David Did Not Create the Xenomorph (Part 2)
chli
MemberChestbursterApril 13, 2019As we all know, in the original film Alien the crew of the USCSS Nostromo (on their way back to Earth), on company orders, investigate a signal coming from the moon LV-426. Captain Dallas, Kane and Lambert follow the beacon which is, in fact, a warning (in an alien signal system). They discover the Derelict and the eggs, and Kane is “infected” by a facehugger which eventually leads to the famous xenomorph.
According to this classic movie, the crew are woken, by “Mother”, because a new and strange signal has been detected. However, “Mother” should have detected the signal already on the way from Earth towards Thedus. Why didn’t “she”? The answer to this question seems to be that on Thedus, the original science officer is replaced by Ash, a company synthetic, whose main task it is to implement Special Order 937 (which “Mother” is also instructed to follow).
In the prequel Prometheus, we follow Sir Peter Weyland’s expedition to another moon in the same system, LV-223, due to the discoveries of maps found in old cave paintings by doctors Holloway and Shaw. However, in the extra material on the blue-ray version of Prometheus, namely “Quiet Eye: Elisabeth Shaw”, Sir Peter Weyland states:
“As fate would have it, Shaw and Holloway’s interest in Zeta 2 Reticuli has proven to be mutually beneficial. While the good doctors rely on ancient carvings and primitive cave paintings, my science division’s own long range scans have recently detected a faint, almost imperceptible signal emanating from one of the lesser moons in that system. And contrary to the findings of Shaw and Holloway, which target LV-223 as our primary site of interest, our findings suggest the point of origin could actually be the moon LV-426.
Per standard procedure, we will embed a David 8 unit with the crew. And he will be programmed with multiple contingency plans to address and exploit whatever assets we secure on LV-223. But only David will know about 426 and will ensure that the rest of the crew - including Meredith - learn nothing about the transmission we’ve recently discovered until the time is right.”
The beacon, or warning signal, from the Derelict on LV-426 is already there long before the Prometheus expedition! It is, therefore, impossible that David could be the creator of the eggs on LV-426! Hence, the Space Jockey is as old as Dallas claims it to be: “Looks like it's been dead a long time. Fossilized”. The most plausible explanation would be that the Space Jockey is at least as old as the engineer corpses on LV-223.
Furthermore, in Prometheus, the expedition discovers the engineer experimentation facility on LV-223. They find the body of an engineer, dead for about 2000 years. They find ampules containing a pathogen which mutates organisms into hideous creatures. On a wall, they find a mural depicting a ritual in which hominids (engineers or humans) are “sacrificed” in order to create the deadly xenomorph creature (The whole cycle is there: egg, facehugger, chestburster, and the xenomorph creature).
Later on in the movie, we see what the pathogen can achieve when David persuades Holloway to have a drink spiced with the pathogen. Through intercourse, Shaw is also infected and gives birth to a large “facehugger” (the trilobite) which in turn infects a still living engineer who “gives birth” to a xenomorph creature (the deacon).
Concerning the eggs on LV-426, they were lying in wait there long before David was even contemplated and created by Sir Peter Weyland. Millennia before the crew of the USCSS Nostromo lands on LV-426, the eggs were there, patiently waiting . . .
What does 10 years of isolation do to a synthetic? “When a note is off, it eventually destroys the whole symphony”. David, seeing himself as superior to both humans and engineers, has in the situation of “Crusoe on his island” developed delusions of grandeur, seeing himself as the creator of the “perfect organism”.
This creature, the “perfect organism”, was in fact discovered or created by the engineers aeons ago and which, as far as the engineers on Planet 4 goes, they had renounced from ever creating again.
So, David wants to believe that he is the creator of the wolf, “the perfect organism”, but “in reality” - David did not create the xenomorph!
@ daliens,
You misunderstand my theory - the Xenomorphs remain a bio-weapon.
Currently, most fans see the Xenomorph as a bio-weapon created by a higher power (Engineer, Space Jockey or other), and used by said high power to enact their nefarious plans.
With my theory, the orchestrator, the instigator, the higher power is the Xenomorphs themselves. Rather than attack the human race and others, potentially losing thousands/millions of their own kind the Xenomorphs make themselves into the perfect weapon, to be coveted and utilized despite the evident dangers of such a deadly weapon. The result - the Xenomorph wins, its enemies destroy themselves and in the fallout, the Xenomorphs return to their former intelligent state.
The goal of my theory is to return the franchise back to the mystery and threat we experienced in Alien while accounting for all of the deviations the franchise has thrown at us with the sequels and prequels.
Would we not, as Alien fans, want the Xenomorph to return as the primary threat and an overwhelming threat poised to spell the end of all we know while retaining the mystery and alien nature that attracted us to the creature in the first place?
"I just fear there has been so much Damage to the Xenomorphsince after Alien 3, which includes Movies, Games and Comics that its Hard to place the Xenomorph in a Role at the Top of the Hierarchy."
For many audiences, the most impactful moments in a movie are the opening and closing scenes. With a good movie the former seeds their interest, pulls them into the narrative while the latter, being the last element of the movie they'll remember helps shape their entire experience of the movie - think of how a bad or mediocre ending reduced your opinion of a movie.
# Alien - Only Ripley survived & a cache of thousands of deadly Alien eggs remains.
# Aliens - Ripley survives again, with friends and "seemingly" the eggs have been destroyed.
# Alien 3 - Ripley dies, taking with her possibly the last specimen of the Alien race.
# Alien: Resurrection - Ripley survives again, with friends and "seemingly" all the Aliens have been destroyed.
# Prometheus - David and Shaw survive departing to discover existential answers.
# Alien: Covenant - David survives again, holding 2000+ colonists hostage.
With the Alien franchise, the best endings were with Alien and Prometheus, whereas Alien 3's ending feels poetic, as for Aliens, Resurrection, and Covenant, their endings feel generic...
My point?
Alien and Prometheus' endings were the most impactful because of the possibilities they offered and the threat they posed. As such, imagine an ending to the next movie but using my theory, whereby a character asks some ancient Alien interface the simple question of "How many", referring to the number of eggs on LV-426, but because the question is so open-ended the interface answers completely, showing an ever larger map of the galaxy/universe and that their caches of eggs hidden throughout. Such an ending takes the conclusion of Alien and magnifies it exponentially.
Such a conclusion married with a movie that returns the Alien to its prominence as an effective antagonist, is IMO what the series needs and what we as fans want - a return to form.
Welcome birdman
Indeed the Mural was interesting and vague, merely a Easter Egg maybe? Some use it as 100% Proof of the Xenomorph but in reality it bears little resemblance to the Xenomorph, well it more so looks like a Cross Between the Deacon and Neomorph... Carlos Huante had some Concepts for the Xenomorph and Ultramorph for Alien Engineers draft, and while there was variations... these ones below seem to indicate what was in the Mural.
Indeed the Neomorph and Xenomorph have similar Stages, in effect the Spore Balls act like Eggs, the Released Spores act like the Face Hugger.
Davids notes indicate that he had taken the Neomorph Spores and they had been tested on Various Life-Forms he had then used the Black Goo to take/mix various traits of Various Organisms and mix them with the Neomorph.
Then this Species was then mixed with Dr Shaws Egg Cells to produce his Xenomorph.
How was this possible? I think if we look at the GOO in Prometheus then look at the Scarabs in Alien Engineers and look at them being the same thing... then its quite simple.
R.I.P Sox 01/01/2006 - 11/10/2017
@ birdman,
An interesting concept if I read it right - that the spore sacs are indigenous to Planet 4 and the origin of the Xenomorph race. Of course, this would then make the Space Jockey an Engineer rather than a something alien, which is why I feel many infer that the spore sacs were either mutated when David bombarded the Engineer city with the black goo or that David mutated them directly with the black goo.
@ BigDave,
Having many caches of eggs only limits the franchise if we continue down the path of the original franchise and overuse the Queen idea James Cameron introduced. But these many caches of eggs need not be restricted in such a way, but instead could show the Alien propagating in new and interesting ways, such as the return of egg morphing, or the eggs incubating parasitic variants other than the Facehugger (like with the aforementioned spore sacs).
To me, the engineers are already depicted as slaves, and more specifically a group of primitive humans taken from Earth that have not advanced much in the interim. I believe the Space Jockey is the instigator of the franchise as either one of the last original Xenomorphs hoping to sire a new, reimagined generation of his race, or something else that has laid the eggs on LV-426 for other means. With the pilot having fallen victim to his own cargo/offspring I believe the beacon was sent by the vessel itself to warn that the pilot had fallen and that a replacement was needed. But with no more available pilots another pilot instead traveled to Earth and offered primitive humans advancement and paradise in return for continuing the dead pilots work, with the resulting Engineer humans returning periodically to Earth to bolster their numbers.
But when the order came to attack Earth it created a conflict of interests with those Engineers that remembered Earth, resulting in the non-accidental outbreak on LV-223 2000 years ago.
