In my quest to write up a reasonable Prometheus 2 script, I constantly struggle in figuring out all the questions from the first movie. Yesterday, I attempted to examine the Ampule Room in trying to flesh out what it possible could represent. Today, I want to delve into David’s character a little since he’ll obviously play a prominent part in the upcoming Prometheus 2 movie. Here, I will attempt to answer the question “What does David know?”
Ironically, David was one of the least flat characters in Prometheus. A few characters like Shaw had clear motivations and personality traits. But the vast majority were more or less cardboard stock characters. David though, because of Michael Fassbender’s great acting and Ridley Scott’s interest in androids, becomes one of the more popular characters in Prometheus. Despite all this, David does have a great deal of mystery surrounding him, which makes it extremely difficult and interesting to answer the question posed above.
The most compelling aspect of David’s knowledge is how much he was able to learn and ascertain from studying the engineers. Considering that he did not require certain elements in humans like sleep, he was able to utilize his time to fully focus on learning languages and perhaps other things during his spare time. We only get a small glimpse of his activities during the pre-orbit scene. Because of the time period of the travel, we can assume that David has effectively gained even more knowledge than what we see. It’s unknown if the company had further information on the engineers, but considering that Weyland and Vickers, the two top brass, seemed ignorant of the situation, it’s highly unlikely.
The two main things though to come from his learning experience are his capacity to learn and speed. We can only presume that he has a near indefinite amount of learning potential that perhaps has the ability in the future to exceed that of a human. We can also assume that his deductive reasoning is far superior to humans as we see him being able to quickly determine how to fly the alien ship and invoke the hologram of the engineers.
I think though that we can limit his knowledge to a certain point about the engineers. What I mean by that is he probably up to the scene where his head is torn off does not detect the engineers’ hostile intent. Otherwise, he probably would’ve done a better job in acting as a mediator between the crew (especially Weyland) and the engineers.
The main knowledge that he is hiding but hasn’t explicitly stated up to this point though concerns the ampules. He did manage to privately study the ampule object and had some impression on what the liquid could do. This obviously is something that needs to be addressed as Shaw noted in the scene where David reveals the air did not affect David.
Yet there’s little clues provided to demonstrate whether David utilized anything from within the engineers’ vessel to ascertain more information about the black substance. He does realize that some of the stuff was organic. Yet was he able to further analyze what the substance could do? Considering that Shaw and Ford were able to simultaneously conclude that the blood of the engineer matched human DNA, we can infer that David has similar equipment and knows at least as much, if not more since he has his own sample.
Now, an interesting thought that isn’t directly related but can be connected is the notion of the God Particle. Occasionally in science, you’ll hear about physicists researching something called the God Particle. I believe Dan Brown’s book “Angels and Demons” attempted to address this idea. While the black substance isn’t exactly a particle, the black substance does deal in the subject matter of DNA and molecules. It is possible that the engineers have either created or discovered something like the God Particle.
The reason why I want to connect the God Particle to DNA/molecules and the black substance is that David asks Holloway, “How far would you go to get what you came all this way for — to get your answers?” It’s clear that Holloway, despite claiming to not be religious, has some sense of belief in something. Like Janek when Shaw asks why he decided to partake in this mission, Holloway too wants to find out something. Where we came from, why do we exist, what’s our purpose? These are the fundamental questions humans constantly ask themselves. So that begs the question why David would give the black substance to Holloway?
Some people argue that David may have done so maliciously because of jealousy for Shaw and/or his mistreatment by Holloway. However, David really isn’t abused but rather treated as a tool. Despite not being able to express himself emotionally, David, I feel, is exhibiting the closest thing to empathy for Holloway by giving him the black substance. I do believe that David has figured out that the black substance is like the God Particle and has some answer. It’s not the verbal answer that humans may desire but something great, maybe metaphysical.
Before moving on, I want to address one other issue that we can probably assume for the upcoming movie. We’ve seen the space crafts to be outfitted with their own hypersleep type of cryochamber. So assuming that the engineers’ home world is far away, he’ll probably do some similar activity in learning more about the engineers with their technology. Naturally, this leads to the question of how much knowledge/technology the engineers have aboard their craft but we won’t be able to answer that until at least the sequel.
On that note, I want to move away from David’s knowledge of the engineers to David’s personality and certain aspects. I did cover how I feel David is not acting in malice towards Holloway. As odd as it sounds, David does not strike me as a particularly “evil” android the way say Ash was constructed. His intense curiosity perhaps is the one the that makes him human-like and is that element of a “soul” that Weyland says he lacks.
However, David might be a slave figure. After all, there was the dialog between him and Shaw about wanting their parents to be dead. It’s a real bizarre interaction that comes out of nowhere but there’s a hint of motivation behind David. My guess is that he might see either humans and/or Weyland as slave drivers over him. In Blade Runner, we saw similar motivations in the robots like Roy Batty. Here, it feels as though Ridley Scott is attempting to bridge some of the concepts of both movies together. One could argue that the idea of life is self-preservation and propagation. It’s only logical then that David will “want” to persevere. For him to be able to pursue the things that make him happy (i.e. satisfy his curiosity), his parents/creators must pass on so that he’s able to be independent.
The thing in the story of Prometheus is that David is able to gain a certain independence once Weyland passes on. At least, the Weyland corporation cannot control him. This is an important thing that I feel should be explored in the upcoming sequel because I do not feel that his actions have been malevolent, but driven through the purpose of Weyland’s orders. I don’t know if he would be aware of Holloway and Shaw having sex, but it does feel that he was experimenting at least on Holloway once David understood what the black substance could do. That does not mean he necessarily agreed, which is why he had the courtesy to ask permission in a way first from Holloway.
Finally, I have to ask one last thing about David and it’s something that, as I mentioned before, we all ask ourselves: what is his purpose? Logically, David’s purpose is to serve humans and the Weyland corporation to the best of his duty. That’s something he’s been programmed with. But does David feel that he has a purpose beyond that?
That sentence alone is loaded just by the fact that I utilized the word “feel” in conjunction with David. Obviously, he has sensors to detect things but how he interacts with them differs. But can there be an internal sense of feeling that he is unable to describe and something he longs for? We see a sense of disappointment when Weyland describes David as never having a soul. Holloway often calls David “boy” making a reference to Pinocchio. Even if people assume that androids possess no feelings, we always have to wonder if, given superior computing capacity and algorithms for AI in the future, androids are eventually going to be capable of learning to the point of discovering their own sense of feeling.
This is something I doubt anyone can truly know and it’s a question I actually would not want the sequel to explicitly reveal to us. It’s an element that is mysterious and should be left to our imaginations. We can hint for an answer but anything straight forward would ruin things.