Dr. Shaw, is she real?

Dr. Shaw is the most human charactor in the film. She shows all the attributes of what being human really means. Before discussing her charactor, we have to look at what facts we are given about her. She persued Weyland and convinced him of the mission, so that tells us she was not part of the Weyland corperation until then. We know she bleeds, bruises, eats, feels pain,and has a human anatomy from when she becomes pregnant and the internal scan of her mid-section. Elizabeth Shaw is the one charactor who has held on to the qualities that makes us human, outside of the ships Captain Janek. She shows her faith in various ways, from her religious belief, to her faith in her loved ones. She is loyal to herself and also to the ones she has loved in her life. We know she is well educated, but does not let her education of science and medicine rule over her in her deceision making, and above most she has a love for humanity. She knows she was wrong and states it, and has to correct the wrong in order to save humanity from destruction from the Engineers.

Somehow the blending of David's android/robotic traits with Shaw's humanity would ,make a pretty complete Super Human.. @Oldmantime I like your overview,,pretty succinct.. for an old man..!

@Mateo That's the standard explanation, why don't we take it further? Since you read all the posts in this thread, why wouldn't Weyland be Ridley Scott himself pulling the strings of David8? The tourist guide to the world of "Prometheus", the world of allegories. @Indy John Did you see the female breasts I am talking about?

Some more thoughts. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------In the first scenes we see David8 watching Dr. Shaw's dreams. I expressed the idea that after this scene the whole movie is taking place in Dr. Shaw's mind, with the guidance of David from our world who can shift between these worlds (reality and dream world) Here we see David8 studying Shaw's dreams and learning her inner subconscious self. [img]http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m5heeyu6Qh1qgd8e1.jpg[/img] Here wee see him welcoming her to the dream world or better the symbolic world. [img]http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m5hefiqeKs1qgd8e1.png[/img] I watched the movie Alien again and having in mind the beginning of Prometheus (meaning the two images above), I noticed a strange similar starting story telling. Before the crew is awakened from cryo-stasis, we see the following picture, [img]http://media.rhizome.org/blog/8396/Alien-1979.jpeg[/img] next we listen to some strange sounds like voices from another dimension (dream?) with pauses between them and the letters from the display being projected to the helmet's glass. After this scene the camera slowly takes us to the room where the crew is asleep (with the fabulous music of Goldsmith played in the background), like taking us from the real world to the dream world and the crew waking up in their dreams to explore the subconscious projections of the mind and the beginning of all fears, the birth trauma. In the same scene (which can be watched [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7deEcyeVuw8]here[/url]), take a look at the red cap inside the helmet (on which the label "Emergency Helmet" is written), is this actually a metaphor of a projector? But a projector of what? Is the world of Alien, a Pan's labyrinth created by Ridley Scott to guide the crew of Nostromo in the direction to find their inner selves and understand deep truths that the subconscious has depressed so deep that cannot be remembered any more and the means to do this is this "helmet-camera", which projects Scott's world to the Nostromo crew's dream. So in this first scene it might be possible that Ridley Scott gave the program to "mother" and of course all the plot and images that he wanted to show to the crew and thus the game begun. Notice also the strange resemblance between the ancient drawings star system depiction and the circular projections' in the following picture, even the way they are set up remind us of the star system that "ancient people" draw. When we dream, noises or even a far light can interfere with our senses and change the dream we experience. [img]http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_marvi0WaIH1rhq7xgo1_1280.jpg[/img] In a previous post, I noticed the metal-breast like construction on the engineer's cryo-stasis chamber, this gave me another strange idea, since "Prometheus" and "Alien" are full of birth symbolism. Many people have noticed that the Xeno's head bears a great resemblance to the man's penis. This is correct since our eyes cannot deceive us, [img]http://images.wikia.com/avp/images/6/69/Alien-1979_2.jpg[/img] taking again one more look at the mural in the temple room I noticed that the figure that extends in the Xeno's depiction from under the chest vertically to its genital area looks like the female human genitalia. [img]http://gamingshogun.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/uxAo9.jpg[/img] Is this a depiction of the hermaphrodite man? The perfect human being? Is this why Ash admired its purity? The perfect organism that could breed by itself without needing a mate and of course spiritually more stable than a being being split into two genders. Think of it! A reference to the mythological figure Hermaphroditus can be found [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermaphroditus]here[/url]. Having also in mind what was discussed in this thread and in the other three links I gave in this same thread (threads I created), we can now understand why the alien ship had three doors, if the two symmetrical circular sides of the ship are the legs then in the centre we see a metaphor of the woman's body anatomy. The Nostromo crew entered the central door, which led them to the space-jockey which of course is the baby with the umbilical cord.

@JooJoobee Read the links to the threads I give in the first post and all the discussions here. I am not 100% sure that Dr. Shaw is mechanical. Is this poster another hint to figure out the hermaphrodite perfect man theme in Prometheus maybe? Engineer's head over the Xeno representation, as mentioned above Xeno's body is consisted of the male-female genitalia of the human species. [img]http://www.prometheus-movie.com/media/prometheus_unused_poster_12.jpg[/img] Take a look at the following poster, the similarity between the human fetus and the Xeno is unmatched and this explains something else. [img]http://www.prometheus-movie.com/media/prometheus_unused_poster_11.jpg[/img] The Xeno is the hermaphrodite man, the fetus, we can tell its gender for sure in 12 weeks, that's why it has 2 jaws because it has two genders inside, two bodies trapped in one body (metaphorically). Around 9 months it becomes the engineer and when the time comes the engineer (baby) travels from the mother's body to Earth (Paradise). The evolution steps are 1. Scream we hear when David8 played the hologram sequence, which is the ejaculation after a sex act. 2. The Running engineers a metaphor of running sperm to fertilize the eggs, only few make it in the end. 3. Creation of a Xeno. 4. Xeno (fetus) is transformed to an Engineer (he was bold, babies are born bold) 5. Destination Earth

I'm gonna have to go with negative on her being an android or replicant. As for the dreams, I believe that is how he was also communicating with weyland was it not?

In my opinion (always) here is a poster that has to do with the birth theme in "Prometheus". Is this crevice that leads to light a metaphor of the female genitalia, a passage from the female body to Earth, a birth about to take place? For those who understood the parallelism, it is a spiritual birth also, free from the flat sci-fi explanation and very deep in context. [img]http://www.prometheus-movie.com/media/prometheus_poster_uk.jpg[/img]

More symbolism in "Prometheus". Male-Female in one body, also notice the snake (temple) and the cup (first scene of prometheus). [img]http://chemicalmarriage.com/wp-content/uploads/wpsc/product_images/GoldenHermaphrodite.jpg[/img] [img]http://images4.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20120612195107/aliens/images/f/f4/Deacon_Xenomorph.png[/img]

Why did the engineer kill Weyland? ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The engineer was a human being awoken from the nine months stasis, ready to come to our world, using the ship to go from its world (mother's body) to ours (they're leaving! to go where? Earth) in order to be born, this makes clear why the engineer got mad after the conversation with Weyland. Weyland committed a sacrilege to life itself, he substituted the natural birth mechanisms with robot engineering. This phrase "I made him perfect so he will not fail....you and I are creators we are gods.", made the engineer curious about this strange mechanic humanoid and disgusted by the way Weyland thought, he killed them all. Weyland's plans would substitute all the real people with humanoids and of course the natural way of reproduction of the human species would be lost in centuries ahead of the movie's events, until life itself, the unborn baby gave the answer by brutally killing Weyland and his employees. In the scene where the engineer is "haunting" Dr. Shaw, I am sure that he was searching for his mother.

I see that Mala'kak has gone into far more detail than I can imagine on a subject that was just brought to my attention: Is Shaw a creation of the Yutani company , a robot creature to replace the real Shaw in this adventure we call Prometheus? I don't recall reading much about this possibility at the site til this thread. THis would tie in the Corporate struggle for survivial in the real world while providing info for Yutani about this flight. A corporate spy so to speak. Having a baby is an obstacle to be concerned with and the fact that Shaw thinks, well, that she is Shaw, a real person. I guess there could even be made a case of Weyland making a Shaw replicant.. If there are other threads on this suibject please advise.. Still it is good to see that others have thouhgt outside the box and have takes a step back from the movie details. I want to see the overview and the details sort of bi-focal point of view.

I dont think Shaw was an automaton robot because that would indicate that a machine can have a womb for example. The mutated facehugger sperm could only have grown in her if she was a living thing. I know she was barren but you have to realize the alien creature always needed a living thing to grow and develope inside a host body. It would null everything about the story of how the black goo itself wouldn't have any biological material composition. Only a womens body would have made that placenta that covered 'cuddles'. I like the idea but it doesnt make sense logically when conveying the very nature of this entity.

Yes it was a reach and like you say, Anunnaki50, if she had a robotic nature than the goo just wouldn't work. It would be like David being a host and then giving birth. Maybe it is just the winter darkness that brings out some crazy ideas.

@Indy John A small correction on my metaphor explanations! Thinking of the running engineers sequence again and the Deacon-Embryo connection, I think that the running engineers are the sperm struggling to survive in the female body and that the last waking engineer is the surviving last one which would fertilize the ovum. If the human history is stored in our DNA, this is why the last engineer spoke the proto-language of the first human beings.

good metaphor explanations i like it.sound great,history is stored in our DNA,

I would simply like to add this here, it is a direct quote from Charles de Lauzirika, the man who created the supposed communique written by Peter Weyland (Guy Pearce), which made some pretty obvious allusions to Blade Runner's Eldon Tyrell. He apparently got the idea from fans online trying to connect the dots between the two acclaimed sci-fi universes, and thought he would have a little fun to see if anyone would catch on. Of course, everyone did: [i]"That was me having fun and being cutesy. I wrote all that stuff. I actually said this at the press conference they had in London, which is that if it's in the film, it's canon. I would argue that the viral pieces that are included in the Peter Weyland Files are canon just because they originated with Ridley and Damon Lindelof. I would say those, to some degree, are canon. But anything else - especially these which are kind of like little cute, embedded text graphics on the menus - I wouldn't take those too seriously. It's just meant to be an in-universe framework for those viral pieces." "As a Blade Runner fan, and because there's been so much talk before this even occurred with people on the Internet speculating that maybe Alien and Blade Runner and Prometheus could all exist in the same universe, it was just more of a wink at that. Absolutely nothing to be taken seriously. I mean, I sent it to Ridley and he had no comment. [Laughs] So, it's just icing on top of icing. It's not the cake. It's a fun, little side thing that's very superficial. And, by the way, it in no way officially establishes that it's Blade Runner because, if a lawyer were to comb through that, there's no reference to Tyrell or anything in Blade Runner. It's just a very lightly intentioned joke."[/i] So as you can see, it is not canon, it was just something he thought would be fun to add to the DVD. Source: [url=http://www.blastr.com/2012/10/prometheus-dvd-producer-r.php]Blastr[/url]

@Svanya Ok...thanks for the info. Of course these people can get ideas from the imagination of the people who loved "Prometheus".