Plot similarities with Mass Effect universe

Nicky.the.hutt
MemberOvomorphJune 07, 20121449 Views0 RepliesI've read very interesting theories around the board. We can't deny that the so called "plot holes" opened us for speculation, discussion, sequels, and generated a whole lot of thinking. Which is often the point of science-fiction if you spent more time reading Asimov than watching Terminator for example. While trying to see through the space jockey mystery I used my knowledge of other sci-fi universes to find missing keys. I'll waste my time and yours exposing what I came up with in this thread.
I read a theory in this [url=http://www.prometheus-movie.com/community/forums/topic/7082]discussion (After my 2nd viewing...)[/url] - and certainly other discussions may have brought it up too, about how David and in fact androids in general boldly retrieve hazardous material, experiment on their crew, and ultimately deny humanity at its individual scale. We know they're following Weyland Corp's programming but every android in the Alien universe express their admiration for the xenomorphs, their survivability, their perfection, and lack of remorse or morality.
The androids must have generated on their own this idea that any life can be superior and surpass others even with perfect lack of consciousness or soul. We believe that androids, aware of their being soulless try to outsmart and turn against their makers as soon as they emulated consciousness and sentiment of self value. And this pending danger would be a reason for the space jockeys to change their mind on creating us, and decide it is the time to destroy us and start over clean.
Well... It reminds me a whole lot of the countless lines dialogs in the Mass Effect series, I know it's a video game but according to many, a very elaborate sci-fi universe where things are much better analyzed and explored than in a 2 hour linear movie.
I won't spoil the ending but here are some specifics: the reason for new organic life in Mass Effect universe is standard Darwinism, but the plot brings in synthetic sentient lifeforms, the Reapers, who claim to have no creator (a lie) and be the beginning and the end of every civilization, they appear out of dark space to destroy advanced civilizations every 50,000 years as a way to deny them the possibility to create new synthetic life. They allow our existence to a certain limit. Space conquest is allowed along a determined path but creating synthetic life is above limit. Because synthetic life when it become sentient, aware of its inferiority, but aware of its powers, will always surpass the organics, find the loophole in their Asimov's "Three laws of robotics", turn against them and destroy them all. In the three Mass Effect episodes we meet and learn the stories of different alien races who have destroyed each other or created sentient machines that doomed them to a nomad existence in space, unable to breathe freely in any atmosphere other than their lost home world. Reminds you of someone? Another race in the game cannot breed due to engineered bio-weapons targeting the females' fertility, and some people mentioned the total lack of female space jockeys in screen time or illustrations. The way our technology turns against us justifies the necessity to hit the advanced organics on the head whenever they rise too high, and in that way destroying them will allow primitive organic life to evolve in their turn. Another similarity would be the way the Mass Effect's Reapers destroy civilizations, if not by firepower - subtle or brutal indoctrination turning captured organics into horrible half synthetic drones to discourage resistance.
It could be that similarly the space jockeys allowed us to live until we reached the level of technology allowing the creation of a synthetic being, David, that ultimately can doom all mankind more fatally than when for example dropping a batch of xenomorphs on one planet. In Prometheus, in the rooms storing the xeno-jars we see murals and sculptures of the space jockeys, as if to remind them of who made them. Maybe as an attempt to tame the xenomorphs like we program the androids to never harm us with advanced but flawed programming. We cannot know who is more mistaken and who controls their creation the best, humans with their androids or space jockeys and their Earthborn humans and xenomorphs?
One thing is sure is that xenomorphs don't dress up as regular people to travel around the galaxy sacrificing their crew and bringing infection back to their home planet in the name of admiration for science. David is the best example we were given from the Alien series, he successfully manipulates the crew into following their dreams and believing in something beautiful, but facing danger he shows no interest in their lives, not even Peter Weyland's life. In the meeting scene it looks like David wants to ask the questions for his own curiosity. Even after his boss died his job isn't done, he wants to bring something back to Earth just as well as he wants to travel further to learn more. Either it hurts humans or helps him progress.
When I see it that way I surely see humanity as a failure and danger to itself, because of creating synthetics. The video game Mass Effect tries for countless hours to convince us the same in very cool narrative tricks. I feel that the more I think about Prometheus the more I recognize the same tricks.