Warning! This article contains spoilers for Alien #5
After more than a few encounters with the cosmic monsters in Alien, the synthetic Bishop has finally learned to steal the xenomorphs’ greatest trick. The titular creatures have always acted like a swarm of ants when they create a hive and go on the attack.
In Alien #5 by Phillip Kennedy Johnson with art by Salvador Larroca and Guru-eFX, Bishop finds himself up against a horde of scientifically enhanced xenomorphs along with a group of hired soldiers and activists. In an effort to escape the alien-infested Earth-orbiting laboratory, the team splits up for a better chance at survival. In order to evade the xenomorphs, Bishop and his companion take a trick from the aliens’ book and travel through the ceiling.
It has been established throughout the Alien mythos and reiterated in Marvel’s Alien series that all Bishop synthetics share memories based on function. Marvel’s Alien takes place in the year 2200, twenty-one years after the event of the film Aliens takes place. Bishop made his debut on Hadley’s Hope where he witnessed the efficiency of the xenomorph’s hunting abilities. One of their primary tactics is using the ceiling and vents as means of quick and easy access to all corners of a ship. Bishop realized through his past lives that if the xenomorphs can pull it off, there’s no reason he couldn’t.
While using the Xenomorph’s hunting tactics as a means to survival is a brilliant example of necessary adaptation skills, it isn’t that original. People aboard another scientific space station once used the same method of ventilation travel to evade the Xenomorphs. In the novel Alien: The Cold Forge by Alex White, there too was a breach on a Weyland-Yutani vessel with a group of people trying to escape with their lives. In order to survive, those crew members also used the vents to crawl around the alien horde. Their plan nearly came back to bite them, however, as one character came across a hibernating Xenomorph in the vent through which they were crawling. While the tense moment made for suspenseful reading, the characters survived that encounter.
So far, Bishop has been lucky enough to not encounter a Xenomorph while crawling through the same ceilings and vents. The idea has been explored through other media of the prospect of getting caught by a Xenomorph while hiding out in such a confined space. If Bishop continues to think like a Xenomorph with the hope of evading or beating them, he may have to come face to face with one in the near future, then hopefully the next Bishop in the Alien saga will learn from that one’s mistake.