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 Addendum                                     Issue# 27  -  10th April 2002
 URL: http://www.adden.tr.cx/
 Author : Steak, we've got [bowl] movemnt!
================= A biological report on Aliens ============================

Have you ever seen the film Alien? You know, the one where the crew of the
Nostromo set down on an alien planet and go looking for this ship thing
And one of the crew members, Kane comes back with that crab like face hugger
on his face and then something comes out of his chest grows up and stars
to devoir the crew one by one.

What about the sequel? Aliens, the one where riply (the survivor of the 
first flick) goes back to the planet with a group of marines and they kick
some alien butt an meet up with the big queen alien at the end.

And the next one? Alien3 where riply goes to this prison planet with a group
of no hoper y-chromosomes who have found god at the end of the universe, but
an alien is along for the ride.

and the horrible Alien Resurrection, Hollywood action flick with a bunch of
cooperates that clone Ripley and give her some alien DNA which makes her
one bad ass bitch.

Well did you know that there is a lot more to these films than meets the 
eye. There is a lot of information that you probably did not know and some
that you probably worked out for yourself. The purpose of this file is to
try and explain some of that to you and to give you a better understanding
of the films

1. Lifecycle of aliens
This I think is where I will start off as it is the thing that you need to 
know, I will be referring to this throughout this file. I will write this
section of the file treating the reader as if they are living some time
after the events of alien, aliens, alien3 and alien resurrection and will
refer to the information in the style of a 'fantasy history'

KEY:

Stage [Stage number] : [Stage name] : [Movie(s) the stage can be found in,
Alien = 'A', Aliens = 'AS', Alien3 = 'A3', Alien Resurrection = 'AR']

Stage 1: Egg : A,AS,A3,AR
The egg is the first stage of the alien life cycle. The egg is 'born' if you 
will from the egg sack of a gestating queen. They seem to be semi-translucent
and react to presence within there local area. When they do react, the top
splits open into four pieces and the second stage, the face hugger can be seen 
inside, the face hugger then jumps out of the egg at the host in a kind of
jack-in-the-box way.

Stage 2: Face hugger : A,,AS,A3,AR
The face hugger is the second stage, it resembles a hose shoe crab with
a long powerful tail, it is yellowish in colour and has molecular acid for 
blood. It jumps from the egg onto the nearest host's face. Once the hugger 
is in place it renders the victim into a coma like state and feeds the victim
oxygen through the large flaps at the bottom of its body to keep it alive.

Once it has completed all that it then can get on with its main job in life,,
implantation it does this by placing a long tongue like tube down the 
victims throat into there chest cavity. It will then implant an embryo 
into the victim and then wait there for a while for the creature inside to
gestate enough for it to live on its own, then it will crawl off the face
of the victim and die. 

It has been speculated that in a situation where it is far from the nest 
and there is a need to implant a second victim it can do so, but in most 
cases, like a normal nest environment or when there are no other victims 
present like say a locked medi-lab the face hugger will just die.

Once the face hugger is in place it cannot be removed by any means possible, 
trying to cut it off will cause the blood to spill out and burn instantly
through anything that it touches, be it steel, iron, aluminum, skin, bone 
etc. 

Stage 3 : Embryo A,A3,
It has shown to be variable as to how long an embryo takes to gestate
inside a host, it can take from anywhere from an hour to a couple of days
the reason for this is unknown, it is thought to be based on the metabolism
of the host, what kind of animal it is and maybe other parts that we don't 
know about

During gestation it has been shown that the alien develops some 
characteristics from the host. In the first reported encounter the alien
was tall and thin, just like the human host, the alien walked on two legs
and showed very human characteristics like intelligence and a sadistic nature
however as a contrast on Fury 161 where the impregnated victim was a dog
the alien shown canine characteristics, like the fact it ran on all fours, 
mauled its victims for a bit before killing them and was very fast.

Stage 4 : chest buster a,as,a3,ar
The chest buster is more of a "baby alien" than a actual normal part of the
life cycle. It has two jobs in life one is to bust out of the victim through
it's ribcage and into the outside world, the second is to survive and shed
its skin to become an adult

Stage 5 : Adult a,as,a3,ar
The fifth stage of the alien life cycle is the adult alien, this is usually
the end of the cycle for most aliens as the do not reproduce, the are 
neither female nor male so cannot reproduce.

The standard alien is between six and eight feet tall and is a super fast
killing machine. it is at least as intelligent as a dog but not as 
intelligent as a human, they can push switches and remember what they do, as
well as remember places and land marks.

Aliens behave differently depending on there proximity to the nest, or more
precisely the queen, an alien that is alone, like the one that was 
encountered aboard the nostromo will act violently, crouching in tunnels and 
hiding, waiting for its prey to come to it, or at least close to it, it 
will sometimes come away from its relative darkness to hunt prey but not 
usually.

Aliens that have a functioning nest present like the ones encountered in
Hadley’s hope on LV-426 will behave differently, they will not kill there 
prey unless it is absolutely necessary, they prefer to coma there victims 
and take prisoners back to the nest for implantation, they will stick 
there victims to the wall and a egg will be moved from the egg chamber 
near the victim, the victim will wake up out of there coma to an opening 
egg, the face hugger will do its job and the alien will be "born" right
there inside the nest.

However, an alien on his own that is near a queen or a host carrying a 
queen, like the one encountered at Fury 161 will do its best to protect the
queen or the queens host, being violent and acting like an alien on his
own until the queen is born and starts producing eggs, when it will just
act like a nest worker, along with every other alien.

Stage 6 : Queen as, ar
The queen is much larger than the standard adult aliens, she is about ten
foot tall and much more dangerous, she is the ruler of an entire nest,
she sits in her thrown above the egg chamber. She lays eggs from her
egg sack. Although it has been observed that she does not need her egg
sack to lay eggs, it is speculated that the egg sack is just there to
gestate the eggs quicker than they would in the outside world.

In 2381 Lt. Ellen Ripley was cloned to obtain the queen embryo from inside
her and to produce eggs for biological weapons however things got out of
hand and some deaths were involved. The queen however was successfully
retrieved. However she escaped and set up a nest where aliens were bread
however the queen soon stopped producing eggs and instead developed a womb
which was a 'gift' from Ripley past down to the queen through the genetic
producing. There were no hosts, there were no parasites, only her.

It gave birth to a genetic human/alien hybrid. It did not consider
that the queen to be its mother, due to its genetic link, it decided that
riply was more it's mother and saw the alien queen as a threat to riply.
It attacked its real mother knocking her entire jaw off, spilling the
highly acidic blood everywhere it then perused Ripley into her escape
vehicle.

little is known about the alien reproduction system, but there is a theory,
one that I myself subscribe to that the adult aliens themselves
are neither male or female and hence do not have hormones, find another
alien 'attractive', do not have a 'mating season' or indeed at all 'mate'.
As a contrast the queen is both male and female, hence the a-sexual
reproduction, the production of eggs without a male and the intense
emotional/telepathic connection to her eggs.

Well that’s the entire alien life cycle, I think I covered everything. From
egg to queen these creatures are fascinating beautiful almost perfect
organisms, yet highly dangerous and ultimately unpredictable.

2. Differences in alien bodies
If you watch the first film and take notice of the creatures distinct
physiological build you will notice some things that are apparent across
the entire series i.e.: large looming back head, long articulated tail,
double jaw etc however there are some distinct characteristics that are
different throughout all three films, Here I will note the differences 
between the aliens in all four films

'Alien' alien
Body color:   Black
Head:         Long, sitting at a 90 degree angle to back of the body,
              a smooth transparent coating protecting what look like
              inner ridges, distinct 'human' looking skull structure
              at front under transparent 'skin'
Claws:        Six
Body shape:   Tall and thin

'Aliens' alien
Body color:   Black/blue
Head:         Long, sitting at a 90 degree angle to back of the body,
              no smooth transparent layer, ridges in full view, no sign
              of distinct human looking skull
Claws:        Three
Body shape:   Tall and thin

'Alien3' alien
Body color:  Black/red
Head:        Long, sitting flush against back, no transparent layer
             but still a smooth finish to the skull.
Claws:       Three
Body shape:  This time the body shape was less tall and thin and more
             along the lines of an actual animal, the hind and front
             legs were articulated and the head was flush against
             the back of the creature, this facilitated the running
             that this alien was accustomed to. This one was built
             for speed and it shows in it body structure.

In reality the reason for these differences is the need to keep up 
with the times and create more menacing and frightening looking 
aliens. Especially in Alien Resurrection where they were changed back 
again from the ridged heads to the smooth heads.

However we are looking at all this from a fantastical point of view
so we therefore cannot be content with the "real world" reason so
we need a film reason.

Many theories have been presented for this inconsistency in the
species, and this has been a topic of hot debate I will list some of
the most popular here.

The crest theory
In accordance to this theory the aliens from the first, third and
forth films, with the smooth heads were solider aliens, they are
the attacker type aliens that specialize in killing and nothing else,
the first line of defense for the nest if you will. they are highly
aggressive violent and relatively unintelligent and put there own
safety above that of the nest sometimes.

The aliens in the second film were nest workers, they have the ridges
on the head, are generally less violent and will not attack you until
you disturb the nest. They will however take hosts back to the nest
for implantation, as this is the main way for an alien to reproduce
they feel that this is more important. They are bred primarily for
nest work and not for killing, that is left to the solders, however
if the nest is being threatened then they can be just as violent as
solider aliens and will kill on site. The main difference is that they
always put the nest before them, laying there own life down if it will
stop the intruders, unlike a solider who will stalk its prey in the
shadows a worker will use itself cannon fodder and use its own body
as a decoy so that other aliens can move in for the kill.

The maturing theory.
The maturing theory is the idea that the aliens from all the movies are
all the same. The ones with the translucent heads such as encountered on
the nostromo, the augra and fury 161, are young aliens, they are less
than say, a week old. After a week or so and the aliens have set up a
nest and there a queen present and they have all been interacting and the
nest is doing rather well, like the scenario encountered at Hadley’s hope
the aliens malt their skin, more importantly there translucent head
skin and they have the ridges.

I really am not sure which theory I subscribe to, if I had to choose I
couldn't, The maturing theory seems to fit most of the on screen evidence
but then again so does the crest theory, and that seems more in tune with
the alien existence.

Of course there can be only one real answer which is the fact that the
directors of the movies changed the appearance of the aliens to look more
scary and dramatic. But if we accepted that we really couldn’t have all
that much fun trying to work out and write addendums on the inner workings
of a nest could we.


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 Addendum                                     Issue# 27  -  10th April 2002
 (C) Steak April 2002
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