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Xenomorph Archaeology - Ep 52
1.7k Plays2 years ago
In this belated spooky episode, we untangle the web that is xenomorph anatomy, the creatures from the popular Alien franchise. Listen in for tales of stress inducing videogame sessions, what a dog xenomorph looks like, and in-depth analysis of the role of the facehugger in the xenomorph life cycle.
Transcripts
For rough transcripts of this episode go to https://www.archpodnet.com/animals/52
Links
- https://www.inverse.com/article/31942-an-explanation-of-alien-covenant-xenomorph-biology
- https://avp.fandom.com/wiki/Mesoskeleton
Contact
- Alex FitzpatrickTwitter: @archaeologyfitz
- Simona FalangaTwitter: @CrazyBoneLady
- Alex’s Blog: Animal Archaeology
- Music "Coconut - (dyalla remix)" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2UiKoouqaY
Affiliates
Recommended
Transcript
00:00:00
Speaker
You're
Introduction to the Archaeology Podcast Network
00:00:01
Speaker
listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network.
Unidentified Signal Investigation
00:00:15
Speaker
Captain, you're going to have to want to look at this. What is it, pilot? Looks like it's stressed because of some sort. Can't make it out properly.
00:00:26
Speaker
of the codes. Oh, you know the code. We have to investigate. How long until we get there? Couple of hours. Hey, um, science officer, you're reading on that signal? Whatever it is, it's not human. I'm getting a transmission. Playing on main speakers. Oh, okay. So everyone else laughs about, I'm the one who can hold character or whatever.
00:00:55
Speaker
Alex, you're just an excellent actress. Okay, I'm sorry. This is amazing. Yeah, can you tell the person who did a community theatre for most of their life in New York?
Acting Skills and Community Theatre
00:01:07
Speaker
I've only done 60 years of community theatre, so obviously I'm just starting out my career. I have so much to learn, Alex. Yeah, for me. In that case, we should start the show. My throat.
00:01:25
Speaker
Okay, let's start. So yeah, I guess we should start by saying this is in fact, the archaeo animals podcast.
Introducing Archaeo Animals and Alien Franchise
00:01:34
Speaker
Don't change your channel after what you just heard. We're just really good actors.
00:01:41
Speaker
And today we are trying to be a bit in the holiday spirit, albeit a little late, but hey, you know, no time right now. And we'll be looking at the zoo archeology of xenomorphs from the Alien film franchise. And of course it's Alex's Patrick and with me as always, Si buona, Falanga.
00:02:07
Speaker
So yeah, Simona, what is your familiarity with the franchise? We'll just say I guess just a couple hours here and there spent watching and rewatching the entire franchise, or at least the first four films anyway, and I guess a couple video games under my belt.
Impact of the Alien Franchise
00:02:28
Speaker
to just occasional light research now. Yeah, just a very casual watching and not at all, just a random like Sunday morning, I'll tell you what I'm going to do. I'm going to rewatch all the Alien films. That's never happened.
00:02:46
Speaker
And as for me, I saw the film too young and there is also a, we'll get to it a bit, but if anyone's been to Disney World, there was a theme park attraction that had the alien in it. So I was scarred for life at a young age because of that. I have a very complicated relationship. Yeah, very child friendly.
00:03:09
Speaker
You have no idea, but we'll get into that. Because what we're going to do for this first part is kind of just do a real brief introduction. I think most people, even if they haven't seen the films, know of Alien. It's one of those things, right? That's kind of like in the pop culture lexicon. Like, at least they know like what the alien looks like. But I think it's probably good to kind of real quickly go through
00:03:33
Speaker
what we're going to be talking about what's from, because it's not just the films, although it obviously does start with the 1979 film Alien by Ridley Scott, in which the crew of the Nostromo are picked off one by one by the titular Alien and it still slaps. In space, no one can hear you scream. Yeah, I guess. I believe that was the tagline for the film. I mean, I heard them scream because I could hear them on the film.
Is 'Aliens' Better Than the Original?
00:04:03
Speaker
Yes, because it was obviously a much celebrated documentary. After the success of Aliens, the series has continued with several other sequels and prequels, including so it was followed by Aliens in 1986. Which some people say is better. I think that's debatable, but I still think it rolls. It's debatable, definitely. Just saying.
00:04:31
Speaker
Just saying what people say. I like it, but I don't think it's better than the original. I would agree if I quite like it. I still prefer the original, but I guess it depends on what kind of film you enjoy the most because the first one has more of a survival horror vibe. The second one is more like army men guns blazing. Yeah, they're different genre of films, but you know, they're still fun. It's got Bill Paxton looking like a snack, so.
00:04:58
Speaker
Yeah, to that we have Alien 3 in 1992 too, which I'm guessing from the notes of this. I liked it. No, it's a bad movie, I'm sorry. I don't like it. What do you like about it, Simone? It's just really badly paced, it's got no direction, it's just the acting is a wee bit wooden and I can't even tell you half the things that happen in it. Maybe I should watch it again.
Critique of Prometheus and Covenant
00:05:26
Speaker
Well, I guess it's more of a nostalgia factor for me, because I remember watching the first two films when I was little. And we didn't have the VHSs of the other ones. So remember, I actually bought it at the petrol station on a school trip. So my idea of a souvenir to bring back from a school trip was a VHS of avian three. So you go and I'm like bringing it home and then my dad was like, Oh, I don't like that one.
00:05:52
Speaker
Your dad was right. Well, I've watched the first two. I wanted to watch the other ones. Well, on the bright side, it's not the worst Alien movie because following Alien 3, you had Alien Resurrection in 1997. I do think that's probably the worst one.
00:06:08
Speaker
It's something that's a hot take. No, that'll have to be the prequels that don't exist. Oh, true. I think those are bad in a different way because I think, okay, well we'll get to it because obviously it was a very long break, at least in this kind of main canon. We'll get to some of the other movies. But then Prometheus came out in 2012 and it was a prequel to the original Alien. I was so hyped for it and boy,
00:06:34
Speaker
I was so disappointed. So, sorry y'all, I did not like it. No, I watched it at the cinema,
Alien vs Predator vs Prometheus
00:06:41
Speaker
wasn't a big fan. Same with Covenant in 2017. I like, I like to object here and I say that like, Prometheus and Covenant are good as long as you don't think of them as alien films. Like, I remember seeing Prometheus in cinemas in English and I actually also saw it in German and I actually understood more in the
00:07:06
Speaker
English one. And I actually appreciated it only because I was like, this is an alien film. So I think from maybe that perspective, basically, it's like the Mass Effect Andromeda of the Alien franchise.
00:07:19
Speaker
Yeah, bingo. That's it. That's exactly it. And I guess for me, I guess for me is the lack of nostalgia factor, because again, like, I enjoy watching Alien Resurrection, because I've watched it when I was quite young. And of course, being quite young, I liked it. And I don't know, nostalgia factor, maybe.
00:07:40
Speaker
Well, more importantly, it's not just those films because there's also crossover films, which I think technically count as part of the franchise. They're Alien vs Predator in 2004, and then AVP, Requiem in 2007. And to be honest, they also slap, just saying. I think I've watched some of one of the two AVP films. I forget which one. It doesn't matter. No, I suppose not. But like,
00:08:09
Speaker
Here's the thing, I don't like Prometheus because for a lot of reasons they're disappointed in it. That said, I also sometimes want a film where you just take, it's basically two action fingers and you're just throwing them at the top of each other and smashing them together. And that's why the AVP movies roll.
Crossover Nature and Cultural Impact
00:08:25
Speaker
I guess it just, I don't know why, like I'm going to get so much hate. I'm not a big fan of Predator and just Predator stuff.
00:08:36
Speaker
Woof. I just don't. I never thought this would be on the bingo card, but like, bad Simona takes. Yeah, worrying. I might have to get a new host.
00:08:49
Speaker
I'm not saying I've got good reason. It's completely irrational. I mean, I'll be fair, because I was probably a little more lukewarm on Predator up until I started rewatching them as an adult. And I was like, oh, wait, this rules.
00:09:08
Speaker
And, you know, the newest one, Prey, great, great film. Really enjoyed that. I've heard really good things about that one. I've not got around to what. At least watch that. Yeah, it's good. But yeah, I mean, you know, we're not really going to talk about the Predator, but hey, if you want us to do a follow up app and we make Simona rewatch all the Predator films alongside that.
00:09:32
Speaker
you know, just saying. Let us know.
Extended Media of Alien Franchise
00:09:35
Speaker
I guess I'll have to do it for the podcast. Do it for the podcast. You always have to do a podcast. Anyway, that was just the films. Now, the franchise also includes various other media, some which we probably kind of
00:09:48
Speaker
ignore because it's a lot. I mean, there's novels, there's comic books. As I mentioned, there was for some reason a theme park ride at Disney World as part of a ride where you just go through all different movie scenes. And for some reason, they were like, you know, we should also include a scene where a xenomorph is trying to attack
00:10:11
Speaker
a bunch of children and that's what happened and that really did a number my psyche as a child but hey you know it kind of is cool now so whatever it's not there anymore rip great movie ride anyway there also were video games which i think me and simona have at least played one of the same ones
00:10:33
Speaker
Yeah, because there was one, oh, I think it was, could have been early nalties. I forget, it was just like, I think it was literally called Alien, like the one thing I remember about it was that these huggers were terrible, they were just so anxiety inducing, because you would just hear them. And I guess you'll be all dark and you'd have your torch on and you would just hear them moving around.
00:10:56
Speaker
And then if they attach themselves onto your face, a countdown would start and you'd have to use what was literally an abortion kit to get rid
Playing Alien Isolation
00:11:07
Speaker
of it. But then if the countdown sort of ran out and you didn't have one of those kits, it was game over. It was just so panic inducing. Sure. That's weird. What was that called?
00:11:21
Speaker
I don't know. I mean, because the only ones I could think of were, there's Colonial Marines, which is notoriously a terrible game. There's the Alien vs. Predator arcade game, which we have a local arcade near me that has it. And I've probably played that through beginning to end like a dozen times now because it rules.
00:11:41
Speaker
And there was also Aliens vs Predator 2005. I had it for, again, I had Windows ME. Oh my God. It was my first computer. And one of the games I have for it was Aliens vs Predator, even though I shouldn't have had it because my mum was like, no, you can't play games that are about your age. I'm like,
00:12:05
Speaker
yeah well you don't know what this age is okay you can't it was one of the it was a cd box and had so many bits and pieces on it you know it's like one of those classics recreated and it was just like it was you couldn't even see read what age was meant for but like i remember playing that that was really good
00:12:23
Speaker
Okay, I found the game is Alien Resurrection came out in the year 2000. So it's just a game, I forgot everything about the plot, but it just pretty much mirrored sort of the events of the film. And it was just like a first person shooter on the Auriga. So yeah, and like the particular bad thing was the drone aliens, but also the facehuggers with yeah, you needed to track down a device to remove the embryo, or you would you would just be game over.
00:12:50
Speaker
Well, it sounds like the only worst version of that is in the 2014 game, Alien Isolation, which boy, howdy, I think made my anxiety disorder worse. Make it two. Yeah, I literally when I played that game through the one time I played it beginning to end through, I played it with my brother when I was visiting the States and we bought a
00:13:15
Speaker
of ice cream, which we shared between us, and we would basically hot potato the controller after one person died to kind of, you know, avoid the kind of anxiety and frustration, you know, rage quitting. That's the only way we can get through that game, and it was still horrible.
00:13:33
Speaker
It's a great game, but I really enjoyed it. I've got through, like, the whole main campaign sort of by myself. And I think just hiding yourself in lockers was particularly fun. And also, I guess, having to fight loads and loads of, like, not drones, the androids, the androids, that's the ones. And of course, not being able to use guns or the xenomorph will come looking for you. But I can tell you my anxiety levels definitely got better once I got hold of a flamethrower.
00:14:03
Speaker
Then it's pretty good, but those beginning bits when you're just like, have a wrench and a gun that you can't use is just some of the worst. Yeah. They got a couple of DLCs as well, which are actually sort of sort of like you play through the story of the first film. I think I've done one of them, but you basically get to play a sort of one of the Nostromo crew. They're more like more than a fully fledged DLC is more like an extra level kind of thing, but they're quite fun.
Zooarchaeology of Xenomorphs
00:14:32
Speaker
I mean, it's just great to, you know, have a lot of the cast together to kind of recreate that. And a lot of them came back to voice it. So I think it's really cool. But yeah, I guess we've been talking a lot and using a lot of very intricate terminology. So it might be useful to kind of go back and explain what we're actually talking about, because we're not just talking about the franchise. We are actually going to talk about the zoo archeology of things.
00:15:00
Speaker
Oh, and I guess we should. Yeah, I think for that it was just anecdotes of my childhood watching the Alien films. Oh, yeah. I think this is actually a zoo archaeology podcast. So I think we need to go back to that a little bit. But hey, and the franchise is called aliens, we might as well start with the titular alien, which is actually not really called it's technically it's a xenomorph. And it was designed by the great HR Giger, which is why it looks like that.
00:15:30
Speaker
So, just the biggest nightmare ever. That's why it looks like that. Thanks, Giger. But, you know, we're obviously more interested in Giger. Sorry. I just need to talk. Sorry. My jurine sensibilities are coming in. It's H.R. Giger, not Giger. No. Sorry. Too late. You've already said all of it. You'll just have to keep this in. I was thinking that, but then I was just like second-guessing myself. Or maybe I'm saying it wrong.
00:15:59
Speaker
Anyway, do I have to recite all that? No, it's funny. Just continue. It's always getting called out. Anyway, Geiger, H.R. Geiger is the one who designed that. Apologies to the German slash Swiss. I forget what his nationality is. And yeah, so we'll be talking specifically about the xenomorph and its iterations in this
00:16:27
Speaker
podcasts, you know, and we'll be talking about more of the in-universe explorations of what a xenomorph is and kind of those fanciful scientific explanations as to why the alien looks like that, which we love to do on those podcasts. Yeah, and I guess like a very sort of brief description of the xenomorph. They're an alien species which require a host to gestate, but once born, causes the death of the host and starts living outside of them, making them more of a parasoid species.
00:16:57
Speaker
Much like bees and ants, xenomorphs have a central queen as part of the social structure. But I guess what's more important for us as zoo archaeologists is what the skeleton of a xenomorph looks like.
Xenomorph Life Cycle
00:17:10
Speaker
Because you see, they kind of have two. Because an alien has both an exoskeleton and an endoskeleton, which evil company Weyland-Yutani Corporation has dubbed a mesoskeleton in canon in the films, that is.
00:17:27
Speaker
Because what's scarier than one skeleton? Well, two, apparently. Two, two. They make them super tough. Megaskeleton, basically. Anyway, we will talk a bit more about that, I think, after the break. And I'll try and figure out how to pronounce Giger properly.
00:17:47
Speaker
And we are back with Archaeo Animals. We are celebrating the spooky season or belatedly celebrating the spooky season by talking about the zoo archaeology of xenomorphs from the Alien franchise. And we're going to get down to it, I guess, in this section.
00:18:06
Speaker
I guess we'll have a little look at all the various iteration of the Xenomorphs that we see throughout the franchise and have a bit of a punt at what their skeletal structures may look like and hope our brains don't explode.
00:18:24
Speaker
a lot to deal with just to begin with because we might follow them through like their life cycle so to begin with we have what i'm sure is everyone's favorite the face hugger not at all anxiety inducing no no so it well i guess a horrifying baby xenomorph but also like not
00:18:42
Speaker
really, because the face hugger, it hatches from the other morph, so the egg. So the spherosatoid lava, refer to as face hugger, attach themselves to the face of its host, but then lay an embryo inside of them and then kind of just die. So they're more of a, yeah, I guess that they're not a baby xenomorph in itself. How's that work?
00:19:05
Speaker
Yeah, they're not really, they're in retrospect, it kind of doesn't make sense. I don't know. Hmm. Okay. You can hear my brain starting to already sizzle and pop, but because you would think they're the baby xenomorphs, they're the ones that actually hatch out of the egg that is laid. But then the escalator structure is completely different to that other fully formed xenomorph, or is that
00:19:32
Speaker
their impact of being hosted by a mammal. I think, yeah, well, we'll get into that as we move into some of the other iterations. But yeah, I guess, I don't know. Yeah, I don't know. Because they attach themselves to your face, and like, and the tail goes around the neck, so you properly can't pry them away. Yeah. And then after a couple hours, a baby xenophobe just first start your chest.
00:20:03
Speaker
Yeah, and they are called, very creatively, chest bursters. And then the chest bursters are the ones that actually mature into the adult xenomorph. So yeah, I guess in some ways the face hugger is a completely different thing to the xenomorph, but it does give birth to the xenomorph. I guess it's more like a vehicular thing that transmits the embryo.
00:20:32
Speaker
Oh gosh, um, other morph to host. Like if you think about like a tree seed, like a conqueror is inside like the spiky shell, you know like a conqueror is like inside the, so like the outside layer of the conqueror is like the green spiky thing, that's still part of the tree, that's still part of the
00:21:00
Speaker
moving shell I think that's the best way to kind of think about it
00:21:06
Speaker
um i don't know i think that may bring her a bit more but yeah only then do you get the baby xenomorphs coming out to which looked for something so terrifying looked so super cute in the first alien film because it was this tiny baby xenomorph and it looked like it was on wheels just going as it was running away and it was whip its way through that room and hit it after it pops out of john hurt oh spoilers i guess but whatever um goes
00:21:35
Speaker
right down that hallway. It's kind of incredible. And like I said, they're very quick in very different ways. They take literally hours and they're the terrifying killing machines that haunt the protagonist of the aliens films.
00:21:53
Speaker
we might as well move into the xenomorph themselves. Or specifically, we'll talk about the xenomorph as seen from a human host, which is seen in Alien and Aliens. And I think it's kind of the prototypical idea of a xenomorph. If you talk about it, that's what people think about. I guess also alien resurrection.
00:22:17
Speaker
Yeah, well, I just try not to think about that film at all. I'm just trying my best to manifest its way out of my brain, maybe. As we discussed before, the Xenomorph needs a host for gestation. Of course, in the alien films, given that it's mainly human-based crews, most of the victim hosts do tend to be humanoid in nature.
The Runner Xenomorph
00:22:43
Speaker
So in the lore of the franchise, the Xedomorph have the ability to take on certain characteristics of the hosts during gestation.
00:22:54
Speaker
Yeah, so obviously if most of the, you know, victims are humanoid in these films, you usually end up with a xenomorph that ends up kind of humanoid looking in that they're upright, they're bipedal creatures, even, and you know, this is going more into stylistic differences that really can't really be explained by in universe
00:23:17
Speaker
science but in the original film you can even see the glimpse of like a humanoid skull within the larger xenomorph cranium which i always thought was a really cool detail of course like you know that design didn't stick around so we can't really say it's canon but i like the idea of like you know having that kind of thing from a host even though it doesn't make sense
00:23:39
Speaker
But I guess in a way because maybe like the first one allowed for a bit more level of detail because it was they were using costumes a lot over CGI and of course CGI was still in its early days when the other films came out so maybe that. Talking about CGI so you know like we know that the xenomorph can take on the characteristics of any host species so we've seen a humanoid xenomorph and what else could it look like?
00:24:07
Speaker
That's where ADN3 comes in and answers it for us, giving us a dog xenomorph, also known as the Runner. As you expect, the host was a prison dog, and it unfortunately gives birth to the Runner, which is more quadruped in nature, runs on all fours. The anatomy sort of is
00:24:29
Speaker
Well, it's not necessarily quite similar to a dog, but you do see some similarities, like in hind-leg structure and such, and the fact that, yeah, it runs on all fours.
00:24:39
Speaker
I mean, it's kind of like they just took the skeleton of a dog and put a big, weird alien skull on it, that big brown thing. But more importantly, what I'd like to talk about in this section is that we were deprived of what a real dog xenomorph would look like. So if you on YouTube the
00:25:01
Speaker
a special effects team from Alien, the Alien films, they've uploaded some behind the scenes stuff. You can also find this on like the DVDs and stuff. But there are original tests for the Xenomorph dog costume. And it's the greatest thing in the world. And I'm inviting you all, including you, Simone, if you haven't seen it already, I assume you might have. To just look up
00:25:24
Speaker
on Google, the dog xenomorph costume, because they literally just put a costume on a dog for filming. And it's just the cutest thing in the world. Sorry, you just reacting to this now. I just I just looked at the photo.
00:25:42
Speaker
It's amazing, right? If anyone else wants to see what it looks like, I mean, you're more than welcome to send us an actual Xenomorph costume for dogs, and I'll make sure I get my dog to wear it. It's just, it's the funniest thing. I love that notion that someone was like, what if we just put it on a dog? And then they made the whole costume, like, and everything, and they put it on a dog. And you just can't do that, folks. It's too cute.
00:26:12
Speaker
supposed to be scared of that? No, I will be running towards it with my arms open. They'd also be like the usual like, well, not usual dog actor thing, but a lot of dog actors that just can't stop wagging their tail and they have to CGI it out. They're so happy to be there. Yeah, just the happiest, the happiest, you know, it's just it's so funny. So yes, if you have not seen this, please take a moment
00:26:37
Speaker
out of your life and just look it up and just give yourself a little joy in that sense. I feel like Alien 5, the best boy. I mean, I feel like with Jonesy in the first film, we could have also just gotten a xenomorph cat. Oh no, that'll be too terrifying. Yeah, that actually might be the most evil thing possible. I'm sorry Bastet, I didn't mean to disparage you.
00:27:08
Speaker
No, she's not on good terms with Jonesy. Went on adventures without her.
Xenomorph-Human Hybrid
00:27:15
Speaker
Sorry to bring it up that time. Anyway, we should probably move on to the other hybrid-y type thing. The xenomorph-human-alien hybrid.
00:27:30
Speaker
Yeah, that's all we have to say about it. No, it's from the extremely bad movie Alien Resurrection. And we just need to get, we just need to talk about the plot of Alien Resurrection first to really emphasize the ridiculousness that we're about to kind of try and justify through science. So it's all about clones of Sigourney Weaver's character, Ellen Ripley, from the other films.
00:27:55
Speaker
And yes, I said clones. And, you know, there's a lot of DNA nonsense occurring. So of course, you know, that obviously means we would get some weird hybridization between Ripley and the xenomorph, specifically the xenomorph queen, which we will talk about later in this episode.
00:28:13
Speaker
And I think we specifically want to talk about the horror show known as The Newborn, which is born from the xenomorph queen, which has been contaminated by DNA from Ellen Ripley, so she doesn't actually give birth to an egg.
00:28:29
Speaker
and have a face hugger situation, instead she gives birth like a human would to the newborn. And boy does it look like a hybrid. Because unlike other xenomorphs, the newborn has a much more humanoid looking body, particularly the skull which is
00:28:48
Speaker
distinctly more human looking, except it has the kind of weird, you know, more elongation and very scary canine teeth to really emphasize the fact that this is a scary guy. Do be fair, like it was kind of haunting. Or like when I first watched it, it might be like that sort of humanoid, but not quite. There was a bit, it's a bit unsettling. He just looks like he's made out of candle wax.
00:29:17
Speaker
It's weird. It's goopy. Don't get it. Take it for what it is. The whole ordeal is confusing.
00:29:26
Speaker
Yeah, so it's like, I don't even know where to start from talking about the anatomy, the skeletal anatomy of that. Yeah, because like one thing that is confusing sort of biologically, and I know we're going to cover the queen in a bit, because in this film, you have a queen, and then you have all the various like xenomorph drones, to whom like she gives birth,
00:29:48
Speaker
you know, like in a viparous fashion, she lays the eggs, pace hungers go out, a load of people like pre, you know, left there for the occasion get infected, give birth to the xenomorphs. But then she gives birth to the newborn like a placental mammal would.
00:30:09
Speaker
So is she both like mammalian and oviparous at the same time? Oh, I can answer that actually. As you see, it's because the xenomorph queen was contaminated by DNA from Ellen Ripley, thus giving her some slightly humanoid characteristics, similar to how Ellen Ripley's clone, which I think is number eight in the film, she also has been contaminated by DNA from the xenomorph queen and she has like acid,
00:30:38
Speaker
spit and like sharp nails, you know, obviously, this is scientifically sound, so I don't know why you didn't pick it up. No, no, but I get that. They just you seem to be having two different reproductive systems at the same time, because of course, all the drones were like, she gave birth to them in an aviparous fashion. But then the newborn, it was a very placental kind of situation there.
00:31:03
Speaker
Oh, I can answer that. Yeah, I can answer that question. It's a very bad movie. It has a very bad script. That's why that's happened. I'm gonna start writing that as like a zoological report thing if I just don't get it. This is a very bad movie with a very bad script.
00:31:21
Speaker
This is a very bad context. But yeah, there you go. If anyone has any answers for us, please let us know.
Alien Queen's Biology
00:31:34
Speaker
Yeah, and you know we didn't really have time to talk about this because we try not to talk too much about Predator since it's a whole different thing. But we do want to do a special shout out to the Predalien, which is the wild looking Predator alien kind of hybrid from the AVP films, you know, it's the same as the other ones in terms of
00:31:53
Speaker
predator hosts, alien comes out, not much else to say except it's super cool. And yeah, I mean, there's also other alien iterations that we're not really going to talk about in this episode, because they're from the prequels and they're bad. The like, I don't remember what they're called. They're not called the Animorphs. They're like the predecessor aliens. Okay, I just looked.
00:32:17
Speaker
looked up a photo because I don't think I'd actually ever seen the predalien. Oh my goodness. You are missing out on art. Very classy. We love to see it. Which AVP is that from? I cannot tell you off the top of my head because they're the same film. It's from the second one. Thank you.
00:32:37
Speaker
It's also in the 2005 Alien Source Predator game as well. It's weird. They were kind of like orange in that game as well. It was quite hot. Thank you, Loremaster. You know what? I do what I can. Do what I can.
00:32:55
Speaker
But I guess we should end this segment by talking about one of the coolest ones and arguably one of the ones that is, again, kind of difficult to explain scientifically. That's kind of the theme here. We can't really explain any of this. They got two skeletons kind of lose us at that point, but still fun to talk about. And we've talked about her a little bit and it's the alien queen. So.
00:33:21
Speaker
As we previously mentioned, the xenomorphs follow a social structure akin to, you know, bees. So you have your queen as the center to the reproductive cycle of the species and the kind of societal element of the species. And the queen does actually look similar to her worker drones, but she big fellas, she real big.
00:33:43
Speaker
I guess in a way possible to signify her position above the rest of the drones on an elongated skull with a very large shield-like carapace which she can use to protect her head. It's real big.
00:33:59
Speaker
Yeah. And actually real quick, before we finish the segment, I do want to ask you, what do you think those things are made of? Because I looked it up and there's conflicting reports even in the canon where it's either the exoskeleton is either like a carapace kind of chin to chin like material or it's like silicone.
00:34:22
Speaker
Silicon. Yeah that was something that came up in I think it was one of the novelizations maybe or no it's a line I think in the first film like offhand they say it's like silicon based. Yeah so it's meant to be like you know hardware card and based it's meant to be silicon based and
00:34:39
Speaker
the resistant to the super acid blood but no there's there's no kind of consensus really. I think some of the carapace, chitin kind of talk is like it's almost like people who don't it's almost from characters points of view who don't really know and that's what they are assuming it looks like or that's how they would describe it but I don't necessarily think that we can take that as a
00:35:07
Speaker
active description, that's just what people think it looks like. Does that make sense?
Archaeology Themes in Alien
00:35:13
Speaker
And I guess really, it could be made from anything. I mean, the Keating, so the keratin based material, it's the closest thing we can think of in parallels on Earth. But even like from watching the prequels, I don't think we actually know where the xenomorph has originally come from. So it could be like the sort of structure that could be based on anything. That makes sense.
00:35:37
Speaker
No, because none of this makes sense, to be honest, and I guess that's how we end this segment by saying we don't know. It got two skeletons, folks. What do you want us to do about that? Two skeletons. Because it's fiction. Don't know what that means. We're gonna go to the next segment after this break.
00:35:59
Speaker
And we are back with archaeo-animals. We are talking about the zoo archaeology of the xenomorph in the alien franchise, although to be fair, we're actually going to take a little bit of an aversion at this last section and talk a bit more about the archaeology, broadly speaking, in the alien franchise, because there's actually like a fair amount of archaeology that takes up a lot of the broader lore.
00:36:25
Speaker
You know, like a lot of Zeno archaeology, because we're talking about lots of Zenos here, baby. I don't know.
00:36:34
Speaker
I don't know, folks. I mean, technically, most of the actual archaeology is found in the prequel series. But we do see the beginnings of it sort of in the first Alien film, where the crew of the Nostromo originally sort of first gets in contact with the Xenomorph after exploring ancient remains of an alien ship on a nearby moon, as you do.
00:36:56
Speaker
And it said that it's in these ruins that one of the crew members of Kane, played by the late and brilliant John Hurt, was implanted with the Xenomorph embryo and then the whole, you know, chest burst thing happened and the baby Xenomorph wheeled away and the survival horror that we know and love truly begins. Yeah, but, you know, was it probably more interesting?
00:37:18
Speaker
apart from all those, those many, many eggs that John Hurt comes across is the remains of an alien life form that's known as the pilot or the space jockey. And it's this really, really big body that's found in what was most likely the cockpit of the ship who died after a chest burster had, you know, burst out of its chest.
00:37:44
Speaker
Which actually makes me think, because I remember I was thinking about this when I was writing the notes for this episode, and I was like, that kind of counts as archaeology, right? Is that weird? No, that is definitely archaeology.
00:38:00
Speaker
And I don't know what it is that makes me feel like it's not archaeology, I guess because I don't know if they really, I can't remember in the first one if they really kind of play up how old it might be, like it's supposed to be like a fossilized kind of body that space jockey is, right?
00:38:19
Speaker
It definitely looks like it. I think they were definitely in some of the filming notes really trying to amp up how ancient it was. It was fossilized practically. They made it to look to be fossilized. Obviously, fossilization in space, that's going to be taking a long time. You're also uncovering a
00:38:44
Speaker
What's it called like you're uncovering a ship, you know, like a way of life or like an organization of space within a in a within a kind of confined space like there's design choices in how the rooms are laid out the tunnels that you know where.
00:39:00
Speaker
Everything's designed. It is archaeology. It's just not archaeology of humans. It's archaeology of another sentient species. So definitely archaeology. Xenoarchaeology, I know. And they didn't even take a single photo, not a single section. Drawing in, you know, a plan could have made a nice grid and planned everything one to 20. But no, they just had to go and get facehuggers all over their faces.
00:39:26
Speaker
They actually, you know, that's annoys me. You know, in the face hugger eggs, they have the like, they have a flat level plane. And it's like, got these like lines that go across, like, you can easily just like, plant your grid there, count your eggs and, you know, like, yeah, I think if I was going there, I would do a better job.
00:39:46
Speaker
I guess the thing about it that makes me like not see it in a archaeology headspace, despite the fact that this is a fictional thing and it's, you know, science fiction is, I guess, yeah, aside for that, I guess is because they are they are originally going towards it with the intent of salvage and oh, there's like, you know, a down ship.
Critique of Archaeological Tropes
00:40:07
Speaker
Should we check it out? And, you know, I mean, that's obviously part of the plot that they aren't expecting to uncover an ancient ship.
00:40:16
Speaker
But I guess that kind of also speaks to what might be the problem with archaeology being a huge part of the lore, specifically in the prequel films.
00:40:27
Speaker
Because, yeah, so the prequel films end up kind of returning to this alien spaceship and specifically the space jockey by further exploring the franchise's kind of deep lore and tying it even more directly to archaeology, particularly in Prometheus, where
00:40:46
Speaker
two of the main characters are actually archaeologists and it's it's funny because i didn't even pick this up until i was like rereading the the plot summary for this episode i completely forgot it begins on the isle of sky which is part of the inner hebertis of scotland so not that far from where i excavate very strange i know but like i mean like we like representation but
00:41:15
Speaker
not this kind of representation. It's just like, I'm gonna struggle a little bit here, because to be honest, I kind of merge Prometheus and Covenant together, and I'm not entirely sure where one ends and one begins. It's just one blob.
00:41:29
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, I didn't see Covenant. I read the summary for this episode. It doesn't seem like I missed much besides potentially just watching Danny McBride be Danny McBride. And yeah, so first red flag, I guess, is that the
00:41:46
Speaker
Archaeologists and Prometheus discover that several ancient cultures have left behind parts of a star map that would potentially lead them to the site of humankind's ancient alien ancestors. And there's your red flag, the foghorn's going off at the phrase ancient alien ancestors.
00:42:08
Speaker
Because yeah, this film utilizes some problematic tropes with regards to city archaeological beliefs that ultimately have really horrible consequences for others in the real world. And it's bad. I think there was some new
00:42:31
Speaker
Prometheus where one of the things they wanted to do was almost like have the plot twist being that like there is human DNA in the original xenomorph and it's actually like all come full circle and it's kind of like me sewing hahaha me reaping oh no but like I think they really this is the problem is like that was that's an interesting thing to talk about but like
00:42:59
Speaker
it's almost like they bent over backwards and they actually tore up a lot of their own canon in order to kind of make that happen and that's why they've come up with this whole ancient aliens thing because
00:43:11
Speaker
All they wanted to do was demonstrate that humanity is the vicious one. You know, humanity is the evil inside this weapon. I think that kind of takes away from the cosmic horror of Alien. That's my biggest problem with Prometheus.
00:43:29
Speaker
But Prometheus is actually not the first film in the series to actually engage with this. Unfortunately, it was actually Aliens vs. Predator, which I think brought up the ancient aliens kind of thing. Oh yeah, it does. I kind of turned my brain off when I just watched them fight each other.
00:43:49
Speaker
Yeah, so they have the pyramids and everything. Are you sure it's a pyramid in Antarctica? Which is like, if you're thinking about pseudorheology, that's the big one. I think that's the one I sort of bit of, and I didn't finish it. I think that's the one. I remember something Antarctica pyramids, it rings a bell.
00:44:09
Speaker
Yeah, and base 10 is the counting system. I mean, this is actually relevant to, again, me talking about this 2000 game, the aliens versus the predator game. You get to play as the alien, and you spawn inside one of these temples, and then you have to take out humans and predators and stuff. And I just remember thinking,
00:44:36
Speaker
The whole walls were adorned with alien hieroglyphs. It was like hieroglyphs, ancient Egyptian stuff, but it had the iconography of the alien as well and the xenomorph.
00:44:49
Speaker
I know what you're trying to convey here. You're trying to convey that this is not the first time humans have interacted. There's more to this. But I feel like it takes away from, ultimately, what aliens about is this unchallengeable horror, this cosmic horror, this horror beyond humanity that can't be comprehended. But then we get little snippets
00:45:16
Speaker
of that horror to the engineers. That's where we get the space jockey and the spaceship, and that's where we're only getting bits and pieces of it. And we'll never ever be able to understand it all. And I think believing it as something that we can't understand would have been better.
Ancient Aliens in Sci-Fi
00:45:33
Speaker
But instead, they made Prometheus. Now we have to talk about this stupid archaeology. I mean, yeah, sorry.
00:45:44
Speaker
Yes, I don't remember much about it. And I think it's just in general as a theme, like the whole like precursor race thing, you just just just know. Yeah, and it's funny, because like Predator kind of I mean, it's got some problematic stuff, but it kind of
00:46:01
Speaker
gets around that by just having it be like the predators have always visited earth and fought humans and that's how you get like the most recent predator which takes place in the 1700s and you know they they come back and they you know fight humans in different ages because they're all about you know the sport um and you know but they're not like they're not like giving humans like technology that's that's what annoyed me about like Prometheus it was almost like
00:46:31
Speaker
you know, we are aliens, you know, we are the engineers regenerated, you know, and I think I'm okay with the predator one just because it's like, oh, they interacted rather than, you know, your standard ancient aliens fair where it's like, oh, we couldn't have achieved it without the external, you know, like interaction. I think that's the big problem with it.
00:46:56
Speaker
Yeah, it also makes me think about how often when science fiction tries to touch upon archaeology, how unfortunately, how often that becomes a trope they fall on. And I guess in some ways I can kind of understand it, you know, if you want to do an archaeological take on science fiction, you're kind of thinking, all right, if it's more, it's this human centric type of
00:47:22
Speaker
field so obviously if we want to tie aliens to it this is how they do it but obviously it's it's racist and xenophobic and bad and we shouldn't be you know tolerating it because it has like I said it has extremely real world consequences even though that you know some people might say that's silly that uh who's gonna watch Alien and then think something racist or whatever but
00:47:46
Speaker
It normalizes it. Yeah, it's more abstract than that, isn't it? It's like building up this expectation that there are certain bits of history that are just up for grabs and that can be just toyed with. I'd love it if the Alien franchise had focused on Stonehenge or Neolithic mounds in Ireland, that was what the
00:48:12
Speaker
aliens kind of got involved with to help people build. Because like, when you look at pseudo archaeology and ancient alien stuff, it's always stuff that's like in the global south, it's always like, Oh, no, these people, these groups of people couldn't have been, you know, technologically advanced to do this. And that's, that's, that's the, that's the problem, you know, and I think, but I also want to say that, like, it's lazy.
00:48:37
Speaker
you know, there are so many things that you could do with archaeology in terms of a methodology, because obviously we've not made contact yet, so we can't really talk about what the analogous alien anthropology would be, but I think there are things that you can apply to human anthropology that would work with an alien species, and you could actually do it in a nice way where you're actually trying to
00:49:07
Speaker
understand things. And coming back to your point where you were talking about like when the crew of the Nostromo first went on the first ship in Alien, that they were kind of like
00:49:20
Speaker
looking for survivors, they're looking for salvage, they weren't actually like trying to examine anything. I think that kind of ties into the wider themes of like the anti-capitalism kind of narrative of Alien which I know that like you know very on brand for me but to bring that up but like you know this whole idea that the the company just wants the bioweapon at any cost and you know they're willing to sacrifice the crew for that. I think
00:49:46
Speaker
those are the broader themes that like we look at as an example of like how contact will probably actually happen rather than like oh let's study these ancient like um all things in Scotland doesn't leave us on a map like we're never going to get a map we're never going to get a map
00:50:11
Speaker
It's just overused in a way because you can have some nice sci-fi without recursive races and things and you could just like that there are so many like universes and things out there and not all of it has to be linked.
00:50:28
Speaker
Totally, totally. It's funny because that stuff also kind of speaks to the simultaneous like horrific ego and yet kind of
00:50:40
Speaker
weird optimism of humans in the idea that, you know, oh, we would if we made contact, we would start thinking immediately tackling these huge philosophical questions of like who we are, and then the ego of well, they'll give us the answers and we just need to find it. It's very
00:50:59
Speaker
interesting in a kind of abstract way. But again, it's a lazy trope that people should stop relying on, and I get why it's used, but come on, guys, it's mad. I mean, that maybe was one of the redeeming features of Prometheus, was that they were looking to find the engineers to actually find out the secrets of the universe, and the engineers just attacks them. That's just not true. Yes, thank you.
00:51:29
Speaker
you know like if we ever interacted with the past you know i would expect the past to fight back you know to slap us in the face and go no i will not be understood i'm not here to be understood leave me alone and i think it's the same for like when we ask these basic questions you know i think i i think the thing is that like
00:51:51
Speaker
The alien lore is very messy and it leads to a lot of interpretation, which gives a lot of fodder for archaeologists because that's all we do, you know, is we interpret things.
00:52:03
Speaker
Yeah and yeah I mean it's I mean ultimately I think a lot of it is a misunderstanding of what archaeology is when it's kind of used in these ways and I mean obviously that's me not trying to obscure the fact that archaeology is often used in harmful ways to begin with but it's that kind of misunderstanding of archaeology is you know finding the truth when it's interpreting the past it's you know that's all we can do
00:52:29
Speaker
And it leads to stuff like that. And I don't want to end this episode beating down, because it is, unfortunately, a thing we should talk about. But I think there's still some other interesting archaeological themes that can be found throughout the Alien films that aren't necessarily as problematic. There's these themes of identity, of lineage, even ignoring the precursor race thing.
00:52:55
Speaker
this idea of who we are in comparison to these aliens that can take on your form more or less, like, and kind of adapt to parts of you, you know, weaponizing things for power, which is a very archaeological theme, if you're looking at it as a field of itself. But yeah, it would be nice for science fiction to realize, you know, you don't have to do the ancient aliens
Call for Accurate Archaeology in Sci-Fi
00:53:18
Speaker
route. If you want to do archaeology, just saying. Hot taste.
00:53:24
Speaker
No, I totally agree. But I also think as much as I like to lampoon things, I think it's important that archaeology does get representation so people do get intrigued. And it's just up for people like us to kind of
00:53:42
Speaker
be like, hey, I know that sun's killed, but here's the real deal. You know, that's that's
Engagement and Contact Information
00:53:48
Speaker
our job. Yeah. So that's why we're saying to the Disney Company, which now owns the property, to hire us to be in the next alien installment as the three archaeologists that no one listens to and we get killed off within the first 35 minutes.
00:54:05
Speaker
Okay. Just saying, if anyone wants to let us know, and hey, if you're an agent who wants us to be part of this, you know, franchise, let us know. But if you just want to, you know, say hi, tell us about what you like about the episode. Tell us if you want us to do a Predator one. You can find us on Twitter at archaeoanimals. We are on the Archaeology Podcast Network website. We are
00:54:33
Speaker
You know, you know where you find us, you're listening to us right now, but hey, while you're looking at us on iTunes or Stitcher or whatever, you know, follow us or subscribe to our podcast, give us a like or a rating and a review, all the other fun stuff. What am I missing? No, that's good. And any hate mail goes to me, Tristan, at archaeologypodcastnetwork.com. Oh, you took the words out of my mouth. Oh, and if you want to give us fan art, draw us as xenomorphs.
00:55:03
Speaker
Very happy for that as well. I would love to be completely scarred by some horrifying fan art of me with a big head. Well, bigger than I normally have. So hey, we might put you on your Twitter and all that stuff. We've had some fun fan art in the past. And as always, it's been me, Alex Fitzpatrick. And Tristan was here too.
00:55:35
Speaker
Thank you for listening to RQ animals. Please subscribe and rate the podcast wherever you get your podcasts from. You can find us on Twitter at RQ animals. Also, the views expressed on the podcast are those of ourselves, the hosts and guests, and do not necessarily represent those of our institution, employers, and the RQ podcast network. Thanks for listening.
00:55:59
Speaker
This episode was produced by Chris Webster from his RV traveling the United States, Tristan Boyle in Scotland, Dig Tech LLC, Culturo Media, and the Archaeology Podcast Network, and was edited by Laura Johnson. This has been a presentation of the Archaeology Podcast Network. Visit us on the web for show notes and other podcasts at www.archpodnet.com. Contact us at chris at archaeologypodcastnetwork.com.