Question: Curious on why the surgical equipment doesn't melt when removing the Queen chest burster from Ripley when she has acidic blood?
Corrected entry: The scientists claim they procured blood samples on the Prison colony that allowed them to recreate Ripley. If you used blood to clone Ripley, then you'd get a clone of Ripley without a chest-burster inside her. The chestburster doesn't alter DNA.
Correction: 1) I don't recall any DNA blood tests being given in any of the previous movies, so you don't really know if the chest burster does or does not alter the DNA in any way. 2) In an inscet colony, any egg laid has the potential to be a queen. When a new queen is needed, certain eggs are treated differently to produce a queen instead of a worker. Since Ripley was implanted by a queen, maybe the intent was to produce another queen and who knows what happens to a person's DNA implanted with a queen.
There are different theories about how the facehugger actually impregnates its host. It may implant an embryo, or it may inject a mutagenic liquid that causes host's own cells to transform into alien embryo. The latter would also explain why aliens inherit the traits of their host, and would also explain why the blood sample resulted in cloned Ripley with embryo inside.
Corrected entry: Something to note as the flesh alien is being sucked out of the Betty. In the previous films, the drones were designated as Xenophobes or Xenomorphs (skeleton on the outside), very similar to insects. When the flesh alien dies, the last thing we see is a nearly human SKULL.
Correction: An animal with its skeleton on the outside is actually called an arthropod. A Xenophobe is the fear of strangers or foreigners and a xenomorph is a species where the young do not resemble the adult form (e.g. caterpillar and butterfly, or face-huggers and insect-like drones).
The word "arthropod" literally means "jointed limb." The word "xenomorph" means "alien shape" or "strange shape." Both words themselves have nothing to do with a skeleton being inside or outside. I have also never heard about "xenomorph" being used for insects. The development where there are distinct forms of larvae and adults is called holometabolism or complete metamorphosis.
Corrected entry: During the entire battle scene on the ladder, DeStephano is nowhere to be seen. Considering the fact that he has a gun, he could have helped out when the alien was attacking Christie, but instead he curiously disappears from the scene, until Call opens the door, and he is at the top of the ladder. (01:09:10 - 01:13:10)
Correction: He is not a nice person. He is more interested in getting away than in helping.
That'd be Ren you're referring to not DeStefeno. The original post is correct the correction beneath is wrong.
Correction: He didn't disappear from the scene. He went up earlier than Johner and he is just on the other side of the ladder so he can't get a shot. Johner however is on the same side as Christie and Vriess so he helps them out instead.
Corrected entry: When climbing above the nesting grounds, one of the guys gets a dead, very heavy alien on his shoe. To save the crippled guys life and keep him climbing, he unhooks from the crippled guy and falls to his death. He didn't have to die, though. He could have just pushed it off with his other foot.
Correction: Christie was very badly injured from the acid that hit him. He was barely conscious and simply couldn't move his foot to get rid of the alien. It wasn't a certainty it would work either, Christie simply thought of the fastest and surest way for Vriess to be saved.
I always got the impression Christie was paralyzed from the waist down after he gets hit with the acid. It's a fitting way for him to die, because he saves Vriess who is also paralyzed in the same way.
How would he get paralyzed from the acid? It hit his face.
Went into his brain. I can't see him being too tired to move his leg but not too tired to un-snap his harness. Either way, it's a very poorly explained scene. Not saying I'm right and you're wrong, it's just the way I always read the scene when I watched the movie.
Right, right. I get where you are coming from. But let's be realistic, if the acid had gone in his brain he'd be dead. He just didn't have the strength left, not tired, just in and out of conscious. And again, it would have taken too long to try and get the alien off.
He won't necessarily be dead. Brain injuries are not all fatal, but can result in loss of different body functions.
Question: If Ripley was operated on and an alien removed a few days ago, how come they have a fully grown queen who is laying eggs, 8 to be precise as there are 8 people who have been ingested and turned into aliens? But later, when most of the crew have ejected successfully or been killed when a hand grenade was thrown into their escape pod along with an alien, one of the scientists says there are 12 more? How can that be?
Chosen answer: Well firstly the queen was probably genetically engineered, like Ripley herself. A few days might be all the time they need to have a fully grown queen created. Secondly the 8 incubated victims were only the latest batch, they had been incubating people with xenomorphs for quite a time I suspect.
With regards to the quick growth of the alien queen, it is standard for the xenomorph in nearly every film they appear (Aliens is the only exception, the only chestburster shown in the film is quickly killed by Apone) to grow to full size in around one day. Presumably the same is true for the queen.
Corrected entry: If the mission is to capture and use xenomorphs, why on Earth aren't the areas of the ship meant for them acid-proof?
Correction: Perhaps there is no material strong enough to resist the acid. It's extremely volatile. Also, the station isn't built for the containment of xenomorphs, and since it is a secret operation they couldn't get any materials without drawing suspicion.
Yep, not even the Predators have armor that can stand the xenomorps' acid, and they have been technologically advanced for thousands of years.
Even 400 years in the future!? My entire point is that why aren't they better prepared for confining the xenomorphs?! By any means and at all levels?! Weyland Yutoni is powerful enough to get what they need secrectly.
It may well be 400 years in the future, but that doesn't mean they have developed a very specific material to resist the acidic effects of the alien blood.
Corrected entry: At the end of the film Ripley uses her acidic blood to burn a hole in the ships glass window the problem is, as any High School Chemistry student will know, acid doesn't react with glass.
Correction: The acidic blood of the Aliens is never scientifically described onscreen, only compared to highly acidic substances. Because this is an alien biology, it could have an acid-like caustic effect without actually composing what a chemist would describe as an acid. For example, the blood could contain omnivorous microorganisms that consume substances other than the Aliens - it's possible that these could destroy glass as acid does not. Remember, in the first Alien movie, the facehugger, "It secreted an acid that "burned" through Kane's helmet glass."
Hydrofluoric acid does react with glass, conceivably the blood could be partially composed of that.
Was it ever mentioned that the windows were made of glass and not of some transparent plastic?
Answer: This is just speculation (and I haven't watched the movie for ages) but the operation is done with medical equipment in a facility designed for studying Aliens, which the military knows a little about. Maybe it is made of futuristic acid proof material.
If the surgical tools were acid proof, surely the floors of the cells that contain the grown alien specimens would also be acid proof. But that is how they escape: by sacrificing one of their own in order to spill acid blood onto the floor.
Well, you can imagine any acid-proof metal is probably very expensive. They can't make the entire station out of that stuff. Surgical equipment is probably necessary for their research, so they make an exception.
lionhead