Space Jockey

The Space Jockey is an unidentified alien featured in the film Alien. Though very little information has been provided about this mysterious character, his presence plays a pivotal role in the mythos and it is through him that the audience is first introduced to the world of the Xenomorphs.

Biography
The space jockey is an interplanetary traveler of extraterrestrial origin. Almost nothing is known about his species or where the jockey originally hailed from. It has been theorized that the jockey is a bio-mech, likely part of a military operation responsible for transporting a weapon carrier craft to the planetoid known as Acheron at some point in the distant past.

The cargo bay of his carrier contained a nursery, which included a bed of thousands of Xenomorph eggs. At some point in time, the jockey activated a distress beacon on his ship, sending it out across the Zeta II Reticuli System and neighboring systems. This likely took place just prior to landing on Acheron. The true nature of the beacon is itself a mystery. He may have sent it as a warning of the dangerous species aboard his ship, or he may have been attempting to lure unwary space farers to his location so that they could be used as bio-gestation chambers for the Xenomorphs. Whatever his intent, the pilot found himself a victim of the very creatures that he was transporting.

In 2122, the commercial freighter USCSS Nostromo picked up the distress beacon and sent an away team down to the planetoid's surface to investigate it. They found the fossilized remains of the pilot, fused to the seat of his command chair. The ribs of his chest protruded outward as if something had burst its way out from the inside. The first officer, Kane, found the xenomorph nursery in the cargo hold and was attacked by an embryonic "facehugger" (the virtual larval stage of a xenomorph). Desperate to save Kane's life, the crew hurriedly brought him back aboard the Nostromo.

The derelict remained undisturbed for several decades. By the year 2159, Colony LV-426 had been established on Acheron, but it wasn't until 2179 that someone discovered the derelict and its deceased pilot. Russ Jordan, a "wildcatter" working at the colony, was sent to investigate the derelict by order of Weyland-Yutani executive Carter Burke. Based upon information he had gathered from Ellen Ripley (a member of the original landing crew), Burke knew about the Xenomorph egg chamber and deliberately put Jordan and his family at risk in the hopes of obtaining a specimen. Like Kane before him, Jordan was attacked by a facehugger and impregnated with a xenomorph seed.

Ripley and a troupe of Colonial Marines came to LV-426 and engaged in an entire nest of xenomorphs. Ultimately, Ripley and Corporal Dwayne Hicks escaped from the carnage and set off a thermonuclear weapon that destroyed the colony, the derelict and the remains of the space jockey.

Notes & Trivia
The physical appearance of the space jockey was designed by Swiss artist H.R. Giger.