History Headscratchers / AlienCovenant

*** The "spores" being a coordinated swarm is actually quite a sound theory; real spores have no motor skills. That would certainly result in some sublime ParanoiaFuel; simply by being in to same environment as the spores would mean you would never truly be safe again, because you would never be certain that the last microscopic killer was accounted for. Sadly, this movie is the only chance we have to see the "spores" in action, and since David has made it clear he wishes to move on to the Xenomorphs, we can only speculate on the their range and endurance outside the pods for now.

** Not knowing where it is is easy enough, he could just tell the ship to go home/ select it from given options. He also doesn't know what the ship is capable of so since he doesn't know where he's going or how fast it can get there he can't know how long it would take.

** Weyland wanted David to be a son, Weyland is also an abusive parent.

** Weyland wanted David to be a son, Weyland is also an abusive asshole of a parent.

*** The takeaway from this film series is apparently that a lot of androids are badly programed and for some reason develop a fetish for a being which is good at nothing but killing and reproducing. Not all of them are like this, why are some? Are they just the androids equivalents to sociopaths?

* There are several reasons for the embryos, first off there is the whole delta V problem of space travel (every gram of cargo = lots of energy to move it) thus carrying the bulk of the colony as embryos saves a lot of space and mass. second the large number of embryos helps increase genetic diversity thus acting as a back up should problems arise (accidents during transit, unexpected contagion killing much of the colony, ect) this combined with their distance from earth would indicate that they would have to wait a good 10-20 years for assistance or another ship. it's also possible that these genetic colonists would be grown in vats thus free up the colony from having half it's population constantly pregnant. there's also the "money making angle" wayland-yutani is a company, it's building a colony, chances are many of the colonists paid for passage to this new world rather than be hand picked by the company, thus it's not hard to imagine that the company offered a cheaper alternative by charging people to donate embryos so their children could colonise the stars. there's no lack of people who would pay good money for such a chance

* How are David's passcodes still valid onboard the ship after so long and his type considered volatile and unstable, shouldn't those long been erased?[/spoiler]

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** I'm no sure about your jaw, but I do know that if you have a leg torn off suddenly you're in extreme danger of bleeding out or having your heart give out from shock.

*** More proactive than the spores? Judging for how they formed a coordinated swarm, it seems what we call spores are actually tiny airborne insects. There's no reason to think they could not act with as much strategy and skill (plus infinitely more stealth and infiltration capabilities) as a Facehugger. Yes, Facehuggers can "elude" detection, but their implantation method gives up spectacularly that something wrong is happening - any intelligent scientific crew would put in quarantine and CT scan any man who had got a FaceFullOfAlienWingWong, but not a man with a sneaky infection they know nothing about because it gives zero external signs until it's too late.
*** The spores seem to have a very limited range, and require their victims to be right on top of them before they can deploy (maybe even ''requiring'' physical contact). Facehuggers have proven to be hardy enough to survive away from their eggs for weeks floating in glass containers (as seen in ''Aliens'') allowing them to rang much further in search of prey. Facehuggers have also displayed an unnerving ability to patently stalk and wait for a victim to become isolated, increasing the chances of the offspring being born without detection (Kane's facehugger latched on while he was separated from the team). Finally, something as simple as a gas mask would be enough to thwart the spores, but a your average facehugger is sufficiently strong and determined enough to bore through a heavy-duty environment suit to reach it's victim. Had Kane stumbled upon spores rather than facehuggers in the original movie, he would have been fine.

*** The "spores" being a coordinated swarm is actually quite a sound theory; real spores have no motor skills. That would certainly result in some sublime ParanoiaFuel; simply by being in to same environment as the spoors would mean you would never truly be safe again, because you would never be certain that the last microscopic killer was accounted for. Sadly, this movie is the only chance we have to see the "spores" in action, and since David has made it clear he wishes to move on to the Xenomorphs, we can only speculate on the their range and endurance outside the pods for now.
** As for the resulting offspring, the Xenomorph is just plain smarter. Chestbursters throughout the franchise have proven to be capable of killing adult humans (anything that can bore through a ribcage at birth is ''never'' harmless), but they only do this if there is no other choice. I believe that the custbursters run so often not out of fear, but as a tactical retreat to muster it's strength, take the initiative, and regain the element of surprise. Compare this to the feral-minded neomorph who charged Karine within moments of hatching only to get its sorry hide booted across the room. Had tried the same stunt on someone who was properly armed and prepared, it would have been a much shorter movie.

*** They refused to cede ground, but with good reason - they were cleaning house. The first Neomorph could have judged that he could single-handledly take on a team of armed humans, and for the matter, he was right, as he was wrecking them right and left without being hit until David scared it away. Yeah, real life predators use a more measured approach, but remember that Neomorphs are biological weapons and not a product of evolution: they are programmed to butcher non-botanical lifeforms, and it seems they have the tools to back up their claim. Heck, even if you are right about them acting suicidal, we don't know if Neomorphs and Xenomorphs have the same goals whenever they fight. We know xenos fight to establish a hive, so they must take the fewest risks possible and only act on behalf of their future queen, but given that we ignore how Neomorphs reproduce, charging head on and mowing as many enemies as they can might be their own smart way. What if, for instance, Neomorphs turn their own corpses and their enemies's into fertilizer for spore-releasing eggsacks after dying? In that case, then David's only fundamental "improvement" on the species would have been simply making them less biological weapon and more animal-like in its morphology. Which from my point of view is AwesomeButImpractical, because it would have made them adopt a social structure that is quite hard to accomplish when you are just a facehugger in a hostile environment. On the other hand, a single bunch of spores could have an entire garden of spore generators in much less time and much more easily.

*** [[AIIsACrapshoot He's a malfunctioning, genocidal, sociopathic A.I.]]. He doesn't ''need'' justification to do whatever he wants (which considering his intelligence and resources is quite a damn bit). Yet this also leads to some nasty FridgeHorror ; if the Neomorphs are capable of wiping out a whole biosphere's fauna in that time period, what exactly are the Xenomorphs capable of?

* In Last Supper prologue clip, Walter performs Heimlich maneuver / hits a woman in the back, when she is choking on a chunk of food, then he says in friendly tone: "I've got your back." This serves both as a statement that he just saved her life by litterally hitting her in the back and BadassBoast - as he's ready to come to aid his teammates (even for the cost of his life, or parts of his body). For me the most likable character saved someone BEFORE the main plot, while nobody did anything and everyone was staring at their companion choking to death. What does he get for reward? Tennessee replying to him: [[WhatTheHellHero "Woah... that was a joke, right?"]]. WHAT?? I completely understand Walter following this with bemused face. Why the hell would Tennessee say something like that? It is like saying: "Yeah, you prick, you hit her in the back, but we're playing a game 'Save your own life' on this ship, and you, you android R-tard just broke the rules." Is it just me looking at it this way, or was it meant to be seriously that mean from Tennessee (who is quite alright character by the end of the movie itself)? Maybe originally Tennessee was meant to be mean character and this was supposed to [[ForeShadowing give us a hint]]? Or did he not trust Walter, as Walter was an android?

*** Wrong. Lt. Goreman also killed one with his pistol.

*** I recently re-watched that scene. Goreman does kill a Xenomorph in the air duct with his pistol. That's why you can see it's a different alien coming at him right before he sets off the grenade. It shows him shooting the Alien, then when it cuts back to him, it shows him turning his head and seeing a different alien coming at him from a different direction, as well as another one from a different direction. It's these different aliens that compels him to set off the grenade. The original alien he was shooting at was clearly dead at that point. Also in regard to size, Goreman's vp70 pistol is actually bigger then Vasquez's S&W model 39 handgun (which in real life only shoots 9mm bullets, though in movie lore it's a 10mm gun. The vp70 also shoots 9mm bullets in real life.). Check the "Internet movie firearms database" for reference. They show good images of both guns.

* Alright, so where the hell does the Deacon from Prometheus fit in with the Xenomorphs? I was trying to find something about it during ''Convenant'', but nothing, so...can someone just explain this to me?

*** With regards to the fate of the Deacon, the comic book series "Fire and Stone" seem to strongly imply that [[spoiler: the Deacon had at some point wandered over to the crashed Engineer ship, ate some of the black goo, and transformed into a mountain-sized object]]. See [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5C_EC0oroA here]] and [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wWOwxZFcFY here]] for a more detailed explaintion, though beware spoilers for that series.

* This isn't all that unusual, a real life example would be military helicopters such as the UH60 blackhawk and the huey both of which are very fragile (the skin is thin enough to stab a pen through by all accounts) but these are still used to drop people into combat zones. compare with the landing craft which is a civilian craft designed to drop colonists into a relatively safe environment and not expecting idiots to go shooting guns indoors, it's not going to bother with heavy shielding. (to use another real life example how many tanker trucks do you see with armoured fuel tanks to prevent them from exploding or catching fire in the event someone crashes into them or shoot them?). another possible reason for not covering the explosives with a steel plate is rocket science, every gram of additional weight means more thrust needed to get into orbit thus more fuel which in turn increases mass of the ship further

* The colony probably won't receive any new members from Earth for decades, if ever. This means that ever skill needed will have to be to taught to the next generation. The embryos provide a new stable generation of craftsmen, doctors, ect. right away instead of depending on the variances of natural reproduction.

** About cultuvating people in jars, I would say definitely yes. Maybe my eyes deceived me, but I remember something resembling a human-sized glass tank in the room where the embryos were stored. It will be probably addressed in the next film
** Another reason is the embryos don't need to give consent to be shipped of to an alien world. Weyland Yutani has other colonization missions to run and needs to supply a colony ship with enough people to establish genetic diversity somehow. In the extended universe Weyaland Yutani is mentioned to abort the pregnancies of company employees when its both unsanctioned and inconvenient. Given the companies famous brutal pragmatism, its not unbelievable that many of these "abortions" are actually just removing the fetus, putting it into cryo suspension, and shipping them off to other planets so the don't have to find volunteers.

* One explanation is that in the whole series we only ever see 2 actual facehugger scenes the first is kane who is hugged in a very hostile environment by a very old egg, the hugger could have remained attached for longer simply to keep the host alive or because it was old thus it's implantation process was slowed. The second is Newt's father who again is hugged by an old hugger and we never see how long it's attached for. (long enough to drag him back to the truck at least which could be as little as 10 minutes). All other scenes are either not shown or stopped (Ripley in Alien 3 is only shown in one short flash in the intro, the dog/ox is never shown), one problem however is that the facehugger is always shown to incapacitate their target in a way that is suggested to be some form of chemical anaesthetic (quickly knocked out, no memory of the incident ect) as indicated by both Kane and Pervis' reactions. Not having memory of the facehugger just waking up to see the carnage that was the birthing of the aliens or the after effects with no indication of how long the whole thing took but given the crew of the betty were still onboard it's easily within 24 hours)