on his own until the queen is born and starts producing eggs, when it will just act like a nest worker, along with every other alien. Stage 6 : Queen as, ar The queen is much larger than the standard adult aliens, she is about ten foot tall and much more dangerous, she is the ruler of an entire nest, she sits in her thrown above the egg chamber. She lays eggs from her egg sack. Although it has been observed that she does not need her egg sack to lay eggs, it is speculated that the egg sack is just there to gestate the eggs quicker than they would in the outside world. In 2381 Lt. Ellen Ripley was cloned to obtain the queen embryo from inside her and to produce eggs for biological weapons however things got out of hand and some deaths were involved. The queen however was successfully retrieved. However she escaped and set up a nest where aliens were bread however the queen soon stopped producing eggs and instead developed a womb which was a 'gift' from Ripley past down to the queen through the genetic producing. There were no hosts, there were no parasites, only her. It gave birth to a genetic human/alien hybrid. It did not consider that the queen to be its mother, due to its genetic link, it decided that riply was more it's mother and saw the alien queen as a threat to riply. It attacked its real mother knocking her entire jaw off, spilling the highly acidic blood everywhere it then perused Ripley into her escape vehicle. little is known about the alien reproduction system, but there is a theory, one that I myself subscribe to that the adult aliens themselves are neither male or female and hence do not have hormones, find another alien 'attractive', do not have a 'mating season' or indeed at all 'mate'. As a contrast the queen is both male and female, hence the a-sexual reproduction, the production of eggs without a male and the intense emotional/telepathic connection to her eggs. Well that’s the entire alien life cycle, I think I covered everything. From egg to queen these creatures are fascinating beautiful almost perfect organisms, yet highly dangerous and ultimately unpredictable. 2. Differences in alien bodies If you watch the first film and take notice of the creatures distinct physiological build you will notice some things that are apparent across the entire series i.e.: large looming back head, long articulated tail, double jaw etc however there are some distinct characteristics that are different throughout all three films, Here I will note the differences between the aliens in all four films 'Alien' alien Body color: Black Head: Long, sitting at a 90 degree angle to back of the body, a smooth transparent coating protecting what look like inner ridges, distinct 'human' looking skull structure at front under transparent 'skin' Claws: Six Body shape: Tall and thin 'Aliens' alien Body color: Black/blue Head: Long, sitting at a 90 degree angle to back of the body, no smooth transparent layer, ridges in full view, no sign of distinct human looking skull Claws: Three Body shape: Tall and thin 'Alien3' alien Body color: Black/red Head: Long, sitting flush against back, no transparent layer but still a smooth finish to the skull. Claws: Three Body shape: This time the body shape was less tall and thin and more along the lines of an actual animal, the hind and front legs were articulated and the head was flush against the back of the creature, this facilitated the running that this alien was accustomed to. This one was built for speed and it shows in it body structure. In reality the reason for these differences is the need to keep up with the times and create more menacing and frightening looking aliens. Especially in Alien Resurrection where they were changed back again from the ridged heads to the smooth heads. However we are looking at all this from a fantastical point of view so we therefore cannot be content with the "real world" reason so we need a film reason. Many theories have been presented for this inconsistency in the species, and this has been a topic of hot debate I will list some of the most popular here. The crest theory In accordance to this theory the aliens from the first, third and forth films, with the smooth heads were solider aliens, they are the attacker type aliens that specialize in killing and nothing else, the first line of defense for the nest if you will. they are highly aggressive violent and relatively unintelligent and put there own safety above that of the nest sometimes. The aliens in the second film were nest workers, they have the ridges on the head, are generally less violent and will not attack you until you disturb the nest. They will however take hosts back to the nest for implantation, as this is the main way for an alien to reproduce they feel that this is more important. They are bred primarily for nest work and not for killing, that is left to the solders, however if the nest is being threatened then they can be just as violent as solider aliens and will kill on site. The main difference is that they always put the nest before them, laying there own life down if it will stop the intruders, unlike a solider who will stalk its prey in the shadows a worker will use itself cannon fodder and use its own body as a decoy so that other aliens can move in for the kill. The maturing theory. The maturing theory is the idea that the aliens from all the movies are all the same. The ones with the translucent heads such as encountered on the nostromo, the augra and fury 161, are young aliens, they are less than say, a week old. After a week or so and the aliens have set up a nest and there a queen present and they have all been interacting and the nest is doing rather well, like the scenario encountered at Hadley’s hope the aliens malt their skin, more importantly there translucent head skin and they have the ridges. I really am not sure which theory I subscribe to, if I had to choose I couldn't, The maturing theory seems to fit most of the on screen evidence but then again so does the crest theory, and that seems more in tune with the alien existence. Of course there can be only one real answer which is the fact that the directors of the movies changed the appearance of the aliens to look more scary and dramatic. But if we accepted that we really couldn’t have all that much fun trying to work out and write addendums on the inner workings of a nest could we. ============================================================================ Addendum Issue# 27 - 10th April 2002 (C) Steak April 2002 ============================================================================