GWC Podcast #178: Alien

Podcasts Galactic Watercooler
#81

Loved the podcast. For my money Alien is bar-none the greatest monster movie ever made. When I was younger I liked Aliens better, and I still really love it, but somehow the true greatness of the original only really clicked for me in the last few years. I love its slow start, how it takes its time and builds tension and lets us get to know the characters. Today’s thrillers don’t usually do that.

Here’s a super-nerdy question that I’ve never quite been able to resolve, though: how exactly does the Alien life cycle work? I know the Queen lays the eggs, the eggs hatch facehuggers, the facehuggers impregnate victims who give birth to chestbursters which grow up into drones… but what exactly do the drones do? They can’t reproduce on their own, right? The second movie seems to suggest their main role is to take victims back to the nest for impregnation, but that means that the lone drones in Alien and Alien3 and any other film where we don’t see a queen are pretty much generational dead ends. Right? And anyway, if that’s their role, why do they do so much killing? Don’t they need their victims alive for impregnation? It seems odd if they’re just killing for food… IIRC it’s not until Alien3 that we actually see an alien devouring someone it’s killed. And they don’t seem to need much food, since the drone in the first movie went from chestburster-size to full-grown without taking any victims in between.

Okay, that was a lot of super-nerdy questions, but sort of all linked together.

Also, am I the only one who thought the Cylon Raiders in BSG looked like Alien heads with wings?

#82

Good questions, darthmix.

I assume that they behave like a colony of insects, so sometimes they’re collecting food, sometimes defending their ‘nest’ etc. The lone alien in the first one was a bit of an anomoly, I would assume.

#83

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Welcome to the forums Darthmix…BTW. ALL nerdy questions are super around here.:slight_smile:

#84

Great nerdy questions. I as Pike said I assume they act somewhat like social insects. As you state the big question is how do they move from one killing drone into making a new colony. As the Aliens seem to be designed as biological weapons our speculation can be somewhat unrestrained by the natural world, but I could imagine that each solitary killer soldier (a better word than ‘drone’ which implies a male) actually has the potential of raising a new queen. In the added scenes it looked like the soldier was actually in the process of setting up a new hive. Possibly, each soldier actually has an egg that can implant a future queen into subdued victims, maybe using her tail is an implantation device? Anyway, once the queen explodes from a chest, she makes new eggs of face huggers and by using pheromones suppresses the soldiers from making a new queen. However, once a soldier finds herself alone, her programming to create a new hive kicks in. Who knows, maybe because they appear to partially designed they may not even need drones for reproduction?

Ah, nothing better than a good unencumbered speculation in the morning…

#85

Welcome to the forum indeed darthmix! Try and hit the Unofficial Introduction thread to say hello and tell us a bit about yourself, aside from the fact that you clearly belong among us. :slight_smile:

I’m also of the opinion that the “Lone Drone” scenerio is probably a rarity. Wherever the Aliens come from, they’re clearly a hive-based creature. Those we’ve seen have been transplanted to another world or ship by extraordinary means. And I would have no doubt as stated that their own bodies could undergo biological changes based on environmental factors (like finding themselves alone with no queen, no eggs, and no hive) and alter to produce offspring.

As for all the killin’ : They’ve got to feed the queen too. Remembering that she’s huge, stuck to the ceiling with Alien Goo and can’t move readily once she’s developed her egg-producing organ, and needs lots of energy to make those eggs, the drones are most likely always on the lookout for a tasty sargeant or other morsel to bring back for the queen’s dinner, as well as the others in the hive.

The original Alien’s growth in the first movie is a bit troubling, as it’s not really addressed. If I remember correctly, the screenplay adaptation novel mentioned food storage lockers having been torn open on Nostromo, which would nicely explain our little friend’s sudden growth spurt.

#86

Thanks for the thoughtful and smart analysis, all, and thanks also for the welcome.

Yeah, I can definitely buy the idea that the single soldier scenario of the 1st and 3rd films is not how the aliens are used to operating. Even if there’s no way for a soldier to reproduce alone - and as you guys pointed out there could be lots of ways - but even if there’s not, it’d still make sense for the soldier aliens to follow their instincts even when separated from the hive. It would sort of make the threat seem smaller and more self-contained in those situations, but that’s okay. I also agree that soldier is a better term than drone, since drone implies male and suggests a specific role in the reproductive process (as in bees fertilizing the queen’s eggs) that the soldiers don’t seem to have.

I have seen the deleted scene from Alien wherein the soldier is shown to have been converting the bodies of its victims into new eggs, but I’ve always assumed it wasn’t canon, especially since Cameron overwrote it by introducing the concept of the queen. We also know (I think - please correct me if this is wrong) that the queen in Ripley’s tummy in Alien3 was the direct offspring of the queen in Aliens, 1 facehugger removed, which always suggested to me that queens beget queens. But yeah, there’s definitely room for us to speculate that soldiers have secondary methods of reproducing on their own when they find themselves separated from the tribe, even if they haven’t been firmly established to have that ability in the films. Maybe this idea is more fully addressed in the comics?

I guess a lot of this just comes from my original impression that the alien threat was mainly parasitic rather than predatorial, which, for me, is what made them so original and interesting and scary. We’re used to movie monsters that want to eat us, but we’re much less familiar with monsters that hatch little spider-things to rape our faces (loved that comic btw) and turn us into incubators for their young, making a horrifying mockery of sex and childbirth along the way. So I’ve always kind of resisted the notion that they hunt for food, which seems kind of pedestrian compared to that. I remember Bill Paxton in Aliens realizing, after the first attack, that the other marines were still alive - and Ripley explaining that they were being cocooned. I’ve just pretended David Fincher missed the point in Alien3 when he showed the dog alien eating the prisoners. But of course I’m being stupid, since they’d have to have some food, just to generate biomass and sustain the hive and the queen as you guys have said.

So… yeah. Thanks again. Hopefully at some point they can reboot this franchize, ignore the AvP films, and supply us with canonical answers to some of these questions.

#87

Then again just to argue with myself, it could be presumed that the soldiers are supposed to be sterile. That would make sense if they were supposed to be a bio-weapon as implied by Ridley Scott’s commentary track. Releasing soldiers are a good way to destroy an enemy, releasing a queen is a good way to ensure your own extinction. However, any bio-weapon is likely to not be completely controllable once issues of natural selection and mutation come into play…

#88

In the books and comicboks the Aliens work like an insect colony. There are different types of Aliens, as in: Drones, Soldiers, Workers, Queens etc.

In the original story they were supposed to find a temple, and on one wall was going to be a series of carvings depicting the lifecycles of the Aliens. But it was removed, and for good reason, most of the suspense in the movie was based upon the fact that you did not know what form the creature was going to take on next. Another thing from the original draft which was dropped but Scott still hinted at, and yet oddly made it into the book was what happened to the female(Veronica Cartright). In the book it said it was attempting to (eeewww) mate with her but it turned out they were not compatable, gee… yah think?

An interesting aspect of the creatures which has rarely been touched on in the movies but was dominant in the comics and even in the toy line, was the fact that the Aliens take on characteristics of their hosts. In 3 the creature was shaped differently and ran around on all fours because in was incubated inside of a dog. In the second AVP the creature took on many characteristics of its Predator host.

As to Darthmix’s questions, drones can impregnate captured prey and cocoon them. This is usually only done if the drone finds itself separated from its hive, it then feels compelled to create a new colony. Which is what happened in 1 and 2. The Queen is tasked with creating eggs which can be used to create new colonies elsewhere, insure a new colony should something happen to it. And for creating specific types of creatures should the colonies needs change, as in more soldiers if the hive is in danger and so on…

Ridley has agreed to make the new Alien Prequel, now we will get to see what happened aboard the ship which crashed. http://www.slashfilm.com/2009/07/30/ridley-scott-to-direct-alien-prequel/

Alien was suspenseful because that ship was so huge and there were so many places for the thing to hide. And you were never sure what form it was going to take next. Aliens was much more suspenseful for me because I knew what those things were capable of, and therefore knew what those cocky marines were walking into. And it served them right for not listening to Ripley…

Hmmmm, Ripley-Ridley. Ridley-Ripley,… just a coincidence? :wink:

#89

Does anyone have a picture, or screenshot, of that 20 foot alien? All the alien franchise movies i’ve ever seen, back in the 80’s, were from watching VHS tapes - the picture was totally crap. :mad:

#90


#91

Funny Alien spoof care of Nathan Fillion: link

#92

Awesome. But, what does Nathan Fillion have to do with it?

#93

He shared the link on Twitter. :wink:

#94

OK, so I finally feel like I’m getting close enough to start participating on the forum (although if kicking up old show threads annoys people just tell me).

Firstly, you guys are awesome. We’ll wait a sec for that to sink in.
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OK. The only film which ever gave me the same creeping dread that Alien does is The Thing. It’s a weird scary alien that can change shape and murders people. You never know where it’s going to show up. And it takes nearly an hour of suspense and fear before you even see it (and when you do, jeez!).

A couple of the crew (I suck at names, sorry) mentioned either not seeing Event Horizons or not seeing it at the cinema. I saw it at a midnight showing and I drove an hour so I could see it with friends. When we got out we joked around about silly it was and then I got back in my car to drive home. About 20 minutes later as I was driving all alone, at night (in a car with no stereo) all of the street lights went out and my car stopped. On the advice of my therapist I can’t go into the details of what happened in the next 15 minutes but let me just say that Paul WS Anderson owes me a pair of pants.

Oh yeah, I also relate Alien to Cube because their is some violence and a little “gore” effects, but that is not at all the point of the film. It feels like the director is trying to make you feel fear but without really trying to shock it into you.

Finally the song grocs and if you guys form a band you shouldn’t be the Juan-ettes. You should absolutely be the Juan-a-bees. :smiley:

#95

Welcome aboard!

Old 'cast discussion is absolutely acceptable, and encouraged.

A lot of the subjects are ongoing topics of conversation. When you have a random thought or new insight into some obscure '80s flick, there’s not a better place on the web to strike up a conversation.

#96

Welcome aboard, Wolf. And what DXF said.

Heh! So noted.

#97

Okay, now that’s just plain awesome (Juan-a-bees). Made me laugh! :smiley: