Thousands of eggs?

My guess, is what ever busted out of that engineer's chest on the Derelict ship that the crew of the Nostromo found, laid eggs... which is notably a queen since she can lay eggs. It could be possible if there was thousands of engineers on that ship that they could be eggmorphed possibly. I'm really hoping that the sequel to Alien: Covenant will explain how the derelict ship got there and who laid the eggs.... that why its called a prequel. So if it that doesn't happen... Ridley will hear a lot more complaining from fans.

Difficult to say. I'm not keen on a queen having laid the eggs. There were three chestbusted cryo Engineers in the Prometheus Juggernaut, yet no evidence of eggs or an egglayer.

I like the idea of the urns breaking down over time and becoming eggs. That still doesn't explain the Chestbusted Engineer, unless he was infected before he set off with his payload.

I'm really keen to discover whether or not the holocaust type incident on the Engineer/hybrid/whatever planet, the LV-223 breakout and the derelict are all part of the same event, or if they did indeed take place around the same time.

I read somewhere that Ridley's Alien universe is going to contain multiple humanoid creatures that were created by unknown beings (not the Engineers from Prometheus) who are worshipped as gods by the humanoids.  Humans, the Engineers, and the others are all at war for dominance of the known universe.  Humans just don't know it yet.  My guess as to how we get to the thousands of eggs goes like this:  The Engineers in Prometheus were planning to wipe out humanity before we got too advanced.  A preemptive strike, i guess.  Their plan went awry at their testing facility as we saw.  Jumping forward, David and Shaw travel to Paradise were they find the Engineer race already dead or the black goo from their ship kills them off (released on crash or David releases it on purpose).  David now wants to create life and uses Shaw as his guinea pig.  He experiments on her and turns her into a birthing machine for the first of the eggs.  He tricks Crudup's character into taking a look and getting facehugged, hosting a Protomorph.  At some point after seeing how successful that experiment was, David finds out that Walter is somewhat self healing (see Meet Walter.com info - regenerative shell) and whether jealous of Walter or curious, he gets Walter to take a look and get facehugged.  This spawns the first true Xeno with the biomechanical makeup.  And it's a queen and it starts laying.  I'm guessing this is the ending to Covenant.  At some point in the sequel(s) to Covenant, the Engineers lose contact with their homeworld and return to Paradise, as they have probably colonized other planets so are not a completely extinct species, and find a.) everyone dead, b.) evidence of humans being there, and c.) a new species (the Xeno - maybe just the queen or many).  They realize the destructive power of the Xeno and already being pissed at humanity, harvest thousands of eggs from her to send back to earth on the pre-Derelict ship to destroy mankind.  They recruit a lone suicide pilot to do so.  The eggs were obviously placed on the ship on purpose hence the laser mist over the eggs to keep them from accidently hatching.  Unfortunately for the pilot something goes wrong and he gets facehugged and crashes on LV-426.  But first he sends out a beacon (warning?).  Then the Nostromo shows up.....

That is a very good theory indeed you got there R. Budd. Very interesting. I'm also thinking somewhere along those lines. Pretty sure Walter will somehow end up contributing to the mechanoid part in the xeno.

This is a great theory R.Budd but it doesn't fit the timeline as the derelict and space jockey are determined to have been there for 2000 years

could this be laying the eggs? 

Well I really don't think that Ridley will address the mystery in a way that will please the "Space Jockey on Acheron crash landed there millions of years ago" camp (I'm included in that camp btw.)

I think he's going in the direction of David creating the alien from ALIEN. I think in the sequel to Covenant, we will discover that either David or one of the Covenant crew is behind the space jockey helmet, which really doesn't sit right with me!

But, this was always going to be the case if one day somebody wanted to tell the story of the space jockey and his species.

I mean, it wouldn't be financially viable for FOX to fund a project based on a surreal alien incident that happened millions of years ago while human beings were still in their infancy.

The backstory of the space jockey doesn't need to be told. We each have our own imaginations which explain everything we need to know.

The Prometheus project and this new project go against what I hold in my imagination.

I wish I held the same excitement that you other people hold for the upcoming iteration. I really do!

Xenowarrior1, were does the 2000 year number come from?

I thought there was an idea that the derelict crashed on top of an egg silo that was already there but it got cut because of cost or time. It would still leave the mystery of the chest burst pilot though.

Its all up in the air at the moment it depends on how you look at it as its evolved over and over.

1) Star Beast... the draft Alien was based off,  A Giant Alien Race had discovered a ancient and abandoned Pyramid on a far away World, these Giant beings explored this Pyramid and discovered the remains of a Ancient Alien Life-Form that has a unique Life-Cycle that requires Sacrificial Hosts.   These beings discover the Spore Stage of this Life-form in a Hibernated State with nothing left of the Life-forms Ancestors or Culture. 

These beings attempted to transport the Life-form Spores for Study but got infected and then set off a Warning SOS.  A Human Ship detects this and investigates and also explore the Pyramid and get infected by the Spores that runs amok on the Human Ship.

2) Alien was based on the above, only the Giant Beings now hold the Eggs in their Ships and the Pilot had succumb to his Cargo and we are not told anything about where either came from.

The Franchise expanded upon the Organism but not the Origin and all Ridley Scott confirmed was it was a ancient Bio-Weapon that the Giant Being (Space Jockey) was carrying in his Cargo Hold and the Ship was in effect a Bomber of kinds.

3) Prometheus introduced us to the Space Jockey Race by having them be a Ancient Humanoid Race who created Mankind and Evolved life on Earth and other places, but these beings was also conducting experiments with a Bio-logical Mutagen that seemed to contain the DNA connected to the Xenomorph, but a outbreak 2000 years ago killed nearly all of them off on the Outpost they was conducting experiments on (LV-223)

After this point Ridley confirmed the Space Jockey Event had happened within a few hundred years of the Outbreak that killed nearly all of those Engineers off and the Derelict did not get far before it crash landed on LV-426

4) Now Alien Covenant is teasing that the Survivors of the Prometheus mission to that Engineers Outpost, have taken a Engineer Ship with a Cargo of Bio-logical Warfare to the Homeworld of these Engineers... Where in the Process of this movie David will be shown to had conducted Experiments in the aim of Perfecting a Organism, thats very related to the Xenomorph if not its Predecessor.

Thats what we have guys and so indeed Points 2-3 contradict number 4 as far as Timescale.

We really dont know whats going to be shown for sure, but hopefully David is just re-creating something that has been created before.

"I thought there was an idea that the derelict crashed on top of an egg silo that was already there but it got cut because of cost or time."

DK they was originally going a similar route to Star Beast, where the Egg Silo was separate to the Derelict but it was different to Star Beast because they was going the route that the Space Jockey is involved in the creation of the Eggs and the Egg Silo was merely a Storage for their Weapons.

Due to budget and time restraints they had to make it seem like the Egg Silo was part of the Ship.

The way I look at it, Ridley changes his mind as much as stripper changes outfits, so anything he says can be taken with a grain of salt.  Yeah, I know it's his baby and yeah I know he said the ship on LV-426 is supposed to pre-date the one on LV-223, but I don't buy it now with the direction he is going in Covenant.  So, I've developed the mindframe that if it didn't happen in one of the movies or isn't mentioned in one of the movies, it didn't happen.  Even if it's some other media (book, comic, etc) that Ridley condoned, if it's not in the movies, it never happened. That's just me though.  Keeps everything simple.

R. Budd Dwyer

Agree it boils down to canon but honestly RS will do what he sees fit. I won't be disappointed if time lines don't quite match.

@R. Budd Dwyer;

The good news is that it's totally upto YOU what constitutes Cannon, in your world.

I only consider ALIEN (directors cut) and certain pieces of Giger's artwork canon as far as the ALIEN universe goes.

That's one of the great things about art; you can either take it or leave it.

I'm pretty sure that Giger had a completely different vision of the space jockey and backstory! But it would be something that FOX wouldn't fund because they'd feel that it was "too out there"

Fuckin FOX!

There's a long bow.  Make up something that Giger might have thought up, then stick the boot into Fox for not funding something he might have made up.

It's neither here nor there.  O'Bannon actually created the Alien and he had other ideas that didn't even make it to the film he wrote.

OK

If the queen process is being abandoned and egg morphing is back (unless shaw is a birthing machine) the disparity between the eggs in the trailer and those that Kane found could be attributed to being genetically developed from either residents of paradise or humans. 

with potentially 2000 humans on board covenant they could be the source of eggs on lv426

but again, sone kind of time displacement needs to occur to match with canon timeline 

A lot of interesting theories! I'm loving it :D

I've got a feeling they won't show the Derelict incident until the film following Covenant. It's alot of story to fit into two hours don't you think?

I also believe they'll either completely ignore explaining why the crew in Alien thought it had been there for thousands of years, or perhaps the technology the engineers use on the ship for the suit wasn't fossilized at all, but only appeared to look fossilized to humans.

I really hope they go the eggmorphing route. The "queen" was frankly too safe and not as frightening. Eggmorphing on the other hand is fucking horrifically frightening! I believe that Ridley liked the idea of eggmorphing and it's why he put it in the "Director's cut". If horror and scaring the shit out of us is his intention than I would think that he is going there. He certainly has it set up to go there with thousands of colonists for Walter to continue David's experiments... 

I posted a similar thread on this subject back in December and used the same picture of the eggs...

The Derelict and Jock are 2000 years old, just make this flashback good please!

Add David trying to create the perfect specimen 

Add David being able to handle eggs and goo

Add a regenerating Walter

Add 2000 colonists 

= Approx 2000 eggs?

David just needs somewhere to put them, just stick them under the Derelict, turn on the blue mist and set up the beacon...?