April 20, 2012After reading the Alien Omnibus, the novelization by Alan Dean Foster many years ago, I racked my brain in frustration over this issue too.
I too feel like it is a glaring continuity mistake that is extremely troublesome to the history of the Alien story, and a real let down to serious fans.
And it didn't have to be this way. They could have come up with a semi-plausible and satisfactory scenario... if they just would've done a little more research, brainstorming, and/or work. I mean, at least come up with something. Anything would be better than a giant glaring hole in the whole damn story of Alien 3.
Alien had already established that a single drone alien could carry on the task of creating individual eggs. That's enough information right there, without any need to explain the specific biological science behind that. It's simply enough to know that the aliens can continue their life cycles even with only a single alien.
The deleted cocoon scene in "Alien" and the novels by Foster establish that fact, and somewhat explain the process. I always found that extremely fascinating and I wish Ridley had chosen to keep that in the story because it makes the alien that much more fascinating and ominous.
Anyhow, after racking my brain years ago on this issue of how the eggs/facehuggers got on the Sulaco... I finally just resolved myself to the fact that the filmmakers simply overlooked it, and didn't care enough about it. So I came up with my own possible ideas.
There were 2 possible scenarios that made sense to me.
1. That Bishop himself somehow placed them there, on orders from the company, either with or without his memory, or awareness. He would have done so during the time that he was waiting with the drop ship.
How the egg/s got to the cryosleep chamber, the EEV, etc., who knows. This scenario seems like a dead end to me.
Feasible or not, plausible or not? I don't know, I just chalk it up as a possibility.
2. My preferred scenario, which takes into account the alien's ability to procreate on it's own... is the possibility that 1 or more drone/warrior aliens somehow got on board the drop ship.
The ship had to land at some point in order for Bishop to get on board, so one could have sneaked on then, who knows.
If that happened, then based on the cocoon concept the alien/s could have created new eggs, which developed new facehuggers, which then broke the cryosleep chambers and set Alien 3 into motion.
This was the only plausible solution I could come up with, that made some semblance of sense to me. I'm still peeved that the "powers that be" back then, let Alien 3 turn out so badly.
Anyhow, that's my two cents.
