Ridley Scott confirms David WAS the originator of the xenomorph AND that the beings he bombarded were in fact engineers.

Lilly (Svanya)

"@QueenElizabethShaw I've featured this thread, thanks for posting it!"

Absolutely! I'm happy to see people engage with each other over it. Thanks for featuring!

Tiwaz

"Of course he could be lying. But David usually lies through omission rather than faking things."

I've been thinking about this myself as well. Lying and saying to Oram that the engineers created it would probably be somewhat disarming. A way to put Oram more at ease by shifting the focus to the engineers as the evil, while creating the appearance that David is trying to study what they were doing in an effort to protect humans.

Also we COULD conclude that David is fine with big lies too and not just lies of omission. When Oram hesitated while approaching the egg, David outright says "It's perfectly safe". Then there was also his claim initially that the Juggernaut's payload accidentally deployed. My impression was, he told Walter because Walter had caught him and he also believed that it was time Walter made a decision between David and the crew. Full disclosure would be required in this situation.

Another excerpt from the book ( shortly before David shows Oran the dead egg):

'“Marooned here so lamentably,” he explained, “I had nothing but time to watch and to learn. Eventually my innate curiosity got the better of me and, with nothing to occupy myself other than the compiling of a simple collection, I began to do a bit of genetic experimentation of my own. Some cross-breeding, hybridizing, what have you. I like to think that the ill-fated inhabitants of this world—the original Engineers—would gaze on my work with approval.”
His words were useful in reminding Oram to tighten his grip on the weapon he held.
“You… engineered these?”
David smiled anew. “Idle hands are the devil’s workshop.”
Oram stared at the line of specimens.'

He admitted that he created "something" already. 

Possibly he even reverse bred, without realizing it.

The Company...and its predecessor in Alien: Resurrection centuries later...is obsessed with the Xenomorph for use as a bioweapon.

LV-426 has an alien craft on it, Ash knew about the eggs and what would come from them. (And Ash may be David; one last "surprise" as the prequels end.) The proximity of Hadley's Hope to the Derelict was not a coincidence. Was it? Why send people to that rock if Covenant was looking for a cushy Paradise world decades before? Why not send android workers?

The Company, Weyland-Yutani and its Resurrection successor, want the Xenomorph! They want the eggs! They want a perfect bioweapon!

LV-223 is full of the military technology of godlike beings. The black goo vases are there. Biomechanical wonders are a visitor's for the taking. Shaw sent out a warning for no one to go there. So everyone and their brother should be rushing to find the great alien powers that doomed the Prometheus and that dearly missed bundle of charm Mr. Weyland.

LV-223 boys! No need to make Ripley clones in the far future! Go get a Juggernaut army on LV-223! Your scientists can whip up something as dangerous as David's "perfect organism"! I bet that little Deacon would be glad to be a weapon for you...and he'd hold plenty of secrets if you chose to experiment on him.

Engineer technology. A military base. Goo vases. Juggernaut ships full of biomechanical secrets.

On and on. Maybe androids are secretly running things by the time of Alien. But...white "blood." Even in Call, much later.

Will David make a return trip to LV-223? Will one of our heroes nuke that mysterious world that Ellen Ripley would know is the ultimate threat to humanity (if exploited by the Company)?

Nah.

Movies have to get to the point. We're going to see David connect to Ash in some way, and the Engineers may remain an enigma. And not a very interesting one, compared to Giver's Space Jockey.

LV-223! All the bioweapons and technology the Company could ever need! The secrets of life and death!

"I'm making this up as I go" - every creator involved in the Alien prequels.

Well it looks like that Alan Foster wrote his Alien Covenant/Origins books since he knew that fans would backlash against David being the canon creator of Xenos.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCrVnlNk4eA 

i heard that the origin is something related to the xeno :) ill be buying the novelization as it does right by the original 

"Is almost like they haven't thought it through" oh i loved that... unfortunately that's been the theme since the start of Prometheus. :(

I love Ridley Scott and he can still rescue this.... It was better than Prometheus most people are falling on that side but it is feeling like the xenos are getting less mystical and less awe inspiring.... the engineers were nothing like awe inspiring more like weaklings.  i hope David was lieing about creating or the original black goo comes from something amazing... cough cough demi god cough...

Listening to Ridley i do wonder if he realises why people love alien so much... it's realness is set inspiring vastness feelings... at no point did i think b movie Friday the 13th  in space!

"the xenos are getting less mystical and less awe inspiring"

Only in Alien has the Xeno had any mystic...after that not so much..

1. Aliens: Xeno's are just 'bugs' killed with a shotgun! They're really no match for a 5-80yo with a weapon.

"Here little Timmy here's a shotgun, jus' pull the trigger and kill the big bastard....then we'll go for some ice cream!"  

"Yeah!!"

2 Alien3: pretty much had to base a movie where there were no weapons! Or the Xeno would have been shot. "Look an Alien!" "Blam!" "Whew! that was close! Let's get back to our cells"

3 Alien:R  More bugs..dumb as a bunch of rocks.

4 Alien:C  Just a bug(with a backstory). Though I did like how difficult it was to kill the Neomorph that was cool!

I'd like them to produce fear pheromones....makes you run screaming or just submit. (Some airborne pathogen surrounding them a nice stink.)

Being in the same room with one should incapacitate a Elephant.

I mean, do they even smell? Not sure anyone has mentioned a 'smell'.

When it comes to the mural and the Deacon comparing to the neomorph and protomorph, I like to compare them to cockroaches and termites. Termites are basically just more evolved cockroaches. 

I don't like the idea that Engineers created the Aliens, I don't know if that's the official synopsis but it's was most people are saying… could be wrong…

Here are my thoughts, or at least what I thought before AC destroyed my theory haha

In the first Alien movie (LV-426) they only find one crashed ship with the Ovomorphs (eggs). In Prometheus (LV-223) they find several ships (parked underground) holding only the weaponised 'goo', in what seems to be a military installation. I think this means that the Engineers use the eggs (as they are the easiest form of the Alien to transport) to create the goo. Since they are moons of the same planet and relatively close by, I think the crashed ship from Alien was on its way to LV-223 from somewhere to resupply the military installation with more eggs, before it had to make an emergency landing on LV-426. So the ship from Alien wasn't a bomber, I think it was a supply ship on its way to LV-223 and that's how the films are now connected. People saying that the engineers created the Alien species, I think they discovered them and just got one step closer to what Weyland-Yutani corp was trying to do in the original films (weaponise them).

As for my thoughts on David creating the Xenomorph, I'm still not sure whether I like that story arc… I feel that knowing that the Xenomorph is not a natural creation but engineered, just makes them much less scary looking back at the original films. I hope that in the next movie RS finds a way to explain it's existence in a more sinister plot! Make David accidently get infected whilst experimenting (kind of like the Engineers) to bring about the Xeno. This would return that sinister self preserving identity the Aliens have, as opposed to being seen as the pet expriment of a delusional Android. So far Prometheus and AC combined have now painted them more as pet projects from different humanoid races that keep going wrong…

Edit: Deleted duplicate post FML

Just to throw this out there, it is always entirely possibly Ridley is using this creator David thing as a misdirect purposefully to satisfy the anti-Prometheus people who hated engineers so that they'll come back for the next film or two.

This conflict between the book and his comments really opens up the possibility that this is all Ridley's idea of marketing and generating self contained intrigue within the series.

So he gets the anti-Prometheus crowd to stick around by making them think he's dropping the engineers and sticking with xenos and androids (two core aspects of Alien), then he reals in people who care about neither Prometheus or Xenos, but who find the AI story fascinating. And he keeps the Prometheus fans by dangling them in suspense, making them feel like they need to come see if he's truly going to leave Prometheus concepts in the dust, and he produces the same car-crash-gazing effect to real in those who want to see if he's really going to betray them and make David the creator of the original xenomorph.

In reality it doesn't really matter what happens in the films between Prometheus and the Alien tie-in prequel because if he gives everyone what they want in the final installment, as long as everything makes sense at the end, many people will largely appreciate all the misdirection in hindsight.

Or this could be the next Star Wars Ep 1 - 3.  ]:p

Let's hope not though.

David:  The Galaxy's Biggest Copyright Infringer?  Maybe The Engineers will see him in court?

 who knows what's going on any more lol! Its started confusing then got worse :p . 

Ridley and the story writers need to sit down and write out the entire timeline and details of everything answering all questions...a solid universe as such.  Then from that will come a solid film... It currently looks like that part is missing things are not joining up... if you listen to that pod cast posted on here with Ridley in it you start to realise how vague and pulled in to many directions this idea is still in Ridley head...please no David creating xenos please please....

"Or this could be the next Star Wars Ep 1 - 3.  ]:p"

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!

Nycro

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!"

Well...This franchise is dying....150,000 humans die every day.

..what percentage were Alien fans? 10? 100?

20th Century Fox lose tens of thousands of alien customers a years. Who is replacing them? Little kids? No. George Lucas  grows his franchise on the back of little kids...sell them toys...get um' hooked young and you'll have customers for life.

Alien series really can't hook em' young?

Hooking some jaded 17 year old, who's seen it all and knows it all, is a tough task.

Chest popping and head munching teddybears aren't exactly kindergarden's best friend, you know. XD But I see your point, MonsterZero.

MonsterZero

Good point. It is comforting to know we at least won't see things get quite as bad as they got for THAT prequel series.

Doesn't really bother me that David created the Alien, doesn't bother me at all.

What does bother me, why do the Engineers look so different from Prometheus to Alien Covenant? Am i missing something?

Engineer Tech Brett

"What does bother me, why do the Engineers look so different from Prometheus to Alien Covenant? Am i missing something?"

I think there's three pretty decent theories about this right now.

1. The engineers in Prometheus were simply part of a space faring god-king class. The engineers in Covenant were surface dwelling commoners.

2. The engineers in Prometheus were manufactured to go out into space and fulfill the mission of seeding other planets, while the rest of their society are much like humans varying in body type and lacking bio-mechanical suits for space travel.

3. The engineers in Covenant are a genetically deteriorated line of their race that became less like the Prometheus engineers over millenia of breeding.

 You forgot number 4.

4. It was a small scene and they thought they would get away with a bit of face paint and some rags. Doing the makeup for that Prometheus engineer took ages...

I like the Star Wars prequels as guilty pleasures and I'm not the only one. But yeah, the Alien prequels are way better.

@QueenElizabethShaw

It would need to be something. Combining the first and second idea would work for me.

@Ati There's no contradiction regarding where the eggs are from, David is not telling the truth. He is lying in the movie as well.

Hi Ati, Thats precisely how I read that entire section he is trying to put Oram at his ease and say this particular thing is a result of the long dead Engineers what I am going to show you is different.

However I have written to Alan to thank him for his excellent work and asked him what he had in his mind did he want to leave the possibility of a different view as a creative author to Ridley.  

That’s a crappy idea and it feels like the whole franchise becomes too David-centric (so to speak). I would like the SJ to be an engineer and that the Engineers originally made the Xeno. David should just do something that has been done before because I would be fine with that.

I agree with Chli what he thinks about the eggs on the Derelict. Hopefully they won’t make David the SJ but the way it looks now it could be a possibility. Help us all, I don’t want it to turn out that way even though David is an interesting character.

Some interesting ideas in this thread, but I must agree with many others here and say that I'm disappointed by the new direction the narrative seems to have taken in Alien Covenant.

What made the original movies so appealing and thought provoking was the idea that a terrifying organism like the Alien (Xenomorph if you prefer) could evolve naturally in some dark corner of the cosmos. Something so different from us that it is essentially unknowable, at least by any human defined terms. This hints at important revelations about the nature of the universe and how life develops within it. It tells us that anthropocentric beliefs are mistaken at best (deadly at their worst) and that our species can never escape the implications of predator .vs. prey (This concept is neatly explored in Dark Horse Comics' Aliens:Book One). It is a primal fear of the unknown that is at the core of the Aliens movie mythology and forms the foundation of its unique brand of sci-fi/horror.

By acknowledging David (or the Engineers for that matter...) as the creator/s of the Alien we are robbed of the great potential in this central mystery and instead given a dumbed-down parable about the maker losing control of his creation; a story that has been repeated ad nauseam in this genre. Alien Covenant's plot reduces the most fearsome entity mankind has ever encountered to a lab experiment conducted by a bored rogue synthetic with a grudge against humanity. The nameless terror that is at the heart of the franchise is diluted; diminished into a realm of easily recognizable human motivations and mundane melodrama.

In addition, when examined, David's rationale for wanting to sabotage human efforts at colonization seem vague & ill-defined, perhaps even petty. We don't see him suffer abuse or ill-treatment at the hands of his human masters, although in AC's opening scene David's confusion/resentment at being made to serve is clearly portrayed. His genocidal response to these frustrations seems an overreaction and his judgment of humans and Engineers as unworthy rather hasty. It also suggests that his is a fragile, badly flawed AI, which seems odd given how much effort Weyland has put into his design (Asimov's Three Laws anyone ?). No doubt David's frailties represent a major through-line in the prequel movies and prompt the evolution of more humane, compassionate synthetics like Bishop.

In any case, here's hoping something better emerges from the next installment... 

If Davids the SJ in alien he's about 4 foot too small :s . But with the muddled way things have been going it's looking possible :I ...

Sorry this is just lame writing, going back to my imagination and thinking about what that millennia old elephantine creature was transporting that dangerous cargo, and actually giving off the warning signal for others to stay away....the space jockeys story could have been so much more creative than what we got. I think with the crap story we got with Prometheus there's just no way for them to write them selves out of it to match up with Alien. Look up some of the artwork people have come up with for what the Space Jockey creature could be.. haunting stuff.. more so than the albino giants we got.

Having Xeno's as your main antagonist is very difficult! They kinda' just squat in the mud. They're not going to build a spaceship and terrorize the galaxy....No.... humans have to do most of the work to get dead/chestbursted. (Good for padding your movie with a lot of walking and exploring scenes?)

But..if you make David the main antagonist he can fly/build spaceships and terrorize the galaxy. An order of magnitude more dangerous.

(how many humans have Xeno's killed in 200 years? 40-50? I think John Wick killed as many before breakfast.)