Re: Official Alien Prequel/Prometheus Discussion Thread
Found this on IMDB
What was the Marines "bug hunt"? Is there a connection to Starship Troopers?
Pvt Hudson (Bill Paxton) comments about the mission being "just another bug-hunt," possibly implying that the marines have encountered alien species before, as does Pvt Frost (Ricco Ross) in the mess hall scene, when he reminisces about "Arcturian ********." Under the cockpit window of the drop ship is a picture of the marines' mascot: an eagle brandishing a machine-gun and wearing boots with the slogan, "bug stompers," which implies that such is their specialty. Elsewhere on the marines' uniforms are patches with similar images of an eagle and the slogan, "We endanger species." A "bug hunt" could also simply mean that they've been sent on several wild goose chases with no aliens to be found, which would explain their derision about it being another false alarm. James Cameron revealed on the DVD commentary that he had all the actors playing marines read Starship Troopers; this is a nod to the inspiration of that book.
However, the most likely reason is that "bug hunt" was slang for a search-and-rescue mission, which seemed a rather second-rate challenge than a "stand up fight", which, in Hudson's terms, meant being sent down to a war-ridden planet to aid in some sort of violent dispute where there will be lots of combat. When Gorman says, "All we know is there's still NO CONTACT with the colony and that a xenomorph may be involved." It meant they would be going in to look for missing colonists, to which Hicks replies, "It's a bug-hunt." which corroborates with the slang theory. Then he asks, "What exactly are we dealing with here?" to which Ripley steps in to explain the circumstances of the colonists going missing.
It is likely the marines uniform slogans about being "bug stompers" is merely coincidence (done so because of the Starship Troopers novel), as if they specialized in dealing with alien species or had been sent on wild goose chases before in regards to aliens, then they would've been a little more serious in the briefing, knowing that there have been past inquirries as to extraterrestrial existence. But they scoff at Ripley's story, just as the Company executives did, because there hadn't been anything relating to extraterrestrials recorded in "over 300 surveyed worlds". Unlike Star Wars, which has thousands of different species, this universe is portrayed as a humans-only dimension, as the concept of the original film was to depict what it would actually be like to encounter an alien.
There is also the explanation, supported by some dialogue, that the bug hunt suggest that they have to kill aliens from space (not the alien of the film). Hudson being impressed about Ripley seeing an "alien" sound like he have seen many before when the marines have been on bug hunt. The hearing commitee also comment that the Nostromo crew found something never seen before in 300 worlds making the life-cyclus of the Alien rather unique and more threatening than the other Alien-species out there in the world. To sum up: there are different alien-species in the world and the ALIEN of this film appears to be the most dangerous
And this too.
Do the aliens have an official name?
No. In most of the expanded universe, comic books, video games, and even in the Assembly cut of Alien 3, they are referred to as Xenomorphs. They are also called Xenomorphs by Lt. Gorman in the movie, but this may be a blanket term to cover any unknown alien species, since the term 'xenomorph' is derived from the Greek words "xeno" (stranger, alien, foreigner) and "morphe" (form, shape). In the expanded universe in some of the comic books, the species isalso given the name Linguafoeda acheronsis, but this has not been mentioned in any of the movies so far.
