Question

Yeah it's kind of a unaddressed issue.  His lab of experiments clearly had Neomorph specimens so that would imply he had test subjects at some point...along with the the David-esque body there as well.  

I assume they died by time the Covenant crew arrived. That's assuming Ridley is sticking with his original vision of a short lifespan.

Tina You mean when he released the "pathogen"? No xenomorphs were born of them. The phathogen just killed them. And btw the xenomorph didnt exist at that point.

 joylitt

I had a feeling someone would come in here and say something like this about the OP.

For clarification, when David bombards the engineers, if you look closely at one or two of them, you can almost make out what appears to be creatures emerging. At best it looks like a solid mass coming out of them. This is very quick and as stated, it's not the fate you see the others suffering, just one or two of them.

This is also something that several people on this forum (including myself) have attested to seeing, and there was at least one person who reported this when the footage was shown at Comicon before the film's release. It is definitely something that one could easily miss. And I'll be the first to say these shots flash so quickly, it's hard to say if what we are seeing are definitely creatures, but what is shown is very distinct and when it's pointed out to you, it's hard to say for certain it is not happening.

If you are interested in checking for yourself go and watch the two engineers at 1:08:43 through 1:08:46. The video quality isn't great but it's the best available at this time. There may be other examples but with this video, it's all I can make out.

And yes, obviously Tina used the word xenomorph loosely to describe what she believed she saw. For all intents and purposes, we can refer to all these creatures as xenomorphs including the Deacon and neo considering their common role in the lifecycle as well as the arbitrary and vague nature of the word itself.

*Link to movie removed by Svanya

Maybe it's  a question only Mr. Scott can answer, but I thank you for your input.

Who knows. Between this movie and  Prometheus there are so many plot holes they are making it up as they go along. Thanks lindeldork. Go write another bomb like tomorrowland.

if they even make another movie I can't wait for the bs they pull explaining the space jockey. Considering that guy looked like he was 20ft tall and fossilized for 2000 years. Of dear lord. Smh.

plus the deacon. Oh that's right it's an alien movie so here have a pointless alien because we forgot, sorry. Dear lord they screwed up these prequels. Maybe they should of just left it a mystery.

@QueenElizabethShaw I saw it again yesterday night and paid close attention to the scene, there are no creatures. It's just huge eruptions of goo that come out from the engineers, you even see the stuff solidify in midair. I'll have to go see the movie again now, lol. 

((Also please don't link any bootleg copies of the movie, not on site. I'm so sorry but I have to remove that. I know you guys want to discuss the movie and have visual aids but that's a real no-no)) xx

*Edit: I'll consider allowing screenshots as visual aids, i'll talk it over with Chris and see what he says. 

@joylitt, this is why things get confusing because when Prometheus came out and was first discussed; the xenomorphs were around for millennium.  

http://thewertzone.blogspot.com/2012/06/filling-blanks-tying-prometheus-to.html

"The bioweapons and the xenomorph
On LV-223 a black liquid stored in vase-like containers serves as a destructive bioweapon. It can animate corpses, turning them into monstrous killers, and transform little worms into large, snake-like monsters. Rather more bizarrely, it can convert human sperm into a parasite-like creature that, when given a female human body to gestate in, transforms into a squid-like creature which can grow to colossal (some might indeed say, totally fricking preposterous) size and then impregnate another type of creature into another host, a creature which more closely resembles the traditional xenomorphs.

On LV-426, the cargo of the crashed Engineer ship consisted of eggs which, when hatched, produced parasitic 'facehuggers'. These creatures would attach themselves to a human or animal host and place an embryo in their chest. After a period of gestation (typically several hours, or several days for a queen creature capable of laying further eggs en masse) this 'chestburster' erupts through the host's ribcage and grows to large size within a matter of hours. This creature is the traditional xenomorph. Unlike the black goo things on LV-223, the xenomorph's life cycle appears fairly stable and predictable.

Note that, based on both the information provided by Scott in interviews and the mural in the LV-223 facility depicting the traditional xenomorph, the traditional xeno appears to have already been in existence for some time when the base on LV-223 was wiped out. This would then seem to contradict the popular (and perhaps obvious) theory that the black goo stuff in Prometheus is some type of prototype that would lead to the familiar xeno in future films (though the appearance of a proto-xeno in the final seconds of Prometheus would seem to suggest that this was the direction things were heading in).

Based on all of this I would argue that the standard xenomorph was already in existence and the Prometheus bioweapon was an attempt to replicate it. Given the inefficency of the Prometheus creatures, with a confusing and bizarre life-cycle, it can be concluded that the Prometheus bioweapon was a miserable failure. Perhaps all of their 'normal' xenomorph eggs had been put on the LV-426 ship and they were forced to develop a secondary weapon when their main one was put beyond their reach (which seems extremely unlikely, but there doesn't seem to be too many other conclusions that can be reached)?"

Lilly (Svanya)

Yes interesting. On reviewing that footage again (which I apologize for linking) I can kind of make out the appearance of of goo solidifying.

I thought they would mutate into Fifield like zombie creatures? Or whatever was happening to Dr. Holloway?

Maybe it was such a powerful overdose...that they disintegrated like the Engineer in the opening of Prometheus(drinking the cup of black goo)? 

I saw them exploding from inside, but I must confess I saw no creatures coming out. Then again, the theater I went to was not the best - far from it - and everything was gloomier than intended by Sir Ridley (I blame the projectionist...).

Yeah it's  hard to decipher, looking back to Prometheus in the beginning when the engineer drank the pathogen, his body just fell apart, maybe that's  what happened in Covenant.

@colonialsoldier

That site is just making their interpretations on what they saw, its quite ambiguous as far as the Black Goo and Xenomorph connection  but i have studied the clues over and over and that information is partially correct.

Sadly its seems they are going for a different route now...

Where as before it seemed the Xenomorph was either.

1) A result of the Black Goo outbreak by a series of events/evolution thousands of years ago... either by accident or purpose.

2) Was something they had been trying to create with the Black Goo thousands of years ago, but then a outbreak leads to some undesired results..

3) They was trying to create something from the Black Goo but the Xenomorph was a accidental outcome.

4) The Black Goo came from a Xenomorph.

As far as the OT...

Its a mess really, what we see is the Black Goo seems to break apart in the air into tiny nano particles like the Spore Infection and these Particles then swarm around and Target living Organisms and begin to Eat Away at their Skin, but then somehow these beings just end up becoming Charred/Burnt, like the Swarm of Black Goo/Particles is acting like some kind of Acid.

The concept work seems to show some of these Engineers are partially just being melted into a Ooze...

My Study of the Black Goo prior to AC... would lead me to think a Drop of this stuff directly onto a Population would result in this Chemical Attacking its Molecular Structure and breaking it down/apart, spreading through there entire supply of cells and breaking them down into nothing... or at least just into dust or ooze...

The other option would be that it would mutate their cells to produce a Hybrid Organisms.. So we should have seen some Half Xeno related/Half Engineer Hybrids....

Or just a start of basic Evolution in which new life starts from the ashes/ooze that was once Engineers.

@BigDave, good points! Then again, as mentioned by Tina, the engineer drank a whole lot of goo (if it is the very same goo) and just had his body dismantled, as it seems was the fate of the engineers targeted by David in "Covenant.

And, as you've pointed out, how seriously are they (Sir Ridley and attached producers, I guess from your words, if I'm wrong, please enlighten me) following the route they started?

Probably also disintegrated/petrified because of too much pathogen absorption.

But..

Not the whole planet's lifeforms where destroyed in a sudden it probably took some days,weeks for the initial load to spread.

After the initial load was absorbed by the fleshy lifeforms they became basically petrified black goo vessels, which could cause chain reactions if some other lifeforms touches them.

And these other lifeforms are basically the ones which David had probably experimented with. Because they dont absorbed that huge amount from the initial load but enough to cause mutations.

Maybe even some lone Engineer on the other side of the planet.

The Sacrificial Goo, seems to break down a Hosts DNA and then this is reformed into a new Substance that carries the Hosts DNA onto other life and infuses it while also evolving it and taking the Hosts Best Traits and Evolving them and mixing in traits from the Organism that was broken down by the Goo.

So its logical the Black Goo is obtained the same way the Sacrificial Scene was only collecting this broken down Matter/Mutagen and Storing it in Urns...

Which would mean the Organism Sacrificed would have to have Xeno DNA.... which i feel is what the Mural was showing, a Xeno related Organism Sacrificed to create the Black Goo.

Originally the Sacrificial Bowl was in the Scene.

If you read Spaights Draft, and look at the Nano-Scarabs... in both Sacrificial Cup Form and then Urn that Fifield knocks over Form.

Then replace Scarab with Goo and you get the answers clear...

But after they finished shooting Prometheus and from them to even AC it seems they keep changing what the Goo did and its just a mess now..

@QueenElizabethShaw I've discussed it with Chris, he said screenshots are acceptable and allowed. So feel free to use some to illustrate your points. This goes for everyone. :D