Space Jockey body in the Derelict ship

Why? because of all them eggs. The Derelict was carrying the eggs as cargo, hence the blue laser and the design of the egg chamber.

Just curious but where else besides in talk about special effects is it mentioned that the egg chamber had a blue laser? I always thought it was a luminescent mist and was there to alert the eggs of movement.

Blue laser, blue mist same thing. either way, as you said it was there no either alert the eggs or alert the Jockey. thus the eggs were cargo, Ridley has been saying this all along.

Ridley has been saying this all along... Do you have the links to his interviews? love to read his point of view on it

"The Derelict was carrying the eggs as cargo, hence the blue laser and the design of the egg chamber." This theory has a problem: some people did calculations about the likely dimensions of the derelict, and, if I understand the numbers right, the egg chamber should be outside the derelict´s body. See here: http://time.absoluteavp.com/alientech.html EXTERIOR PORT PRONG (hammerhead) – 161.6 m (530’) long STARBOARD PRONG – 174.3 m (571.7’) long INGRESS/ EGRESS HOLES – 5.5 m (18’) high x 3.1 m (10.2’) wide HEIGHT AT ‘BRIDGE’ AREA – 33.5 m (180’) high LENGTH OF ‘BRIDGE’ AREA – 43 m (141’) long WIDTH (AFT) – 116.6 m (382.6’) wide WIDTH (AFT BETWEEN PRONGS) – 61 m (200’) wide INTERIOR EGG ‘CAVE’ – 39.6 m (130’) high SPACE JOCKEY CHAMBER – 12.2 m (40’) high If the SJ chamber is the bridge, Height of the bridge - SJ chamber = 33,5-12,2 = 21,3m. Weel, the egg chamber is thought to be 39,6m high. So, except for some poetic license, the egg chamber must be the fruit of the works of something else besides the Derelict´s projectists. The problem is, I agree that the chamber has all the signs of have been projected and built. I really think that all of this is so inconsistent that it will be disregarded in Prometheus.

Whomever did those calculations needs to take a break, no offence. The average viewer and the sensible fans just accept that the egg chamber is part of the Derelict. @firetothegods, its mentioned in many interviews and in the dvd commentary

Ridley contradicts himself. He has said that he believed the ship might be a bomber but in the Alien script there was suppose to be a separate pyramid with the eggs in them and he said for economic reasons that pyramid was turned into a cave underneath the derelict. He could make it a bomber and take artistic license but that would change Obannon's original idea. No one can say for sure right now which way it will go. Maybe the Prometheus screenwriters have an entirely different take on it.

Right on snorkel. I think it is silly to over analyze all of this...

So what exactly is the right amount of analyzing that will keep this forum from dying yet doesn't pass the silliness threshold? Can you give a percent?

@BM, True the original ideas was the pyramid but they changed it to what we saw and Ridley has stuck to the bomber idea like glue ever since. Scripts and screenplays change, whatever ideas are used at the start get changed, streamlined etc. ideas evolve over time. In Alien he already changed O'Bannons ideas and O'Bannon agreed with the changes and helped with the changes (it was O'Bannon that suggested Giger after all). Knowing how stubborn and driven Ridley is IMO the bomber idea he has always advertised will be expanded upon, to a degree, in Prometheus - This is probably why the Prometheus/Magellan impacts with the Derelict, as shown in the trailer, to stop it from delivering its deadly cargo.

You can speculate all you want and it's nice to speculate, but I think "not fully understanding the Biology" doesn't prevent us from enjoying the ALIEN series.

To answer what this thread was originally for. I feel we can't ignore Cameron's alien life cycle. Yes there were many eggs in stasis. There is no other reason for the blue light special light alarm thing that made noise when Kane went through it. As to where those eggs came from...who knows. But Ridley himself said the Derelict was a type of bomber. I believe that had the Alien not died on the Nostromo it would have finished converting Bret into an egg. Eventually a face hugger would have gotten on Dallas who then "birthed" a queen. Have a queen in the life cycle makes sense. However if circumstances like in alien, a drone can reproduce in the absence of a queen. That is what makes the xeno remarkable and dangerous my fellow nerds.

In the original script and director's cut of Alien, the alien created the eggs without the need introduction of a queen or bug-like society concept (which is a way better concept and way more alien than what Cameron came up with--the queen idea makes the structure of alien existence too tangible and less alien). I'm pretty much with Snorkel on this whole thread, especially concerning the sequence of shots showing Kane being lowered from the Jockey chamber to the egg chamber. (Then again, if you look closely, the tunnel of the egg chamber does a lazy s-curve in the distance, which the derelict does not do. Though admittedly, continuity in those days was not as big of a deal as it is now.) Another example of things being changed from one movie to another.. Alien: Kane doesn't remember anything from the planet. Aliens: Ripley says that Kane said he saw thousands of eggs...THOUSANDS. She's rather emphatic about what Kane doesn't remember. And while Kane gives a weak play by play as he's lowered in, he never mentions the number of the eggs OR the size of the chamber. He just sounds really impressed by what he's seeing.

Well to add once more, the novelization (which is taken from the script) makes it somewhat clear that the area where the eggs are does not seem part of the ship. Stating that Kane was being lowered further than Dallas felt the bottom of the ship to be. It also Added that the proportions would not make sense, then followed by the line "make sense to what?" SO it is even vague about in there. Which means nobody here can positively say it is one way or the other. period.

I do not know whether to post this here, but I have a different theory after seeing the proper SJ masks in a previous article: it seems like the facehugger and the SJ are one and the same. Where with humans the facehugger drops off after putting its load in the belly of the victim, it seems to remain on the face of the SJ. The nose of the SJ which forms into some kind of tube or trunk (like an elephant) reminds me a lot of its tail, so that it seems the facehugger envelopes the face from the front and then remains there.... Like some kind of symbiosis or sumthin. It would give the story an amazing twist, like humans are needed for aliens to have their lifecycle, breathe a queen, create new eggs, therefore creating new facehuggers so that new SJ's can live. As if they are not able, because of their biology or I do not know, to breathe new aliens. So the SJ's need us to breathe new facehuggers so they can continue their existence as without the facehugger they wouldn't be complete. This theory however, does not match with the hole in the chest of the SJ in Alien in the derelict ship.... However, no one ever stated that this hole in the fossilized SJ was the result of an alien.... Once again, I do not know whether to post this here and whether this has maybe been opted already and I'm just repeating yesterdays' headlines... It seems to me a very sound theory and I just had to get it off (out of, to coin it daftly) my chest:-)

AshV, it has been brought up here before (mainly by me) and it was basically laughed at and flamed out of "speculation", because.....you know, some peoples speculations are more important than others . LOL

I also think if the xeno is a perfect specimen, it'd make sense to have multiple reproductive paths. There are frog species that can change sex. Frog reproduction is quite interesting, as various species have different ways of reproducing--in one species, males storing fertilized eggs in vocal pouches, and in another, females store fertilized eggs in a membrane on their back. Perhaps a queen becomes present in proximity to a large number of potential hosts. So in a lightly populated environment like the Nostromo, there'd be no queen, because it's relatively quick work to convert a small crew. But if a queen is present, she could presumably produce multiple eggs faster than a lone xeno could, with less energy expended. Thus, enter the queen in Aliens due to the higher population of the colony. Whatever the case, speculation makes for good mental exercise. :)

@Mindbender: in The Netherlands we have a saying that no one ever has a good idea alone;) @Jones: very nice trail.... If it is the perfect creature, it would indeed find a way around reproduction if there weren't any hosts.... Food for thought indeed!!!

I dont think Sir Ridders give a flying fuck about queens and all that jazz. So if Prometheus does conclude with the Derelict crashing on a planetoid orbiting LV-426 in a system close to Zeta II Reticuli, then we shouldn't be surprised to [i]not[/i] see a queen alien. From all Ridley's interviews, the impression I'm getting is that metamorphosis from victim to egg is his preferred genesis. "They do uncivilised and perverse things" is what I'm clinging on here - although some special individual on this forum immediately jump to rape. To each his own.

@ Mindbender, this idea of novelizations pretty much falls into the same pigeonhole as original scripts. Although the Novel is based off the script a film can vastly change from the "Final" script to the release of the film - rewrites, cut scenes, unfilmed scenes, editing (which can restructure an entire film). Furthermore a script turned novel would actually produce a novella, what fills 2 hours of screen time will barely fill 200 pages, and as such scenes are usually added, and not necssarily canon ideas. Add to all of this the novel has to be written while the film is being filmed and cut (usually changing in the process) so that it can be released in conjunction with the film as merchandise. Don't get me wrong novelizations of films are fun to read, but should never be considered canon.