I've always thought that the queen likely had an intermediate stage between being born and being royalty wherein she would be a part of the pack (or solo) and kidnap the first generation of victims for the hive herself.
I could see a praetorian version of the queen roaming the colony and abducting people early on, and everyone trying to figure out what exactly was happening, by which point it would be too late.
Say, for example, the first 24-48 hours after birth the queen is ambulatory and kidnapping hosts, creating the "core" of the hive. Likely at that point a search party would go looking, and the first few aliens would be born. Search party gets taken out, maybe the aliens lose a grunt or two, but end up doubling their ranks.
Rinse and repeat. Maybe the colonists try other things. According to what Ripley said Newt survived longer than 17 days. So, how long would that be from the time Russ was facehugged to the time the marines arrived? A month? More? I haven't looked at any of the Aliens drafts in quite sometime so I forget if it gives us any kind of a description of how much time passes between the events.
Quote from: Local Trouble on Sep 15, 2022, 02:11:04 AMI always wondered about that. Cameron said even more colonists ventured into the derelict and got hugged, but wouldn't Anne Jorden have warned them about the eggs?
I always thought it'd make more sense if Russ Jorden's chestburster got loose, abducted some more colonists and eggmorphed them. One of that batch could then become a queen.
It would have had to happen quickly though. The colonists all had PDTs implanted so it would be impossible for them to go missing for very long.
That scene is in the treatment version of the film as I recall. The problem I have with the idea that a recon team went out to the derelict is it adds questions of how they ever got back to the colony. It's not exactly just around the corner. If I were the colonial administration on LV426 I would be very weary of sending more people out into a major unknown like that. Mark the map with "Here be dragons" and send a detailed report back home.