May 25, 2012Strong "no" on both counts. Partly because Sir Scott has said that there is no [b]direct[/b] link between the two films, and partly because I deem him to be a more interesting director than to play to fan expectations.
But also because it doesn't make sense to me that the SJ on the derelict would fossilize in only 30-some years (between Prometheus and Alien), without resorting to time travel. And because the squid-thing that Shaw births (Cuddles) doesn't look a whole lot like the xeno. And because the only SJ space craft we've seen so far is the Juggernaut, which we know crashes back onto LV-456, not LV-233.
My guess is that the SJs had already bio-engineered the xenos (in some shape or form) long, long before the Prometheus lands, and that the xenos were the SJs' undoing (on both LV-456 and LV-233). I'm also gonna guess that, while the Shaw baby might well be an iteration on the xeno body plan, Shaw isn't the mama of the xeno. She's just another victim.
I'm not even certain we should be calling the squid-thing Shaw's "baby," or to assume that she "gives birth to it." It could turn out that Holloway infected her with a parasite that happens to incubate in her uterus (as the site of the infection), with no hybridizing between SJ bio-tech and humans, at all.
