Egg on Sulaco

Started by Darkness, Nov 01, 2006, 08:21:10 AM

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Egg on Sulaco (Read 638,575 times)

Perfect-Organism

Perfect-Organism

#1245
All of these explanations are within the realm of possibility and are simply dependent on the writer's choice.  My gripe with the whole thing is that it is a contrivance which led to a story without grandeur.  The end of Aliens suggested that the queen was effectively defeated by Ripley.  To say that an egg was either brought on board by the queen, or somehow she laid a tiny one is realistic without argument, but it is also contrived.  It just doesn't seem like a natural progression to the story.  It seemed like the natural thing to do was to go big and find out where the aliens came from.  That was the approach that Mark Verheiden took with his Aliens comics.  Instead, after the fans were pumped up by the Aliens film and the comics, we went to a story which seems so unimpactful and literally stalls the progression with some of the main characters.  Just take a look at how many pages it is taking for us to come up with an answer to how the egg got on the Sulaco.  It is just such an out-of-left-field direction that was taken, that it literally derailed the progress of the story.

What would be natural, is that these characters might get a few decades of some sort of peace after the events in Aliens.  It would be unnatural that the aliens' homeworld would be found a few weeks after the events of that film.  It would likely take a lot more time before people stumbled onto that planet.  So now we are at that stage where, we could get a proper sequel to Aliens, one which moves in a grand direction instead of the unrewarding one we got in Alien 3.  We could get that with Blomkamp's film.  The key actors are still around, and they are up for it.

This is ridiculous.  It's time to let go of the egg on the Sulaco, because most likely, it was never there and go in a better direction for a sequel to Aliens.

Kel G 426

Kel G 426

#1246
er... I want A5 too, but I don't feel this is the thread to discuss it.  I'd rather not see that debate erupt here.

Local Trouble

Local Trouble

#1247
Quote from: Perfect-Organism on Aug 25, 2016, 09:03:56 PMTo say that an egg was either brought on board by the queen, or somehow she laid a tiny one is realistic without argument, but it is also contrived.

I suspect that Fox insisted on it.  It just doesn't makes sense that all of the various screenwriters who worked on this film would have chosen the same starting point for their stories if it hadn't been mandated by the people who commissioned their scripts.

SM

SM

#1248
Re: gravity.  Interesting idea, but are we to assume that an egg can float to get stuck on the ceiling - but nothing else floats while the crew's asleep?  The floor would be littered in perpetual motion executive toys every time they woke.

Local Trouble

Local Trouble

#1249
I thought the same thing, but didn't he suggest that the ship would have reduced its gravity versus cutting it off entirely?  Regardless, I think the theory works with or without that idea.

windebieste

windebieste

#1250
Quote from: Corporal Hicks on Aug 25, 2016, 04:35:19 PM
Quite possibly the simplest and yet best solution.

Quote from: Perfect-Organism on Aug 25, 2016, 05:18:16 PM
Very good point about shutting off the gravity.  Well done sir.  I don't think I've heard that one before.


Thank you.  We have 'ALIEN 3' now regardless of the decisions made by  the studio to take the movie in unexpected directions.  Directions that some people find hostile to their sensibilities and difficult to accept.  Then again, if the 3rd film does live up to its title, doesn't it?  Unexpected and hostile; and that is what these movies are about.  So they should be.

If we take the available evidence, Yessir, we can explain the egg's existence.  Accepting that the Queen is still capable of generating a 'spore' of some description and coupling that with powering down of the ships systems, including gravity generation, while the crew are in hypersleep we can come to a very reasonable and practical solution. 

Finally, you could add these events into the narrative of a movie by having someone aboard, say, the Patna have coded remote access the Sulaco's flight records and have a visual via monitors of recorded security feed of Ripley's fight with the Queen, close ups of it dropping spores and those spores moving around the powered down ship and growing into eggs while Ripley and company are asleep. 

Then crew of the Patna would have some understanding of what happened aboard the ship and that information is conveyed to the audience.  They then board the ship and find, surprise!, there's a few more eggs than they anticipated via the security feed.  Only 2 of which have been opened and those are the two we see on Fiorina in 'ALIEN 3'. 

From here it's on with the movie... an 'ALIENS' movie told from the viewpoint of WY mercs.  I'd take it in that direction.  So much to offer right there with all these advantages:  Continuity between 2nd and 3rd movie explained.  New characters.  New story.  More pulse rifles.  More Aliens.  No need for a retcon.  A true 'ALIENS' story spanning across both ships as infected WY mercs are returned to the Patna and containment for the contamination fails. 

Quote from: Local Trouble on Aug 25, 2016, 08:17:26 PM
Agreed.  I've been trying to sell that idea for a long time, though.  Hopefully you'll have better luck convincing people.

People like their insect analogies when it comes to just about everything regarding the Alien so here's one that might just suit.   We have hydrochloric acid in our stomachs essential for digestion.  We digest our food internally but insects, houseflies, for example, digest their food externally.  Houseflies are toothless and in order to eat they have a very specialised proboscis.  They vomit up their stomach contents - including the acid - and dissolve their food.  They then suck up the soupy nutrients via the proboscis. 

Disgusting, right?  Well, facehuggers have all these features.  They lack a jaw.  Acid is present. They have a proboscis.   A juvenile facehugger may very well be able vomit up acid, digest local material for food (and egg construction) much like an insect does to feed.  Tell them that.

Quote from: Perfect-Organism on Aug 25, 2016, 09:03:56 PM
This is ridiculous.  It's time to let go of the egg on the Sulaco

That's not what it's time to let go off.

-Windebieste.

Local Trouble

Local Trouble

#1251
Quote from: windebieste on Aug 25, 2016, 09:54:06 PM
Quote from: Local Trouble on Aug 25, 2016, 08:17:26 PM
Agreed.  I've been trying to sell that idea for a long time, though.  Hopefully you'll have better luck convincing people.

People like their insect analogies when it comes to just about everything regarding the Alien so here's one that might just suit.   We have hydrochloric acid in our stomachs essential for digestion.  We digest our food internally but insects, houseflies, for example, digest their food externally.  Houseflies are toothless and in order to eat they have a very specialised proboscis.  They vomit up their stomach contents - including the acid - and dissolve their food.  They then suck up the soupy nutrients via the proboscis. 

Disgusting, right?  Well, facehuggers have all these features.  They lack a jaw.  Acid is present. They have a proboscis.   A juvenile facehugger may very well be able vomit up acid, digest local material for food (and egg construction) much like an insect does to feed.  Tell them that.

I tried that, but my version was "like in The Fly."  Like I said, too simplistic and people won't believe it.

windebieste

windebieste

#1252
Quote from: Local Trouble on Aug 25, 2016, 09:54:01 PM
I thought the same thing, but didn't he suggest that the ship would have reduced its gravity versus cutting it off entirely?

Yah.  This is why you can't shut it off entirely.  You wouldn't want to anyway.  It needs to still be on because the crew would otherwise wake up and not be able to find their coffee cups when they get up.  It's all explained in the post.  Reduced gravity, friction and the intertial frame of reference of all objects on the Nostromo traveling at exactly the same velocity together without any other force acting upon them would keep all objects in place.  Everything would be as light as a feather if you picked them up, but even a feather stays put when placed on a flat surface.

The egg is formed when the spore settles upon a surface.  Any surface.  Once it's determined it's safe, it sends out tendrils, feeds, grows and forms the egg.   For 'ALIEN 3' that surface just happens to be part of the ceiling.  Under significantly reduced gravity the egg could grow to full size unaffected, just its orientation is perpendicular to the surface it's attached to.  As it grows to full, it would cross a mass threshold where it would no longer be able to hold its contents and it disgorges the facehugger onto the floor. 

-Windebieste.

SM

SM

#1253
So the gravity is reduced enough for an egg to float up and get stuck on the ceiling, but not enough for absolutely everything else on the ship - cups, jars, dippy birds, clothes, loaders, drop ships the sleeping crew - to float around. 

windebieste

windebieste

#1254
Quote from: SM on Aug 25, 2016, 10:10:14 PM
So the gravity is reduced enough for an egg to float up and get stuck on the ceiling, but not enough for absolutely everything else on the ship - cups, jars, dippy birds, clothes, loaders, drop ships the sleeping crew - to float around. 

Close, but you're missing a critical step.  I guess others will too, so more effort is required on my part. Not much:

The spores that the Queen drops on the deck of the Sulaco, 2 or more of them, would be partially formed facehuggers.  Basically just a tail and a sack of organs with a proboscis - very delicate and vulnerable.  It needs the egg to be safe to develop fully but does have the capacity to create one of its own if necessary.  It's small, though, which makes it very mobile - and fast.  It lands on the deck and intuitively seeks out safety.

Meanwhile, Ripley throws the Queen out the airlock, gathers Newt and hits the sack.  The ship then powers down its systems to conserve energy as I've outlined above. 

While this is happening the spore(s) migrate around the ship in low gravity and one of them attaches itself to the ceiling where we see it in 'ALIEN 3 and grows into maturity there.  The low gravity doesn't affect the egg growth but it does affect the growing mass of the egg and eventually forces it to open. 

Hope that helps.

-Windebieste.


SM

SM

#1255
With things like teeny proto-facehuggers (that were dropped when, and didn't get sucked out into space?), these teeny proto-facehuggers make their own eggs(?), some things defying gravity while others don't (setting aside that it makes perfect sense to reduce artificial gravity while the crew is asleep - David notwithstanding) - this has rapidly shifted from 'that has some merit' to 'this is too convoluted'.

Local Trouble

Local Trouble

#1256
This is why I went with mucous-like globules of tiny proto-eggs in my theory.  They don't require spidery proto-facehuggers crawling around the ship, just a bit of slime oozing out of the queen's abdomen and into the hangar's subflooring during her fight with Ripley. 

Presumably, this material would have been sticky enough to prevent it from being blown out into space when the whole room decompressed.  Either that or it landed in a place where it was safe from being dragged out by the airflow.

windebieste

windebieste

#1257
It's not that hard to understand.   Just give it some thought.

If you want to get down to every little detail.  Yes.  We can do that, too.

The egg doesn't float around. Gravity affects all objects the same way but the high mobility of the small, light weight spores permits them to access locations under these conditions and then grow into an egg on any surface. 

The spores use their tail to secure themselves to the floor grating during the rapid decompression.  Simple.

-Windebieste.


Quote from: Local Trouble on Aug 25, 2016, 10:34:28 PM
This is why I went with mucous-like globules of tiny proto-eggs in my theory.  They don't require spidery proto-facehuggers crawling around the ship, just a bit of slime oozing out of the queen's abdomen and into the hangar's subflooring during her fight with Ripley. 

Presumably, this material would have been sticky enough to prevent it from being blown out into space when the whole room decompressed.  Either that or it landed in a place where it was safe from being dragged out by the airflow.

The principle is the same, just the details differ. Others have suggested similar solutions in the past.  The important point being made in each example is the Queen may still be capable of dropping spores despite the loss of its egg sac.

-Windebieste.


Here's the break down if it's too convoluted for you, or anyone else:

1).  Queen drops 2 (or more) spores.
2).  Queen gets thrown out the airlock and Ripley and Newt head off for the long sleep home.
3).  Ship's non-critical systems, including artificial gravity, power down.
4).  Spores migrate freely around the largely vacant low gravity ship, settle into place and become eggs.  One attaches to the ceiling under these conditions.

It's easy.  ;)

-Windebieste.

Kurai

Kurai

#1258
Eh, I'm not so sure... We don't have any precedent for it. We may as well say a Warrior got on with the Queen and after everyone went to sleep, crawled above the hypersleep chambers and reverse-morphed into a Queen Egg and that's how it got there. :P

@SM: If I remember correctly there is a mention of artificial gravity being reengaged as the Nostromo crew wake up. Can't say for the Sulaco though.

windebieste

windebieste

#1259
The problem here is the Alien's biology is not set in stone.  Every film maker, including Scott, has modified it to some degree.  Scott removed the eggmorph scene.  Cameron added the Queen.  Fincher made the Alien compatible with other species.  and so on. 

As movie makers have each added their own take on the creature's life cycle just about anything is plausible. 

If you want an explanation of how the egg got on board the Sulaco, then the simplest is the best.  In this scenario, you just have to link presence of the Queen to the egg on the ceiling; and then just 'join the dots'. 

So yes.  It can be explained.  Given the malleability of the organism and this under explored area of the Queen's loss of an egg sac, it's a viable solution.

-Windebieste.

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