It’s implied that the Alien species doesn’t need to mate in order to reproduce, but instead the xenomorphs incorporate genetic material from the hosts the embryos develop inside of. For example, the xenomorphs from the first two Alien movies were mostly bipedal and humanoid, whereas the one from Alien3 was borne from a dog and had a build better suited for a fast quadruped. The chestburster from the end of Alien vs. Predator had mandible jaws similar to the Predator species.
This kind of makes design sense as a bioweapon because the resulting creatures would be well-adapted to survive in whatever environment their targets lived in.
I was counting the days until Alien came out, but one of my sisters managed to see it before I did.
She described it thusly:
“You know how, when the movie is over & everyone is leaving, & talking & laughing on their way to their cars?
After this movie, no one was saying anything.”
I saw it a few days later. It’s a strange thing to see everyone in the audience jump at the same time.
And my sister was right.
I just had the exact same thought watching this (even though it was fun). A lifecycle with TWO egg stages (one nest, one host) feels over complex and counter-evolutionary, especially for an apex predator species that apparently evolves very quickly indeed in other ways.
Laserdisc? Pfft. I did that with my VHS copy, best part was that when John Hurt’s shirt turns red before the burst, you can see that it is a big splash of dye thrown at him from one side…
I don’t know of any parallel among our apex predators or parasites. There are two types of eggs in some little crustaceans and rotifers and so on, though, mostly freshwater plankton that go through a boom-and-bust cycle with the seasons. The “summer” eggs are produced quickly and asexually to spread quickly once things are melted. Then the tougher “winter” eggs are produced after mating to survive the freeze.
So then these are aliens. They are not near the bottom of the food chain, but I think they can be regarded to have some challenges more comparable to plankton, since they are apparently built to drift through space and only sometimes encounter prey. So I think a system with two types of eggs seems reasonable for them too. The big eggs that can lie in space are perfect for that…the only thing is probably facehuggers should be able to lay more than one chestburster egg before dying.
