With Ridley Scott, the Space Jockey and Alien origin always seems to come up. Whether or not it's a sequel with Ripley 8 or a prequel with unknown characters (or maybe no characters at all if Cameron's Avatar opens the door to movies with no human characters) is probably beside the point.
Remember, Ridley Scott decided first and foremost on what the Alien does in its essence, from the beginning of its lifecycle to the later stages. The impregnation, gestation, birth and adolescence were all part of how Scott made the creature work. If Scott had went on to make an Alien 2, it would've been something revolving around the same concept as he looked to create an image of something terrifying in the way it abuses common concepts of life. He wished to see Alien end with Ripley dead as well and the Alien proceeding to send out a transmission using her voice.
The whole shrieking wall-crawling mega-killer-ant of death was a concept introduced by James Cameron, but it's the most common concept one remembers from the series. And it is Cameron's idea that has both glorified and made this very version of the Alien a landmark of the entire series. Facehuggers and chestbursters and eggs became mere plotdevices, the lesser end of a spectrum that mainly revolves around the matured Alien. Remember, in Alien all these things became a character in and of itself and each step of the way was a terrifying new experience when you first saw the movie. With Ridley Scott, I'd expect more of this evolution and defying of how we think things need to work because if they suddenly stopped doing that, we'd be terrified.
A Spacejockey Origin movie would have enough of the Alien in it simply because that's what seemingly brought it down. A creature seemingly grown into its pilot chair, dead from within due to the payload it was carrying in its ship. What is the story behind that? That can work as a prequel. Even if we never see an Alien drone, there's enough of the xenomorph in its various forms to infest every nook and cranny of that. As for a sequel treatment, well, we got Ripley 8, the abomination. Human Alien Hybrid, she literally carries the horror inside her genes. It's such a Whedon-move to take a predicament like that and turn it into superhero-like empowerment with some feminism thrown in (coughbuffycough). To me, Ripley 8 needs to be conflicted as time goes on, struggling with what is Ripley's hatred towards the creature due to her memories and her own alien side. The Alien is often presented as the Anti-Life, something so pure in its program to killkillkill. How is it gonna effect Ripley 8? Can she bear children? What is her monthly period like? Forgive the bold humor, but I think it's gonna be an acid affair. Is she aging normally? Is her body healing normally? Won't she become riddled with tumors due to some genetic incompatability? Does her sweat turn into the hive resin when it dries? Her own body could become a plethora of problems to her and would be enough of a problem for her in a sequel to go seek out the origin of the Spacejockey to find answers. Maybe even because she's dying from her contamination and wishes to once again see the world save from the xenomorph threat. There's enough potential in the Alien itself to carry it on in various forms or shapes. The Drone-Queen-Hive expression of the xenomorph should and must only be the tip of the iceberg. Otherwise it'll only end up catalogued as a species of monsters down the line like it is already for many disgruntled fans out there.
I would honestly welcome an Alien TV series with the type of production values like The Sarah Connor Chronicles or Battlestar Galactica. It can explore a multitude of ideas like that which could broaden the franchise immensely, since neither novels or comics have recently tried to endeavour the same.
What about Hives? How do they grow? What do they do? If the Alien is dead, is the Hive Resin harmless biomatter? Aliens Labyrinth by Dark Horse once upon a time tried to take a peek into the 'life within the Hive' and it is by far the most memorable Aliens sidestory that has stuck with me. It tackled the multibirth later revisited by AVP-R. It showed what prolonged cocooning can do to its victims. I'd really love to see a TV show based on Alien to have a few episodes playing within a Hive with no Alien whatsoever and show survival of a few people within that living structure. Does the resin try to grow them when they sleep? Does it infect them and mutate them like it did Dallas and Brett in the first movie's deleted scene? Can Aliens sting you with their tail spikes and leave something behind that will sooner or later turn you into hive biomatter? Will you start sweating out the resin like Dallas seemingly did (him getting lovingly covered up by the Alien is merely the most mundane scenario)? What does a Hive do to a planet when it is left alone too long? Do the walls breathe in atmosphere? Can it consume the atmosphere, leading to a dead planet like LV-426?
It's all just food for thought and I think there's still a valid future for the Alien in whatever shape or form it may come.
Beo
