After some thought I have decided to reverse my opinion regarding eggs transform

She may have known her time upon the Hadleys Hope colony was up and was going to be destroyed so she went into self-preserving, survival mode. To be fair to the idea of a king alien if all but brief time to procreate with the queen say one of her smaller drones. Lets just briefly say that cycle perhaps at times is 'performed' by the quenn and selected grunt/warrior/drone male there is nothing so far that has both been presented by Ridley Scott's Alien film and James Cameron's Aliens that it hasn't taken place even if it was off-screen when it occurred. There would perhaps need to be a stronger case to back this idea up in order to support its further debate but as the case was with viewing the cargo down in the Derilcts silo. As yet, within the franchise, there is nothing to suggest that this is not indeed is the remenants of a 'converted forsaken'. It's intruging and engaging and I welcome the intruge to pursue that type of inquiry but it does have to be followed through with some selmance of educated reasoning which the cocooning hypothosis can stand up to scrutiny on in dual relation to the queen birthing sequence as well.

If Alien3 shooting scripts are to be believed, Queens are born with all the eggs they're ever going to lay (same as human females - kinda... not so much the laying, but anyway). They don't need to mate with another Alien because the act of procreation doesn't occur when an egg is produced - it occurs when hugger meets host. In a manner of speaking, the ovum laid by the Queen, produces a sperm (ie hugger), which then impregnates another ovum (ie. the host).

See but that's what I'm saying it's all off-screen so far, we don't know exactly how the Queen comes about. Even Praetorians are a concept that's not firmly established yet on film. Exactly how that Queen and her offspring/servants came about. Not that she would need the male side, but it's more of a backup for producing more aliens in the first place that can then produce a queen. She then cannibalizes and morphs the King or male-leaning hermaphrodites in favour of the evolutionarily advantageous egg trait. Not egg laying, but you get what I'm saying. Shaw has something wrong with her ovum, and might not have produced a Queen when you take it with the Engineer possibly having altered x chromosomes (lack of nipples). The stuff about preying mantises and blackwidows is me thinking that she cannabilizes the males to create the new servants, and remove deacons from the equations, while sending out a signal that represses the growth of males once she arises. Turning them into her obedient offspring/warriors that are weaker and easier to kill-- but easier to control and protect herself with. She almost knew her time was up when she was on Hadley's hope and allowed Ripley to approach to retrieve newt because she understood her babies were at risk. She forces the warriors/drones present in the hive to back away before Ripley torches the place. I do really think that after that she kicked into survival mode, rather than angry mode, and it was more so a combination of the flight and fight response. It was running but also chasing it's target to the next site of fresh meat. Which it may have already realized was going to be where ever its prey was coming from or going. It may have been thinking a lot more than the males that it came to rule. See I don't think Ridley is trampling on the Queen concept, on the contrary he may have Cameron's blessing because of some of their work with Fox before Alien 5: the homeworld/jockey exploration story fell through. However, Ridley/Fox may be approaching it in a way that complements the Queen concept and goes even deeper with it while telling an unseen parallel story that meets up in the middle.

Praetorians aren't established at all - never mind 'firmly'.

Sorry poor choice of words. Yes it hasn't been established at all how they really change and turn into the other classes. I've seen that word used and understand the concept so I adopted it just to describe a stage before a Queen. That idea is sort of out there, but it doesn't have to be exactly like the comics describe. In fact anything about a King from the comics would not be used. One of the comics where the Mala'kak are genetically engineering a King is the closest it may come. If used it would be completely altered and more of a natural thing. The head thing may be far more important to the morphing cycle. In some parasitic insects the parasite is deposited in the head before spewing out a number of eggs. The infected creature goes on as a zombie to the parasite that is eating away at its brain... then the poor ant keels over and spews what will become eggs out of its mouth. That's what the Hammerpede was doing in there... Instead of converting the body first and turning it into and egg... the Engineers made it a little different. We've now got headbursters as well... Which is why the Engineer head looks like an egg... and explodes when the transformation is resumed. it didn't have a fully functioning x chromosome, so it exploded. It's sort of a fail-safe--meaning the Engineers are less vulnerable to a massive outbreak than the Elders or us..

Which comic was that? I remember humans creating one in Rogue, but that was more of a title than a role. Beyond the obvious Queen role, I don't see the point of other specialised roles for Aliens (with the possible exception of Cameron's albino drones).

I think that Rogue does have something like that. This is the comic with the big ass dude with a bunch of tubes in it, I'll have to dig it up. I quickly realized the Engineers would be a lot different. but i looked at that comic a few years back and it had to do with the Jockeys tampering with the genetics. it would be sort of like Black widows, to feed her young and separate them from the backup form of the genetics who spread the message of the alien genetics religiously and fervently through morphing until the queen arises. Not really feeding on them but using the free males' bio material to start mophing the walls of her hive... they sort of get turned to royal jelly, to throw in a comic concept that may be altered and renamed. The main function is that when there are no eggs or no Queens left, there still has to be a way to start a new hive/ create more eggs. Like lets say if one Alien gets on a ship and then travels far away form the hive it came from. But wasn't initially a Queen. So I strongly believe the morphing cycle was what that original Alien in the first movie was doing to try to, eventually, move back to the Queen/Egg laying method. And is mainly only a servant in the Alien species like all the other male drones, and warriors. So this would be the one time we get to see the King extend his lifespan and reign a little longer, artificially like Weyland may do via David... So the thematic links are what I focus on. Vickers never got to be "Queen", thus we may see mainly Kings in the next movie. Although David and the Deacon are artificial kings, never really intended to be King of the colonies/hives. The alien genetics were re-born into a new form and pass briefly through ancestral stages, to the Deacon, and eventually creating a queen through some more additional stages. It rapidly shoots back through its evolution after being broken down because of the goo.Just like Weyland's rule is about to be passed to an android like in the video games... Although this android may not pretend he's human. He may have been behind the scenes secretly running the company this whole time... giving the other androids his knowledge. It may be David who now runs Weyland corp... As the closest thing to a son Weyland left behind. He has no relatives to leave the company to and Vickers is dead. King David may have biblical connections Weyland intended when he named David. Lawrence of Arabia "trains" David how to be a leader and perform his tricks. If he believes he is not telling a lie, he can get away with one part of Asimov's laws. In the early scenes he gives a weird mission time. Lindelof says this is totally planned and part of David performing a trick. Expressing things in different ways to cover certain things up. David uses double meaning to trick himself into believing what he's saying is true. Thus he's not lying, as his double meaning reveals what is truly going on... When Holloway makes the real boy comment this has certain connections to Pinnochio... David is really becoming more real, and gaining some freewill... The trick is not minding that his double meanings hurt him in the end, after enough new info is provided what he's lying about will start to show. He answers things ambiguously or vaguely because he's trying to lie. Remaining ambiguous allows him to not reveal the truth. That's only one small part of the trick leaders and politicians use to deceive, double-speak. And it's how a robot can get around programming that prevents it from lying. "Because you know sometimes words have two meanings". Paradise can mean a number of things, and David says there were different words for it in different cultures. Shaw sees it as meaning Heaven, because she chooses what to believe because of her fathers advice. The dangerous thing is that David learned to lie by watching her dream and he now also chooses what to believe. Him only working out the "broad strokes" about why the Engineers wanted to destroy us means he chose any belief he was being presented with, out of all the possibilities he analyzed. But he may not have chose the correct one. On purpose. He tricked himself into believing he was telling the truth. Like how some people pass lie detectors. The role of fathers in this story is particularly important too... again the male side. We never meet Shaw's mother. But Weyland's mother has heavy influence over the mixtures of different cultural influences and what Weyland knows. Because of comparative mythology. things were put in a new order. And went through stages in Prometheus where morphing was involved. I think the Deacon will eventually try to get back to the Queen genetics. But we'll see the struggle for power between genders that occurs as every hive is created... We just didn't see it yet. There was always a Queen to suppress the males and no need for it/morphing cycle. Now we have no eggs, no Queen (so far), and possibly non-functioning egg genes, that would trace back to the very first creatures that developed this trait. How the gender themes apply to everything else, and how Weyland wanted a son, and created the closest thing to a son. Closest thing to the next king.... is part of it.

The reason I bring up preying mantises is the decapitation of the males angle. Not that it's strictly bug/parasite characteristics that make up the Aliens. The Aliens could be like a combination of all the most evil seeming traits and survival mechanisms that are spread out over a vast number of species all across evolution. At one point they talked about how they based it on many different things, fish and a lot of organisms that operate in similar ways. Or give it other traits like the jaw. Basically this things a *fudger* and has the combination of all the most horrific traits known to all species. Including cannibalizing some of the young so they don't cannibalize hers to extend their reign and outlive their usefulness to the females. It's the males heads they're after... that becomes how they produce the walls, and even morph themselves/protect themselves. The female in such species may kill the father because there's a chance he wants to eat the babies, and she is driven to protect her young as they arise and become non-morphers/her servants. And the female Alien may feed the males to the others. Bringing back some of why the Alien needed to feed... When its gonna morph or transform it needs lots of energy. Even to construct the hive they need to feed on the males and spit them back out to morph the environment... they become part of the background. The original male is leaning in those rocks in the trading cards. Ash sees him as part of the rock formation in the monitor in the book I think, not sure. Hypnotized, mesmerized, gargonized and petrified can have the same meaning when set in the same context. *moderated*

Topic Closed. This thread has reached it's maximum in my opinion and the topic has gone off course several times.