Its not really explained, but in the prequels, the black goo seems to be a biological nano-tech like weaponsystem, that takes a given lifeform, breaks it down and recreates permutations of it that are capable of fast, parasitic replication, longterm stasis and accelerated development towards a better "attack-vector" life-form.
The whole thing is basically the engineer version of a nuke, rendering planets permanently hostile to other life forms and destroying civilizations by transporting the weapon inside its members - and thus following trade-routes.
I like this take, I'm stealing this as my headcannon. It's especially interesting to think of the black goo as able to design a parasite specific to the species it comes in contact with. And the LV-223 base might be part of a former alien MAD deterrence program, similar to an SSBN or a missile silo.
I still have to watch the prequels after "Prometheus", but that prequel was one of my favorites in the series, and your comment makes me want to go watch them.
Even if you know the correct spelling, it's an easy mistake to make when you're writing fast. Sometimes hands seem to just want to do their own thing while typing out what you thought your brain was telling them :P I make so many mistakes this way that I try to be forgiving when I see it probably happened to someone else.
Regarding cannon vs canon, the way I remember it is that "you need a double-n for a cannon to be double-barrelled." I have no idea whether that's useful to anyone else.
Etymologically, they are both related to "cane", so it's pretty much a historical accident that we now spell them differently to each other, or that it's not the other way around.
The that reminds me a bit of the "protomolecule" from The Expanse, which has a similar meta-algorithmic nature. Perhaps moreso, in that it's suggested it relied partly on transcendental magic-math where molecules were just a way to carry it.
It differs a bit in intent though: Its eldritch designers seem to have intended it as a high-reliability remote construction drone.
Ah, so this is not how people doing chemistry refer to different chemical elements in their papers. Given the overall level of imitation, I thought it's that.
I think the sequence of sci-fi-like references goes like this:
"Chemical A0-3959X.91–15, i.e. 42-(acetyloxy)-1-7-0-1-unobtaini-interferon acid, also known as "black goo", sold under brand name EcoCola, marketed as alternative to NukaCola, is an nano-engineered chemical first documented in report A0-3959X, ..."
In the methods sections they might actually do this with what is called a CAS number. This ensures you can order the that exact chemical from Sigma Aldrich when you try that experiment yourself.
Should we gather the "just to clear it up" statements all in one place?
"Xenomorph" is not any sort of official in-universe term for these things, though I believe Alien: Romulus at least does have scientists calling it "xenomorph <some number>" indicating it has been catalogued. Xenomorph is just a generic term for a non-humanoid alien, though, what PFC Hudson called a "bug" when the term was introduced as Lt Gorman was briefing the other Marines about what they might expect. This wasn't their first time encountering hostile life and they called a lot of it by this name.
The xenomorphs (as fans have taking to calling it) are not silicon-based, but rather some blend of organic and inorganic. They're bioengineered superweapons, not naturally occurring. As far as we can tell, they don't eat at all, at least in their adult form, as they grow to full size in a matter of hours without us ever seeing them consume anything. They only seem to need hosts in their larval form. This is also why they mostly don't kill the humans they attack unless they have to because they're under threat. They instead attach them to a resin they secrete, where they are used as incubators for more larval forms. Their entire purpose seems to boil down to multiplying as rapidly as possible. I believe Ridley Scott has suggested they consume electricity or radiation in general directly, rather than extracting energy from food.
They were not actually created by the "engineers," as Shaw from Prometheus called the space jockey guys. They were created by David, the first synthetic sentient android created by Weyland, when he and Shaw hijacked an engineer ship. He returned to their home world, released the black goo and killed everything, and experiments with its ability to create multistage lifecycle semi-organic lifeforms, which he eventually managed to turn into the xenomorph as it was seen in the original Alien.
The black goo itself seems to have been some sort of quasi-religious experiment thing the engineers developed billions of years ago that has the ability to dissolve organic matter, attach itself to DNA, and rewrite it to become some kind of more "advanced" lifeform. The beginning of Prometheus shows them doing this on earth, with a sacrificial engineer dissolving himself into primordial water to seed what would eventually become all earth life. This doesn't imply earth-life is genetically similar to the xenomorph, but rather to the engineers, who were humanoid. So Ridley Scott (or Damon Lindelof or whoever) is implying earth life was meant to eventually become humanoid all along, like we're the ultimate end of an experiment in engineered evolution.
However, back on their home planet, they didn't just stop doing new things for four billion years. The black goo of the present in Prometheus was similar to the original used to seed earth, but seemingly had changed at that point and specifically created more xenomorph-like things, now by infecting other lifeforms and incubating in them, rather than dissolving them into free-floating DNA.
All of that addresses whether xenomorphs are "related" in any biological sense to life on earth, but either way, I'm not convinced arthropods are the right analogy. The reality of their size and movement is obviously confounded by the fact they're played by humans wearing costumes, but I'd be surprised if they didn't have endoskeletons. Ridley Scott has stated the original intention of the creature design was to invoke armor. They're insect-like in appearance, but arthropod exoskeletons are not really armor. In fact, arthropods very rarely grow as large as humans, with the only examples all being extinct, and they had paper-thin exoskeletons, in part because molting something that large is difficult and expensive. To me, I think they're more similar to certain types of dinosaurs with hardened exterior armor. That said, they are clearly shown molting, but the fact they have claws and teeth seems to suggest they probably also have bones. I suspect this is mostly just confusion on the part of the designers or the simple fact they aren't really trying to make something that is biologically coherent or plausible so much as a nightmare made flesh.
I don't think it's ever made clear what the engineers were trying to do. The timelines are a little jacked up, but the derelict the Prometheus crew discovers can't be the same one discovered later by the Nostromo, because the one of the Nostromo has actual fully-realized xenomorphs, which the narrative eventually makes clear were created by David after the events of Prometheus. The derelict in that case was simply carrying black goo, but a weaponized version, and carrying it to earth, apparently intending to destroy all life there. Why is never explained, nor does it seem to be the case that this was some civilization-wide decision, since the mission failed and no follow-on was ever launched. This could have been some rogue faction that weaponized black goo and attempted to destroy life that had earlier been created by the non-weaponized older version out of disagreement with the larger historical goals of their own people.
Weyland-Yutani corps by the time of the mainline films seems to not understand what they are dealing with. They understand they have found some substance that can meld with organic life and create a stronger version of it that doesn't need food and can survive in a vacuum. Romulus seems to suggest that the goal at that point was to create a race of hybrid mine workers that would survive the harsh conditions better than humans. They don't seem to have ever realized that David had created the xenomorphs as they existed at that point and his goal was not to create better humans but to destroy all other life completely and replace it with xenomorphs.
Considering all I've written to this point, I'm amazed at how silly the mythology of this series eventually got after starting as a simple great horror flick that needed no explanation or backstory.
The fresco in the Prometheus goo chamber showed a Xenomorph creature before David had a chance to work with the goo.
I don't mean to nitpick there, it's more a comment on continuity in multiple movies.
I'm an old school Aliens appreciator; I recognize as canon Alien and Aliens, and the Dark Horse comics of the early 90s (80s?). It's easier on my old brain than juggling plots from 20 different people.
> "Xenomorph" is not any sort of official in-universe term for these things
In his briefing (about 23 minutes in in the Disney+ version of Aliens), Gorman says “all we know is there is still no contact with the colony, and a xenomorph may be involved.”
> They were not actually created by the "engineers," as Shaw from Prometheus called the space jockey guys. They were created by David, the first synthetic sentient android created by Weyland, when he and Shaw hijacked an engineer ship.
We see the skull of one on the predators' ship in Predator 2 (set in 1997). And Alien vs. Predator was set in 2004.
The whole business with David wasn't until 2091 or so.
The order of the movies as I understand is: Prometheus, Alien: Covenant, Alien, Alien Romulus.
The technology of the ship user interfaces in Prometheus and Alien: Covenant seems much higher tech than what is presented in Alien Romulus. Alien gets a pass because it was made in 1979.
So David makes the Xenomorphs and then David uses the colonist and human embryos for further experimentation? So are the events of Alien a trap by David?
But the most resurrection movies aren't explaining anything. They're just making a big incoherent mess. That fresco only seems explainable with a time machine coming into the mix somewhere, or I guess David unlocked a hidden design. Ugh.
> The xenomorph’s multicellular structure serves as a cornerstone for its classification within Animalia (Ros-Rocher et al., 2021). Its intricate organization of cells, tissues, and organs reflects a level of biological complexity commonly associated with animals.
This is already wrong! Animalia is an Earth kingdom, and the Xenomorphs clearly aren't an Earth life-form.
> Xenomorphs can be included into the Arthropoda phylum due to the morphological similarities shared with certain terrestrial arthropods such as an exoskeletal structure, a segmented body plan, the presence of hemolymph, etc.
Again, no! They're not an Earth life-form. Just because they superficially resemble some arthropods in some features doesn't make them an arthropod! You might as well say that a train is an arthropod - exoskeletal structure, segmented body plan, the presence of hemolymph...
The elephant in the room is it's a silicon organic organism. So during parasitic stage it grows basically ex nihilo, and then hunts and eats carbon life forms for no reason. It's hollywood zoology.
They don’t eat humans generally. They did eat a guy in one of the later ones. But the better thought out films don’t have them doing this. Just killing or paralyzing things and then taking them back to the nest.
I haven't seen Covenant or Romulus yet. I saw Prometheus, and it was really bad, but in a complicated way. It wasn't a completely terrible movie that you can just dismiss as garbage like Battlefield: Earth and not think about again. It was beautifully shot, and a visual feast to watch. There were some really great scenes, like the robo-surgery scene. But the characters were frequently stupid, and the script was bad because it made the characters do idiotic, incompetent things that should only be seen in a B-grade horror movie. Ridley should have known better, and should have done a better job making sure the script he was working with made sense, so I'm very disappointed with him. He didn't do this with the first "Alien" movie at all.
Then he apparently did it again with Covenant: I haven't seen this one yet, but what I've read says he didn't really learn his lesson from Prometheus, and made another great-looking movie with high production values and a poor script. So I haven't been in a hurry to see it.
Romulus seems to have good reviews so far, and a different director, so I'd like to give it a chance. I just haven't had a chance to see it yet, but it is high on my list of films to watch soon, along with the new Quiet Place movie.
I feel the same way about Prometheus, lots of interesting ideas and memorable sequences that are beautifully shot but aren't connected together in a coherent way leaving the motivations of characters unintelligible by the end.
I watched Romulus recently and its kind of just a fan service film with a few utterly ridiculous sequences. The only things that really offended me where the heavy nerfing of facehuggers and the controversial CGI character who looked bad. Mostly it was just kind of forgettable but started out pretty good.
> and the script was bad because it made the characters do idiotic, incompetent things that should only be seen in a B-grade horror movie
I took it as a meta-commentary on how humanity degrades with time. ("Idiocracy"-style.) Remember these clowns were supposed to be the cream of Earth's human crop.
Were they? I remember some people defending the plot, saying quite the opposite, that these clowns were actually a bunch of barely-competent losers who had little to lose by signing a contract to go on this voyage, because the cream of Earth's human crop would never have gone on this mission (the mission's nature was secret and no one had any idea why they were going to that planet, nor that Peter Wayland himself was aboard). This explanation still strains credibility in my opinion (even barely-competent contractors should be smarter than this, like the biologist who takes off his helmet when he sees an alien lifeform), but at least it's something.
If humanity was really degrading with time, they wouldn't be able to build such fantastic FTL spaceships, robotic surgery pods, etc.
There appears to be a misunderstanding in this thread.
The xenomorphs are not silicon-based.
In Alien, Ash (the android) notes that the facehugger utilizes utilize silicon-based processes to replace its outer layer...he specifically calls out the "interesting combination of elements". [1] It wouldn't be necessary to call out the use of silicon for the outer layer if the entire organism was silicon-based.
Also, it's clear that the xenomorphs utilize carbon-based food to grow baby xenos. In Alien, the host complains of starving before the baby pops out of his chest. Moreover, humans lack sufficient quantities of silicon for a baby xeno to grow in a human. In David's lab (Alien: Covenant), David's notes and experiments also indicate a duality to the creatures, and also that they are not strictly organic lifeforms, but are a fusion of organic and non-organic life...which is part of his fascination with them.
[1] In the novelization of Alien, Ash goes even further, stating that they facehugger is both carbon-based and silicon-based.
Depends on your philosophic position on taxonomy. If you wish for it to capture inheritance and lineage, then I agree, but it is equally valid to view it as a relationship of similarities and patterns (similar to design patterns in programming). The lineages may have different origins, but if they converge on a common pattern, why shouldn't they be grouped together? (if it quacks like a duck...)
We can definitely group them, but if we want to pretend they are the same phylum, that will be a move going against the consensual meaning of the term in biology, which clearly distinguish analogous structures and homologous structures.
At this point, it’s clear that yes we can say whatever fantasy we want, but that is not going to instantly override the precise preponderant meaning it has gained in the community most interested and knowledgeable in the topic.
All that said, I’m not a biologist, and given the honesty I show with such a disclaimer, you know you can blindly trust me on all the topics I’m barely conscious about, right? So trust me xenomorphs are actually adorable cute cuddly pets. Don’t believe all you see in your nightmarish block busters.
Also, doesn't the chemical merely mutate the existing DNA, so that a phlogeny based on sequence composition would yield high consensus for existing organisms (albeit with way higher than base rate variants)?
In science fiction you pretty much have to accept either a single source of life or amazing convergent evolution. How can Vulcans mate successfully with humans in Star Trek, if they aren't animals very closely related to Homo sapiens? Or the humans in Star Wars that lived "long ago in a galaxy far far away".
Chimps, gorillas, and humans are very close in the genetic tree, but cannot cross-breed. For a high level of genetic compatibility, constant contact and cross-breeding are likely required.
That seems to apply to the Star Trek one, which going by the lore seems to be more of an artificially maintained rotten stump that had any potential for divergent/adaptive growth preemptively cut.
The Star Wars lore you link only seems to talk about empires that made contact with multiple species and might have helped spread them over a hundred thousand year span. It does not seem to mention a single point of origin or an artificially crippled evolution that would enforce parallel development.
Or you don't have to accept either - authors don't need to canonize a theory of biogenesis within the world they build to tell compelling story.
"How can Vulcans mate with Humans" doesn't need to be explained if the compelling part of the story is "how does the child of a human and Vulcan navigate both worlds and what does that tell us about ourselves." Of course, you could write a story where a shared or divergent biological/geological past was a part of the metaphor/allegory - but Star Trek doesn't need that.
And if Star Wars replaced the "galaxy" part of that sentence with "kingdom" and all the space ships with wooden ones no one would even need to ask the question, because Star Wars is as much fantasy as science fiction.
There are certainly some creatives who go that far, but I personally take issue with the necessity of detail and depth in scifi worldbuilding. It's really a recent phenomenon that audiences expect so much out of creators and I think it hurts the stories we tell.
Yes, yes, like the Mystery Science Theater 3000 theme song "If you're wondering how he eats & breathes, and other science facts, then repeat to yourself it's just a show, I should really just relax."
I think you're missing the entire point of the article. It's attempting to classify a fictional, alien species with a real taxonomy (the only one we currently have available to us).
And yes, "just because they superficially resemble some arthropods in some features doesn't make them an arthropod".. but at the very beginning they point out they cannot use DNA sequences to help classify, so they are only using known physical characteristics.
> This is already wrong! Animalia is an Earth kingdom, and the Xenomorphs clearly aren't an Earth life-form.
Has biology even bothered to come up with a name for that level of taxon, or would it be premature? I know that in recent years they've been quibbling about both what the top-level (Earth top-level) taxon should be, and what the specific ones would even be for it, but I've never heard of a scheme that embiggens it to alien life. If they ever did so, would there even be the same number of sub-taxons for it for any given planet?
And what in the hell do we do if we discover one of those on Earth? There's no reason to be certain that life only abiogenically manifested once on Earth is there?
> The xenomorph’s multicellular structure serves as a cornerstone for its classification within Animalia (Ros-Rocher et al., 2021). Its intricate organization of cells, tissues, and organs reflects a level of biological complexity commonly associated with animals. Xenomorphs can be included into the Arthropoda phylum due to the morphological similarities shared with certain terrestrial arthropods such as an exoskeletal structure, a segmented body plan, the presence of hemolymph, etc.
I don't understand the logic of this argument. If Xenomorph has evolved on a different planet, it will surely not have the same common ancestor as Animalia, let alone Arthropoda. Why would anyone classify it under those taxons?
I've never liked "xenomorph" as a name for them. It's like calling them "serpentines" if they were snake-shaped or "quadrupeds" if they had 4 legs. So-called fandoms really are filled with stooges.
But it’s based on a misunderstanding. Xenomorph just means “alien”— it wouldn’t make any sense for that to be the term for that specific alien, because their existence isn’t common knowledge.
In "Aliens", when Hudson (or was it Hicks?) asks, "is this another bug hunt?" the lieutenant says, (paraphrasing) "there may be a xenomorph involved".
I interpret this to mean that
(a) The marines have previously fought alien creatures of some kind (and they had no problem dealing with them).
(b) They used the term "xenomorph" to mean any alien creature--not specifically the titular alien, which they had never before encountered.
So I agree. Calling it "the Xenomorph" is a misunderstanding. At best it's like calling something "the Beast", or calling all ships of a certain size "dreadnoughts".
The Marines also referenced sexual relations with "Arcturians" which might be human colonists or sentient aliens.
I really like your point about the Marines having fought/hunted/exterminated other "bugs". It casts their bravado in a different light. Even after seeing catastrophic damage from "acid for blood", the Marines are still very confident, which after beating other alien species, makes perfect sense. It's only when they get into the nest do they start getting scared.
I love the scene where the marines go in for the first time. They start out well-disciplined, well-trained badass marines, but things start to go wrong one by one. First, they have to put away their rifles (too close to the fusion reactor), then they see movement on the motion-detector but can't see anything ("Maybe they don't show up in infrared"). Once Apone gets killed, the entire unit falls apart. They come out shell-shocked and demoralized.
It isn't a portmanteau, it's a classic Greek word construction (an ordinary expression of classic Greek morphology). "Morph" generally just means "shape" as a Greek root so "xenomorph" is more accurately "alien-shaped". Which gets back to it being a very generic term said in a fancy way (like "we don't even know if it is an alien, we just know it is alien-shaped"), like much technical and scientific jargon will do when it goes to constructing Greek words to describe something ("gynomorph" => "woman-shaped"; to call to a different sci-fi horror Species).
It's just an adjective. It would literally be like calling your aliens "humanoids". It describes a shape, literally "alien-shaped", probably because all the other animal-shape adjectives were inadequate.
The "morph" in "xenomorph" as a purely Greek scientific jargon construction mostly just means "shape". It is interesting in English "morph" as a verb has come to mean "change shape", and it is possible the users of the term in the franchise do intend that. But technically if that were the intended meaning it would be something closer to "xenotransmorph".
The use of the term "xenomorph" in the film predates the development of the morphing technology, seen early on in Willow, The Abyss, and it largely entered popular perception after T2 in the early 90s. So: no.
Ahh, but you miss out on the 'cool' aspect embodied by letter X, the underlying meaning that effectively refers to the title of the movie and other things are likely going over my head. Gige prefix does not have the same impact. Alien in fake latin sounds a lot better.
Should be [unpronouceable-mix-of-vowels-and-cosonants], which in their language means "actual people" or "true people". That seems to be the name of most of the ethnic and cultural groups on our planet. There are people (i.e. us) and there are "those funny looking weirdos over there" (i.e. them). No reason it would be different for space-faring slimy mutant thingies.
My favorite of these is the Czech word (and its cognates in other Slavic languages) for German, němec, is derived from the word for mute, apparently because on the Slav’s first contact with Germans, they found their speech so incomprehensible as to assume that these strange beings just couldn’t speak.
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