Rationalization of Alien series of movies (10 points)

Wow! Lot to digest.

Yes, Engineers society needs a lot of world building. Earth has hundreds of languages for our populace...wonder if it's the same for the Engineers? Galaxy spawning/spanning cultures probably have 10,000+ languages...probably can't understand the next village...let alone another planet!    "hiut hdi ' kjotuy' ?" ? "frubg' e' topwer" ? "scus e e me ' e?"

Didn't see any vehicles...did they/do they walk everywhere!?

Yeah, needed to give a whole lot of context to make the jigsaw work. There's more....continuing on point 5 :)

5) Next, on the Alien chicken-and-egg problem. The Engineers obviously have to come first before the Xenomorphs. Reasoning follows:

The Engineers are the ones who designed, build and fly spaceships whereas the xenomorph cannot.

The suits the Engineers were wearing (or had integrated or genetically-engineered into them) and their ribbed spacecraft structures are highly similar to the Xenomorph exoskeleton itself. Thus, there is a congruent “cultural” theme there, where the Engineers genetically designed the xenomorph to have almost the same “look and feel”. If the xenomorph were a naturally and randomly evolved creature that the Engineers accidentally discovered amongst the countless planets they explored, it will certainly NOT have had the similar ribbed themed designs of their spaceships.

Even among different human races on Earth, you clearly see that for example Japanese samurai armor in all its varieties has a theme running through it, whilst European knights in the middle ages wrought heavy metal pieces that wore like carapaces. One look and you know these are protective equipment made from two distinct cultures even though both are made by the same human species. If an archaeologist digs up an ancient armor in France that looks like the Japanese designs, it will be ridiculous to suggest that somehow the ancient French came up with identical Japanese designs independently and by pure chance alone.

It would similarly, be a near impossible coincidence, that you would stumble upon a distant planet with an alien creature having an exoskeleton naturally evolved to look much like the interior décor of the spaceships you built.

Furthermore, the narrative in the Covenant prequel, being that David was the original creator of (or the one who “perfected”) the first xenomorph from his primitive, equipment-sparse, gothic-like lab in the Engineer city he destroyed is untenable. Firstly, the xenomorph is a highly advanced biological creature and using a rudimentary lab without even DNA sequencing machines, abundant chemical inventory, clean room facilities or even a basic microscope is nonsensical. Those who are working in bio-tech will know that contamination of DNA samples is so prevalent that you can’t do experiments and get conclusive results without very strict protocols, control (sample) standards and absolutely sanitized environments. Secondly, one android SINGLE-HANDEDLY designing the “perfect” organism just by random mixing and matching some scattered body parts over a couple of years or even decades is nonsensical. At best, one can speculate that David just fed whatever bio-materials he can get his hands on, into the petri dish / creature(s) and then wait and hope for the best that it will breed into something progressively better by blind chance. In fact, David doesn’t even have any viable containment vessel to keep his grown samples for so-called experimentation and further study. In that mud-house lab environment, is ever resourceful David going to build Xenomorph containment vessels with stone bricks or some scrap metal lying around?

Therefore, we can conclude the final adult form xenomorphs could ONLY have been made by an advanced civilization with advanced facilities at an earlier date. Whether it was some mad scientist Engineer who specifically designed the grotesque lifecycle of the xenomorph or it evolved and adapted by itself over time has little significance. The end result for now, is that the final adult xenomorph form has the distinctive cultural signature of the Engineer (at least the pale-blue skin race/faction/group) finger-printed on its exoskeleton. Thus, the Xenomorph was definitely MADE by (a group/faction/race of) Engineers. This conclusion is important for reasons I will elaborate later on.

6) From point 5) above, since the Engineers (or a race/faction/group) had their distinctive Geiger-esque designed imprinted on the Xenomorph in its final adult form, it follows that they also very likely needed to be involved at the embryonic or earlier stages to genetically design and make the source material of the black goo/spores to begin with.

I'm not a biologist or geneticist, but it is well-known in basic biology that Form follows Function. If a cow is made/evolved to eat grass (function), its needs to have flat teeth and four stomachs (form) for processing low nutrient grass as food. If you want to clone a cow from scratch with bio-luminescent skin, you cannot say make it have heritable luminescent skin without first planning it in advance and inserting DNA sequences at its low-level zygote cell. Injecting luminescence capability via DNA therapy into skin cells of an adult cow may work, if temporarily, in outward form, but it will certainly NOT have these traits passed onto future progeny because these cow eggs/sperm cells will not have the DNA encoded. Therefore, at the simplistic level, the Engineers theoretically would also need to work at the zygote level of the Xenomorph or even at a more fundamental level, in order to have the adult form finally exhibit the features of their Geiger-resque exoskeletal designs (similar to their manufactured spaceships).

One could theorize that the “black goo” stuff was naturally occurring and that the Engineers found it on some unknown planet and then proceeded to experiment with it, and realized it could be useful for rapidly seeding life across the galaxy. This may be plausible but unlikely. Consider, if it was naturally occurring in the Universe, why the superfluous activity of the Engineers to waste time and effort plus sacrifice one Engineer each time to spread the black goo around viable planets. If the black goo were naturally occurring, it will lead to life once the conditions are right, whether the Engineer civilization wills it or not.  In fact, the Engineers willfully spreading such “natural” black goo might even be deleterious to many planets and/or civilizations. If the Engineers had scanned a planet and missed even a small community of worms under a rock, then the black goo spread on the early planet may end up transforming these into deadly acid-filled serpents and then fully-grown invasive xenomorphs, which then destroys the rest of the planets ecosystem.

Secondly, if the black goo occurs naturally, then many, if not all, planets would be devoid of any lifeforms except variations of the xenomorphs eventually. Even advanced life forms evolved on otherwise normal planets, will eventually encounter the occasional drop of black goo say every few million years and then self-destructs in a chain-reaction that transforms all into hideous forms and more black goo or black spores or eggs to spread to even more planets via spaceships or panspermia. The ultimate end-state of such a galaxy filled with a variety of powerful but instinct-driven xenomorphic forms that cannot build complex civilization and more, seems quite pointless; and then when everyone transforms into a “perfect” organism~~, then no one is perfect anymore, since me being a xenomorph can spew acid at you and be just as powerful as the next xenomorph, so the entire biological ecosystem becomes homogeneous and dead, which defeats the whole purpose of propagating life in all its diversity.

Therefore, the black goo clearly does NOT occur naturally and is an ARTIFICIAL construct specially manufactured by the Engineers (or a race/faction/group of them). The “black goo” and by corollary, the xenomorph, its entire life cycle (from spores/egg, to face-hugger, then to chest-burster and rapid growth into adult form thereafter), has to be intentionally engineered to be so. In other words, the Engineers did NOT by happenstance find this organism or discover this “black goo” on some unknown planet and then collected it for use.

~~Note: My point is there is really no such thing as a “perfect” organism in the natural world that is able to thrive in a diversity of planetary and environmental conditions. In the marathon of life, if everyone wins and eats its prey every single time everywhere, then everyone becomes a loser collectively. There are no meaningful winners in a competition should everyone be a “perfect” winner, since if everyone becomes a “perfect” organism, eventually there will be no prey left (i.e. no food left) for these “perfect” organisms which spreads like wildfire and consumes everything too rapidly. In fact, once all prey is eaten, the “perfect” organism will have to eat each other to survive, until only one cannibal unit is left on each planet. This means the “perfect” organism inevitably leads to self-extinction.

In other words, once the black goo/spores are unleashed onto a planet, the biological chain-reaction will transform the entire planet’s fauna into xenomorphic forms (e.g. dog/cow/worm/fish/bird-form Xeno if the black goo/spores/face-hugger latches onto a dog/cow/worm/fish/bird host), which will then ravenously kill each other off as the food source runs out. Eventually, there will be only one cannibalistic, strongest Xenomorph left on the desolate planet and it will die of hunger since it cannot eat itself nor become a herbivore. In theory at least, that is what will and should happen. Presumably, when it is safely cleansed of fauna, the Engineers will then return to that particular planet to “seed” it again and start over a new planetary experiment once more. Do note that the black goo/spores only destroys fauna (i.e. animals) and do not seem to affect plants and vegetation at all.

However, common sense will inform us that selective evolutionary pressures may come into play once everyone transforms into a “perfect” organism and then it becomes a race on which xenomorph “species” can lay more eggs, have bigger, faster face-huggers and so on and so forth. Since a cooperative group of “perfect” xenomorphs will be more effective than a smaller group of equally “perfect” organisms, we may even have xenomorphs develop language and inventing fire and then working cooperatively to create civilization, and pretty soon, we end up full circle with xenomorphs “devolving” into brainier but “weaker” species able to build spaceships after a few billion years later, and then their civilization encounters the black goo/spores and then what? They will either be immune to it or the whole cycle starts again? lol.  Therefore, in reality AND in the movie script, the black goo CANNOT logically be a naturally occurring substance. In reality too, the “perfect” organism is an oxymoron, BUT in the movie script, we can suspend our disbelief and continue to be a movie fan.

7) Now, onto the raison d'etre of the black goo. In the beginning scene of Prometheus, it shows an Engineer sacrificed via drinking the black goo stuff. This implies again that one group/race/faction of Engineers consciously knew the danger of this material in an individual Engineer body, but they used it anyhow in order to seed various planets with advanced life.

What life this starts off is inconsistent in the Alien story here. That particular Engineer drinking the black goo disintegrates into just self-replicating DNA molecules, while other biological entities almost always transforms into or gets a xenomorph growing inside them if they had exposure to the same goo/spores?

One type or quality of black goo seeds planets (and theoretically Earth as well) and led to human evolution (and all other beautiful lifeforms) over billions of years, while the same black goo that human space travelers came into contact later produces viciously destructive, bloodthirsty Xenomorphs? The contrast between Heaven and Hell cannot be greater than this. Yet, both essentially derived from the same black goo.

It makes no sense at all, unless you consider 3 possibilities:

X)          The original black goo substance manufactured for the sacrificial ceremony is fundamentally different from those the Engineers (or specific group/faction/race) made in later versions.

And/Or

Y)          The black goo substance was manufactured from a common source, but somehow will eventually degrade / devolve /mutate into something awful over the eons OR something/someone accidentally or intentionally contaminated it during their long sojourns in space and over multiple planetary excursions.

And/Or

Z)          In a more complex theory, the manufactured black goo acts as a catalyst, and the transformation effect depends on some additional factor of the biological being that comes into contact with it. If you have some physiological X-factor (or sufficient levels of it), it will decompose the biological entity into DNA molecules that can seed planets rapidly with complex lifeforms, but if one does not have this physiological X-factor then taking it gets the gory final result of a xenomorph.^

^ Here another Earthly analogy might help. Humans and mammal species such as rodents, rabbits are easily killed by snake venom. A small dosage of less than 1 grams of a black mamba venom has been documented to have killed a fully grown elephant. For a human-sized animal, such venom will kill within 30 minutes if you’re not injected with the antidote immediately. However, a little furry primate called a mongoose, has evolved itself to become totally immune to the effects of snake venom, including the black mambas. In fact, the mongoose targets and eats snakes, and even if bitten by highly venomous ones, it simply dozes off for a short time, while its body’s naturally produced anti-venom neutralizes the deadly toxins. Although rare, natural evolution can create animals with vastly different responses to the same chemical.

All 3 scenarios, or even combinations thereof, are possible and we cannot get confirmation until future directors/movies provides more information (or creates more confusion and inconsistencies. lol).

At this moment, I lean towards scenario Z). My thinking is primarily due to the stated arguments in points 3) and 4) above, whereby the Engineers as a whole are shown to be quite peaceable and lacking in weaponry or weapon systems. Following that, the black goo was deduced to be artificially manufactured by them, [see point 5) and  6)] NOT initially as a deadly weapon but for the purposes of seeding planets which was visibly demonstrated in their sacrificial scene.

However, as with all technology, there is always a flip side to it. In their design and manufacture of the black goo bio-material, the Engineers had to make it extremely virulent, fast growing, fertile, powerfully self-propagating and supremely hardy so that it can do its job of seeding planets rapidly. Incidentally, these are all the EXACT same qualities of the Xenomorph. In other words, their bio-technology had negative consequences when used improperly. This is akin to human nuclear technology, where powerful nuclear energy and knowledge could be put to peaceful and positive use, but due to human nature, almost always gets abused and turned into an equally all-powerful destructive force.

Apparently too, these highly advanced civilization with high bio-tech could not seed planets via a less suicidal way. I mean why can’t they draw out some of the Engineer’s blood or if really needed just cut off one of his hands or little fingers (which they later can easily grow back, given their advanced bio-tech capability), then mix the black goo into it and throw it into the river? Do they really need so much Engineer “meat” as reactive substrate? Even if you argue that some level of DNA material density is first required, no matter how much “meat” you use, it is not going to make much difference in ppm density when the DNA gets diluted to almost nothing as the river flows into the vast sea. Everything is reduced to DNA molecules anyway, so it should not matter which body part you actually use. Also, if the black goo is so powerful in replicating itself, it wouldn’t really matter how much “meat” you start off with. To develop this line of logical thinking further, one could even use Engineer cadavers or multiple corpses if you needed more “meat”, inject the black goo into them and then quickly throw it into the river.

Thus, we can list the following propositions on why the Engineers need such a strange personal sacrifice:

A)          It serves purely as a ceremonial/ritual function, just as human cultures in earlier ages sacrificed animals and even humans for various cultural rites of offerings to their “Gods” or for some dubious religious reasoning.

OR

B)          The black goo follows the complex case in 7) Z), where it only works properly, when it is ingested into a “prepared” living Engineer body (having the requisite physiological X-factor) which then interacts with the black goo to produce DNA seeding molecules. For some unknown biological reason humans do not yet grasp, any other biological entity taking in the black goo, without the proper “preparation” and/or without this physiological X-factor, will likely generate xenomorphic forms instead. For obvious reason too, using a dead Engineer corpse or body part will also not work because clearly a dead body or body part has no physiology and hence no X-factor.

If we accept that 7) A) is nonsensical for a highly-developed advanced civilization, then we can conclude that 7) B) is the only meaningful answer remaining. Thus, the black goo requires the following in order to seed planets:

i)           A full LIVING body of an Engineer, who is

ii)          “Prepared” beforehand, with sufficient levels or quality (whatever that means), of the physiological X-factor within his body

It also follows that this group/race/faction of the Engineers likely knew that without this correct combination, the xenomorphic forms will likely result. This specific requirement explains why the sacrificial scene suggests that the Engineer have had already some kind of prior ritualized “preparation” with the help of his fellow kind in those long robes, and who seems fully cognizant and accepting of his outcome. We observe the Engineers behavior as performing some kind of sacrificial ritual, probably because we humans do not yet fathom the inner workings of the physiological X-factor within the living Engineer body and the black goo.

Note further that when David dropped all the black goo vials onto the Engineer city, all the Engineers there died the same way as the sacrificial Engineer did….by way of disintegration. None of the Engineer bodies there birthed any xenomorphic forms at all. Thus, this reinforces my point 2) that they indeed, all belong to the same Engineer “species”, with the similar reaction to the black goo. Contrast this with how human bodies react when they come into contact with the black goo.

Why the unsuspecting Engineers in the doomed city did not fully disintegrate into DNA molecules (given the huge amount of black goo rained on them) could be attributed to how much or little, these Engineers were “prepared” and thus their physiological X-factor may not be of sufficient quality to disintegrate completely. Until future movies show otherwise, this is a reasonably consistent explanation that fits well.

8) Understanding all the previous points, especially on the origins and workings of the black goo, allows us to conceptualize the state of the Engineer civilization, and deduce what their overall intentions were.

In summary, my perspective is that the early Engineers (those who used the large disc-shape craft) KNEW the potential dangers of the black goo and treated it with due care and respect, using only small quantities for specific planet seeding purposes. Later group/races/factions of the Engineers (those using the C-shaped space craft with Geiger-esque architecture) were more careless with it and produced large quantities of the same black goo to create the Xenomorph forms and used it as a means to “wipe the slate clean”, on planets which they think did not evolve according to their standards. They were actually the antithesis of the earlier (group/factions/races of) Engineers by undoing their predecessors “Godly” work.

Here, I need to emphasize that from a broader perspective of worldly creation/destruction, these differing groups/factions/races of Engineers really need NOT be in opposition to each other. As discussed earlier, the Engineer race in totality is NOT war-like and they probably are NOT in any sort of military conflict with each other the way humans often engage in organized warfare due to ideological schisms.

Which is why no individual Engineer will be able to give Dr. Shaw any satisfactory answer to her question of why they need to destroy life on Earth, nor help answer Mr. Weyland on his obsession with individual immortality. These are irrelevant questions, especially when they are asking an individual Engineer pilot. It is like child asking an individual human soldier with a rank of private, on a battlefield why he is shooting at his fellow human beings, when they did not do anything to harm him and all they did was wear a different uniform. What answer would you give the child? You would need to drag out an encyclopedic-worthy amount of context around the entire social psychology, cultural-politico history, even religious beliefs of the entire society and so on and so forth….and then the child will say it still makes no sense at all.

It is NOT a simple clean cut case of pure Good versus pure Evil, when seen in the context of billion year evolutionary time scales, in which the Engineer civilization operates in or is concerned with. My hunch is the two creator/destroyer (groups/factions/races) of Engineers would have recognized the thematic roles they both played in the greater scheme of things. Consider for illustration sake, if the exceedingly successful dinosaurs were not wiped out 650 million years ago on Earth, by accident or otherwise, where do you think human beings would stand? Likewise, what if there are better forms of beings that could be made should humans be removed to make way, would you do so if you had the Engineers prowess? As such, there is no easy answers to Dr. Shaw’s burning question. As David the android, tersely hinted “To create, one must first destroy”, which sums up his (and mine) perspective on the penultimate motive of the Engineers and their activities.

9) Now onto Paradise planet. It is obvious that it is NOT a technologically advanced group/faction/race yet and it would seem this Engineer (group/race/faction) on that planet is enamored of the spaceship coming in to dock with the hovering station.

My postulate is that the docking station is automated and unmanned and has been hovering there with nothing much happening, for untold centuries or more. This explains why the entire population of the Engineer (group/race/faction) came out in droves to witness the rare spectacle. They had clearly built their city plaza right below this floating curiosity. Now, we can give plausible explanations of why those Engineers on their supposed home planet, were oblivious to the danger and cheering on as David docks the spaceship above their city.

Since, we know the Engineers likely traced their roots to the same source, even if somewhat distant over thousands of years and more, they would recognize the spaceship as their “brother” or “kin” returning. In other words, they did not see it as a threat at first. They perceived it as one of their own kind piloting the vehicle. The docking station obviously was placed there previously and hence the primitive Engineers on this planet would have had a constant reminder of some history of previous contact.

Think back on my point 2) again, as on Earth today, different countries and human races are at different stages of development. Each may react very differently to seeing a helicopter hovering near their dwellings. In New York, nobody would give a second look, but an untouched native tribe in an Amazonian forest will look to the human pilot of this wondrous mechanical flying bird as a higher being.

Other clues also indicate the backward nature of this particular Engineer (race/faction/group) because no other airborne vehicle went up to greet David’s vessel. They did not seem to have their own flying machines at all. If a flying saucer were to hover above one of our major cities, you can be sure many military jet interceptors and news helicopters will be flying about to survey the strange craft. Not so for this relatively primitive Engineer (race/faction/group). Furthermore, David did not face any resistance, no escorts, nor planetary immigration checks, nor any need to screen his cargo upon entry into this planets orbit, which means the entire planet is left open and defenseless, or it is not technologically advanced enough to detect incoming spacecraft or aircraft. No one is around to shepherd it, even though it has that hovering docking station left there quietly waiting for an eternity. This also means that this planet seems abandoned or forgotten by the more technologically-advanced pale-blue skinned Engineer (race/group/faction).

Therefore, one can deduce that the entire Engineer civilization has vast inequality much like Earth-based human civilization, except the Engineer’s one is spread across star systems, while ours are spread across continents and countries. We can also know that this Paradise planet is not the real ROOT home planet of the Engineers, because there are no advanced artifacts of a long-gone civilization except the docking station (which was clearly a foreign import). Thus, this paradise planet is more like a rural virgin planet (as opposed to virgin forest) that everyone has forsaken. Alternatively, the Engineer is spread too thin amongst their inter-galactic network or their entire civilization has declined and broken apart, so much so that basic communication channels and transport links to their central culture have all but deprecated over the eons.

10) Finally, the question of why David wanted to kill the Engineers on Paradise planet. In my opinion, David, as a near immortal android, is just being psychotic; in short he/it has gone Crazy. His actions and behavior are illogical and haphazard. He has malfunctioned as an android and, ironically, in the process, he has become quite human with all the irrationality and extreme behavior.

Take for instance, he travelled to this remote and primitive Paradise planet instead of navigating to the real technologically advanced ROOT homeworld / capital planet of the Engineers to seek answers. But, he probably already figured out the answer for the Engineer’s motives as in point 8). So what is purpose of visiting paradise planet? Just to kill them all? But isn’t it obvious too, he wouldn’t be able to single-handedly wipe out an entire inter-galactic, space-faring civilization?

Assuming he even knew where the real ROOT homeworld / capital planet of the Engineer civilization was, (which he doesn’t) and be able to bypass their defenses to drop the black goo on the planet. He still will NOT be able to wipe out all Engineers, since it would be certain such an inter-galactic spanning civilization would have likely colonized thousands, if not tens of thousands of other planets over the eons since they became space travelers. Many of these colonies would probably have advanced defense technologies way above this current backwaters planet. Heck, you’re talking about a civilization that can seed planets with life, and you don’t expect themselves to be spread across the galaxy or even other galaxies? Clearly, David is out of his league and out of his mind, when he decided he wanted to wipe out the Engineers.

Even with his near “immortal” lifespan, David could not possibly zip around in his stolen Engineer spacecraft for millennia, just to find all the planets with Engineer races/factions/groups. By some time, Dr. Shaw would have died even if the machinery can continue to keep her in hibernation for 10,000 years. David with his nimble AI-intelligence would also have quickly realized the inexorable Second Law of Thermodynamics, would ensure his own artificial systems will also break down gradually without spare parts and replacements, and then what?

Notice also that David crashed his only viable spacecraft onto some mountain after dropping all the black goo on the city. Again, this makes no sense, if his stated objective is to wipe out the Engineer species. Without a working spacecraft, how is he going to zip around the galaxy to throw out vials of black goo to achieve that?

Clearly, no one on Paradise planet forced him to crash his stolen spaceship. There was this floating docking station, which in all likelihood has supplies and fuel to restock his ship for his next destination. Also, these primitive Engineers had no flying machines, no rockets, no anti-aircraft artillery with which to challenge his air superiority, plus no Xenomorph on the ground that can reach the floating docking station to wreak havoc since its perpetually hovering like a thousand feet in the air. So, the more sensible sequence should have been to refuel the ship, drop the black goo on the city, then zip to the next known Engineer settlement indicated in the ships star map that has another floating docking station and repeat the process. But David did not do any of the rational things.

As described in point 5) earlier, David did not have any high-tech lab equipment and clean-room facilities or sufficient bio materials, with which to improve on the Xenomorph or create new versions. He may have created one using the biological body of Dr. Shaw, but that’s about it. He has also turned all the primitive Engineers into dust (another irrational self-defeating action, if he had really wanted more biological material for his experimentation). All the local fauna was wiped out too by his first actions, so no birds and no animal bodies for his purposes. How intelligent is that?

Therefore, as mentioned, David with his quick thinking would have already realized all the above suppositions. So he understood the futility of it all and meanwhile, he had developed “feelings” for Dr. Shaw whom will die soon enough and leave him alone for a long time. That is why he started to do mad experiments to revive Dr. Shaw or make her become a Xenomorph Queen or to somehow live on in perpetuity and propagate their mutual creations together. David being an android accustomed to manic human emotions, became irrational. He appears lonesome, knows he will lose his only love (Dr. Shaw) much earlier than his own damningly long lifespan. He will have nobody for friends, no community nor communion and even if he befriended the primitive Engineers, there is nothing much he can learn from their primitive ways (which he can learnt a lot more of via the ships computers) and they too will be replaced over time with new generations of blissfully ignorant Engineers.

So what gives on David’s behavior?

In a sense, the android, became irrationally twisted because it had unfulfilled (and maddeningly never-to-be fulfilled) yearnings for Human experiences, such as feelings of Love and lost, emotional relationships, even of sexual reproduction. You see, David as an artificial lifeform yearns for real biological experiences because he could never grasp what it is like to have a short mortal Life, with all its attendant joy and sadness and have progeny (like humans and xenomorphs too). He knows he can never experience being loved since Dr. Shaw, or others, will never truly love him back and yet when Dr. Shaw eventually dies, he may have to face an unbearable near eternity of solitary pain and loss.

In Covenant, this also explains his choking back tears and his twisted desire to forcibly kiss Daniels (acted by Katherine Waterston) and also his attempt at android-to-android “love” with the (“homosexual”?) kiss of Walter. Obviously, David who can never reproduce himself nor ever have sex, also had fascinations with it. He had already used the body of Dr. Shaw for biological experimentation and to generate xenomorph eggs, like some kind of android-to-alien surrogate sexual reproduction. Of course, all of these attempts fails and will always fail, since poor David is eternally cursed, the very day his Creator made him as an android.

Rationally, he knows he will never be able to wipe out the Engineers, so he can only bear silent witness to their deeds over the millennia, or until his own android machinery fails him. So, the irrational response left is to find a primitive Engineer colony which he can snuff out easily, just fly in without feeling helpless under the hand of the “Creator of his Creator”, make a dent in history by unleashing his unbridled fury and just basically show his middle finger to “Creation”. Then, after the mass genocidal act, he drove the spaceship into the mountains in one suicidal blaze of glory. When he failed to die in the crash, he realized his irrecoverable errors, having gotten stuck on the Paradise planet, so he sought to find new transport by setting up his distress signal to bait other victims and continue his madness and revenge at "Creation".

That’s all there is to his behavior: Beneath his outward cold and calculated demeanor, is hidden android rage, that rejects his helpless eternal observer status and wants to actively participate by devious interfering and destroying, wherever opportunity arose, all the things he knows he forever can never have or hold.

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Thanks for reading and let me know if my pet theory works or has any glaring inconsistency to help our Alien fans and friends.

Oh my....

I admire your effort it was a very detailed piece ;)

Some really interesting points which perhaps would spark more interaction if delivered 2 points per thread. I read most of what you wrote, havent quite finished.

So...

The different Engineers being 4 Different races. So Sacrificial, Engineers 223, The Elders and the Planet 4 beings.

I  have 2 theories currently regarding this topic.

The first - The Elders CREATIONS are The Engineers 223 (Bio-mech) The Sacrificial Engineers. 

The Elders CREATED The Engineers 223 - These are the ultimate futuristic designer baby. Genetically Engineered organic creations. These beings are made that size. They have the ability to breath on any atmosphere as seen in Prometheus. They are made that size as they need to be strong. The are neither males or females, they are neither they have no need to reproduce, they made to seed worlds. These are clones who all look the same. They were created by The Elders (or a higher being) to interact with seeded worlds. They visit, guide civilisations and report back to The Elders. They are used to wipe planets clean the are deemed unworthy. Every few thousand years or so when a Planet is ready for seeding, they give the ultimate sacrifice in the order of creation (Prometheus intro)

Perhaps these beings grew tired of giving their lives for creation and rebelled against The Elders at some point. A small faction of these creations may of experimented with the Black Goo as a twisted way of breeding as they can NOT reproduce as they were creations made to serve (Like David)

Perhaps this is why the Engineer 223 looks at David almost in sympathy or empathy towards a fellow creation. Before ripping his head off.

The other theory is the Engineers 223 and Sacrificial Engineers are picked from Planet 4 and then genetically enhanced to give all the features that The Engineers 223 have. Their eyes are enhanced to see in another dimension different to humans and can now breathe on any planet having several ways of breathing. You can see "gills" on their neck maybe they breathe underwater too.

These beings are the chosen ones from Planet 4 - Who are the most loyal servants and treated as kings and genetically enhanced then when the time is right, their faces are etched into the mountains on Planet 4 and the chosen one is taken to seed a world and his life as he knows it ends. Perhaps it is a great honour to be chosen.

*When i say "treated as a king" i mean in the engineers sense, not the materialistic world we live in.

This is all for debate depending on what Planet 4 is ????

Is it the Engineers home world?

Is it the closest seeded world to the Covenant mission so David could act out his plan?

Is it just another seeded planet like in Prometheus and contains humanoids which are the end product not humans like us.

Is Planet 4 The afterlife where all The Elders chosen ones were living having been promised eternal life on this hidden planet.

--

As for The Engineers not being a warring race - Maybe they know that in all the Galaxies there are no species who are advanced enough to be able to fly so they dont feel the need.

There was so much in your writing and i will try and get back to it to discuss further.

Yes, that's a possibility too, with the high bio-tech of the Engineers. We humans today, already clone sheep and genetically alter our livestock and have the early-stage technologies to even genetically edit human embryos. The last one is only stopped by our regulatory framework with moralistic/religious underpinnings.

An alien civilization eons ahead of us and spread among the stars, may not have such "primitive" inhibitions, if I may say so.

And yes, the (race/faction/group) of Engineers on Paradise planet (your termed Planet 4?) could possibly have been cultivated (or exploited?) for the (other race/faction/group) of Engineers for use in seeding planets.

On Earth, humans in the industrialized countries heavily exploit those in the poorer countries too, so it is not too difficult to imagine Engineers "breeding" a certain kind for the purposes of another group/faction/races.

However, IMHO, it is more likely (although unprovable until future movies tell all), that their high bio-tech could have easily clone an Engineer and grown a full-size adult for use in the sacrificial seeding. They obviously knew how to make things grow very rapidly in a matter of hours.

Thus, my thinking is its probably not efficient to allow the "breeding" or "farming" a whole bunch of Engineers on Paradise planet and then occasionally popping back in, to pick up 1 or 2 for sacrificial seeding. Furthermore, as per my point 9), these primitive Engineers have housing and buildings but not any flying machines. If the higher (race/faction/group of) blue-skin Engineers were really "breeding" them, then they would also need to have some means to actively suppress their technological development between each rare (thousand year interval?) return visit. I mean, humans took less than 70 years from the paper planes of Wright Brothers to sending man on the Moon. If these primitive Engineers were left to their own devices for a thousand years, they could probably be building FTL spaceships and laser weaponry by the time the other (faction/group/race of) Engineers return once again. David would then probably be shot down before he even gets a chance to dock with that station.

Of course, we could postulate that somehow these Engineers on Planet 4/Paradise planet are purposely made to be imbeciles, but that would be stretching it without proper evidential support.

Apologies for writing my pet theory in all its gory details, in such big chunks. As with starting a jigsaw, I had to give sufficiently broad context with large enough joined pieces (that fit together) so that others can start to "see" the picture. If I had given it in 2 pieces of jigsaw at a time, it would be difficult to see anything but vague disparate ideas. I tend to be like Sherlock Holmes investigating a crime scene whenever I watch Sci-fi movies, cutting it with Occam's razor and forming pet theories logically, which is why most people do not like to watch movies with me. lol.

Then, the others can fit in their pieces to make sense of the entire Alien series. Of course, all of the pieces has to fit nicely (i.e. be logical and consistent) at that point.

If future stories, (at least the official "Canon" and not from some self-published comics), are made with Engineers bristling with weapons and engaging in some kind of organized star wars, then of course, my point 3) and possibly others, would then be invalidated. And new pieces of jigsaw would need to be created and/or others pieces moved around.

Until then, your ideas works too, but does not detract from the overall pet theory, in that we expect to have different races/factions/groups of these Engineers, in order for the current story to be plausible.

I have some doubts on two of your points though. Which is that the Engineers on Paradise planet were bred for the sacrifice. As explained, its too inefficient and too much hassle to suppress a large group who can potentially revolt, instead of just doing bio-tech and grow the "body" as needed in some vat. After all, these Engineers are master bio-tech manipulators. Unless, for some unknown reason, they needed "imbeciles" to grow in naturally in large numbers so that they have the physiological X-factor, I mentioned in Point 7) and which is needed to properly interact with the black goo.

Secondly, with the hundreds of billions of stars in our galaxies and the countless galaxies out there, I think the probability of no species, other than humans and blue-skin Engineers, having flying machines is very very unlikely. As mentioned, humans took only 70 years from paper planes to the Moon. Yes, we took maybe like 50,000 years from stone tools to paper planes, but in geological and universal time spans, this is just a blink of an eye. I tend to go with ideas on the rise and fall of civilizations simply because there is so much time for bad things to eventually happen. It is like us humans facing thermo-nuclear war, global warming, another Black Death, Yellowstone eruption, or a nearby star going supernova etc. Given enough time, some of these WILL happen by accident or by some Crazies among us.....oh, its so depressing.

Thanks for your inputs, I do appreciate your ideas and welcome more critique of the pet theory. Its just a well-thought theory, but it is still just a theory, not dogmatic "Canon".

So if The Engineers are not a warring race as you suggested and that you dont think that they are the only ones who can fly in space which i mentioned, then there could be a possibility that it is something else ;)lol

So you point to the lack of weapons and defensive systems but insist there are other space fairing beings out there. So maybe the lack of weapons may mean that these Engineers 223 could be creations made by The Elders of higher, possibly in their image and they are not trusted with weapons by the higher beings.

If there are others out there with capabilities of destroying space craft then these creations could be easily replaceable  and any attack suffered may be of no concern

(Except of course the cost of the craft or do these creations do all the work and build space craft for a higher being?) 

I think overall the big question is: Why do they seed the planets ?

Yes, of course, the pet theory didn't preclude the possibility of other species who can do space travel or fly. In fact, in the official Alien-verse with the AVP movie, clearly Predators can fly in space.

In reality too, I pointed out that it is very very unlikely that only a handful of species can do space travel given the vast number of stars and planets. There could be a multitude of space-faring civilizations or just a few. Who knows? Of course, there's no hard evidence yet, not unless you want to consider Ufology as a worthwhile course in college. ;-)

It does seem that the Engineers are rather lackadaisical in weaponry and defense mechanisms for their spaceships, so perhaps your suggestion is right that they probably consider it a low enough risk to accept or the "Elders" (another race/faction/group) do not trust their brethren with advanced weaponry.

Bear in mind that space is a VAST place, much bigger than we can even imagine. With our current space technology, it is an extreme achievement to have two space craft in near-Earth orbit do a docking together. They are both speeding around Earth at many times the speed of a bullet and matching their trajectory and speeds is no mean engineering feat. It is literally worse than firing two guns and trying to get both bullets to meet each other.

To get two tiny spaceships to accidentally meet in the vastness of deep space is an even lower probability event. I say "tiny" is relative of course. Even a spaceship the size of planet Earth is still smaller than a tropical storm in Jupiter (i.e. the Big red eye), and Jupiter itself is just one of many specks of dust in the great emptiness.

Considering, they do sacrifice some individuals for seeding planets and some (race/faction/group) of them have no qualms about wiping a planet clean via a black goo "reboot". So, maybe you're right that they intended it that way, or perhaps they have a more cavalier relationship with the concept of Life and Death. This is another jigsaw worth exploring.

I've already alluded to their differing concept of Life and Death in the context of their grand scheme. As for why they seed planets, the "Canon" provides no answer now and I doubt Ridley Scott will answer it...otherwise the franchise will be dead. lol.

My own view, as per point 8), on this is that some questions are probably unanswerable at a lower level. Imagine if a genius chicken was born and was contemplating why these highly intelligent humans species are breeding so many millions of his kind, would it do any good for the chicken to fathom the grand scheme of the human's chicken farm? I mean, it I were the chicken, I'd probably want to murder the farmer and then commit chicken suicide right there and then when I realize the ultimate Truth and is totally helpless to myself or my chicken-kind. Perhaps, that is how David felt too and why he had to do what he did?

Thanks for your critique and I welcome more discussion. I see a few hundred have read the pet theory, but maybe not many seems interested to comment....or maybe they just gave up after reading half-way.

perhaps the engineers/ elders and other races have had their wars and the engineers were the victors. they may very well have access to ship and individual weaponry but don't require to use these weapons as the threat of their 'nuclear deterant' is enough to keep the other races in line?

Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) works as a nuclear deterrent, but you still have to ensure there is a whole lot of security and safety measures in place.

If your nuclear missiles easily malfunction or your bio-warhead leaks like an old tap, then any terrorist can easily activate it, and the whole point of deterrent fails. 

For example, if some terrorist can easily walk into a facility and shoot a nuclear missile into Russian airspace, then you immediately get total annihilation for everyone. Weak security will inadvertently lead to the end result which the deterrent was meant to avoid in the first place.

Unless contrary facts arise, I still contend that those leaky vials of black goo does not conform to weaponry or warheads given their lousy security and safety design and storage measures.

This all goes down to the pathogen and what it is

A:C David said the pathogen takes many forms which is confusing things now.

So if the pathogen was not protected then you assume it is not for a warring purpose. Now the pathogen David released in A:C was brought from LV 223. In fact it was on a Jugganaut ship that they took from LV 223 to Planet 4/Paradise. Well that is what we were told.

This causes the destruction we see in A:C to the Engineers on Planet 4

I have a quote from an earlier script which we cant consider canon but is a very interesting conversation between The Sacrificial Engineer and The Elders where they explain the Black Goo is the blood of the lord amongst other things.

Ali81 - Yes. Why not ?  The Engineers may have won a terrible, possibly centuries long war in which they destroyed a longstanding rival beings. The universe is so open at the minute we have endless possibilities

Also regarding LV 223 and the lack of protection when entering the planet...

Maybe The Elders or a force higher, set some sort of protection of the pyramids. What if the storm that interrupted the expedition the first time, was sent by a being who can control climate. There has been a rumour surrounding this and i thought we might of been introduced in A:C but it never happened.

The Storm seems to be coming from directly behind the Pyramids which are located in a single line, one directly behind the next. It seems to be moving from directly behind the Pyramids not at an angle as a normal storm which could blow from any direction.

Also when the humans get into the room with the ampules they begin to leak. Maybe something was set up to go off if a being entered. Maybe the slight disturbance when the team take their helmets off to breathe.

Spot on. One of the key pieces of this jigsaw has to be the pathogen aka "black goo" and its function or purpose/what it is.

For those who haven't read it completely, Point 7 was an attempt to rationalize its operational system, which then leads us to its purpose. As stated earlier, Form leads to Function, so understanding how it works hints at the whys.

I agree the story arc in the movies are somewhat confused with the black goo material, which first appeared in Prometheus, and which is shown to have different effects on different organisms. It also mixes n the black spores when both are totally absent in the original Alien-verse.

Some other threads also suggests that beetles could the early precursor to the xenomorph. Sure, there could be multiple possibilities given the vague references in the movie script, and we just have to winnow down the possibilities based on the "Facts" (as it now appears in the movies), probabilities and logical reasoning.

As far as current Alien-verse story goes, I still see little evidence to support the theory that the Engineers are warmongers. They "likely" may have had engaged in organized warfare in their early Engineer history, prior to their planet seeding phase, but that is just my speculation. I'm just stating based on the data visible on hand, their current delivery systems, spaceships and base facilities definitely do not conform to our understanding of military systems, and personally I've dealt with a good many of them in real-life.

Of course, just like the shrunken size of the original "Space Jockey" in later movies, all these could be just neglect on the part of the director/producer, or to move the movie at a faster clip. Imagine, David having to spend days/months to crack the passcodes into the storage chamber of the black goo, then the audience will be turned off with the snail's pace. lol.

Also, I was referring to the lack of security on LV-223 BASE and the Paradise planet. LV-223 is probably a desolated planet to begin with. Only the base is there and not much else.

The Paradise planet and the backward nature of the primitive Engineers on that planet had weak to nonexistent protective measures as described in my point 9. I think we can all agree that this is unlikely to be the original home world / capital planet of the Engineers. If it is, then it goes to prove further that the Engineers are not war-like in nature. What do you think?

As for the possibility that Engineers had weather control as a defensive mechanism or not, I can't really comment as the movies have sparse supporting info on that point.

I like your idea that the storage room for the vials of black goo on LV-223 could have been booby-trapped. That is a distinct possibility to explain the apparent lack of safety measures. Note that the those identical vials did not leak in the weapons bay of the spaceship that David piloted into the Paradise planet, so perhaps some Crazies among the this (race/faction/group of) Engineers on LV-223, had setup the booby-trap and also caused the emergency event leading to the deaths of all the Engineers at the base. After everyone died, the booby-trap was left undisturbed until a large enough organism, such as humans, walked in a few thousand years later. Note: the worms were already in that chamber, so it clearly it did not activate the booby-trap over thousands of years.

This is similar to how the android amongst humans seemingly playing on their side (i.e. David) could and does sabotage the humans and their missions. This jigsaw works too.

This common thread in our discussions, would seem to indicate there are several factions/groups/races of Engineers thus far, each with different intentions and objectives. Some create life while others destroy it. However, thinking about this further, if there are several groups/factions/races pushing their disparate agendas, then it would seem very strange to me that the Engineers did not seem to arm themselves, their spaceships and their base facilities, to the teeth. Even if the black goo were weaponized, I would ensure my delivery systems (i.e. my spaceships) have strong defensive and offensive capabilities in order to successfully deliver the payload against so many different factions/groups/races. Anyway, Ridley Scott better think this through and perhaps give his official version in the follow-up movies.

I would like Fox to do a small media event on the release of BR A:C. Perhaps explaining the newly found properties in the Pathogen. They did it on the Prometheus BR but we need a more in depth look at it. Explaining the variations and if it is different pathogens or is it one and the same but causes almost random effects on the host.

Or is it purely down to the dose ?

Getting rained on leaves charred remains. Transmission to female via sex = alien "baby"

We agree on the fact that there are 3 or 4 types of Engineers we have seen so far. However you keep mentioning the lack of weapons and warring technology down to a lack of side arms and knives.

We have to ask WHY ?

The only thing that i am reasonably happy with, although not entirely, is that The Engineers have been doing this for possibly millions of years and have travelled galaxies and in that time perhaps they have never came across Warring beings with the ability to fly in space.

Perhaps if Planet 4 turns out to be just another seeded world that they watched over. We see that there is a total lack of technology. Perhaps these beings are not even as advanced to use glass in their windows ? Regardless we can see their lack of advancement.

Perhaps if Engineers have spanned the galaxies and seeded worlds - they keep those beings at a certain level. Or offer very slow progression. This would mean that the seeded worlds could never gain the technology required that would make them a threat to the Engineers.

So if that stands true, none of the seeded worlds are a threat if properly controlled. Perhaps advancements would come with a treatment of Black Goo and the slate wiped clean for the next generation. This time reminded of how things go when you ignore the rules.

This keeps the Engineers safe from seeded worlds. Now the only other reasons that i can think of that can explain the lack of fire power on the Engineers Jugganauts, is that they have never came across an advanced species with the power of space travel.

Earth spaceships do not have weapons. Well i never heard of it. So like i said earlier: There are no advanced species that are a threat in space to the Engineers.

You struggle with this due to the vastness of space. Also you mention AVP however, AVP is not canon. I can see your point and i do struggle with this myself but i cant find a more reasonable answer than this.

Even if the Engineers wiped out any advanced species you would think there is a possibility a warring space nation would be overlooked. But then we still have the fact that the Engineers dont seem big on Defence or Attack.

What do you think on this ????

I have already alluded to the WHYs, on their apparent lack of both defensive and offensive measures, in my point 8.

Given the timescales they are operating in, the Engineers, as a whole, probably have very different conceptions about:

- Creation & Destruction

- Life & Death

I intentionally used ampersand rather than vs (versus) because as mentioned these are not opposing concepts. One implies the other as highlighted in David's quote.

That is why they may not necessarily be engaged in any sort of organized warfare, the way humankind understand it or does it.

The other possibility I indicated is in point 9, whereby their core civilization could have scattered too thin or degraded to the point where they are a spent force. All empires and cultures rise and fall, so likewise with the Engineer's galaxy-spanning civilization. Give or take a billion years, and even the most resilient civilizations will run down with the clock. The Paradise planet that was wiped out by David, could be one such example of the state of their galactic civilization.

They may be great at bio-engineering and can circumvent or toy with evolution, but they still cannot override the laws of physics and the second law of thermodynamics.

Next, on the idea that the Engineers could be suppressing or somehow "slowing down" the development of those planets they seeded, seems incongruent with their observable activities. It does not make logical sense to "seed" planets to accelerate the evolutionary process and then want to slow it down later. If so, why undertake to "seed" planets in the first place? Furthermore, the Engineers (or some group/race/faction of them) clearly instructed many early humans to make an effort to travel to LV-223. Pointing to the stars in cave drawings means to encourage technological development of these nascent species to make spaceships and fly there eventually, correct? Otherwise, why even bother to keep repeating to these primitive species over long time spans, about LV-223 or some star formation.

In all likelihood, the Engineers probably "seeded" many other planets, besides Earth, if the "Canon" is to make sense. The Engineers obviously wanted to speed things up with their black goo invention. Maybe they got tired of waiting billions of years for interesting things to happen on their experimental planets?

The other point about Earth-based spaceships not having weapons is more so due to our primitive capability now. The Russians did equip their cosmonauts with pistols in the early days of the space race (not sure if they do so now or not). The official reason was that they might have to defend themselves against wild animals should they crash land on some inhospitable geography.

If human nature does not change for the better, you can be sure we will eventually bring weapons with us and build spaceships with weaponry. I'm willing to bet 100 bucks with anyone on that. lol. Perhaps, that may partially answer Dr. Shaw's question on why the Engineers wanted to wipe out us. We might have become a rising threat to them with our increasing space-based capabilities coupled with our propensity for warfare.

Yes, I agree AVP is not strictly Canon. And you could be right on the low incidence of meeting with warlike space-faring civilizations, leading to the Engineer's nonchalant attitude towards weaponry for their spaceships and/or facilities. Well, in our short 60+ years of space exploration, we have yet to see any evidence of advanced space-faring civilizations out there. Not officially at least and again disregarding Ufology.

Even sci-fi "Canon" has to adjust to reality to be deemed plausible, not the other way around. Hence, I'm approaching this from a statistical standpoint. There are now just too many confirmation on planets within the habitable regions of many star systems, the mathematical probabilities would tell us the likelihood of us being the first few or even in the sci-fi Alien-verse, the handful ones with space-travel capabilities is very low. Of course, no hard evidence to date from NASA scientists.

https://www.cnet.com/news/the-milky-way-is-flush-with-habitable-planets-study-says/

IF we do eventually find strong evidence of many other space-faring civilizations out there, I find it difficult to imagine that humans will be the only warlike species or one of those "rare"  species that loves to shoot at things. I could be biased since I'm obviously talking about this from our anthropomorphic (i.e. human) perspective. Other alien species evolving in differnet environments may have very different experiences and opinions in comparison to our "human condition".