David's drawings of Shaw and his experiments now online!

All hail the Queen Elizabeth Shaw

Some of the concepts pictured above match up with fan expressions of a possible alternate reason for Shaw's demise: that she was sick by virtue of her past contact with the black goo , and that David in his not-yet-crazed state didn't necessarily ( at least willfully ) murder her.  It could very well have been a mercy killing -- which then might have gone some way toward driving him to the insane state we see him in, ten years on.

True, his reaction to Shaw when referencing her in the film seemed to be that of remorse. But when confronting Daniels he seems to throw it all away and reveals a more sinister demeanor. Hard to say really. 

Cel. Kurtz's famous quote from "Apocalypse Now" was the first thing that came to my mind: "The horror... the horror..."

And I think using her eggs and other cells is quite likely. But imagining how he killed her is what horrifies me the most - I liked her sooo much :(

All that character development in Prometheus relegated to few minutes of Alien egg batter in Alien Covenant. So much potential wasted with her character.

Alien Covenant could have been so much better if they had taken the time to flesh our her fate properly. This seems like an after-thought.

Here's how it went down...

FOX Studios: "We want more of them Xeno creatures killing folks and less of this Ancient Aliens crap..."

RIDLEY: "Okay, I'll whack the Engineers. We'll have David slime 'em in 2 minutes... Too easy, whole technologically advanced ancient civilization wiped out in the snap of a finger..."

FOX Studios: "While you are at it, DX the religious girl..She makes us uncomfortable. Make her get chest-bursted or something particularly gruesome..."

RIDLEY: "Chest-bursting would be later on in the movie. You all want her toast quick...How about we make up that David kills her for no apparent reason before the movie really starts...? Lots of potential for mad-scientist robot experimentation..."

FOX Studios: "Sounds like a plan...Make it so and make us some money!"

But didn't Shaw say she wasn't capable of having children in Prometheus? I guess sterility is irrelevant when it comes to the black goo. But all those pictures of Shaw...Did David clone Shaw using the black goo? Or did he just keep using Shaw's body, reassembling her when he wanted to do another experiment? Maybe in the next movie, Alien Awakening, we'll find out what happened to Shaw. 

I think Shaw died as a result of her contact with the black goo, David feels remorse b/c he is the reason for her death (he spiked her hubby's drink). I think his motivation to make the AlienXeno is more ego driven, he cant create life in the biological sense, but he can create superior creatures to his God (humans) and their God (Engineers)....but control them God's dont die and by his estimation he is God for creating, taking, and managing life. So leveraging Shaw's body and local beings to "make" monsters is ego driven. I will say it would make sense that Shaws eggs to create "children" as a tribute to her. But I think to satisfy folks, I would have preferred more explicit motivation with David to nuke the engineers, shaw, etc in CCovenant. 

Im willing to bet "Awakening" is going to involve some poor souls waking up on the Covenant to Davids' Monster mash and flash back to the prior timelines...maybe provide more motivation.

This was the best part of Alien: Covenant. Not sure if she is actually dead or this was a clone or he killed her. Definitely the most horrific part of the movie! This subject alone would make a great movie.

Hmm... 4 out  of 10 pics show a severed head (more or less)... Could this indicate something?

Some seems to contradict each other...

Shaw and her eggs were mutated by the black goo. David extracted her eggs and watched them grow into full Xenomorph eggs. This matches up with the effects of the black goo on Holloway, in Prometheus. One of his sperms seems to have been infected, and mutated into the Trilobite creature, growing while it was in Shaw's womb. By the way, just because a woman is infertile, does not mean she has no eggs in her ovaries. Do some basic research on biology before you come out with things @KingKaijuGojira.

I wonder what Nooni thinks of these pictures. I imagine it would be unsettling to see a picture of yourself depicted those ways.

Wow...I think these are awesome.  What do you guys think?  Were these drawings that were planned to use in the movie?  Or were these just a set of images drawn that had potential to be used.  I remember seeing the jaw ripped off picture in the film.  Did David actually birth more Shaws or other humans hence the human skulls in his lab?

All this project taken from David's lab, is lacking in machinery which we do not see, only I can find madness sketches, possibly due to low budget of the film, I would have liked to see more like a Strickfaden lab style; David's lab is very archaic and old-fashioned in my opinion.

Beware!, I still have a couple of matters pending  in my schedule, there are some pictures of Shaw, with a very strong satanic symbolism that I will explain at the time.

Called it

Well i have only one thing to say... well not LOL

But First .... WHAT A COMPLETE MESS!!!!

Simple As That... LAZY LAZY LAZY!!!

I dont RANT! Much... but i have to with this... this is one of the Plot Holes i was looking forwards to talking about and well we just have to maybe let those who are pulling the Strings at FOX and Ridley Scott simply take a Hike and Pass the Torch!

What am i on about?  I will tell you, time and time again it seems they are putting things in the movie without even having any idea to how it all fits together... It would be like realizing a Murder has happened in the apartment over the road and so before the Police come you enter and take some clues away and then throw down a lot of random items and evidence that had nothing to do with the Murder... then wait for the CSI to try and make sense of it all...

I heard that with Prometheus the Whole Mural was just a Easter Egg, for Alien Fans nothing more...  also the Egg Fresco again nothing more than Easter Egg... So RS/FOX had put these in the movie without ever thinking "ok so we leave these clues here very vague that we know how they connect, but lets see how the fans do"

Rather than... wow cool design lets stick it in the movie even though it in NO WAY is connected AT ALL...

Take the Alien Covenant Poster... now that was interesting but again it has NOTHING to do with the Movie... Lucky it was never added to the movie!

So NEXT i will explain what is this Mess i am on about!!

Seems during Production the staff had knocked up a lot of Concept Work and Props, pretty much like they did with Prometheus, Sadly a lot of these never appeared in the movie as far as Monster Designs. (as far as PROMETHEUS goes).

TO ME......

It appears they was running with David Experimenting on the Black Goo and maybe even obtained a Egg, and the Monster Design team had to come up with a number of Monster Designs and Face Hugger Designs, and Concepts with what way could David experiment with Dr Shaw

The TEAM had came up with various designs and even used Skeletons of Chickens/Turkeys, and Cats and also Human Baby Skulls.

These are all to influence how they can design Monsters in this movie...  Then someone at FOX or RS decided "You know what would be Amazing.....? If we add all these designs and concepts into the Shoots so they appear as Davids 10 years Experiments"

And so it was......

This is why we have a lot of things like Cut Open Eggs, Cut Open various Alien Related Skulls.... all with no Signs of Acid Burns to the Organisms or David... and what Powerful tools does he have to cut through these.... NONE... only Victorian Times Surgical Tools..

All these Experiments also looked to be preserved very well...

Then we have Shaw and the Book of concepts that Daniels Find, these appear to show what David had done... Lucky for us they was shown very briefly like the Frescos in Prometheus.

And Lucky we never saw all the concepts as shown in this Post.. THEY ARE JUST THAT.... Concept Works

But having them in the movie will make people think they have to connect, and it sends people up the wrong garden path...  The Hole Lab has a lot of Flaws... such as how the Urns are not activated, and the Vials from within are not Activated...  not like in Prometheus.

So i think its Lazy little things like NOT-THINKING how things shown will potentially be connected down the line, that has caused a mess and more so than Prometheus... its just a lack of Foresight....  Daniels finding out Walter is David is another one.. which means surely now this means Daniels can only play a Small Role in the next movie?

So i am going to have to THROW these Concepts out as being NON-CANNON...

Apart from those that are shown in the Movie... otherwise how does Shaw Loose her Hair, and Head then get it Re-attached etc etc... maybe David is drawing her with no Hair, when she actually had it?

But i am always open to Debates, and look at interesting ways to explain these Concepts.. if we do fancy taking them as Actually Experiments by David..

And so in which case.. Maybe i can throw this IDEA out there?

What if some Female Engineers Survived and David experimented on them, and got so close to Perfection but then Ran out of Hosts.... So close... yet so far...

The only thing he then had left was Dr Shaw... and he had no choice but to used her Body.. maybe She was kept in Cryo-sleep for a long time or passed away.. but David kept her Body on Ice until he had no more Female Hosts?

Looking at the Concepts we vaguely saw in AC... which one is of Shaw with no Body/Jaw...

This is shown so quick that in the movie it only looks like Shaw is Regurgitating Something up... and so looks like Hallets Throat Burster.

I would assume this happened then to Shaw if i look at the Pictures only as vaguely as we saw in the Movie, the other has Shaw with a Tube down her throat... and so this would show she was then given a Embryo like from a kind of Face Hugger, which would then explain why her Body Cavity was open, as David opened her up to remove this....  Maybe this was first... and Throat Burster was next?

Then as Basically Shaw was now as good as Dead... David then takes out her Reproductive Organs to experiment on her Eggs.

I feel these are what kinds of Experiments could have happened.

She was his creative muse.

Everything he has accomplished has been through her/with her... Even down to the rogue signal that brought the covenant team to that planet.  

@BigDave - I totally agree with all your comments sir.  LAZY!!  They ruined to continuity and how things should be properly linked.  I am sorry but I highly doubt an android will be capable of all this.  

Despite these unnusual ad expected setbacks one thing that struck me is not finding a glimpse of technology in everywhere inside the temple where David lives, how is this possible? 

"This is actually interesting, so let's leave it out."

There's way more to this than fans have been told yet. If nothing else, they ditched Noomi Rapace for a Ripley clone. Did they even notice the woman can barely act and is much, much less believable as an action heroine than Rapace?

I hope there's no follow-up to Covenant. It will just get worse. But it is amusing that Daniels or whatever her name is almost certainly won't survive for the next installment, if David so coldly butchered Shaw.

Zzzzz

This gets right to the root of Ridleys failings with these movies. he clearly inspires lots of blue sky thinking from the various artists BUT never makes a selection which is bound inside the story and becomes part of the narrative. its all completely speculative !

What Covenant has shown is that far from the headroom and its elements being full of clues its not, its full of speculations. This approach is extended in Covenant.

The docking tug looked great but what happened to it.

The multiple headroom adds texture but what the f... is it.

These drawings which are supposed to lead us to Giger's Beast tell us more about the artist than the story they are supposed to represent.

if you want a coherent story you also need some rules. The pathogen should take its victim like the worms and turn into an over sexualised deeply unsympathetic outcome. The hammerpede echoed that but where is the continuity between the exploding head, Fifield, Charlie and the Engineers of Paradise. Clearly what should have happened after the hammerpede penetrates Milburn is a proto xeno should have emerged. Incubate, bust and something grows out of it.

With Shaw we had established a novel approach, the pathogen re stimulates her reproductive system, how that could have gone forward into Covenant is obvious. Instead we have this botched half told story where we are not all certain how and why David overcame her, though as Chris said the only pointer is his dialogue with Daniels, suggests he did and some vague notion he used her body parts where miraculously her face is beautifully preserved.

How about either :-

a) Continuity with her experience in Prometheus which is part of Davids anger.

b) She tries to leave and David turns on her. 

By just rationalising away his behaviour what we get is a psychopathic robot who survives the movie and we want him stopped as quickly as possible because he is mad. I am completely bemused how a character who is now at best evil personified or worse just pursues random plot convenient turn abouts can be of interest next time round. 

My apologies if I seem to be repeating elements of what I have said before but these drawings build a picture, that there is no picture no coherent plan beyond Michael, how to use him and how to feed his narrative. 

@Existenzable

My take on Ridleys response in an interview with Empire is Daniels is toast. 

This kind of thinking is counter intuitive. If your going to make a series of films and build up audience loyalty you do not do it by killing off everybody and starting again you ruin the previous movie.

I haven't watched Prometheus since AC but I have a horrible feeling that it has been emotionally devalued by Covenant and indeed what I thought he would avoid, the Hicks-ing, will have been replayed again. When you have episodic television you build it through many journeys and we come to love the characters. If you kill of a particular character it has to be huge and leaves a creative scar on whats goes on afterwards. Flash backs et etc multiple movies have to work the same way.

The result of all this is I could not care less what happens to David in the next movie. He isn't on a journey where experience build up and mean something, because anything goes and so the plot is the same, just to pass a couple of hours.    

Put simply none of this means anything to me. He isn't growing the legend he is sucking the life out of it. It demonstrates the danger of using a robot who demonstrably can and will anything to serve the plot. The only thing that can make a robot interesting is when it becomes more than one and that requires emotional consistency and development not incoherent random acts of cruelty.

David IMO is one of the best characters of the entire franchise.

^^^^

Michael is superb and his performance in Prometheus and the Crossing absolutely fascinating the most interesting character in the franchise  but the narrative explanation of Shaw/David is botched and in the third act reduces him to the child in Omen. 

I would like to say that i am embarrassed that i spent so much time on a:c. that also takes away the value of the hours spent debating Prometheus.  

Over the last few days i had a bit of acceptance that it just will never be what i hoped it would and to try and enjoy what it is.

Its just so easy to get back to the thoughts that i was let down. by this movie.

Every topic is littered with the films inconsistencies, due to there being so many.

One of the worst bits for me though, is the flippant way that they  go about the franchise and the reasoning behind decisions which affect the story massively.

Davids reasons for hating humanity.  Not acceptable reasons.

Killing the "Engineers" - No reasons given except for RS poor interview. Not acceptable.

 This could be a five page list but we are all aware of that so ill leave it there.

 Im still watching it 1 or twice a week tho!! 

I'm sad..... the infusion of concept art post mortem is not clarifying nor world building, and honestly comes across as many have stated here, many clues to no end. These drawings are great, beautifully rendered works of nightmarish art. But none of these drawings make any friggin' sense! Was she cloned? There isnt even continuity in these drawings, let alone on the story. I keep going back to "the third movie will explain" but that's what I was saying leading up to AC. Why oh why would the spend so much time on the lore, building all these elements that lead you to believe the alien world is vast, dark, and deep, but then just leave those roads not taken. I liked AC, but its just not what I wanted and thats ok of course, but I hate this GREY area that AC invokes, this in between which comes across as a dumbing down of really broad and engaging themes. I think thee drawings further infuriate me because THIS is where they could have said so much with just visuals. The sets, the art, the flashbacks, those were the opportunities where they could have told us so much about the engineers, the ancient timelines they and the xeno have, the purpose of the city and planet, the LORE! all atleast partially flushed out with just visuals. There are so many scenes in this movie that werent necessary and if they had used that time to explain the more interesting aspects, this movie could have been a masterpiece in what will be one of the best scifi trilogies. IDK ive only seen it once and I like it but I am really disapointed by all this marketing and concept effort with no clear end game. And I am just not a fan of the LOST treatment where everything is bait and switch and you leave feeling like the people who made the movie dont even know what its about. Everything doesnt have to be spoon fed, but if I wanted to just pose answers and use my imagination for all the guidelines and possible directions, I'd just write my own basic plaot and sit around IMAGINING what it could be. I go to see movies beccause they are one timeline with distinct boundaries that i then can add my own interpretations. This series is starting to feel like each movie is stand alone. Sorry for rant, but these incoherent drawings (although beautiful) really bummed me out lol 

 And what ever happened to learning more about how the xenos get around so stealthy and easily? I thought there were talks about learning something new about how they travel....

Good concept art , but not in alien covenant  , very disappointed

The breast of shaw turns into egg alien?

Lv226 well Walter did comment on how light footed David was so maybe David imprints that into them. I agree too with you on cutting some scenes out to make room for the super important stuff like What the hell happened to Shaw. Like add that intro crap with Waylen to viral marketing , jeepers. I wonder if Ridley getting hurt on set led to this mess as big Dave points out. I know in one interview he is high as a kite and he ain't drinking alcohol I'm sure of it. Lots of people get on pain pills after an injury then have a hard time getting off, it's just a guess. I do admire many aspects of this film with him trying hard to please everyone. It just really hurts how this one feels phoned in or that he refuses to be a team player is my take. As others have said, David has left no appeal to me seeing how this could develop in the next film as it just feels like a bad TV series with one cliffhanger after another with no payoff. Its gonna take some serious talent to pull this one out of the ditch but I don't think the beast is cooked. That new director from "Get Out" is so fresh I think if you gave him a pile of cash he could make a crazy sequel to that which is totally bizarre but wins at the box office by word of mouth. My best friend did not have to leave his couch last weekend when the free pirated cam footage of "good qualty" version of AC  went online! So films have to be kinda special to beat that new dynamic

Hmm. So David = H R Giger, basically?

Given what we know from the film and the novelization, paired with these images, it seems likely that, at some point, David was especially focused on trying to preserve her *head* without the body, with different ideas about how to do that. That would explain the purpose of the weird "biomechanoid halo" that she has in the film. I like the idea that she incubated a burster of some sort and that what we see in the film are the remains of David's attempts to preserve her and any useful parts of her anatomy thereafter for his own purposes.

In any event, it's all creepy as f*ck, and I love it!

The best Alien trailer ever:

http://mashable.com/2017/05/26/trailer-mix-alien-as-a-comedy/#zPAr_wkP1mqb

JakeHansson44: I feel so silly for liking that but it was hilarious. Now we know who killed everyone onboard. :D

That's some artwork.  Since all of these photos show Shaw's demise in differing scenarios/methods, it's logical to assume that these were intended as either "plans" that he was fleshing out, or they were created as a part of a fetish in David's twisted programming.  It's impossible to determine if any of these photos represent what really happened to Shaw, and we'll probably never know.

With regard to the "Engineer(s)" story arc, one can easily see that it was trashed when the Engineer as "Jesus Christ" twist became untenable.  It was all a bit of a dead end, and it was easier to just kill them all off.

Somebody mentioned what Shaw would think of the images.  I'm sure that she was paid for her likeness in them.

They could probably just call the next film: "Alien: David Kills Everyone.  Again."

Some of David's drawings have really detailed notes written on them and there was a really good thread on reddit where people were deciphering them: https://www.reddit.com/r/LV426/comments/6guhx6/deciphering_the_text_on_davids_illustrations/

Pietro Scalia the editor of both Prometheus and Covenant has this to say when asked about the benefits of his familiarity with Promethues. its quite a long answer but the key element as regards the speculative drawings of "what happened to Shaw" are.

Ridley and the writers wanted to incorporate the destruction of the Engineers’ world as a prologue to bridge the two films and to show what happened to Shaw after she and David went traveling to the Creators/Engineers’ world. There were a lot more scenes that connect directly to Prometheus but structurally it didn’t work to have two or three scenes or about 12 mins. of film that connect one film to the next. And then start the actual story of AC. I think that the prologue scene with Weyland and David sets up the thematic of creation in a more cinematically elegant and concise way.  In the overall context of the film, Prometheus, connects halfway through Alien Covenant as a flashback. At a point when it was important to tell what happened to the Engineers planet, the destruction, and the truth yet a hidden lie on David’s part. It could possibly help answer some questions for people who had seen Prometheus, but I don’t think it takes away from people who hadn’t. We also tried to have two flashbacks, when David touches Shaw’s grave and explains to Walter what happened and how she died, again another misdirection from David. 

For me this is a straight forward betrayal of the Prometheus audience. Covenant was a sequel to Prometheus and to talk as if there is a random audience who might or might not have seen Prometheus is frankly a failure to understand your audience.

Its clear from everything that he says and elsewhere that the emphasis was rebooting the series as a monster movie with the connections with Prometheus being a necessarily evil and of course what is ironic is that many of the audience think the films  momentum is killed from the point that David appears and others find the second act deeply frustrating and the third act dull and predictable. "A camel is indeed a horse designed by a committee". What is good about all of this is we can now see very clearly what was in the teams mind and why we ended up with what we did. 

Maybe just maybe a directors cut will emerge, which like so many directors cuts are much longer and much more fulfilling. It is a mystery to me why we have never had one for Prometheus.  

New user here and my first post so here goes.  I'm a life long franchise fan but I've only begun to start really looking into the story of prometheus and AC, so if anything here is what a layman perceived in regards to the fate of Shaw.

Keep in mind I read the book before watching the movie, not sure if the book is considered canon.  But based upon what I saw in the movie it was clear to me that Shaw was in fact murdered by David through experimentation.  Yes the book goes into greater detail which colored my perception but it would be the same.

1. Shaw's mutilated and clearly modified corpse is witnessed in one of the scenes, hard to ignore that.

2. David tells 'the new ripley' that he is going to do the exact same thing to her, coupled with the artwork that while seemingly contradictory shows that David took great pleasure in Shaw's fate.  Serial killers are known to make drawings such as this and they don't always match up to the actual crimes they committed. 

I can understand why people would want to see a different outcome for Shaw, she was a cool character.  I felt the same way about Hicks when Alien 3 came out (I was 10 years old at the time and was VERY disapointed).  But for me Shaw's fate really isn't much of a mystery in the film, and if I include what I read in the book there is zero doubt at all (again not sure if the book is considered canon).

On the flip side, I find what happened to Shaw to be trully horrifying and the corpse scene at least to me was a very clear nod to Giger.

All in all I like this element of the story which is perhaps part of the reason why I have no issue with seeing it this way.  Even if it is disgusting and terrible it's certainly a more interesting way to go than being impaled by a safety apparatus in a crash landing...seriously, they couldn't have thought of any better way for Hicks to go? Anyway that's an entirely different movie but I thought I would reference it since it seems people have the same disappointment that I did when Alien 3 came out.