Was Obannon that bad? i didn’t realize his version of the alien script had been changed so much. i’m curious to read it now…
EDIT: oh, lookey
Wow, the Nostromo was originally called SNARK. Maybe it’s better they did rewrite this story!!!
I read the novelisation, but I’m pretty sure I’ve seen the scene.
The crew were glued to the wall with eggs in front of them - they were not turning into eggs, they were stored hosts - once the eggs matured, they would get facehugged, and chest-bursted.
The aliens, like many social insects, can modify themselves based on the social situation. The lone emerged alien can lay eggs to propagate. If there are lots of aliens and hosts, and a social structure develops, then a drone becomes an egg-producing Queen, as in Aliens.
Si
“Captain Chaz Standard”? :smack:
You are mistaken.
How interesting. It is my interpretation that the crew is glued to the wall and are acting as stored hosts. I read the novelization as a kid and when I watch the youtube link provided, it looks like Dallas is behind an opened egg (implying he has an alien inside him and that’s why he begs for death). I’m open to a new interpretation, but I’m not sure how a person would turn into an egg?
Brett is next to him and is nearly dissolved into the egg. My fanwank is the alien implants a facehugger larvae into/attached to Brett and Dallas and it feeds off their bodies growing and building an egg case around them.
If you notice Brett’s ‘egg’ is smaller than Dallas’ and both are larger than a traditional completed egg, which shrinks as it absorbs the host’s bodies.
I agree, I was mistaken as to the film version. I’ll have to see if I can find the novelization, to see how that played it. Then maybe I can blame Alan Dean Foster.
Si
Well, i’ve read over half of the script by Obannon. It does read very, very similar to the movie. I absolutely see why he was given the script credit, the movie hits most of the beats and menace implied in the screenplay. Yes, the names were all changed. A lot of the dialog (but not all) was changed. The characters were made much more believable, and Walter Hill added the whole subplot with the android. They find the facehugger in a separate pyramid from the crashed derelict ship (which reminds me of Prometheus). When the facehugger dies it actually decomposes into acid and they have to throw the carcass out of the airlock. They later capture the growing alien inside food storage and try to poison it with gas. Not only does the xenomorph eat their food supplies, it is also seen gnawing on a human thigh bone and a human arm, something that was removed from any future iterations of the xenomorph. The survivors also have a plan to corral the alien into the lifeboat and detonate it remotely. The spore/egg room where survivors are kept (the deleted scene from the movie) is intact in the original screenplay.
And here’s the end of the screenplay:
INTERIOR - LIFEBOAT - LATER
The boat is re-pressurized and Roby is seated in the control chair. He
seems calm and composed, almost cheerful. The cat purrs in his lap.
ROBY
(dictating)
... So it looks like I'll make it
back to the Colonies on schedule
after all. I should be to the
frontier in another 250 years or so,
and then with a little luck the
network will pick me up. I'm not as
rich as I was a couple days ago --
but I'm not exactly broke either.
Incidentally, I did manage to
salvage one souvenir out of this
whole mess.
He reaches down into the carrying bag he brought on board, and pulls
out the ALIEN SKULL.
ROBY (CONT'D)
Poor Yorick here should go at least
partway toward proving I'm not a
crank. I wish it was him we'd met in
the first place -- things might have
turned out different.
He puts the skull down on a shelf and locks a glass lid over it.
ROBY (CONT'D)
This is Martin Roby, executive
officer, last survivor of the
commercial vessel SNARK, signing off.
Come on, cat, let's go to sleep.
Roby leans forward and switches off the recorder. Then he rises and,
carrying the cat, walks to the hypersleep freezer, which stands open.
He climbs in and stretches out on his back, holding the cat against
his chest. With one hand, he presses a switch, and THE LID CLOSES OVER
HIM.
CLOSE-UP OF THE ALIEN SKULL, watching sentinel over the slumbering
Roby like some dead, melancholy pixie.
EXTERIOR - OUTER SPACE
The lifeboat -- SNARK 2 -- sails away toward its rendezvous with Irth,
250 years from now.
As SNARK 2 drifts past camera, we suddenly see that A SPORE POD IS
ADHERED TO THE UNDERBELLY OF THE CRAFT.
ROLL END TITLES & MUSIC.
THE END
Everything I’ve read and seen about Dan O’Bannon makes me think that he essentially is the character Sgt. Pinback from Dark Star! Which is really cool in terms of being a fan of his work, but probably less so for people who have to actually deal with him on a day-to-day basis…
Interesting, I’d never caught that part with the one guy turning into an egg before, even though I had seen the deleted scene. I had always assumed that the first alien to be “born” if not already a queen, would change sex to become a queen and then go about the egg laying.
It still doesn’t answer why they are still gluing them to the walls in Resurrection, with a queen right there in the same room.
Well, a) i’d say for restraint so they can’t escape, and b) by the time part 4 rolled around the series had lost all credibility. It was not making a whole lot of sense.
When i think about it…they took Ripley’s blood sample, and used that to clone her AND the alien? Why would the alien’s DNA be in ripley’s blood? It’s a parasite. They don’t share blood, one has acid for blood, it’s lethal.
Movie three suggested that the alien parasite ends up looking a little like whatever host it was implanted in. (Dog alien.)
Fanwank: That suggests that there might be some exchange of DNA during the incubation stage. Most hosts get chest bursted, so usually the host doesn’t have time to derive any benefit from this exchange.
I’d never seen that scene, either. The only “extended” movie I have is the second one, which is not only the best of the four, but also my favorite movie of all time.
In the original Colonial Marines Technical Manual (there’s what looks like a newer reprint available, too), which, although beautiful is hardly canon (and with AvP, who can tell what is any more?), I seem to recall the implication that a single drone/warrior alien could manage to squeeze out or cobble together one egg (as JMH125 suggests), which might then hatch a queen able to start a new colony.
Like holmes said, it’s an adaption to make sure that your hosts don’t leave or find some way to prevent or remove the implanted alien.
Of course, that didn’t work for John J. Mericheck anyway.
That’s what I thought. A perfect organism, evolved (or designed?) to survive no matter what, would have several different options for reproduction, and would resort to whichever was optimal under the circumstances.
It’s pretty strongly suggested in Alien. Ash refers to the alien as “Kane’s son.”
.
Have you seen AvP? Boy do they have options.
The queen pumps out eggs in conventional fashion in AVP. But in AVP:R there is a scene in which the PredAlien pumps a bunch of embryos down the throats of pregnant women. The Strauss brothers said this was a method for a queen to quickly establish some protection before she sets up a nest.
In Alien, didn’t the facehugger somehow get through the helmet faceplate?
They didn’t seem to carry this trait forward in the later films.