In Empire's interview with the original screenwriter of Prometheus, Jon Spaihts - which you can check out in full here - there are a number of fascinating details about what might have been if director Ridley Scott and his replacement as screenwriter Damon Lindelof hadn't changed it further down the line.

One particularly eye-opening revelation was the possible appearance of facehuggers, a xenomorphic beastie now so beloved you can even buy plushie versions to sling at unsuspecting housemates/fellow bus passengers/strangers at Prometheus screenings.

"I did have facehuggers in my original draft," says Spaights. "David, as he began to get fascinated by the science of the Engineers, doesn't deliberately contaminate Holloway with a drop of black liquid. Instead, Holloway hubristically removes his helmet in the chamber, is knocked unconscious, facehugged and wakes up not knowing what had been done to him, and stumbles back into the ship."

"In my draft, he returns to his cabin, is embraced by Shaw, who is delighted to see him having feared that he had died, and the two of them make love," he goes on to say. "And it's while they're making love that he bursts and dies. So that lovemaking sequence echoed my original lovemaking sequence where he explodes! It was messy."

That said, David, as it turns out in Spaihts' vision, is much more malevolent than in the final cinematic cut - but in a very precise, scientific way.

"David, fascinated by these creatures, begins delaying the mission and going off the reservation on his own, essentially because he thinks he really belongs with the Engineers," Spaihts explains.

"They're smart enough and sophisticated enough, great enough, to be his peers. He's harboring a deep-seated contempt for his human makers. So at one point Shaw goes to stop him and David ties her up and deliberately exposes her to a facehugger. He caresses an egg open and out comes a facehugger."

"David doesn't smell like a person - his breath isn't moist - so he can handle the thing like a kitten. It doesn't want him; it's not interested. But then he exposes it to her and it goes for her like a shot. He toys with her for a bit and then lets it take her. That, in my draft, was how Shaw was implanted with the parasite that she had to remove with the medpod sequence."

That's right, David would ostensibly be playing with a facehugger like a little kitten, toying with Shaw as he lets it clamp around her mouth. Elsewhere in the interview, Spaihts goes on to describe the different incarnations of xenomorph badness that were considered during the film's production, including one alien with a crab-like shell. 

Intrigued? Check out the interview in full over here, and if this has piqued your interest in the film, Prometheus is now available on Blu-ray and DVD.