Besides obvious instructions from Weyland,David seemed to have a hidden agenda

Oh, and there's nothing wrong with the flute. I thought it was cool. Remember, they're aliens - they have a different way of doing things, and it probably makes total sense to them to use a flute to start up a ship.

The flute thing was ripped off from Legend Of Zelda (NES).

I think David is tired of being a second-class citizen. I can relate.

I don't think he did. I think he had a very general order from Weyland which was to somehow make contact with the engineers, and he had to think of his own way to do so. Makes sense, why would you design a super intelligent robot no doubt with high logical abilities, just to order it around to do his bidding down to the last detail? When david goes in to to give halloway the black goo in his drink and asks what he would be prepared to do to to make contact with the engineers, it's almost as if, at that point, David was prepared to not give him the spiked drink if he had've said something else. That suggests that david is coming up with a plan as he goes. So i think that because he has to think on the spot, it kind of seems like he has his own agenda, when really he's just trying to solve the problem weyland has given to him.

How much shit can one person or robot take, he's constantly told through out the film that "eh, we made you because we could" and "you can't feel, your just a robot" and whatever Mr. Weyland says at the beginning about him only being a robot (sorry memories failing) the only person he seems to somewhat care about, IMO, is Shaw. He makes sure she's alright when Charlie only yells at her etc. Maybe he finally snaps? Shaw is really the only one who shows any compassion for him and vice versa in his 'twisted' yet 'strange' way.

i think he may have had an agenda from Weyland Corp, which is implied by Vickers to have abandoned Peter Weyland's own leadership because of his health/age. since David was created as a line of androids, the Corporation could've programmed a secondary secret mission into David before they left that said to get back any alien biological find at any costs; this statement alone is supported by the rest of the Alien series. this could've been done without Peter Weyland himself (or anyone else) knowing about it.

It is mysterious. Who knows what he said to the engineer as well.

It should be instinctual for Shaw, as a Christian, to TRY to be nice to David. I think that David was dismissive of her faith, but by the time the zipper is zipped, they've either actually come to *like* each other (genuinely), or they're both figuring out how the use the other to maximum advantage. It's ambiguous. And, that's interesting to me.

Weyland obviously told David to tag along but find out information and take samples of his own and report back to him. Hence, David manages to hide an urn in his bag without anyone else noticing... It seems consistent with his 'confidential' orders from Weyland. I think he was going to poison Holloway anyway, but was toying with him a bit first. I don't give much credit to the idea that David deliberately enraged the engineer. I think it examined him, saw that he was artificial, and that humans (who were earmarked for extermination) have in fact become creators themselves. And he showed his displeasure by pulling off David's head and using it to beat Weyland to death. I'm sure there will be some religious/mythological metaphor on those lines.... like when the biblical god got angry at people for trying to build the tower of babel to reach heaven, and they got punished for that, just like Prometheus got punished for trying to put people on a level footing with the gods by giving them fire. (awfully pretentious, but consider who the script writer is)

I think that David was programmed to absorb information about everything around him, and as the cliche goes: curiosity killed the cat. He was recklessly curious in his service to Weyland. That's a reiteration of one of the aspects of the broader themes of the story. Weyland was recklessly curious in his journey to touch the face of his creator.

I think there is an important plot device concerning David that really helps to explain his behavior. David is quite taken with T.E. Lawrence and the David Lean film “Lawrence of Arabia”. I have access to a couple of National Geographic’s that I read years ago that really helped me to fill in a lot of information on Lawrence that was not in Lean’s or this film. One of these Geo’s was from a revisit to his battlefields in the sixties and another that was done during WWI. In our Prometheus story, David watches the Lean film and even changes his own hair style to match that of Peter O’Tools in the film. On a side note here, I’d be willing to wager that director Scott named our enigmatic android after David Lean as some sort of homage to the epic, enigmatic film director. It’s feels to me like a signature sort of Scott thing that Scott would do. Anyway, David later quotes a passage from the Lawrence of Arabia film “There is nothing in the desert and no man needs nothing”. When David is asked what he had just said, he answers, it’s a quote from his favorite film. The full quote from the film goes like this. “No Arab loves the desert. We love water and green trees. There is nothing in the desert and no man needs nothing.” At the time, I think David is trying to use this quote as a metaphor for the desert of space and the potential emptiness of their quest. I might be wrong here thou, I’ve only seen the film once, so far… However, this quote is not something that Lawrence said in the Lean film. It’s from Prince Feisal: Leader of the Combined Arab tribes to Lawrence. Feisal is expressing his confusion as to why the English and Lawrence find his desert land so compelling. Another British/Canadian film called “The Prize” points to the real British answer this question in the WWI time frame. It seems even then, BP had its eyes on the as of then yet, untested potential of Saudi Oil. Don’t believe this! Fine this rare documentary and watch it for yourself. But I digress. Lawrence’s affection for the Saudi Peninsula is many times more subtle than the British designs. He has a personal agenda. He sees the Saudi Peninsula as an Arab land for Arabs only. This amazes the Arabs, confuses General Allenby and the British High Command in Cairo and infuriates the British Foreign Office in London (and probably the good folks at BP!) Anyone that ever met Lawrence described him as a strange enigma of a man, passionate for his causes with a genius for guerilla warfare and a potential for ruthlessness and savagery that at times could be chilling even to his Arab cohorts. All of the above obviously intrigues and captivates the android David. For David’s part, he is very much an enigma amongst humans. While he looks like a human, he is possessed with an intellect and singularity of purpose that humans find unnerving. I can see where David completely identifies with T.E. Lawrence. That fact that Lawrence was a rejected, bastard child also has to play into David’s mind in relation to his relationship with his creator. He really isn’t the true son of Wayland after all. It’s clear from the TED promo for this film and this film that while David is the culmination of Wayland’s legacy. Even at the end of his life, Wayland still only regards David as nothing more than a sophisticated tool and a means to the ends of his personal agenda. I personally feel comfortable with reading into the unspoken parts of this story that in the two year plus journey to the “Engineer Planet”. That David develops his own little agenda or at the very least, an internal conflict with his programming from his creator and the free spirited approach to life of his alter T.E. Lawrwnce ego. In any case, David is completely amoral in his approach towards achieving Wayland’s objectives. You have remember, just like the Ash android from “Alien”, David has been made to operate autonomously and to solve the details of their mission’s objectives on the fly. David is without a doubt, the most fully developed of the films characters.

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