Impending Disappointment...

It would be really interesting to see what happened with the Hammerpedes after Shaw and David left LV-223.  

The worms can possibly pass on the egg laying trait to the creature.  But if the hammerpedes are hermaphroditic like we think, then they're forced to engage in a bizarre form of double-mating that worms go through to produce the eggs.

My theory is that the Y chromosome is just as important as the X chromosome, and the Deacon needed to hybridize its DNA with the human genetics to develop along similar lines to the classic alien.  The ALIEN DNA that hybridized itself with the worms (and Fifield) didn't look like the creature in the mural, because the human/Engineer DNA is a key ingredient in it.  

Daniels might note that the infected plant life they find is also hermaphroditic in nature.  She's the one who's most worried about what they'll find out there, because even the alien plant life can be dangerous.  The plants contain both sexes within them, like the worms, so they go through a strange form of cross-fertilization (and can't self-fertilize).  It's possible to take a cutting and produce a clone of the "parent plant," but without new genetics all you'll end up with is clones.  FATHER is able to force Miss Vickers' embryo to divide during an early stage of embryonic development, which causes her cells to multiply and allows the company to wake up Vickers 4 from her embryonic cryostasis.  Miss Vickers is a cloned offspring or "genetic sibling" of FATHER, much like how X-23 is the "daughter" of Logan in Fox's X-Men series. 

In the W-Y report, it talks about how the creature rewrites the host's DNA and hybridizes with it after the host is infected.  So my feeling is the infection altered Holloway's DNA + his sperm, then piggybacked on his spores, increased his desire to mate with Shaw, and infected Shaw through the mating process.

The ALIEN needs a host and new genetic material to bond with to evolve further.  A type of "double mating" occurs and the White Ones hybridize themselves with the Black Ones to produce what Daniels refers to as a White-Hybrid King.  New theories about hybrid evolution have recently taken hold in the world of evolutionary biology; although, Daniels would understand the whole concept of hybridization from her work with plants.  She's able to see how the hybridization or cross-breeding process works to advance the species evolution, thus the White-Hybrid King type is not as big of a shock to her.

The creature was somehow able to alter Shaw's eggs and make them viable after Holloway's sperm combined with one of Shaw's eggs.  But to "fix" Shaw's ovaries permanently, the "worker Aliens" would feed Dr. Shaw some of their royal jelly to promote her growth into a Queen type (that can pump out the eggs faster).  David would watch as some of the ALIENS get together and force a strange substance down Shaw's throat.

The White Ones are sometimes referred to as "Belugamorphs" instead of as "Neomorphs."  They become Tennessee's "Great White Whale" in this "great big sea of nothingness."  After his wife dies, there's little meaning left in Tennessee's life.  So he dedicates himself to hunting the "White Whale" as part of his new life.  All of it is to start their new lives, and now both their spouses are dead.  Tennessee is a survivor, like Daniels, and the Company wants to know what they experienced out there.  He can't go back to the way things were:  Tennessee is "promoted" to the Captain position by the end of the film. After the end of Covenant, the company will give him another ship.  He's willing to go back out there and face the creatures again.  But he's primarily interested in the "white ones," while the company wants to study more of the "black ones." They try telling Tennessee that the Black Ones are more valuable to them, yet it only increases his urge to destroy all White Ones...

Little bit off topic but I heard this brought up on a joke video except it's actually a decent question. If the Engineers created us in their own image and began life on Earth then what about the millions of years of life before human came to be? Dinosaurs, prehistorical animals, neanderthals etc etc.

The Engineers evolved from an Ape-like species as we did, so their entire evolutionary history (including all other branches of their evolutionary tree) is recorded in their DNA.  In the Fire and Stone comics, we see how the Black Goo can lead to the creation of many different species.

Some of the stages we went through in our early evolution show up again in the womb, allowing us to study those stages.

Engineers are a match for all the life that's evolved on Earth, because all the different branches of life are related. When the Engineer blueprints were hybridized with monomers in Earth's ocean, the DNA began sending and receiving instructions and arranged itself a certain way to follow specific blueprints.

I'm not sure if this was after or before the Cambrian explosion (or the last big extinction event on Earth).  It's tough to say how the dinosaurs came to be.  I'm sort of combining theories about hybrid evolution with the notion of Panspermia:  I think at a few points in Earth's history, it was hit by a giant space rock that carried microscopic forms of life on it.  The comet that caused the dinosaurs to go extinct also brought new life with it, because sometimes to create one must first destroy.  

Some of the dinosaurs are still around in one form or another.

The chicken is an evolutionary descendant of the dinosaurs: the birds are more closely related to dinosaurs than mammals.

In Covenant, we may get a few clues that the chicken came before the egg.  Some of the reptiles started using the egg-laying method long before the birds branched off from that evolutionary line.  By the time Darwin's finches came along, the egg-laying method had been used by bird species for a very long time.  An evolutionary process known as sexual dimorphism leads to female birds being larger, on average, than the male birds.  In our species, the males are usually bigger than the females.  But when talking about "the birds and the bees," it's the female who is naturally dominant.

The "birds and the bees" are a major part of every life cycle, since they carry the pollen from one plant to another and act as hosts to cross-fertilize everything.  Without "the birds and the bees," each ecosystem in the planetary biosphere will cease to function.  If the bees go extinct, then we're all dead.

Each energy system is connected to one another, so the company stopped producing harmful pesticides.  Sir Weyland solved global warming and saved Earth from a number of natural disasters with the air processors and genetically modified plants.  Some creatures will grow wings and migrate to other parts of the planet.  The "worker bees" are free to leave.  Even drones can grow wings and fly away.  The Queen is their slave, in a way, because she must tend to her nest. 

Daniels is wondering where all the birds & other types of life are, because the ecosystem needs them.  Most of the birds probably left the area to start nests in new locations after the incident(s), but we'd see a few bird skeletons in David's lab.  

The company has a thing for birds, and the winged globe is one of their symbols.  It's said that Zeus sent a bird to peck Prometheus' liver until he was dead.  Each morning, he would be reborn to repeat the cycle for all eternity (as part of his punishment for giving mankind fire).  It's only after Hercules unchains Prometheus from the rock that he's freed from the creature.  Weyland's MUTHUR held degrees in comparative mythology, like Shaw did, which left Sir Weyland with some strange beliefs.  The Company worships Hades, Gaia, and the five Rivers of the Underworld, rejecting Zeus as their FATHER.

LV-426 is code named Acheron after one of the rivers of the underworld, while the river Styx is where the Gods of Greek myth go to make covenants with Hades.  The Covenant is partially a reference to the Greek Lord of the Underworld, who they worship more than the Judeo-Christian God.  Ripley was born at the Olympia colony, so she's a Goddess to them in her own way.  "We are the Gods now," as Weyland said in his TEDtalk:  he thinks of himself as Hades and embraces practices and policies some might find immoral.  In order for their science to advance, Weyland-Yutani must toss morality aside.  Their new Asian partners were taken by surprise when the bigger company swallowed them up and merged them. 

Thats one thing that is always unrealistic about these type of movies. They always happen to land in the exact spot on the planet where everything is happening. Like what if it is only that one little area they land in where there are "no birds, no bees, nothing". For instance what if Aliens landed in the middle of the Siberia when all the answers to Earth's secrets happened to be in the Amazon? Planets are large things people

I think the aliens will think that earth girls are easy.

I watched stargazers live on ABC tv australia last week and the search for exo-planets experiments found 90 new exo- planets in a 24 hr time period including a new planet system with 4 large planets, what i am getting at is the universe as we perceive is infinite, therefore the chance of life whether intelligent or basic is in the positive rather than negative and even if we are the only life in the universe(highly doubtful-my opinion) then the human race will have to leave earth and colonise whether through terra-forming barren rocks or settling on worlds that are the same as earth, resources on earth are not infinite and our planet will be gone when the sun goes nova in the far future, in other words expand out or perish, simple as that.  

My reaction would be excitement and a reinvigoration of wonder.

If we find another example of life in just our star system -- and it is not analogous to life on Earth -- then how abundant must all sorts of life exist out there if we have as many as 2 kinds in our backyard?

Whatever scary, disgusting aliens our human minds can create, Nature is far more creative in every respect. Here on Earth, we have spiders that throw nets to capture prey; wasps that burst out of caterpillars; worms that live inside other animals' guts.

My point is: however exquisitely deadly the 'xenomorph' and its lifecycle is, rest assured Nature can think of things even crazier.

Stan Winston (deceased)

And I for one am a grateful student of Nature as I get some lovely creature ideas and capabilities from Nature. :)

Though in researching such, I sometimes end up with nightmares worse than what ALIEN gave me :D

"...in other words expand out or perish, simple as that."

Exactly, airshaft_surprise.  The Earth can't sustain our current population levels indefinitely, thus the company colonizes Mars, and many other planets, while perfecting their air processors.

W-Y begins large scale mining operations on other planets as a way to keep Earth and all her colonies supplied with energy. It didn't matter if they continued burning fossil fuel, because they developed methods of reversing any damage done to the atmospheres. They were forced to accept the reality of climate change when the polar ice caps wouldn't stop melting.  Some of the other megacorps felt the science behind climate change was inconclusive, but W-Y certainly never felt that way (and will deny accusations they made the government pay for that operation). Space truckers carry valuable natural resources.

Nature definitely isn't mankind's best friend.  The environment itself can be very hostile to human life.  Storms on the surface of LV-223 and LV-426 are another example of how deadly nature can be.  The company might start doing weird things like hybridizing animals with plants to try to keep insects from eating their crops.  The problem is that if you use some type of nerve agent, it kills the bees that move between ecosystems and the whole biosphere dies.  The company learns you've gotta engineer your own hybrid plants and crossbreed them.  

The potato famine in Ireland was caused by a type of mold that managed to spread through all the potatoes.  The same type of potatoes had been replanted over and over again, and they formed a monoculture.  None of the potatoes were from a different strain or a different branch of their evolutionary line, so they all had the same weakness to the disease.  If some of the "plants" don't crossbreed, they won't survive.   

Daniels would be well aware of dangerous plants and insects that can exist in tropical and subtropical regions.  There are theories about exoplanets and convergent evolution, so the company doesn't think there's anything too deadly out there. Daniels is the one who argues we don't know what's out there.

Natural disasters and famines account for the collapse of many ancient cultures. This reality has a chance at avoiding a global famine or a flood caused by the melting of the ice caps. There's nothing we can do about A.I. stealing our positions in the hierarchy once a quantum computer is complete; however, a Hell on Earth type scenario remains avoidable if space is colonized and/or air processors start being built.  The fact that there's no animal life in the area is very troubling to Daniels...  

If some of the company's beliefs about convergent evolution are in fact correct, then the bioregion should be literally full of alien birds tweeting at each other, making plenty of noises. Birds are very social creatures, and they should be chirping as soon as the newcomers arrive.  The absence of birds is what bothers Daniels most.  Well, besides Branson's death and Weyland-Yutani being so sure it's okay to not wear helmets.

NYCRO - What a very compelling topic! I have actually reviewed a pair of papers discussing the possibilities of extraterrestrial life in the recent past. According to many whom make a living contemplating this notion, any aliens of sentient mind and high technological sophistication will likely be, unfortunately, predatory in nature. The most advanced life-forms in Earth's biosphere are predators - like humans. Such organisms develop to become the dominant life-forms as a result of having to out-think prey and learn how to adapt to changin conditions. The harsh truth of life is that it must, in one way, shape or form, eat other life to continue. Treks through space - across the vistas of time - would require not only great technology, but a willingness to undertake whatever actions are necessary to survive. Such actions would undoubtedly include fighting and killing for resources. It is not pretty. It is not congruent with our desires of civility. It is simply the way of Mother Nature - and she typically favors the strong and opportunistic over the weak and timid.

@Utah_CUtiger

The whole Dinosaur Debate is a interesting one, but hey if we are going by Biblical Connections then they never existed lol

But yeah i dont think the Franchise is going to discount that, the thing that gets people confused with Prometheus indeed is the whole Sacrificial Scene, in Spaights draft it showed this Process is what lead to a Hybrid of Engineer DNA and Primate and that resulting in Humans... so the Sacrificial Scene had been done after the Dinosaurs etc.

Prometheus however is hinting that the Sacrificial Scene was the Start of Life, which would then raise the question why does all life not look like Engineers apart from Humans and what is the off Chance that Seeding Engineer DNA Millions and Millions or over a Billion years ago.. all off a sudden by Evolution lead to Humans, who just happen to be close to the Engineer who Sacrificed himself.

This is where Ridleys comments and Lindeloffs are needed, as they then clearly tell us the Engineers came back over and over Evolving Life until we get to Humans.  They simply tinker with all sorts of Life, and so its likely they chose species and experiments on them on LV-223 then planted the preferred results back on Earth... and the same thing likely happened over and over to create Primates and then further Evolve them.

If i was to Nit-pick further then indeed the world the Sacrificial Engineer performed  his Sacrifice on was not Baron at all, it had signs of Plant Life and Algae etc and so the Engineers Sacrifice was likely the Catalyst that allowed basic Life to Evolve to Complex rather than being the start of Life in general.

The other thing this allows us to now ponder, is that indeed the Sacrificial Scene could have happened on a Already thriving World but in a more secluded area, where only a more Local Ecological System at that Waterfall was altered that leads to Mankind down the line. And so Dinosaurs etc could have existed in other parts of the World away from the Sacrifice and are thus not effected by its results.

"If the bees go extinct, then we're all dead."

This is a common theory that does not quite work out as True, not all Plants rely on Bees, but if we throw in Birds too, then indeed it makes things hard as Seeds are Spread by many Plant Life/Fruit etc by Birds and other Wildlife, but then also other Insects pollinate Plants too.

So no Bees and No Birds does not mean no Plants/Harvest or Fruit but it surely would have a massive impact on these things, not so much to the Modern World, as we understand these things and can find ways to Populate Plants/Harvest and Fruit without the use of animals and insects.

Which your comment about "The company learns you've gotta engineer your own hybrid plants and crossbreed them"

Is very good and indeed plausible if not for certain and the Weyland Viral Site supported this.

But if we went back to say Ancient Times, thousand or thousands of years ago, and all the Bees died off, the effect would be drastic and would certainly have a massive impact, more so if we saw at that time all Birds and all Insects die.  It would have a massive impact on Food Sources, and would mean that Fish/Seafood would have to become the Main Meat/Protein most people would have to rely on.

I will CarynDelacroix add to the Hammerpede and Deacon debate by saying how can we involve these to make something like the Xenomorph, well as far as Procreation.

I think we can assume if Weyland-Yutani or David for that matter, had the Sacrificial Goo and you either gave this/infected  a Hammerpede and then broken down Hammerpede DNA Infects a Deacon... or Vice Versa where Deacon broken down DNA infects a Hammerpede.

I am sure a Hammerpede/Deacon Hybrid would certainly add a Egg Laying Organism that is close to the Deacon for sure.

WHOAH MAN.   CHILL OUT          Their are number of infinite possibilities and high probabilities.    I think that you are just saddened because you wont be alive long enough for true space travel exploration and uncover the numerous number of life forms that can be discovered.   

This is all hypothetical, we don't know for sure that our energy requirements will one day exceed our capability to sustain ourselves and cause our species to go extinct.  We don't know exactly what killed all the early hominid lines, or the dinosaurs, but there's evidence that we ate some of the Neanderthals (and now we eat chicken, which is evolved from dinosaur).  

The wars over natural resources are part of what keeps the whole machine going since there are limited resources already.  An advanced civilization capable of galactic travel will require an incredible amount of resources for expansion...

To BigDave's points, I'm focusing so much on "the birds and the bees" as I feel it's a good conceptual metaphor that can sum up the other related ideas, such as the possible need for intercourse as part of the ALIEN life cycle.  So I'm sort of being dramatic and using bees as a symbol for other things as well. It's important not to take anything too literally :)

We would probably find ways to survive without the bees, since they aren't the ultimate producer of the energy at the top of the energy system.  The nearby sun is producing the energy that the plants (also producers of energy) absorb.  Many of the plants would be okay without the birds and bees.  Wild wheat is able to be spread via other means - if the husks are brittle.

The wheat seeds have been planted by gardeners who have been working with the crop for thousands of years (if we compare it to wheat grown on Earth).  Daniels likes gardening and all that stuff, so she would think about all these ideas if she's considering how the bioweapon might have the ability to wipe out entire biospheres.  Complex forms of life require a lot of energy to keep going...  In the end of the 2Oth century and early 21st century, many farmers started being forced to buy their seeds from large agribusinesses instead of local sources.

The large corporations have already begun taking control of the farming industry in our real world.  That's why Weyland-Yutani is heavily invested in gardening and appointed Daniels to her position.  Her nature-based perspective would allow her to hypothesize that the ALIEN species evolved naturally long ago, and the Engineers picked it up somewhere and began genetically modifying it.  I think the film will give us clues that one faction of Engineers stole the ALIEN from the other faction.  Other than that, I think much of it will be left open to interpretation, and we'll have even more questions to discuss.

If Daniels survives, then W-Y private security officers might need to consult with her in the prequel/sequel books.  They'd wanna get Daniels' opinion on the ALIEN.  If Daniels proves herself to be a survivor. then she's valuable to them.  It's still too early in the timeline for the company to really know what they're dealing with. They might have vague ideas about the smaller ones and headburster types; although, this is the first time W-Y has even seen an adult Xenomorph.  

@CarynDelacroix

Indeed Wheat is very important and i think this is why we see it in Alien Covenant, and so indeed maybe important they find this prior to when Daniels asks why there are no Birds or Animals.. Nothing... Wheat is something that can be Harvested on its own and re-produce with Nothing.

Back to the Real World... and Indeed our Population is growing at a Alarming Rate, that unless we can completely change how we Pollute the World with the Bi-products of our Energy uses and acquirement and find construction materials as far as for everyday use in all industries that is Bio-degradable.  With Population Boom, we can only expect a Grave Future for Earth within 150 years.

At the Rate Modern Mankind from the last 200 years has been going it paints a horrid picture for what this Generation of our kind will do as far as Damage to Mother Earth that really cant be sustained much longer than another 200 years without irreversible effects.

where as other Ancient Generations be it the Dark Ages (Middle Ages) or even Roman Times, or even earlier than that.  The way Mankind lived and our impact on the Earth from 500 to 3500 years ago.. these Generations as far as Technology goes could live on Earth for many more thousands of years with out putting the Earth at risk, as far as environment and its effects on Life.

As far as Daniels goes... it depends where they are going with the next movie, or indeed the one after that.

I dont think Alien Covenant is the last we will see of Daniels, they surely have to follow what and where does she go next, and i cant see this leading her off Happily into the Sunset as there Original Destination would have ended up, if only THEY HAD NOT gone to where they received that Signal from David/Shaw.

they would be single celled if we are able to perceive them at all