David to Oram question?

Are you talking about in the book? He does not say anything about morphs from Prometheus in the movie.

@Kethol: A poster mentioned it on another thread here.  A problem once again of posters not providing direct references/ differentiation in their comments.  Highly frustrating.

I know he talked much more about the pathogens and neomorphs in the book, but I don't recall him mentioning anything at all about what happened in Prometheus to Oram. Here is what he said in the movie.

DAVID
As you can see I've become a bit of an amateur zoologist over the years. It's in my nature to keep busy I suppose.

The pathogen took so many forms and was extremely mutable. Fiendishly inventive, in fact. The original liquid atomized particles when exposed to the air. Ten years on, all that remains outside of the original virus are these gorgeous beasts.

DAVID picks up one of his grotesque SPECIMENS.

DAVID
Patience is everything. From the eggs came these parasites. Shock troops of the genetic assault. Waiting for a host. Entering the host. Rewriting the DNA. And ultimately producing…well…these enviable unions. My beautiful bestiary.

DAVID gestures to a table full of horrid ALIEN FETUSES, each mounted on hand-made display stands. ORAM examines them, but keeps his distance from DAVID.

DAVID
Soon enough I began a bit of genetic experimentation of my own. Cross breeding, hybridizing, what have you.

It is difficult to tell if ORAM is fascinated or horrified by what he sees.
 
ORAM
You engineered these David?

DAVID
Idle hands are the devils workshop, Captain.

DAVID beckons ORAM to follow him into a side passage which leads down a dark, stone staircase.

DAVID
Come. This is what I wanted to show you. My successes.

DAVID  walks down the staircase and ORAM follows cautiously, the laser pointer of his gun never leaving David's back.

DAVID (as he walks)
"You see Captain, my work has been frustrated from a lack of an essential ingredient."

We get to the bottom and enter LARGE CAVERNOUS STONE ROOM, filled with a dank mist and dripping with water. The only illumination is from the light on Oram's rifle barrel. Covering the floor are a half dozen very large, leathery EGGS, about waist high. David brushes one with his hand as he walks to the OPPOSITE side of the room. Oram pans his light around the room..

ORAM
Are they alive?

David
Waiting, really.

ORAM
For what?

DAVID contemplates his reply.

ORAM (LOUDER)
What are they waiting for David?

DAVID
Mother
 

@Kethol: Thanks heaps for that:)  This thread probably needs to be deleted by a moderator now, as my question appears redundant!?  Interesting that Oram approaches the egg when David specifically states that "from the eggs came these parasites. Shock troops of genetic assault.  Waiting for a host…".

As for David's last line you've quoted, does he mean they are waiting for MUTHUR?  That is, was he somehow responsible for luring the Covenant to planet 4?  Given we know a 'neutrino burst' would have no impact on the ship, did David discover some Engineer technology on the planet that would project some type of 'burst' once he picked up a ship nearing its sector of space and he could then trigger the recording from the Juggernaut to lure them (the reason he hadn't applied the technology earlier is because he had to wait until a ship passed into that system)!?

It has been mentioned here before, but there is a scene in the book where David shows Oram an egg and tells him it is harmless. This is before going into the egg room, so Oram would be a bit more at ease. There is a photo of this egg prop online, so they may have filmed that scene. David also tells him that if he wanted to infect him, he could have done so at any time, but he won't. I bet a lot of those lines were shot.

David also touched one of the live eggs himself in the movie, and there was no reaction at all, so Oram has no indication something extremely dangerous is here. WE know what is in the egg, but Oram has never seen an Alien film, so he has no clue something can literally explode out at him in a split second. I had no clue when I first saw Alien. I mean I knew something was in there, but no clue THAT was going to happen.

As far as your other question, why are you spelling it Mutha? David said "mother". Just his sick way of referencing a mother carrying a baby to term. The face huggers are waiting for a host to impregnate with a xenomorph embryo. 

@Kethol: In the film we don't know how David intended his vocalisation of mother to be spelled, and I'm suggested he meant the eggs were waiting for what MUTHA was bringing - hosts.

He said 'mother'. I'm not following why you are spelling mother MUTHA in all caps.

Are you referring to the actor's British accent and his pronunciation? Or are you referring to MUTHUR, the ships computer?

He's either saying 'mother' or 'MUTHUR'. I think he's being clever and is making a reference to both.

No way. He's just saying "mother". Nothing to do with a ship's computer. It's obvious - the face hugger needs a "mother" to do its work. Of course, Oram knows nothing of the Alien lifecycle, so David can say this with superior smug knowledge that it will go right over Oram's head.

@Kethol: Like auximenes picked up, I believe David is being clever and really referring to the ship's computer.

Sorry, I agree with Hox on this one. It is obvious Oram was going to be the xeno's mommy and bring it to term :)

Hi I am new but in addition, as David is android the all kind of beats doesn't react to it. This is why eggs doesn't facehug him. Or neomorph attack. He thinks he is God of them but no. Aliens only send e through living. If my theory is correct this gives me question in aliens movie, the queen attacked the android u remember. Maybe those are genetically enhanced alien species while we all aware of current alien was not biomechanical. 

New to the Forum as well...

I have a much different take:  Oram asks "What are THEY waiting for, David?"  Mother would be a proper answer to what the opened egg is waiting for - but not for what "they" are waiting for...  I believe "Mother" means a QUEEN ALIEN; that the xenos are waiting for a queen (so they don't have to wait around for David to "engineer" (pun intended) a new egg or two.

Thoughts????

@POP!: Welcome to the board (and I'm likewise a new arrival although have been a longtime fan of Ridley's Alien and more recently Prometheus:)

Ridley released his director's cut of Alien back in 2003, IIRC, and in that he potentially retconned the need for a Queen established by subsequent films by hinting that the xenomorph was able to control its entire lifecycle independently, through using human victims (e.g. Kane and Brent) to breakdown to become eggmorphs that then released facehuggers.  So I'm not sure if Ridley considers the Alien Queen necessary this time around!?

@POP! goes the Alien Weasel

Welcome. You do realize the chicken comes before the egg don't you? Why would there be a need for a "queen" as in Aliens when the eggs already exist?

The original idea for the xenomorph life cycle in Alien was that it was self contained. The xeno uses a host body, re-writes its DNA to transform that tissue into an egg where a face hugger is grown. The face hugger then impregnates a new host, host birth a zeno, and the cycle repeats. (EDIT - Nathan beat me to it)

Thanks for the warm welcome, everyone...

LOVE the chicken-n-egg reference, Kethol !  LOL

Gotta admit:  I'm working off of the 20thCF films only (i.e., no books/comics/director's cuts, original ideas, homing pigeon notes, smoke signals, etc.) - so no Brett/Dallas humans-to-eggs.  As such, aren't eggs necessary since it's one FHer per egg per human.

Furthermore, there are thousands and thousands of eggs in the derelict - so without a queen somewhere, David is limited to the 2 FHer embyos he placed in the drawer of Covenant, no?

(remember, OFFICIALLY no Brett/Dallas human/eggs)

The egg scene was re-instated into the Alien directors cut 14 years ago, so it is official now. I doubt Ridley will even address it in a future film, simply because it has already addressed in his directors cut. Dan Obannon intended the Alien life cycle to be self contained all along - no frigging queen!

We have already seen there are numerous versions of the alien that can be bred and customized, so this does not negate the lame alien queen idea Cameron came up with. The eggs in the hold of the derelict were sectioned off by walls, and each of those sections may hold a different variety of the egg.

That colonist who found them in Aliens simply had to hop down into the left egg bay instead of the right bay that Kane went into, and he gets infected with a different version of the organism that includes a queen in the life cycle. Considering the aliens in 'Aliens' don't even look like the one in 'Alien', that actually fixes Cameron's contradiction.

Kethol, MY MAN!

The "lame queen" notwithstanding, David created or "engineered" the eggs in AC (i.e., no mention of humans-to-eggs-to-FHer life cycle).  So HE either engineers said life cycle in the future - or he may very well have meant a queen when he said that his new creations were waiting for "mother."  I suppose time will tell.

And as for right- and left-side holds in the derelict possibly carrying different "versions" of alien eggs (a la the "different versions" of Predators in the movie "Predators;" remember? Laurence Fishburn says they're "like wolves and dogs are related"), there is simply no proof of that whatsoever.  I mean, there's just as much proof that the 2 FHer embyos David stows away eventually turn out to be the queens in Aliens and in AvP, no?

(I know you're laughing - or I'm hoping you are)

The different versions of the aliens from Alien to Aliens is likely more a result of better FX - just like David is a much better robot than Ash.

On another note, I wish I had confidence that RS is gonna tie it alllllllll together in the end - but I sincerely doubt it.  For example: we're likely to never know what David said to the awoken Engineer in Prometheus that made him so angry... 

@POP!: One xenomorph can convert more than one organism into an egg, given there was only one xenomorph on the Nostromo (birthed from Kane) and it cocooned both Dallas and Brett.  So RS probably has in mind for David to use the two FH embryos to convert as many of the frozen colonists into eggs.  As for RS being capable of tying it all together, I’d suggest the colonist-converted eggs become (and explain the size of) the cargo of the Derelict we saw in Alien.  As for what David said to the awoken Engineer in Prometheus, put your DVD of the film back in its player, switch on subtitles and run the scene again.  The subtitles will interpret exactly what he said for you.

Yep. I think retconning the Alien Queen would be a bad move anyway.

@POP! goes the Alien Weasel

No proof needed. That was just some speculation. I don't think there will ever be anything in future RS movies about this.

But if you just extrapolate what is canonical in the movies, ignoring the off screen reasons - The xenomorphs in Aliens WERE very visually different from the one in Alien, so they had to be of a slightly different breed. All were birthed by humans, so they should be the same breed, but were not, so if we back up a step to the facehugger in the egg, that is where the difference must be.

Thanks, everyone.  A guy can get dizzy with all the deleted/alternative scenes, DVD subtitles, books, comics, interviews, etc...  I completely understand the reason for them (i.e., cha-CHING) but they truly convolute from the released/cinema versions.

For example:  I'm getting my 15-y/o son into the series and we watched Alien 3 the other day...  I've never seen this version where the FHer got a water buffalo (it was a Rottweiler when I saw it before); where they trapped the alien - only to have a crazy inmate set it free; and the version I saw had the alien queen burst from Ripley as she did her triple lindy into the liquid steel.

To me, there's something to be said for leaving things the way they are/were when it was released (isn't that what months of editing is for?)...

Alien 3 definitely should not have been released like it was. That longer rough cut was a far better movie. The big chase/capture the alien segment in the middle of the movie just seemed to go nowhere in the theatrical cut.Then I read the novelization and found there was so much more to it, with the actual capture, and that nut Golic letting it out.

When I finally saw the rough cut and found they actually filmed all of that, I was just baffled. It badly needed those scenes.