Derelict cargo hold or Silo

@Dj; I appreciate your point of view! Really, i do! But when it comes to investigating/analysing a film and the elements within that film, all we have to go off is the film itself and what the directors and screenwriters have to say about it. Each one of us fans can make up stuff that fits with our perspective of how we think the story has played out.

We each think that our own perspective/idea's are the correct one/s, but if you want to get close to the truth of what REALLY happened, you have to watch the film, watch the documentaries, read the books, and try to form a rational explination from the evidence provided.

Never have i heard or seen anything from film, documentary or text that gives any hint to the egg silo being anything other than a part of the derelict.

Well your correct...

But if we go only by the movies.....  then the movie does not show us for sure that the Derelict Crashed, it looks crashed but there appear to be no real marks in the ground leading to it skidding along the surface but i guess over 2200 years or so any marks could be brushed away by the harsh winds etc...

But then the Egg chamber looks to big for the Derelict, and while the ship looks perched on where it landed, we can not say that it attempted to land at that point. maybe climate over years and seismic activity could have been why the ship may look like its not quite perched perfectly on a landing point.

Not saying thats the case, just the movie does not say or try to tell us the ship crashed.

The one thing of interest is, if we go any route by that did they find the Eggs on LV 426 under where the Derelict was, or if they was storing Eggs or something that evolved into Eggs under there.

If all along the Eggs was carried on the Derelict on its way from some place to some other place, but the ship had to make a detour to LV 426 because of infection. Regardless which of the above, we have to remember Prometheus LV 223 shows us the Xeno Eggs and Cycle.

And it also shows us that creature in the Fresco that could be the same as the one that is holding the Eggs, and this means this creature may be the ancestor to the Xeno or indeed something that came from the Xeno.

So the LV 426 Cargo which ever way we look at is would not tell us where the Xeno or its Ancestor came from. This is why i don’t think we need to show the Derelict and LV 426 to tell us where the Xeno came from.

Yep this is why its so lucky that part was left so vague in the film if they had said this is the hold of the ship everyone would of gone you what?! Even Ridley says “This would be argued as the hold of the ship,” argued not definitely so yes it was left vaguely as a cargo hold in production but only because of lack of funds and time etc. Not because of what some of them wanted to have our envisioned. And so it is ok to keep it as a silo or pyramid or even cavern. And makes it all fit and look much better. It's ment to be ambiguous and i keep it that way it just gets away with it for me thank god or I would be looking at alien with some of the sadness I see Prometheus with.

And there it's a tiny hint at a crash with the derelict looking like it's at a strange angle kind of topped over a bit but yes not a big crash or anything like that. Want there something at the entrance too like it was a bit broken? Can't remember right now.

I can remember a thread, not so long ago, that was about this very subject. Because the egg silo is so out of proportion to the rest of the derelict, i suggested that the derelict was carrying some sort of container. Then, BigDave said that he had previously suggested that he had come to the same conclussion (i hadn't seen that post.)

However, now i have abandoned that idea, for one simple reason: it is nothing other than an idea, an assumption, speculation etc. 

There as never been anything in film, documentaries or books that mentions anything about the egg silo being a container, or for that matter an underground cave or temple that is independant of the derelict.

I don't know, if Ridley says it was carrying cargo then the chamber was part of the ship.

@dave, what's interesting to consider is that perhaps the ampules that evolved were ones that weren't originally contained in cylinders, hence the different storage in the Juggernaut in Prometheus. But consider this - when they started leaking they weren't leaking from the seams but literally melted from the very tops, and look at the little rivers of goo between the melting ampules, it mirrors the tentacles that connect all the eggs. Ergo, the goo is literally melting through what is presumably metal. This could explain how the xenos get their metalloid attributes. After realising how tempramental these things are they increased their containment measures; stacked into pillars rather than spaced apart, and refrigerated as well. 

Cargo 'evolving' also solves the delemma of how the engineers were able to handle their weapons in the first place. If the cargo were originally eggs then how would they have accomplished storing them without being impregnated? You could argue their suits provided some kind of masking ability but then again Kane wore a suit so I don't think this explanation flies too well. You could posit that strange creature in the mural did their bidding but those murals are so vague you could posit anything. 

lol and we see no evidence of urns in Alien because they're no longer urns! They changed.

@everyone

Ok we all have to stick to some very basic rules here. For one thing it is ok to raise a new theory. Sure urns could turn into eggs I mean why not. Alien\'s are nano based non-organic machines.

I find the urns to eggs theory compelling because look you have your urnns they turn into eggs as you are reaching your target and then all those face huggers are released onto the surface of the target world you are attacking. Brilliant I say! well done!. So I think it is ok throw ideas out there.

About the Aliens secreting a resin like environment. My explination will most likely get thrown out but that is why we all come here to test what can be tested and choose what we may come to find as most plausable. So I think when Cameron was making Aliens he accidently got this right. Think about it. A nano based non-organic weapon like the Alien has to be able to make something it can hide in and protect a queen. It has to be able to make that structure quick and we all know they secreat this structure rapidly. So it only makes sense that YEP GO FIGURE the Engineers design a Nano based weapon that secreats configurations not too dissimilar from how the Alien itself looks and maybe can even hide within the Enigeer space ship as well because of all the other similar shaped insides of the craft. 

This is just another theory. Also, I think it was a complete mistake on the part of the producers for all the nonsense with Engineers not being able to completely control these Alien creations. You see how fast the Engineer dealt with us! I do not buy that the Engineers were running for one second from a bunch of Aliens that they made and know how every part of that MACHINE works at the nano level. Lets not forget they built this machine atom by atom. Silly film makers! All those chest busted Engineers silly stuff. It would be like every engineer at every car factory in the world saying YEP we build cars by the billions but have no way to repair them! We have no idea how they work or are even put together. You start to think about this stuff as a movie gower and its frustrating. Ok there was an epic battle by the Larger face hugger and the Engineer I hated that sceen as well totally outside of the plot. Makes no sense. 

I am surprised that they are this poor at making movies these days. We all deserve much better than this of course. Lets keep this great debate going. 

“Lets not forget they built this machine atom by atom. Silly film makers! All those chest busted Engineers silly stuff.”

Not really sure it would sound so silly, firstly we have not yet been shown where the Xeno comes from, so we do not know if these Engineers had created the Xeno, it could be the Engineers Tech etc was stolen from the Xenos. At the very least we could even see that these Engineers may had came across a Xeno or its Ancestor and that they then saw this new Organism and as these Engineers like to experiment and evolve all manner of life they could then had attempted to try and Engineer and Experiment on these Organism in order to obtain Genetic Material etc from them. I.e they go around creating things but also they like to borrow and re-engineer other things they find that could be of use.

This could also explain why indeed the Derelict and Egg Chamber Walls are similar and why the Xeno Hive in Aliens also had the same Bio-Mech Look.

How come the Xeno can make these structures, well look at how Bees can make Bee Hives, did the Engineers create the Xeno and then they also can make these structures, or did they know the Xeno could make them and used the Xeno to make them for the Engineer.

Or is the process of how the Xenos make their Hives something else the Engineers had borrowed from, or even is there some being we have yet to see or organism that created both the Xeno and the Engineers Tech. We just don’t know and its one of the many possibilities out there.

@meshuggah and Necronom 4

Some interesting points and its as i said what Ridley says as comments he can change his mind, and we can accept what ever he finally puts on film, so yes while back then in Alien the Derelict had crash landed with a Cargo of Eggs... Ridley has hinted since that it never crashed in the traditional sense and that the Cargo Evolved. This could hint to a change of ideas to fit in with Prometheus so that the Urns can fit into the equation.

Yes i noticed that some kind of reaction was happening at the top of one of the Urns when David was looking at it where he said “Organic” so maybe we can not rule out that Urns could turn into Eggs or that the Urns could under certain conditions disintegrate.

A Problem with the Cargo Evolving to Eggs that then got to the Space Jockey would be that surely this means when the Cargo was on the Derelict it was not Eggs, and surely when the Derelict left the Engineers could have checked its payload first before setting off. So from the time of the departure of the Derelict to when it landed on LV 426 the Cargo must have gone through changes during that time.

Unless the Cargo had Evolved and the Engineers knew about this as it was the plan, but then the Space Jockey would know how deadly this cargo is.   The only other way is maybe something escaped from the Urns that got to the Engineer/Space Jockey before the Urns had changed to Eggs, and the Urns became Eggs latter maybe due to something the Chest Buster did to them.

But that sounds more of a complex route, the basic ones is simply the Cargo was all ready Eggs, or that during the transportation they had evolved into Eggs. Or maybe that the Cargo was not Eggs or Urns but another way of storage that was not as secure as the Urns as thus after the LV 426 incident the Urns was intended as a Safety Upgrade for the Bio Weapon.

@BigDave

You have bloody well schooled me again. You have raised an important point. When David touches the urn he says “organic” so I am also in agreement that the urns could definitely turn into many different types of creatures and not just the eggs that have face huggers in them.

I know this seems like a stretch for many fans in here because when I first read it I was like WoW, they are smoking Alien poop! Urns turning into eggs!!!! Pish Posh! LOL but then I started thinking about it and why not.

I think by now everyone knows I am like nano crazy about just everything I can read about in science.

I know this for sure. Scientists are using fast lasers that turn on and off several hundred billion times a second and they are slowing down chemical reactions taking place at the electron level.

Also scientifically speaking they could also raise the energy level with the right amount of photons in the right place and cause the chemical reaction to happen faster as if they were applying a catalyst.

Soooooo having stated all that it is plausible to at least hypothesize that when an “urn” is changing that there are complex nano structures converting energy into organic compounds very quickly. Let us not forget that these Engineers are very smart. They visited Earth some 40,000 years prior to creating us and then they revist us to evolve us. So the Engineer technology is perhaps several hundred thousand years more advanced than anything we can extrapolate.

So let us not assume for one second that very complex nano machine based urns canmot rapidly turn into organic molecular compounds on the fly and also that the Engineers could create the Alien. I think it is safe to say that the Engineers made the Alien and that they have a strong enough mastery of science to do it at least.

I know that you want to leave the doors open for the time being on this but everything about the Alien is somewhat similar to the aesthetics within the engineer’s ships.

It is very compelling that any civilization capable of inter stellar travel over 50,000 years and back would have a lot of mastery over biology or what we think of as biology and computer science. We have just begun to make primitive nano applications that can mutate and form other materials could you imagine what we could do in just 10,000 years from now and these Engineers have been doing this for several hundred thousand years.

There you have it BigDave! 

Yeah this is the thing it hasn't been cleared up at all, I mean they gave a few more hints, but nothing concrete, Ridley and Lindy were content to let the fans theorise and go around in circles. I like the idea of the urns becoming unstable and evolving into organic 'eggs' simply because it's, well, simple and isn't complex at all. Some might say it's 'lazy' but I think it's perfectly in line with Giger's biomechanical aesthetic. But with the upcoming comics by Dark Horse they did say something along the lines of explaining the relationship between the urns and eggs and what not so I am waiting with the utmost anticipation for that.

"When David touches the Urn he says "Organic" " BINGO! 

To paraphrase Lindelof "Whether the deacon is an egg layer is open to interpretation, we feel there are clues in the movie that lead you down a path." Those clues to me are the ampules, given how much the ampule chamber looks like the egg chamber, how the urns react and sweat to the presence of the crew much like how the eggs sweated and reacted to Kane's presence, pretty big visual clues. Many might not like that but the whole idea of the urns was O'Bannon's and that's how the eggs were originally percieved to be in StarBeast before they are identified as 'eggs'.

Quite simply the urns grow unstable under higher temperatures, in Alien when Kane enters the chamber he remarks how hot it is, "like the tropics".

The ampules have all the chemical ingredients to make a facehugger, but if that DNA were to spread onto other lifeforms you get mutants with xenomorph features thus xeno DNA can be used as a weapon in and of itself. The process of getting to a Deacon almost seems to be like a reverse engineering of the classic xenomorph lifecycle. 

Given that the Deacon is attached via umbilical to a human placenta it's unlikely that it's an egg layer since placentals don't usually lay eggs.

Maybe they simply had pools of black goo and over time spores or eggs started to grow but eh there's no way to know 100%, I surmise that they are not supposed to change during transit, they are supposed to keep their solid state and remain temperature controlled. The below zero conditions in the temple is another clue. I can't wait for those comics!

Pretty sure the black stuff David saw was black goo and not the urn itself the goo being organic. The urns are meant to be weaponised black goo I hope they never show them turn into eggs that would be pants. But yes it is possible from what I've seen so far! I am expecting bio and tech to be meshed together in engineer technology as well...

Not digging the whole time travel thing.... Too complicated and vague. In my mind both the derelict and the ship on LV423 are related somehow and both the crash landing of the Derilict and the outbreak which precluded Prometheus happened some 2000 years before the arival of the Prometheus.

Perhaps whatever attacked the Engineers on LV423 impregnated another Engineer who managed to escape the carnage. He managed to get to a ship (the derelict) take off and land on LV426, perhaps docking on an Engineer outpost, was chest bursted before he was able to leave the ship. The burster then injured itself and its blood burnt a hole in the floor, through to the silo facility beneath the ship. It then grew and laid eggs.

This all works with Canon and would make for some great flashbacks....

This of course is simply an idea and could be totally wrong..

Brego

Yes brego they could go that route, by that is that the Cargo had became compremised and Evolved and infected the Space Jockey, why he even could have been infected before he left to go to where ever he was going and then the resulting Chest Buster got down to the silo underneath and somehow Evolved the Urns stored there.

Thats if they go the route of this being a underground storage facility to explain away the size of the Cargo Hold.

Ridley has done a U-Turn in a way, well he has laid some ambigious clues that the Derelict now did not contain Eggs but something had caused a evolution of the Cargo that led to the Eggs, this could be Urns Evolved or something that Evolved from them laid or changed the Urns to Eggs.  Its just left to ambiguity.

But going by Ridleys old comments before Prometheus well it appears the idea was a ship full of Eggs, and when we saw Prometheus and what i made of this movie then i assume that they was either

1) Conducting experiments on LV 223 to create the Eggs to then be shipped out.

2) What ever they was creating either had some different method of storing that evolved to Eggs.

And that they realised how dangerous this method was and so they re-weaponized it for safer storage and application.

3) Or that they shipped in the Eggs to be used to produce the Bio Weapon in the Urns via the same method they used to seed the Engineers DNA to create life.

Thats some good points..

It is all up in the air as far as the Xeno connection goes, for so long we had been left with the Space Jockey that had been carrying a Cargo of Eggs and he got infected and one of these chest busted from him, looking at how the Xeno works this would had to lead to a Xeno that is either bigger than a Human Xeno or maybe it would appear different and thus like the Deacon on the Mural which to me looks more like the Xenos from the Dark Horse Comics

These Xenos above that to me look more like the Mural and so maybe this style is what comes from a Engineer.

A other idea from Alien was what if something infected the Space Jockey and Chest Busted then laid all them Eggs, but this is something Ridley said was not the case.

We now get Prometheus and some of Ridleys new comments are now trying to add some confusion and ambiguity to the Alien Eggs on Derelict, as Ridley now hints something in the Cargo had Evolved, now this could be a red herring well he could mean Evolved as in Face Huger + Space Jockey = Evolved Organism and not that the Eggs evolved from something in the Cargo Hold, but now we cant be 100% Sure.

The thing is the Mural and Frescos seem to indicate they either new of the Xeno or Predecessor Life Cycle before the 2000+ year ago outbreak and we cant assume those Murals was just weeks old before the Outbreak but we cant say that they knew about the Xeno thousands of years before the outbreak.

Most likely they was messing around with some experiments or even a Organism that is related to the Xeno, or one of their experiments got contaminated and produced something that they then decided to further experiment on and one of these led to the creation of the Xeno... and experiments and goo in the urns but we cant be sure.  As due to the ambiguity and clues Fox have left they are trying to lead us down the path the substance mutates DNA take on Xeno traits so it is from some Xeno related Organism but when consumed in large dose then it breaks down the DNA of the Consumer.

Could that be David (above) with his face partially removed......

BTW I doubt we will ever see a Deaocon in frame with a Predator.... Or at least I hope not.

It does not look like David and this has Pradator in it so it may not be directly connected to Prometheus.

Its a odd image, as it does look like it could be a Android under the skin like Terminators...

But then from what we know about the Androids in Alien is it appears they are not constructed from metal frame, it appears they have arftificial bone structure that is made from a compond that is not Metal,  it is some synthetic material that immatates bone structure it could be like a super strong carbon compound ( Carbon Nanotubes) or super strong plastic (Polymers) or some other material not invented yet but invented by Weyland that is molded to form bone like structures that is not metal and is light weight but strong.

However from what we see in Prometheus we have to assume the Goo does not affect Synthetic Life for same purpose a Face Huger wont use a Android as a Host.  This image seems to show some kind of mutation, we see the skin has gained like warts or bubles and the hands seem to be growing claws.

Also the Humanoids skin is a blue/grey and you can see he has ridges forming under the skin ontop of the skull like a Klingon has, to me this means what we are seeing is some Human that is infected with maybe the Goo that we see he is starting to grow around his bones more like a Exo Skeleton or another layer of skin maybe Silca based and this is causing a reaction to his skin which is now pealing off as this Humanoid is mutating and the colour is not to far off the Deacon skin tone his eyes are also turning black like the Engineers so maybe there is a link.

Just re reading above regarding the Urns....

In the original script for Alien, something described as looking like an Urn is found by the crew of the Nostromo in the Derilict around the time they find the device which is emitting the misunderstood SOS signal. This of course is an empty egg, or I think it is. It is however located outside the egg chamber.

Back to Prometheus. David handles the black goo sweating from the top of the urn and states "Organic" indeed. However it's the substance coming from the Urn which is organic, not I think the actual Urn.

The glass ampule type structures inside the Urn, we later find out contain a mixture of fluids as well as a heavier black goo which David extracts by turning it upside down through its snapped end.

So upon sensing carbon dioxide from the crew's breath and or heat or a number of other chemical signals the internal structure of the urns became activated and begin to secreet their payload.....I think some people suggest that if left to their own devices, over time, they could become eggs... I'm not sure I like this idea, although I would be surprised if Ridley has this in mind....

One thing that I'm hoping isnt another plot hole however is why didnt the Urn which David secreted back to the Promtheus start sweating once it was thawd out?