The Companies desire for the Xeno?

Ripley openly accused Carter Burke (in Aliens) of attemping to smuggle them through customs and/or quaranteen back on Earth for the "bioweapons" division of the company.  I don't recall any such speculation in Alien with the exception of Ash's admiration of it's purity.

You brought up something that I think is very important.

Ripley only assumes that they wanted it as a bio-weapon this whole time.  Peter Weyland's goal was to find immortality. We have no evidence that suggests HE actually wanted the Alien as a bio-weapon. Burke probably wanted it as a bio-weapon, but I don't think it was ever Peter Weyland's intention when the company started...Peter Weyland would be interested in the medical applications. If he found immortality, then he might have even shared it with humanity... He likened himself to Prometheus, stealing the fire to give to humanity.  Fire has many purposes.

Someone within the company: Yutani, the Marines, the androids etc. might want it as a bioweapon. If androids secretly took over the company or something, then bio-weapons are useful to them. Also useful to the Marines, which is why Burke would have sold it to them. Weyland did unethical things, misled the crew, sacrificed them in the name of science to gather data. David tricked Holloway into donating his body, "what would you do...", while David experimented & gathered data. Weyland has little regard for ethics (he talks about this in the TEdtalk), but he follows his own code/morality, a law only to himself (and not for all mankind). Weyland views himself as above humanity, and gave them a chance to survive. He even offered David a choice of words, David makes "a poor choice of words" to Shaw and it was ultimately Holloway's poor choice of words ("anything and everything") that doomed Holloway... Shaw's the only one who had survival instincts "in her". Weyland feels he can get around human rights laws, because he doesn't mind David tricking/hurting them. However, he was actually trying to find immortality...

They found "only death" on LV-226. This was possibly reflected in secret files, influencing someone to want it as a bioweapon. Maybe when Yutani merged with Weyland it became about the bio-weapons.

We suspect that the company is "evil", but we don't know their true motives. There could be dual motives. Maybe Weyland corp needs the bio-weapon to secretly fight back the Engineers?  It's like Ash said, "the Alien is perfect, unclouded by delusions of logic & morality". There could be a real reason they need it so bad, are willing to do whatever it takes. Many sides to the company. Different reasons why they want/need it...The Alien is a survivor. Maybe it's about our survival as a species too.

The ex-Weyland scientists in Alien resurrection special edition claim it has medical benefits.  The Alien can be used for creation or destruction. It can be our saviour or our doom. Maybe there are two sides to this story, like a double-helix strand. There are two serpents around a Caduceus, the symbol of medicine. Prometheus is a parallel story.  We only think it's all about bio-weapons.. The serpent can symbolize many things: medicine, wisdom/hidden knowledge, the sciences, deception, cunning etc..

I think the facehugger & Hammerpede do have medical applications, while the fully grown Deacon/Alien has military applications.  The Hammerpede can even re-grow its own head,  tricks its own brain back to life after being decapitated...This is an amazing ability. If Ash saw it, he would say it's almost impossible to kill. Worms can be cut in half & each side will re-grow to survive & produce two worms. Cutting the Hammerpede's head off won't kill it. It only makes two of them.

Hammerpede is more perfect in some ways than a traditional facehugger imo. You don't dare kill it, you literally can't kill this son of a bitch without causing more problems...Being able to regrow your own head would be a VERY useful trait in a series where everyone's losing their heads.If David could re-attach/re-grow his own head, then he'd be truly immortal...If Weyland could replace the dead cells in his head/brain at a rapid rate, like the Hammerpede, then he wouldn't have died from his head wound...The facehugger/alien can breathe without atmosphere & breathed for Kane. There could be many applications and ways to improve atmospheric processors based on that alone, so yes I believe the Alien is much more than just a bio-weapon.

Great analysis, HiveMinded. I definitely agree that the Alien and its variations represent a knowledge we have yet to gain. Perhaps Prometheus and the original film are essentially cautionary tales about being grateful for what we have and staying true to what makes us human, and the Alien is the temptation for more knowledge and our biological improvement, posing a serious threat to our survival at the same time.

Just think about what we could learn from one Hammerpede though... very tempting indeed.

The single most important question that the three prequel movies should try to answer is how did the company know about the derlict? It is obvious from the special order that the company knew of the creature and they used the crew of the Nostromo to bring it back to earth. What did they know? How did they know it? That is what remains to be answered.

As posted in another topic not long ago...

The company detected LV 426 in 2039 this does not mean a signal just astronomers discovered multiple moons around a Ringed Planet outside of Zeti 2 system that could potentially support life. They hoped to send a mission there in the next 100 years of that discovery i.e by 2139

Also i cant remember where now, but it was said one part of Davids mission while the crew was to gather some information about the Signal on LV 426 in the same system that the company had picked up.

The comic while can not be taken as canon, shows the company sent a Probe to the system in 2090 maybe this was to survey the findings of the astronomers to see indeed if planets could support life, and maybe on its mission it detected LV 223 was the closest planetoid that could but also while going there it may have detected some signal from LV 426.

The Probe disapeared as soon as it went down to LV 223 maybe the dust and silca storms caused a malfuntion but the comic shows it crashes on LV 223 and then a Engineer crushes it.


While maybe the comic can not be used as Canon, we can safely assume that around the time of Prometheus the Company picked up a signal from LV 426 if not before... and if not then it would definately had picked one up after the events between Prometheus and Alien i.e maybe from a rescue mission to LV 223?

Edited Post from 2nd... as server crashed and not finished reply off....

so above is what i meant in full to had put...

I had this realization the other day, what if the Xeno is a bioweapon. Not against other humans,  but to unleash it on unsuspecting Engineers.  Prometheus predates Alien, in Alien there is the implication the creatures are known prior to Ridley's encounter.  

I wonder if the events of Prometheus 2 will show David or Shaw sending back signal to Earth, or more likely Weyland, of the Xenomorphs and details of the Engineers.  The quest to militarize Xenomorphs is the only defense against an inevitable Engineer (black goo) attack.  In fact, a human lead attack using Xeno's on other unsuspecting Engineers could wipe them out.  The stumbling block we repeatedly see is amassing a Xeno army or having controllable Xenos.  Failure on Weyland corp's part won't just end the quest for immortality but decimate all of humanity.

Perhaps Shaw and David stir up things in Paradise, but yet again manage to somehow prevent an Earth holocaust.  I like this idea of bringing all the ideas full circle.  Themes of mortality and fear offspring through out Alien and Prometheus would be tied together quite nicely by using the Xenos as a bridge and harbinger of death.

All I remember is that ripley stated in alien that ash was protecting the alien all along and that they wanted it for the bio weapons division. Biological weapons I would assume would be poisons and gasses I guess. Perhaps it would be better to have said bio genetically engineered weapons division.