20th Century Fox hadn't even begun to consider a sequel to Alien. It was incredibly successful, sure, but this was in the halcyon days when every so often a studio would consider not turning everything into a long-running franchise with increasingly diminishing returns (John McClane, whatever happened to you?). It was only when James Cameron expressed an interest to his producer that Aliens got off the ground. The hotshot young director had just come off the blockbuster hit of his first Terminator film, and the world was his oyster. Apparently that oyster looked a lot like a facehugger egg to him. Not just one, but dozens, with the second Alien film being an all-guns-blazin' affair. In fact Cameron was so jazzed at the idea of a sequel he'd written a spec script before the Terminator even got made. Fox waited to see how that turned out before officially giving him the gig, with his second draft cutting out a whole bunch of neat stuff: more time with Newts family, Ripley calling the facehugger a walking sex organ and tiny albino warrior aliens in the egg chamber.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
