The “big boy” is back. Five years after the sporadically thrilling yet utterly obtuse Prometheus left us with more questions than answers about the Alien universe and the mysterious, godlike Engineers, the latest trailer for Ridley Scott’s Alien: Covenant restores the iconic xenomorph to centre stage – or at least, its 21st-century cousin. But can the veteran film-maker’s latest venture into the drool-dripping maw of extra-terrestrial purgatory satisfyingly pick up all those lost threads from its frustrating predecessor? What happened to Noomi Rapace’s Elizabeth Shaw and Michael Fassbender’s David the android, last seen setting off for the Engineers’ home world in a borrowed ship? Will the new crew prove any more canny than their forebears at sidestepping completely avoidable demises? And do our space daddies really want to destroy mankind because we killed Jesus? Here are five takeaways from the new trailer.

The crew of the Covenant are lovers, not fighters

As revealed in a four-minute prologue released last week, the Covenant is manned by five or six sets of couples, a setup presumably designed to help with the rapid colonisation of a new world. They do not seem to have had any training to help them cope in the event of a difficult arrival – the prologue shows them more keen on getting drunk and partying than contemplating the historic import of humankind’s escape into the cosmos – though we are told Katherine Waterston’s Daniels is a terraforming expert.

The Engineers’ home world is a dead planet

There may be corn growing, suggesting agriculture and habitation by human-like species, but the only life forms on this hellish new world seem to be two different breeds of xenomorph (more on which later). If this is the home planet of the Engineers introduced in Prometheus, it doesn’t appear Shaw got the answers she was looking for as to why the alien species created mankind in the first place, or why they seemed so displeased to see their “children” last time. There appear to be fleeting glimpses of mummified Engineers and ruined cityscapes in the trailer, suggesting this world once boasted a highly advanced civilisation that was perhaps overrun by a xenomorph infestation.

David the devious android has a kindly twin

Fassbender will play two roles in Alien: Covenant: a new android named Walter who appears to be a benign member of the Covenant’s crew, and the dastardly David, whom we know from the movie’s synopsis is the only other inhabitant of the new planet. The last time we saw him in Prometheus, David had lost his head both figuratively and literally, seeding Logan Marshall-Green’s unfortunate Charlie with a single drop of mysterious black goo in a dastardly experiment that eventually led to the birth of the trilobite and deacon aliens, before being decapitated by an Engineer. Is that a hooded David holding a gun in a brief shot from the trailer? If so, somebody must has have helped the mischievous android put his head back on. We know Shaw will also be seen in the new movie, potentially in a flashback, so perhaps she came to the aid of her erstwhile travelling companion. Daniels appears to be holding up the archeologist’s dog tags in the trailer, which suggests she and her crew are exploring the Engineer ship used by Shaw and David to leave LV-223 at the end of Prometheus.

The new xenomorphs are suitably diabolical

Scott has promised us monsters that will be familiar to fans of the original xenomorphs from 1979’s Alien. In Covenant, the full range of nightmarish nasties is on display in the new trailer, from egg to facehugger, the hint of a chestburster (or backburster?) and at least two full-grown monstrosities. The first is a horrifying black-carapaced quadrupedal beast trying to get to Danny McBride’s Tennessee, the other a paler creature that recalls Alien 3’s canine-spawned “runner” xenomorph but boasts colouring reminiscent of the Engineer-born deacon alien in Prometheus. Might the two monsters be the same creature in different stages of development? Or, as with previous films in the space saga, might they appear differently because they were spawned by different hosts? These new xenomorphs appear a lot more mobile and agile than their grim cousins from the early movies, and are certainly as ugly, though they seem to have lost something of the phallic threat of the HR Giger-designed originals.

Stop me if you think you’ve seen this one before

Prometheus came in for criticism for trying to widen the Alien mythos via the introduction of a portentous backstory with pseudo-religious overtones. Scott has hinted that the Engineers created mankind billions of years ago, but turned against us about 2,000 years ago, when the naughty Romans killed Jesus (who, it turns out, was at least part-Engineer, so really bad move, guys!) Alien: Covenant meant to return the saga to its slasher-flick-in-space roots, and the trailer certainly bodes well for those hoping to fill their boots with body horror futurism. But we’ve seen bumbling space morons wandering blindly into xenomorph hell dozens of times in these films, and if the new movie is to succeed it will have to offer a fresh take on the well-worn template. Hey you, myopic astro-idiot, leave the mysterious space goo alone, stay away from the freaky, steaming giant eggs, and just take off and nuke the site from orbit already.