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Xenomorphs, (PROSE: Genius Loci, et al.) also known as life-spores during the War in Heaven (PROSE: The Annotated Autopsy of Agent A) or Facehuggers, (TV: Last Christmas) were a parasitic species encountered by humanity from the 21st century onwards. (TV: Mindwarp, et al.) They were an aspect of the Enemy. (PROSE: The Annotated Autopsy of Agent A)
The Sixth Doctor once observed with disgust an infant "chestburster" Xenomorph in Crozier's laboratory. (TV: Mindwarp) In 2012, Van Statten's Vault had an ovomorph on display. (TV: Dalek)
Biology[[edit] | [edit source]]
Their lifecycle included several stages and forms. They began as "life-spores" that would infect humans, then grow into creatures that would burst out of their chests. (PROSE: The Autopsy of Agent A)
Xenomorphs secreted a knobbly black resin. (PROSE: So Vile a Sin)
Because they originated from outside the universe, they could infect the pasts of their victim species throughout time and history as a purely biological infection, without time machines, science, or culture.
History[[edit] | [edit source]]
The human crew of the Narcissus first discovered Enemy life-spores inside a lesser species ship on an asteroid. The spores then infected the crew, killing the crewmember James Watt. The ship's sole survivor was Captain Jennifer Alistoun, who had further fights against the species, both adapting between every encounter.
However, they quickly became more than just a danger to space travellers when the logic of their presence began to affect the Spiral Politic, leading the asteroid to inconceivably grow into a planet that attracted a human colony, which became a breeding ground for the creatures.
The first deep time oddity caused by the spores was their insertion into the history and culture of a warlike lesser species, which had no interaction with the "life-spores" or humanity. The Great Houses took notice and watched as the spores traced the Narcissus's world-line back to Earth in the second half of the 20th century, infecting the first astronauts of the British Rocket Group and various towns and cities from the 1950s to the 1970s.
However, their infestation attempts weren't gaining the creatures enough notoreity and psychic energy, so they sought to insert themselves into the "meta-flow" (PROSE: The Annotated Autopsy of Agent A) via a horror movie simply titled Alien featured aliens called "facehuggers". (PROSE: Last Christmas) With their new iconic status, the creatures gained the power to go far back to the Old Times, where they established that they were bio-engineered by the lesser species, now "Creators and Agents". The Great Houses considered this an affront to their past and an attempt to usurp them.
John F. Kennedy's body was infested with life-spores, but they were prevented from bursting out when he died from a heart attack on 19 January 1976. Agent A took notes on his autopsy of Kennedy's body before resolving to go back in time and kill him to prevent the spores from succeeding in their "false history". (PROSE: The Annotated Autopsy of Agent A)
References[[edit] | [edit source]]
Professor Albert Smithe noted a resemblance between the facehuggers and the dream crabs' method of consuming their victims' brains, by latching onto their face. (TV: Last Christmas)
When Bernice Summerfield visited Ace in hospital, she thought that the respirator clung to her like a facehugger. (PROSE: The Left-Handed Hummingbird)
In the 30th century, a group of students used Xenomorph resin to decorate the surfaces of their block of flats. Simon Frederson described the resulting appearance as "knobbly, black, and unpleasantly organic shapes and orifices" and "very ugly and retro". (PROSE: So Vile a Sin)
Heidi Maputo used the saying "when the xenomorph hits the ventilation shafts". (PROSE: Genius Loci)
Notably, K9 Mark 2 used the term "xenomorph" more loosely to apply to other alien beings, and, accordingly, once recommended "rapid movement in the opposite direction of the xenomorph". (TV: Liberation)
Behind the scenes[[edit] | [edit source]]
In the real world, the science fiction films Alien and Aliens, being part of the wider Alien franchise, featured Xenomorphs, although nothing in valid DWU sources has drawn a link between the scattered allusions to Xenomorphs as real beings, and the occasional contextless nods to Alien and Aliens as in-universe movies. The closest any source has got, was in TV: Last Christmas, when a Facehugger was identified as being from the films, as well as in TV: Greeks Bearing Gifts, when Toshiko Sato mentions the scene in Alien where the "thing" bursts out of John Hurt. (Additionally, the mention of Facehuggers in PROSE: The Left-Handed Hummingbird is open to interpretation if they're fictional or not.)
Although the DWU and Alien have never had an official crossover acknowledged by the Alien side of the equation, an actual Chestburster prop was clearly visible in TV: Mindwarp, hinting at a shared universe as early as 1986. The Xenomorphs and the Weyland-Yutani Corporation continued to have cameos in television stories and novels alike for years to come.
A more narratively relevant crossover came in the form of The Annotated Autopsy of Agent A, which, although it did not mention the name "Xenomorph", described the history of the life-spore creatures in sufficient detail that any reader familiar with the other franchise would recognise them as Xenomorphs, as readily as viewers were expected to identify the Mindwarp Chestburster or the egg in Dalek.
Other matters[[edit] | [edit source]]
In the Obverse Books charity anthology The Curse of Fanfic!, John Peel's story Alien Encounter crossed Fireball XL5 with the Xenomorphs from Alien.
External links[[edit] | [edit source]]
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{{Proposed identities of the Enemy}} Category:Insectoid species Category:Parasitic species