"What happened to the rest of the crew?"

[deezelboy]

There's even the fact that as Kane is lowered down into the pit there is a wall behind him, if the chamber was part of the ship I would think the wall would have been in front of him to match the room the Jockey was in - to give the impression of an extension of the hull to a lower deck.

That's a very good point, and one I hadn't noticed before.  Thanks!

If memory serves in the novelization either Kane or Dallas makes reference to the fact that Kane is actually below ground as he is descending into the egg chamber.

Yeah, that line also crops up in all the scripts - from StarBeast, where the Eggs are found in an area below the pyramid, to the Hill&Giler June '78 script, where the shaft from the Derelict goes down below ground level, emerging into a cave/pit which is then referred to as a hold/storage area.  All a bit odd.

It's been a while since I've read it, but I think it was in one of the magazines that were published around Alien's release; possibly the one from Warren Publishing.

Think it's also in The Alien Portfolio.

[DAVIE]

So do we actually know if they explored all the ship because there could have been hundreds of more rooms with MORE eggs! Plus they must have had amazing equipment to keep the eggs closed because as soon as you go near the eggs they immediately hatch!

[CHAINS]

They only explored some. Once Kane got the Facehugger on, They went back to the ship immediatly. From what the movie shows. 

[maledoro]

When you have a fallen shipmate with an unfamiliar organism on his face, the last thing you'd want to do is go siteseeing.

[CHAINS]

When you have a fallen shipmate with an unfamiliar organism on his face, the last thing you'd want to do is go siteseeing.

Excactly, It leaves allot to mystery as to whats in the ship.

[Thedus]

So do we actually know if they explored all the ship because there could have been hundreds of more rooms with MORE eggs! Plus they must have had amazing equipment to keep the eggs closed because as soon as you go near the eggs they immediately hatch!

Not to go back to the novelization, but in the book they did wander around a bit before finding the Jockey.  They found the source of the acoustical beacon and Lambert found what was described as a "broken urn."  Kane did not see this - He was looking at something else (I think the beacon... it's been a couple of years), so he didn't make the connection that once he was in the pit what Lambert had found was an ancient spent egg.  I think the insinuation was supposed to be that this is where the Jockey's facehugger came from.

Because of how the movie is done the implication is that the Jockey was the first thing they came upon, and then they sent Kane down into the pit.

...One little nit pick: In ALIENS Ripley states that Kane had said there were thousands of eggs in the Derelict... We never heard him say that. 

When you have a fallen shipmate with an unfamiliar organism on his face, the last thing you'd want to do is go siteseeing.

Not to mention that was last thing Lambert wanted to do in the first place.

[oniyama]

...One little nit pick: In ALIENS Ripley states that Kane had said there were thousands of eggs in the Derelict... We never heard him say that. 

The only explanation I have is that it was part of the dinner conversation before they were so rudely interrupted.   When that scene starts, Kane is full dressed and they've had enough time to lay out and start eating dinner.  No doubt he would have retold some of his experiences from the derelict, those he could remember.  The crew certainly would be asking.  After all, inquiring minds want to know...

[maledoro]

...One little nit pick: In ALIENS Ripley states that Kane had said there were thousands of eggs in the Derelict... We never heard him say that.

Some of what Ripley had told the Board was speculation on her part. For instance, she couldn't have known if the eggs came in with the derelict or if they were loaded there a long time ago. As for her stating that there were thousands of eggs, she may have added that just to make the situation sound more urgent.

[SiL]

I'm with oniyama - I figured it was said off-screen. Seems the sort of thing that would come up.

[xeno_alpha_07]

...One little nit pick: In ALIENS Ripley states that Kane had said there were thousands of eggs in the Derelict... We never heard him say that.

The legacy DVD and Laser Disc features has the 'Lambert confronts Ripley' deleted scene has the extra segment not in the Directors Cut where Ripley asks Lambert what happend to Kane and she replies:

Lambert : It was in the derelict. Look, we were inside and there was nothing around, and he volunteered to go down below. He found these...egg things. We lost communication and the next thing we bring him up and he's got this thing on his face!

With this scene deleted the only explaination is, as mentioned, was that it was said off-screen.

[Grumpz]

But weren't the eggs located beneath the ship?  Also the shape and size of the egg chamber never seemed to fit with the shape and size of the ship... it felt bigger somehow.

I agree 100%.  They seem to only cliimb up a few feet into the ship, then up a few more into the Jockey's room, but Kane ends up going way down into a huge egg chamber that doesn't fit the the ship size at all.  It's more like a cave.  Maybe it wasn't intentional, but to me, it's like the ship was on top of sunken chamber. 

Maybe it's a base, and the ship was at the loading dock?

[oniyama]

I agree 100%.  They seem to only cliimb up a few feet into the ship, then up a few more into the Jockey's room, but Kane ends up going way down into a huge egg chamber that doesn't fit the the ship size at all.  It's more like a cave.  Maybe it wasn't intentional, but to me, it's like the ship was on top of sunken chamber. 

Maybe it's a base, and the ship was at the loading dock?

There is a long shot of the derelict ship before Dallas, Lambert and Kane go into it that will give you some idea of the scale.  I have a model kit of the derelict (that I have not yet built ) that has the chamber with the space jockey at the very top of the ship.  If you can find the painting of the the derelict ship's top view that Giger did it shows that location as a circle/dome at the top of the ship.  Given that scale, Kane could easily drop down as far as he did and still be in the belly of the ship.

My guess is that they went up the equivalent of four to six stories, certainly enough to account for the depth of the egg chamber.

It may seem that they only went up a few feet but one should take note that there was a whole lot of walking through the ship that wasn't shown.  It wasn't shown because cinematically it would have quickly gotten boring.

The issue is that when they were making the film they were shooting for what was visually impressive, which the egg chamber is.  They really did not put much thought about the details of the derelict ship beyond what furthered the story.  That leaves us to speculate and try to make sense of it all.

[wmmvrrvrrmm]

Giger did a cutaway sketch that shows the jockey chamber in relation to the gangway and entrance and to the size of the rest of the ship on p33 at the bottom left of Giger's Alien, and well that idea came through before they decided there was an egg chamber below the pilot's chamber and the next sketch along shows the room from above in relation to the entrance of the ship. So it seems that the walls of the pilot chamber during that stage of design were the walls of the ship

[Hooper]

According to Dan O'Bannon, the planet was dying and being the benevolent creatures they were, the Jockeys wanted to preserve the remaining specimens of this species; not knowing the danger they were soon to be in.

I really like this theory, especially when you consider that the beacon was transmitting a warning to stay away.  If the Jockeys were such a ruthless, warmongering species, as some theories suggest, why would the Pilot bother to turn on the beacon at all?  If that were the case, I would wager that the Pilot would most certainly have left it unactivated, figuring anything that comes along and discovers the ship deserves the fate that awaits in the cargo hold/chamber.

[BishopIII]

 No disrespect to the late O'Bannon, but his idea about the alien/space jockey relationship is deeply flawed. For starters, all this is happening on a planetoid that is 1200 Km in diameter. How does a place like that have a gravity of 0.86? Especially considering that Ash's analysis of the planetoid reveals it to be 'rock, lava base'. Such a world wouldn't have such a strong gravitational pull, unless it were almost entirely solid lead! Such a planetoid, therefore, couldn't have supported any kind of atmosphere, and why are there no real traces of sedimentation? This would mean that the aliens couldn't have originated there, and would have had to have been transported from somewhere else, with more room for such a fast-paced biosphere.

Maybe there is more of the ship embedded underground? Perhaps volcanic activity covered up some of it? Or, IMO, it is in the ship on ground level. That ship looked absolutely huge compared to Kane, Dallas and Lambert, and we don't know exactly which way Kane was facing in the egg chamber (in relation to the derelicts' orientation, so the 'cave' could just be another chamber of the ship. Plus it looks like the rest of the ship, more or less (those chest elements in the walls are too repetitive and ordered to be alien resin).