A new theory to explain the Cocoon Scene in the Alien DC

[Doctor Ash]

By thinking about Ridley saying that Dallas and Brett were food for the eggs and looking at this Giger Painting

http://rs1271.pbsrc.com/albums/jj636/skybeast3/35je0c1_zpsf765631d.jpg?w=480&h=480&fit=clip

again and keeping in mind that alien eggs have tendrils for absorbing nutrients, i got a new idea:

What if alien eggs are able to feed themselves from various sources.

Maybe Dallas and Brett were just eaten by the eggs and the eggs laid by the queen in Aliens fed from the soil and/or the hive.

That would be an alternate idea to solve the eggmorphing/queen discrepancy, although i like eggmorphing much more than the queen.

[SM]

They're not sitting next to a forming egg and being used as food though - they're becoming the egg.

[OpenMaw]

Ridley never said they were food for the eggs anyway. It was one of the production people who said that Dallas had become "food for the alien." Which, depending on the way you look at it... I mean whatever the process of metamorphosis that is egg morphing is, it could be looked at as a form of digestion. (breakdown and reconstitution.)

[SM]

What could be nasty though is you have a body lying on the ground (dead or alive), and the Alien bites them in the chest (or head - even nastier if they bite them and they live) and from wherever they go bit, and egg grows out of them.  The body is eaten away as the egg become more fully formed.

[Doctor Ash]

Maybe an xeno warrior or drone has the potential to lay one or two small eggs that aren't as big or nurtured as those from the queen.

Therefore Brett and Dallas were simply egg fodder, that was slowly dissolved and digested by those eggs, like it is with those wasps that were mentioned to be eaten alive in the alien novelization, IIRC.

The queen eggs get their nutrients in the egg sac and later when laid through the tendrils from the soil.

Edit: Maybe the environment is also a factor in how the eggs are created, as space ships and space stations have no soil from which to get nutrients...

[Valaquen]

Ridley never said they were food for the eggs anyway.

Yes he did. From Sight & Sounds vol. 48 no. 1.

"Loose on the ship, this new Alien begins to lay eggs in the bowels of the ship. It lives to propagate and must find food for its offspring -- in this case, the crew members of the Nostromo upon whom the young Aliens can feed in their eggs until a new host comes along prodding the eggs. Then the cycle begins all over again."

They were inspired by parasitoids that nest inside living bodies (caterpillars) and devour them without damaging their organs. Once used up the caterpllar husk is used as a cocoon to protect the embryo. According to Giger the Alien returns the crew to its nest and "drains the blood out of its human prey and [forms] the dried husk into a cocoon." That was to be the fate of the crew and maybe why the interior of the eggs is so fleshy and organic.

If you want to know where the Alien's offspring come from, O'Bannon had transposed most of its life cycle from his screenplay They Bite, which featured exoskeleton insect creatures who do much the same to their human victims as the Alien does, and one scene even shows us the eggs being deposited inside a victim: "The breeder is now holding Gil to the ground, its ovipositor plunged into his belly. The eggs begin to force their way through the ovipositor and into Gil's belly in a series of rhythmic contractions." The Alien would seemingly do the same, abducting hosts, living or dead, for each of its embryos to feed and grow on. The bodies are then broken down to form sustenance and protection for the embryo.

[Doctor Ash]

Ridley never said they were food for the eggs anyway.

Yes he did. From Sight & Sounds vol. 48 no. 1.

"Loose on the ship, this new Alien begins to lay eggs in the bowels of the ship. It lives to propagate and must find food for its offspring -- in this case, the crew members of the Nostromo upon whom the young Aliens can feed in their eggs until a new host comes along prodding the eggs. Then the cycle begins all over again."

They were inspired by parasitoids that nest inside living bodies (caterpillars) and devour them without damaging their organs. Once used up the caterpllar husk is used as a cocoon to protect the embryo. According to Giger the Alien returns the crew to its nest and "drains the blood out of its human prey and [forms] the dried husk into a cocoon." That was to be the fate of the crew and maybe why the interior of the eggs is so fleshy and organic.

If you want to know where the Alien's offspring come from, O'Bannon had transposed most of its life cycle from his screenplay They Bite, which featured exoskeleton insect creatures who do much the same to their human victims as the Alien does, and one scene even shows us the eggs being deposited inside a victim: "The breeder is now holding Gil to the ground, its ovipositor plunged into his belly. The eggs begin to force their way through the ovipositor and into Gil's belly in a series of rhythmic contractions." The Alien would seemingly do the same, abducting hosts, living or dead, for each of its embryos to feed and grow on. The bodies are then broken down to form sustenance and protection for the embryo.

That would mean that the embryo eats the host and excretes the egg shell? Is the embryo the later facehugger or is it another organism that builds the facehugger inside the host?

[Valaquen]

Ridley never said they were food for the eggs anyway.

Yes he did. From Sight & Sounds vol. 48 no. 1.

"Loose on the ship, this new Alien begins to lay eggs in the bowels of the ship. It lives to propagate and must find food for its offspring -- in this case, the crew members of the Nostromo upon whom the young Aliens can feed in their eggs until a new host comes along prodding the eggs. Then the cycle begins all over again."

They were inspired by parasitoids that nest inside living bodies (caterpillars) and devour them without damaging their organs. Once used up the caterpllar husk is used as a cocoon to protect the embryo. According to Giger the Alien returns the crew to its nest and "drains the blood out of its human prey and [forms] the dried husk into a cocoon." That was to be the fate of the crew and maybe why the interior of the eggs is so fleshy and organic.

If you want to know where the Alien's offspring come from, O'Bannon had transposed most of its life cycle from his screenplay They Bite, which featured exoskeleton insect creatures who do much the same to their human victims as the Alien does, and one scene even shows us the eggs being deposited inside a victim: "The breeder is now holding Gil to the ground, its ovipositor plunged into his belly. The eggs begin to force their way through the ovipositor and into Gil's belly in a series of rhythmic contractions." The Alien would seemingly do the same, abducting hosts, living or dead, for each of its embryos to feed and grow on. The bodies are then broken down to form sustenance and protection for the embryo.

That would mean that the embryo eats the host and excretes the egg shell? Is the embryo the later facehugger or is it another organism that builds the facehugger inside the host?

The egg shell, we're to assume, is composed out of a host that an adult Alien had subdued. That is probably why the interior of the egg looks like a pile of guts. The facehugger/spore inside uses this to insulate and feed itself.

Here's what Ridley said about the facehugger in American Cinematographer (1979):

"The thing that came out of the egg --the 'perambulatory penis', as we used to call it-- is the father. It is an abstract entity, in a sense, because all it does is plant a seed. Once having conceived, it dies and the next generation takes on characteristics of whatever life form it landed on. It could have been a dog, in which case, the Alien would have taken on a dog form. The result is a combination of two elements, the original creature and whatever host it uses."

O'Bannon and Scott used the words 'spore' and 'embryo' sort of interchangeably with the egg, facehugger and chestburster... so it's quite confusing. They never quite specificed how the Alien reproduces in terms of spawning the facehugger, they only spoke about its uses for the crew, the earliest stages of which are quite oblique.

[Doctor Ash]

Ridley never said they were food for the eggs anyway.

Yes he did. From Sight & Sounds vol. 48 no. 1.

"Loose on the ship, this new Alien begins to lay eggs in the bowels of the ship. It lives to propagate and must find food for its offspring -- in this case, the crew members of the Nostromo upon whom the young Aliens can feed in their eggs until a new host comes along prodding the eggs. Then the cycle begins all over again."

They were inspired by parasitoids that nest inside living bodies (caterpillars) and devour them without damaging their organs. Once used up the caterpllar husk is used as a cocoon to protect the embryo. According to Giger the Alien returns the crew to its nest and "drains the blood out of its human prey and [forms] the dried husk into a cocoon." That was to be the fate of the crew and maybe why the interior of the eggs is so fleshy and organic.

If you want to know where the Alien's offspring come from, O'Bannon had transposed most of its life cycle from his screenplay They Bite, which featured exoskeleton insect creatures who do much the same to their human victims as the Alien does, and one scene even shows us the eggs being deposited inside a victim: "The breeder is now holding Gil to the ground, its ovipositor plunged into his belly. The eggs begin to force their way through the ovipositor and into Gil's belly in a series of rhythmic contractions." The Alien would seemingly do the same, abducting hosts, living or dead, for each of its embryos to feed and grow on. The bodies are then broken down to form sustenance and protection for the embryo.

That would mean that the embryo eats the host and excretes the egg shell? Is the embryo the later facehugger or is it another organism that builds the facehugger inside the host?

The egg shell, we're to assume, is composed out of a host that an adult Alien had subdued. That is probably why the interior of the egg looks like a pile of guts. The facehugger/spore inside uses this to insulate and feed itself.

Here's what Ridley said about the facehugger in American Cinematographer (1979):

"The thing that came out of the egg --the 'perambulatory penis', as we used to call it-- is the father. It is an abstract entity, in a sense, because all it does is plant a seed. Once having conceived, it dies and the next generation takes on characteristics of whatever life form it landed on. It could have been a dog, in which case, the Alien would have taken on a dog form. The result is a combination of two elements, the original creature and whatever host it uses."

O'Bannon and Scott used the words 'spore' and 'embryo' sort of interchangeably with the egg, facehugger and chestburster... so it's quite confusing. They never quite specificed how the Alien reproduces in terms of spawning the facehugger, they only spoke about its uses for the crew, the earliest stages of which are quite oblique.

Do you have an interview planned with ADF after the release of Covenant? It would be great if you could ask him about what he know about how the eggs were created in Alien and how he saw the process happening in his imagination.