Space Jockey (Alien)


 * For other uses, see Space Jockey (disambiguation).

Space Jockey (or simply "The Pilot") is the nickname given to a type of extraterrestrial life form from the Alien series of movies and games. Aliens director James Cameron also called the creature the "Big Dental Patient". These large biomechanical creatures may be the first victims of, and perhaps the creators of, the Xenomorphs (also seen in the Alien series). Their discovery was made in the first Alien movie, when the commercial starship Nostromo set down on the unsurveyed moon LV-426 in response to a distress call. The crew found a wrecked derelict spacecraft with a dead lifeform inside, apparently its pilot. No other remains were found, and they are not referred to in the other films of the series.

Name
The Alien production team, without having a proper technical term to go by, nicknamed the creature found aboard the Derelict ship "The Space Jockey". H.R. Giger, who was designer of The Derelict and of the Space Jockey, as well as the Xenomorph, originally had named it "The Pilot". The greatest amount of said information can be found in the game Aliens versus Predator 2, in which the species is collectively referred to as Pilot (in contrast to Human, Alien, or Predator). In Steve Perry's book Earth Hive the jockeys are referred to as collectors as they collect Xenomorph eggs. One is seen later on in the book and is referred to by several different names (spacer, elephant man, elephantlike creature, alien creature...)

Most recently, in the novel Aliens: Original Sin by Michael Friedman, the Pilot race is referred to as the Mala'kak. It is also still referred sometimes to though as the Pilot, or the Pilot's people.

Appearances in Film and Media
The only movie that the Space Jockey pilot itself has featured in was the original 1979 Alien. Swiss surrealist artist H.R. Giger was hired on the movie Alien to design the title's creature and the environment of the alien planet. The Space Jockey was one of many things he created for the film. The scene inside the Derelict's interior with the Jockey pilot was, according to the writers, an essential scene, although the Fox production company wanted to pull it from the movie for cost reasons. Eventually the filmmakers won and the scene was filmed, the Space Jockey and interior being built full-scale by Giger. The Space Jockey prop was 26 feet (7.9 m) tall. A smaller version of the prop was also built, but was destroyed by arsonists while on display at the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood.

The Space Jockeys have not appeared or been referred to in any of the subsequent films, but have been featured prominently in many of the videogames and comics series. They have made appearances in various Dark Horse Comics publications on Aliens and some readers speculate that they had some connection to the Predators. In the bonus materials of the special edition Alien DVD, director Ridley Scott has expressed the opinion that a film exploring the backstory of the Space Jockey would be an interesting new direction for the series to take.

In Mark Verheiden's graphic novel series Aliens, a Jockey-like creature is encountered, and is able to communicate telepathically with humans. It is shown with pink skin, a tail and an elephantine trunk, and yellow, cross-shaped eyes. In the novels the Jockeys are shown to be malevolent, and have used the Xenomorphs as a weapon to kill all life on Earth so they can take the planet for themselves. After the release of Alien 3, these books were rewritten to be in tune with the deaths of Ripley, Hicks, and Newt. Later books never expand on the idea.

In the more recent book, Aliens: Original Sin, the Jockeys are mentioned and discussed throughout the book. Towards the end the reader learns that the Jockeys are trying to breed a group of Aliens.

The game Alien Vs. Predator 2 deals with an experimental lab built to study a Xenomorph hive that itself is built on the ruins of an ancient civilization- although the Pilots are not seen throughout the game, the technology is referred to as Pilot technology, and the architecture of the ruins is similar to that of the Derelict spacecraft.

A parodic version of the Jockey appeared in an episode of Captain Simian & the Space Monkeys. Instead of the telescope-like device, this fossilized Jockey was playing a saxophone.

The multiplayer section of the Xbox game Conker: Live and Reloaded featured a brief parody of the Jockey's ship, using it as the housing ground for the fossilised Panther King.

The dominatrix miniature for Games Workshop's Epic 40,000 has a figure seated on its back which looks like a Space Jockey.

A very similar version of the Space Jockey appears as the final boss in the NES Contra game Super C.

Physiology
In the novelization of Alien by Alan Dean Foster Ash describes the Space Jockeys as a noble people and hopes that mankind will encounter them under more pleasant circumstances. It also states that they were larger, stronger and possibly more intelligent than humans. The first Space Jockey was seen in the original Alien movie as a giant humanoid corpse sitting in front of a telescope-like device aboard the derelict craft. It was fossilized, meaning it had been there for a long time. The Jockey that the starship Nostromo's crew found aboard the derelict seemed to be growing out of the chair of the telescope, as if it had fused itself into it. Its rib cage was bent outward; it is evident that a Xenomorph escaped from the creature, though no adult Xenomorphs were encountered on the derelict.

In the comics, the Jockey is shown to have an elephantine trunk. This is inconsistent with the original concept. An inspection of the concept art done by H.R. Giger, shows that the "trunk" is supposed to be an air hose and there is a helmet surrounding the Jockey's head. This is also supported by the fact that soft tissue such as elephant trunks do not fossilize. This does not leave out the possibility of a different kind of trunk, but the one depicted in the comics is very much like an elephant's. None of the works depicting the Jockey with a "trunk" are considered canon - the only canon appearance of the Space Jockey is in Alien and its novelization and directly related works.

In an early script visualized but never written, the Pilot ship had crashed or landed on LV-426 some 10 million years prior to discovery by the Nostromo. It was depicted as having been dragged in some unknown manner to the top of a pyramidical structure, which was the top of an enormous subterranean temple containing the Xenomorph eggs. This is evident in the first Alien film, when Kane notices the hole torn in the bottom of the Pilot ship. It should also be noted that despite later rewrites and storylines, Giger and O'Bannon designed the Pilot so that it appeared to be a sympathetic and friendly lifeform.

Relation to the Xenomorphs and other races
Little or nothing is known of this race. The principal theory of their connection to the Xenomorphs, which was mentioned briefly by Ridley Scott in his director's commentary for the first Alien DVD, is that the Jockey's ship was a "bomber" and that they created them as biogenic weapons to fight an ancient war. There is some evidence to support this, such as the Xenomorph's biomechanical nature. Alien eggs would be used as "bombs" on an enemy planet and then the Xenomorphs would proceed to kill the entire population as they spawned. The Xenomorphs would be designed to then genetically die off, however it seems they eventually mutated and thrived even after killing their prey. It is probable from the Alien film, that the Space Jockeys were then turned upon by their own creation. Regardless, the pilot was itself infected with a Xenomorph and killed, though it managed to send out a warning to any passing ships to stay away from the moon. The unexplained purpose of the "blue mist" that covers the eggs in the cargo hold does not offer direct support for this conclusion, but appears to indicate the possibility that the eggs were intentionally put in stasis, as if stored for later, possibly military use. The Predators bred Xenomorphs for hunting according to the movie, Alien vs. Predator. Whether the Predators had any contact or relationship to the Space Jockeys is totally unknown and purely a matter of speculation.

It is also possible, however, that the crashed ship found in Alien could have just been the result of a brief encounter between the Space Jockeys and the Xenomorphs, much the same as what happens to the human protagonists of the film. Alan Dean Foster's novelization states that the Jockeys were trying to warn humans away from the aliens whilst Mark Verheiden's graphic novel indicates that they planned on invading Earth after the Xenomorphs wiped out all the humans. It should be noted, in respect to that, that according to the comic "The Destroying Angels" that the biomechanoids have been around from long before mankind even came to exist (their civilization having fallen 1.6 million years ago due to the Aliens), and that the warning beacon may have been to warn their own kind.

A lesser-known history of the Space Jockeys comes from an older source than the DVDs. According to "The Alien Portfolio" by John Mollo and Ron Cobb, Cobb tells of Alien creator Dan O'Bannon's backstory where the Jockeys had simply landed on the planet on a course of exploration and had encountered the eggs there. Since the planet was dying, and they didn't realize how dangerous the eggs were, they loaded their cargo hold with the eggs and prepared to lift off. Before they were to take off, one of the crew that was parasitized "gave birth" to an alien. The crew eventually killed the alien, but at the cost of hulling their ship. As they were dying out, one of them had set up a transmission warning other ships not to land there and to suffer the same fate.

This is mentioned in the novelization of Alien by Alan Dean Foster, during the scene where Ash was telling Ripley, Lambert and Parker about their chances against the alien. Out of all sources, the Portfolio is the only one connected to the film that gives a complete series of events describing the Jockeys' encounter with the aliens.

Technology
It has been theorized by fans that the Space Jockeys can grow spaceships organically. See the article on the Derelict for more information.

The cargo hold of the Space Jockey's ship was filled with eggs of Xenomorph facehuggers (the second stage in the Xenomorph life cycle), which were held in stasis beneath a blue mist. It has been theorized by fans that the Space Jockeys created the Xenomorphs because of the similarities in design between the biomechanical spacecraft and the hostile aliens, and because in the expanded Alien universe, it has been acknowledged in different literature that they were responsible.

The novelization by Alan Dean Foster, on the other hand, states that Space Jockeys found them on LV-426, and there has been no conclusive evidence shown in the feature film series supporting that the Space Jockeys created the Xenomorph. Clearly, however, the Space Jockeys have advanced technology, leaving open the possibility that they had a hand in the Xenomorph's genesis.

Director Ridley Scott also makes note that he would like to make "an Alien 5 or 6" where the audience would be privy to the home planet of the Xenomorphs, but makes no reference to whether this is the same planet that the Jockeys hail from.

Similar themes in fiction
In Mario Bava's Planet of the Vampires (1965) a nearly identical scenario is depicted wherein a human crew, summoned by a distress signal from a derelict ship, found an oversized alien skeleton dead at the controls as a result of parasitic beings.

In Blizzard's  StarCraft series of computer games, a situation similar to this one is brought up between the Xel'Naga and the Zerg.

In Robert E. Howard's Conan mythos, a tale exists called The Tower of the Elephant (1933) wherein Conan encounters an ancient trans-cosmic being that is bipedal in ways similar to a human but whose head and upper body are clearly elephantine. Naming itself Yag-Kosha, the creature relates that it is the last of a race that had been exiled from their homeworld and forced to "sail across the stars", later settling on Conan's world. Yag-Kosha is blind and frail, suffering as a prisoner of an evil sorcerer, and begs Conan to end its torment via a mercy killing.

In Halo: Combat Evolved, the main character and human marines stumble upon an ancient parasitic lifeform known as the Flood. These creatures assimilate different organisms and are said to be encountered by an ancient race known as the Forerunners, like the Space Jockeys. The Forerunners were intelligent lifeforms, said to be more intelligent and technologically advanced than humans. They possessed highly advanced technologies before wiping themselves out in an attempt to destroy the Flood.

This is also similar to the Chozo and the Metroids in Nintendo's  Metroid series. The Chozo, an ancient, advanced alien race, created Metroids, dangerous parasitic lifeforms that would eventually become a significant threat to the galaxy.