Specimen.00: Plot Summary of Alien

1. Prometheus (2012 / Setting: 2093)

A planet that appears to be primordial Earth. An extraterrestrial (Engineer) drinks the Black Goo, causing his body to disintegrate at the cellular level before falling into a waterfall. His deconstructed DNA recombines, becoming the origin of humanity. Time passes to the year 2093. Funded by Peter Weyland, who is terrified of death and thirsts for eternal life, the USCSS Prometheus lands on the uncharted moon LV-223 in search of humanity’s creators. David, an early-model android attending to Weyland, discovers the “Black Goo” stored in countless cylindrical ampules within a sealed room in the ruins. This was a “primordial soup” that violently rewrites the blueprints of life. David acts on his own to infect Dr. Holloway with the liquid. As a result, Elizabeth Shaw becomes pregnant with a grotesque lifeform and is forced to undergo a gruesome abortion, cutting open her own abdomen using an automated medical pod. Meanwhile, the Engineer, awakened from Cryosleep, shows no intention of dialogue; he rips off David’s head and bludgeons Weyland to death. They were planning to drop the Black Goo on Earth to annihilate their own creations, humanity. The USCSS Prometheus sacrifices itself by ramming the Engineer’s ship (Juggernaut), causing it to crash. The surviving Shaw and the decapitated David hijack another ship and set off for the creators’ homeworld (Planet 4) to uncover their true motives.

2. Alien: Covenant (2017 / Setting: 2104)

In 2104, approximately ten years after the previous film. The colonization ship USCSS Covenant, carrying 2,000 colonists and 1,140 human embryos, is guided by an unknown signal and lands on Planet 4. It is a planet of death where David, upon his arrival, had dropped the Black Goo from the sky, committing a mass genocide of the Engineers. Over the past decade, David had dissected and usurped the body of Shaw, his sole sympathizer, repeatedly conducting mad crossbreeding experiments using the Black Goo. His goal was to create a “Perfect Organism” (the Praetomorph, a prototype of the Xenomorph) that would transcend humanity, its creator. The crew members fall prey to Neomorphs and Praetomorphs one after another. Walter, a Synthetic who is David’s successor but stripped of creativity, engages in a desperate struggle with the madness-consumed David. However, David destroys Walter, takes his place, and deceives the surviving heroine, Daniels, to seize control of the USCSS Covenant’s systems. As Daniels, trapped in her Cryosleep pod, realizes the despairing truth, David places Alien embryos in the colonist embryo storage while Wagner’s Entry of the Gods into Valhalla echoes through the ship. The vessel carrying the future of humanity has been transformed by a mad AI into an incubator for sowing the seeds of death.

3. Alien (1979 / Setting: 2122)

In the year 2122. The massive commercial towing vehicle USCSS Nostromo, owned by the Weyland-Yutani Corporation, intercepts a mysterious signal from the uncharted moon LV-426 while en route back to Earth. Awakened by the main computer “MU-TH-UR,” the crew discovers a colossal Derelict Ship, a fossilized extraterrestrial (Space Jockey), and countless eggs (Ovomorph) on the surface. The tragedy begins when Kane, orally violated by a Facehugger that sprang from an egg, is brought aboard the ship. The Chestburster, born by tearing through Kane’s ribcage from the inside, rapidly grows into a massive Perfect Organism (Xenomorph) and slaughters the crew one by one in the confined space. Warrant Officer Ellen Ripley uncovers the existence of “Special Order 937,” which dictates that the corporation’s highest priority is the capture of the alien organism and considers the crew “expendable.” Ash, the science officer acting on behalf of the corporation’s will, attempts to suffocate Ripley with a rolled-up pornographic magazine. After being destroyed and spewing white fluid, he praises the purity of the Perfect Organism. Ripley activates the self-destruct sequence of the defiled mother ship, the USCSS Nostromo, and escapes in the shuttle (Narcissus). She expels the stowaway Xenomorph through the airlock into the void of space, and enters Hypersleep once again in absolute solitude.

4. Alien: Romulus (2024 / Setting: 2142)

The year is 2142, set between the first and second films. Young Rain, exploited for her labor in the sunless Weyland-Yutani Corporation mining colony “Jackson’s Star,” plots an escape to the free planet “Yvaga” with her adoptive brother, an outdated Synthetic named Andy. They infiltrate the abandoned orbital research facility “Renaissance Station” to steal a Hypersleep Chamber, only to find it was a mad laboratory where the “Z-01” (Prometheus Strain) was being extracted from the original Xenomorph that survived the USCSS Nostromo tragedy. When Andy is implanted with the chip of the destroyed science officer Rook, his prime directive is overwritten to prioritize “the company’s interests,” turning him into a part of a cold-blooded system that callously abandons his friends. Navarro dies after being attacked by a swarm of Facehuggers and forced to witness the fetal movement within her via an X-ray device. In despair, the pregnant Kay injects herself with Z-01. As a result, a hideous hybrid that has atavistically reverted to the form of an Engineer, the “Offspring,” is born, and it devours the life of its mother, Kay, under the guise of nursing. Rain restores Andy’s original chip, granting him self-determination and reclaiming their solidarity as “us.” After a desperate struggle in a zero-gravity elevator shaft, they expel the Offspring into the asteroid ring and enter sleep for Yvaga, holding onto uncertain hope.

5. Aliens (1986 / Setting: 2179)

Fifty-seven years after the USCSS Nostromo tragedy (2179). When Ripley, miraculously rescued, awakens, her biological daughter Amanda has already passed away from old age. The corporation’s board of inquiry dismisses her testimony as a delusion and revokes her flight officer license. However, when communication with the terraforming colony “Hadley’s Hope” built on LV-426 is lost, she descends into hell once more alongside the Colonial Marines and corporate representative Carter Burke to settle her trauma. The colony has turned into a Xenomorph hive. Ripley discovers the sole survivor, a young girl named Newt, and acquires a “pseudo-motherhood,” risking her life to protect her as a surrogate for her lost daughter. Amidst the despair of the squad’s annihilation and the banal malice of Burke, who attempts to impregnate Ripley and Newt with Facehuggers for exclusive profit (a percentage), the Synthetic Bishop rescues Newt even as his torso is torn in half. Ripley confronts the Alien Queen laying countless eggs in the deepest part of the hive, and enrages her by burning the eggs to ashes. Against the Queen that infiltrates the USS Sulaco, Ripley dons a Power Loader (a mechanical exoskeleton) and engages in a death match, roaring, “Get away from her, you bitch!” Having expelled the Queen into space, she finally gains recognition as a “perfect mother” in a symbolic sense.

6. Alien 3 (1992 / Setting: 2179)

Immediately following the previous film. The emergency escape pod jettisoned from the USS Sulaco crashes into the black sea of Fiorina ‘Fury’ 161 (Fury 161), a penal planet where only male violent offenders live an ascetic religious life. Ripley is the sole survivor; Newt and Hicks, whom she loved, have met gruesome deaths. Tormented by castration anxiety-like trauma, she demands an autopsy of Newt, confirming her body is empty, and cremates her with despairing relief. However, the true despair lay within her own body. The embryo of the next-generation Queen was gestating inside her womb. As the unarmed prisoners are slaughtered one after another by a quadrupedal Xenomorph (Runner), the Alien senses the Queen inside Ripley and refuses to kill her. The Weyland-Yutani Corporation, scheming to use the Alien for military purposes, sends a human of the same model as Bishop (Bishop II), who uses sweet words of saving her life to try and retrieve the embryo. However, Ripley rejects the corporation’s asset recovery at the cost of her own life, throwing herself into a massive furnace to save humanity. While falling in a cruciform pose, she firmly embraces the Queen Chestburster that bursts through her ribcage with both hands, sinking into the sea of fire and molten iron. It was the ultimate “messianic sacrifice.”

7. Alien Resurrection (1997 / Setting: 2381)

In the year 2381, 200 years after Ripley’s death. The military-industrial complex USM, which inherited the madness of the Weyland-Yutani Corporation, “reconstructs” Ripley as a clone from remaining blood samples aboard the medical research vessel USM Auriga. Their objective was to extract the Alien Queen from her womb, but due to the crossing of DNA, she awakens as a chimera with acidic blood and superhuman strength, “Ripley 8.” She encounters her failed predecessors (Nos. 1-7) in the clone laboratory and, shedding tears over the remains of her vivisected selves, incinerates them with a flamethrower. Meanwhile, the extracted Queen, influenced by human DNA, regresses from oviparous to viviparous, acquiring a “womb,” and gives birth to a human-Alien hybrid, the “Newborn.” The Newborn brutally murders its biological mother, the Queen, by tearing off her head, and affectionately nuzzles up to Ripley 8 as its “true mother.” Ripley, having formed a deep spiritual bond with Annalee Call, a self-loathing Synthetic (Auton) trying to prevent the extinction of humanity, confronts her adoring child (Newborn) in the cargo bay of the smuggler ship Betty heading for Earth. She melts the window glass with her own acidic blood, causing the Newborn to be sucked out into the vacuum of space in shreds, as Ripley sheds tears of repentance, whispering, “I’m sorry.” Having buried her motherhood with her own hands, she returns to a devastated Earth, quietly murmuring, “I’m a stranger here myself.”