Alien: Covenant explained!

Interesting. I mean anything is possible. As far as the questions I'm gonna leave them alone. I don't like to speculate about things. Covenant isn't out of theaters and I haven't had time to digest it fully.

I'm rather more interested in Why the Engineers were making efforts to erase mankind.

The whole AI thing...frankly, I'm burned out on 'Evil Artificial Intelligence' plots.

The points in the essay are interesting, but I dislike how it all becomes a cyclical structure, always circling itself, again and again...almost a Tunel Infinity.

"All this has happened before, and it will happen again…again…again…again…again…again…again…"

BW, "Those who do not understand history are condemned to repeat it." 

Now let's wait and see until Dr. Connors gets here 

In terms of the names for the Driods, theres the guess that it might be a nod to 

David Giler and Walter Hill.

To think big and use pre existing mythos and belief systems to inform how you tell a story is not the exclusive province of Prometheus nor is it entirely absent from Covenant.

The core philosophical drivers of Covenant (and why is the film called Covenant) is the relationship between creator (Weyland, David) and created (David, the creature fashioned out of the lifecycle) and mortality Weyland and immortality David. 

In Prometheus we see David disappointed with the Engineers (mortal after all) and Davids antipathy for Weyland (Don't we all want our parents dead).

His only emotional confusion is that as a robot he suffers a kind of apartheid at the hands of mankind "your not a real boy". That is what makes his relationship and his feelings for Shaw so unique. In general terms Shaws search for the Gods was somewhat Promethean in an interfering sense but there is no connection between the title of Prometheus and Shaw's story arc.  

What has been lost by repositioning the story from its original intent is Shaw and all she represented in terms of enquiry.

Paradise as David said at the end.

Why did they want to kill us. 

We were going to Paradise to find that answer and we simply went to a superior species home world.

As has already been pointed David and Walter are paired with the executive producers.

I think the story of David as regards Shaw maybe the story of Alberich, the Alberich the Nibelung who renounced love, stole the Rheingold and made a powerful magic ring out of it. He took  Shaws motherhood and made a variant of the outcomes we saw in Prometheus which stem from the pathogen. Watch this space with two ADF books which may elaborate on this. 

My difficulty with making thematic links between Covenant and  Prometheus is the story pursued is radically different from the one intended in 2012 where the Space Jockey was a brother who got into trouble within a two hundred year bandwidth of the outbreak on LV223. Links have been garnered but "much that was known has been lost".

The film is called Covenant because of the ship and mission and Weyland was gone and dead before the ship embarked on its mission.

I'm here but have no interest, it was too much to read. Just here to troll, haha

To answer the question of why the film is called Covenant it may just be the vessel. The connection with the arc couples leaving to procreate making a new contract with "God". This may explain why they dropped the title Paradise Lost because we have no idea if the planet they arrived at was the mythical paradise. It was a Paradise a beautiful verdant land were something was revered but that plot has been passed over and it simply is  a place where "the devil" has come to and turned all to serpents.

Oram is a derivation of an old anglo saxon name whose nickname is serpent I am sure that is a intentional. Byron had many homosexual relationships and one could link the use of that slip to connect Davids homoerotic scene with Walter.

I think those scenes are intended to show that David recognises the power of human sexuality I do not think he had experienced it "is this how you do it" when "kissing" Daniels. His love for Shaw came out of admiration and her kindness we really need the dots joined up at an emotional story telling level as I have said elsewhere he gave witness for his love and was mighty affected not for effect but because he was. So why did you experiment on her or was she dieing etc. etc.  

What we do know is the Alien Lifecycle is reproduction without a moral compass, love is absent. David was created by a deeply amoral man not out of love but because he could, and cut out his biological daughter that seems to me to be a humanist connection which one can make.   

About Walter’s name. David was able to pick his name, but the David models needed to be altered slightly in their psychological make up. (W)eyland (alter)ed the David model hence Walter.

About the Byron error. I don’t think David was really that much in error. In some literary circles it is felt that Ozymandias was written about Byron. It was also Byron who inspired the ideas behind Frankenstein although he did not write it. On the surface it does look like David has mad a great error , but the background history to Ozymandias and Frankenstein reveal a different story. There are those who have historically taken credit, but what inspired them?

I think David cloned Dr Elizabeth Shaw many times to use her for his multiple experiments until he achieved the ovomorph and xenomorph. In the movie we see 2 differents Dr Shaw, one is a picture on a roll with her mouth and jaw disfigured, and another one her corpse with strange head and open chest. So there must have been at least 2 copies. Maybe David really buried the original Dr Shaw. Aslo, maybe David planted the wheat to feed Dr Shaw and her clones. The idea of clones is a bit similar to Alien 4 Resurection where Ripley was cloned too.

Aslo, maybe David, with engineer's technology caused the neutrino blast to stop the covenant ship and attract them to his planet.

Trappist you just have me an idea....thanks!

Ur welcome!

@Trappist.  I think that clone theory is a stretch and again, a robot ahead of the curve; hundreds of years before humans.  I think if this was something that was very much feasible; I will not see the 200 year time lag between Alien 3 and Resurrection.

Maybe, we'll see for more answers in the sequel I guess...

I think there is a connection between the title Prometheus and Shaw (as the OP states). Whether this is intended or not is another issue, but certainly Shaw's fate would suggest she suffered a similar fate to Prometheus, held captive and having her insides ripped out repeatedly.

It appears the backstory prior to AC will likely head down this path, and outline Shaw's fate as a 'birthing machine', and reveal the true horror (as we suspect) that she was in fact alive much longer than David suggests.

Very interesting points by "Prof A". Thanks for sharing that.

As for where it all goes from here... 

Well, like myself and others have pointed out, for one thing... we know that there were obviously some forms of xenos long before the Prometheus crew arrived. The engineers(or beings) that were there had murals and whatnot depicting some of the history or geneology of their links with the xenos. And the severed engineer head was carbon dated as at least 2000 years old. So that site and that outbreak (if that's what happened there) had probably been sitting there, undisturbed, for over 2000 years.

So David is not the creator of the xenos or the black mutagen. Although he may turn out to be the creator of some subsequent xeno species... who knows.

But those are some interesting thoughts, and I hope Ridley does indeed have a master plan for all of this.

"(W)eyland (alter)ed the David model hence Walter."

I love this thought.

I think David really loves Shaw and he cannot accept the fact that she is dead. His creation of egg is somewhat a symbol of Shaw rebirth.

I'm starting to think that most of the scrolls in David's lair might be pictures of his many experiments including failures, with Shaw's clones and maybe engineers too..,

@cmutt, i am thinking along similar lines.

I agree with Starlogger from another topic that david did not create the xeno he recreated it, it was his version of it, david would have had access to all the research files from lv-223 on board the juggernaut, he is A.I so while in the pilot big chair, downloading the engineers knowledge would not be hard.

The mural on 223 points too the fact that these engineers, fallen ones, whatever you want to call them worshipped a xeno in some form or other, which makes me think that the engineers on 223 were outcasts, rebels expelled from paradise, they terraformed a barren planetoid, set up a weapons complex, they were on the warpath to exact revenge on the creator engineers who expelled them from paradise, and on humans, it is the devil that rebels against god and his creation, enki and enlil, the players have different names in many cultures, but the story is the same.

LV-223 & 426 are planetary neighbours, so the classic xeno is the engineers creation not davids.