I don't think you should read Ash was protecting the creature when he said 'dont touch it' - he was merely stating the knew nothing about it and therefor could be contagious or harmful in many ways.
Was Ash actually protecting it? I'm not that sure, the order was the 'specimen' must be retrieved and human life was 'expendable'. He did little to protect the humans from the alien, that doens't mean it was actually protecting the xenomorph - matter of fact, he actually brought them a tracker that operates on 'micro air density'. if he wanted to protect the alien, he would have locked it in the airlock alltogether - or simply grabbed the flamethrower, threw dallas out of the airlock and burn the rest of the crew. He merely killed ripley because she became a danger for his assignment, so he - perfectly like the thinking of a machine - took her out of the equasion. Then the rest of the crew started to intervene and he had to act accordingly, not the least because he himself suddenly became under threat.
For Ash, there only existed mission objectives - that is his goal and purpose.
Anyway, as for David and the Oram and Neomorph scene - i hated it to the bone.
There was no sense that the neo left oram unattended, there was no sense that he didn't feel endangered by david. Even if it's somehow able to distinguish between machine (non-life) and human (non-botanical life), it makes no sense that he did not percieve it either way as a danger despite that.
Also it looked really bad CGI, the lighting was absolutely dreadfull.
David's reaction was spot on though, that was great. Storywise then oram following david whom he didn't trust anyway like a sheep to the slaughterhouse was just an embarassment and really an insult to scripting or storytelling completely. I don't know if the movie's intention was to portray people who have faith and believe in a higher power as dumbasses, but if that is the idea, it tries really hard indeed. "Trust me" says david literally and oram looks straight into something creepy and weird. sure.
it was horrendeously bad writing, and a scene i found rather insulting, unbelievable, and really laughable when i watched it. i was sitting with my hands wide open like WTF when i saw that scene, and then not much later the flute scene appeared.
i was also rather annoyed with how they portrayed david when he was actually throwing friggin rocks at oram. that was 'seriously'? and then the xeno popped, looked way different, and then the arm movements......no just no. the movie to me really ended there as being able to be taken serious even in the slightest.
so no, it was a really, really stupid scene that made no sense.