Charles Fraser

17th Feb 2004

Alien (1979)

Corrected entry: The director's cut of the movie contains a continuity gap with James Cameron's Aliens. In the sequel, we learn that the eggs containing the facehuggers are laid by an Alien Queen, who is protected by drones and warriors. However, in the director's cut version of Alien, we see that the captured Brett and Dallas being slowly transformed into eggs when Ripley comes upon them as she races for the shuttle. (Even in the theatrical version of Alien, we don't actually see either Brett or Dallas being killed; we just assume they have been when the Alien grabs them.) When asked about this later, James Cameron replied that since the released film version of Alien omitted these scenes, he did not consider them canon and did not feel bound by them.

Correction: This can actually work in either the theatrical version or the director's cut. It's possible that the drones, not being capable of laying eggs themselves, can somehow change a living creature into an egg when faced with a situation where a queen is not around (the first egg created would become a queen, most likely). This would help the propagation of a species with such limited capabilities for growth. Kind of like some frogs have spontaneously changed gender when in a situation where there was a disproportionate number of one gender over the other.

Charles Fraser

Correction: The single Alien being able to create an egg from a human would also explain how the Queen in Aliens even got there.

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