The end of the line, and back to the distant past

leading from: The Space Jockey's Story

The continuing theory
As Scott wraps up the ideas within the streams of 1979 Alien interviews about the background information regarding the derelict, some had wondered if the cargo were the young of the space jockey's own kind and so the chestburster would eventually grow up into a Space Jockey, but Scott simply wished to present the fact that the Jockey was a victim of these spores, but would soon come to a conclusion that he kept for a number of years, expressed in the small amount of words that the derelict spaceship was a battlewagon or even a freighter that was carrying either it's own kind of a weapon from A to B and something went wrong.

Past associations with planet Earth
We never find out exactly how it went wrong, or where it intended to go, but 12 years later, we find out a little something more, that would expand the alien mysteries a little more. In an interview for the Alien Laserdisc collectors set, Scott revealed to us a place where the demons of it's cargo of spores had been once upon a time in history, and it's our planet Earth, and the demons that we think about and turn up in old drawings in China and Europe are perhaps somehow memories of this biological entity.

Chung Qai, chinese demon

Thoughts relating to Quatermass And The Pit Territory
In 2012, Ridley Scott would talk in the commentary for his film Prometheus about the marveled at the ideas of the 1967 film "Quatermass and the Pit" that dealt with the concept of insect like aliens on Mars landing on Earth five million years ago and they had been perceived in human ancestral memories as demons, and this film was originally conceived for the 1958  TV series that was and most likely borrowed from Arthur C Clarke's 1953 novel Childhood's End which dealt with a similar concept.

A martian corpse from Quatermas And The Pit

book cover for Childhood's End

What is the derelict still?
To look at the vessel as part of the film's scenario, we can not state too much about the logic of the
design of the derelict because it was not designed by humans, the derelict does not necessarily follow a human rationality. What we assume are engines at the end of each side arm of the vessel might not be engines at all. To be honest, while it's assumed that this was a space worthy method of transport, it's possibly nothing of the sort. It may as well be another monolith out of 2001 A Space Odyssey left behind by an unknown civilisation to have no final word about.

However while there are these curious questions about the vessel's dimensions and interior, Ridley would eventually put them aside to pursue a story

Simplifying the derelict situation.
Ridley has decided that the vessel is a space vessel with a cargo hold, and this is what James Cameron chose to have it believed to be within the sequel Aliens, thus terminating any further mysteries about the nature of it's dimensions in the Alien series. The only thing now was a scenario in which the space jockey could use its cargo of bioweapons which it would possibly drop on an alien planet, and fundamentally integrate in a very aggressively way into any society or place it's dropped, by taking on its victim's general form through the way we had seen in Alien where a humanoid alien came out of Kane and so if the facehugger landed on an ostrich, one would get a creature erupting that would grow into something like an ostrich.

Scenario of Bacteriological Warfare
What this turns into though is another situation. Ridley wondered if the Space Jockeys had destroyed a planet, and the discussion seems to flow into thoughts about Saddam Hussain who we had a scare with in terms of chemical weapons, but he wasn't someone who used bacteriological weapons because he would have had the sense himself to realise it would have been dangerous for him to use those because where does it stop.

His story went into the scenario about what would happen if you let a bacteriological weapon loose on some other part of the world and then eventually it gets brought back to you by airliner. If you have it in an aerosol can in a subway in New York city, within a day you may have half a million people infected. Within a week going home, schools, work, families, lovers, friends. Okay you have a million people infected with an ebolar type entity, you never stop it. There is no plan. In that time that it was undiscovered maybe 20%  of the people got on aircraft and maybe 5% traveled to Europe and 1% went to Africa. And the true irony would be that it went back to where it started, you know. So if you really think it through about that kind of use of a weapon, you've to think about it. It'll come back and bight you on the arse and somehow that appeared to happen to the space jockey in the planetoid in Alien

1. Ridley Scott:The derelict ship was a battlewagon or a freighter, that was carrying, either it's own kind or a weapon from A to B and something went wrong." (The Book of Alien, p87)
2. Ridley Scott: Well I had to look into it, I mean I had to look into it myself, and say, oh yeh, you know, what frightens me, erm, and erm. So I started looking at a lot of, er,  films, horror films which were good ones. I think one of the great horror movies is the Exorcist, yuh. So , and I always talked and played with the idea of, uh, you know, the absolutes of good and evil, right and if the alien is really, what was it? Was it just, um,  was it the face of the devil, right, was it the face of the demon, because if you look at historical you know , manuscripts and engravings, pictures, er, i... erm, from wherever they come from, whether it's China, whether it's Europe, whether it's, you know whatever the nationality, there's a kind of continuity of the idea of the perception of the dem, demon, as there is about the dragon, right, so it's like taking off the mystical aspects of it and saying "it's nothing to do with that. It's a Mar..., no, Martian, Mars is not far away enough. It's, it's a...a biological fact, it's a biological creature, and it's been here before. Exorcist for me was the biggest lesson, I just kept looking at and looking at it, and, erm, looking at the class that you've got involved in making the movie, you know. (Raw Alien Laserdisc Don Shay interview with Ridley Scott )
3. Scott: I always wanted to go back and make an alien five or six. er,where we find out where they came from and go there, and answer the question 'who are they?' Mars, Mars is too close,so they can't be, they can't be gods of War, but the theory was, in my head was, this was, a... an aircraft carrier, a battle wagon, of a civilisation and the eggs were a cargo which were essentially weapons, (sorry) like a large form of bacteriological stroke biomechanoid warfare. (Alien 20th Anniversary Edition)
4. Ridley Scott:There's room for it to grow. Like who was the jockey? He wasn't an Alien, he was another race. I think it was a battleship carrying biomechanoid weapons, the weapons were eggs. You drop a lot of aliens on an enemy planet, it's like bacteriological warfare, ( The Times, An Alien Invasion, The Times, Interview with Ian Nathan, Saturday,  November 29, 2003)
5. Ridley Scott: (31:46) I think that Space Jockey is actually somehow the pilot, and he's part of a military operation, if that's the word that you want to apply to his world, and therefore this is probably some kind of carrier, a weapon carrier, a (32:00) biological or biomechanoid carrier of er... lethal eggs, inside of which are these er... small creatures that will actually fundamentally integrate in a very aggressive way into any society or any place it dropped. So if you land on a human being, you have a... a resemblance to a human being. If it dropped on an ostrich, it would look like an ostrich.  (Alien Anthology Blu-Ray  Alien, commentary)
6. Ridley Scott: I always thought you go or you visit the.... and find out what and why and who is the space jockey. What nationality, what nationality in space, what being was this space jockey and what was he carrying. Was it a battle ship of like, bit like, bacteriological warfare. except he's got a hold full of eggs. Right. And where was he going, could there have been, well we know enough about Mars to know that Mars is a more of a romantic idea of the god of War than being far too close to Earth to you know, where we know now that there isn't a civilisation on Mars right? But the idea that we always love to think that there are civilisations out there? And it seems to be entirely logical that there has to be. Must be.  Why is it only us? That doesn't make sense right?  And therefore elements out there that we have no weapons, again who? Had they destroyed a planet? By putting it down letting it loose. A little bit like our scare with Saddam. The only reason I think that people like that don't use bacteria is because where does it stop? And suddenly you get it to being brought back to you from an airliner. You have it in an aerosol can in a subway in New York city, within a day you may have half a million people infected. Within a week going home, schools, work, families, lovers, friends. Okay you have a million people infected with an ebolar type entity, you never stop it. There is no plan. In that time that it was undiscovered maybe 20%  of the people got on aircraft and maybe 5% travelled to Europe and 1% went to Africa. And the true irony would be that it went back to where it started, you know. So if you really think it through about that kind of use of a weapon, you've to think about it. It'll come back and bight you on the arse. (As reported from the Alien Evolution documentary interview)