Does that make Ellen Ripley.........

I agree, I think if Alien were released today a lot of people would complain about things like bringing Kane aboard, etc.

Totally true, Lilly, there are people who think Lambert is stupid, others claim that the soldiers in Aliens are stupid, then there are the Alien Res haters, etc. A member mentioned here some months ago that the stupidest character of the Alien Universe is the queen from Aliens.

Smart characters make for boring movies! Always 2 steps ahead of the audience.

"Don't open that closet! Probably a monster in it! In fact, Let's get the hell out of this haunted mansion and meet at the local Starbucks for a frap."

The Covenant crew acted, to me, like real people in a moment of crisis. They weren't expecting anything of what happened to them. These guys haven't watched Alien or even know they are in a horror film. These people are mostly civilians excluding Lope's security team. Humanity is fallible and I think that's the point Scott is driving home and why David believes them to be inferior. There are exceptions like Daniels and Ripley who can cope with these circumstances but most can't.

I thought the characters in Covenant behaved more realistically than those in Prometheus.

remember in alien it isn't the crew that bring kane back on board, it was ash, and he was acting on secret orders. u can make an excuse for dallas as he was looking at it from a humane perspective and it was his second in command but still daft of him to want to bring him back on board. and also ripley only agreed to return when she realised that families were at risk. she was also returning with a group of so called highly trained and armed soldiers which im sure she probably wished shed had during her first encounter with the xeno 

The crew of the Covenant was almost like sheep as the Engineers in the flashback scene.

Both groups looked naive and "trusted" a suspicious entity and both payed the price for it.

The Engineers did no precautions while welcoming the black goo bomber.

The Covenant crew got lured into David Slaughterhouse aka Lab like cattle, and he calmed them down with stupid phrases like "The storms last,days,weeks,months".

Hilarious and sad at the same time.

gralen, id say the engineers on planet 4 were a culture who either chose not to use technology or wernt given the choice as I don't think they had any way of knowing who was on the juggernaught. maybe the fact those engineers didn't advance technologically was one of the reasons they were still alive and not killed off by the engineers? they were probably just welcoming back what they assumed were their makers for the 1000 year check in. though the docking ship and docking facility were no doubt advanced, the rest if the city from what I saw didn't show any signs of such an advance race. im guessing the docking facility was simply there to facilitate the returning engineers 

@Gralen, when David said "Days, weeks, months" it wasn't to calm anyone down. It was simply to point out that the weather on that planet can be unpredictable and relenting. Pray tell, what exactly is the 'stupid' bit about that observation?

@Lawrence of Arabia, your observations are spot on.

The characters are super dumb in Prometheus and Covenant. And in Covenant they don't even have spacesuits on at least in Prometheus they do before they take them off. Let's go on a planet we know nothing about and could have deadly pathogens in the air with no spacesuits or suits of any kind on. They are dumb characters in dumb movies just like typical horror movies with typical horror movie clichés. These movies are no different than Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm Street and any straight up horror movie, they just take place in space and on other planets. The first 3 Alien movies are what Alien movies are supposed to be like, whether you like them or not is your decision but at least they tried new things and tried to be different. The prequels are awful and are ruining the first 3 movies.

Dr Curt, I'll defend Prometheus because it seemed to play along with the audience. Covenant feels like Ridley intentionally pooped in my sandwich with these space chimps he picked to crew the Covenant. If an Android is NOT in a conversation in AC then there is almost ZERO intelligent banter/dialogue between humans!!!! This proves Ridley has lost his grasp on good storytelling as he ONLY gives a shit about androids in this spin-off alien BladeRunner hybrid. The film bombed because of the bad narrative and poor storytelling unlike the films the OP  mentions. NOBODY can say with a straight face that the believable dialogue forty years ago does not/could not hold up today vs the dumpster fire characters of Covenant.

@Capt Torgo   Exactly, couldn't agree more