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.
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 ~~was~~ were 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