I was looking through the UFOpedia of the first game, looking up for some source material on Mutons so I could do sketches.

Anyway, I was reading the UFOpedia description and I noticed as to how they had cybernetic upgrades to their bodies. Looking at other aliens, some of them had cybernetics as well.

But what got me was the fact that Mutons had armour plating in a skin suit with cybernetics underneath.

Now, I don't know why no-one else has thought of it. But wouldn't it make Mutons a bit like terminators? (The ones from the Terminator films if you are wondering.)

Thing with Mutons though, is that they are an actual alien race, naturally evolved to be dumb, but rather tough, humanoid creatures. The image you see in the UFOpedia autopsy shows the Muton's natural purple skin. The Green outer skin is the armour you speak of, half worn, half grafted onto the body itself. The muton's are tough, good warriors if you can tame them. But at the end of the day they aren't armour plated, they're not even particularly thick skinned! Hence the biomechanical armour the aliens gave them when they bought them to earth. They'd used Mutons for similar purposes once before, but that's a different story

Says in the UFOPedia that the Mutons are intelligent.

Yes, the UFOpedia does say that, but they rely on the Ethereals. If the telepathic connection is stopped. Their mental system breaks down and they die. Yes, they are intelligent, but only as long as they are connected to Ethereals.

Hmm, it seems there is still a corner of the UFOpedia I haven't memorised! Kudos to you Gimli!

All the alien races rely on the Alien Brain, if I remember right. It dies, they die. Which is pretty idiotic if you're anyone except the Brain. Without that psionic connection, which all the alien races have, they die. Or perhaps this was revised in later games?

I'm pretty sure the aliens, with the exception of the Mutons, relied on the brain for leadership (as opposed to life).

For example, the Sectoids manage to make it to Apocalypse.

Not exactly. The brain controls the sectoids and the ethereals. The sectoids and ethereals control the other aliens on the earth. Sectopods and Mutons rely on Ethereals on the battlefield. Not the brain. I don't think the brain has enough power to influence the aliens on earth. Otherwise, why would the aliens have bases on the earth in the game?

Also, in TFTD there isn't any psionics, there's only MC to use. Molecular control is not psionics.

Interceptor follows UFO in terms of leadership whist in Apocalypse the aliens are controlled by the micronoid organisms.

The alien brain in UFO is the ultimate threat. As the Ethereals mutated, evolved and spliced their DNA with that of other psionically gifted creatures. They produced all kinds of new lifeforms...

We know for a fact that the level of psionic dependancy felt by the Ethereals makes unconsciousness almost fatal as the few organs that do still operate are psionically stimulated.

As the level of physical atrophy increased, so the level of mental dependence grew. Every time the Ethereals created a new more powerful psionic being it became like part of a communications network. It expanded and improved the effectiveness of the psionics in uzse by all the other aliens nearby.

As time goes on, the ethereals become increasingly dependant on these outside influences and the influences themselves become more and more powerful.

Eventually after millions of years the Ethereals are left under the control of these super-brains, each capable of controlling entire planets, sometimes a whole solar system.

When the brain dies, the aliens are mentally destroyed, after so many million years of natural and unnatural integration into this psionic web, its removal is devastating. The web had become the ethereals only means of communication. So much of their psionic power was provided by these brains that they are left with virtually nothing. The Ethereals would certainly die in hours due to respiratory failure.

Other aliens would have more difficult to determine fates. Silacoids and reapers for example are wild creatures enslaved by the aliens, they shouldn't die as they weren't psionically capable and so feel no loss when the brain dies. The Mutons, Snakemen, Floaters and Chryssalids were alien races but they were all simply enslaved by the use of psionic manipulation. Again, they had no dependance, it would be like waking from a dream and they would have their freedom again. Sectoids are a tricky one, it's easy to imagine them made useless and a race wide panic would ensue but would they die? Probably not...

Okay, I got another movie tie-in.

Doom the movie and Chryssalids.

I was reading the wiki UFOpedia http://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php?title=F...ter:_Chryssalid
and I noticed just how similar to the way of infection in the Doom movie is almost EXACTLY the same as the impregnation process described in the Field Manual: Data Canister: Chryssalid.

"Reproduction is quite a disturbing matter... Behind the mandible plates, which give a Chryssie a very pleasant smile, there is a sort of tongue located just underneath the digestive tract. About eight inches long, three wide, the tip is slightly concave, with a kind of... beak, in the centre. Very flexible organ. The Chryssalid latches onto its victim with the tip of its tongue, there's a specialised muscle grouping which allows it to flex the concavity, producing a suction effect which leaves a very distinctive bruise pattern, almost like a hickey.

"The central beak, or perhaps a flat two-part needle, one might call it, is gouged into the flesh. Typically there will be an egg, three inches long, about an eighth of an inch wide, within this beak. The two halves swing open, and the egg is deposited about three to four inches underneath the flesh, along with about sixty CCs worth of a very powerful psychotic drug... It basically makes rational reasoning impossible, triggers flight or fight reflexes, deadens pain... very nasty."

Now I know there are some changes in the way that the infection/impregnation goes. But the simple fact that something is inserted into the victim's neck and irreversibly change that victim makes it the same.

Well, I know that flavor text by heart, because it's written by one of our guys here, but since I never saw Doom the Movie, what happens there?

I don't really want to tell too much because it is a quite central to the storyine.

Basically an "human-like advanced civilsation" is dug up by scientists and the genetic scientists on the team discover a synthetic "24th" chromosone that made them superhuman. Heal 50X faster and smarter, etc, etc.

Anyway, that happens before the movie starts. But what is told during the film is that the "24th" chromosone reacts to certain "Genetic markers." Like Psychotic behaviour. (Convicts and such are the main group with these genetic markers.)

"C24" as its dubbed in the film makes monsters out of people with the genetic markers for psychos and superhumans for the ones who don't have such genetic markers.

Anyway, once someone is transformed into a monster, they find another person with the same genetic markers and latch onto the neck, insert the detachable "tongue" that then converts the victim into another monster. And so the process repeats itself.

And those turned into monsters tend to kill those without the same genetic markers. (the ones for the Superhuman group)

Did I talk too much? I don't know.

This is the only part of the text I'd like to comment on, because I don't fully agree with it. Bear in mind that as those species would "have their freedom", they would also be in a state of deep shock. They were not captured on some world and enslaved, they were bred by the aliens, just like their parents and grandparents. They don't know how to live on their own, they don't even know how to live on their own. Their personalities are practically non-existant, and even if they retain some of the skills and behaviors they learnt during the formation process, they would be unable to adapt it to the new world. They wouldn't even able to communicate with one another.
I think Chryssalids would probably just run wild as smart, mean, solitary predators, trying to figure out a way of survival; I feel they are the best suited for the change, simply because they're so aggressive (but I don't know if it would take them far). Snakemen would just curl up and do nothing, unless interfered with. Mutons would die from the neural shock... And Floaters, who knows - but I think same as Snakemen.

I was told that if you feed birds in your backyard every day for years (many bird generations), and then one day stop feeding them, they will all die because they won't know how to feed themselves. I'd imagine that would hold true for the X-COM aliens as the Ethereals/Sectoids would have raised and controlled them from "birth".