Your explanations for the Queen...

My theory since the late 1980s is host morphed into egg produces a Queen bearing egg/ facehugger.  Simple.

Interesting. So in other words, an egg morph can only produce a queen.

That is definitely simple.... and satisfying

It allows a lone non-Queen to start a hive.  Otherwise it's down to blind luck whether the species can perpetuate with any longevity.

That theory does make sense. It still makes me wonder about the Derelict though. The chest burster from the SJ burned through the floor where all the eggs were found. If that creature was to start a hive, it would have needed bodies. That brings up the question if there was a crew aboard the Derelict. To be fair, that queen concept didn't exist at that time. Unless we could say it was a queen that burst from the SJ?

dk

I remember reading Ridley originally wanted one engineer pyramid near the derelict in Alien and that this is where the eggs would be discovered and Kane impregnated. If I remember correctly from what I read, the production cost of a second structure was too high, so they instead put the cavern of eggs under the ship. This leads me to believe that when Ridley did Alien, he intended to convey (much as in Spaiht's Prometheus script) that the engineers (or Space Jockey) had manufactured the eggs as opposed to a queen laying them.

If Ridley goes with his original idea, then we can assume that a facehugger in cargo simply sensed an opportunity, found it's way to the seated SJ and implanted, then perhaps the resultant chest burster butchered itself trying to push through the SJ armor which led to the hole in the floor.

But now that we have the queen concept, I wonder if Ridley will switch gears and perhaps go with the idea that a queen was born from the SJ or what you've proposed about egg morphing and a crew.

QES

I read something similar to what you read. The result made it appear that the egg nest was a lower level of the Derelict. The queen concept didn't come until Aliens. So it seems that RS has the reins on how or if it will be explained.

This is an excellent question.I'm still trying to figure this one out.One theory i have is perhaps a queen first came from a possible human/trilobite birth.

why not a spider or other egg laying insect that came with the crew got a drop of black goo?

YC-865

Are you new? If so, welcome aboard!

Your idea sounds good on the surface but I am thinking if RS wants to do that, it would be in the next movie after AC. In the meantime, could you flesh out your idea a bit more?

Thats a wild idea.

Which came first? The Alien or the Egg? In my opinion I say the Alien. I like to think that the Queen is a result of an evolutionary "branch" of the species. Prometheus and Covenant are teaching us that the Aliens don't need a Queen and that they come in many... many different forms. 

Sorry YC

I see you have been here since at least last July. I just have not come across you before.

my theory....

the xeno is an ancient species discovered and then worshipped by the engineers. they r based in part on a bee hive where there is a queen but the others have the ability to be a queen if she is killed which would allow the species to colonise on a planetary scale (multiple queens each with theyr own territory)  though while she is alive she produces a pheromone that supresses the others until the hive reaches a certain size then a handful of xenos leave to start a hive of theyr own. when the chest burster molts, its environment dictates what it becomes. on a planet where there would be many hosts, if there is no queen it will molt into a queen. if there is already a queen in the area it will become a typical xeno joined to the local hive. in an environment where there is little or no hosts, a queen isn't really required as she would continually produce unnecessary eggs so a xeno which has the ability to morph life forms into eggs for a limited amount of time is what the burster becomes.

just a theory though

Derelict. Queen or ultramorph comes from sj..makes a hole...creates eggs and let them wait for new hosts..when they sense hosts they hatch.

If the enginners made them why would it hatch on a controled environment make a hole uppers and grab itself on a masked engineer?he cant...engineer had the mask on.

So he was facehugged prior ..amnesia....burster comes...hole in the ground...eggs.

Queen. The best suitable theory. Only one eggmorph(bigger egg) can be done and needs to be a female host for reproductive genes when a queen needs to emerge if the environment needs it and supports the specie growth...enough hosts..need for hierarchy etc..altho it think the purpose of xeno is survival and immediatly building a hive.

Ali theory is good..but i cant buy the randomly xeno morphs itself into a queen. Altho i like the idea a xeno eggmorphing itself into a queen...like a butterfly method...it cant be a normal xeno.

So..for me the queen would be the very first being ever created...and chiken first and egg second.

So how do you create a queen...well i would make it in a laboratory mixing black goo with traces of reproductive genes,the fiercest universe beast..and etc..or simply put..the queen was allways the true perfect organism..able to reproduce itself..stronger...much more inteligent...the xeno cant be it..so they have their suits,black goo, eggs..etc all of that comes from a anscient beast ,queen style.

So i would put it this way...from all we know so far as canon.

What comes first...the queen or the black goo...where does it come from :)

 The mural if u look closely behind and upp the deaconish alien...has a huge queen head shell...and on the downside...facehuggers and humans..bald ones.maybe engineers.

I disagree chris.

Prometheus and ac are showing us that black goo on different hosts and process gives us different aliens. But how does a neo multiply itself?how does the deacon? 

With xeno we know how ..its canon..the queen is canon.unless ridley pulls a major ace with eggmorph concept..witouth discarding the queen then ok.

They cannot erase the queen or modify what we learned for 20 years.

So xenomorph specie needs and has a queen. Their objective is survival and hive establishment

According to the original Alien, the xenomorph seems to propagate asexually (plant propagation) which would mean that every xenomorph is identical. The Life cycle seems to involve a living host (e.g. a human) which slowly disintegrates and changes into an egg (in which a face hugger will develop) etc. A queen is therefore not needed.

well ye but then aliens came making eggmorph not canon or needed either so we were left with a queen and ridley cant undo that just cuz he meant otherwise..he doesnt own alien,its only choice is to adapt.

It's more horrifying if it's something different (more plantlike - like The Thing) than if it's humanlike. No emotions, purely instincts. Like an insect . . .

Here we can see Brett, disintegrated and transformed into an egg.

It would seem unlikely that whatever came out of the Space Jockey on the Derelict deliberately made the hole in the floor, unless it was seriously wounded.

There's also the question of where the blue light covering the egg came from. I don't think that would have been placed there by a queen.

What that from?

This is a major problem with the franchise and how each movie they never seem to give it a in depth thought of how it connects to the previous movies... there are many many faults and one is the Procreation of the Organism.

Alien: It was intended to show just as Star Beast which Alien is based off did, that the Organism starts as a Egg, then it goes through the life Cycle of Face Huger to Host to Chest Buster then to a Adult...  then the Adult can Egg Morph a Host to start the process over again.

The Organism thus clones itself, but it requires Genetic Material from a Host in order to do so.  The big flaw with this method was not only did the Egg Morph look way larger than a Egg, does the Egg Morph shrink?   Why would the Xenomorph not go and capture all the crew and attempt to make 4X Egg Morphs, which would need 4 hosts..... or 2X Egg Morphs and use other Two Crew as Hosts so we would be able to develop TWO more Xenomorphs on that ship.

Aliens: carried on based of the Alien Theatrical release and so they could bypass the Egg Morph route... I would assume that in this respect a Hive has to be set up by Drones in order to then me suitable for a Queen to emerge and start laying Eggs.

This would require a Xenomorph a lot of work to make the hive ready, but then the Problem is how does ONE Xenomorph set up a new Hive? If we go the route to assume that certain influences on a environment can lead to a Egg being changed into a Royal Egg... or maybe the Drone can change a Egg into a Queen one via some kind of interaction (Royal Jelly) who knows.

So this route is also Flawed....

Unless more than One Egg is activated, because we have to ask how does a single Drone produce Eggs?

This is a mystery and a subject that we dont have a 100% way to look at it,  but i would assume once a Hive is set up that the Material the Hive is made off either affects environment and climate or/and produce pheromones or similar so as that it effects a Egg to then produce a Queen, and the Hive/Eggs then interact via pheromones or environmental changes that are maybe connected to a Queen too so that the Hive can somehow determine that there is no need for a Queen or Drone and will produce Warriors instead.

When a Queen dies.... something must change in the hive, be it pheromones or some Psychic connection, that then would allow another Egg to be changed to a Royal Egg.

I would assume if a Egg is taken away from a hive, or the Face Huger infects a Host that is some distance from a hive where it would be out of range to any pheromones, environmental factors or Physic influences....  The Egg or Face Huger then realizes its away from a set up Hive Colony and will Automatically produce a Drone.

Thats about the best explanation i can come up with.

I would think the Blue Myst may block what ever Factors that allows the Organism to detect what stage of a Hive creation it is at... so the Blue Myst may prevent a Face Huger from Producing anything but a Drone... otherwise maybe it would detect the Eggs and think it needs to produce a Warrior or Queen.

The only way i can think of fitting both Egg Morph and Queen would be as SM stated and its the theory i had for many years, is that logically a Egg Morph produces either a Queen Face Huger or a Queen itself.

This is why the egg size was larger.

Why the Xeno only needed Brett (Egg) and Dallas (Host) as the result would be a Queen that could then start to lay any number of Eggs.

Off course going against this theory would be Alien 3 and the smaller Royal Face Huger and then also how and where would a Egg Morph had occurred to get the Eggs on the Sulaco.

The logical way would then be that either the Queen can determine what the Eggs would produce or that again the Eggs that got brought on the Sulaco would determine a Drone and a Queen to give it TWO chances to procreate... these are determined by factors as listed in the prior post... and so when these Eggs detect no Hive or Queen... then Automatically produce a Drone or Queen.

As with Big Dave and S.M., I am a fair believer that the Queen is produced from a Royal Facehugger born from an egg-morphed host. Meaning that had the Nostromo not been destroyed it would have returned to Earth with a Queen and many, many eggs on board.

Big Dave does bring up the slight issue of the mystery egg aboard the Sulaco as seen in Alien 3, which if I recall correctly S.M. is a firm believer that the Queen must have planted it onboard, carrying it between her dorsal spines, which in all honesty is the best answer we fans have, but we can elaborate it...

Although I could not tell begin to suggest what the biological process involved would be, I have always imagined that after cocooning Brett to the walls with some sort of "phlegm" the "Big Chap" drone in Alien extended it's inner jaw into Bretts mouth, depositing something that began the process of turning Brett into an egg.

I would imagine this act is a one time deal, with each Xenomorph capable of egg morphing a single host, but at the cost of their life (explaining "Big Chaps" lethargic behavior aboard the Narcissus). As such it may have been that the Queen too performed this act on a single host (maybe Carter J. Burke), transforming them into an egg which would sire another Royal Facehugger (pictured below), and through Ripley, another Queen.

As for the eggs aboard the Derelict; there is another possibility none of us have imagined...

Prometheus used a lot of unused ideas from Aliens "Star Beast" original script, this is well publicized. Less so is how much the movie also borrowed from 2004's Alien v Predator. In the latter, it is shown that the Predators visited ancient humans whom would offer human sacrifices for the Facehuggers so that "Teen" Predators could earn their right of passage defeating the "Ultimate Prey".

What if... the Engineers upon visiting ancient humans demanded many human sacrifices, whom would kneel within the bowels of the Juggernaut as the Engineer fed each of them a drop of black goo, that in time transformed each of these human sacrifices into an egg. This could explain the artifacts discovered by Shaw and Holloway, depicting an Engineer pointing to the Zeta II Reticuli system; inferring "This is where I am taking the human sacrifices." 

Maybe the Engineer gathered too many sacrifices and fell victim to the Facehugger born from the first formed egg before he could secure himself inside his seat and armor, producing a Queen that then added to the eggs in the vessel's bowels until it died, producing thousands off additional eggs.

I agree with what many of you have said, but personally I think I like the egg-morphing (cell division/cloning) better (no queen needed). It’s more plant like (alien), like the original The Thing. But I suppose, if they want to connect all the films in the alien franchise, they have to stick with the queen-idea?

On the other hand, now we have spores and the mutagen which complicate everything . . .

If my theory about Shaw is correct then the queen DNA would have come from her.( my theory about Shaw is on my forum: What happened to Shaw ) 

Hi Guys n Gals,

How do we know the Queen in Aliens wasn't already alive on the derelict?  Once Mr. Jordan got facehugged, and once there were enough xeno's they moved the queen from the derelict to a more hospitable location so she could start egg production.  It's what army ants do in real life.  This solves a couple problems at one time.

Rick

What if lv 426 already had a queen there..from the lv 426 chestburster sj event.

And so thats what we gonna see how the sj get impregnated with a queen..when it connects to alien..

Maybe the queen was the ultramorph modification inspired all along.

Because imagine we get the ultramorph from the engineer...this is as big as a queen...and now imagine a queen ultramorph...this is double queen size..insanaty.

Tiago,

I'm implying maybe the SJ's were carrying a queen as cargo supply, too.  Nothing like having an Egg Bomber with an endless supply of eggs.  I hate going the AvP route but how do we know they didn't have her giant a$$ in stasis or something? Like the predators did and when the ship crashed she was freed or maybe she was still in stasis since the blue "protective" beam over the eggs was still active after the crash.  There could also be a whole mess of things we didn't see in the labyrinthian arms of the Derelict Bomber.

Rick

Rick,

Ok but even if its there. What we need to figure out is this.

If a facehugger got away...he makes the hole in the ground..and grabs the sj. It cant be this way .he would have the mask on..so even if it ataches itself and he crashes he woudnt get infected and killed..so theory about facehugger escaping cant be.

The only way that engineer could get facehugged was before he launched the derelict .when he got facehuged amnesia..he wakes up and moves on...suddenly along the journey he got chestbursted and crashed the derelict. This is the only possible way.

Now the next is what needs to be discussed.

Whatever it came from him was based on what we know and study.

- ultramorph ( original concept, never on screen )

- queen( plausible,maybe ultramorph inspired,lays eggs )

- deacon(based on prometheus birth) but unlikely due to complex process..and also deacon would burst him from behind.

So what comes from him made the hole in the ground with acid.we know aliens have this hability.we never saw a juvenile queen.we never saw a juvenile or adult ultra.

The hole leads to the cargo where the eggs are.

Was it cargo or did this creature layed them there?

If its cargo why did the creature went towards them,and where is it,died?where are the remains? Did it escape?.in aliens a queen is building the hive and we dont know how it got there. We assumed it was a royal egg in the derelict ..but its only assumption.

Or

One random xeno turns itself into a queen to lead the hive when theres lots of hosts around..colony hadleys hope.

However this is also assumptions.

What we do know in fact and was ALLWAYS shown to us is the queen the only one able to produce eggs and multiply the species...in every game in every movie,other then requiem avp.wich was predalien impregnating eggs towards female bellys.

Sooo ,

Did the queen layed those eggs in the cargo...and the eggs produce blue mist themselfs to stay dormant until new hosts arrive and touch that mist thus detecting hosts? We can assume so since it happened to kane.

Did the engineers made the eggs...and created the blue mist  to keep them in stasis until they reach the planet? I dont believe it why? Because they had black goo..why would they need the eggs for? Why did the blue mist stayed active in a crashed ship with no power? The mist was made from the eggs themselves.

Regarding the blue light.

Ridley Scott wanted an early warning system around the Alien Eggs that would signal them to the approach of a possible host organism. This effect was achieved through the use of a blue scanning laser that was projected through smoke to highlight the apparent membrane covering the eggs. The laser used was loaned to Scott by the rock group The Who, who were testing out various lasers for use in their upcoming tour in the soundstage next door to where Alien was being filmed

And how would a single engineer use the eggs as weapon?

Grab one by itself and throw it through the window? Out of thousands of them throwiing them like bowling balls? 

The crazy plausible theory i can think of if eggs were cargo is.

Whatever came from the engineer was able to eggmorph the black goo urns in the cargo.

Or simply layed all those there

 Ridley is gonna make everything up as he goes, he intended to do one way and did the other 3 ways around and its gonna be a big mess to correct everything.

At least in AC we will have major clue. How can eggs be created if no queen. Will be the first ever clue to step away from a queen concept shown on screen where its fact 100% canon. And we will be able to fix more the theory regarding the cargo.

If the next 2 movies after ac will connect to alien then we will see how the SJ got facehugged and what happened before he made his departure 

This is where things could get interesting..maybe he was betrayed prior, maybe he ran away ..

But then we have this facts

Ridley Scott states during the Director's Commentary on the Alien home video releases that the eggs are the cargo of the Space Jockey's ship with the ship being a sort-of war ship designed to carry these biological weapons, or perhaps a science vessel carrying the eggs as cargo for scientific study.

And interesting clues that arent what ridley wanted and considers his vision(unless fox demands it)

Alien: River of Pain, Russell and Anne Jorden explore previously undescribed areas of the ship finding the remains of several Engineers and Xenomorphs. There is evidence of weapons fire as well as acid burns throughout the ship, the two groups apparently having killed each other during a battle of some kind. They also find the remains of a Queen and an Engineer who fought to the death and killed each other in unarmed combat

The origins of the derelict and the Engineer who piloted it remain unknown. Likewise, the circumstances behind how the ship came to be on the moon — whether it was deliberately set down or crashed unintentionally — remain a mystery. What is known is that the vessel had been to LV-1201, a planet where the Engineers were apparently breeding Xenomorphs, some time before it crashed.^[8] Judging by the fossilized condition of the Pilot's corpse, the ship had been on LV-426 for potentially millions of years