Scavengers Reign (HBO)

I don’t want to declare some kind of pop-cultural shift just because I’ve gone from watching one smart animated science-fiction show aimed at adults to another smart animated science-fiction show aimed at adults, but it was nice to move on from Pantheon to the HBO-MAX (most countries, technically “BINGE” in Au) series Scavengers Reign.

The premise is simple enough. A spaceship carrying cargo and colonists in suspended animation runs into trouble. The active crew manages to leave in escape pods which crash land on a planet below. This set-up is covered mainly in the short opening titles. We meet five survivors (including one robot) some time later. Ursula and the ship’s captain Sam landed close to each other and have partially adapted to life on the strange planet. Much further away, and out of contact with the other survivors, Azi has an added advantage in the form of a robot, Levi, and a motor-bike-speeder vehicle. Meanwhile, on yet another part of the planet, Kamen’s escape pod crashed in a way that has left him trapped inside, slowly starving to death.

The planet has a breathable atmosphere, edible plants and animals and fresh water, so maybe these survivors can last until help arrives? Unfortunately, this is not a bucolic Eden but rather a world crammed full of living things eager to bite, trap, entangle, infest, infect and consume anything and everything. Even poor Levi the robot has something growing inside…

The idea of a planet as a kind of character in itself is something I love in science fiction. Stanislaw Lem’s Solaris is a great example, with the polymorphous, psychic ocean messing with the researcher’s mind as an attempt at communication between utterly different intelligences. There are elements of that here also, particularly in Kamen’s story but this is a more diverse and complex world than Lem’s. The ecosystem’s mix of benevolence, indifference and horror is reminiscent of Area X in Jeff Vandemeer’s Southern Reach trilogy.

Visually, the planet is stunning — a rich biology with incomprehensible or even profound lifecycles. Reminiscent of the art if Moebius or Brazillian artist Léo and also Hayao Miyazaki (particularly the fungal forests in Nausicaä), plants, creatures and plant-creatures variously glow, blob, crawl, run, fly or just inflate and float away for inscrutable reasons. There’s also another Miyazaki-esque aspect to the way the show dwells on landscapes with soft winds blowing across them with gentle music playing.

You could probably make a nice edit of the more relaxed landscape scenes that would be quite relaxing. Indeed, musically from the soft opening titles to much of the incidental music the tone is one that emphasies the sense of wonder in this alien world.

This sense of wonder is coupled with terror though. The beauty of the world comes with plenty of creatures eager to eviscerate the humans (if they are lucky) or infest them (if they are more unlucky) or turn them into monstrous puppets (if they are even more unlucky). Spores, tentacles, stingers, strangling vines and psychic powers are all out to consume the hapless survivors.

What the planet doesn’t have is a prevailing sense of evil. Part of the emphasis on life-cycles is that each of the ones shown emphasise the sense of an interconnected ecosystem. The most horrific elements arise in the combination of humanity with the local fauna and flora (and fungi), which creates the more malelovent creatures the survivors have to face.

This show is very hard to sum up. Well worth a watch. Interesting characters, marveollous visuals, brilliant ideas.