In an effort to temper my expectations for Alien: Earth, I’m trying to remind myself of some of the weirdest/worst/oddest Alien lore decisions that were revealed in official Alien universe installments, including:
- Aliens share a psychic/empath connection with Ripley’s offspring.
- Ripley had an entire encounter with another crew and Ash between Alien and Aliens, then had her memory wiped.
- Cultists who worshiped the xenomorphs voluntarily incubated themselves with chestbursters to walk among the xenomorphs undisturbed.
Any others? I seem to recall there being a humanoid Alien queen, but iirc she was just a nightmare vision.
There was so much to choose from in the Dark Horse Xenoverse. The psychic link crossed too far into woo for me. The engineers as mysterious bounty hunters was a bunch of “y’all just gonna leave that there?!”
How does everyone feel about Scott running with the original storyline he intended? Unfortunately for “Covenant: Origins,” the visions are a major plot point.
One thing I enjoy about the “new” Scott Xenoverse is that we got away from the hackneyed Queen Xeno 4th Act trope. The addition of The Jackals in “Alien: Inferno’s Fall” is a breath of fresh air and adds new layers of metaphorical possibilities.
Actually I lied about consuming all alien lore; the comics are a big blind spot for me as I’ve only really read a few AVP series, one of the newer Alien comic series (involving a colony and a farm and a severed robot head? I forget the name of it), one about artificial persons being sent to rescue a colony – which I think is where my subscription canceled after I moved-- and one about an activist sabotaging a WY ship.
Since my subscription canceled I’ve been lazy about getting back into them/was waiting for one to wrap or for a volume to come out for me to catch up on.
Is the ‘hackneyed Queen Xeno’ the humanoid queen I was seeing pictures of? Again I thought she was just a nightmare, she was real? Oof!
Hackneyed: Overused, repeated too often.
Ever since Cameron’s “Aliens,” there was almost always a boss fight with a queen xeno in the 4th act of plots. The books and comics became too formulaic for me. Weird crisis > oh no, drones are on the loose > people be all crazy in a crisis > climax > ostensible resolution > oh noes! a queen alien!
So once Scott took back control of the franchise, the themes and motifs changed to be more allegories based on Scott’s original premise: bad ideas corrupting our minds and bodies; metaphysics and the nature of creation; creation myths; the pitfalls of technology and especially drive for machine intelligence; unchecked capitalism will gladly destroy everything for a few dollars more*; how humanity will be its own downfall; the male fear of male pregnancy.
*to be fair, unrestrained corporate power and the moral hazards of capitalism
waswere always a theme from the start (I can grammar)In the Dark Horse Xenoverse, stories that radically broke with formula were always my favorite. “Cyberantics” (https://avp.fandom.com/wiki/Cyberantics:_A_Little_Adventure) leaps to mind. I mean… an Alien children’s book?! Winning!
If you’re in the mood for some Xeno brain bleach after all the WTF, the new books are mostly a good, worthwhile ride. And I just noticed that Philippa Ballantine published a sequel to “Inferno’s Fall” in January. Got that on hold at the library!
Warmly, A Fellow Xenomorph Media Junkie
How do the cultists survive being chest burst or do they just have very short lives?
They still die once the chestburster comes out, the device just prolongs the incubation period… and the cultists get to have a sweet, giant, see-through hole in their stomach area where all of their internal organs should be… somehow.
I mean OK if they can make artificial persons as good as they do in the movies, I SUPPOSE I could find it believable that we developed tech to let us live without, um, our stomachs, intestines, rib cages, etc.
by the way i guiltily admit to devouring any and all alien lore and accepting every stupid curveball they throw out there because i am a glutton for xenos. i’ve listened to those two audiobooks multiple times (they’re so well-produced! and the cast isn’t bad!) and am currently playing Aliens: Dark Descent a second time.
One that I both liked and was like WTF was the introduction of The Woman in the Dark. Like not only do you have to worry about the ravenous herds of xenomorphs but the chance this Woman in the Dark can seek you out across the cosmos just brought me back to the original Alien lore where they’re supposed to be more mysterious and like a cleansing force of the universe. Not some science experiment cooked up by the Engineers. I’d like to believe the Engineers came across the original black goo and have been trying to replicate and improve their own variation of it similar to what humans did in Romulus with the pathogen from Engineers with Compound Z-01.
