Last Saturday, we saw that David the maniacal robot returned and offered to be our heroes’ guide through their current predicament. He led them to a building where he assured the crew of the Covenant that they would be safe. Of course, they weren’t because David has plans of his own.

When one of the aliens sneaks into the building and kills a crewmember, Oram finds David trying to tame the beast. Oram shoots the alien and demands answers from David. The robot responds by asking Oram to follow him, and Oram actually does.

Stupidity drives the plot

In the first part of my review, I discussed the way stupidity seems to drive the plot. This is a prime example. Oram doesn’t like David. He doesn’t trust David. Nobody trusts David because the robot gives off creepy vibes. Oram has just seen the evil robot trying to tame the beast that has killed one of his friends. He knows that Walter, the crew’s robot, had been talking to David and is now nowhere to be found.

All signs suggest that David is up to no good. And to make matters worse, it’s going to take a lot of bullets to subdue David, so a gun is minimal protection at best. There is no reason for Oram to want to follow this broken machine by himself. The least he could’ve done is asked someone to go with him. Really, it would’ve been smarter to shoot David because there’s nothing the robot could tell them that would be of any use at this point in the story. But the plot needs to happen, so Oram follows the synthetic sociopath anyway.

David takes Oram to his room, where he explains what he’s been doing on the planet for all these years. It turns out that David has become Dr. Frankenstein in space. The black goo David dumped on the white aliens from the previous film, Prometheus (2012), is highly mutable. It’s changed into an airborne pathogen, and as it infected every living creature on the planet, it produced a variety of variations of the alien from the first films.

The notorious eggs

David crossbred these variations and performed experiments until he created something he was particularly proud of. However, he tells Oram that his pride and joy are lacking something. Then he asks him to follow him into another room, where he shows the Covenant’s captain the notorious eggs from the original series. Now, any thinking man would’ve shot these eggs just to spite the stupid can opener, but the true problem with this scene is that David practically tells Oram these eggs need a host.

Then, when one of the eggs opens up, Oram actually looks into the egg after David encourages him to do so. I mean, did the Covenant’s captain need Admiral Akbar to scream it was a trap before he took the hint?

The only explanation the writers give to explain Oram’s profound stupidity is that he is a man of faith, which means he’s religious. Frankly, I felt the movie was saying that if someone is religious, they’re a moron, and that irked me. Petulant shot aside, Oram looks into the egg, and one of the spider variants—which I’ve since learned are called facehuggers—latches onto him.

So much for Oram.

But where’s Walter?

At about the same time, the radio signal from the Covenant conveniently kicks in, and Daniels forms a plan with Tennessee to escape the planet. They’ll use a shuttle with a crane, called a loader, to navigate the storm and land by the building. With this plan in place, Daniels begins looking for her splintered crew. She can’t find Oram or Walter. Walter’s disappearance was particularly annoying to me because the we are given no account of what this second robot was doing while David lured Oram into his trap.

We do see Walter some time later, while David is playing the Prometheus theme, then the two robots kiss. Don’t ask me why. I couldn’t follow the scene myself. Basically, Walter thinks David’s a sociopath, which he is; then, for some reason, David says he loves Walter and kisses him.

I’m not sure if this was a sexuality thing, a sibling thing, or a narcissist thing, and the movie doesn’t tell us. That is probably for the best because I don’t really want to know anyway.

As it happens, David stabs Walter after kissing him so the poor robot can forget about this awkward encounter. David aimed for Walter’s throat, and this appears to shut the second robot down. However, Walter, while stunned, isn’t out of the game yet…

And Daniels?

As for Daniels, she eventually finds herself in a room filled with various drawings. While she’s looking at the papers, she comes across a sketch of Dr. Shaw. It’s unclear what exactly happened to Shaw, but it looks like her death was not a pleasant one. Daniels is studying Dr. Shaw’s final moments when David attacks her. He overpowers Daniels, and it looks like it’s all over for our protagonist. But then Walter appears. He tells David that there’s been a few updates since the older robot’s day and begins attacking the maniacal machine, while Daniels rushes off to find the rest of her crew.

The two remaining men just so happen to come across Oram’s body at around the same time as Daniels finds the sketches. Clearly, the first alien from the original series has been born, but these two unfortunate souls don’t know that.

A facehugger manages to latch itself onto one of the crewmembers, but his comrade kills the thing by cutting into it. Unlike Ash and Dallas from the first movie, this man isn’t concerned with the acid that spills out of the creature. He stays focused and removes the facehugger, which soon dies in some random part of the room. The crewmember’s friend is certainly injured—the acid burns a large hole in his cheek—but he’s still alive and able to move.

This unknown man makes the one intelligent decision in the entire film. It’s amazing! The smartest character in the movie has less than ten minutes of screen time. Unfortunately, he’s not rewarded for his trouble. The first notorious alien for which this entire franchise is named, the xenomorph, makes its appearance and jumps right on top of our one clever crewmember. He never had a chance. Au revoir, smart cannon fodder. We hardly knew you.

Tennessee arrives to rescue the survivors

The wounded crewmember rewards my favorite fallen cameo by running in terror while the xenomorph rips him to bits. He meets with Daniels and tells her that the xenomorph is on its way and that they need to run. At around the same time, Tennessee manages to navigate the loader through the storm and prepares to retrieve the survivors. All Daniels and the others have to do is make it to the ship.

Now, I know Walter was fighting David so that Daniels could escape. I know that Walter would not want Daniels to return, and I know that the last crewmember has already proven himself to be less than bold when it comes to dealing with aliens. But a part of me really, truly wished Daniels would’ve acted a little more like Ripley and gone back to save the synthetic member of her crew. If she had, she would’ve spared us the most obvious and aggravating twist in this movie, which we’ll cover next Saturday.

Catching up with David:

Here are the first three parts of my review: Alien: Covenant (2017): A story driven by stupidity, coincidence. Nothing seems to happen as the natural result of a character’s choices, consistent with personality and motive. It’s exciting but the audience will likely notice the hands of the writers moving the pieces where they want them to go.

Alien Covenant (2017): When the prophet fails. Everybody trudges onto the planet in what amounts to hunting gear and they begin looking for Shaw’s ship… What’s the point of Daniels being the screenwriters’ prophet if the character isn’t going to even try to take any sort of action to prevent a disaster?

Alien Covenant (2017): David the malicious robot… returns! And, just in case we haven’t already suspected, David is lying about what happened to Dr. Shaw. Seeing that the robot is frighteningly apathetic toward the death of one of his crew, Oram demands answers from the faulty machine.