David's Lab (Blu-Ray Teaser): David explains what the black goo is.

@George-TheGreek

I can see what you mean, there are things that are not clear in the movies and the Storms indeed seem to Block Communications, but we had Storms on LV-223 too.  Maybe not connected?  But i can come back to this, as i had a Source who claimed to have knowledge of Prometheus 2 who hinted at some Technology the Engineers had.

Anyway i think a thing to consider is the Bombardment Scene the Boom... appears to be the Sound made by the Juggernaught as it enters the atmosphere, well within the atmosphere and its most like a sound made as the ship leaves what ever kind of Advanced Propulsion it uses and enters normal Speed.. a Bit like in Star Trek Leaving Warp to then drop to impulse speeds.

We dont know the exact time frame of the event from when the Ship came out of High Speed Entry and then slowly headed towards the City, it appears like less than a minute, but the movie is not running or showing us a exact Second for Second Clock of Events, for example it took more than Minutes to get from the Lander to the Juggernaught for the Covenant Crew.

However looking at the size of the Courtyard which is fair large, and where those Engineers were coming from, its not exactly a quick walk and so do we assume they all happened to be in that courtyard by coincidence to just be in the right place at the right time so just as Davids Ship arrives which was unannounced or detected, these beings had already been in the center or near it of the Courtyard?

It appears David makes a quick entrance, flies over the mountains and approaches the City, and when we see the clip of his Juggernaught arrive at the city, the Hanger is already opening.

So i would assume again, the Juggernaught either Automatically or by Davids command had sent a signal to tell the Hanger to Open... but why if David planed to Bomb them?

Or something on Planet 4 detected the Ship and prepared the Hanger, this giving enough time so those Engineers knew something was arriving and so they began to head to the Hanger.

I can then only assume the Docking ship either by Protocol, Automatically intercepts the Ships prior to docking, or it was sent to intercept for some purpose... again we cant be 100% sure of what the exact Process was...

I will only assume at some point they detected Davids Arrival and prepared the Hanger, then there must be some kind of Air traffic control (ATC) device where they may try and contact the Pilot of the Ship.... which if they then get no reply would surely mean they would send the Docking Ship out to investigate.

As far as the Signals... again if they are Man Made, they are done using Engineer Technology, i cant see how if the Engineers Ships have NO Way to Transmit communications, how David manages to do so.  I doubt Davids Build in Communications would allow for such a Signal and so i think he used Engineer Transmission Technology.

But as its never completely shown the process of how this is done, it still can be debated that they dont have no communications Technology... which i find hard to believe.

@Kethol

you are right, I misinterpreted David's notes! All this work made by experts who worked for Ridley and nothing put into the film!

Somewhere in this forum I don't remember exactly I read that David told that the engineers did not come up with binary logic and that it was strange for an advanced civilization.

@red0guy@gmail.com

Some interesting Questions....

Firstly the movie has left it pretty open, but indeed those Engineer Burnt like Corpses do not look good enough to be able to make as good sketches on their Anatomy as David has, or his experiments.  There are Humanoid Baby Skulls on his desk, there are previous Neomorph Organisms he has dissected and experimented on... we have to ask where do these come from?

And so maybe indeed there are fresher Corpses or Hosts to be used, which does raise a Question as we see how the Engineer in Prometheus dealt so easy with David.   Physically David can not match those Engineers.

But David is many times stronger than a Human, but despite this he is a Mechanical Being, with Synthetic Material, Cables, Tubes and Skin and so only a Certain amount of Force would be required to pull his head off....  So we can Assume Walter could Pull Davids Head off, maybe it needed more effort than the Engineer did.

But also those Engineers are maybe purposely Engineered/Evolved Larger Solider or similar Class. Those beings on Paradise/Planet 4 appear to have varied heights and builds and not all of them are such Genetic Specimens as the Sacrificial and LV-223 Engineers.

But your point is valid, how does David overpower or be able to use Fresh, Alive Engineers?  First we have to ask where are they from?

Can we assume the City's whole Population came out to see the Juggernaught? We can clearly see many were near and inside the Cathedral Building

We see here on the steps to the Cathedral and outside the Doors are about 15 Engineers, and many more are gathered between these steps and the Courtyard, and these have appeared to notice a Ship in the sky and are not part of the group who have moved towards the center of the Courtyard, this group in this image then notice the Bombardment and they attempt to run to the Cathedral.

Latter shots we can see the Cathedral had locked down and Engineers had tried to get inside.

This building is Large, its the Center Point of the City and of great importance and looked like it had some Technology above it, the Gold like Devices.  And so we can maybe assume this place PROVIDED SANCTUARY from the effects of the Bombardment....

We know the Engineers are Genetically connected to Humans, and so its very likely they require Nourishment like we do in the form of Food and Water.

So the logical theory i can come up with is some Engineers managed to hold themselves up inside this Building like a group of people entering a Under Ground Bunker from Protection from a Nuclear Attack.

However as this Cathedral was likely not a Place of Rest/House to the Engineers, they likely lived within the City and the Cathedral was thus just like a Church/Temple/Mosque etc would be to us.. So while this place maybe could offer Sanctuary from the Effects of the Black Goo... if this Place did not have enough Food and Drink Provisions for a long period of stay, and if outside is a Infected Area.

Then over time these beings would be starved, and when a Humanoid has been starved of Food and Water they become weak.

And then i think they was ripe for the pickings..

Also David could maybe had made a Covenant with some of them, he could use the Black Goo as a bargaining tool

But i would assume David and Shaw held up in the Juggernaught, while Engineers held up in the Cathedral and David is free to wonder around eventually Malnutrition is what lead to those Engineers all dying but a few, that David could then more easily have his way with.

I will expand upon the last post, by saying these Beings look more closer to Humans, but this is for another Topic... but we see there are Females, even David Studied Females.

Now if we have to be scientific here, and these are Humanoids and we came from them or our Genetic Origins are connected.

These beings have not yet long evolved for Millions of years past the need to Procreate, because they would have not needed some of the Anatomy, not only being there are Females, but they have Breasts and Nipples....

This logical means they either Need, or if not so far ago in terms of Evolution they needed to Procreate like Humans. This means Babies, and Children and means Breast Feeding.

Davids Lab has Human Baby Skulls... it was a interesting Question to ask where did he get these?  Was he able to make Shaw Pregnant, Gift her Child Birth, did he use Engineer Seed or somehow he could have allowed her to give Birth like the Virgin Mary? Who knows...

But the other way these Baby Skulls could come into play if they are not just from Long Dead Baby Engineers, is indeed if there was Baby and Child Engineers, with these there is the potential for David to Experiment

In Prometheus the closest we saw to a Xenomorph, was via the Trilobite Face Huger which required Shaws Female Anatomy to Produce.

Looking at Most Cultures and the Ethical/Courageous thing to do in any Conflict or Disaster is... PROTECT the Woman and Children, these are the Future of the Species.

If WW3 broke out and certain ruling Leaders and Business men decided to protect themselves and only ONE Bunker Survived and this was filled with 95% Wealthy Men and the rest of the World was decimated... where do we Populate from?

Woman and Children would be the first ones to Protect and in many Disasters and Wars, its the Right Ethical thing and unselfish thing to Protect the Women and Children

And so if a number of Engineers escaped to the Cathedral and it Provided Protection from the Fall Out of the Bombardment, but then Food/Water was in short Supply... The Logical thing to do is ENSURE the Woman and Children are looked after, they are the greater Importance for their Kinds Survival until Help arrives.

And so if the Engineers are such a honorable Race, who see Sacrifice for the greater of their kind, they would (Males) Sacrifice Food and Drink so they Woman and Children Survive.

Now once Food and Water Runs dry, if i am right about this, the last to survive would be Woman and Children and so if there are survivors by the time the Fall Out has gone away then a Majority could be Woman and Children who may be weak due to Rations of Food and Drink...

This would be easy picking for David, and Woman and Children would offer David a lot for his Experiments and Agenda... and this is the best Logical Theory i can give to how David obtained more Fresh Corpses.

Guys what do you say about the code David uses in this video? D964ZB, is it a reprogramming of David? Is David controlled via patterns of characters from the cinema? As I mentioned earlier and none said anything about it, D stands probably for David, 964 for 1964 the year Zulu was released, and Zulu Brother probably for the role of the colonel Michael Cane played who resembles David too! Maybe the role David played as Lawrence took its course and another more aggressive role will come into play.

@Dave

the engineers don't seem to have a commercialized antagonistic world, their buildings, the lack of symbols like ('Coca-Cola','Pepsi','Mercedes',etc) and behavior resemble a lot a socialist ancient Spartan like way of life. Still the question remains, if they were so advanced why did their systems of defense lacked the ability to prevent a David from bombing them? They were ridiculously helpless when David entered their world.

I also wonder if David is controlled via role based programming, in the bombing scene he might have been forced to do something by WY that he was against for, not the bombing itself but something like 'kill Shaw and then destroy everything ...', he might follow a procedural based programming based on acts and missions with some ifs and alternatives. I believe that humans were not as stupid as the engineers to leave A.I. without a control in case something goes to pot.

Does this Zulu Brother in the end imply that he will follow a 'Gonville Bromhead' programming and the zulus are what is left from the engineers who will try to retaliate?

Zulu Ending

or reversed is the advanced English in the movie a metaphor of the engineers and the zulus a metaphor of humans that's why David is called a 'zulu brother' and maybe the movie's Zulu battle 4000 zulus (2000 colonists + 1000 over human embryos) against 150 British soldiers is what will come next 4000 Xenos (humans mutated by David) against what is left of the engineers (British soldiers).

David: Use security code 'David 73694-B'

73 translated in ASCII is 'I'.

David I694 B(rother)

David 1964 Brother

David Zulu Brother

is really David preparing to launch an attack with Xenos (4000 zulus) mutating the crew and the embryos of covenant against the engineers (what's left of them, 150 British colonist soldiers in the movie zulu).

Its interesting to try and make the connection with the Zulus, and i think the outcome of you post could be what we shall see as far as David amassing a whole load of Xenomorphs.

Regarding David and the AI, i think he has somewhat become free of Weylands Programing, and so now has his own Goals and Agendas.

But i certainly think we could be shown that AI that the company had/has could be playing a bit more behind the scenes and in some way i would not be surprised if RS will touch upon the rogue AI simply playing a Game of Corporate Chess and unknown to Mankind, AI is actually controlling a lot of things behind the scenes.  It could be a interesting Plot Twist if this AI is actually Weyland himself.

As far as the Engineers i did think it was odd that a Military Ships would have no defense or offense mechanism/ability and how those Engineers did not seem to react with fear until the Bombardment began.

I can only come up with TWO explanations.

1) These Engineers and their Hierarchy are very Naive and Arrogant, they go around Seeding Worlds and Evolving Worlds and then wiping out and starting again, where they control how much knowledge and information they pass on to those Worlds.

So it would be like the Zulu Analogy, lets assume African was completely separated from the Middle East  (Route to Europe via Egypt) or better still lets use Aboriginal People... if we never made any contact with them until after say World War 2 and assume these people are still living in Ancient Ways, of Straw/Wood Huts and simple Hunting Tools and so like how Europe was say 4000 years ago

The Europeans who visit this Aboriginal Tribes would have more Technology, we would have Planes, Cars, Tanks, Guns, Electronics you name it we have got it....    The Europeans could teach these Aboriginal Tribes how to use these things, or indeed how to make them but it would take time.

But if these Europeans simply assume if they left a Plane, a Tank, and say a Radio or other Electrical Appliance running off a Petrol/Diesel Generator... that has ran out of Fuel.  We can assume the Tribe if they have never been shown how the Europeans use this things... its likely they would struggle to ever be able to figure out how to successfully use them.

or we can assume that if the Europeans just left Australia and took all the Technology and Tools with them, then they assume those Tribes would never ever be able to Create such Technology etc by their own.

This is HOW the Engineers may have looked down at Mankind and other Races they created, they visit them teach them things but never nothing past Ancient 2000  year old Cultures would have.

The Engineers arrogantly know they are the only ones with the Technology and if they never teach their creations the Advanced stuff then there is NO WAY these Races could ever Evolve to a Technological Level, they would assume all created Races without the Engineers Help would only evolve as far as Mankind had 4000 years or so ago.

So they have no Fear or Concerns of other Races they created ever Evolving to such a point to be a threat and also ARROGANTLY they may think all of their own Species obey the Rules set by their Elders so there would be no Internal Engineer Conflicts.

So they have no need for Such Defense Mechanisms etc. (so they thought).

2) Those Juggernaughts was never Military Ships of sorts, they are just a more Advanced Means to Seed Worlds, instead of dropping off a Lone Engineer or a Engineer on every continent and then have them performing the Sacrificial Scene... they could have Evolved a way to instead perform these Sacrifices on Paradise/Planet 4 or taken to LV-223 to Perform them and the resulting broken down Matter then Stored into Urns.

so Sacrificial Goo, breaks down their DNA that falls into the Water to Seed Worlds... If the Engineer was standing inside some kind of VAT or Enclosure and his broken down material was collected and then stored into Jars and these Jars emptied into the Water Fall we can safely assume the same thing would happen.

so the Purpose of the Urns may be to Store Engineer DNA where they then drop these off onto Worlds to Seed/Evolve Life instead of the Sacrificial Scene.

If this is True, then this could explain why the Engineers where not to Fearful and it could explain the whole Culture and those Statues as maybe being selected for Sacrifice is considered a Great Honor and maybe only the Purest/Perfect of them get Chosen for this and they have Statues Erected around the Plaza to Honor their Sacrifice.

This 2nd Answer is what i am drawn to for the whole Purpose of Paradise and those Ships.... well this was THE purpose but a Faction of Engineers had decided to meddle in things and leads to the Xeno-Strain in the Urns on LV-223

Thank you Lilly (Svanya).

"Radical" most certainly means vastly different A.I. in regards to what we project A.I. could be and what we have been shown with Ash, David 8, Walter, and Mother under human development from Weyland Industries and Weyland-Yutani Corporation.

This ancient A.I. uses an organic vehicle to spread. Ridley Scott clearly stated that the black goo didn't originate with the Engineers and it was someone else in an interview a while back. I hope this aspect is covered in the prequel novel.

This is such an interesting thread, heres my input:

sure the goo forms a mechanical type genome. But i still see the goo as being like a transmitter and amplifier of what the person using it is thinking or feeling. The sacrificial engineer wanted to disassemble himself, the goo did what he wanted. I think its more a supernatural substance, david being N android has tried to classify it scientifically.

when david drops the goo on the engineers, it exploded and became an aerosol, so anyone or anything it didnt land on could have survived, but if it was inhaled, they would have probably perished.

the engineers may have far better memories than humans so dont need as much written records. If they can command matter using their minds then that would make shipbuilding easy?

as for the space flight, they must have some sort of gravity distortion system or they can fold space and time somehow. Like the film dune, maybe its a chemical reaction within the ship that distorts spacetime?

on youtube, someone has put the full david labs clip on from the blu-ray. David states that he 'wiped the planet clean for shaw' and that he wanted to create an eden, but she refused.

its a shame its just 'mad android' (like blade runner?) and finding a cryosleep engineer and interrogating him, using him as the link to their world would have been very interesting, particulary after the bombing.

cheers guys

"I think its more a supernatural substance, david being N android has tried to classify it scientifically"

I don't think there is anything supernatural about the pathogen at all. The terms David uses in Advent are all typical stuff in genetics and biology.

"This primordial ooze, ripe with advanced nano particles, operating off on an algorithm based on evolutionary computing. It is essentially a form of radical A.I., making the substance unbelievably chaotic. It generates a unique reaction to every genome it encounters. Reshaping life."  - David

'Primordial ooze' is just the building blocks of life - organic compounds and amino acids that form protein structures. That term has been around since the 1950s when scientist tried to re-create the original primordial material that they think life originated from on Earth. It is also called promordial sludge, primordial soup, and... primordial GOO.

A 'nanoparticle' is just a small, nano-sized, single particle of carbon and phosphate that behaves as a whole unit. These are organic particles, not little metal robots. In genome editing and gene recombination, we use nanoparticles like siRNA, miRNA, and ribozymes, and  riboswitches to deliver protein packages across cell wall barriers and targeted to specific areas of specific cells that require genome editing. They are basically used to rewrite DNA, which is what David said the pathogen does to the host in Covenant. He is just being more specific in Advent by saying 'advanced nano particles that generate a unique reaction to every genome'.

When David says "A.I." and 'evolutionary computing' he is talking about the same type of thing. Evolutionary computing is a computer science term that is used in the field of Artificial Intelligence. It means it uses algorithms based on biological evolution to predictively organize amino acid sequences and protein structures in DNA in an intelligent manner to rewrite it. The pathogen version of this can also intelligently adapt to resistance to these algorithms, and since it was created artificially for the Engineer's biomechanical biotechnology application, it is technically 'artificial' and 'intelligent'. That may not be the 'self aware' type of A.I. that most people think of when they hear that term, but there is still an organized intelligence to what it does, like a hive intelligence.

Those algorithms used in evolutionary computing come from real biological genetic operations, like mutation and crossover. Crossover takes chromosomes from more than one parent organism and produces a chromosome that combines features of those parents. That is exactly what the parasitic form of the pathogen does and how David bred his own version.

I just watched the Herrozzy (sp?) video comparing all of the A:C scenes to the Divine Comedy artwork.  The end of this video shows the bombing scene which I guess I didn't really pay close attention to before.  But however the method of ingestion or infection from the black goo cloud, as the camera skims around through the dieing bodies, the heads move and explode just like the Engineers head on LV-223 they bring back to the ship.  Their skin on the heads starts to crack and bubble then explode, some spew from the mouth, most of the black goo that spews from the mouths or openings seems to harden instantly as it grows into a grotesque shape.

joylitt

When I watched Advent and picked up the deconstruction of the Alien Pathogen I to made the connection with Transcendence.

There was a point in the evolution of the script when I looked at both Paglen and Green's recent work and then considered Ridleys remark about David infecting the machine which evolved into bringing hell.

I think what we are picking up in the detail being offered is little fragments of the big ideas that would have driven the movie pre John Logan and Alien Prefix. 

The transformative journey of Shaw the creation of multiple Davids and a much closer and more detailed look at the Engineers and the source of their power which David would have tampered with. This notion of the Pathogen being radical A I may echo how David was going to affect the machine, the source of the Engineers power. If you have considered any of Big Dave' tips down they years from his source they hint at all these elements.

David was going to use what he learned from the Xeno strain, as Damon called it, on the Engineers but in a much more subtle way than what we received, the bombing contracting the Engineers element down (and Shaw) and made space and fed into David and his Xeno creation arc. 

There is a connection to Transcendence? Please don't tell me we are going to find out the aliens are created by little nanobots :(

What is Alien Prefix?

Great theories and explanations BigDave

I wasn't thinking of A.I. when David revealed this, but instead immediately thought of the famous Lycurgus cup from ancient Rome and Mesopotamia.

These humanoids aren't looks Like Engineers but like humans beings. Females has Black Hood on head and all of them hasn't so white, shining skin like Engineers. They can be humans took from earth long ago to paradise and they live in this times. Maby Black goo when feel noise and agitation when David dumps pathogen from vessel, its changing to agressive pathogen and destroy all of life but when is calm goo live like normal microorganism, and search host to life and  asimilates to xenomorphs. Xenomorphs hate noise. In spiderman, venom hate noise and can be furious. 

I have missed some Replies on here, i think i will PASS on replying to them (as the comments i would like to reply to are by Posters who MAY-NOT be back to respond).

So i will reply to you Michart

First Welcome aboard ;)

Those Engineers do look more like a Hybrid of Human and Engineers, you could be Mistaken to think they had taken Humans to Interbreed with, that Certainly would FIT.  As would if the Engineers could not PROCREATE and so our Creation/Evolution was to allow them to be able to Procreate again (if they Ran out of Females).

What it could be is that the Prometheus Engineers are to those Planet 4 Engineers as the Replicants in Blade Runner are to Humans ;)

Regarding the Black Goo... well with the Revelation its a Form of Radical A.I it becomes a McGuffin that can be MOLDED to do what ever they see FIT for a Plot Convenience.

It could be the Ship did something to those URNS that would Cause a Different Reaction to the Pathogen... Think of this like the Arming and Activation of a Atomic Bomb!

Where as the Fallen/Leaked Urns on the Crashed Ship, and those in Prometheus are like a Nuclear Weapon in Storage that Suffers a Radioactive Leak!