ok, for starters let me just say that even though they suck, I include the avp movies as cannon.
All the movies are cannon imo... now let get to the basics:
How to get an alien warrior: life cycle starts with the egg. the egg contains the facehugger, which attatches to the host and implants an embryo which then burst out of the host as a chestburster...
i think thats right so far...so then the chestburster grows, sheds its skin, and becomes the 8ft tall wrecking ball we all know and love.
How to get a Queen: this one is a little more tricky but follow me through this... Ok so we start with an egg...but this egg is
different because it has a super facehugger (Alien3) which can lay multiple embryo's into a various hosts. It layed a Queen embryo into ripley and a warrior embryo into an ox. The Queen embryo takes longer to gestate then a warrior but when it chestbursts through the host it is already showing signs of its special nature ( extra forelimbs and a crest). The queen chestburster takes 3 days to become a full grown queen (Alien res) and then it starts laying eggs.
But!!! These arent the
only ways to make a Queen or an Egg or even a warrior Alien!
An other way to make
Eggs without a fully grown Queen is when, in the absense of a Queen, the dominant drone will begin to transform into a queen (AVP-R) this young Queen can create more warrior aliens by using a back up reproductive method that involves orally implanting embryo's into a host. This method requires no facehuggers and if the host if pregnant then they can be used to spawn muliple aliens that erupt from the host's body via their enlarged gut as opposed to bursting from the chest...This method was used in gunnison colorado where their was an abundance of hosts but the Queen hadnt developed her Egg laying ovipositor yet...
its reasonable to assume that all young Queens use this back up method of reproduction before they fully mature and grow an ovipositor (this is also assuming of course that they have access to a large host population while they are not yet fully matured).
Another way aliens can make
Eggs without a Queen is by converting dead organic material (in this case
brett, as was seen in
Alien) into an Egg (this egg would presumable house a Super facehugger) this backup method of Egg production was used when there was a
finite number of hosts available. The Alien in
Alien didnt have access to many hosts, one could theorize that this method of egg creation is prefferable in this type of situation because an egg can last
many many years. Long enough for contact with hosts to be reastablished (as was seen in Alien when kane was taken by a presumably ancient egg in the derelict).
So their you have it! I have reconciled all the different things the movies have shown into a comprehensive guide on the Alien life cycle...now then, what are your opinions, criticisms, and other valued input about this? did i get something wrong? did i get it all right? let me know!
