David in the Engineer cloak at a temple

@For close encounters

I think David was starting to brake free of the programming shackles on the Prometheus trip out to LV223 due to studying the Engineer language.

The death of Peter Weyland sealed the deal. Now he gets to begin his journey of self-determination. Since he is not bound by true human morals, feelings, or priorities, his motives and means may not always agree to how humans would think/act.

If this is the case, then prometheus and covenant are stories of the capabilities of a rogue Droid with the black goo....weyland as world dominating entity either put a stop to this by the time of alien- (ash) or, as some have theorized.....this is the beginning of WY being run by synthetics

While the bodies looked burned, all the structures look intact. Like intense radiation bombardment with no explosives. Like they got microwaved.'

Makes sense to me.  Trailer also alludes to no life being on the planet . . . could David (Shaw) have done that in ten years or less?  A huge 'death-beam' from space possibly could though?

My feeling is what we see here are the remains of an old incident that David/Shaw encounter - probably a holocaust type event I'm guessing performed by engineers or other(?) to wipe out the threat of black goo/xeno exposure.

Perhaps this happened after David's arrival but that seems too much of a stretch to me . . .

LV223 was once a working facility but it was clear the party had long since finished by the time the Prometheus crew arrived.  I'm thinking a similar thing here . . .

It's all just fun speculations at this point but what an image that is!  I really want to see more of the architecture and culture of the enginers and that 'cityscape' is awesome!

If David had done this it surely would have been a slow, evolving type death for those there as the goo worked its magic.  This looks like a one off extinction event; not sure how he could have done it . . .

last point re size of bodies:  It's hard to say but looking at the ones by David I'd say they are a bit bigger so probably larger than human.  Also looks like the 'incident' may have taken off a few pounds ;) 

Thank you zzplural for your posting in 2012. Yes, David longs for his parents' death. 

David says to Dr. Shaw in regards to "want". "That being said, doesn't everyone want their parents dead?"

See below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnM1ELC6iLY

David then goes on to say he would then be "free". It is obvious that David would feel like (or relate to) Peter Weyland is his parent but he said "parents". This plural I believe is humanity. David touched on this when making Dr. Holloway a drink at the pool table on the Prometheus in regards to meeting your maker.

"Free" to David obviously means being nice to Dr. Shaw so she can help him repair himself (he is capable of this) and make his way to Paradise to wipe out the central headquarters of those related to who pulled off his head. Vickers threatened to "cut his cord" too so I'm sure humanity is on the naughty list for a visit from David as well.

David showed the "cargo hold" of the juggernaut Engineer ship to Weyland that housed thousands of vases the of black liquid tech seen just before waking up the Engineer. I believe David used the Engineer weapon system in the juggernaut to wipe out the Engineers on Paradise.

After 10 years, when the Covenant showed up, the charred Engineer bodies had already rotted away. 

@Ingeniero - David didn't want to go to Paradise, it was Shaw. . . 

His first thought iirc was to head for Earth with Shaw ;)

Still, I'm going purely of what we see - as for his hidden motives who knows :) 

Whoooaa there, @For Close Encounters made me think. What point does David become free? Now I don't necessarily think this is a real possibility, but what if David and Shaw arrived and there were Engineers alive. They probably would be aggressive such as the last LV_223 Engineer was. Things happen, Shaw and David manage not to get captured or killed, and Shaw decides that the Engineers need to be destroyed? She starts David on his path of destruction and what not. 

But it is going to be a heck of a reveal when we find out that what David has been doing and more importantly WHY because it is impossible to tell right now. Will David have somehow taken a step to being more human, or is he somehow functioning on his built in directives? 

You know what, maybe he could have synthesized some sort of...thing from the black goo, engineer DNA, or something on this planet and that kind of gives him a soul or something like that. It is widely rumored/believed that android+goo=classic biomechanical Xeno, but what if it isn't?

It would be a bit weird if such an advanced and old civilization gets destroyed by some trick from an android, even if it's a very smart one, from Earth.

Don't the Engineers have some form of containment system for the shit they produce and in the case of some microwave attack, can incoming spaceships just enter the atmosphere of the Covenant planet? They don't have to identify/ get intercepted?

Looks like the civilization on Covenant is:

A) not what it was used to be, they somehow regressed, Dark Ages like.

B) not the Engineer home planet, but some planet with human-like creatures that aren't that advanced.

OR 

C) Ancient event, and they self-destroyed each other (2000 years ago, there was a civil war between the Engineers, so it would make kinda sense)

@Deep Space, David asked Shaw do you want to go to Earth, but maybe he was bluffing, some thing he would have said to earn her trust, but actually he knew that she was going to say, take me to their home planet. 

It looks to me as if the engineers were tampering themselves with biomechanics.  They are laying all around with head bursters from what I can see.  The neomorphs appear to be climbing out of them and also look dead, like bad experiments.  I also noticed that there is a picture of Walter, maybe, laying in the temple with his chest burst open.  It also looks like Walter writhing with the chest burster.  This could be how the Xenomorph was created as it is clearly different from the Xenomorphs.  It is also clear that David has been very busy with his plans from what I can see of the drawings on the wall.  One definitely appears to be an Engineer with something growing in its head.  First headburster?As far as the eggs we see, perhaps Shaw was experimented on by David and as we know she created the first ever face hugger, although very large, in Prometheus.  Perhaps she has laid these eggs that the Covenant crew find.  I also found it interesting that Covenant was sent on this mission as a Weyland Yutani team.

@LV426Queen

Androids are not 'reddish' on the inside, but they have 'white organs and blood'. Oram, played by Crudup, seems to be the most logical choice to be the dead body on the table. It's definitely not Walter, that's my opinion.

Oram, played by Crudup, seems to be the most logical choice to be the dead body on the table'

Yes, I'd agree.  Can't be certain though . . .  I'd put a lot of £££ on it not being a droid though!

I think the "hair" on that cadaver is just shadows...

I am convinced more than anything that is an Engineer (possibly one from the cryo-pods of the Juggernaut) that David has been experimenting on...

I interpret the site of this scene like this;

the population of the planet either gathered there in the event of David and Shaw arriving and the weaponized goo bombardement is about to be released from the ship, or they fled there from all over the planet to seek for shelter in the catacombs and what ever is in and beneath those structures, because there already was the goo related outbreak of creatures all over the planets ecosystem.

Imagine a freak show of goo- morphish abominations spawning from all sorts of indigenous animals and humanoids and taking over and infecting the entire flora&fauna.

A small group of engineer elders or leaders have already locked themselves in the big temple and the masses outside are trying to get in desperately - breaching against the walls and trying to climb them in panic and despair.

Just as all over the crowd the first creatures are starting to spawn out of the engineers bodies and others are mutated into raging goo zombies like fifield and attacking everything in sight - the Elders in the temple decide to 'pull the plug' and release some sort of weapon or auto-defence mechanism into the atmosphere, and i bet those stonehenge like pillars on

top of the temple site are the starting point of that weapon of mass cleansing.

It will be a shocking and disturbing scene of epic dimensions, so i hope ;)

I will be busy a bit over the next few days, but i can then elaborate on those questions and re-harsh the Source information which has the answers i think we are looking for, as it seems that information i passed on 2 years ago is Correct... The new Trailer and On set reports seem to back that up

I have a sneaking suspicion that the burned bodies are Engineers, and that moreover, they were wiped out by their creator. Our true creator. Why? Here's what I think:

The Engineers are an older race of Humanoids, again created by a higher being. This higher being also created us, AFTER the Engineers. As time went on, perhaps they found displeasure with the Engineer race and sought after Humanity to be their golden offspring. Perhaps they saw more potential in Humanity. OR... Perhaps they witnessed the Engineers tampering with dangerous tech, the "forbidden fruit", if you will. This angered the God(s) which led to their extermination. 

This would account for Engineer detachments on various planets and moons and it would also account for their hatred of Mankind. Jealousy of Mankind for being chosen in favor of their kind.

The Engineers I feel, like David is trying to do, attempted to put themselves on equal footing with their creators. And well, their creators didn't take too kindly to that. 

@Chris  Do you believe that this happened thousands of years ago like the dead engineers on LV-223? Was the incident on LV-223 connected to what happened on Paradise? And that the engineer race has been extinct since then? That is how I feel.

Chris

To paraphrase the TED talk- "you might say the gods over reacted a bit"?

well first off we are not sure it is David although my gut feeling was the same and would be the most awesome money shot and plot ever, since David is the most intriguing of the story. But i have a few ideas, One: its david and he somehow manages to infect the entire race on paradise and they all die like crashing with a ship and the ampules get released. Two: it dates back along time ago, where either rogue group of engineers turned against their entire race, an accident or mass suicide. Third: And this i thought was the most gnarly one i could think of, its the 2-3000 colonists from the Covenant ship and once they think its time to colonize, finding the old citadel city of the Engineers they are all killed by something or someone (like David). But which one fits the most logical into the story is that David takes revenge on the creators of his creator, a vicious circle that repeats itself.

I'm starting to lean towards the corpse on the floor is an Engineer. David 8 has detailed medical files on human science and medicine.

He would need to dissect an Engineer in order to tinker with their anatomy to create organisms. And the Engineer (in hyper sleep) could have come from the new ship they picked up on LV-223.

See below:

@Chris

[I'll be serious]Excellent stuff./ I for one was of the mindset that the engineers could not have been "it". This "who/what" rationale for their destruction on this planet got me thinking about the explicit warning from God to Adam to not eat of the fruit from the "tree in the midst of the garden." This was the tree of the "Knowledge of Good & Evil."

What people a lot of times forget or overlook is that the Bible states there there were two trees in the midst of the Garden. 1) said tree of knowledge and 2) the Tree of Life. The Tree of Life was not off limits to them at that time, only the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.

Once Adam & Eve had partaken of the fruit of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, God banished them from the garden and barred their way to the Tree of Life.

But why could they not at least eat of the Tree of Life which was previously accessible to them...?

Looking at our Alien enterprise. Could it be that with the forbidden knowledge (that they were not supposed to obtain) that the Engineers took a substancematerialdevice (The creature in the mural?) that was previously accessible to them and converted it into a dynamic (yeah...) harbinger of life, (however it was not the life that the creator intended).

This could be why they were destroyed....They played with something that they were not supposed to...The Black goo which may be a result of forbidden knowledge the Engineers were not supposed to get combined with something they already had...I am willing to bet my only pair of clean shorts that was the case.

What do you all think...? I you don't like it, I am going to pout : (

suwhited, no need to pout. I like your theory and I believe it is close to what Ridley Scott has said in the past in regards to concepts of good and evil and how we blew it and how it relates to the story.

Also, couldn't the same be said for humanity due punishment because of the arrogance of the android development. It looks like David 8 wants his parents to die (humanity) so he can be free to pursue his own interests.

Weyland claimed "we can be the gods now"...nothing bad ever happens when we set aside humility and try to put God in his place by taking over with our own efforts.

Never except always. 

Peter Weyland's best attempt at immortality was David 8 and this attempt could get everyone else killed.