Raised by Wolves – Season 1
‘Alright, now, listen carefully. A malfunctioning android, a Cleric, and a cat walk into a brothel. The malfunctioning android requests an android whore with mechanical skills. The Cleric requests a virgin with the knowledge of the Mithraic mysteries. But the cat... the cat can't decide what to ask for, so he turns to the malfunctioning android and the Cleric and asks for suggestions. The Cleric turns to the malfunctioning android and says, "How is it a cat can speak?" To which the malfunctioning android turns and says, "I am malfunctioning. None of this is actually happening. The cat doesn't exist, and neither do you." To which the Cleric then says, "Thank goodness. For a minute there, I thought I was losing my mind." You see, it's a paradox. I have many jokes tailored for geniuses like yourself. ”'
I love sci-fi, it’s possibly my fav genre, so eagerly lapped up this HBO series from Ridley Scot the creator of Blade Runner and Alien. As high-concepts go, having a story centre around two androids, Mother (Amanda Collin) and Father (Abubakar Salim), tasked with escaping earth and starting humankind anew on a far-flung world of Kepler-22b is a decent one.
'come to mummy'
As per many future predictions, we have managed to ravage our home world by going to war over religious disagreement – and now the plan of the Atheists is to try and raise a new colony unbridled by any religion.
What follows is a fascinating philosophy-em-up that incorporates many elements from existing theologies, borrows liberally from other sci-fi films and books and blends it all into a compelling mix.
Some have pondered that Raised by Wolves is actually based on one of the ancient Hebrew apocalyptic texts ‘The Book of Enoch’ that was deemed too wacky to make it into the standard C of E approved Bible. It’s not actually impossible when you look closer…
The Book of Enoch features angels that fell from heaven in ‘The Book of the Watchers’ – the ideas around heaven and hell as places of isolation with communion between the inhabitants limited to antipathy such as the passage: "And these spirits shall rise up against the children of men and against the women because they have proceeded from them. From the days of the slaughter and destruction and death of the giants, from the souls of whose flesh the spirits, having gone forth, shall destroy without incurring judgement." etc etc…
By the end of the series, it doesn’t seem to be a huge stretch to envisage Kepler-22b as some prototype Garden of Eden – especially when you take into account the form that the offspring takes at the end of the series!?
'we can't help ourselves'
But even this pseudo-religious posturing doesn’t undo what is actually a kick-ass show, the characters are well developed, the danger and threat levels sustained and the possibilities to be explored in season 2 are fascinating to ponder.
Mother is set to be an iconic sci-fi character, she certainly was my favourite thing about the series so far. Part battle angel, part nurturing guardian – all ass kick, screams-that-make-you-explode weapon!!
It would be quite brilliant if Scott introduces elements from the Alien timeline into this series – both sharing lots of android action and xenomorphic wildlife…
Raised by Wolves is a great series that I hope gets the chance to run and run – unlike my possibly fav sci-fi show FireFly which never made it past one season…
Out of a potential 5 - you have to go with a Darkmatters:
öööö1/2
(4.5 - Quality sci-fi, much to chew on)
Awesomeness öööö – Spectacular set-pieces and general high narrative production
Laughs ööö – Father brings the funny
Horror öööö – Violence and scary stuff in places
Spiritual Enlightenment öö - God is the cause of all problems?
click below for some dark sci-fi reading...
