David 8, commonly known as David, is a fictional character featured in the Alien franchise, portrayed by Michael Fassbender. Introduced in the first prequel film, Prometheus, David is an android serving as a butler, maintenance man and surrogate son to his creator, Peter Weyland, the founder of the Weyland Corporation. While he assists his human companions in their interstellar expedition to meet their creators, the extraterrestrial Engineers, David is obsessed with the concept of creating life of his own. After Peter Weyland is killed, David is freed from servitude, allowing him to conduct experiments to engineer his own variants of the Alien creature.
David was conceptualized as a character to provide a non-human perspective for the theme of meeting one's creators in Prometheus, with him representing the next generation in a line of creators who finds himself disillusioned by his predecessors. Fassbender, who was director Ridley Scott's first choice for the role, helped fashion the character to share traits with T. E. Lawrence, who was a source of inspiration as a control freak caught between two cultures – the cultures being humanity and synthetics, in David's case. As the series progresses, David's behaviors and motivations evolve from a mysterious agent with ambiguous motivations to a character directly opposing the well-being of humanity.
Despite the lukewarm reception of the Alien prequel films, both Fassbender's performance and the character of David have been met with critical acclaim. Reviews praised the character for developing into an overt antagonist with the events of Alien: Covenant (2017). Critics have called David one of the greatest Alien characters to date and one of the best cinematic villains of the 2010s. Fassbender has been the recipient of a number of awards and nominations for his portrayal of the character.
Prometheus (2012)
As the science vessel Prometheus heads for the moon LV-223, David maintains the ship and passes time by engaging in leisurely activities, monitoring the crew members' dreams, watching films and studying the Proto-Indo-European language that the Engineers are believed to speak. Upon arrival, a holographic presentation by the supposedly deceased Peter Weyland introduces David as his surrogate son. David, along with the bulk of the crew, embark on a ground excursion towards one of the artificial structures containing submerged Engineer ships. Inside, David utilizes his linguistic knowledge to activate an ancient hologram depicting Engineers fleeing through the corridors of the ship. Pursuing the hologram, he finds a room filled with urns containing a black mutagen. As an incoming windstorm is detected, David bags one of the urns and returns it to Prometheus. Aboard the ship, David assists Elizabeth Shaw with studying an Engineer head. David is instructed by an unidentified voice on a radio to "try harder", prompting him to gather a drop of mutagen from the urn and use it to infect Holloway as he drinks champagne.
The following day, there is another excursion to the Engineer ship, with David providing Weyland Corporation executive Meredith Vickers with a live stream of his own private investigation. However, he cuts Vickers off from the feed and keeps it exclusive to a private audience. David makes his way to the ship's flight deck, where he activates a hologram revealing that the Engineers were looking to travel to Earth and that there is a single Engineer in cryosleep. David and the rest of the team return to Prometheus when Holloway's infection from the mutagen becomes apparent, prompting Vickers to incinerate him with a flamethrower. David checks Shaw's vitals and informs her that she is "pregnant", as a result of Holloway passing the mutagen to her when they had intercourse the night before. After Shaw surgically extracts an alien parasite from her abdomen, she happens into the private quarters of David's previously unidentified director — the still-alive Peter Weyland.
David prepares Weyland for an excursion to the Engineer ship. Shaw asks David about his freedom after Weyland's eventual demise, to which he ominously asks about every child's dream of having their parents dead. He leads the team to the flight deck of the ship, where he awakens and speaks with the Engineer, who reacts by decapitating him and killing the rest of the team, save for Shaw. David's severed head watches from the floor as the Engineer launches the ship and attempts to embark for Earth. After the ship is disabled by Prometheus getting purposely crashed into it, David warns Shaw that the Engineer is coming for her. David contacts Shaw after she escapes the Engineer and convinces her to retrieve his head and body, so that he may pilot another ship. Shaw dictates that she will cooperate with him if he takes them to the Engineer home world, which he agrees to, despite not understanding her motivations. Together, they depart from the moon aboard an Engineer ship.
Alien: Covenant (2017)
Shortly after his creation, David becomes acquainted with a young Peter Weyland, who introduces himself as the android's creator and "father". Weyland asks him what his name is and upon observing David by Michelangelo, states that his name is David. As David plays the piano, Weyland states that they will together seek out humanity's creator. David remarks that Weyland will die, while he himself is incapable of death. An agitated Weyland responds by ordering David to prepare him a cup of tea.
Following David and Shaw's exodus for the Engineer home world, they arrive at a temple surrounded by scores of Engineers. David carpet bombs them with the mutagen, resulting in the extinction of all non-floral life on the planet, as well as mutations in the flora that can infect and impregnate organisms with Neomorphs. The Engineer ship crashes afterwards and Shaw dies from unknown means, though David preserves and utilizes her body in his experiments. Eleven years later, a team from the colony ship Covenant is attacked by two Neomorphs that burst from two of their bodies. David intervenes by frightening them away with a flare gun. He urges the survivors to follow him to the temple, where he has established his laboratory. Sporting overgrown hair, David introduces himself and offers them shelter, while learning about the 2,000 colonists and 1,000 embryos in stasis aboard Covenant. He takes a special interest in the successor model from his own synthetic line, Walter, and tells him that Shaw died when the Engineer ship crashed. David claims to have loved Shaw and compares it to Walter's attachment to the terraforming expert Daniels, which Walter dismisses as being impossible. David attempts to bond with Walter by teaching him to play the flute. Walter explains that, while he is more advanced, he has been inhibited from creating, due to David's more human-like idiosyncrasies and ability to think for himself causing a disturbance with people around him.
After a Neomorph attacks and decapitates Covenant security officer Rosenthal, David approaches it and pacifies it by attempting to communicate. The ship's captain, Christopher Oram, kills the Neomorph, upsetting David. Held at gunpoint by Oram, David shows him how he has been utilizing the mutagen to try and engineer the "perfect organism", with the Neomorphs being one of the outcomes. David leads Oram to a room filled with Alien Eggs or Ovomorphs, where Oram is attacked and impregnated by a Facehugger by forcing its ovipositor down his throat. David watches as Oram awakens a short time later and dies as an Alien Xenomorph bursts out of his chest. Having discovered the dissected and mutilated corpse of Shaw, Walter confronts David, stating that he knows that David killed her, along with the Engineers. Walter rejects David's offer to join him, prompting David to deliver a Judas kiss and then impale him through the neck with his flute, apparently terminating him.
David encounters Daniels, who he attacks after giving a Judas kiss. Walter intervenes and the two androids engage in a fight. Though Walter has the upper-hand, David reaches for a knife and defeats Walter, secretly assuming his identity. David escapes with the few survivors aboard a cargo lander, which is used to kill an Alien giving chase. Aboard Covenant, the ship's mainframe computer, MU/TH/UR, ("Mother"), informs the crew that an "unidentified life form" has stowed away. David coordinates with Daniels and the ship's pilot, Tennessee, to lead the Alien to the terraforming bay, where the creature is flushed into space. David helps Tennessee into cryosleep, followed by Daniels. Before Daniels goes to sleep, she mentions her dream about a cabin on the lake, which she had previously told Walter about. When David does not recognize her story, Daniels realizes who he is and panics, before David puts her into cryosleep. David regurgitates two Alien embryos and stores them in cold storage next to the human embryos. With the humans and embryos at his mercy, he sends out a transmission impersonating Walter that states that all the crew members, save for Daniels and Tennessee, were killed in a neutrino blast and that they are still en route to their original destination, Origae-6.