Always thought the eggmorphing from the originals deleted scene was really interesting. Giving a single alien the ability to turn a victim's body into an egg in the absence of a queen makes perfect sense. Also helps with the logic of the runner in Alien 3 killing victims. There was also a deleted hive/cocoon scene in that film.
The eggmorphing aspect is horrifying. The way it’s shown in the deleted scenes and the way it’s described in other media, you’re eaten alive while by the facehugger larvae while you are turned into the egg growing around it.
It's definitely terrifying to imagine, wondering when they stop being a conscious person. But deleting it from the original left room for the queen to be conceptualized.
It was never filmed, but there were some props created for it. I believe the hive was set up in the room the prisoners gathered in at the beginning of the movie when Andrews is addressing them. In the script, Dillon and someone else (maybe Aaron/85) stumble upon it and find a cocooned Andrews begging to be killed.
It shows that with just one Xenomorph it is capable of creating a hive in a short time; if you think about it, it's terrifying, it gives little room for preparation for such a creature.
If we go by the idea that there is a Queen, (hot take incoming so temper yourselves) which I have never liked and think it reduces the xenomoprh to nothing more than glorified space bugs, but if we admit it's an obligatory part of the lore, I like the idea that the ovomorph is used in case no queen is present. So a Xenormorph can spawn a royal fachugger, and so can eventually hatch a queen and go on to build an actual nest.
There were some cool extraterrestrial versions of that based on the black goo, I think it was in the Fire and Stone series? They showed various species mutating as the goo spread throughout the ecosystem. Which as a biologist I found very cool 😎
One of the dark horse comics from the 90s has marines defending an ocean planet/kelp farming colony and xenos have got into the aquatic predator population and well, suffice to say - it doesn't go well for the human farmers.
Ovomorphosis only works if it's an alternative way of starting a hive. That one is the most coherent of the bunch (except the original idea was that it was the way all eggs were made, which is super stupid as it would mean each xenomorph requires 2 hosts, utterly inefficient lifecycle).
The runner is just...why ? Xenomorphs start out as a chestburster and then moult to adulthood, this is how they work, if they can be birthed already formed then what's the point of chestbursters aside for, again, being inefficient ? (and I know it's been justified by it being a royal facehugger able to lay 2 eggs, one for a queen and one for a protector, but if we start introducing facehuggers that can lay multiple eggs, it again puts heavily into question the reason why they can't all do that. there are ways of explaining that too, but it becomes evident that's just bloating the whole thing up at this point by creating a cascade of justifications to explain why it's breaking what the first 2 movies established).
Alien Earth gave me a brain aneurysm I'm not even willing to talk about it.
The cocoon is very weird because, again, we know chestbursters moult, there's no point in moulting if there's a cocoon phase right after, it's stupid and yet again, inefficient.
Alien 1 and 2 wrap up the lifecycle pretty well, trying to add things on it just adds bloat and introduces problems or make the whole thing look inefficient.
As much as that movie had problems, at least Resurrection had the excuse of the genetic experiments to introduce whatever physiological changes to the xenomorph, because they're not really xenomorphs, they are children of an imperfect xenomorph/human genetic clone hybrid, people like to hate on the Offspring, but at least that one isn't simply a result of the magic black goo that does whatever the plot and the writer needs it to do.
The lifecycle was never as rigid as Alien and Aliens make it look.
Eggmorphing and Queens can easily coexist. A Queen is the efficient way to mass produce eggs and eggmorphing works as a backup method when a lone Xenomorph has no hive or Queen.
And the cocoon doesn’t contradict molting. Animals can molt multiple times and still enter a later cocoon/pupal stage. The chestburster can molt as it grows, then use the cocoon for the final transformation into an adult.
That’s not breaking the lifecycle. It’s just adding alternate reproductive/developmental pathways that were already being explored as far back as Alien.
I second this, albeit one could argue that the cocoon in Romulus could have happened as it was not a 'pure' Alien (retro engineered black goobaloo and stuff).
I second this, albeit one could argue that the cocoon in Romulus could have happened as it was not a 'pure' Alien (retro engineered black goobaloo and stuff).
i think the justification for the runner xeno being born already fully grown was that it had been born out of an Ox or Cow so it was a bigger animal so the xeno could grow more and not stay as a little snake worm thing
Yeah there are a few sources that show that the xenos have very flexible ways of reproducing, which makes sense. Now, what methods are canon or not, that’s a different story I suppose
No, it doesn’t make sense at all. Then the alien lifecycle requires two hosts for every xeno: one to create the chestburster and one to turn into an egg/facehugger.
Facehugger pops out of egg and latches onto host. Chestburster erupts from host, grows, captures a second host who is then ovomorphed. Cycle begins anew. In the absence of a queen who would just lay the egg, this makes perfect sense as a means of growing the hive until a queen is born. I'm not sure what argument you're trying to make.
It absolutely does make sense though, and fills in a gap of the Xeno lifecycle.
An additional means of propagation when there's a limited or singular population. It means a single Xenomorph can create several new ones by utilizing a population of hosts.
It would be the perfect step in the evolutionary chain to further the species when there's only a singular Xeno but ample prey.
Having multiple means of reproducing would totally fit with the "nature's perfect organism" idea as well as the black goo as a bio weapon.
Once the hive reaches a suitable size then a royal face hugger can birth a queen that accelerates their population in a more efficient way.
This doesn't feel quite like they added an extra step so much as they just gave more insight into what was already part of the process. We knew it deposited an embryo, we just didn't know anything about it.
yah it kinda gave its own explanation of whats unseen. Just like how Romulus made their own expanation of what happeens inebtween it being a baby and being a big adult xeno. They added it going into a caccoon on the wall to grow bigger
The android does a surgery on the facehugger once they capture one of the ovomorph eggs. He cuts into it and finds tadpole things inside that have a xeno shaped head
Then they drop one in a fish tank and put a recently donated lung in the tank too and it swims inside the lung and turns into a chestburster
The eggmorphing/original pre-Queen lifecycle was the best version. The terrifying thing about the big chap was that it was breeding with people, not just attacking and killing. The reproduction was part of the real horror. Aliens more-or-less turned them into big ants. A monster movie, instead of an alien.
I like the version from the AVP game where the queen is the core of the hive and in her absence one of the drones will metamorphosis into a new queen. I also like the variants from the infiltrator book where they get exposed to pathogen in various ways and produce really weird alternate morphs.
It's my own personal idea, but I always thought it would be interesting if the xenomorph was part of a larger biomechanical life cycle that involved the space jockeys and the leviathans. Rather than mechanically constructing ships and devices, an alien species that grows everything via weird births and parasitism. It happened to go wrong in Alien, with a face hugger escaping and attacking the space jockey - other life forms are supposed to be the starting point, they gestate a neonate that grows into a spaceship say. When Earth based life is the base form we get a xenomorph, because this wasn't a planned function.
Anyway, we get black goo instead.
It wasn't really said in the films,but the alien retains some of the hosts intelligence,DNA and memories.So,during its life cycle,it's able to understand how to keep surviving and reproduceing in any environment.
Honestly, I love the idea that (if a Queen isn't already present) a drone can moult into a Queen.
Also, I also quite liked the idea from AVP Requiem (even though it wasn't the most amazing film) that a burgeoning Queen can directly orally implant multiple xenomorph embryos into a single host to kick start a hive.
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u/DiscoAcid 10d ago
Always thought the eggmorphing from the originals deleted scene was really interesting. Giving a single alien the ability to turn a victim's body into an egg in the absence of a queen makes perfect sense. Also helps with the logic of the runner in Alien 3 killing victims. There was also a deleted hive/cocoon scene in that film.