Raised by Wolves - 01:10 - The Beginning

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Paul begins displaying troubling behavior that leads to a shocking revelation. Sue confides in Mother while Father battles unfamiliar human-like emotions. As Campion questions his place in his new family, Mother and Father uncover a distressing secret about Kepler-22b’s native creatures.

 

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I'm not sure what scares me more, seeing Mother's bump getting big or Marcus starting to look like Mr Buckethead with veins throbbing on his face. They are both equally horrifying, because you cannot rationally explain any of it. In fact, to our eyes it all looks like magic and yet, none of the characters are voicing it.

They don't think about it. Marcus thinks its Sol whose turning him to a King, while the kids believe it's all in Sol's will. That this was meant to happen. But if it's meant to happen then surely it is also an indication that it's a time-loop and the only way to get out from it is by going through the ordeal and finding a solution, or outside influence.

But the way Marcus was transforming it looked to my eyes that he was turning to one of the 'creatures.' Is it because of the meat they ate, or the eyes he was forced to digest or something else?

Sol, is that you?

HBO definitely amped up horror aspects in the season final. A birth of a human-android should be a beautiful thing, but instead they made it a scary show. With additional cultist. But if you remember, I speculated that there might be alien presence in the planet. That, to my eyes, is definitely a proof of such things.

It also makes you wonder did the alien deity planned all of it, going across the galaxy over hundred light years to cause all of this, so that it could freed from the dodecahedron?

Thing is, Mark said that the Necromancers were poorly understood technology, but also the evidence points out that they are also the ultimate product, standing directly at the top of the proverbial pyramid. So, if Sol gave the instructions to Mithariac worshippers to build the Necromancer technology, it might also be a possibility that since tech wasn't ours, it could have had the blueprints for the human-android hybrid hidden in the code.

I loved that Father popped out the question, "I was wondering how exactly this pregnancy came to be..." and the answer Mother gave went along line of my above hypothesis, with her blaming the Hacker for doing the deed in the cyber realm. In a way, it was the "it wasn't me, it was an accident," excuse that sometimes goes along these sort of questions.

Where could we find a bar to Father for him to go to brew his misery?

Thing is, I recently read an article on the monogamy claiming that it was invented so that the poor men could have babies too. And Father certainly fulfils the definition of a poor man, because he didn't get be part of the whole act.

So, going from left, a horse. Earth-Moon system with Earth turned to Venus like state with a thick cloud cover of the rocky surface. At the centre the Scout Ship with Mother and Father and ten stored babies. Above it five fingered palm print. A star-chart and finally on the right Kebler-22 and its planets.

It's freaky that Sol told Paul to stay in the North and to not to go South. And the boy thought he needed to disable to lander permanently. I for one am glad that part of the plot didn't turn out to be successful, when they finally started showing information seeping through the landers systems to the pilot.

Even scarier thing is that Sol told Paul to shoot Mary and claiming that she was going to try to harm the baby.

Alien tech. Mother confirmed it. She said that "it wasn't our creator, but something else." The baby looked nothing like it.

What did you thought about it? And who are the new comers?

 

[REBerg]

Total weirdness.
Mother vomits her baby, which I guess was the only way it could get out. Baby is not the silvery, glowing-eyed, human-android hybrid I was expecting. Surprise! It's a flying alien lamprey!
Mother's nurturing instincts evaporate instantly. For the sake of its siblings, the baby must be destroyed. Father just as quickly gets over his cybernetic jealousy, abandons his plans to erase his memories of Mother and eagerly volunteers to help dispatch an offspring that definitely does not have his eyes.
Then came their suicide dive with junior into a pit, which literally became a journey to the center of the earth and out the other side. What? Kepler 22b is a Swiss cheese planet?
Things may have begun with a science fiction bang, but the season ended with a fantasy whimper. Will things become clearer next season? Hmm.

Sol, is that you?

Davros?

 

[ctg]

Davros?

Nope, the alien in the dodecahedron.

It's a flying alien lamprey!

Well, it was modelled after an eel. So, a flying, silvery, human-android hybrid fish with bad intentions. I wish they would have made it an dragon and not an eel. You have to wonder what the ef have they been smoking when this thing came up and how it lead for the HBO to give them a second season?

What? Kepler 22b is a Swiss cheese planet?

I thought they came back on same location and not on the other side of the planet. I'm not sure about it though.

 

[REBerg]

Nope, the alien in the dodecahedron.

These two may not be identical twins, but first cousins seems like a possibility.

 

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Speaking with Collider, Guzikowski said, “We lay out in season one sort of this kind of mystery in terms of where did this technology [for the Necromancers] come from? The Mithraic discovered that encrypted in their scriptures were these blueprints, essentially, these designs for various technologies, which they proceeded to build and then use to basically win the war [against the Atheists], but they also forced the end of the world in the process. So that we do know. We also know that there seems to be a connection between some of that technology and what we have found so far on Kepler-22b.” Kind of like the Engineers spreading hints out across the universe, no? And we can’t forget about the motherhood themes. Oh, the motherhood themes!

Raised by Wolves Is White, Gooey Nonsense

HBO Max’s sci-fi epic Raised by Wolves has completed its first season today with “The Beginning,” but after 10 episodes of future religion drama, I’m still not sure there’s any substance. Except, of course, for that white, milky substance Ridley Scott is so well-known for.

io9.gizmodo.com

 

[ctg]

To be honest, I don't really know where the series is going because it's so ultra weird. They could have gone in so many other directions with androids raising children in the aftermath of an apocalypse, but instead they needed to strike a tone that it was a great religious war that ended human civilisation so to speak.

But we also saw the Aethiest in the planet, just hovering in the cloud cover almost completely sealed from the observers. We guessed rightly that the Ark and the Scout Ship weren't the only ones. It's more likely that the none religious people spread across our part of the Milkyway and they're aware that there are aliens. Some willing to destroy civilisations in their elaborate plots.

Humanity is hard to eradicate, is it not, just because we are so diverse. There's always some bugger at the end, realising a sigh while thinking, 'oh it's another day in the misery...' Frankly, if you look deep into this series it's more eye-opening because it is showing how blue-eyed blonds we humans really are. We believe we can survive out there with the aliens, but at the end of the day, what do we really know when humans have been in the existence for a blink of time in the celestial scale.

 

[REBerg]

In a way, this matches the takeaway I get from The Expanse.
In the unlikely event that we succeed in getting off our planet before we destroy it, we will only bring our conflicts and shortcomings with us.

 

[ctg]

In the unlikely event that we succeed in getting off our planet before we destroy it, we will only bring our conflicts and shortcomings with us.

Have some faith man. We are not really that bad as we writers portray us.

 

[Dave]

No we are worse than I can think of. It is proven to me every day, but we can't talk about that here. Back to this series:

Things may have begun with a science fiction bang, but the season ended with a fantasy whimper. Will things become clearer next season? Hmm.

I don't really know where the series is going because it's so ultra weird.

It has left the science in science fiction behind. It's a fantasy series now. They no longer need to explain anything!

I saw the Aethiest in the planet, just hovering in the cloud cover almost completely sealed from the observers.

You see, i didn't see that. I thought immediately, indigenous Neanderthals! But that idea is ludicrous. No, evidence that could be possible at all.

Then came their suicide dive with junior into a pit, which literally became a journey to the center of the earth and out the other side. What? Kepler 22b is a Swiss cheese planet?

I thought they came back on same location and not on the other side of the planet. I'm not sure about it though.

Those tunnels are deeper than I expected, and to have that much heat and fire they go way beyond depths we normally drill on Earth. Maybe it's Hell, maybe it's the Mantle. I really couldn't speculate.
Father: This planet has a history; a history we are ignorant of". As we all are! So, say we all! You bet your bottom dollar!
You literally had 12 years to explore the planet and you know zilch!

Mother: "All the jokes you generated will be lost"!. That would be such a loss to literature and, indeed, comedy!

I'm still confused about the big ship and various other things. Not a great finale.

Is "Sol" a God, or is he actually a Neanderthal Crime Lord?

Mother's "baby". What is it? Flying eels aside, her "baby" didn't have a large enough head in comparison to it's body to be intelligent. How does it fly?

 

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Mother's "baby". What is it? Flying eels aside, her "baby" didn't have a large enough head in comparison to it's body to be intelligent. How does it fly?

Magic or it could be explained that it inherited the ability from Mother. It will be scary if it has inherited the scream as well. But, if you really start to wonder, how much that creatures is machine and how much it's alien?

Is "Sol" a God, or is he actually a Neanderthal Crime Lord?

Latter. I vote for a crime lord. The whole plot if it was behind the apocalypse is quite brilliant and it shows how evil that thing really is. But there are still the question of how it knew that it would all happen in the order?

 

[Dave]

Well they’ve lost me with the magical and religious elements. I thought the first two episodes were excellent science fiction. This one was pure fantasy and full of the kind of “Oh no! The Neanderthals are de-evolving” nonsense.

 

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A pair of androids struggle to raise human children on a hostile planet in Raised by Wolves, the new sci-fi series that just concluded its first season on HBO Max. In this era of bankable franchises, reboots, and adaptations, it was refreshing to see something so original and visionary hit the small screen, and we had high hopes for the series.

That hope was sadly misplaced. Granted, in its earlier episodes, Raised by Wolves is moody, atmospheric, strangely disquieting, and thought-provoking, with gorgeous cinematography. So it's especially maddening that the show squanders all that considerable promise with a clunky, incoherent finale featuring a hackneyed, ham-fisted, totally unnecessary twist that left us seriously questioning whether we even want to tune in for a second season.

Review: Raised by Wolves squanders early promise with clumsy, bizarre finale

Yes, there are going to be major spoilers, because WTAF?

arstechnica.com

 

[Dave]

I couldn't agree more with that review. I had to laugh at this part:

Ars Technica Senior Technology Editor Lee Hutchinson had the exact same reaction to the finale. "I can forgive a lot for an interesting story," he said. "I’m willing to overlook minor stuff like, how the Heaven ark crashed a mile from the family’s camp, and yet somehow on foot there’s three days’ worth of desert in between the two locations. But a flying alien sucker snake? WTF?" Even that, we might have forgiven, if the finale had given us any answers or insight into the planet's central mystery that the show has been hinting at for ten episodes. Instead, it went for a jarring, over-the-top ploy that simply wasn't sufficient payoff for the viewer, and clashed mightily with the original set-up.

And how can it already be renewed for a second series with such a poor ending, and after such a great premise was squandered for a flying alien sucker snake and devolved Neanderthals, but absolutely nothing explained about the planet's giant holes that go all the way down into Hellfire and Brimstone.

 

[Dave]

And anyway, while we are still here. During the world war, at the very the edge of an apocalypse, while Earth's cities lie in ruin, and people would take any chance to flee, we are led to believe that an ex-Mythraic scientist, Campion Sturges reprograms two robots, and then, he finds an intact Mythraic top-of-the-range spacecraft, just lying about idle, to send them and some embryos to Kepler-22b?

I think I'm annoyed most that I wasted 10 hours of my life watching this.

 

[Niacin]

I actually like this show. Does it pose more questions than it answers? Yes. Does it give you enough information for you to come to a plausible conclusion? Also yes. I've heard some really good theories about this and have some myself. However this doesn't seem the place to post that. I will say that I can see how it could confusing and hard to follow.

 

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I've heard some really good theories about this and have some myself. However this doesn't seem the place to post that. I will say that I can see how it could confusing and hard to follow.

Please do post. Don't be afraid.

 

[Dave]

Yes, @Niacin it does pose questions that are not answered and that in itself is not a bad thing. I'd love to hear you theories. My problems are threefold. I think:

1. Some of the back-story that is not told is necessary to follow the plot. To ask the audience to buy something in order to learn what is going on is an idea I have a huge problem with. It needs to stand alone.
2. I began watching it because it seemed like a "hard" science fiction TV series about future earth and colonisation of Kepler-22b. Androids, face transplants, sub-light spacecraft - these I can accept as possible near-future technology. However, it then began with the devolved-Neanderthals, the mystical stones and ghost children - scientifically (and I presume historically) inaccurate, supernatural, and pure fantasy. After the first few episodes, I no longer got 'what it said on the tin' anymore.
3. It is badly written with unbelievable plot points - the Earth "explodes" due to nuclear weapons (devastation, yes, radioactive wasteland, yes, annihilated into gas, no) - Campion Sturges has a state of the art spaceship that no one misses, and a secure bolt-hole to reprogram two androids, then send them off and no one notices - that the crash site is seemingly a few miles away bit takes three days to walk - that they ate radioactive starchy vegetables that none of their equipment had detected, for 12 years - that when they got the lander out of the hole in the ground, child-Campion knew instantly how to operate it - that these holes in the ground go all the way down to molten Keplar-22b.

And it isn't that things are left unexplained, but more that they had 12 years to explore and discover reasons for many of these things, but they did nothing and squandered their time on the planet i.e. if the tropical zone is more fertile, then why didn't they go there instead of eating meagre portions of poison and freezing every evening?

 

[svalbard]

Haven't read the above yet because I am still watching but felt the need to post after the arguement between Mother and Father. When Campion runs up to Mother after Father storms and asks "Where is Father gone," in my head the answer was "The Pub".

Anyway back later with a more nuanced review.

 

[svalbard]

The one saving grace of this series was the acting of the cast. It was superb, especially from the kids. I also loved the dynamic between Mother and Father and that she was having the illicit affair and not him.

The alien birth or genesis story of Big Bad Barry from Ben and Holly(look it up) was actually quite ludicrous. For a moment I thought(all logic thrown aside) we were going to get the true the story of the how The Alien saga began. Considering everything I have watched over the last ten episodes I could of have worked with that. A flying eel, not so much.

All that said and ignoring Ragnar's capacity to survive( eating the Necromancer's eye might explain it) and the arrival of the Atheist ship I am looking forward to a 2nd season.

A bonkers series with no logic.

As an aside I hope this is the big breakthrough for Niamh Algar she deserves.