Online Series: Raised by Wolves (HBO Max)

[Osprey]

Spoiler: E9 spoiler

Sad. The show's coolest character just had his head crushed in. Fortunately, it's only a flesh wound!

 

[The Moose]

Good visuals, but pretty silly otherwise.

 

[Rabid Ranger]

Just finished the season. For better and for worse this is the Prometheus of television series. Love the world building and some of the concepts are intriguing but there is some crazy **** going on.

 

[Chaels Arms]

Yeah it's definitely trending in the wrong direction. The "Sol told me" and "Sol did it, it's a miracle!" device is really annoying now. I may give the first few episodes of season 2 a watch but not something I'm excited about anymore.

 

[Osprey]

I just finished the season. I had been warming up to it, but the last few episodes lost me. It got too weird for the sake of being weird and doubled down on trying to be allegorical, meaningful and surprising. It also didn't end on any kind of satisfying note. I'm not sure that any of the questions that I had earlier in the season were answered. I'll watch Season 2, but more because it's sci-fi and there aren't enough sci-fi shows to be choosey.

Edit: This is just a PSA to anyone reading who has not watched Season 1 yet and doesn't want it spoiled. From this point on, people have been discussing the events of the final few episodes without using spoiler tags, so you will spoil some of the ending of the season for yourself if you keep reading.

 

[Jussi]

The show totally lost me in the last 2 or 3 episodes. It was like Prometheus & Covenant on tv with all the bad traits.

 

[ProstheticConscience]

Just watched the finale.

The. f***.

Okay, the show started to get a bit wiggy the last couple of episodes, but that finale just went so ridiculously off the rails it's hard to summarize all the things that came out of nowhere and didn't make sense. Ridley Scott just can't stop himself from making muddled Christ allegories or throwing snakes with vagina dentata at us, can he. "Meet your new little brother, Campion! The flying snake monster product of my miraculous virgin android birth!" Uhhhhhh...

And Travis Flimmel has given up entirely on even trying to develop a character apart from Ragner, so I'm just going to call this guy Mullet Ragnar from now on, assuming I ever remember this show if and when the new season comes out.

 

[Jussi]

Just watched the finale.

The. f***.

Okay, the show started to get a bit wiggy the last couple of episodes, but that finale just went so ridiculously off the rails it's hard to summarize all the things that came out of nowhere and didn't make sense. Ridley Scott just can't stop himself from making muddled Christ allegories or throwing snakes with vagina dentata at us, can he. "Meet your new little brother, Campion! The flying snake monster product of my miraculous virgin android birth!" Uhhhhhh...

And Travis Flimmel has given up entirely on even trying to develop a character apart from Ragner, so I'm just going to call this guy Mullet Ragnar from now on, assuming I ever remember this show if and when the new season comes out.

Exactly my thoughts.

 

[Osprey]

Okay, the show started to get a bit wiggy the last couple of episodes, but that finale just went so ridiculously off the rails it's hard to summarize all the things that came out of nowhere and didn't make sense. Ridley Scott just can't stop himself from making muddled Christ allegories or throwing snakes with vagina dentata at us, can he. "Meet your new little brother, Campion! The flying snake monster product of my miraculous virgin android birth!" Uhhhhhh...

Speaking of that, it just dawned on me that Mother flies around in the form of a cross or in the pose of the crucified Christ. It's hard to believe that that's just coincidental after the allegory in the last two episodes.

I'm not sure what Scott and the writers were thinking. I imagine that atheists probably don't enjoy Christ allegories any more than Christians do. Together, that's probably most of their audience, so you have to wonder what audience they were trying to appeal to.

 

[Jussi]

Well I do appreciate the premise that mankind was stupid enough to come up with a religion that was so crazy that it it turned non-believers into atheists which the believers wanted to kill. Resulting in a war that destroyed the planet. At least that's logical.

 

[les Habs]

Oh boy. I spaced on watching this Thursday since I've been into completing Netflix's Borgen. So I was kind of excited to see how the season ended. What a letdown. I'm fine with pretty much everything n the show apart from the devolved native "people" of the planet (bad cgi if you ask me) and Mother using their blood during her pregnancy. There was plenty of mystery left out there they could have worked with and Mother's child could have still been interesting. In fact a human-android child would have been great. Instead we get... a f***ing flying snake. As absurd as that is, and notice how big it got at the very end despite being in a pod maybe 1/3 it's size, the cgi was again horrible. And the worst of it is is that it was entirely unnecessary. Plenty of potential storylines to work with going forward:

• Going to another hemisphere/continent.
• Marcus is still alive.
• Devolution of the native people.
• Atheists arrival on the planet.
• Splits within the group based on their beliefs and/or Paul's relationship with Sue.
• Maybe somehow get off the planet and on to a new planet.

And I don't even care if you're going to have an "Alien" like alien species, but don't make it a... flying snake.

 

[Osprey]

And I don't even care if you're going to have an "Alien" like alien species, but don't make it a... flying snake.

I wonder if the snake is another case of Scott and the writers insisting on allegory and symbolism. As ProstheticConsceience pointed out, Mother represents Mary, who virgin birthed Jesus. Mother's baby is the opposite, though, and anti-Christ figures are represented a few times in the Bible as serpents, most notably in the story of Adam and Eve. In other words, the symbolism may've been more important to the writers than whether it made for the best story. I could be reading into it too much, but it seems like a possibility.

 

[les Habs]

I wonder if the snake is another case of Scott and the writers insisting on allegory and symbolism. As ProstheticConsceience pointed out, Mother represents Mary, who virgin birthed Jesus. Mother's baby is the opposite, though, and anti-Christ figures are represented a few times in the Bible as serpents, most notably in the story of Adam and Eve. In other words, the symbolism may've been more important to the writers than whether it made for the best story. I could be reading into it too much, but it seems like a possibility.

There was an interview with Scott and the creator and Adam and Eve, the garden, etc were discussed. Not sure I remember the serpent, but I wouldn't be surprised.

Spoiler

The "snake" is apparently reminiscent of the bones they find earlier in the series, except this one takes on some of Mother's abilities like flying... I still don't care how they explain it away, that bit pretty much killed the series for me. I'll probably watch the second season, but can't see it recovering from that.

 

[ProstheticConscience]

Spoilers in case anyone aside from the five or six people who watched this show enter this thread.

Speaking of that, it just dawned on me that Mother flies around in the form of a cross or in the pose of the crucified Christ. It's hard to believe that that's just coincidental after the allegory in the last two episodes.

I'm not sure what Scott and the writers were thinking. I imagine that atheists probably don't enjoy Christ allegories any more than Christians do. Together, that's probably most of their audience, so you have to wonder what audience they were trying to appeal to.

I picked up on that pretty soon after I first saw the necromancers flying around, but then on the show they're very specific that the religion isn't Christianity, it's Mithraism. Sol told me this, Sol told me that, etc etc.

And I don't know if they were trying to appeal to a particular religious persuasion in their audience per se; more that Scott's personal non-sensical motif intruded in his work once again. You'd think he'd have learned his lesson after Prometheus and Covenant, but I guess not.

Oh boy. I spaced on watching this Thursday since I've been into completing Netflix's Borgen. So I was kind of excited to see how the season ended. What a letdown. I'm fine with pretty much everything n the show apart from the devolved native "people" of the planet (bad cgi if you ask me) and Mother using their blood during her pregnancy. There was plenty of mystery left out there they could have worked with and Mother's child could have still been interesting. In fact a human-android child would have been great. Instead we get... a f***ing flying snake. As absurd as that is, and notice how big it got at the very end despite being in a pod maybe 1/3 it's size, the cgi was again horrible. And the worst of it is is that it was entirely unnecessary. Plenty of potential storylines to work with going forward:

• Going to another hemisphere/continent.
• Marcus is still alive.
• Devolution of the native people.
• Atheists arrival on the planet.
• Splits within the group based on their beliefs and/or Paul's relationship with Sue.
• Maybe somehow get off the planet and on to a new planet.

And I don't even care if you're going to have an "Alien" like alien species, but don't make it a... flying snake.

With most sci-fi, you don't necessarily ask for logic, but you do ask the show/movie at least keeps to its own internal logic that makes sense. All through the show, I was wondering what was up with the planet itself. It really seems to suck. Not a lot of food...yet somehow large, predatory animals. If they eat the fungus in the holes, they don't need to be predators. How does this ecosystem work? Who are these mysterious guys in rags making the cave drawings? And the answer they came up with was...people devolving. That's a fail.

And Mother's "pregnancy"...yeah. They could have gone in so many different ways with that. It started off really interesting with her delving into her own memories of being reprogrammed, then just ran off into ever-increasing circles of drooling insanity.

1. Pregnant android.
2. Pregnant android drinking blood/android milk-blood.
3. Pregnant android drinking blood/android milk-blood to feed the possible android Christ-analogue baby mentioned in Mithran prophecy.
4. Pregnant android now giving birth...not to the Mithran messiah but a flying snake monster that starts sucking her dry. Uh...what?
5. Androids then fly shuttle into the planet's mantle to kill the flying snake monster and fail because the shuttle is apparently invulnerable, and the flying snake monster exits on the other side of the planet much larger and more pissed-off.
6. Oh, and the flying snake monster is clearly not one of whatever those things were that make up the huge skeleton fossils littering the landscape. The skulls have very clear jaws.

And that's not even getting into the new Atheist guys/ship that arrived, the other Mithran guys (did anyone else notice the lieutenant who beat up Mullet Ragnar was the security expert in the first season of Narcos who escaped from the Cali Cartel via witness protection and ended up in the US as a mechanic? No? Just me? Okay.), the voice of Sol everyone's started hearing, what's really going on in the tropical region, etc etc etc.

This show just lost all sense of where it was going. And that's just over the space of a couple of episodes.

 

[chicagoskycam]

I got through like 5 episodes and then the show just lost me..,.

 

[Osprey]

I picked up on that pretty soon after I first saw the necromancers flying around, but then on the show they're very specific that the religion isn't Christianity, it's Mithraism. Sol told me this, Sol told me that, etc etc.

Yeah, the religion in the show is different, but it's very clear what the writers based it on and are alluding to, not just with the symbolism, but all of the practices. It's basically Christianity under a different name, with a different god. Also, Mithraism was one of the dominant religions that Christianity replaced 2000 years ago, so even that choice is rather suggestive.

I got through like 5 episodes and then the show just lost me..,.

If you're lost after 5 episodes, wait until you finish all 10.

 

[chicagoskycam]

Yeah, the religion in the show is different, but it's very clear what the writers based it on and are alluding to, not just with the symbolism, but all of the practices. It's basically Christianity under a different name, with a different god. Also, Mithraism was one of the dominant religions that Christianity replaced 2000 years ago, so even that choice is rather suggestive.



If you're lost after 5 episodes, wait until you finish all 10.

Yeah I’m not going to. I’m disappointed and really wanted it to be good. HBO...

 

[Rabid Ranger]

While I have reservations about the series moving forward my biggest gripe is they had an opportunity to set it in the Alien universe. There are so many nods its obnoxious.

 

[Jussi]

While I have reservations about the series moving forward my biggest gripe is they had an opportunity to set it in the Alien universe. There are so many nods its obnoxious.

Not really because they don't have the rights. Disney has the rights to all things Alien related.

 

[Chaels Arms]

Oh boy. I spaced on watching this Thursday since I've been into completing Netflix's Borgen. So I was kind of excited to see how the season ended. What a letdown. I'm fine with pretty much everything n the show apart from the devolved native "people" of the planet (bad cgi if you ask me) and Mother using their blood during her pregnancy. There was plenty of mystery left out there they could have worked with and Mother's child could have still been interesting. In fact a human-android child would have been great. Instead we get... a f***ing flying snake. As absurd as that is, and notice how big it got at the very end despite being in a pod maybe 1/3 it's size, the cgi was again horrible. And the worst of it is is that it was entirely unnecessary. Plenty of potential storylines to work with going forward:

• Going to another hemisphere/continent.
• Marcus is still alive.
• Devolution of the native people.
• Atheists arrival on the planet.
• Splits within the group based on their beliefs and/or Paul's relationship with Sue.
• Maybe somehow get off the planet and on to a new planet.

And I don't even care if you're going to have an "Alien" like alien species, but don't make it a... flying snake.

I would have also been on board with the show giving us a lot more flashbacks to the Battle of Boston / everything that was going on on Earth prior to the Arc departing. So yeah, don't know why they feel the need to throw all this random stuff at the wall.

 

[les Habs]

I would have also been on board with the show giving us a lot more flashbacks to the Battle of Boston / everything that was going on on Earth prior to the Arc departing. So yeah, don't know why they feel the need to throw all this random stuff at the wall.

Yeah, that too. I mean sprinkle it in and you could even do that into next season. For me I wanted to learn more about that structure of whatever it was where the Mithraics went a few times that had fire or whatever. Also the more evolved human-like person, who I referenced a few episodes ago, might have had more of a storyline.

 

[Osprey]

Not really because they don't have the rights. Disney has the rights to all things Alien related.

I was having such a great evening. Thanks for ruining it.

 

[ProstheticConscience]

I would have also been on board with the show giving us a lot more flashbacks to the Battle of Boston / everything that was going on on Earth prior to the Arc departing. So yeah, don't know why they feel the need to throw all this random stuff at the wall.

Yeah, fully on board with more backstory regarding the whole Mithras/Atheist war, especially as the whole premise of the season was that only the Mithran ark and the shuttlepod were able to escape the dying Earth. And then there's an Atheist mothership hovering over the plains in the finale.

I was having such a great evening. Thanks for ruining it.

They own the rights to everything else, why not that?

 

[Osprey]

They own the rights to everything else, why not that?

They don't own the rights to... um... gimme a moment... oh, Star Trek. We don't need Disney to ruin that, though, because we have Alex Kurtzman (the man who brought us 2017's The Mummy) and CBS doing that already.

 

[Jussi]

I was having such a great evening. Thanks for ruining it.

My pleasure.