Dr Shaw agreed to help David and knew what he was going to do

Interesting

just to expand a little

So I am going to be controversial

Spoiler alert for alien covenant

Alien covenant... I think... Wait for it....

I think Shaw agreed to help David after learning about the "engineers"

Shaw was clearly sick from the black goo after her relations with "insert black goo fodder boyfriends name"

Shaw wanted to rid the galaxy of the engineers and because of David's love for Shaw and Shaw's eventual love for David she helped affirm David's conviction for revenge on the engineers. Shaw maybe didn't know about David's loathing of Humans.

Dr Elizabeth Shaw has a larger role left in all of this and it wouldn't surprise me if she was re-animated by the black goo eventually....

David is from my perspective still in communication with weyland-yutani and that's how he ends up with over riding protocols on the covenant.

David has a genuine disdain for the new female lead... She isn't worthy of Dr Shaw and showed no compassion ... In fact she was quite antagonistic and definitive in her action towards David with an immediate distrust.

This film is amazing and there is a lot that is left to be revealed. It's getting knocked for the wrong reasons... Fickle fans ruined where the story was going with complaints about Prometheus... Where the story recovers is with the unwritten story yet to be told.

Interestingly the alien protomorph appears to turn on David in the last 10mins
I don't think it does, I think it is acknowledging it's role for its father's survival.

If everyone remembers about the Xenomorph in its genetic structure it has the ability to remember past lives so to speak so underneath the extraverted violence Dr Elizabeth Shaw is the driving force ... This also adds to the theory that Shaw agreed with Davids plan.

I'm also beginning to think that those xeno embryos David planted amongst the human ones originated from his experiments with Shaw and the pathogen …

Interesting angle. I could understand Shaw's desire for retribution after everything she went through as a result of the Engineer's actions.

But after the horror of "Birthing" the Trilobite, I can't see her subjecting herself to that again, or even being responsible for inflicting that on others. She was a woman of faith, merciless genocide of an entire population doesn't seem to be in her motives. 

David could have convinced Dr Shaw that she was dying because of the engineers and their wicked ways.

He could have quoted the Bible upteem times to show that God was giving her the chance to bring tribulation/judgement day/rapture to the engineers.  That this was her calling and reason for living.

She was already dying and being stranded and suffering from PTSD could have had an effect.

She looks like a woman with a plan and David went to all the trouble of giving her a headstone which he wouldn't have done if she and he hadn't have grown closer.  

I don't even think she was manipulated.  I believe with the transformation already starting to take place Dr Shaw would have been angered, saddened and vengeful by this point.  There maybe even more to the story of Weyland knew that the engineers weren't all as they seemed.

He didn't go for science.... Or for answers... He went for eternal life... He claimed to be a god.

With Dr Shaw being spiritual and seeing the engineers believing themselves to be omnipotent beings she may have been even more angered by their blasphemy.

So far there has been no mention of Shaw being tortured directly by David. No mention of him murdering Dr Shaw.

Good points. I'm definitely not disagreeing. Maybe David convinced her that together they are The Four Horsemen of the Engineers Apocalypse lol especially given Ridley Scott just did the Exodus story recently.....  

I think that makes a good point, I forgot about exodus.

There is no doubt that David is twisted...

Wouldn't it be nice if Dr Shaw was too

There is no place in the Alien films for perfect goody goody characters.. Even the illustrious Ellen Ripley is a flawed character