Cougar, sorted out that stuff with the alien numbers yet?
Yeah, sort of. I had to look up the population of Hadley’s Hope – I remembered Burke saying “60 or 70 families” – it’s 158. So your “160” was near enough. And there’s way more aliens than that. They took out maybe a couple of dozen during the first encounter, and the sentry guns accounted for a hundred. One colonist = one alien doesn’t add up.
But. We’re assuming that the only way to produce xenomorphs is by the traditional impregnation and chest-burst scenario. There may be other ways we’ve not seen. Isn’t there a bit in one of the AvP movies where an alien is bred in a human womb? I don’t believe the AvP franchise is regarded as canon, but point is that there could be other mechanisms. Hell, maybe the colonists kept pets.
It’s a serious bit of reconning, of course. The obvious answer is Cameron either employed a bit of artistic licence, or simply didn’t notice (or care). So you’re right, it doesn’t add up, but in the grand scheme of things I don’t really think it’s a show-stopper. A simple dialogue change upping the numbers would have fixed it (and it’s not an issue in the original release anyway due to the absence of the sentry gun plot line).
