So... about the Derelict

It's indeed quite a puzzle how we'll end up at the beginning of the original Alien. Clearly, the space-jockey has to be an engineer, and since David created the xenomorph (that we know, not the hybrid shock troop that spawns from the black goo), there are only two ways for an engineer to get ahold of eggs: Either from David's lab on Paradise, or from eggs that I assume David will create on Covenant/Origae-6.

Maybe the engineers seek revenge for what David did to their people on Paradise, and decide to give humans a taste of their own medicine, but during the journey with the eggs a facehugger attacks the engineer flying the ship and they crash on LV-426.

According to the novel, the eggs already existed. David just modified them. If that is the case, the eggs were something the Engineers had been making for a long, long time.

@Kethol and Burke, Carter J.: The size of the ship's interior could be explained by it being a tesseract (after all RS does pinch other ideas from Doctor Who such as Elizabeth Shaw;)

It could also be explained that the interior is Bugs Bunny's magic pocket that anything can fit into :)

It's just a goof up from the film makers at the time. The egg chamber was supposed to be in a pyramid/silo thing originally. Budget issues killed that, so they relocated it inside the derelict ship and re-used the pilot room set and used a matter painting to make the room look huge.

Most people did not look that hard at details like this back then. My friends and I picked up on it easily after repeated viewings of the VHS tape when we were kids. We just assumed there was a larger part of the ship underneath the surface that we could not see. The area must have been volcanically active in the past and covered it up.

@Kethol - 'We just assumed there was a larger part of the ship underneath the surface that we could not see.'  I agree, as I had also felt this was the only way the egg chamber could have been so large!

I just found something really interesting in the novelization of Covenant (may contain spoilers!):

So when David leads Oram into his lab and shows him his specimens explaining to Oram what he's been up to during the ten years, he explains that the black goo atomizes to particles when exposed to air. It then reproduces in whatever host it can find, producing more goo, which then atomizes again and so on and so on.

This happened until there where no more hosts left. Ten years on, what remained of the original black goo was something that looked like black mold contained within a paper thin membrane. David tosses one of those things to Oram, who catches it instinctively, worried about what he's just done.

David then says: "Don't worry. It's fully ossified now. Complete inert and harmless."

So that right there might be the answer as to why the Jockey in Alien was carrying all those eggs, which were created/reproduced by David, but looked to be fossilized /ossified. This could still happen within the 18 years between covenant and Alien.

What do you think?

I think Kethol has a point regarding the SJ story. It may of already been told.

The LV223 outbreak / Earth attack made the craft detour or crash on the next planet.

The Eggs are no longer an issue because the novel has stated the Engineers already had eggs. 

So if there was an outbreak on LV223 AND Engineers were already studying/using the eggs then there is every possibility that this story has been told and A:A may cover other ground.

How would we feel about that?

I guess I can live with that. I think it would be better to maybe just leave the hole derelict story stand on it's own, without bringing it into any future installments. I'd probably just be disappointed with whatever explanation they would come up with for the Jockey.

I'm torn because I would rather they leave the exact details of the Derelict in Alien a mystery, but I would also like to see the David storyline arc come full circle.

The problem is, Covenant established that the particular breed of the xeno we see in Alien was bred by David, so if a cargo hold of eggs for that breed were on the Derelict, it ties back to David somehow.

Really good point about 1979Xeno and the links to David i overlooked that one.

I would have to rethink that theory of the story already been told now:(

Clever Kethol!