Quote from: stephen on Nov 01, 2011, 01:08:11 AM
The simplest theory in my opinion is:
A facehugger hitchs a ride with the queen.
The queen is able to through survival of the species kinda thing to lay one egg without her eggsac (if you wish to believe that this is a queen facehugger go right ahead).
She lays that egg in the drop ship landing gear.
She hops out and has her fisticuffs with ripley.
the face hugger that hitched the ride moves the egg (by dragging it with its tail) and does this out of instinct - "don't be where your enemy expects you to be".
Ripely puts everyone into hypersleep.
Egg hatches
We now have two facehuggers - one gets ripley and the other gets the dog.
All other theories don't really explain with any real plausibility (in my opinion) the location of the egg. A super facehugger theory explains the two aliens but not the egg location.
Actually, your theory just gave me an idea.
Like in my original theory, a chestburster hitched a ride with the Queen onto the dropship. The Queen lays an egg on the dropship. By the time everyone goes into hypersleep, the chestburster is a full-grown alien. This Alien takes the egg and moves it to where we see it on the Sulaco in Alien3. The egg hatches, and the facehugger breaks into Ripley's cryo tube. The cryo tubes are all moved into the escape shuttle, and the facehugger goes with it. But the alien that moved the egg stays behind on the Sulaco, eventually starving to death.
I do believe it's even possible for a chestburster to crawl inside the Queen and live in her temporarily. As a kid when I saw the Kenner Alien Queen figure and the small arms sticking out of her chest, I actually thought it was supposed to be a chestburster living inside her, like she was storing it there while it grows. My mom told me that's what it was.
But... I do think it's clear in Alien3 that there was only one face hugger. As I've posted already, it makes sense that a Queen face hugger can lay two embryos - first a regular alien which prepares the way for the Queen, then the Queen itself. Queen face hugger.
I still don't understand why Ripley didn't scan the ship to make sure the coast is clear from aliens, but this assumes it's actually possible to scan the ship for lifeforms.
So your theory + my theory seems to make sense to me now. I just don't like the idea of a face hugger being intelligent enough to move an egg... face huggers are just stupid little parasites with very limited reasoning. Is all they think about is impregnating someone to satisfy what it obviously a strong and intense mating (sexual) desire. I'm sure the face huggers gain a lot of pleasure while impregnating someone.... a lot of orgasms.
But, the idea of a chestburster being on board and growing up to move the egg works.
And obviously, the full-grown alien is what 'told' the egg to hatch.