Aliens : The Fall of the Colony

The Fall of the Colony

Anyone wonder at what the sequence of events were between that first facehugger grabbing the guy and the marines turning up. Obviously Newts family took the guy back to the colony and a chestbuster came out and managed to avoid getting killed long enough to mature. So was that first one the Queen? Even if it was and she formed a hive somewhere and laid eggs, how did the rest of the colonists get captured? The queen would need drones to grab people to bring to the eggs. But she wouldn't have those drones until the people were captured and brought to the eggs...


Bit of a catch 22 situation?

Re: The Fall of the Colony

I'm watching it right now on TV in the U.K. and I'm thinking exactly the same. We know they surgically removed some facehuggers before embryo implantation which were then found in the jars. You'd expect that when Newt's Dad was brought back to the colony he would have been put into some kind of quarantine so when the chestburster emerged it could have been contained in a room. Unless they were completely incompetent and took no precautions but that still doesn't explain how so many Aliens emerged to overwhelm the colonists. As you say even if the Queen built a nest they should have been able to contain it.

Also why no distress signal, we know they made a last stand in the operations area presumably that contained the communications system and they should have been able to get some kind of message off to Earth. Although of course they may have done so and The Company didn't disclose it

Re: The Fall of the Colony

I doubt the first one was the queen. After all, the one on the Nostromo wasn't a Queen, right? Even if we go by the special edition where that Alien laid an egg to infect Dallas, it still hadn't matured into Queen form and just looked like any other Alien.

So I would guess the first one was born in the colony, escaped, and grew to adulthood. It then began abducting colonists and taking them back to the ship for implantation. The colonists probably would have launched some kind of effort to investigate or attack the ship, which led to even more being implanted.

Now with 10 or 20 Aliens running around, they're screwed.

The one curious thing is, why did they never inform Earth of what was going on after the first Alien? To judge by the Nostromo timeline, they certainly had the time after implantation and after the first Alien's birth.

Re: The Fall of the Colony

Clearly there was a follow up survey to the ship which is probably the source of the preserved facehuggers, I don't think the idea of a Xenomorph taking colonists back to the ship is plausible, we know that the colony is well established and that no one had surveyed that grid reference before so the implication is that there is a considerable distance between the two locations or they'd have discovered the ship sooner. Also how would the Xenomorph know where the ship was?

It's also clear from the signs of a battle that the Marines discover behind the main lock that there was an attack on the colony from outside and the remains of the barricades suggest that they had some time to prepare for it. However the unfinished coffee and doughnuts in the office is more suggestive of something that hit them out of the blue. So again the evidence is contradictory, and given the distance between the two sites how did the Xenomorphs know where the colony was or even that it was there?

Re: The Fall of the Colony

How about using your Xmas money buy Alien: River Of Pain & Aliens: Fire & Stone.

You gotta stay in your seats until the Sulaco reaches the terminal!

Re: The Fall of the Colony

Interesting question. My favorite theory is that the company knew about the derelict alien ship even before the colony was built on the planet. Or alternatively, the company didn't know but the colonists discovered the ship and informed the company about the alien space ship they had found and the strange eggs inside the ship. Anyway, the company instructed the colonists to fetch some eggs from the derelict ship and bring them to the colony for study. That's how at least one of the colonists got facehugged.

Re: The Fall of the Colony

obviously the colonists went back to the ship to investigate. who knows how many were exposed?

"He's dusted, busted and disgusted, but he's ok"

Re: The Fall of the Colony

I always imagined that the aliens went for a drink at the local tavern and got super pissed when they were carded and started an epic bar fight which eventually engulfed the entirety of Hadley's Hope.

And yes, I did wonder about the sequence of events.

Re: The Fall of the Colony

LOL, Oh Good Grief!

Re: The Fall of the Colony

I've always thought of that and I'll share my take on this untold story. To build my theory I will also take into account the deleted scene that was never shown back in 1986 but was included in the DVD years later.

The part that the guys in the company alredy knew about the derelict on LV 426 doesn't hold up for me because if they were so anxious to get their hands on the Xenomorph species, why would they wait for 57 years? All they had to do is send another ship to LV 426 to reclaim what they wanted so badly. Why would they need to wait for Ripley to arrive and tell them about it?

So when Ripley was rescued and she told her story it was Burke who decided to act on his own issuing an order to the colony to send survey teams and investigate the coordinates Ripley supplied. Later in the film when Ripley "interrogated" Burke she told him that she had read the logs and she aknowledged that it was noted that it was indeed Burke who signed the order. If there were additional orders like ones telling the colony members to do studies on the creatures or to collect "samples" for analysis, I believe this would be mentioned somehow throughout the story. In this deleted scene the conversation between the colony's chief staff members reveals that there's a great distance between the colony and the derelict and it even implies that it took almost a week for the Newt's parents to reach it. Then when they found the derelict they went to "have a look inside" and few hours later the man was brought out of it with facehugger on his face. Then the story cuts out and we can only guess what happened. Whatever happened however must have happened pretty quick or at least quick enough so the colony members didn't have enough time to send a distress call towards the Earth and the signal was lost without the company be notified what had happened on LV 426.

Newt's mom was really in panic when she got her husband out of the derelict with the facehugger on his face. The deleted scene shows her calling for help on the radio. Also... the conversation which was shown earlier in the deleted scene between colony's chief personal implies that several survey teams were sent, so my guess is that Newt's parents weren't the only ones in the area. I guess that others answered the distress call of the woman and came to assist. Could they also take a look inside..... I doubt that they would want to take further risks. Keep in mind that they would have absolutely no idea what they are dealing with. The reaction of Newt's mom reveals that they (when I say "they" I mean the whole colony) were totally unprepared and had no idea what to do in this situation. My guess is that it was indeed a queen's embryo planted in the man's chest. I think they brought him back to the colony without knowing what's inside him. If it was a regular drone Xenomorph it probably would have pop out of his chest while they were on the way back. Even in this case I can assume that a drone Xenomorph on the lose out there would be able to take care of the rest. Even if it wouldn't know where the derelict would be, we know that Xenomorphs have well-developed "seventh" sense and they can find each other. It would not be unlikely if it would sense the presence of all the eggs in the derelict and take care of them. But no..... my personal theory is that the man had a queen inside him..... simply this theory fits better with the assumption that whatever happened it was pretty quick. Queens have longer developing period so the man would have survived the trip back to the colony, where it would burst out of his chest and run free. Remember how hard it was for Nostromo's crew to locate the alien and I can imagine what it would be for the colony members to find the creature on the lose considering how big the facility was. The queen then hid somewhere where they couldn't find her, reached maturity and started laying eggs there. As we know, it doesn't take too much time for this to happen. Facehuggers then hatched, started lurking around and attacking people. And there we have the first drones in action.

In the lab when they found the facehuggers which were isolated, it was mentioned that they were surgically removed before the embryos were planted. My guess is that when the first people where attacked by the lurking facehuggers on the lose, they were brought to the medical staff who tried to save them by removing the facehuggers but the patients then died. At that point the colony members must have realized there's nothing they can do. I believe the aliens first started to attack the workers who were operating the atmosphere processing tower and its equipment along with all the systems related to the thermonuclear reactor while the staff working in the main complex were probably spared at the beginning and they could only watch helplessly. When the marines arrived, from what they first saw it was clear that the complex was attacked "at the end". They concluded that it was "last stand" when they saw the barricades. It is obvious that the creatures somehow preferred to stay around the processing tower and not going too much in the complex. Remember how long the marines were able to hang out there without their presence being noticed by the aliens. I also think that some individuals managed to hide and survive for some time like Newt and that woman they found alive in the nest. Yes...... that woman...... as we know it takes 6 months for a trip from Earth to LV 426, so that woman must have been caught and impregnated almost before the marines arrive. I also assume that when the first Xenomorph warriors were out, they probably damaged the antenna - before the people in colony could realize what was going on. When the marines came they found that the antenna was disconnected and they couldn't control it from the main complex, which is why Bishop had to go there personally carrying the terminal which he used to operate it. Most likely the antenna was disconnected shortly after the aliens started their invasion on the colony which is why a distress call was never send to Earth.

Well.... basically.... all this is my own theory.

Re: The Fall of the Colony

Read this:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Aliens-Newts-Tale-2-Ref-1830676030/dp/B00MRWFOVY/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1485716844&sr=8-1&keywords=newt%27s+tale
It's a pretty good account of what may have occurred.

If those pen pushers up at city hall don't like it,well, they swivel on this middle digit!

Re: The Fall of the Colony

Alien-39 - I basically agree with your theories, at least that's what seem to make the most logical sense considering what we know for sure. The one thing that bothered me was this; what were the odds that out of a ship full of eggs, that the face-hugger that attached to Newt's father happened to be a queen, if most were not. But then I thought what if all of the eggs on the derelict craft were queens. It kind of makes sense that whatever purpose the original ship was transporting them or where, that they would take only queens. This means the one from Alien would have been a queen also, but that's possible as the chain of events in the first film happened over days and she hadn't matured enough yet to lay eggs. In Aliens, it makes sense that the face-hugger burst out of Newt's dad in the lab, got away, and over the following weeks, matured to lay eggs elsewhere in the facility, where other colonists were infected, a few at first, who tried to have them removed in the lab, until the drones had sufficient numbers to storm the main building and taken the remaining colonists back to where the nest was in the reactor building to be cocooned. Some other details that were never made clear but may have been the case, at first, the colony was dealing directly with Burke alone, and as you said, later the aliens damaged the antenna, and they couldn't transmit. Plus, we don't know how long Burke waited after losing contact with them, as communications sounded like it could go out from time to time due to the weather there. It's just hard to imagine any other explanation than the face-hugger on Newt's dad being a queen. Based on that experience, no way any other colonists would have gone back to that ship after that. Plus, the time frame after Newt's dad was brought back. After that, it all started there within the facility, and happened over a couple of weeks. It was too long a trip to the derelict ship and not easy to find for multiple trips back there to have been an option.

Re: The Fall of the Colony

This was a great question and I had not really thought about it. And I agree there is contradictory evidence. It's possible there was a combo.. it was a queen in Newt's dad and maybe a team also went back to the ship. I think it simply had to be a Queen however in any scenario, bc of the time frame. It's also possible Newt's dad was in Medlab and wasn't being watched too closely and the alien got out and they didn't even see it happen.. it's just tough to explain not messaging for help no matter what scenario you subscribe too. If there was a way to explain that then all kinds of scenarios are possible. So here is an idea. What if someone inside the colony sabotaged the antanae? Idk why or who, but someone or something had to knock it out quick. And if it was an alien, it would have had to do it first thing, and idk how it would know to do that. I gues you it could have gotten lucky but that's a huge assumption. So someone being ordered or doing it makes just as much sense to me that the alien doing it. I tried the link above but I don't have the comic and not in a position to get it now.
The last scenario is that the writers just goofed. They wanted to show it happened quick to set the mood, but didn't think this plot part out. That almost makes more sense than anything, bc we can poke holes in any thoughts we have had so far.

Re: The Fall of the Colony

Exactly! It just seems this was a pretty significant detail not to have provided better explanation. Even in the "Special Edition", we are given little info. We can only imagine what series of events happened between the one face-hugger being brought back on Newt's dad and the whole colony being wiped out, and dragged over to be hosts in Reactor plant next to the Queen's nursery. We see the lab with facehuggers, one still alive, we see the barricade at the front of the complex, but again, can only guess exactly how long it's been and the series of events that happened before Ripley and the marines got there. The only hint on time frame is when Hicks says they can't expect a rescue until 17 days after they been declared overdue, and Ripley tells Hudson that Newt has survived longer than that with no weapons. But, we still don't know how long from when Newt's father came back with the face-hugger until the colony (except Newt) had been wiped out. But we could then add a week to be declared overdue, and another 17 days for rescue to that time period. It's not unreasonable to think all of this took a couple of months(or more) from first contact until the marines landed on the planet. That creates a lot of possibilities, but why didn't the colony report the face-huggers/aliens/derelict ship to headquarters right away, and if they couldn't because communications were lost too quickly, then why did it take so long for Burke to react to it, since he had been in contact and was anxiously waiting to hear what they found at the coordinates he sent them?

Re: The Fall of the Colony

Another disadvantage we are at is that we don't know how frequently they check in, who they talk to when they do, etc

Here is my just kinda thinking out loud and typing. Let's say Burke gives the colony the coordinates. When Newt's dad gets back, what if they did contact Burke? I mean, he was the one who sent them, so it's logical for him to be the one they tell first. He has an "oh S**t" moment when he hears things are falling apart. Somehow he manages to shut down the communications from his location back on Earth. Or the starbase, wherever he is. Idk how he managed to shut it down, or did he tell them he was sending help and they thought that the mayday call was sent? And then later the aliens took out the antaenae? But in my head, Burke could be the reason and explain the communication blackout. Would the colony be content with telling Burke but no one else? Probably. Just a thought

Re: The Fall of the Colony


if it was an alien, it would have had to do it first thing, and idk how it would know to do that.

you sound like Hudson...
"How could they knock out the power? they're just animals!"
Doesn't Bishop say the conduit between the medlab and the antenna is damaged? Maybe the antenna wasn't specifically taken out, but was a casualty of an attack? (Cliche: how often does a firefight end up taking out the radio?)

"He's dusted, busted and disgusted, but he's ok"

Re: The Fall of the Colony

I like that it's a mystery. It makes it that much scarier. Something really bad happened and no one knows how.

So many stories, so little time.

Re: The Fall of the Colony

No. The first one would remain a drone and gather colonists for implantation. Only once a certain number of drones existed would one morph to queen.

Beware the sound of one hand clapping.
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