Giger's alien a drone?, man this is news to me, not to mention that way for referring to It is almost as insulting as that famous nickname "scout" for, which perhaps was the strongest, biggest and most feared out of all aliens seen in the movies, along with maybe the runner, the most violent alien ever seen.
Look there's a problem when you try to apply Cameron's lore to the previous seen in "Alien", and the problem usually consists in you crashing into a concrete wall. Both movies/monster were based on complete different visions, and you can't try applying Cameron's vision on which it was not a creation of his. Apply Cameron's vision to the alien warrior and his drone only (I'm explaining now why this last one too)
And btw, so you can see who of the two is actually confused or maybe wrong. The alien "drone" was created by Cameron and had nothing to do with the first alien. It was going to be a ridged head, smaller than the warrior and in charge of the house work, spreading resin shit all over the place, helping to place eggs around, etc. He couldn't put this alien class in the film due to budget and time problems and got discarded eventually, BUT his concept remained.
You are just suffering from the secondary effects caused by long exposures to Cameron's lore after all these many years. Alien and Aliens were different movies man, different monsters with different visions of each director.
Glad to help you discovering that the alien drone was already imagined by Cameron. The first alien was just a mystery which MIGHT get an explanation, a very very subtle explanation in prometheus (doubt it tbh) or perhaps in a more than probable sequel to this movie. For now all we know about this alien class is that It had more of jockey than we could have ever imagined before...
