SPOILERS! David 8 and linking Prometheus up with the Alien series

[deezelboy]

Look, there are going to be SPOILERS through the rest of this thread, so don't read further if you haven't seen Prometheus or you mind being spoilt.

David 8. An amazing piece of engineering. A very clever piece of kit. Lacking almost any kind of Rosetta stone, he can not only communicate with the Engineers but can fly their spaceships without training.

Not only that, but he's a vindictive piece of shit. For all his talk about being free from Weyland, even when he's nominally enslaved by his nominal programming, he's perfectly capable of breaching all sorts of Health and Safety regulations just to get back at uppity humanity for motives born out of revenge and idle curiosity.

So... assuming that there's more than one David 8 - which the supporting WI website info seems to suggest that there is, in fact seems to suggest that he's mass produced - what are the chances of the Alien films being able to take place in Prometheus' universe?

I ask this because David 8 is vastly more intelligent than your massively above-average human. Human-android relations are, as we see from the human crew's relationship with him, asymmetrical and primitive. I know who I'd be backing if the droid's started a civil rights movement, as the human response is going to be asymmetrical and primitive.

But also... technological singularity. Because from the looks of Prometheus, this is what's happened, albeit in microcosm. And if you've got a thousand David-8s running around on Earth, I imagine it's going to be a very hard rapture indeed for humanity.

Which does beg the question: given what we know about humanity's progress with AI by Prometheus, how is what we've seen in the Alien films even possible?

[Company Man]

Someone might outta call a man named Deckard to keep the thousand or so on Earth in check.

[Dutch90]

I'm not entirely sure I'm getting your point. Are you saying that David is more advanced than Ash, Bishop and maybe even Call, and that this represents a continuity problem if one places Prometheus firmly within the Alien universe? I'm not sure if that's entirely so. Ash, as Bishop pointed out, was an older, "twitchy" model. Seeing as Bishop knew Ripley was talking 2122 and not 2179, Ash would be old by 2122 standards. With Prometheus taking place in 2093, I don't see that big a problem here. David was top of the line and Ash was a dated model, probably programmed more stringently than David, with the purpose of carrying out a specific mission. As for Bishop, he does seem less advanced than David, but this nay be due to certain humanoid emotion-like tendencies like the one Deezelboy describes deliberately being omitted from newer models because people started realizing the downside to this. I.e. androids were getting too intelligent and human-like in their emotions people decided to cut back and return to the basics, introducing Asimovan behavioral inhibitors, preventing them from doing certain things that we don't want them to do.

As far as technology goes, I have more issues with some of the Prometheus ship's technology looking far more advanced than the Nostromo's, especially the computer screens of course (the interior design did look very similar, I loved thay). Then again, the Prometheus was specially designed and state of the art for 2093 and the Nostromo was an old towing vehicle in 2122. So it's not necessarily inconsistent or unlikely.

[Neltharion]

I thought they designed the computers to be very similar (at least they looked similar to me) as with Alien. I actually noticed that, while they had these fancy holograms it still looked like something from Alien.

As Dutch pointed out, this a state of the art vessel and the Nostromo is an old mining ship. If you look at a state of the art ship today and compare it to a "work horse" ship you will probably see a large difference.

I don't see a need for a hauling ship to have a 3D Holodeck on its bridge, maybe thats why it was lacking?

[deezelboy]

I'm not entirely sure I'm getting your point. Are you saying that David is more advanced than Ash, Bishop and maybe even Call, and that this represents a continuity problem if one places Prometheus firmly within the Alien universe?

Sort of. I'm saying that David 8 is so much more advanced than the human race, that I view humanity existing in the way it does in the Alien series represents a continuity problem if Prometheus is a strict prequel.

David 8 manages to figure out the controls of the Engineer ship in minutes - the humans don't have a clue at any point. David 8 has absolutely no allegiance to humanity - he uses the crew for his own experiments. David 8 manages to trick everybody, possibly even the Engineers, with consummate ease - and going by his relationship with Weyland (and the ousting of Weyland's daughter) has probably been doing this for years.

Now, imagine a whole production run of them on Earth. They're constantly ahead of humanity. And they're not willing to settle down for a lifetime of pouring drinks for their masters. They make Nexus 6 look like a Casio pocket calculator.

EDIT:

As far as technology goes, I have more issues with some of the Prometheus ship's technology looking far more advanced than the Nostromo's, especially the computer screens of course (the interior design did look very similar, I loved thay).

With technology, how useful would it have been to have some of Fifield's anti-grav mapping and life-detection globes in Aliens? That's 80-odd years down the line, and the military uses of them are too good not to equip the USCM with.

[Tryfan915]

(and the ousting of Weyland's daughter)

I had the thought while I was watching the film that

Theron delivers the line "Father" rather like Batty did in Blade Runner, which makes me think that maybe there were 2 artificial persons on The Prometheus

and

going by the conversation with Janek that maybe Vickers had a little bit of the "basic pleasure model" in her programming.

 

[deezelboy]

Yeah, I was expecting her to be revealed as a secret droid working for Yutani from the moment she was cast. But no!

No droid would've run in a straight line, rather than taking two steps to the left to avoid falling obstacles!

[SiL]

I got the impression David 8 was Weyland's pet project, not a strictly production model unit. Shaw's "What will you do when Weyland's not around to keep programming you" line comes to mind (Which could also be indicative of other things, sure).

[deezelboy]

Dunno. The pre-release material definitely showed two David-8s playing chess together as a commercial for the production model, and is dated 2078.

None of the crew seemed at all surprised to see a David-8 on board - they all seemed familiar with androids.

[dude]

All the viral marketing said David 8's are mass produced. There is no question about it.

Maybe the controls on the Prometheus specific one are a little looser?

Who is to say all of his 'vindictiveness' wasn't just straight up orders from Vickers and Weyland? Deez, if you where specifically going to poison a crew member, wouldn't it be Holloway? He's the only bloke you could guarantee would be having sex in the near future.

He seemed to be grooming them, Shaw was the only person he comforted when she woke up from hypersleep, he was watching her dreams, he jumped out into the sandstorm for her. After his little experiment, he gave Janek levels of shit about her.

Of course, this all begs the question, how the hell did he know the need to experiment with sexually transmitted extraterrestrial life forms would arise?

[deezelboy]

I don't think he did. Spiking Holloway's drink was just an experiment to see what the goop did, IMHO. David chose Holloway because of all the shit he was getting off him about being a droid (again, IMHO).

I don't think Vickers ordered it - she was terrified of the ship being contaminated with anything ET.

There's that bit where David's communing with Weyland while Weyland's in stasis, and David tells Vickers that Weyland's told him to 'try harder.' That could be interpreted as Weyland telling David to experiment with goop and humans.

(Although apparently this is the end of a scene that was never shot. We were apparently going to see David in Weyland's dream, Weyland being Guy Pearce without makeup and hanging out in a yacht. David tells him that the mission's a failure - all the Engineers are dead and he can't find any living ones. Weyland then tells him to 'try harder' - that is, find a living Engineer.)

I took David to be fascinated by Shaw due to her belief in a benevolent higher power. David has to deal with meeting his makers every day, and it's not a very enlightening experience for him. Plus you have Shaw's relationship with her father, which is very much different to what David's encountered ("don't all children wish their parents dead?" - not Shaw). There's a part of David that wants to break Shaw's hopes and dreams - like how he did with Weyland - and there's a part of him that's curiously fascinated by her response to this.  Maybe a bit like Hannibal Lecter's relationship with Clarice Starling.

[Hudson]

I kind of think David is a multimillion dollar purchase if it's mass produced..that means not many of them are probably around. Kind of like Ferraris and Lamborghinis. They mass produce them, but who really has one? You might see one driving down the street, but it kind of depends on the type of person you are if you're shocked and drooling at the sight.

I don't think anyone was surprised or intrigued by David on the Prometheus because they were on a Weyland ship...and of course he'd be there. I'm sure they'd also seen them around, but maybe not actually directly worked with one before.

I'm kind of up in the air about who's more advanced, Ash or David. David is pretty obviously a robot, even if he didn't reveal himself to be one. His attitude about things is just not human, he's too inquisitive and cares too much I think. He's just creepy is what I'm getting at. Ash is programmed in such a way that he comes off as an aloof douchebag and you'd never guess in a thousand years that he wasn't human.

As for the Nostromo, I kind of have a feeling it was already built and in service in 2093. They commented that the Prometheus project cost a trillion dollars. Didn't the suit in Aliens say the Nostromo was only worth 40 million? Of course it's a heap of junk.

[beckmen]

I don't think he did. Spiking Holloway's drink was just an experiment to see what the goop did, IMHO. David chose Holloway because of all the shit he was getting off him about being a droid (again, IMHO).

I don't think Vickers ordered it - she was terrified of the ship being contaminated with anything ET.

There's that bit where David's communing with Weyland while Weyland's in stasis, and David tells Vickers that Weyland's told him to 'try harder.' That could be interpreted as Weyland telling David to experiment with goop and humans.

That's certainly how I interpreted it.

[deezelboy]

I'm kind of up in the air about who's more advanced, Ash or David.

From an AI perspective, David, no question about it. Ash failed his mission objectives. David utterly subverted his, so that by the end of Prometheus there's only one winner, and it's David 8.

[TheDeed]

I need to watch the briefing scene again. My understanding was that David had to be introduced as an android to the crew, as they clearly weren't familiar with one.

Furthermore, I perceived him to be an exclusive product (as was the prometheus herself, and the equipment within.)

I didn't think David was more advanced than either Ash or Bishop either (although I'd guess he's more expensive than the latter due to his military role) since both exhibit much more sophisticated interpersonal skills for a synthetic.

How much of David's behaviour was down to shite programming or a downright fucked-up mission objective...?