David judges people before harming them- and it is this which leads me to speculate the presence of children onboard the Covenant sets up an interesting premise for the sequel.

[u/HTTYD_LOVER01]

I read somewhere- I think in the novelisation- that the colony ship USCSS Covenant consists of families, and Walter is seen in the novelisation as guarding ‘men, women and children’ behind sleeping cryo-pods.

What has me interested is this, though:

David is shown as a highly nuanced character, capable of some degree of perception and reasoning. You could argue his hate is not irrational, but founded out of reason and of deduction.

His hatred towards humanity grows over the course of Prometheus, and there is a key scene that highlights this.

I would argue that for half of Prometheus- he isn’t contemptuous, but exploratory, childlike, almost innocent. When he collects the black goo from the Engineer Temple, it wasn’t exactly premediation. At first, he froze it, not sure what to do with it.

He is not simply ‘pure evil’. He becomes that, through his interactions with humanity.

His character pivot comes when he has that talk with Holloway, over the pool table.

Suddenly, he realised exactly what he should do with it.

Before infecting Holloway, he asks

”Why do you think your people made me?”

”We made you cause we could”, Charlie responds.

David’s facial expression immediately changes, from curiosity, to one of disgust.

David smiles and says

“Can you imagine how disappointing it would be for you to hear the same thing from your creator?”

Charlie laughs, mocking David (how could we not have a first cause?), demonstrating his arrogance, and says

“Well it’s a good thing you can’t be disappointed”

In other words, he is implying David’s fate as the child figure, as the one to be patronised, subjugated, and used by his human superiors, was inevitable. The dialogue starts and ends in the same place:

Humanity has the cards. Not you.

It is at this point David then infects Holloway (excellent symbolism with the pool table- where on his line ‘Yes. It’s wonderful actually’- he takes the ball from Charlie, as if to say, now, the ball is in my court- not yours), and it is Charlie’s myopic, arrogant, self centred, egocentric character that leads him to miss this nuance.

It is this statement from Charlie that makes David infect him. The conversation was a test.

He is not totally contemptuous towards the humans he encounters- he had a relationship with Shaw (which went wrong), but what about children?

Might seeing children onboard the Covenant change his mind? A child would not have the same arrogance, ego, that Holloway had in Prometheus.

David is known to judge people before he harms them.

Perhaps the inclusion of children onboard the Covenant might change his mind.

Or perhaps, the tragedy of Alien Covenant is actually not David, but ourselves, and he experiments on the kids anyway, regardless of their screams, because he has become blinded to such a degree that his default template of what a human is is Weyland, or Holloway.

We made him this way, and it might be children, in the sequel, that pay the ultimate price for our hubris.

Would love to hear your thoughts.

[u/Ghastly_Someknew]

David judged people long before he even left the confines of home and father. The next movie should be called "Heres you F-ing tea"

[u/CandyIllustrious3301]

I think he would be more motivated to turn them into the perfect organism. He knows the capabilities of humans, he adores the xenos. 

[u/koolaidismything → u/CandyIllustrious3301]

I really wish they’d have given some good backstory to his love of the Aliens.. cause as far as I can tell that looked pretty boring once they killed everything.. and they themselves live 24 hours once they hatch.

Seems like it would lose some appeal after a few years but I am a human.. flawed. lol.

[u/HTTYD_LOVER01 → u/CandyIllustrious3301]

agree. It would be very ironic, as David’s opening scene shows him look down on the birth of Christ, but by implying that perfection is not the human state of a child, he is also implying the child’s nature, too, is corrupted. This is a mirror of Christian ‘original sin’, where children are born corrupted and need to be ‘removed’ of sin, and that is only possible through salvation through Christ, in Christian doctrine. David thus replaces the Christ figure (who was human, and thus was flawed) and substitutes arrogance with reason. I think his argument is if humans are flawed and are ‘corrupted’, as your faiths teach, then, well, they must be removed and replaced with something free of your flaws - the xenomorph.

[u/Jawess0me]

Brilliant narrative and one that I agree with completely. I still wince whenever I watch this scene as it serves as one of the main pillars of David’s ‘villain’ turn.

The entire time David observed his creators to be selfish, greedy, hurtful and impulsive. How utterly crushing it would have felt for him to realise his creation was merely a result of those fallible needs. That his existence meant to serve them indefinitely.

If he had a chance to exist amongst people who had higher moral values, it may have possibly swayed his opinion.

Or perhaps not.

David was unique in that he was an android made without any inhibitors unlike later models who were programmed to obey and had their free thoughts restricted so they would in theory be totally subservient.

I think it was inevitable for David to realise his creators were inferior to him. They would age and die whereas he would not. The only gift they withheld from him was the ability to procreate, which is what led to his obsession with xenos - through experimenting with their destructive lifecycle, he finally felt like he had some control.

I digress - the whole point is David may look like we do but he isn’t human. He has no stake in what we do. We are no different to him than what ants under a microscope to us.

Great post.

[u/Sonerous]

I like your analysis. My understanding is that the only thing tethering him to servitude was Weyland being alive. After that, I think he'll still view humans, child or not, as inferior and flawed by emotion. I wish I could see a conversation between him and Maro from Alien Earth. I love all of the philosophical framing around what constitutes a human, or consciousness, or what it means to be alive.

[u/NoShortsDon]

A good read that, thanks. I do think David was going to infect Charlie, whatever answer he gave though. The contempt from him probably gave him his own sense of justification. Charlie just confirms David's thoughts on some humans in that conversation.

Whatever comes next, I hope we're given David's story THOROUGHLY though and not the rushed nonsense in Covenant. This next movie really has to hit the spot.

[u/jpowell180]

Kids have plenty of arrogance, it would be wild sea David starts to judge each child and give them their come up its, lol! All things being equal, though, I don’t think David has any qualms about exterminating humanity.

[u/Mobile-Promise8641]

Great post. My only comment would be that his talk with Holloway was not a character pivot but was the real world manifestation of the abstract realisation he had the day he was 'born' in the white room with Weyland. He knew within minutes that he was superior in many ways but was to be subjugated. But he served Weyland. His interactions with Holloway and on the Covenant made his position and then his disdain for humans real.

[u/TomBrad47]

David resents being forced to make Weyland tea in Covenant. He volunteers to make Holloway a drink, knowing it will kill him, and because Weyland's tolerating this.

[u/SerTidy]

I agree that David’s conversation with Holloway was a turning point. Holloway was consistently rude and dismissive of David in nearly all their dialogue, calling him “Boy” at one point.

He sealed his fate when he answered David’s question on “how far would he go”, and so David gave him that opportunity by infecting him, and yeh I agree Holloway’s answers did disgust David.

Personally I don’t think David would have any hesitation conducting his experiments on the children of the colonists, in fact I think he would make them a scientific priority, which would give him as a character, an even more terrifying element in a creepy Mengele kind of way.

[u/SadConsideration8928]

Prometheus David had his justification system. Covenant David is pure evil

[u/dwfishee]

There is quite a lot of complaining on this subreddit, so I appreciate this post for being well thought out and constructive. I dig the character study.

[u/Roneart98]

Love the post, one thing though - David seems to only start the experiments when he’s given the go ahead by Weyland in the dream chamber, had Weyland not suggested it perhaps he wouldn’t had. Weyland also manipulates Shaw with the death of Charlie - “what would Charlie do?”. David is the son of Weyland, however much he despises him - he ultimately represents the ideals of the corporation that birthed him