The Monstrefact Omnibus: Alien

demand release of the film. So I hope you enjoy these episodes if you listen to them previously or if you are listening to them for the first time. The omnibus episodes of The Monster Fact are all about taking the previous shorts and stitching them together Frankenstein style into one long episode. I understand some of you prefer to listen to these episodes in that format, and so this is for you. Without further ado, let's jump right in,

beginning with part one. The Engineers in this episode will begin a multi installment exploration of the various strange forms found in the Alien universe. I previously wrote about xenomorph biology in the article how the Alien Xenomorph Works back

in twenty twelve for the website how Stuff Works. That article is still there in full, accompanied by illustrations authorized by the hr Giger Museum, and as I work up to various considerations of how natural world biology is reflected in or matches up to the xenomorph, I'll likely draw on some of the same ideas, but I also plan to touch on various additional natural world and mythological connections, as well as such sources as the twenty seventeen film

Alien Covenant and the excellent Alien RPG source books from Free League Publishing. I want to add the caveat that I am not setting out to wrangle all the lore here or to provide you with a one hundred percent canonical take on everything. You have no shortage of wikis and lore videos for that. The Monster Fact Journey will touch on a lot of the same themes and information, but will also reflect my own thoughts and obsessions as

a fan. With all that in mind, let's start at the beginning with the Enigmatic Engineers, an elder race of spacefaring humanoids. The Engineers have largely vanished from the portion of the galaxy traversed by twenty second century terans. It is unknown what they call themselves, but accounts whisper the names Malakak and Ossians, While informal names such as space

jockeys and universal pilots also abound. The term engineer, used by doctor Ilizzabeth's Shaw of the Doomed Prometheus expedition, has stuck in the few circles allowed to know of them. Pale, hairless giants of uncanny statuesque perfection. The engineers are thought to have worn modest clothing on their home worlds, but donned more exotic, biomechanical space suits during their interstellar voyages.

Suits that seemingly melded with their bodies, fused with their organs, and via their strange helms, gave them the outer appearance

of a trunked elephantic head. They were or are, masters of not only interstellar travel, but also biotechnology, able to generate new forms of life, program genetics, master evolutionary process augment their own bodies, and craft terrifying bioweapons beyond the scope of even the most advanced whalen Utani weapon lab within the wrecked Juggernaut found on planet LV four T one twenty six crew members from the Nostromo encountered the long dead remains of a very large engineer, with evidence

of an explosive emergence from its chest, as well as thousands of eggs. Prior to this, the crew of the Prometheus encountered even more artifacts of the engineers, and even a lone living specimen preserved in some advanced form of suspended animation. The android David, one of the few survivors of that mission, went on to study their works more exhaustively,

decimating one of their inhabited worlds in the process. As such, we have much more to go on than the crew of the Nostroma, but much about the engineers remains clouded in mystery. Members of their species seemingly seated the planet Earth with life long ago, and as such are our progenitors, and then much later members of their species seem to

decide to end that life instead. The rationale for either impulse is a matter of debate, but we find many ideas in the realities of human nature and our own impulses to murder and create. We know from various engineer artworks that they held their own form in high regard, perhaps even worshiping themselves or deities dreampt of in their own image. But they also held strange and dangerous forms of life in seemingly high regard as well, forms that

resemble the xenomorphic creature spawned from their biotechnology. Did they use their advanced understanding of life to create life forms that reflected their dark beliefs? Did they harness the raw biological power of some pre existing life form? We simply don't know. The Alien RPG source book ruminates on these questions as well as others. Is there indeed a single engineer species and or culture or many? Are there? Different breeds?

Are there different casts? Is the space jockey individual found on LV four to twenty six merely a large specimen, a subspecies or something else? Again, all this is shrouded and delicious mystery, as it should be. The engineers are often invoked as gods, demi gods, or, indeed, as the invocation of Prometheus implies, Titans. The Titans of Greek mythology were, of course, the pre Olympic gods cast down by Zeus

in the Epic War known as the Titanomachi. Afterwards, the gods imprisoned many of the Titans in Tartarus, while others remained free. The individual nature of the Titans varied from brutal Chronos to the culture bearing tricks, to Prometheus, who in some tellings created human beings but is also credited with giving them the gift of fire or fire technology. This is a common trope in many different cultures, so even in invoking the Engineers as Titans, a certain mystery remains.

Are they are creators? Are benefactors, cruel former masters of the cosmos? Maybe all of the above. In the film Prometheus, the Ers are explored in a manner clearly partially inspired by the pseudoscientific ancient astronaut hypothesis, and I personally think science fiction is the right place to deploy these concepts. While the idea that aliens visited the Earth in ancient or prehistoric times carries no weight in serious consideration of history, mythology,

or science. Please see our past Stuffable Your Mind episodes for more on this. It's all fair game. In a twisting tale of futuristic fictional space horror, the Engineers provide us with a great Elder race for the alien universe, shrouded in mystery, ultimately unknowable and untrustworthy. In the films that follow the life of the Android David, they also serve as a fitting contemplation point for humanity's own place in the universe as a creator of artificial life and

an expansionist terraforming civilization in decline. Look on their works, Ye Mighty and Despair. All right, now, let's move on to Part two, The Black Goo. In the previous episode of The Monster Fact, we began our alien series with a look at the mysterious Engineers. Today we'll turn to this Elder race's most dangerous creation, a highly volatile genetic accelerant classified by human researchers as Agent A zero thirty

nine fifty nine x point ninety one dash fifteen. In its purest form, this so called black goo does in fact resemble a viscous tar like material or liquid. Human explorers first discovered the substance amid the ruins of an engineer outpost on the planet designated LV two twenty three. They found the gou and coretets of glass like vials

secured in steatide ampules or urns. The engineers had secured it there like a precious tread me, like the remains of the dead, like a devastating bioweapon, the pinnacle of the engineer's advanced biotechnology. We can even think of agent A zero thirty nine to fifty nine x point ninety one slash fifteen as a kind of biological AI that reprograms everything it touches, perhaps following specific instructions, general directions,

or left entirely to its own generative impulses. As revealed in the film's Prometheus and Alien Covenant, and as discussed in Freely Publishing's Alien RPG, the black Goo aggressively recodes DNA, rapidly transforming individual organisms, species, and entire ecosystems. When exposed to the atmosphere, it atomizes and spreads as an aerosol, but may also be further manipulated in liquid form if handled with proper expertise. High level exposure to the substance

generally spells instant death for organic beings. Select engineers are to have ritualistically ingested the substance in its pure, concentrated liquid form to seed new worlds, allowing the black good to rapidly break down their bodies and spend new life forms out of the genetic pieces. Likewise, when weaponized, aerial bombardments of the steatide ampules quickly laid waste to entire populations, finally twisting the life forms at the peripheries of the

attack into dangerous new creatures. At lower exposure levels, the Black Goose steadily mutates human beings into zombie like forms known as abominations, noted for their increasingly aggressive behavior, enhance strength, elongated limbs, and swelling craniums. They are also able to pass on their rampage in genetics through different infection routes,

as we'll explore in the next episode. It's impossible to know exactly how the engineers regarded the Black Good, but we might best understand it, like many forms of technology, as having tremendous potential to destroy or create. It can enable the seating of whole new worlds with the divergent genes of a single donor. But it can also be a weapon of terrifying power, wiping out most life on a world and reprogramming the surviving biome into aggressive monstrosities

that steadily grind all life to its end. But let's set aside metaphors and interpretations, and consider a few additional takes on black goo. With all of these extraterrestrial horrors now running through your brain, you might find it a bit unnerving to realize that here on Earth, outside of the Sci Fi horrors of the alien franchise, we actually do have to contend with strange black goo within the

buried creations of ancient civilizations. As Kate Fulcher reported for the British Museum back in twenty twenty, the goo in question here would have been poured warm into the caskets of mummified individuals, effectively cementing their linen wrapped mummy cases

into the encasing casket. Museum scientists analyzed more than one hundred samples of the now long dried goo and determine that while the exact ingredients varied, the main components tended to be plant oil, animal fat, tree resin, beeswax, and bitumen, a viscous or solid form of petroleum. Egyptian black goo was reserved for royalty and those rich enough to afford the very best in their funerary preparations. We've even found the stuff on the golden mask of Tuton common According

to fulcher. Its pitch black color was associated with mythic osiris and concepts of rebirth and regeneration. It's clear that a certain amount of Egyptomania went into conceptions of the engineers. It even goes all the way back to artist hr Giger's late seventies concept art for Alien, which includes a hieroglyphic inspired alien life cycle tableau. Look it up, and it makes sense in later ruminations of the franchise that filmmakers might have found inspiration in the real life black

Goo of Egyptology. It's rather fitting, after all, given that the ancient Egyptians seemed to have viewed the journey into the next life as something cosmic and transformative. The sarcophagus in many ways like a cryo chamber, and monstrous entities like Ahmet awaiting the passage of the dead. Black Goo has, of course another larger life in sci fi in general, sometimes as a catch all name for just black inky evil, or other times more specifically as a self replicating meta

material graphene oxide. Jason Kahey profiled the notion in a twenty twenty two article for Wired Magazine, drawing on sci fi usages of the stuff on TV's Westworld and TV's Severance, and if we go wider than that, he points out, we see dangerous black goos in the original X Files

as well as in Miyazaki's Spirited Away. Elsewhere, We've watched it drip onto Gary Olben's head in The Fifth Element, and Yes, the low budget nineteen eighty five alien knockoff Creature features a scene in which the leaks from an alien tube shortly before a monster breaks out of it. What is Marvel's Venom but a slightly more stylish black goo, and the Sorcerer egg Shin and Big Trouble in Little China warned us, matter of factly, not of oil, but

of the black blood of the earth. The examples are endless, though they often betray a Western prevalence for the negative connotations of the color black, which dates back through the Middle Ages and into humoral theory with its black bile. But black also represented power in secrecy during this time period as well. Colors are in the end multipurpose, culturally dependent and based on context. The color black may be invoked to convey everything from darkness and mystery to beauty

and power, and when we combine all of that with gooiness. Well, visually, there just seems to be something otherworldly about black goo, and so it's the perfect visual manifestation of the underlying power in the alien universe of anti blood and anti seed, as dark as the spaces between the stars. Up next Part three, Trilobide and Deacon. In the previous episode, in this special alien themed monster fact series, we discussed Agent A zero thirty nine to fifty nine x point ninety

one slash fifteen. The Black Goo, a powerful evolutionary accelerant created by the Engineers and deployed as both the creator and destroyer of worlds. We consider the various ways that it worked itself through a host, spawning zombie like abominations in the process. As witnessed in the film Prometheus, a mixture of pathogen infected hosts can lead to truly strange forms. The android David infected the human crew made Holloway with

a mere drop of the black Goo. The infected Holloway then impregnated his partner, doctor Elizabeth Shaw, who then employed appalling medpod to surgically remove the resulting squid like embryo before it could burst out of her on its own. Left to its own devices. The resulting creature rapidly grew into an enormous, seven tentacled monster, sometimes referred to as the trilobite. The creature has virtually nothing in common with the prehistoric arthropod of the same name, which we previously

discussed on Stufftable your Mind. If anything, the creature looks more like an octopus. They will find very few seven armed organisms in the natural world. The seven arm sea star comes to mind, but we also have to consider the so called seven armed octopus. Some call it the septipus or the blob octopus, but Halifron atlanticus actually does

have eight arms. It's just that the males hectocotylus, or specialized fertilization arm, remains coiled away in a sack beneath the right eye, thus giving the creature the appearance of having only seven arms, at least in the males. But back to the monster, we quickly learn that the alien trilobite is merely an intermediate stage in the creature's overall

life cycle. When the trilobite overpowers a surviving engineer, incapacitates the host and implants its own embryo, orally, the tentacled monster then covers the host's body in a posture that the Alien RPG from Free League Publishing describes as a protective posture. There's already a lot to unpack here. I don't want to get too ahead of ourselves, but the creature here is essentially more of a body hugger than a face hugger, though it still depends on oral injection

of its embryo. It also feels as if the trilobite form developed expressly for the purpose of infecting larger than human prey, that its juvenile form somehow detect the presence of a much larger engineer in its midst and morph into a form capable of taking one down. It's unknown, however, we do know that the black goop pathogen seems to ultimately result in more stabilized xenomorphic creatures with distinct life cycles, and we can suppose that these stabilized forms in life

cycles are informed by environment and host survivability. Certainly, engineers or rogue android scientists might manipulate this development, but it seems to be a typical pattern. But the resulting creatures, as we'll discuss, remain highly adaptive to host availability. But I will go ahead and speculate, and I'm sure others have speculated along these exact lines as well, that the Trilobyte is a specialized engineer naver, and that Holloway and

Shaw's genetic contributions were marginal at best. The android David in his covenant recordings at least mentions in passing that the engineers are perfect carriers and perfect mothers. We're also to understand that the engineers are genetically somewhat similar human beings. But perhaps there is something else about the Elder race's biology that draws the pathogens and creatures of their own creation.

I wonder if it might have to do with the various other biotechnological alterations that the engineers have made to themselves or are made via their suits. And of course, in Prometheus's closing moments, we see the Trillabite crumpled and dead and watch a juvenile's xenomorphic organism emerge from the engineer's body. It has indeed grown quite large in the giant body of its hosts. The alien RPG describes the gestation as effectively hollowing out the host creature's body, reducing

it to little more than a husk. The new form, dubbed the Deacon, emerges as a more typical bipedal eye list xenomorphic creature with an elongated head, though lacking a tail and various other key features associated with its kin. It boasts protrucible jaws like that of the deep sea goblin shark, and its nickname derives from the sharp point on the end of its head, which resembles the pointed

miter worn by some Christian clergy. The creature uses this point to violently rip its way out of the host body. In this regard, we might reasonably compare the Deacon's headspike to the egg tooth, a temporary sharp protrusion that various birds, reptiles, and monotremes use to penetrate their own eggshell and break free spiders, too, are known to develop an egg tooth

like spike to aid in their hatching. The Deacon's spike would seem necessary as it has to emerge not only from the body of the engineer, but also through its biomechanical spacesuit, which again may to varying degrees, be biologically integrated with the engineer. Just as birds quickly lose their egg teeth. It's possible that the Deacon loses its key feature as it develops into its no doubt gigantic adult form. However, we have no idea what this form might look like.

Perhaps its full development puts in more in line with other xenomorphic forms, only on a scale devoted to prey on giant humanoid hosts. We also have no idea what the Deacon's life cycle would consist of in whole, but we might assume that it would resemble that of a stabilized xenomorphic life cycle, which we'll discuss in the weeks ahead, only with larger eggs that produce a body hugging embryo depositor. The engineers might know for certain, but fortunately humans remain

in the dark. Now it's time for part four, the neomorph our journey through the alien universe. This time brings us to the mysterious planet for the rotting paradise of Alien Covenant. Once an occupied world of the Engineers, the planet suffered a mass extinction event at the hands of

the rogue android David. Descending from the sky in a stolen Engineer starship, he unleashed a devastating bombardment of the skeetide ampules eradicating most non botanical non fungal life with the dreaded evolutionary accelerant agent a zero slash thirty nine fifty nine x dot ninety one slash fifteen. But as we've explored already, the black goo doesn't destroy everything in

such incidents. No, it also creates new dangerous organisms to prowl the lifeless borders of devastation, and it tends to find its way back to the basic form of a xenomorphic predator, in this case working its way up from fungal and possibly insect life. The neomorph begins as a fungal growth that produces small pods or egg sacs, which

release a swarm of moats upon disturbance. These moats are able to move through the air by their own volition, sometimes synchronizing in murmurations to zero in on a potential host organism's vulnerable orifices. The moats are often compared to plant pollen, though of course pollend on vectors such as wind or other organisms to move from one plant to the next. We might instead be tempted to compare these moats to fairy flies or fairy wasps. The smallest known

flying organisms. As pointed out by Julius Klarr in a twenty twenty four article for The Sierra Club, fairy wasp body length can measure as little as zero point one three nine millimeters, equal to the thickness of a human hair, so it's not out of the question for something so

small to be capable of powered and deliberate flight. According to Freely Publishing's Alien RPG source books, the neomorph moats make their way into a host body, where they deliver microscopic amounts of the black goo to the host's blood stream, and then the moats die. In the blood the evolutionary accelerant mutates white blood cells, forming a tumor like mass that rapidly develops into an embryo, referred to as a

blood burster. When this small quadruped is ready to emerge from i'm the host, it bursts out through whatever part of the anatomy is most accessible the mouth, the back, even an eye socket. It depends in large part on where the tumor develops. If it survives, the bloodbuster rapidly

develops into a neomorph. These medium size pales xenomorphic predators boast goblin shark like protrusible jaws much like the deacon that we previously discussed, along with a whipping spike tail in a cluster of dorsal spikes, which as a blood burster, aids in its emergence. Let's talk a bit more about those goblin shark jaws. Though the deep sea mitsucarina o

stony isn't alone in having protrusible jaws. Shark jaws are not attached to the organism's cartilage skull and move as separate parts, allowing for varying degrees of protrusion when attacking prey. The goblin shark nearly boasts the most extreme jaw protrusion known,

both in terms of reach and speed. According to a twenty sixteen article by Nakaya at All published in Scientific Reports, the jaw sling shots forward at a maximum velocity of three point one meters per second to eight point six to nine point four percent of the total length of the shark. They cited the phylogenetic evidence that suggests the adaptation involved in response to their food poor deep sea environment and is a possible trade off for the loss

of strong swimming ability. It might not be able to catch desired prey in an all out pursuit, but if they get close enough, their jaw length can make up the difference. As seen in Alien covenant, Neomorphs can act as both pack hunters and solitary stalkers. While they may enter prolonged states of hibernation, they're ultimately short lived and don't seem to engage in any form of host recurement

or parasitic reproduction while alive. When they die or are killed, their corpses simply produce more sporesas ready to release more black moats when a potential host ventures near. Now, in the natural world, we certainly have organisms that die after reproduction, what we call simularity. These organisms reproduce but a single time and then die. The Pacific salmon are a great

example of this, along with certain insects and molluscs. The neo morph, however, would seem to reproduce through death, which is of course a fitting xenomorphic and gigresque twist on everything it kills, it dies, and through its death it ideally spreads more of those moats that will produce new blood bursters, and new neomorphs, presumably until all life on a world is reduced to just a few hibernating xenos and their weighting fungal eggsacts, we might reasonably compare it

to various pathogens that spread via contact with dead hosts. How are you ready for Part five? Let's look at the xenomorph egg. In the original nineteen seventy nine film Alien, the crew of the Nostromo discovered thousands of strange rubbery eggs, each between two and three feet in hide or point six two point nine meters in height, aboard a derelict

engineer spacecraft. As I originally discussed in the article how the Alien xenomorph Works back in twenty twelve for the website How Stuff Works, the first stop in interpreting this strange stage of the alien life cycle is to approach it as an egg. That is to say, we have to compare it to the amniotic eggs of birds, reptiles, and amphibians, which protect and nourish the organism inside during

its early development. The xenomorph egg certainly contains and protects an organism the face hugger stage of the xenomorph life cycle. No matter what the external environmental conditions might be, The egg seems to keep the face hugger moist alive and possibly at the appropriate temperature, within a vat of fleshy pulpy material that we might compare to the yolk or

dudoplasm that serves this purpose in terrestrial eggs. But the Zeno egg seemingly evolved to not only protect a developing organism, but to preserve it in a state of readiness. As we'll discuss in the next episode, the face hugger absolutely depends on host availability, and the egg patiently awaits delivery too or discovery by suitable hosts. And this is where we consider another possibility, one explored by the alien RPG

from Freely Publishing. Perhaps it's not merely an egg, but a full blown stage of the alien life cycle, an ovomorph and an organism in and of itself. Consider the face hugger doesn't hatch or burst from the egg like a natural world hatchling. Instead, it's the ovomorph that opens its four dorsal petals or lips and allows the face hugger to spring forth. Perhaps indeed, it is the egg that initially senses nearby prey and not the face hugger. We might also look to the ropey tendrils that seem

to protrude from the bases of these eggs. Are these merely secreted resin strands to bind the eggs in place against environmental stress or gravitational changes, or are they tentacles that may help sense interlopers. Are they in fact roots that seek nourishment to sustain their hidden organic payloads. Finally, in the phantasmagorical concept art of dark surrealist hr Giger, the eggs dorsal openings are sometimes manifested as a single slit,

implying not hatching but live birth. Ah. But there is more mystery to consider here concerning the ovomorph, as seen in alternate cuts of Ridley Scott's Alien and is embraced in the Alien RPG source book. There are two known ways to wind up with the xenom. A hive queen may deposit the eggs in great number, as we see in James Cameron's Aliens, or a living host may develop

into a xenomorphag Here's how it allegedly works. A lone xenomorph drone such as the titular creature in the original Alien, collects hosts, incapacitates them, cocoons their bodies with resin secretions, and then uses a barb on its tail, perhaps a form of ovipositor, to inject them with enzymes, hormones, and

perhaps some derivative of the black Good. The unfortunate host then slowly transforms into a swollen ovomorph themselves, complete with a face hugger, drifting dreaming in its semi translucent depths. With enough time and enough available hosts, the new egg may birth a whole new hive of xenomorphic world consuming horror. What comes out of the xenomorphag wine the face hugger. Of course, it's time for part six. In our look at the xenomorph life cycle, we finally come to the

horrifying face hugger. This is the creature that emerges from the traditional xenomorph egg aggressively attaches itself to the face of a human host, implants an embryo in the comatose host organism, and then dies. The embryo, of course, develops into a standard xenomorph, which we'll explore in the next episode. There are a few different ways to look at the basics of the face hugger. On one level, we can ground it in the dark surrealism of hr Giger another

twist on sexual reproduction, Freudian death drive, and physiology. But just as we previously face the question of whether the xenomorph egg is an organism in and of itself, we must also consider this with the face hugger to some degree. In HowStuffWorks dot COM's How the Alien xenomorph Works from twenty twelve, I explored the idea that the face hugger might not constitute a true organism at all, but would

rather be a delivery system for the embryo. No more an organism than a sperm cell is an organism, and of course this alone is a comparison worth considering. A human sperm cell is not a human being, but it does metabolize sugar to produce energy, grow and move on its own to reach the egg as part of human reproduction. But anyway, back in twenty twelve, the face hugger also brought to my mind at any rate, the male argonaut or paper nautilus, which has a detachable spermatophore filled arm

called a hectocoutilus that it leaves with its mate. So if the xenomorphic could be considered an organism, we might consider the face hugger to be its hectocoutilyus of sorts, only one that moves on its own to seek how the host. However, there's an important point to be made here, and one that I don't think is properly reflected in that twenty twelve How Stuff Works article I wrote. A hectocodulus is not free swimming like a sperm cell. Some creatures of the hectocodulus use it as a sex organ

that remains attached. In others, such as with the argonaut, it detaches and the male manually leaves it, with the female leaving it inside a special cavity in her mantle. In the Free League Alien RPG, the authors present three rival theories concerning the face hugger. The first, in line with what we've been discussing, is that it deposits an embryo of some sort, thus making it another morph of

the same species. The second idea is that it deposits not an embryo, but a cancerous growth that mutates into a chessbuster. This, I would imagine puts it more in line with the concept of the black goo in the alien universe. The third premises of the face hugger is its own species in a symbiotic relationship with the prime xenomorph species, and that it injects bacteria into the host

that leads to the development of the chess burster. Part of the confusion here is due to the fact that the developing embryo or chess burster inside the host takes on at least some of the host's genetics, be it the chessbuster we see emerge from the quadruped host in Alien three, or if we're considering Ash's comments in the original Alien, that the xenomorph that emerges from Nostromo Executive

Officer Caine is essentially quote Cain's son. And even this is not entirely outside the boundaries of the natural world, as recent studies have shown that horsehair worms steal genes from host organisms in order to control their behavior, and we see plenty of other examples of horizontal gene transfer, the non sexual transfer of genetic information between genomes. But

let's get back to the face hugger itself. I turned to the paper science Fiction The Biology of the Alien in Alien by Armand im Curis and Mona Wi Leo, published just last year in the Portland Press. They classify the face hugger as a quote hoxt attack larval stage and conclude that quote unattacking larva injecting the next larval

stage is realistic for earthling parasites. For a natural world example of something related, they turn to Seculina Carcini, the crab hacker barnacle, one of the parasitic Rhizocephala crab castrator barnacles.

One of the organism's early motes, is a specialized juvenile form known as a kentragon, which boasts only the antennuals necessary to attach to its crab host, and is otherwise a living hypodermic needle that exists only to inject a cell mass known as a vermagon into the crab, and the vermagon is described here by the authors as microscopic

and worm like. The injected vermigon then proceeds to grow like roots through the host organism, branching through its organs, leaving it unable to reproduce and completely control its physiology and behavior. Absolutely fascinating and another example of how the natural world is always willing to match even our most bizarre sci fi and fantasy inventions. We might well think of the face hugger as a kind of kentragon and

its reproductive payload as a vermigon. And indeed, the vermigon's role in the natural world is to grow and establish the adult form of the organism within the body of the hosts. Only in the case of the xenomorph, that final form must burst free. As we'll discuss in the next Monster Fact episode. Ooh, Finally, part seven, let's look

at the adult xenomorph. Thus far in the Alien Monster Fact series, we've discussed everything from the mysterious engineers and their black goo, to the xenomorph ag and the face hugger that emerges from it. As we all know, the next phase in the alien life cycle is the violent eruption of the free living chest burster, which swiftly grows to become an adult xenomorph, sometimes referred to as a stage four xenomorph or simply a drone or warrior in

science fiction. The Biology of the Alien in Alien by Armand im Kurus and Mono why Law, published just last year in the Portland Press. The authors describe the xenomorph's parasitic development inside the host as lining up with natural world coinobiant parasitoids, parasites that attack hosts that then continue feeding and growing during the parasitism. Because, of course, we see this in the original nineteen seventy nine film Alien, when Caine's face hugger falls away, he awakens and acts

like his old self again. He chats and jokes with his crewmates. He enjoys a meal and prepares to carry on his ship duties before the creature inside him violently emerges. Corros and Low compared this to various parasitoid wasps, horsehair worms, and the Cortescep's fungus. In general, we're dealing with examples where the doomed host organism continues to behave as usual, sometimes even feeding, but also acting in a manner to benefit the parasite. Corticeps infected ants climb to a high

point and release spores. Horse hair worm infected crickets seek out water to drown in, enabling the spawn inside them to burst free into their desired watery habitat and swim off in search of a mate. The growth of such parasites is amazing, consuming host tissues to the developing organism is almost as large as the host in some cases, converting.

According to Chris and Low, upwards of quote seventy percent of the host tissues into parasitoid biomass and up to ninety percent of its nitrogen, mostly to build parasitoid protein.

In twenty twelve article how the Alien xenomorph Works for HowStuffWorks, dot com I pointed to some grizzly natural world examples of this sort of thing, including the parasitic wasp cotesiaglomerata, which may pump up to sixty eggs into a single caterpillar, which may ultimately account for thirty percent of the host organism's body weight. The hatching larvae drink the host organism's

fluids but avoid vital organs. Other organisms, such as the Dinocampus cosinella wasp, seem to reprogram the host to protect the emergent larvae. And here's another interesting wrinkle to this. Parasitic wasp larvae seem to use a virus mimicking poison to shut down a host's immune system, allowing their growing

spawn to develop inside the host unopposed. In a matter of hours, perhaps aided by the consumption of additional biomass and even metals, the xenomorph chest burster develops into a full grown adult, standing a good eight feet or two point four meters in height, glistening and black, the bipedal xenomorph boasts a number of features that indeed make it

worthy of the moniker perfect organism. It seems to benefit from a dual skeletal system, both indo and exo, as well as caustic blood that burns anything that might injure it. They're fast, They're stealthy. They attack with vicious claws, spiked tail, razor sharp teeth, and a secondary jaw that launches piston like to puncture prey, often compared to the pharanngial jaws

of the moraeel. Yet while the eel uses this adaptation to pull in prey, the xenomorph seems chiefly concerned with killing and subduing its prey, either for transformation into an ovomorph or in preparation for a xenomorph. Queen's eggs alone, an adult xenomorph betrays cunning and a fair amount of vicarious learning and problem solving, and within a high context, they may benefit from emergent intelligence or some manner of hive mind. They have even been observed to exploit human technology,

at least to a limited degree. To quote the android Ash, we are left with a survivor, unclouded by conscience, remorse, or delusions of morality. It may constitute the ultimate creation of the Engineers, or that of the rogue android David. It may also be the true form of a creature that inspired the Engineers in their biotechnological pursuits, still dominant in the dark reaches of the galaxy, or resurrected via

the mad research of a demented, vengeful mind. We don't know, We may never know, and it seems entirely likely that we should never have left the Earth to begin with. And finally getting into spoiler territory for alien Romulus, let us consider the offspring and other hybrids. First and foremost, we have to remember that even the ror xenomorph life

cycle is one of horrific and deadly hybridity. The adult Xenomorph is inherently a combination of alien and host DNA agent A zero slash thirty nine to fifty nine x point ninety one slash fifteen. The black Goo works as an evolutionary accelerant on most biological modes of life in the series, pushing them into stranger, more hostile, and more

durable forms. So most of the individual forms and lifestyle stages we've discussed so far can be thought of as the most likely forms and morphs of xenomorphic life, but many other paths are possible. This is especially true when human engineer or android scientific manipulation changes the shape of

things to come. In nineteen ninety seven's Alien Resurrection, set two hundred years after the events of Alien three in the year twenty three eighty one, we encounter United Cisdum's military scientists who have not only created numerous clones of long dead Ellen Ripley, but also the xenomorph queen that was growing inside her at the moment of her death. Their results are numerous Ripley clones with varying degrees of xenomorphic biology, as well as an alien queen with human

reproductive physiology. The latter situation results in the birth of a monstrous newborn hybrid, a pale humanoid xenomorph with various human features and a complex emotional state. Much earlier in the Alien timeline and more recently at our cinemas, we witness the birth of the offspring hybrid in Alien Romulus.

We get to this creature via various missteps. First of all, whilean Utani scientists managed to isolate the black goo from the remains of the original nostromo xenomorph, then they attempt to engineer it into a control biohacking agent that alters human physiology to make them more resilient offworld colonists. A futurist common that we've discussed on stuff to blow your mind before. Instead of terraforming other worlds into something more like Earth, what if we altered ourselves to better fit

those worlds, or at least met them halfway. So give it up to Waylan Newtani. Solid concept. Their execution, however, falls tragically short of perfection. In their vanity, they attempted to harness the biotechnological might of the engineers, and the violent trajectory of the black goo could not be contained. We see footage of the supposedly successful resurrection of a dead laborat via the formula let's call it gray Goo, only to later see the disastrous mutations that the specimen experienced.

Now unaware of the latter complications, the characters and Romulus take off with the gray Goose samples, and sure enough, one of them k eventually injects it into their own system to bounce back from an injury. The gray Goo appears to work here, at least initially. However, the formula affects K's pregnancy, resulting in the rapid birth and development of a fast growing alien zeno hybrid referred to as the Offspring, a towering, misshapen monster with elements of xenomorphic

human and engineer features. Now, I wasn't sure exactly how I felt about this creature design at first, but it has grown on me and I've seen that it clearly freaked out and revolted plenty of viewers, So it's very much serving its purpose in the film. So I eagerly await revisiting this creature when Romulus is released into our homes later this month. Now, the Romulus scientists were far from the first to experiment with the black goo and

charge its effects on various organisms. The engineers, of course, pioneered this science and the rogue android. David experimented exhaustively on the flora and fauna of an engineer home world, before presumably moving on to more human centric experimentations on

the far flung world of Aura Guy six. In David's notes, and drawings from the Engineer World and Covenant, we see exhaustive and increasingly nightmarish records of the Black Goose effects on native species, as well as his own manipulation and proposed alterations of human and engineer physiology with the accelerant and altered strains of xenomorphic life. Interestingly enough, one of these images depicts a creature with the head of an

engineer and the body of a xenomorph. It would seem that David's twisted imagination, if not his unwholesome experiments, prophesied the romulus offspring decades earlier. You'll see this illustration, by the way, in the compiled volume David's Drawings, published in splendid hardback, alongside a softback booklet about the artists Matt Hatton and Dame Hallett, who created the drawings, and the notes that litter the set of David's laboratory in the film.

The main book is a beautiful, haunting volume, and the accompanying booklet provides wonderful insight into the vis visual design process of the film. Now, the Extended Alien Universe contains numerous additional hybrid complications. The Alien RPG from Freely Publishing includes several of these related to the creation of the twenty six Dracona strain, a black goo based vaccine similar to what we see in Romulus, intended in this case to halt the development of a xenomorphic embryo in the

human body. In the module Destroyer of Worlds, we see one complication in which the black goo derivative is introduced into the body of a human already impregnated by a face hugger. The accelerant, they write, serves as a genetic bridge, resequencing the DNA of human host and xenomorphic embryo into a single organism, essentially turning the human into a xenomorph from the inside out. The resulting body burster resembles a normal adult xenomorph, but with the skull of the human

host embedded in the creature's cranial dome. This concept, in essence, originates in William Gibson's unproduced screenplay for Alien three, and plays on some early hr Giger suit designs for the original Alien. It's a fitting and horrific concept that Alien filmmakers should certainly come back to in the future. All Right, that's it for this monster fact omnibus episode dealing with the alien series. Now, some of you might be asking yourself, well,

why didn't we talk about the Queen. Why didn't we talk about Well, maybe one or two other creatures that pop up in the series. Well, maybe we'll come back and look at them in the future. But this, for the most part concludes the journey. So, as always, I'd love to hear from everyone out there. If you have thoughts, opinions, or additional analysis on anything that we teased out here,

write in I would love to hear from you. Thanks to the wonderful Apossway for producing these episodes and then stitching them all together into this final form, And if you want to get in touch with us, you can email us at contact at Stuffdblow your Mind dot com.