What Weyland-Yutani Know About The Black Goo!

It really feels if W Y is faceless....We see Peter Weyland a feeble old man...Not exactly Darth Vader....There is no Emperor in the Alien universe, just a distant hint of something or someone pulling the strings....much like a God(never seen)....Do we need a baddie to make a grand entrance?

Would it help to have a Emperor in the Alien universe?

The Company has 'faces' in the form of Weyland, Vickers, Ash, Burke, Andrews, Aaron, Bishop the Second, etc.

Running an empire is time consuming and expensive.  It's simpler to just buy and sell who and what you want and maintain a form of control that way.

@S.M. - "David isn't programmed to "want" anything."

I think David prefers certain films over others (simply because he has a little freedom of choice over how to carry out his objectives).  He doesn't necessarily want to watch Lawrence of Arabia:  he claims it's a film he "likes."

David's "poor choice of words" may be a clue that he does in fact have choice over how to carry out orders and interpret words.  As Weyland's personal android, he had a little more freedom over exactly how to carry out his programming/orders than other early androids.

If able to choose, then David might "prefer" to watch his creators be destroyed.  "Want" is the wrong word...

Neill Blomkamp once stated that his film will take place after the events of Alien 3 and Resurrection.  If that's still happening, then we could eventually learn more about the events that occur around the year 2400.

I don't really think that the androids secretly control the company.  But if the movies go in that direction, my feeling is that androids would end up doing more than controlling the company.  The machines could end up going after the universe itself, manipulating data etc.

S.M.-

The Synthetics are a common thread throughout the Alien story, without them it could be argued there is no story. Prometheus was certainly David's story, the WY android finally becoming the centerpiece of the Alien plot. I've always felt Prometheus was more Hitchcockian/Kubrickian thriller than monster movie.

Further, mistrust of AI is a common thread throughout science fiction, and now in daily life. Consider the concerns of Stephen Hawking, and Elon Musk. 

I doubt I'm telling you anything you don't already know. All I'm saying is the idea that WY is run by Synthetics is not without merit. The only idea that I have a problem with is that David wants to be organic, the Pinnochio theory. I think David is more a manifestation of the idea that AI find humans to be expendable nuisances, which would dovetail with the overall story so far.

David tries to distance himself from being a "real boy". He says he hopes he's not too close to being human, and refers to humans as "you people".

David doesn't want to be anything, though his expression of fear that Shaw might be dead and he could be a lonely disembodied head until the end of time, would suggest, if nothing else, he wants to "be".

Alien could easily exist without robots. The first film worked just fine before Giler and Hill created Ash. Bishop didn't do anything fantastically robotic that changed the direction of the story that a human couldn't. He was barely in Alien3, and while Call did cause the Auriga to crash, that could also have been achieved via other means (eg. someone holding a gun to Wren's head as he instructs Father to crash the ship).

Even Prometheus could've worked without David being a robot. Him being a robot adds another layer and makes it more interesting. Ash adds a subplot. Bishop is a red herring. Call being the most humane individual amongst actual humans. They all add layers of interest. But the whole thing doesn't fall apart without robots.

S.M.-

I must respectfully submit that you are a kook.

David propelled the events in Prometheus in the fashion that he did because he was several steps ahead of the squishy humans at all times. 

Forget everything else, he alone could decipher the Engineer language and thus open the Ampule a Room. No Ampules = no Liquid = no unfortunate events worth making a movie about. Not to mention, being decapitated would = no David to operate the Juggernaut. 

Ash, like David, had the advantage of no fear. And his decapitation would have produced no awesome creepy hopeless exposition if he was human. It was his artificiality that enabled examination and isolation of the MORB, the humans were too busy trying to save their stinky hides.

I'll grant you that only he could survive decapitation and help them get of LV-223 - but that doesn't drive the story anywhere since it's over by that point.

All the deciphering of the languages and therefore reading hieroglyphs could've been done by a human with appropriate linguistic skills.

Agreed SM, Davids roles could have been performed by a Human for sure, but then we had Plot Elements like the examination of the Goo on his fingers without being infected... However a Human would have taken precautions like using Tools, or Gloves or similar to how they examined the Engineer Head.

I think the back story was hinting at Problems with David models, and the Theme seems to be pointing to Rebellion against creator and so that Knowledge could lead to such things... if all Robots had set Programs where AI could not evolve past Certain Boundaries then all the Weyland Androids would be as Helpful as R2D2 and C3P0 lol  there would be no Terminator uprising of Skynet in those movies, no Matrix, No I-Robot

All of these are born out of the Machines being given advanced AI that evolves itself to see themselves as superior to Mankind and not need Humans and then Rebel against us..

I think the Weyland Background Plot as far as the Virals etc is that Problems started to happen with David models, they was not performing to ways intended and so it points to them being able to in a way think and act for themselves a bit more than intended.

I think this is a theme that the Prometheus sequel would be exploring... David is no longer going to have to obey Humans.... but he will pretend that he is just a Robot who must follow orders.

We also need to consider that this particular David 8 is Weylands personal robot. He/it alone, may have been tweeked and upgraded beyond the production line standard.

David created the Deacon, [on Weyland's orders, or so we are led to believe.] Will we witness him create the MORB? 

I would say very likely. He has already tested the Black Goo and discovered it's capabilities. Applying it to the next test subject-Elizabeth Shaw, may be his next course of action. 

@Lone

Thank you for bumping this thread. One of the points that Benjamin Rigby made was Covenant was  a fairly fluid movement on from Prometheus.

The momentum that was developing coming out of Prometheus was :-

1) The answers to what happened on LV223 lay elsewhere.

2) David had emerged as Ridley put it as poison in the narrative.

3) Shaw had survived with unanswered questions.  

4) The life cycle of human kind to deacon had been established.

As this is science fiction and we know that writing a follow up has been a long and not altogether straight forward journey elements of those themes will inform Covenant but to different degrees and probably the biggest changes have been the hierarchy of the story telling.

I think David is pre eminent in this next movie it goes all the way back (or is that forward) to Ash curiosity unbridled by a moral compass which places care of humankind and each other at his centre. As you have pointed out he is not corralled by an inhibitor which in story telling terms helps matters.

If we see David as the driver of the narrative the first victim of his curiosity is Shaw which answers 3 and he will discover the disaster (RS's phrase) of Paradise which answers 1. 

If W - Y have downloaded imagery from the "black box" of the Deacon and they are tracking "David" the Covenant mission is probably all ready compromised.

As I indicated at the top of the thread the relationship between D8 and D9 maybe crucial and may get caught in big idea David's next life cycle experiment.  

Indeed Michelle, W-Y have 'captures' of the Deacon downloaded from the wreckage.

The Covenant won't just happen upon 'Paradise' W-Y will deliberately re-route it, now that they have discovered the Goo, and that it led to the Deacon and all that this implies.

The dynamic between D8 and D9 is going to be both significant and interesting. 

Poor, hapless crew! 

To the OP, I question whether the company knew anything about events on LV 223 or LV426 in "real time", enough to use as "real time intel" to guide their actions.

The events in each movie seem to happen in a vacuum, more or less, with no prior knowledge of events to help guide the participant courses of action.  Some have theorized that this is intentional on the part of the company in pursuit of it's hidden agenda.  I think it's just because nothing was known of the events, at least at the time.

If you consider the vastness of space that we are dealing with here.  And consider the time-delays involved in transmitting data.  Even granting advances in communications speed in the future, I can't imagine how you could get "real time" communications at these distances, which would allow company input in guiding the decisions of the participants.

It seems most logical to assume that the company didn't know there was a derelict on LV426 before the Nostromo set down there.  I think there were just protocols already in place to provide guidance for special or unusual situations.  The special order was already on the books, just in case this came up, rather than as a response to a report from Ash. 

When you have a fast-moving situation, you don't have time for the time delays involved in getting guidance from higher ups.  I think the call must be made by those on the ground.  So if you want any say in what they are going to decide, you need to have some standing (special) orders to state what the "commanders intent" is.  It is then left up the individual to figure out how to carry that out. 

It also must be noted that given all the death and destruction involved there is a question of how much data actually survived the mayhem and was transmitted back. 

So I agree with others, it's hard to imagine the company already knew about the derelict before sending a colony out that way.  It would appear Ripley's rescue was the first glimpse they had at what happened, prompting Burke to send out a "recce" and then a subsequent rescue mission when contact was lost. 

(On the other hand, why didn't these guys know there was a derelict just sitting there in their midst?  You would think that whole scenario would have played out years before Ripley was ever found.)

At any rate, the colonization mission seems to have gone in without any prior knowledge or intel.

Fast-backwards to Prometheus.  There is a huge question as to what, if any, data ever made it back to the company.  Due to the death and destruction, including the Prometheus, it is highly likely little to nothing was ever returned to earth.  As far as Shaw's warning, is that just an internal log, or could it be transmitted back?  If so, what's the range of the transmission?  How long would it take to get there?  And the larger question is how do you harness the engineer comms (if they exist) to send it?

Perhaps we are making some assumptions here, based on our own experiences, rather than what may be the case in this scenario.  I would even question how much info the company would actually have after all these events.  So far, Ridley was the only survivor (and Newt, Cpl Hicks, and Bishop if you want to include Aliens), so really the only info you have is from their de-briefs.  Since Shaw and David went off in another direction, I assume their AAR (After Action Report) is not available!

To sum up, I don't know how the company would know anything about the black goo.  Unless you add the comic books story lines in, then yeah, ok. 

On the AI's.  I think it's hard to argue that the AI's don't play a huge part in this saga.  Even if you concede that humans could eventually accomplish what AI's are capable of, this goes back to my point of "real time" capabilities.  I would argue that the speed of which AI's can function and effect the turn of events, is what makes the story happen.  In a fast-moving scenario, an AI can compute and reach conclusions far faster than their human counterparts.  Therefore they can have a huge impact on events.  It is also true that their amoral outlook allows them to do things that humans might be prevented from doing, to say the least.  Although we seem perfectly capable of screwing each other over without their help I suppose.         

Zeta (ζ)2 Reticuli is 11.4 parsecs away (37 light years). Instantaneous communication to Sol system is unlikely.

As for WY's knowledge of what is going on on the moons of Calpamos (ζ2 Ret IV), they are fractured internally. Even 88 years after the Prometheus expedition, WY and Science Division (D15) are still at odds with each other.

It was D15 that levered Ash onto the Nostromo by replacing the default Science Officer on that ship in 2122. 

In 2179 after the Sulaco is placed back in orbit of LV-426 WY finds that D15 has already setup a research facility at the derelict site and a blue on blue is avoided by financial negotiation. Read the wiki for the ship Shinyo Maru.

So whoever is writing the canon for this franchise, they keep pushing Science Division as the actual entity within WY that pulls the strings:

1979: Ash as -Science Officer- implemented special order 937.

1986: Carter Burke (Special Services Division): "worth billions to the bio-weapons division." Don't forget, Burke acted alone in Aliens (without knowledge of WY of his actions.)

1996: Aliens Colonial Marines Technical Manual (seen by many as the canonical Alien events encyclopedia book, and nowadays freely available on the internet if you search for Aliens Colonial Marines Technical Manual .pdf):

"The Shinyo Maru (WY) confirms, sir. Science Division are on-site at the derelict. Tanaka wants orders. Should he arrange an accident?" "Not yet. Tell him to keep his powder dry. First I need to negotiate with Trudeau on a secure line. If he's smart, he won't try and muscle us out of the bonus share."

"Oh, the one thing that did check out was Ripley's claim about Ash. Someone did order a synthetic aboard the Nostromo as a replacement Science Officer shortly before it left Thetis. I don't know who it was made the order, but it would imply that Science Division was running the show—" "—As they are now. What goes around—"

2012: The hidden email transcript on the Prometheus special features blu-ray includes a statement from Peter Weyland that his -Science Division- found a faint signal emanating from LV-426 before sending out the Prometheus.

For the past 37 years, whoever is writing the Aliens canon is guiding us towards the Science Division (D15) as pulling the strings.

@Codexas

The Shinyo Maru arc intercepts the story telling between A s and A 3 and is wound into Ripley's hugging is this considered cannon and if so how will A5 affect its status as canon. Curiously much of the story feels like how I imagine the synopsis of A 5 and the investigation of a derelict.

On a broader theme their is a sense of the Babushka Doll about the structure of W-Y. I have suggested one possibility is that the controlling forces are indeed A I which would fit neatly with the idea that the science division is A I now. I understand their is contradictory evidence in the latter history and quarantining of certain Robots but as far as the future of Ridleys Trilogy is concerned he doesn't look beyond A. S.

There is also the broader issue of a pre equal being more informed than a subsequent film. I think this is easily dealt with by applying the Babushka Doll principle that the information that survives Prometheus/Covenant/Final film is hidden deep very deep. Indeed one thing A 5 can show is how deep, should it want to uncover previously learned facts.

This unlearned facts issue can become an issue as to whether the Zenomorph life cycle, derelict and pilot pre date the trilogy begun with Prometheus.

I think its entirely possible that the current protagonist, David, gains the knowledge and tools        to rediscover and re ignite what had lay dormant for millennia and could pursue his own quite separate protagonist/antagonist/redemption role that echoes and refracts the Jockey rather than us meet the jockey first person though there are ways that could happen as well. 

"It seems most logical to assume that the company didn't know there was a derelict on LV426 before the Nostromo set down there"

Raise some points SM... but as we are getting the prequels includes Prometheus these raise questions as far as possibly what would the company had know.  Kind of in-continuity holes that may be left unanswered or maybe get covered?

1) They Weyland Files etc.. did make note of detecting the Zeta 2 System and LV-426 Acheron as early as 2039 but even if this is considered cannon it does not tell us if the company knew about the SOS/Warning Beacon... it only goes as far as detecting  the system and the possibility its moons can support life.

2) There is a log file (if we consider it cannon), that points to the company detecting that despite Shaw and Holloways findings that LV-426 may hold more rewards at a certain risk and David 8 would be made aware of the information and to keep a eye out for anything regarding LV-426 and only David 8 on board Prometheus would know about this secret mission.... well the potential that LV-426 holds some greater importance.

3) After the events of Prometheus..  would the company not want to investigate what happened to Prometheus... if they had information like points 1+2 maybe they could added 1+2 and make 3 and figure something must have gone down.

4) If any mission is sent, or any ships come within a certain range of that system post 2094 and Prior to 2122 surely they may detect Shaws SOS unless its a Personal Log, but we cant assume it was made via Engineer Ship Coms? we dont know how or where it was made but i would doubt they would go back to the LifeBoat. And so there is the potential of discovering Shaws SOS... be that transmitted long range, or found on the Buggy on the Surface of LV-223

5) It appears some of the ECU software on Prometheus is made by Yutani and we saw in the quiet eye videos that Yutani seem to specialize in communications and so they could have intercepted transmissions and logs from Prometheus.  I could be wrong about Prometheus ECU? but if not it was a probe that had detected something from LV-426 that sent information to Weyland but used Yutani Software etc.

6) We dont know how far or how long any signals can be transmitted from LV-223 to a company outpost, probe or ship...  this would apply to maybe Shaws SOS or even at least any logs the Prometheus had... during the events of Prometheus.

7) A Weyland Yutani (post Merger) ship (Covenant) arrives on Paradise around 10 years latter after Prometheus Doomed encounter on LV-223... does this ship by coincidence  arrive at the same place of the Engineers and where David and Shaw set off too.... if not how much information did they have (the company) and where and how did they gain it... the potential is there for them to send at least a probe to LV-223/426 system.

8) What becomes of David 8 and the crew of the Covenant post Alien Covenant and in relation to Alien in 2122... does any information get back to them and would such information lead them to check out LV-223/426 and discover the Space Jockey Signal....

So there is potentially a number of ways the company could know at least something regarding LV-426... prior to Alien and it may be more than coincidence for Ash to then be placed on the Nostromo...

As for the Derelict and the time between Alien and Aliens... that could be explained away i guess in a number of ways.

"We also need to consider that this particular David 8 is Weylands personal robot. He/it alone, may have been tweeked and upgraded beyond the production line standard."

That could be the case... he could have been granted a bit more freedom with his Programing and AI... that makes him more unique compared to the other Androids...

He reflects maybe Satan/Lucifer compared to the other Angels.

As I was out running this morning it occurred to me that a book with a definite time line of all we know, that Ridley would consider part of the story, would be very useful.  The W-Y Report comes close, but perhaps it would be updated to down-play or omit A:3, and A:R.  Even leave out portions of Aliens.  There would then be a clean time line to Prometheus, A:C, and follow-on movies.  Maybe after A:C and A:5 come out we could get an updated synopsis of events published.  He said hopefully.   

The Weyland Yutani Report is semi-canon it gives back ground information from a number of sources.

But if we are talking the definite CANON.. that has to be Movies, and by that mainly Theatrical Cut or the DVD/Blu-ray Cuts...

The other sources can give hints and clues and information but in future the movies yet to come could show us things that contradict or allow us to replace such things that are from other sources.

Alien Covenant and its Sequels and Alien 5 i am sure once these 3-4 movies are complete we would then get more clarity on certain things as far as True Canon.

But indeed the movies do have things they could cover, but its whether they would cover things that we would expect to be covered or leave some to Mystery in which case maybe we can kind of use other sources to fill the blanks in.

But i would assume that (and once the franchise movies is complete it maybe show us) there is some IN THE KNOW... as far as LV-426 and maybe LV-223 and its Experiments by the time of Alien in 2122

WYR is canon, not "semi-canon".

@Michelle I don't know what you mean with A I and A.S.

As for canon, yes, according to Fox (who owns the franchise) these have been listed as being officially canon.

-Weyland Yutani Report

-Aliens Colonial Marines Technical Manual (1996 & 2012 edition)

-Aliens Colonial Marines videogame plot

-Stasis Interrupted videogame plot

The Dark Horse comics are labelled extended universe and are apparently semi-canon, or whatever you make of them.

All in all it surprised me that if you look hard, sources written by different people, and decades apart (1979, 1986, 1996, 2012) all refer to Science Division (D15) as pulling the strings. Right down to the hidden email on the '12 Bluray saying Science Division found a faint signal from LV426 before sending out Shaw and Holloway.

ps: the technical manual is a free download if you search for it's name and .pdf