Scavengers Reign
Created by Joseph Bennett & Charles Huettner
Starring
Sunita Mani as Ursula, a crewmember in the Demeter’s horticulture lab; stranded on Vesta with Sam.
Wunmi Mosaku as Azi, a cargo specialist on the Demeter; stranded on Vesta with Levi.
Alia Shawkat as Levi, a robot from the Demeter; stranded on Vesta with Azi.
Bob Stephenson as Sam, commander of the Demeter; stranded on Vesta with Ursula.
Ted Travelstead as Kamen, a crewmember on the Demeter who is struggling in his career and in his marriage with wife Fiona; while stranded on Vesta he forms a bond with Hollow, a telepathic and telekinetic creature. Co-creator Bennett stated that Kamen’s presence has “introduced human greed and gluttony into this animal kingdom,”[4] which causes Hollow to become more sinister.
Alia Shawkat as Fiona, the Demeter’s robotics engineer; and Kamen’s estranged wife.
Sepideh Moafi as Mia, a passenger on the Demeter who forms a romantic connection with Azi.
Skyler Gisondo as Charlie, a passenger in cryofreeze on the Demeter.
Pollyanna McIntosh as Kris, the leader of a scavenger group from another planet; intends to loot the Demeter.
Freddy Rodriguez as Terrence, a member of Kris’s scavenger group.
Dash Williams as Barry, the youngest and least experienced member of Kris’s scavenger group.
Masha King as Mascha, a healer that Ursula and Sam meet in their travels on Vesta; part of a group that was stranded on Vesta many years prior.
James Kyson as John, a member of Mascha’s group.
Composer Nicolas Snyder
Country of origin United States
Original language English
No. of seasons 1
No. of episodes 12
Production
Executive producers Joseph Bennett, Charles Huettner, Chris Prynoski, Ben Kalina, Antonio Canobbio, Sean Buckelew, James Merrill
Editor Jason Klein
Running time 23–27 minutes
Production companies Titmouse, Inc., Green Street Pictures
Scavengers Reign reminds me, both in plotline and form, of the brilliant 1973 French-Czechoslovakian animation Fantastic Planet (La Planète sauvage). It doesn’t have Draags, the giant blue humanoids who are the masters of the humans on the planet, but it has the same creeping horror and imaginative strangeness of the classic, and probing introspective reveals of the humans stranded on the planet Vesta.
The cargo ship Demeter 227 has crashed on the planet. Several small groups of the crew were able to escape in emergency pods (many more perished, burning up on reentry) and the majority of the crew remained in cold hibernation pods. The ship landed more-or-less intact, but no longer flightworthy. The pod survivors quickly realize their best chance at survival is to get to the crashed ship, with its supplies, weapons and other vital gear. Rescue, it seems, is out of the question.
The immensely varied and fecund life of Vesta isn’t hostile, but threatens to absorb the human survivors in many different ways, and not just physically. Kamen, an angry and alienated engineer, is absorbed into an entity named Hollow, which does become inimical to the humans. At the other end of the spectrum is the service robot Levi, whose circuitry is affected by a native yellow goo, and in a subtle and engrossing sequence, slowly becomes self-aware. While the writing is brilliant throughout, the metamorphosis of Levi is perhaps the most brilliant and subtle single element.
The series is slow paced, and while the animation isn’t particularly special, the artwork is amazing, with rich imagination creating a plausible and frightening alien world.
It originally ran on HBO Max, which promptly canceled it, but Netflix picked it up and is running it now, and contemplating the creation of a second season. It deserves renewal; it’s hands down one of the best SF animated series I’ve ever seen.