John D.April 10, 2012A couple of things.
As far as there being two 'crashed' alien ships:
The ship in the original "Alien" doesn't appear to be damaged. Yes, it is obviously a "derelict" in the sense that it is an abandoned hulk, but it seems that the only reason it's still there on LV-426 is because the pilot got himself a bad case of chest-bursting indigestion, so to speak. The ship looks intact, though, rather than wrecked, as one might expect from a crash.
(Incidentally, can I point out that the visual representation of the ship's hold in "Alien" doesn't quite seem right? What I mean is - look at the dimensions of the chamber Kane is lowered into, and look at the shape of the room. It curves, but then it curves again, and it doesn't seem to follow the contours of the 'derelict.' Not to mention that the opening that leads down to the egg chamber seems to have been 'melted' through the floor, as others have pointed out here elsewhere. It really does seem to be a 'cave,' as John Hurt calls it in the film. And yet, the walls have the same sort of biomechanical look as the Space Jockey's chamber does [which is actually because they used the same bit of set for both rooms,*cough*budgetconsiderations*cough* but I digress]. And yes, I know the 'derelict" is gigantic, but the cave looks even bigger. And I know it was probably unintentional on Scott's part; it's just how it appears. Just an observation).
Anyway - The alien craft in the "Prometheus" trailers looks like it gets a whole can of whoop-ass unloaded on it by the [i]Prometheus[/i] (the ship). The thing goes down in flames, and there's at least one shot of it with smoke coming from it after the collision. I'm sure rolling across the landscape like a giant donut isn't good for its structural integrity, either.
Point being - one derelict seems to be the outcome of a xenomorph impregnation of its pilot; the other downed alien craft looks to have been deliberately taken out by the earthlings. So the idea of there being more than one is really not all that far fetched at all.
But back to the issue at hand: although may folks seem to think that LV-426 and LV-223 are both satellites of the same planet, there's no reason to believe that's the case other than the fact that the host planet has a ring around it (which is actually pretty common even among the larger planets in our own solar system). Also, in the "Alien" universe, we don't necessarily have a planetary naming scheme that corresponds with what we use in the real world, or even something more streamlined like Star Trek's "Ceti-Alpha-5," "Ceti-Alpha-6," and so on).
LV-223 might be nowhere [i]near[/i] the planetoid in "Alien." James Cameron (who came up with the name) said it was simply a number given to the planet for navigational purposes - nothing more. Thus the "LV" designation may very well mean squat.
(Also, big props to Scott/Lindelof for using the LV-426 name; there's no law saying they even had to [i]acknowledge[/i] anything from the later movies).
But...
Perhaps it IS the same ship, and it's either repaired by the Space Jockey race, or it has some kind of organic ability to heal/repair itself (as someone else has pointed out), and then in the future it somehow winds up on LV-426 during some other mission. It's possible.
But I gotta be honest, THAT to me seems like a far more convoluted (and, I think contrived) bit of plot-jiggering for the sole purpose of making sure the 'derelict' winds up on LV-426. I don't see that as being a priority of the storytellers/filmmakers, since they have said over and over and over again that this movie isn't a prequel to the events of "Alien."
To me, it all makes for the prospect of a far more surprising, unpredictable, interesting and satsifying moviegoing experience than it might be if Scott & Co. wind up being hamstrung by the need to make sure that one film connects cleanly to the other...
[i]That's[/i] the kind of thing George Lucas does.
