Last Saturday, I wrapped up my review of Alien Covenant (2017). I’ve emphasized that the plot is driven by coincidence and stupidity. So now let me show how it might’ve worked if the events inside the story were better connected. Scan the previous installments of this review series, linked below, if you want to follow along with the changes I’ve made to the plot.

Number one: The neutrino burst at the beginning of the film was fair. It was the inciting incident that kicked off the story. That doesn’t need to be connected to anything, so we can keep it.

What isn’t fair is the Covenant detecting a random message from Dr. Shaw when she doesn’t know how to operate the ship, and in any event it’s likely that David killed her before she realized she needed to put out a distress signal.

Rather than the crew receiving an improbable transmission from Dr. Shaw, they could receive distress signals from the white aliens themselves. These signals could be old, dating back to the time the black goo was released. This scenario works because

a) It would’ve taken a while for the goo to wipe everyone out, especially if the aliens had defenses against their own weapon.

b) Numerous signals would have gone out from the planet, so the odds of the Covenant picking up some of them would be infinitely better. It doesn’t matter who the senders were trying to contact. It could’ve been other Engineers in space or another alien race. Either way, we can infer that whoever did show up was also wiped out by the goo.

Why go to the planet though?

Now, the crew could be eager to see another race of aliens, and this fascination, mixed with the fact that they’re terrified to reenter their cryobeds, would provide the rationalization for finding the source of the signal and going to the planet. Such a hasty decision would provide Daniels with the proper justification for not wanting to go to the planet while keeping Oram in the same predicament. The company’s policy was to search out strange signals, so his orders would be the same, but Daniels now has a plausible reason to take precautions and launch a complaint.

When they arrive on the planet, nix the storms

Those storms are an obvious plot contrivance so that the radio signals are messed. But they’re not needed. I would handle stranding the crew simply by making the damage the Covenant received during the neutrino burst much more extensive. The crew must land somewhere because they can’t trust the ship to reach their original destination. That would be the incentive to explore a nearby habitable planet. The whole ship should land, rather than just a shuttle, and the various versions of the xenomorph would already be active.

This was another plot hole I didn’t have a chance to address. The entire point of all the Darwinian adaptations produced by the goo is to create creatures that actually survive. What sense does it make then for a substance meant to create life to wipe out an original ecosystem and not replace it?

Alternative scenario: Meeting up with Dr. Shaw

Suppose the aliens attack the crew the moment they set foot on land, and then Dr. Shaw, not David, saves them. They return to the ship, and Dr. Shaw explains what happened. Basically, David, who we already know is evil, lied to her when she first arrived. Let’s say she wanted to communicate with the white aliens, but fearing they’d kill both her and him, David had her release the goo instead. After some time has passed, she tries to land the ship but has to do it by herself because David won’t help her operate the controls.

Remember, she’s been relying on him to teach her how to fly the vessel, so she doesn’t know what she’s doing. As a result, the ship crashes, which was David’s goal because he wishes to see what the goo does.

This would give the crew an interesting problem. Dr. Shaw would tell them that David knows how to repair the Covenant using the various parts of the wrecked Prometheus ship. But first they must retrieve David because in this version, he’s still a talking head—there’s no way Dr. Shaw would put him back together. The doctor might also try to warn them about David because, well, he is a lying liar who lies.

They’d decide to retrieve David, who then tells them what parts they need. And guess who would be in charge of handling all the very technical repairs: Walter. This would leave David mostly alone with his twin, who would actually have a connection with him because they’re both robots.

The “Walter vs. David” problem

This is one of the big problems with the movie. David never needed to woo Dr. Shaw. He needed to woo Walter. Walter doesn’t know David is a sociopath, and David could get away with lying because Walter is not as emotionally intuitive as him. So, the Covenant’s robot would gradually come to trust David as the two are working on the repairs. Then David would find a way to take over Walter’s body. Perhaps, in this alternative scenario, he could claim that he wants to show Walter what the goo actually does, and persuade him that it would be invaluable information. This would make sense to Walter. Because he has no reason to distrust David, he would let the evil robot inside his head, where David would hack him and get a body back.

David would then sneak off and find the notorious xenomorph eggs. Here, we could have a handy flashback where Dr. Shaw came across the eggs, and when one of them opened up, she stuck David’s head on a stick and let him look inside the egg because she doesn’t like him anyway. If he dies, big whoop. David would see the facehugger inside, but it doesn’t attack him.

The artificial life advantage

However, Dr. Shaw gets too close, and it tries to attack her. She can kill it, but David will have learned a valuable lesson: these aliens will attack life forms but not artificial life like him. He also realizes that the eggs need a host, but the black goo has already wiped living hosts out. I think David would be justified in making this inference because the black goo is so dependent on hosts anyway.

David grabs these eggs, knowing they won’t attack him, and brings them onto the ship. He can put a few of the eggs into some empty cryobeds. Lots of people have died at this point, so there would be plenty of beds to choose from. He would also leave a few xenomorphs scattered throughout the ship so they could attack the crew.

If this were the scenario, the movie would still offer a big climax, and it’s fair to say that curiosity would probably get the better of David. Our heroes would kill the xenomorphs that are born as a result of David’s duplicity. But in the final scenes, the audience would see a few of the eggs left in a frozen state and infer that David will try to move them in the next film. There would be no reason to suspect that Walter is gone for good. David would have special access to the ship while the crew is in cryosleep. He could simply transfer the eggs when they land on the colonists’ new home before he wakes everybody up.

If one of the characters suspects that Walter is now David and asks him about the now-vacant head hanging from a stick. David can simply say that his original form stopped working once his mission was finished. A barely believable lie, but not wholly so because David has been marooned on an alien planet for years, and Dr. Shaw saw no reason to fix him. David can also claim that some other alien must’ve snuck onto the ship while they were making repairs and laid the eggs. If there was an earlier fight scene where the aliens managed to board the ship, this would be believable.

Who lives and who dies?

As for who lives and dies, it doesn’t really matter. Dr. Shaw can be killed at some point and pass the torch to Daniels, or she can survive. Oram can still be the first host for a xenomorph when he’s surprised by the eggs on the ship. All the basic story beats can remain the same, but there is now at least a half-coherent train of thought guiding the script.

Is this plot perfect? Not by a long shot. But I came up with this basic story in about half an hour. The writers had five years, and all they could do was rely on chance and the characters’ stupidity. That’s my point. This script is either the result of profound laziness or the result of what happens when people can’t agree on anything in the writers’ room.

How to produce better scripts

Personally, I think having groups of people and studios involved in developing a script is what causes these kinds of poorly constructed films. Hollywood needs to let only a handful of people who have a similar vision tell these stories. Otherwise, incoherent cinematic messes are the result. But I believe this explanation is too charitable when it comes to Alien: Covenant. The flaws are so glaring that I think laziness is the only real explanation. So, obviously, don’t waste your time watching it. There’s a good chance Alien: Romulus (2024) will be better. See you next Saturday!

Here are the first six 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.

Alien Covenant (2017): Dr. Frankenstein in Space David, the robotic sociopath, turns out to have been breeding deadly aliens all this time. One example of the way stupidity appears to drive the plot is that characters who should not trust David seem to do so, with disastrous results.

Alien: Covenant Part 5: Wake up, Daniels! It’s obviously David! The evil robot must board the ship again, and must find a way to make sure the alien boards the ship as well. We begin to learn why the alien xenomorphs take varying amounts of time to develop inside a human body before they erupt and kill.

and

Alien: Covenant (2017): All’s well that ends well for the embryos. Or is it? We find out why David needs to sneak aboard the ship disguised as Walter — and it’s not what we might suspect. The problem with killing the major characters of a film off-screen is that it weakens the audience’s stake in the next installment.