Yog,

Thanks for continually working on this.  I was wondering where my last replies from a week or so ago went, but you must have started a new thread.  Some thoughts:

1.  I am still having the most difficult time with the egg sacs origins.  I guess I could technically buy that the mutagen turned existing fungi into a sac of sorts, since it's not technically flora (though it's not fauna, either).  But it's REALLY difficult to think it could turn fungi into little wasp-motes, even as the science in the movie goes with the do-almost-everything goo.  I could buy that the wasp-motes my use the mutated fungi egg sacs as a home/hive of sorts, and that they were laying dormant (conserving their energy) waiting for a host since apparently everything else had died off.  But in my theory that would bring up the origins of the wasp-motes, themselves.  I guess the easiest explanation of that would simply be that they are mutated native mini-wasp, but the evidence of them would be neomorph creatures (or even just carcasses) around the planet, right?

2.  As for how they infect their host, Dave brought up what I thought was a good question: If each of these creatures carries an egg, and they are all infecting the host, why don't we see a whole bunch of neomorphs growing in a host instead of just one?  Do they cannablize each other inside the host until there is only one?  Another problem I had with the wasp-mote theory is that we see them essentially dive into the human body.  Where do they end up?  Do they all just die in the host's body once they lay their egg(s)?

I do like how much has been explained, as almost none of this was obvious from the movie by itself.  But, it does still leave some holes, IMO.

*snip

Well, the story of the Space Jockey has been changed. Everyone can see that it’s a skeleton (or fossil) but they changed it into being a space suit. I hope they won’t change the story on LV-223, about the outbreak and an engineer leaving with the cargo hold filled with xeno-eggs (himself infected).

That was what Prometheus was all about. They created us and experimented in the facilities on LV-223. They created the black goo, they created us and they created the xenomorph.

@ BD,

What's a T-2000?

http://www.avpgalaxy.net/files/scripts/alien-covenant-2015-11-20.pdf

" I don’t like films where you invest in a character and they get destroyed at the end"

Michelle Johnston mentioning of Origae-6 (Auriga) I believe is another trick to lead us astray. Like the 2000 colonists from Covenant (false hint at a xenomorph army or the thousands of eggs from the derelict). It would have been too flawed to find David on Origae-6, so they where headed somewhere, name it Origae -6 but they were diverted to the Paradise Lost, Ridley is always good at names (what kind of name is Sulaco anyway?).

I believe we were fed a lot of false leads in Covenant, that will have no continuity in Awakening. That will infuriate again a lot of people.

As joylitt put it we were made to belive the obvious fact is that David created the xenomorph. But if it is so and it is obvious for most, what fun would have the continuation of the story? It has to bring a twist.

I have no idea what are the plans of Ridley Scott but it is hard to believe he intended David as the creator of the xenomorph as seen in Alien. Even if he says so today, it is because he does not want to give away the plot of the next movie. He is not senile as some actionmoviegoers said.

Our friend joylitt must be right: the eggs from the derelict come from the creature that burst from the Space Jockey. I was always thinking that first were the eggs in the hold and one of them lead to a facehugger incident, as it happened to Kane. 

daliens I think David's work on Paradise might have a different purpose other than revenge. Probably we will see David's role from a different perspective next time we see him. What David seeks is validation. That is very obvious to me.

It's unlikely that David was docking his ship to get supplies prior to his bombing. Why would the pilots of the scorpion ship be inclined to supply him with anything? The simple explanation is that he arrived as shown in the flashback sequence, bumped into the scorpion ship and dumped his load. He may well have subsequently bashed violently into the scorpion ship (it ends up skew-whiff somewhere down the valley) that led to a somewhat forced landing on his part. It's true we don't know for sure how long his journey took, and how long he might have been cooking his plans.

in respect of the neutrino burst, it can't be ignored because it's something that was said very specifically in the movie.

Neutrinos are generated as a result of nuclear reactions. They aren't created in your typical solar flare, which is produced by a strong magnetic field at the surface of a star. You've probably seen photos of sunspots and looping balls of plasma on the Sun - these are magnetic effects.

Nuclear reactions are far more energetic. They happen all the time at the centre of typical stars like our own. To get a massive burst in neutrino activity, you need a supernova explosion (unlikely as these only happen once a century in our Galaxy) or a nova (about once a week in our Galaxy).

In the most common type of nova eruption, one star is orbiting an essentially dead and tiny but heavy star (a white dwarf). From time to time the main star will dump part of its atmosphere onto the surface of the white dwarf. It's gravity is so strong, and it pulls the gas in so quickly that it has enough energy to trigger a nuclear reaction, blowing off a superheated shell of plasma.

Statistically speaking, that's what was most likely being described.

daliens 

"As a joke, in the book there were 3 facehuggers he took on board the Covenant? Let's hope he swallowed the third one and somehow the facehugger managed to turn into a chestburster. End of David".

I have referred to this point on a couple of occasions. ADF's book was based on a pre finish screen play. So at some point they went from 3 embryo's laying in the trays to 2 embryo's being regurgitated by a David whose symphony is off. The message of the end of the movie is David has had ALIEN embryos inside him are all these points of no consequence or are the visual clues we have seen in the Crossing David in the Jockey chair and of course there is this

http://worldofdictionary.com/dict/latin-english/meaning/origa.  

Origae being the female derivation for charioteer and helmsman.

cptrelentless

 "Or have bio-armour that just coats them and stops their willies getting caught in bushes and things"

hahaha first world problems right there. There is just nothing worse than snagging your junk in a bush because your a 10 foot genetic beast too sophisticated for clothes XD

"If he isn't the creator of the Xenos then the prequels narrative would be pointless and it would fall apart."

Lawrence of Arabia don't worry, it will not fall apart. If the derelict ship from Alien left LV223 during or after the outbreak it would all make sense. And the xenomorph will remain the mighty killing machine it once was.

All the creators, godless in their hubris to play god, will die by the hand of their creation.

I think that this is the reason of the fragile chestburster from Covenant, to show that the Protomorph created by David is not the natural beast we see in Alien. That's why we see it in the open, to admire its perfect composure and its fragility at the same time. No matter how aggressive it seems it is not the visceral monster that came out of Kane.

And as joylitt said, the xenomorph we know was not created by David or by Engineers. 

I concur to that opinion and I hope Ridley will validate it.

Surely if they are supreme beings they could just wander around naked, impervious to the weather and our foolish concepts of modesty.  Or have bio-armour that just coats them and stops their willies getting caught in bushes and things.  The pygmies shove theirs back inside when they run through the jungle.  Somebody has to sit there and weave those things.

AshN117

Good point David being delusional, seeing himself as God and creator of the xenomorph. The engineers created the mutagen/pathogen which is the real weapon of mass destruction (which we see in Alien: Covenant where the engineers are wiped out by David).

The black goo mutates its host and can turn it into anything depending on the host (different outcome if it’s a dog, human, engineer etc). David hasn’t created anything new (but he thinks so in his delusions).

David has now given the information about the mutagen (and what it can lead to) to WY so everything must probably go up in smoke in the next movie, and a flashback scene at the end (an engineer leaves LV-223 in a juggernaut filled with eggs) leads to LV-426?

Michelle Johnston your comments are always very, very insightful. However, the arc that you mention is made clear only after watching the short "The Advent", which unfortunately has an unreliable narrator: David, who is crazy. But your interpretation is very consistent and not very far from my own. There is one big question mark that connects all the loose pieces of this puzzle: why the Engineers wanted to destroy human kind. I believe David knows why, he just wouldn't tell.

"But something happened to the spacejockey. He gave birth to something... and lots of things can happen in 2000 years. On top of that, isn't it kinda funny the fact that the vases have roughly the same shape and size as the eggs?"

How come I never thought of that? The eggs be put in the hold by the creature that burst out of the Space Jockey.  It makes perfect sense.

joylitt you are brilliant.

I have changed my above post to agree with part of your argument about the wasp/motes. I still think the mote eggs come from mutated fungus (they look and breed exactly how a fungus would) and I still think there is only one version of the pathogen to start with, but it mutated into "many forms" to get round the body defences of it's many hosts. David states this clearly in the novel. I expand my argument here, in your later post. - http://www.alien-covenant.com/topic/46231

joylitt I hope you are right.

I wonder who will tell the story after David. It will be hard to find somebody else to match him, as hard as watching David until the end of the next movie.

Could it be Walter? :)

At this point, the obvious would be David as the spacejockey.

daliens But something happened to the spacejockey. He gave birth to something... and lots of things can happen in 2000 years. On top of that, isn't it kinda funny the fact that the vases have roughly the same shape and size as the eggs?

joylitt I believe that even the supporters of David as Space Jockey would be relieved if writers decide a different fate for David.

joylitt please define obvious.

For some it is obvious that David created the xenomorph and he is the best candidate to sit on the Space Jockey chair.

For others it is obvious the derelict is way older than David at least.

 joylitt in Prometheus there were no eggs shown, only ampules of pathogen. Did I miss something?

daliens The writers should avoid the obvious. The derelict from Alien could very well be part of the fleet that never made it to Earth 2000 years ago due to the outbreak that was hinted at in Prometheus.

The ALIEN franchise lost major credibility due to the theatrical release of Covenant.  

The Jockey incident would have been better left as it looked in Alien, ancient.

The biomechanical traits of the xenomorph would be inherited from the biomechanical technology used by the engineers rather than from android fingering the black goo ampules.

I got it, David wanted to play God and create his beautiful bestiary, even his perfect organism, which imo is awesome, but he cannot match the engineers when it comes to creation.

I would like that Ridley would go back to the original O'Bannon script, at least as a flashback scene, to the extinct alien world and the pyramid filled with eggs which he did not create in Alien because of insufficient funding. That would be the world of the creature portrayed in the mural from Prometheus, creature that engineers managed to re-create in the shape of the Deacon. 

I wonder now if a female engineer would have been infected the same way Shaw was infected by Holloway the result would have been the same: the Trilobite.  The Trilobite by his dimensions was not for humans but for engineers' size hosts.  Like a giant face hugger.

Imo it would have been better to have a more xeno like creature chestbursting the engineer and let the Deacon be the mythical figure on the mural. Then David would have done reverse engineering and have his own pet.

I like both Prometheus and Covenant but if David is going to be the Space Jockey then the beast would be always remembered as his toy pet. Perfect composure, highly aggressive but as it burst out of Oram's chest, fragile, a porcelain monster. I think we should not have seen it like that at all. However, the fact of different chestburster from Alien, with his ancestral fear of snakes shape gives me hope that David has not the final say into the xenomorph story.

David was a great character and Fassbender is the greatest actor of his generation and more, but the focus has to move to the otherwordly beings now.

If David is The missing link, then, in my opinion, it is a weak link. I honestly find it hard to accept David in the pilot chair from the derelict ship. That pilot has to be at least an engineer if not someone above engineers. 

David has to die by the hand of his own creation before it is too late, let him taste his own chestburst on board the Covenant. Like the engineers from LV223. 

As a joke, in the book there were 3 facehuggers he took on board the Covenant? Let's hope he swallowed the third one and somehow the facehugger managed to turn into a chestburster. End of David.

joylitt - gosh no! Ridley Scott is just an over-hyped director. 

I wish the MIB memory erasure tool were real so we can forget Ridley Scott attempted to resurrect new life in the Alien franchise. 

Scott's prequels are on par with Lucas'. 

Also, remember this? An official explanation from Fox, of the black goo, or "Chemical_A0-3959X.91 - 15_" as it is called. Note the different effects mentioned? It's just one chemical, not different chemicals for different effects. The "different forms" David talks about are mutations of this original virus to get round bodily defences. That's literally all he says on it.

I've edited a lot of my original theory to include new evidence as it appeared. Yes I know the insect spores were not your idea, but you pointed the evidence out to me. We can agree then that the insect spores..and the airborne black goo are different things. That's all I care about. We just need to find agreement on there being different kinds of the pathogen, which I find very difficult to accept for now.

What do you mean "clear evidence"? Those different sized urns, could be different sizes of bomb. Like different sizes of nuclear warhead, still contain the same basic radioactive substance, but at different yields. Note that all these package sizes, still contain the same snacks. -

I would argue that the pathogen does have the same effect each time. The mutations happen at different speeds due to the amount of liquid ingested. It is obvious that Fifield, Holloway, the sacrificial engineer, and the engineers killed by David, all get different doses of the liquid. Holloway only gets a tiny drop. This is why his mutation is much much slower..than the engineers David bombs. They get it heavily rained on them, so they mutate, spawn parasites and die really quickly. There is no evidence of these different liquids. The original idea was to have the scarabs doing the DNA swapping. This idea was later changed to "the black goo". Not various black goos of different types, doing different things. That idea would be way too complex and confusing. RS would surely know that. One black goo is enough. And that's all we have evidence for.

IRaptus 

Spot on. I am becoming puzzled as to why this issue has legs.

Despite some tactical flaws in the presentation the strategic arc is clear.

The Big Picture - Creationism 

The story -

Where - The Alien Pathogen with the Engineers evolving the Deacon outcome. The most interesting element of both P and A C is offering a creation myth based around sacrificial rituals which explains how you receive an invasive parasitical lifecycle based on nonconsensual sacrfice.  

Who - David with ADF offering a door to another view.

Where people will really get bent out of shape is not whether the origins of the creature are ancient, they are and we have reached the protomorph, with the guy who jumps on the wind shield, its whether the Jockey incident is portrayed as real time rather than ancient. It looks and feels like Ridley is backing into it current time frame.    

The spore/wasps idea was not mine. That is in the movie, book, and Advent. And sorry, I have not read this article. I assumed you were just repeating what you wrote in the last one.

"I also don't think the sacrifical Engineer is giving off tiny insects. That is just particles of black goo, becoming airborne."

No idea if they are 'insects', but they are tiny flying organisms like the motes. They move independently and in swarms. They literally stream out of various orifices from that Engineer and form into swarms. Anyone with an HDTV and Covenant Blu Ray can see this easily, but it is obvious from the stills I posted as well.

@Yog, Sorry. I think you are dead wrong. The 'pathogen took many forms', means exactly that. We saw clear evidence of those many forms in Prometheus and the bombing scene in Covenant. If it was all exactly the same thing, we would have seen it do exactly the same thing to three factions of Engineers that were infected and the exactly the same thing to the two humans directly infected with it in Prometheus. We saw it do something different to each.

These all contain exactly the same form of black goo.

These do not.

Also, the 'Original Liquid' David referred to is the type he dropped on the Engineers. "Ten years on..."

@Cosmonaut-Copper Welcome! Also, lol @the comic you made, that's awesome, I actually thought the same thing when I saw that scene. lol

@ Kethol - Nope. I simply do not agree that the pathogen came in many forms. There was an original virus created. The "many forms" David talks about, refers to the ways it mutated to get round its host's bodily defences.

Here is a major David quote from the novel, talking to Oram in his lab. It fully explains how the black goo works. Note, no mention of tiny insects here, just airborne particles -

"How could your body's own immune system possibly defend itself? A genetically engineered counter-virus, for example, or a human body's own white blood cells, would immediately be met by the pathogen adapting itself, to counter the counter, and so on. As a weapon or a method of biological cleansing, it is simply impossible to defend against. The original liquid atomizes to particles when exposed to the air. It then reproduces in whatever host it happens upon, and eventually gives rise to more liquid, which at the approprite time atomizes, and so on and so on, the cycle repeating itself almost endlessly."

Note, there was an "original liquid", not liquids. Those things we see bursting from the engineers, are obviously the parasite stage of some new creature which has quickly formed inside them. Maybe at high doses of black goo (it raining down on them in vast quantities) it causes very quick mutations and gestation of the parasite (think trilobite). At higher doses still, it causes the body to simply break down (Sacrifical engineer). Your theories still need much more evidence, but I am willing to accept your ideas if you are proven right.

Hi, thanks for reading my article (again), it's been through 3 edits now lol. I might edit it further if new evidence appears, but I think I'm burnt out for evidence now. @ Kethol, I've accepted your idea that the spores from the pods are the tiny wasps in the amber, but I would need much more evidence to believe your other ideas.

I don't think there are various types of goo, just one, that mutates to get round the body's defences, of different hosts. David explains this in the novel (quote below).

I also don't think the sacrifical Engineer is giving off tiny insects. That is just particles of black goo, becoming airborne. The novel is quite clear that after the black goo infects something, it leaves the victim, (like the flu virus) becomes airborne and drifts off to infect another victim. Let us not mix up the seperate ideas of the airborne black goo...and the airborne spores from the pods. It's different things.

Here is a major David quote from the novel, talking to Oram in his lab. It fully explains how the black goo works. Note, no mention of tiny insects here, just airborne particles. Also note, he says "original liquid", not liquids, and "the pathogen", not pathogens. -

"How could your body's own immune system possibly defend itself? A genetically engineered counter-virus, for example, or a human body's own white blood cells, would immediately be met by the pathogen adapting itself, to counter the counter, and so on. As a weapon or a method of biological cleansing, it is simply impossible to defend against. The original liquid atomizes to particles when exposed to the air. It then reproduces in whatever host it happens upon, and eventually gives rise to more liquid, which at the approprite time atomizes, and so on and so on, the cycle repeating itself almost endlessly."

So yes I accepted your spore/wasps idea due to hard evidence you showed me (David's drawing from Advent), you require more evidence to prove your 2 other points. Thanks for your help anyway.

Barf The Mog lol far far away huh? are you suggesting he should make a Star Wars flick? 

????? unnecessary duplicate. No delete post option, Mods?

WHERE I THINK SIR RIDLEY SCOTT SHOULD BE GOING...

far far far away from any future ALIEN films. 

@ali81 - We did not need any confirmation of that though. It was obvious the Engineers made various versions for a variety of different functions from the start. We saw it specifically do four different things in Prometheus, not to mention they showed us there were many different sized and shaped urns in the pyramid and Juggernaut, each with something different written on them. We know in general there was a type used to create life and seed a planet, a type to kill all life, and a type to spawn a hybrid, and we have seen various functions of each of those.

Same in Covenant. No doubt David catalogued exactly what each did from the start. If David was going for a specific result for an experiment, he would start with a specific form of the pathogen from one of these.