Derelict (Alien)

The Derelict was the name given to the long-wrecked spacecraft discovered by the crew of the Nostromo on the planet LV-426 in the 1979 science fiction film, Alien. The Derelict was an alien ship; however it extremely unlikely that it was created by the species of the titular alien. Rather, this ship was used and most likely constructed by beings of a different species from the title creature.

The Derelict was a large, wishbone-shaped craft with three large vagina-shaped openings in front of what is assumed to be the cockpit. It is from one of these openings that three of the Nostromo crew members (Captain Dallas, Navigator Lambert, and Executive Officer Kane) entered the ship. The interior of the Derelict seemed to resemble more a giant beast than a spacegoing vessel, with its skeletal walls, circular gangways and and steep passages. In a enormous cockpit room, on a turntable-like structure was a giant alien life form that appeared to have been dead for a long time, since it was fossilized. It appeared to have grown out of its equally enormous chair. It was sitting at a giant telescopic object that pointed upward that is assumed to be the pilot's controls. It also had a huge hole in its chest with bones bent outward, as if something exploded from the inside.

Very little is known about this long dead organism inside the Derelict, which the Alien production team named "The Space Jockey". H.R. Giger, designer of the Derelict and the Space Jockey, originally named it simply "The Pilot". Lambert of the Nostromo brought up the question of what happened to the rest of the crew on the Derelict, since no remains of any other "Space Jockeys" were found on board.

In a large hole near the side of the Space Jockey's "turntable" was a pit leading down to an enormous cave-like cargo hold filled with thousands of leathery eggs, covered by a thin layer of blue mist that reacted when broken. This room was called "the egg chamber" for obvious reasons.

The Derlict and its inhabitant, the Space Jockey, remain a total mystery and virtually nothing is ever said about either throughout the entire Alien series.

It is generally assumed that the Derelict was essentially destroyed in the thermonuclear meltdown and subsequent explosion of the atmosphere processor in Aliens. The Derelict was never seen again after Alien except for its brief appearance in the 1991 Special Edition of Aliens which depicted its discovery by the Jorden family.