Space Jockey body in the Derelict ship

yes at what point does he look like like an egg, script or not its a bloody stupid idea but your correct i dont like it

on that assumption are all the chamber eggs previous life forms?

I think people are reading too much into the original film and the new trailer. When making the original Alien, no one was concerned with a backstory...the idea was to create mystery and atmosphere by making the alien creature be found inside a mysterious ship whose origin is utterly "alien" (not to make a pun) to the people finding it. Were the SJs trying to escape the aliens? Were they transporting them? Were they trying to get rid of them? Were they victims of it? Were they god-like creatures who seeded life around the universe? None of these questions were ever considered when the movie was being made...the idea was to generate a very eerie mystery. Because of the demand to know more, Scott, Giger, and others who worked on the movie have given different vague answers as to what they THOUGHT the answers could be, and mused about them as an entertaining subject for speculation, but there has never been a consistent, official backstory for the SJs or anything else concerning the Alien universe (the clumsy backstory in the AVP movies not withstanding, and Scott has been very vocal in stating those films have no place in the Alien universe as far as he's concerned). Obviously, this will change in Prometheus, in which Scott and the writers aim to provide an origin story. Clearly from the trailer, we know that Scott has decided to go with the "SJs are beings who have seeded life" idea, which first originated in the original Dark Horse Alien comics. But, again, I think you are overthinking the whole process. Prometheus will very likely not answer all of the questions, and it may not even provide a specific origin for anything per se, but rather a suggestion of things. In the Dark Horse universe, mankind has found more than one derelict in different places around the galaxy. My guess is, Prometheus will NOT directly tie into Alien, but rather tell ANOTHER story about ANOTHER crew finding a derelict and what happens to THEM, only to foreshadow what will happen later on in Alien.

No wonder the script went through dozens of rewrites.

Yeah a lot gets cut out before the expense of making a set and props and shooting the film however that scene was not.

Too true re scripts and alterations. Altered- Ill pick you up on "stocking the larder" are you stating that Aliens need to eat? Or that the Alien was storing host bodies for future breeding purposes? I have always thought that Xenomorphs have no need for sustainance in a way which we understand. However this should go in another thread....

If the eggs were indeed cargo, can someone please explain to me 1. Why did the SJ pilot have a chestburster inside him?? Also 2. Why did the signal the Derelict was sending out was apparently more of a steer clear then an SOS?? I mean surely the SJ had bad motives for carrying these eggs around onboard. . .

Snorkel, Concerning canons: the truth is that _as you can read in "Giger´s Alien", for example _ in the original script by O´Bannon the egg chamber was in a pyramid. Cost considerations derailed this idea, and the money managers forced the solution of the egg chamber being an integral part of the derelict _ somewhat the director maybe was unconfortable with, thus the incoherence in the measures. Alas, if you read the script, it has the following revealing words, at the time Kane was descending into the egg chamber: DALLAS (voice over) See anything? KANE No...Tunnel's gone. Cave or something below me. Feels like the goddamn tropics in here... So, Kane thinks he´s in a cave. There are further signals of this: KANE ...high nitrogen content, no oxygen... Still puffing, he releases his purchase on the stone walls. Begins to lower himself on power. See? "Stone walls". Probably a cave beneath the derelict, not a part of it. Finally: I don´t want to quarrel. Just confirming how difficult is to establish what could confortably be considered "canon" here or not.

I think canon should be whatever RS says is canon. Had he been able to make Alien the way he wanted to, then the scene centrosphere posted would be canon as we speak.

I'm a bit behind the times guys so can someone explain what canon means exactly i'm serious i have not heard that expression before. except in historical armoury lol. and cameras lol

Regarding films, literature, comic books, etc., I'd define canon as being the intent of the author/filmmaker who originated a particular concept. Canon in relation to Alien is what is deemed to be true by Ridley Scott. Subsequent films, comics, etc., created by others that expand on the work that Ridley Scott created are arguably not canon, as they are not based on ideas Scott directly conceived. So you can have a comic book series or a novel that takes place in the Alien universe that expands on elements from the film Alien, but if it doesn't have the Ridley Scott seal of approval, it's not canon.

what if the subsequent films have the fox seal of approval or one of the writers Ron Schusett for example or David Giler does that not contradict that theory ? But i understand the principal thanks Jones.

There's a certain degree of artistic vision that factors into the equation. I would say that Aliens is a fine film, but it's a film that James Cameron made. Sure, he used Alien as a springboard, but Cameron developed his own ideas about the alien queen, aliens in a group, and so on. Those were extrapolations made based on the Alien source material, focused through Cameron's mental lens. Had Ridley Scott made Aliens, his film would have, without a doubt, turned out quite different than Cameron's.

@Brego no i'm not stating anything its a stab at dry humour regarding the larder i really don't know its intentions for cocooning the crew. I admit the egg scenario was something i never contemplated its a new concept to me im a fan but it wasn't obvious in the film at the time that it was using the crew to transform into eggs its a new one for me. even if it is in gigers law its just a stretch to far for me but if that's the case so be it. i never really studied the life cycle sequence in detail and neither have the subsequent film as far as that particular area is concerned so its a revelation to me but one i cant say im that sure about. I always thought the xenomorph was driven like all creatures by instinct and like a spider catching its prey it instinctively cocoons it prey for... (in the spiders case) eating later so whatever the reason it cocooned Bret and Dallas its instinctive behaviour. But now it appears that it may well have been transforming bret into a cream egg and Dallas was going to be the proud happy father to yet a second alien had ripley not intervened. i'm ok with that i guess.

Jones, I think you have nailed it. Or almost. One very interesting thing I just realized is that "Alien"´s scrip lacks a Space Jockey! There is a fifteen feet skeleton, but it´s laid outside the ship. So the trouble is: movies are a collective work. If a mere script can diverge of the movie, what´s sacred? :) Maybe the canon is what we see at the silverscreen, point. The problem is that sometimes we are not sure of what we are seeing... bye, C.

Strictly speaking, canon is whatever was written and [i]published[/i] by the original creator. So for instance, whatever Shakespeare wrote is canon - if [i]I[/i] wrote Hamlet Part II, or Romeo and Juliet: Attack of the Clones, or MacBeth Begins, it would not be canon. Similarly, The Terminator and T2 are canon while T3 and Terminator Salvation are not. Having said that, when it comes to film, canon is whatever you want: most people accept the entire Star Trek universe, as is, as canon - even among us, some only hold as canon the work of Ridley Scott while others include Jim cameron, and I'm sure at least 1 among us swears by all 4 alien and 2 avp films. So with respect to film, you have the freedom to make it what you prefer.

Cool Alteredste. Like the Cadbury Cream Egg! The only reason I asked was that for years I have thought that in especially Aliens, If they needed to eat and I imagine that if they did they would need a fair amount of food, being a large organism. There would not have been enough humanoids on LV426 from the colony to support such a large hive. I have always imagined that the Aliens may have simply taken sustainance from whatever environment they live in.

Good point brego. I like the idea of ingesting whatever sustenance would have had been around them at the time. The question is what kind of sustenance are they ingesting and how are they able to live under such conditions. Maybe their an organism that can produce their own sustenance. Maybe food is just an option. Interesting?

Hey Ripley 8. There is a line in Alien spoken by Ash "I have confirmed that he's got an outer layer of protein polysaccharides. Has a funny habit of shedding his cells and replacing them with polarized silicon, which gives him a prolonged resistance to adverse environmental conditions." I always took this as to mean that the Xeno actually is able to absort sustainance from whatever atmosphere it finds itself in. Just a thought.