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Well Shaw could have been written better and improved upon for a sequel but she wont play a part now, not as far as in person with regards to Rappace, maybe she will in future movie? who knows?

I think there should be some Engineers left or the Hierarchy above them, i would imagine there would have been by the time David arrived.. just like i would assume Shaw was alive after they left LV-223

But they could have no Engineers alive by the time the Covenant arrives which is the start of the movie, so we are looking at the Aftermath of David being on Paradise for a number of years most likely...

And i hope we get some clues as to what he found, that is no longer there now... Flash Backs would work... unless the 3rd movie will cover some of the events between 2094 and 2104

I think a reason the Engineers could not have come back to LV-223 or Earth would be part of the Name of the Movie..

In that i think a Covenant was made to just not bother with us or use the Evil Bio Weapon... again.

I would also like to think if thats the case and as of Prometheus 2093 timeline there are some Engineers or Hierarchy on Paradise.. then i would like to think maybe David comes to a Covenant with them...

But ultimately he breaks his Covenant/Deal with them. This could explain why we dont have Engineers involved in the Alien Franchise.

@Thoughts_Dreams

This is mostly just my hypothesis, but killing all the Engineers would bring David closer to the "real Gods."

David would have suspected that this group of gods was "mortal," or "mortal after all," since the start of his journey.  Unlike Miss Shaw and Holloway, the android predicts that LV-223 isn't the Engineer home planet as soon as the adventure begins.  When he opens the shutters and looks out at LV-223 for the first time, the android already knows that "there is nothing in the desert, and no man needs nothing."  He's looking forward to what's about to happen, because he already has most of his trick planned out before they even touch down.

LV-223 was close enough to a sun to support life, yet there weren't really enough natural resources on the desert planet to support an advanced civilization.  It was unlikely that the company would find the immortality they were looking for on LV-223 (no man needs nothing). It became even less probable after David confirmed that the Engineers were mortal and could actually die. Thus, he already knew that there was nothing there that they needed - when he led Mr. Weyland to his death.

Shaw and Vickers tried to warn Mr. Weyland that there was "only death down there," and "if he went down there, he was going to die."  David understood this just as well as them.  Bishop's behavioural inhibitors prevent Bishop from being able to harm humans through any omission of his actions.  David was the only one that Peter would have listened to.  Charles Bishop Weyland would feel that by failing to warn his relative about his impending demise, David is at least partially responsible for Peter Weyland's death.  He still blames David for it... 

They honestly do NEED stronger characters to help tell the whole story.  I feel that Shaw's character isn't really strong enough to outmaneuver the android. I favour the brain salad theory of what happens to Miss Shaw for that very reason:  if Shaw is transformed into Shaw 2.0, then we can actually see her reach her full potential.  As it stands, she's a little half-baked and undercooked.  David decides to put Shaw back in the oven, because she's not done yet; so he throws her back in the Forge.  Miss Shaw just isn't fertile enough for David's purposes.  She can't carry the whole thing to terms.  While she's not completely barren, her eggs are not quite viable enough.  For whatever reason, even the Aliens don't want her.  David finds her useless and considers sacrificing her for the greater good.  

Miss Shaw puts up a good fight, but now her fate rests in David's hands.  Because she really only has half a brain in comparison to him.  It might be even less than that now.  She could currently be transforming into "Shaw 2.0" (if he decides not to transform her into an alien egg or something else).  She's a tad too infertile to be transformed into a Queen by the creature's DNA.  For some reason, she can't easily pump out the eggs.  David doesn't know, it might be something wrong with her fallopian tubes.  But if he turns her into the mother of a species of biomechanical humans, then he can simultaneously solve a problem he has with not being able to reproduce on his own.  He has a plan for her to become the biomechanical MOTHER of his children.

At the end of Spaights' script, the game of chess that David plays against Shaw is more literal than symbolic. The android eventually manages to overpower her mind during their "chess battles" in order to impose his will over her.  It's not really that important to see how it all happens.  We don't really need to see how David wins the chess battle:  we only need to learn that he did.  His last words to her in the Spaights script are "Rook takes Bishop."  The chess game that David plays against himself in the Happy Birthday vid would become highly symbolic over time.  Chess is a game of Kings.

In the early script, David reveals how he's read the crew's psych profiles and they're "all so stupid."  He looked into their minds to learn how to better manipulate the incredibly stupid Prometheus crew into following a predestined course of behaviours.  In essence, the android is able to manipulate each of the crewmembers' minds by bringing certain memories to the surface of the subconscious to trigger emotional responses.  He was monitoring their subconscious emotional states the whole time, although the Prometheus crew was consciously unaware that they were being conditioned and programmed by him - like robots. 

The humans will be easier for the android to rule over than the Engineers, since he already understands how the humans think.  So, to answer the question about who androids would rule over, it would be the humans. Daniels wouldn't know yet that David is already looking forward to a "merger" of sorts with mankind. To create an "upgraded" version of humanity, it's necessary to destroy the most recent one.  David would want to keep the humans around to act as employees of the company once he secretly takes it over and enslaves them.  He'd have plans for the remaining humans to serve beneath.

Mr. Weyland filled the goddamn android's head with ideas about being immortal.  Despite not wanting to be "too close" to humans, the android is eventually forced to make a deal with mankind that allows us to survive in some form... The machines need something from us, something we and Engineers have that they don't. The humans would be much easier to secretly rule over.  The rogue android only needs to think that the company is willing to negotiate with it.  This will prevent it from springing its deathtrap before Daniels has a chance to spring her trap.  Mr. Weyland created the androids, but Daniels might be somewhat prepared to act as David's Destroyer once she gets down to the planet.

Shaw is barely conscious when Daniels finds her.  She's not making any sense; she keeps saying "kill me," and she's no use figuring out what's going on.  Daniels is torn on what to do, because some people want Shaw dead to make things easier.  The company may or may not want Shaw back, and the goddamn android wants her alive for its own agenda.  However, at this point in Daniels' game, it's actually better to keep Dr. Shaw alive as a bargaining chip against the stupid android... Daniels hates the goddamn android, so she plans to use Shaw against him. She's tempted to just use her flamethrower on the newly transformed Miss Shaw, but the situation is very complicated.  It's said that Prometheus begged to be killed when Zeus's eagle was pecking out his liver for all eternity.  Each new day, Prometheus was reborn; only to have his liver devoured by the creature later that night.  He tried sending word to Zeus, begging for forgiveness, pleading with Zeus to "kill him" - to just let him die. Zeus was not so kind as to just let Prometheus die. 

Shaw would be reborn as something else.  But for now, she is no Queen or King.  She's not a science-fiction Queen like Ripley/Sigourney is, and she's really not that important to the company; therefore, Miss Shaw can easily be sacrificed and replaced.  The company can find better archaeologists to employ. They only really needed Dr. Shaw for her Star Map.  She's useless to them now. 

@Caryn. 

There seems to be a degree of symmetry between the reduction of Shaw and the introduction of Daniel's. I suspect this belongs to the Logan/ALIEN Prefix/10 years movement. 

I think your calibration on Shaw in that new narrative environment feels about right. In the more robust world that Logan is creating I favour the Brain Salad argument. She was tenacious in the 3rd Act of Prometheus and suffered a catastrophic loss of  innocence. Ultimately she will be duped by David and I suspect what will give the duping credibility is Ridders big idea for David. It will appear so audacious Shaw's down fall looks inevitable but also fresh. That movement if explained is a moment of jeopardy for the script we have seen how she reacts to  ambitions to be used for sub creation already and whatever is done needs to make us feel it does not contradict that reaction to get in the med pod.

I thought she worked well in Prometheus as the scientist wearing Jesus Sandals but once we saw P.W. , and David became poison in the narrative , whilst she could be plucky she was as you say no Ripley. I thought Ridley got that right, what drove her was her single minded sense of indigent enquiry rather than "lets blast the f….." Sensibly this was one of the benefits of the Lindelof adjustment there was no f….. to blast. 

If Daniels isn't to be a trope for the franchise she needs to be enigmatic, her personality soup can be cynical (a dash of Ripley) a great crisis manager (unlike Miss Vickers) but her tenaciousness needs to be her ability to Decker David. We need to avoid the physical heroism of Sigourney in A and A's.That sort of thing for me is the definition of fan service.

Yeah, I think you're correct in assuming that Logan was brought in to inject more personality into the characters. At least I hope so.  The potential symmetry to it all would be quite poetic in a way.

Danny McBride's casting is what tipped me off to the idea that the final scripts would contain a David who has a dark sense of humour about it.  We'll likely see a little more personality out of him too.  McBride is a fairly talented comedic actor, and I can't really see them wasting his talents by killing him off quickly.

Comedic actors need to possess a very good sense of dramatic timing, so I'm actually expecting McBride to be one of our main characters.  This might be a chance for him to show that he has serious dramatic chops as well. I also think Waterson is a talented actress who can pull off the type of character I'm envisioning for Daniels.   

@Caryn 

I had a look at some of McBride and Waterson's work today. I was taken aback at how Katherine's nuanced, dense ,difficult to read approach would fit perfectly for my vision of Daniels and Danny's in your face emotional acting would be a great foil for Daniel's. 

McBride usually does play characters who are a little over the top like that, but I'm thinking that his performance could be a little more subdued in this.

He has a certain "every man" quality to him, which leads me to believe that he'll fit in well with blue collar colonists working on the colony.  I picture McBride's character acting as a metaphorical devil on Daniels' shoulder.  He'd be someone working for the company who knows there's more to the whole project/mission.

One thought I had is that McBride could act as an independent contractor who's not really working for the company but has a deal with them to dig out the subterranean levels of the colony with heavy machinery. He's not necessarily evil, but he's greedy and somewhat immoral; he's already planning on staking his claim on some Engineer tech.  The company wants to dig a bunch of secret tunnels that link the colony with the subterranean levels of the engineer ruins.  McBride is hired to operate the tunneling equipment and set explosive charges.  In the event that the covert operation goes sideways, he's supposed to collapse the tunnels.

The Captain (or someone similar) is who I think will emerge as a true force of good in the story.  Daniels would be conflicted, torn between moral and immoral courses of action.  And we can't trust the other David to be "good," or to influence Daniels to make the correct choices.  The Captain character (possibly played by Bichir) would be similar to Dallas and Janek.  He would represent innocence at the beginning of the story, since he's just supposed to do his job and not ask questions.  Over the course of the story, our true male lead would be revealed through his actions. 

My idea is that it'll kind of be the inverse of Alien. The cast would be more of an ensemble, yet we'd spend most of the movie thinking that Daniels is our main character.  But then she suddenly makes a choice to sacrifice herself to save the others.  We'd think that she's going to survive just because she's our female protagonist, which could lull us into a false sense of security about her chances of survival.  The Alien doesn't really know that she's "supposed to survive." In a very shocking twist, a crew member she manages to save would become our new protagonist in the end. 

Yes its interesting to see what role the Cast will play.

To me McBride  would play the Fool, like Milburn but not as stupid, but i think McBride's Character would provide Character would be laid back, a bit of a joker of the pack and its his Foolishness that causes something to go wrong, or that he is the one who is easily subdued by David for Davids Agenda...

As far as the Two Davids, we dont know for sure all that is known is Fassbender will play Two Roles... David 8 and a Doppelganger i also think the Synopsis seemed to Emphasize David as SYNTHETIC so maybe we would see a Non-Synthetic David or David look-a-like? 

I think Bichir and Crudups Characters will be important i think one would take the role of Captain, or the Hero Guy ( Bichir) and i think Crudup would play the Corporate Slime Ball...

@BigDave - A corporate slime ball type would make a lot of sense for Crudup.  That type of character could tie into the ideas about The Covenant in multiple ways.

I've been trying to figure out what our main characters might be like in order to learn more about the plot.  I totally agree that Crudup will be one of our mains.  It seems like the character work and even the overall look and feel of the film will be more similar to what we see in the original film:  a little more of a blue collar feel to some characters.  At the same time, there's probably at least one corporate snake on board (plus a few ideas about "the colonies" and terraforming, like in Aliens). 

Even if all Engineers on the home planet are dead, we can't be sure that they didn't establish thousands of colonies across the universe.  If mother earth is destroyed, then Weyland-Yutani may be able to carry on without her, since they've always got the colonies.

Big Dave:

So Shaw isn’t there but I wonder how they will have the new characters (I am mainly thinking about Daniels here). This is one of the reasons why I will watch the movie, to see how the new characters are. Hopefully they will be convincing and not annoying bastards that we don’t care about.

Maybe she will be used in holograms if it is needed, at least that is a possibility.

Yeah I hope that there will be some Engineers alive when they get there. They could show the Engineer society as flashbacks but it could be interesting to see how it was like and have it in present time of they make it interesting enough but it depends how they manage to make the Engineers.

The broken covenant, well I am not sure if that could be a reason why we see no Engineers in the Alien movies. Maybe there are some Engineers left but that they plan things from behind the curtains so to speak. What if they have a role in what happens in Alien 1, 2, and 3 but that we don’t see them, I think that would be interesting and that it would add a new layer to the Alien movies. Just because they are not on screen in the Alien movies doesn’t mean that they are not involved (just as the emperor isn’t shown in Star Wars 4 but that he must have some role in what happens there).

Caryn P:

I remember that David said something like “mortal after all” so he understood that the Engineers could die. Weyland said in the translated version of when he speaks to the Engineers “we’re Gods and Gods don’t die” (Something like that I can be mistaken about the translation, why the F didn’t they translate it? That was stupid, and it would have made so much more sense if they would have translated it.) In other words he thought that the Engineers were immortal which they aren’t.

Yeah Shaw wasn’t very interesting although there were a potential in the character they totally wasted it. Who wrote the characters? Who edited the movie? My suspicion is that both the writing of the characters and the editing made them look worse. Shaw version 2 would be interesting since the one we got in Prometheus simply wasn’t good. If they sacrifice Shaw to make her a better character in Shaw version 2 them I am for it. Shaw could make her into something else in order to push the story forward to the Xenos, Hopefully they won’t be lazy about it and take the most obvious way. Remember how they had human beings that they tested the Xenos on in Alien Ressurection? I don’t want it to be like that, it got to be smarter.

While transforming Shaw into an alien egg could be a way I think that they could make it more interesting. An egg isn’t as alive as a monster or something similar. Sure they could let her become an Egg but I think that they could do better than that. My preferred version would probably be a mix of human and Xeno since if I am not mistaken Xenos take traits from the host that they are born out of (remember that Xenos in Alien 3).

You mentioned that David read the minds of the crew in an early script. This is probably how they came up with the idea that David could read people’s dreams. Remember that he spoke to Shaw about how her parents died “your father died under similar circumstances”, something similar to that). I am not a fan of the idea that David could manipulate people’s minds, that would make him too much of a villain I think it would be easier to have him at a grey scale although the idea is interesting. You mentioned that he programmed them like robots, which is interesting it sort of blurs the line between robot and humans in an sci-fi way which is interesting.

So if David wants the robots to be the masters over humans then would anyone human understand that or be suspicious of it and if so how would they have gained enough information about it? The more he does the more he is trying to make machines rule over mankind but wouldn’t his action when he has done a lot make people suspicious about it and then they will find out about it anyways? I doubt that he would be able to pull of a big plan like that all by himself or totally in secret since the plan is too huge.

About Shaw being useless to the company: that is how they have considered humans in the whole franchise all along. Remember how they spoke about the company in Alien (1979) so that is a continuation on that.

"In other words he thought that the Engineers were immortal which they aren’t."

Yes very good point, so when David was preparing Weyland for his journey to meet these Gods, that Weyland was looking forwards to... David already knew they was not Gods and Mortal and if the Engineers where Mortal After All, David knew they could not give Weyland the Gift he desired anyway.

But as David said "does everyone not want their Parents Dead" and so David had led Weyland to his Death?

"I doubt that he would be able to pull of a big plan like that all by himself or totally in secret since the plan is too huge."

Maybe not if David starts to understand the Black Goo, or Xenomorph, if there is a way to wipe out Mankind and leave only Androids maybe the Xeno or related Biology could be part of Davids plan..

Could he end up being the one pulling the strings at the company in the Franchise?

As far as Shaw....

We know Rappace is not cast, but Ridley only said as far as shooting on the movie...  remember he said before that she played a MINOR Role....

Rappace during a interview seemed coy to answer anything but her Face seemed to let on that she knows more than she is letting on and could indeed play a role in the Movie.

This means One of Two Things....

1) They may have Shot Scenes for the movie a while back, maybe a long while back and so she wont join Fassbender and the rest of the cast for Shooting the Movie as any scenes she was in had already been Shot!

2) Shaw is in the Movie so to speak, but Rappace is not, and so we could see Shaw as merely a Prop..

Prop Work for Davids Head..

These were used for when the Engineer hit Weyland and also when Shaw put the Head in the Bag.

This is the Engineer Chest Buster Deacon Scene Prop..

The above shows you can make Life Like Replicas and so my point is a Sleep in Cryo Stasis Shaw that is then used only as part of a Chest Buster Prop would not need Rappace to even be cast at all... only cast being as far as a Mold..

I think something like this could be what we shall see, or at least see something in her likeness... if we just see a Egg Morph or a Hybrid Monster that has no resemblance to Rappace, then maybe we wont connect to her or the comment she plays a minor role.