Planet 4 was the fourth world of an uncharted system, the destination Elizabeth Shaw and the synthetic David set after they left LV-223 at the end of Prometheus. The USCSS Covenant navigation screen filed the world as 16EG14. Engineers lived in at least one city there and raised wheat until David released the black pathogen over that city in 2094. In 2104 the colony ship, bound for Origae-6, diverted to a human signal from the same system, and in Alien: Covenant most of the landing party died on the ground.
Location
In Alan Dean Foster's novelization, Mother placed the human signal in sector 105, at right ascension 47.6 and a declination of 24.3 from the ship's place when the particle burst woke the crew. The Covenant navigation display plotted that star as Sequence C234 at stellar azimuth 47.6, on the same chart as Origae-6 at azimuth 87.2, and the display housing is marked QW 79056943. Five planets orbited an old main-sequence star under a bluish sun, and the fourth was the one in the habitable zone. The film's system screen marks that fourth planet 16EG14, with neighboring marks in the 16EG10 range and the extra line XEN 4309 TN 47.5.
The film's briefing puts the system in Sector 87. Free League's Alien roleplaying game uses that same sector for the uncharted system, and the galactic map key groups Sector 87 with C234 and Canopus. The novel's sector 105 is the figure Mother gives for the signal as measured from the recharge stop. Shaw and David had aimed the Juggernaut at the Engineer homeworld. The film shows one city on the world they reached. Early drafts called the Engineer world Paradise. In the novel, Tennessee suggested the name Extinction after the escape. On the ship the world remained the fourth planet, under the catalog mark 16EG14.
Conditions
The navigation profile headed the world Unknown: Planet and marked it Habitable, and it counted two moons. Foster's novel puts the surface gravity at 0.96 g, with liquid water and land of granite and basalt, and two small moons. Ricks, on the Covenant, called the world a clearer prospect than their most optimistic projections for Origae-6. Walter read the air on the ground as clear and breathable.
A plasma storm of about 250-knot winds and continuous lightning covered a wide stretch of the atmosphere over the landing site, and the novel says ionospheric storms on that world could last days to months and cover half the globe. Mother held the Covenant in geosynchronous orbit over the signal. Christopher Oram treated the planet as a possible colony about seven years nearer than Origae-6, close enough that the crew would not return to hypersleep for the detour. Katherine Daniels left the colony ship in orbit through the storm, and Origae-6 remained the destination after the landing party came back aboard.
Points Of Interest
Engineer City
At least one Engineer city stood among mountains, with a walled circular plaza, a central opening in the court, a domed building at the rim, and towers packed behind the wall. A claw-shaped ship hung over that court, above the opening in the plaza. The city exteriors were filmed at Milford Sound in New Zealand.
Crashed Juggernaut
The Juggernaut cut an avenue through the timber on the way down, slicing the trunks lower and lower and searing the growth on either side, and it came to rest in the forest beyond the wheat. The horseshoe hull lay broken across the rocks in the rain, with water running down the decks and gathering in shallow pools. Daniels found a row of giant suits sized for bodies far larger than humans, and a dome chamber with four pods around an empty chair. Shaw's cabin held a gold crucifix, a moldy journal carrying her name, decaying clothes, handmade furniture, and a Weyland Industries helmet, and no body. A hologram of Shaw in that dome chair, singing Take Me Home, Country Roads, was the signal the Covenant had followed.
Lander One Landing Site
Faris set Lander One in shallow water by a pebble beach, with the cliff rising behind the hull. Oram's landing party came ashore on that gravel and walked inland from the water, toward the human signal in the forest. A cultivated field began at the beach and ran back into timber, and the crashed Juggernaut lay beyond those trees. Lander One later exploded in the shallows, and its wreck was left by the pebble beach.
Wheat Field
A wheat field of a primitive cultivated strain ran from the pebble beach into a forest of pine, fir, and sequoia. Lopé, who had come from Iowa, tasted a head of the grain and took it for wheat, and the strain pollinated itself. No animals showed themselves in the field or the timber, not even insects large enough to see, ten years after the pathogen release.
Native Life
Past the wheat, the ground rose into forest, and the deeper timber was thick enough that daylight came through the canopy in shafts. Ledward walked that stand with the landing party on the way inland from the beach, toward the signal in the wreck. Fungal sacs grew in the soil by a creek there, and more of the same growth was inside the crashed Juggernaut. The sacs released motes that entered Ledward and Hallet before the party reached the Engineer city.
The roleplaying game files the parasites the Covenant crew met there as Neomorphs, Plagiarus celerius, after Agent A0-3959X.91-15 mutated native fungal and insect life. The motes are Tachinidae tabellarium, released from fungal egg sacs. Praetomorphs are listed in the Facehugger notes as a related strain, the line the film shows as the Protomorph.
Plants And Fungi
David's Drawings collects the workshop plates Dane Hallett and Matt Hatton made for the decade David spent on the world. One sheet draws the fungal sacs from that forest as a pile of round pods with open holes, a single pod releasing spores from the top, and a round cut through the inside. David classed the growth as a pathogen. On that sheet a young pod could barely move and did not tolerate heat, and a ripe spore poisoned the host's blood.
David used pitcher plants on the world to trap insects and small animals. After rain the water in the pitcher turned acidic, and a catch left in it was reduced to bones. He cut latex from local reeds for sheets and rope when a pool of it gathered at the base of the stem. He also drew giant flowers in the corpse-lily shape, the kind that smell of rotting flesh, along with a weeping fruit, a toxic fungus, ocean snails, and beetles. Many captions borrow Earth names, so they are a poor guide to the real groups of those plants and animals.
Important Events
Engineer Society
The Engineers of Planet 4 lived in plain robes, some with the hood raised, and their bodies were far larger than a human's. They raised wheat in the fields between the city wall and the forest. A domed temple stood at the rim of the walled circular court, and towers filled the ground behind the wall. That court, with the opening in its center, was the main public ground of the city.
In David's Drawings, David recorded that the Engineers had toughened their bodies and left an older shape in place, and that they preserved older cities in the same way, as records. He believed the early buildings were industrial and the later cities belonged to a people who traveled between stars, and that the Engineers living on this world still had the older body. Those plates are his notes from the temple, and they are not a measured plan of the bones.
Pathogen Bombing
David released the Juggernaut's cargo of pathogen over the city on the approach. David initially claimed the release was an accident and that Shaw had died in the crash. Walter reconstructed a release on the approach, over the open city, and Daniels later found that Shaw had not died when the hull came down. The pathogen killed the Engineers in the city and left the wheat and the trees. The Juggernaut came down in the forest on one side of the city, and the claw-shaped hull came down in the forest on the far side.
David's Experiments
David used the Engineer temple as a laboratory through the decade after the 2094 release. In the novel Shaw survived the arrival and lived on as his subject until he killed her on that world. An urn in the temple was marked Elizabeth Shaw, 2058-2094, with her identity tags, a lock of hair, and a photograph. The benches held preserved specimens from the creatures he was building there. Few hosts remained for that work. In Advent, after he had left on the Covenant, that shortage was what had slowed the prototype, and Shaw's body was among the trials in the temple.
Covenant Visit
Acting captain Christopher Oram diverted the colony ship after the reversed recording resolved as a woman singing Take Me Home, Country Roads, and he sent the party down through the storm. Alien: Covenant Origins uses Lander Two on a suicide shuttle before departure from Earth, so only Lander One was left when the ship arrived. Faris flew Lander One with Oram's party aboard, while Tennessee stayed in orbit with Ricks and Upworth. The motes that entered Ledward and Hallet on that walk produced Neomorphs, and those Neomorphs destroyed the lander.
David had live eggs under the temple. Oram looked into one, and the Protomorph that came out of him reached the plaza while Tennessee brought the cargo lift down from the Covenant. Daniels cut that Protomorph in half with the loading crane. Walter remained on the surface. David went up on the lift in Walter's place, and the colony ship left orbit on the course for Origae-6.
Last Signs Of Life
In 2117 a Weyland-Yutani team reached the temple laboratory, in the short David's Lab: Last Signs of Life. The laboratory held David's drawings pinned to the walls and a bench of preserved specimens, among them dissected Neomorphs, a vial of the pathogen, and Engineer material. One explorer recorded that collection, then moved in on an egg that opened. The parasite from that egg attacked him, and the recording went back to the company as a case file.
Behind The Scenes
Early concept paintings by Khang Le treated the Engineer world as Paradise, a stone city of monuments under a bright sky. The film that was released used a different build. Ridley Scott shot the exteriors in 2016 at Milford Sound in Fiordland, New Zealand. Cinematographer Dariusz Wolski matched the footage to that sound's cloud and soft light, with mountains showing and vanishing, and the back-lot sets were lit like a dawn or dusk that did not change. A lander engine, door, and ramp were built on that shore so the crew could walk out of the ship, and special effects supervisor Neil Corbould used the same piece for the explosion. Amy Seimetz, playing Faris, was filmed under the lander in the sound, taking the scene through an earpiece. More than 450 crew stayed at Milford Lodge, and about 300 of the crew were hired in New Zealand.
MPC, with VFX supervisor Ferran Domenech and production VFX supervisor Charley Henley, built the city as a digital valley about 10 kilometers long. A layout tool called Machi placed the blocks. The build held about 15,000 buildings, a plaza about 2 kilometers across, a cathedral dome about 500 meters wide, about 250,000 Engineer figures, and about 50,000 giant poplar trees. The buildings followed brutalist concrete and older stone forms from Egypt, Greece, and Rome, with older blocks toward the outer city and newer ones nearer the plaza. For the lander's pass over the mountains, MPC stitched helicopter plates from a six-camera Hydra array shot above Milford Sound.
Set decorator Victor J. Zolfo commissioned the laboratory and quarters drawings under production designer Chris Seagers. Dane Hallett drew the laboratory, and Matt Hatton drew the scroll room where Daniels finds the studies of Shaw. They worked in charcoal, pen, and Indian ink, and the prints went onto textured Japanese paper so the walls would not look like office copies. Ridley Scott picked the handwriting, and calligrapher Heather Courtis copied it. Those sheets are the plates later collected as David's Drawings, with the companion volume Developing the Art of an Android.
Conclusion
Planet 4 was an Engineer world of wheat, timber, and at least one city, catalogued by the Covenant as 16EG14, until David released the pathogen over that city in 2094. Shaw had come there with him from LV-223 and died on that world. The 2104 landing found the city full of corpses, the crashed Juggernaut, and the creatures the pathogen had made. Daniels and Tennessee got off the surface, and David left with them on the colony ship, bound again for Origae-6.
Appearances
- Alien: Covenant (20th Century Fox, 2017)
- Alien: Covenant - Advent (20th Century Fox, 2017)
- Alien: Covenant by Alan Dean Foster (Titan Books, 2017)
- David's Drawings by Dane Hallett and Matt Hatton (Titan Books, 2018)
- David's Lab: Last Signs of Life (20th Century Fox, 2019)
- Alien: The Roleplaying Game (Free League, 2019) and the Evolved Edition (2025)
Tag Categories: Alien Universe Planets | Space Jockey Lore | Prometheus Lore | Alien Lore
