Why did the Engineer stay in stasis instead of taking off?

[OpenMaw]

This is what happens when you bash and smash scripts and cut out huge swaths of exposition. Basic stuff doesn't make sense.

Originally, all four engineers were "infected." The "Last" Engineer was not too happy to be woken up, as it mean the crew of Prometheus had signed his death warrent.

In the movie as it is, we have no idea why anything is happening.

With the exception of Janek's theory that it was a bio weapons facility far away from home, and... Ya know, really Earth shattering stuff.

2000 years prior to the weyland crew visiting lv 223 was written very deliberately to not make sense.

That's not actually true. The script Lindelof wrote actually explains a great great deal of what is supposed to be happening and has a lot of exposionary dialogue that was outright chopped out of the movie. I've started to suspect that the reason isn't because they wanted a lot of mystery, so much as having David go on for paragraphs about the history of the Engineers and what's this, what's that... It was so stilted that it was just cut.

lindelof is very good at this while keeping people interested.

He's good at raising questions and not answering them, generally, on Lost... And that started to frustrate the audience of Lost. Which is why I was not happy when I heard he was involved as a writer for Prometheus.

It is possible the Engineer was put in stasis as a form of punishment, to neutralize him because he was part of giants wanting to wipe out homosapians. Of course that's with the interpretation that there were two sects of Engineers.

We can only go by intent. In the Lindelof script none of that is there. The Engineers are a dying race, desperately trying to extend their lives. Something that should not have been cut because it so perfectly ties into Weyland's motivation... But what the Hell, who wants consistent themes that pay off?

Bottom line is, their experiments blew up in their faces, and the Engineers tried to put themselves in lockdown to avoid it.. and all but the one we meet failed.

Most likely the stasis Engineer was a back up, kept asleep in case everything "went to pot."
Another possibility is the Stasis Engineer  pit himself in stasis to avoid the outbreak.

The most likely answer is that the Engineer was simply not infected. He got lucky, and nobody else did.

[The Cruentus]

In Prometheus the Engineer is in stasis but was going to take off to Earth when the outbreak occurred.   Why did he stay in stasis for 2000 years?  What was he waiting for?

Also why were all the Engineers running in the holographic playback?  From a deacon?  But they all appeared to have exploded from within when piled against the door.  Would Holloway have also exploded?

I can't recall for sure but in the original script, I think it was because he was infected. He was in stasis to halt the process. I might be wrong though

[Corporal Hicks]

That's correct. That's how it was in the pre-Prometheus drafts.

[Sabres21768]

The holographic Engineers were DEFINITELY running from a Deacon.
If you listen closely, you can here what's chasing them scream and it's the exact scream the Deacon makes at the end of the movie.

[Immortan Jonesy]

The holographic Engineers were DEFINITELY running from a Deacon.
If you listen closely, you can here what's chasing them scream and it's the exact scream the Deacon makes at the end of the movie.

Yeah, it is not that I want to defend the film with everything and its flaws, but that roar was definitely a 'clue' to what happened. Anyway the Engineers were infected and apparently they were on their way to being Fifield-like abominations.

Even Milburn mentions that their helmets have holes as if something had exploded from the inside.

Now how this hypothetical Deacon was born, given the complicated life cycle that involved the trilobite... is subject of debate.

~ Later in Covenant David said ~

"The pathogen was designed to infect all nonbotanical life forms. All the animals... the meat, if you will. Either k*ll them outright... or use them as incubators to spawn a hybrid form. Highly aggressive."

And while some fans think that the pathogen is nothing but a device of  "whatever the f**k makes the plot run" kind...this seems to suggest that the Engineers were escaping from a Neomorph. The Deacon is a rarity. Nenomorphs are the product of a mutagen called plagiarus linesters. When David resequenced the pathogen, the mutagen became plagiarus praepotens; which is the one that creates the Aliens we all love, including the bug stick...aka David's Praetomorph.

Even so, it is worth wondering what type of mutagenic substance the trilobite injected into the Engineer to create the Deacon...another variant of plagiarus linesters?

Anyway People who play Free League RPG, Alex White scholars or Aliens: Fireteam Elite gamers may help you to solve the mystery 👉👈

~ Too bad we can't say the same thing about him! ~

Spoiler

[close]

[dnicholson277]

It's very weird that the planetoid had atleast two working spaceships just on standby for 2000 years and none of the other engineers thought whatever happened to those guys making the goo?

Terrible story telling masked as mystery.

[Wweyland]

The Engineer in stasis was clearly an asshole (Bad Blood Engineer?) and nobody bothered to wake him up.

[City Hunter Yautja]

This is what happens when you bash and smash scripts and cut out huge swaths of exposition. Basic stuff doesn't make sense.

Originally, all four engineers were "infected." The "Last" Engineer was not too happy to be woken up, as it mean the crew of Prometheus had signed his death warrent.

In the movie as it is, we have no idea why anything is happening.

With the exception of Janek's theory that it was a bio weapons facility far away from home, and... Ya know, really Earth shattering stuff.

2000 years prior to the weyland crew visiting lv 223 was written very deliberately to not make sense.

That's not actually true. The script Lindelof wrote actually explains a great great deal of what is supposed to be happening and has a lot of exposionary dialogue that was outright chopped out of the movie. I've started to suspect that the reason isn't because they wanted a lot of mystery, so much as having David go on for paragraphs about the history of the Engineers and what's this, what's that... It was so stilted that it was just cut.

lindelof is very good at this while keeping people interested.

He's good at raising questions and not answering them, generally, on Lost... And that started to frustrate the audience of Lost. Which is why I was not happy when I heard he was involved as a writer for Prometheus.

It is possible the Engineer was put in stasis as a form of punishment, to neutralize him because he was part of giants wanting to wipe out homosapians. Of course that's with the interpretation that there were two sects of Engineers.

We can only go by intent. In the Lindelof script none of that is there. The Engineers are a dying race, desperately trying to extend their lives. Something that should not have been cut because it so perfectly ties into Weyland's motivation... But what the Hell, who wants consistent themes that pay off?

Bottom line is, their experiments blew up in their faces, and the Engineers tried to put themselves in lockdown to avoid it.. and all but the one we meet failed.

Most likely the stasis Engineer was a back up, kept asleep in case everything "went to pot."
Another possibility is the Stasis Engineer  pit himself in stasis to avoid the outbreak.

The most likely answer is that the Engineer was simply not infected. He got lucky, and nobody else did.

Boy did he not get lucky layer with Trilobite.. or well maybe he did.. :p

[The_Foxcatcher]

In Prometheus the Engineer is in stasis but was going to take off to Earth when the outbreak occurred.   Why did he stay in stasis for 2000 years?  What was he waiting for?

Also why were all the Engineers running in the holographic playback?  From a deacon?  But they all appeared to have exploded from within when piled against the door.  Would Holloway have also exploded?

Yes, they were running from a Deacon/s. If you notice, the last Engineer whose head was decapitated turned back while running, seemingly to check out whatever was following them.

The bodies piled up had their helmets/chest burst open, suggesting they had been impregnated by facehuggers. This led to a Deacon outbreak.

The Engineer who remained in cryo entered cryo earlier than the others and survived while the rest were killed in the Deacon outbreak.

Holloway was not face-hugged. He was simply infected by the Black Goo which began to mutate him.
 

[SM]

Most of the Engineers in the pile appear to be intact and unchestbursted.

[BlueMarsalis79]

The comparison I see.

[The Necronoir]

Yeah, I'm much more of the opinion that they were running from a break-out of the mutagenic substance due to some kind of accident during transporting to the juggernaut or the like. You'd probably turn back and react that way to a roiling mass of deadly black smoke, and it doesn't make sense for all the engineers to be piled up like that with various parts of their bodies eaten away if they were getting picked off by a larger organism and infected on an individual basis before bursting a deacon or the like.

[OpenMaw]

Agreed.

There is nothing in Prometheus or Covenant to suggest the existence of the "Ultramorph" or any other morph of any kind, or deacons loose on the base.

At least, my interpretation of Prometheus, is that the goo was derived from the entity they had in relief, and that through the contrived events that occured with Holloway, Shaw, and The Engineer, we got a reaction of that relief figure.

The neomorphs are the result of the pathogen interacting with Planet 4 in the wild, and the infecting a human.... I guess. Unless that particular sub-strain of the pathogen was something David had actually let loose after the initial bombardment.

[BlueMarsalis79]

Actually despite or in addition to what I posted previously, you can hear the Deacon scream as the holograms activate.

[OpenMaw]

I mean, you can hear something. We don't see it, we don't know. It could just as easily be the engineer equivalent to Fifield.