Theory: interstellar travel and evolution

in some of the speel it goes on about .. 'asks questions about where we came from and what we must become', and 'ftl with some downsides'*. perhaps the SJ's are a species that go around seeding and harvesting planets - and perhaps the film would would imply this is the only longterm survival strategy. With time-dilation, if a species goes traveling, those that leave will (a) become genetically dissimilar from those who stay behind - no symbiosis, no trade,no interbreeding and (b) have access to superior resources (many fresh unpopulated worlds). From the travelers POV, they can make a round trip in a short space of time and be back with 'more'; the descendants of those who stayed behind are doomed, their evolution 'capped' by the limits of one planet. (complexity & intelligence bounded by energy available) So perhaps the SJ/Engineers 'emerged' from this type of process: They start by 'pipelineing' the terraforming; - seed one planet, move on, seed some more, return - (instead of just waiting around on arrival at a new barren planet) .. like we grow crops in farming, except the time dilation of a round-trip accelerates growing from their POV. Then they figure they have an advantage (against rival branches) by multiplying as fast as possible at the harvesting stage (spawning more of their own branches for subsequent hops) Hence the whole alien takeover type mechanisms - best done in the alien series itself, but other sci-fi's have it in other ways**. and why Alien has a life cycle that can use a human; they figure out not just *feed* on the biomass they create, but how to breed *into* it. It's like starting start with the idea - [i]"wouldn't it be great to seed an entire planet of women..."[/i], but instead they figure how to turn themselves into 'super-males' able to impregnate anything and absorb fresh DNA. I know that alien != SJ, but perhaps they share DNA , and there are other sci-fis where the aliens are going to use the human population to incubate themselves; and of course alien itself could just be an offshoot or mutation or prototype for their own breeding. This could be consistent with their statement [i]"you'll see the alien but you won't recognize it"[/i]. And perhaps thats' what the '3rd party' mentioned is- the takeover DNA - and the SJ really is just a 'Pilot'. *a hole in my theory is of course they say 'near FTL' , or that they might have FTL. If your civilization can make round trips *within* a lifetime, then you'd evolve nice friendly symbiotic trade like we do on earth. **OTHER INSPIRATIONS (sci fis with similar ideas) (i) V remake uses something like this concept, the 'visitors' supposedly need to absorb human DNA and were preparing humans for breeding. in V it's a meeting of civilizations with human-style conquest, whereas in alien its more inhuman, the inspiration is the parasitic wasp from nature. (ii)This concept is also possibly similar to borg assimilations in star trek - another type3 civ contrasting with the federation at type2 level, the similarity being the assimilation - but there's no seeding or farming done by the borg. (iii) x-files did it too - a species left earth then returned with a plan to takeover and multiply. (x-files movie was declared an alien-clone when they did this) (iv) a more common scenario is that the aliens copy and infiltrate (e.g. invasion of the body snatchers) (v) A Stephen Baxter novel contains a star-hoping species 'the crackers' - but they don't harvest - they just 'multiply and spread' as fast as possible, consuming an entire star system at a time via supernova, probably more like an exaggerated version of humans deforesting. So: this idea isn't entirely unique, but something in the alien universe could provide a unique blend and slant of these type of ideas.