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Do you suppose she was born from one of the colonists, or that she had been hibernating in the derelict ship for untold centuries?

I always assumed that she was born from a queen-infected colonist.  Parts of the Alien lifecycle are left untold, so I guess it is possible that she had made a cocoon and spent thousands of years in hibernation.

Perhaps that is why the original "Alien" creature was so angry.  It woke up and wanted to go find the queen, but was stuck on the Nostromo, millions of miles away.  That would make anybody grumpy.

I thought she was (actually all the original eggs were) created by scientists. IIRC, weren't the eggs in the craft on LV426 all arranged neatly in a grid? I had always thought they were CREATED as a weapon, put on the ship, which was designed to crash without killing them on the surface of a planet to be conquered. This way it will work even if the ship is shot down. I had also figured there was some way to destroy them easily and thoroughly, but nobody ever stumbled across it.

I also thought they were engineered as bioweapons, but my take was that the research was being carried out on a spaceship for safety and something went wrong. The critters had escaped, causing the crew to crash the ship and set up a beacon warning others to stay away.

This would have been similar to what the scientists were doing in Resurrection. At the time, I thought it would have been a much cooler ending if Ripley had crashed the ship on a distant planet and essentially brought the story full-circle. That would even raise the question of whether the owners of the alien ship had created the weapon themselves or had also been messing around with something they had stumbled across.

The aliens could have been a weapon too powerful to control, either destroying their creators or possibly being disposed of at some point in the distant past. Every so often, someone finds them, tries to wield the weapon and fails, and the eggs lay in wait for the next sucker to come along.

The AVP games actually shed alot of light into this matter.

In the games for PC that I have, you are basically on a planet and the pit you see in Alien is involved.  Basically they introduced the idea that this was a breeding ground built by some mysterious race [the 'Observer' or whoever that skeleton was in the first one]  Basically the Predators used it as a way of controlling the eggs, with the blue lights basically being a stasis field for the eggs.

Essentially the Predators used it as a way of keeping control, and so they could hunt those they let grow.

Interesting idea really.

I also like the idea of them being created as a biological weapon.  Adds another new idea to what the Aliens are all about.

That would be the Space Jockey (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Jockey_(Alien)).

AhA!  The Pilot! That's what I was thinking of...

Space Jockey?  Sounds like some sort of underwear...

I do NOT like the idea of them as biological weapons.  I prefer to think of them as animals that are unusually deadly, at least to anything that evolved on Earth.  I think the pilot and crew of the derelict alien ship were just some dudes that found them, got into trouble just like the Nostromo crew, and crashed on LV-426.

Given the size of the hole in the alien pilot's chest (almost bigger than Dallas' space helmet!), the one that hatched out of him must have been pretty big, probably a queen.  At any rate, there had to have been *a* queen to lay all the eggs the Nostromo crew found.

I like to think the queen from aliens was that same queen, and that she had been waiting for centuries, eons, for some unlucky suckers to come along.  That's downright Lovecraftian.

Not only that but she survived a trip from LV-426 into space on the Marine's ship, and then got sucked out an airlock.  Like that could kill her! 

Some part of me likes the idea of a Queen floating around in Space, just waiting for some passerby/new planet and then BAM!

 Well who was flying that HUGE ship then????

There were a series of books that explained more about Aliens and their lifecycle (and the AvP books (http://www.amazon.com/Prey-Aliens-Vs-Predator-Book/dp/0553565559/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_c) were amazing novels; if the first one of those had be made into a movie, it would have rocked!).

The Space Jockey craft was transporting the alien eggs.  The aliens were used as a weapon, but they were only found, not created by the race using them (much like the humans wanted to).  An alien can morph into a queen given time if there is not one in a colony (only takes a week or so before they change, if I remember the books correctly - happens in the first AvP novel.)

Sometimes their are also Warrior Aliens, which are stronger and more feirce then regular drones.  They often have extra features line longer spines on the their back or even horns.  I believe one is visible when Riply is wrecking eggs with the flame thrower in Aliens.

Aliens take on some of the properties of the animals they gestate in (as seen in the AvP movies and the various computer games).  Human-born ones walk upright more easily and are a bit smarter, less instict driven, as seen when they shut off the power to the motion detecting sentry guns in the director's cut of Aliens (watch it if you haven't!  Extra forty minutes or so of pure awesome!) or when they use the acid blood to break free of the prison in Alien 4 - typically drones aren't that smart without a queen to instruct them.

In the movie of Alien 3, the alien gestates in a dog and has more canine features - is smaller, moves quickly, stays on all fours.  In the novelization, it gestates in a large bull-like creature and is stronger and bulkier then others Ripley saw at the colony.  i think this is also part of the reason the Queen is so "mutated" by Ripley (and vice versa)in Alien 4.  They already do adapt based on their host, so the mixing of DNA during the clone only enhanced the problem.

I'm a bit of a Aliens fan - or was, years ago.

Jaer

It looked to me like she was tucked up into where the landing gear goes, so it may have been sealed once the landing gear is retracted. That's how I always thought she survived, maybe I'll watch it again

It is worth noting, that in the extended universe at least, the xenomorphs can survive vacuum. 

Didn't she explode in space at the end of 2?

I know the one in Alien survived the vacuum just fine after getting flushed. Ripley blasted it into space with the shuttle's engines.

Yea, but we were talking about the queen specifically. After checking, I saw she DIDN'T explode after Ripley dumped her out the airlock.

Alien showed a drone could survive in space.

Aliens showed a queen could.

How is never examined, nor do we know exactly how the queen got back onto the Marine's ship from the moon, but it could have ridden the landing shuttle through space.

I don't recall if Alien shows the alien eat.  Alien 3 shows a scene or two in which the alien seems interested in a dead body, but whether it was eating or not is unknown.  They secret a biological goo that can be formed into walls, but I don't think anyone has ever found alien droppings....

Exactly how long they can survive on a lifeless rock of a moon or floating in deep space is unknown.  The chances of her surviving planetary re-entry are, however, pretty low.