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Alien: Covenant
Alien: CovenantScott Free ProductionsMay 19, 2017Theater
7.3
IGN Rating

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Here's a quick look at the characters from 2017's Alien: Covenant. Some spoilers follow...Katherine "Danny" Daniels (played by Katherine Waterston)<p>  Katherine "Danny" Daniels is the lead scientist - a terraformist - on the USCSS Covenant, on a seven-year mission to colonize a prospective planet called Origae-6. During the trek, a neutrino burst from a nearby star overloads the Covenant, causing major electrical malfunctions - including the death of Danny's husband, the ship's captain, Jake Branson. <p> In mourning, and with the ship in repair, the Covenant intercepts a transmission from Dr. Elizabeth Shaw (singing a John Denver song) and the new captain, Chris Oram, decides to follow the signal to a new, better-seeming planet. Danny logs a formal objection.<br> Arriving on Planet 4, the crew thinks they have found a closer, easier-to-colonize world but things turn deadly when two crew members spawn Neomorphs, which attack and kill five overall. David, from the lost Prometheus mission saves them but turns out to be the secret architect of all the death on the planet. Danny finds out that David even experimented on Shaw, helping him produce the first Ovomorphs. When David attacks her, she is saved by Walter, the Covenant's Synthetic (who looks exactly like David). <br> A Praetomorph chases Danny, Walter, and Sgt Dan Lopé to the Covenant's cargo bay, which pilot Tennessee Faris has flown down for a rescue. Danny battles the Praetomorph on top of the cargo ship, killing it. She and Tennessee are unaware, however, that Lopé has been implanted and the next morning, on the Covenant, Lopé spawns a Praetomorph. Danny and Tennessee kill the second Praetomorph too but she discovers too late that android she thinks is Walter...is actually David.<br> David, in full congtrol, puts Danny in cryosleep and leaves with her, Tennessee, nearly 2000 hypersleeping colonists and...Facehugger embryos. His experiments will continue.  Walter (played by Michael Fassbender)<p> The Synthetic Walter looks exactly like the David model of AI androids, but after the David line proved to be too unpredictable they removed the Synthetics' ability to imagine and create, making for a more dutiful service-bot. Despite having less idiosyncratic freedoms than his predecessor, Walter still seems more attached to Katherine "Danny" Daniels more than any other crew member aboard the USCSS Covenant. <br> Walter helps Danny grieve after she loses her husband, the ship's captain, Jake Branson, to an malfunctioning cryobed. He also protects her on Planet 4 from a rampaging Neomorph, losing a hand in the process. Nothing about his protocols indicate why he seems to favor Danny, so his attachment is intriguing.<br> After following a signal left by Dr. Elizabeth Shaw to a planet that seems even better for colonization than their original destination, Walter joins the ground expedition teams with Danny. When it comes to the planet, though, Walter is most curious about David, a Synthetic that had been marooned there for a decade following the disastrous Prometheus mission. David tries to convince Walter that he shouldn't serve humans since they're flawed and mortal. David wants to hep Walter break free of his program constraints but Walter winds up fighting David when it's revealed David killed off everyone on the planet, including Shaw, in order to breed the perfect alien weapon. <br> Walter is killed, or at least injured and left behind on Planet 4, at the end of of the fight, which allows David to impersonate him back on the Covenant an ultimately trap Danny and pilot Tennessee Faris in cryosleep while he pilots a spaceship filled with 2000 colonists he intends to use as hosts for his monsters. David (played by Michael Fassbender)<p>  David, a Synthetic invented by Peter Weyland, was nearly destroyed during Prometheus's mission to LV-223, as Weyland searched for the Engineers. During the mission he displayed slight moments of contempt for his creator and the other humans around him while also becoming more and more fascinated with the Engineers' use of the Black Goo, which David used to poison Dr. Charlie Holloway and also, subsequently Dr. Elizabeth Shaw. Shaw and David were the only ones to survive the expedition, afterwards traveling to Planet 4 instead of Earth so that Shaw could demand answers from the Engineers. <br> Shaw placed David back together on the stolen Engineers' ship and then David placed her in hypersleep. When the ship arrived at Planet 4, however, David immediately released the payload of Black Goo that had been intended for Earth, killing most, mutating some, and spawning Neomorphs. David continued to experiment with the Black Goo for ten years, using the Engineers' notes and records as his guide. He killed shaw at some point, perhaps never even awakening her from hypersleep, to harvest her eggs for his machinations, creating Ovomorphs in the process.<br> A colony expedition arrives on Planet 4, 10 years later, having tracked a signal left by Shaw (but sent out by David). David saves many of them from a Neomorph attack and shelters them in the capital temple of the old Engineer city. He's secretly delighted to hear that their ship, the USCSS Covenant, holds thousands of colonists, and embryos, in stasis. David lies to everyone about what happened to Planet 4 and Shaw, but when a few of them discover the truth, including mission Synthetic Walter and terraformist Katherine "Danny" Daniels, he attacks them. In a fight with Walter, David wins and then assumes his identity, tricking his way back onto the Covenant where, after the crew defeats a couple Praetomorphs (proto-Xenomorphs of David's design) he puts them in hypersleep and hijacks the entire mission for his own dastardly plans.Captain Chris Oram (played by Billy Crudup)<p> Chris Oram is the executive officer on the USCSS Covenant colony mission to Origae-6, promoted to captain after a tragic accident takes the life of Captain Jake Branson. Oram is a man of faith, which is looked down upon, or so he claims, at Weyland-Yutani and so because of this Oram tends to act out of both insecurity and a persecution complex. His wife, biologist Karine Oram, is also an the mission.<br> After pilot Tennessee "Tee" Faris intercepts a transmission of Dr. Elizabeth Shaw singing a John Denver song, Oram discovers that the signal's origin comes from a closer planet that looks more habitable than Origae-6. He orders the ship to divert from its course to investigate, under protest from terraformist Katherine "Danny" Daniels, the widow of Branson. One down on Planet 4, things looks promising at first. Quickly though, spores in the air cause Neomorphs to spawn inside two crew members, and soon, five of the Covenant team, including Oram's wife Karine, are dead.<br> The survivors are saved by David, of the lost Prometheus mission, and housed inside the Engineers' dead city. After another member of his crew is killed by a Neomorph, Oram sees the Neomorph bend to David's will. David kills the Neomorph, inciting anger from David. He demands to know what David's been doing. David obliges but tricks Oram into putting his face near an open Ovomorph. A Facehugger attacks Oram and when Oram soon wakes up he almost immediately gives "birth" to a Praetomorph Chestburster, which kills him. Tennessee Faris (played by Danny McBride)<p> Tennessee "Tee" Faris is the pilot of the USCSS Covenant. He and his wife, co-pilot Maggie Faris, are part of the seven-year colony mission to Origae-6. After an accident claims the life of Captain Jake Branson, Tennessee goes out into space to work on ship repairs. There he hears Dr. Elizabeth Shaw singing "Take Me Home, Country Roads." New ship captain, Chris Oram, orders the Covenant to investigate Shaw's planet, which seems promising for a colony. While his Maggie takes a transport ship down to the surface with an expedition team, Tennessee stays on the Covenant, in orbit, with a violent Ion Storm between them making communication supremely difficult. <br> Maggie is killed when she accidentally blows up the transport ship tring to kill a Neomorph, though Tennessee doesn't learn about it until much later, when he takes the Covenant down as close to the storm as safety will allow. When Katherine "Danny" Daniels informs him that Maggie is dead and that the survivors are in danger, Tennessee breaks mission protocol and flies the Covenant's cargo bay down to the surface, rescuing Danny, Sgt Dan Lopé, and a Synthetic he assumes to b Walter. The Synthetic, however, is David in disguise and when Tennessee helps Danny dispatch of two separate Praetomorphs, he enters cryosleep for a journey to Origae-6, unaware that David is now in control of the mission and will surely kill him to use for future Xenomorph experiments. 12 Images

Alien: Covenant Review

7.3
IGN Logo
Review scoringgoodAlien: Covenant does a better job of balancing old-fashioned gory scares and asking those big existential questions.Daniel Krupa Avatar Avatar
Daniel Krupa
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Summary

Ridley Scott returns to the universe he created in ALIEN with ALIEN: COVENANT, the second chapter in a prequel trilogy that began with PROMETHEUS -- and connects directly to Scott’s 1979 seminal work of science fiction.ProducersScott Free ProductionsDistributors20th Century FoxFranchisesAlienInitial ReleaseMay 19, 2017PlatformsTheaterGenresSci-FiHorror

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