David or Engineers?

[Stitch]

My interpretation of the Advent feature is that David recreated the Alien.

He said that the engineers knew that you must create both wolf and lamb, but they tried to banish the wolf.

I interpret the wolf as the Alien and the lamb as humanity. The engineers realised the Alien was too dangerous and tried to eradicate it.

This fits with David continuing to say that he experimented on the local fauna and, while the experiments were interesting, they didn't quite meet his expectations.
What he does say is that the black goo seems to have a different effect on the human genome. It's only after he starts experimenting on Shaw that he finds his wolf.

Now he has his wolf (Alien), his flock of lambs (colonists) and he'll soon have his queen (Daniels).


Something else that backs up the recreation theory is that in the novel David finds a fossilised Alien egg with a facehugger inside it. You don't see it in the movie (or at least I didn't notice it), but on Advent you see David with an egg that he takes the side off to show the facehugger inside.



Nothing is concrete at this point because the films leave it up for interpretation until the prequels are concluded. Ridley has said David created the beast, but he is notorious for changing his mind and making things up on the fly in interviews. His answers in the A:C interviews may only relate to this specific film.

There's wiggle room either way, but I, personally, would prefer that the origin of the Alien was down to the engineers.

[Olde]

The word "egg" is mentioned only once in the movie and it feels like it comes after a cut where something was edited out.

David: As you can see, I've become a bit of an amateur zoologist over the years. It's in my nature to keep busy, I suppose. The pathogen took so many forms and was extremely mutable. Fiendishly invented, in fact. The original liquid atomized to particles when exposed to the air. Ten years on, all the remains outside of the original virus are these gorgeous beasts. Patience is everything. From the eggs came these parasites. Shock troops of the genetic assault. Waiting for a host entering the host, rewriting the DNA, ultimately producing, well, these enviable unions. My beautiful bestiary. Soon enough I began a bit of genetic experimentation of my own. Some cross-breeding, hybridising...
Oram: You engineered this, David?
David: Idle hands is the devil's workshop, Captain. Come. This is what I wanted to show you. My successes.

Not before nor after were "eggs" ever mentioned. In the context of the scene, the eggs don't make a lick of sense. Where did the eggs come from? Did they come from the liquid? Were they indigenous to the planet? Were they a bi-product of the liquid mixing with indigenous life on the planet? Did they come from Earth? The lack of an explanation of the eggs, as well as a better introduction to them is why I find it very likely that a line or more of dialogue were cut, either for pacing or intentional ambiguity.

While he's talking about the eggs, there is a very clear close-up of what can only be construed as the original organism that gets turned into the facehugger. It looks like a very large bee with a long ovipositor. This is completely unsurprising to me, as it's well-known that wasps of the genus Glyptapanteles, as well as Hymenoepimecis argyraphaga and Ampulex compressa use other insects as hosts for their offspring (the former using caterpillars, the latter using spiders and cockroaches respectively). I find it not entirely untenable, therefore, that the original forms of the parasitoids are actually of Earthly origin, and that they became highly mutated when exposed to the liquid and manipulated across several hundred if not thousand generations on Paradise. This completely betrays the mural, however.

[OmNomAnor]

The early John Logan script has the following dialogue:

The pathogen took so many forms,
and was extremely mutable.
Fiendishly inventive in fact.
The original black liquid turned to
lethal particles when exposed to
air. Later stages produced
parasites and invasive insects.
From their eggs came, well... this
enviable bestiary.

Also this part from the film:

Soon enough I began a bit of
genetic experimentation of my own.
Some cross-breeding,
hybridising...

That came from the early script, but in the script it was said in the egg room:

ORAM
There were things like this on the
ship, they grew out of a kind of
black fur, like mold ... An
evolution from the pathogen I take
it?
DAVID
Yes. I was curious so I brought
them here and nursed them along.
Did a bit of genetic
experimentation, some cross
breeding, hybridizing, what-haveyou.

From the film I took it that the parasites came from the Engineer corpses.
The early script (of which the lines were re-used) seems more vague about the parasites and more clear about the (Alien) eggs.
The genetic experiments line now makes more sense relating to the egg room dialogue from the script, while it is a horrible description of the PowerPuffAlien ingredient mix we saw in the home release extras.

The missing link would then be between goo and parasites that put eggs in animals. I believe David caught some of these mosquitos and infected animals he caught (that came back to the dead city). Either the mosquitos came from the corpses (the smart black goo created many small organisms from the Engineers, because there was too much goo) or the goo took control of native mosquitos, just like it did with the spore pods.

[Baron Von Marlon]

Local mosquito eggs mutated by the goo. Simple as that.

[D. Compton Ambrose]

If the Engineers play the dominant role in the next film, he should have it where their technology is the mastermind, and that AI is a form of Trojan Horse designed to put a cap and reaction against the Engineers attempting to escape from their biomechanical enslavement (as was seen on Planet 4), which could be explained that this is the relationship between David and Protomorph. It is essentially the universe itself giving technology its own superintelligence and organic species - and the Deacons are a form of messenger, or evolution, of life itself. David was effectively an agent of the Deacons, the Engineers realized this as early as LV-223, and their sudden drive to kill humanity wasn't targeted at humanity itself, but the rogue state of our technology self-replicating and unleashing the ancient beast which had been trapped for who knows how long within the biotechnology that had enslaved them. It would be more like a symbiotic relationship, the Engineers on LV-223 commit themselves to service to the biotechnology in exchange for it consciously keeping the Xenovirus contained, and in return they get incredible abilities of intergalactic spaceflight and must create sacrifices. The whole thing is definitely more theological than scientific, and I think accentuating this would be an ideal nod to Dan O'Bannon and H.P. Lovecraft (and, of course, Giger's original concepts for the Jockies).