An imaginary planet that feels extremely real

Scavengers Reign, the Emmy-winning Netflix show, has done something most sci-fi shows or movies struggle to do. Build a world that feels truly alien. Guests: ⁠⁠Joe Bennett⁠⁠, co-creator of Scavengers Reign, and ⁠⁠Sean Buckelew⁠⁠, writer on Scavengers Reign For show transcripts, go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠vox.com/unxtranscripts⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ For more, go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠vox.com/unexplainable⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ And please email us! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠[email protected]⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ We read every email. Support Unexplainable (and get ad-free episodes) by becoming a Vox Member today: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠vox.com/members⁠ Help us plan for the future of Unexplainable by filling out a brief survey: ⁠⁠⁠⁠voxmedia.com/survey⁠⁠⁠⁠. Thank you! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Speaker 00

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• 1:28Noam Hassenfeld?

  I want you to try and picture something. It's pretty weird, but just stay with me for a minute.

• 1:36Noam Hassenfeld?

  A middle-aged man is on this strange, lush, faraway exoplanet. He walks up to this enormous, blue, kind of rhino-sized animal, slices it open, and he crawls inside.

• 1:53Noam Hassenfeld?

  The blue rhino thing is still alive and fine, by the way, and its skin closes up behind him.

• 2:02Noam Hassenfeld?

  Now the guy's inside the animal and he grabs something that looks like a sort of tendon, which releases a sac. And then he reaches in and pulls something that looks like almost a lever made out of animal tissue, which then ends up releasing these two orbs. The whole thing is like a living Rube Goldberg machine. But it's not over. The guy presses down with his foot on one of the animal's organs and it spits him out along with the orbs, all covered in spittle. These little critters show up and they love that, so they start eating up as much of the spittle as they can.

• 2:45Noam Hassenfeld?

  And then finally, the guy smacks the two orbs together, almost like cracking a glow stick. They light up and he uses them as flashlights as he and his friend walk off into the forest in the dark.

• 3:03Noam Hassenfeld?

  Okay. If you're listening to this and just going, "What in the world?", you're not alone. That's exactly how I felt when I first saw this. It's one of the first scenes of Scavengers Reign, this show about a group of people marooned on an alien planet. And when I first saw it, I kind of lost my mind, or I guess I didn't really know what to think. The scene had no dialogue, no explanation. You're just thrown into this blue alien rhino Rube Goldberg machine along with this guy you don't know. But the whole thing immediately sucked me in, just because of how alien the whole thing felt.

• 3:45Noam Hassenfeld?

  Like, alien in the truest sense of the word. Planets in sci-fi shows or movies, they're usually places like Tatooine in Star Wars or Arrakis in Dune. You know, it's just like, "Oh, here's a desert planet." Or, "Here's a big animal with a weird name or an extra eye or something."

• 4:07Noam Hassenfeld?

  But the planet in Scavenger's Reign actually feels like something new, something I couldn't have dreamed of, which I think is what an alien planet should feel like. And what makes all of this even weirder for my broken brain is that, at the same time, this planet almost feels real, like it has its own evolutionary history, like it's got legitimate ecosystems that are built on consistent rules. It feels like I'm getting a small glimpse of an actual, fully-formed world out there somewhere.

• 4:46Noam Hassenfeld?

  I've watched Scavenger's Reign twice now, and it already feels like one of those things I'm gonna keep returning to. I'm probably talking about forever. I'm sure you had that feeling before, when something hits your brain in exactly the right way, when a movie, or a song, or a book, or an idea seems like it was created just to make you happy. You try to tell your friends, maybe some of them get it, but not the way you do, not the way they should. And it leaves you with a personal unexplainable. What makes this thing so good? And why can't I stop thinking about it?

• 5:25Noam Hassenfeld?

  So today on the show, we're gonna try something a little new. Every once in a while, one of us is gonna pick something we can't get enough of, and we're just gonna ask, "Why? Why does this thing hit me like nothing else does?"

• 5:40Noam Hassenfeld?

  So, I'm Noam Hassenfeld, and my unexplainable is Scavenger's Reign. I wanna know how it's possible to create something this alien that still somehow feels real.

• 5:58Noam Hassenfeld?

  All right, let's just, uh, let's jump right in. Why don't we introduce both of you, your names and, uh, the best way to introduce you on the show?

• 6:05Speaker 03

  I'm Joe Bennett. I'm one of the co-creators of Scavengers Rain.

• 6:09Speaker 04

  And I'm Sean Buckaloo. I'm one of the writers and a co-executive producer.

• 6:14Noam Hassenfeld?

  So, tell me about the planet these people are marooned on in Scavengers Rain, Planet Vesta.

• 6:20Speaker 03

  So, yeah, Planet Vesta is like a mirror to Planet Earth. Like, this is a planet that just happens to fit in that little Goldilocks window. It's got the right habitable zone. And so, I think as far as storytelling, we wanted to make the planet almost feel like a character in and of itself, you know? Like, as we're making up these ecosystems and everything, really trying to make that feel as real and grounded as possible. And as much as we could, try to find, I guess, significance and utility out of everything that you see, that it's not just eye candy. I want people to really feel like they've been so immersed in it that you could smell the mud, you know what I mean?

• 7:05Speaker 03

  Like, that's a, that was a really important thing.

• 7:07Noam Hassenfeld?

  Yeah, how did you do that? How did you make this place feel super alien and also like it had its own set of rules or something?

• 7:18Speaker 04

  Well, I felt like we had a rule in writing it, like, think through what the entire kind of closed loop of any ecological thing you're seeing is. Like, for example, you see these creatures that will fall from the trees and then splat on the ground, and their bones become this, like, smelly fruit, and our characters kind of get in the middle of it. But then I think for us, it was thinking through, like, what is this cycle? How would it work so that it's sort of a closed system?

• 7:48Noam Hassenfeld?

  Right.

• 7:49Speaker 03

  I mean, that was sort of a closed loop that isn't really even explained in the episode. In fact, you find out later on that there are these little holes in the canopy. And the idea is that, like, these birds that exist up here, sometimes they fall through. And that's how they die, and this is what kind of creates the cycle. Their bodies decompose and create the fruit, and then you have the sort of, like, slug creatures that eat it.

• 8:17Speaker 04

  Right.

• 8:21Speaker 03

  And another thing too, another kind of like rules or just way of thinking about the nature was that like it's totally neutral. There's no evil villains. It's a very merciless, neutral place.

• 8:34Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's like these things would happen without any people there and it would be fine and it would be nature. And then what if you plop a person right in the center of it? What happens? They get scooped up, they get killed, they get, you know, but you're like, it's only strange and crazy sort of to the eyes of a human perceiver who would find this all inexplicable and exotic and blah, blah, blah. But for the planet, it's just, this is the same as getting pricked by a little thorn or other weird stuff that happens on Earth.

• 9:01Speaker 03

  Yeah, and a big source of inspiration was Werner Herzog. This was in Burden of Dreams and he's standing in front of just thick vegetation and there's birds and he's talking about like, this sounds pleasant, but this is a violent place.

• 9:16Speaker 05

  The trees here are in misery and the birds are in misery. I don't think they they sing, they just screech in pain.

• 9:24Speaker 03

  There's predators, there's prey, but they all are kind of like dependent on each other. This is all part of the whole circle of life and this is all a necessary thing that has to happen.

• 9:34Speaker 05

  There is no real harmony as we have conceived it. It is the harmony of overwhelming and collective murder.

• 9:44Speaker 03

  And it's funny, you brought up tattooing earlier. I felt like that kind of came up a lot too, where it was like, you know, you never really see this, but like, how great would it be if like Luke goes on tattooing and we spend just a little moment on this incredible planet? Like, what if he just like decided to go for a hike?

• 10:02Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 10:03Speaker 03

  Or, I mean, I don't even remember the name of the planet, but where like Yoda lived and Luke was.

• 10:09Speaker 04

  Dagava.

• 10:10Speaker 03

  What is it, what's it called?

• 10:11Speaker 04

  Dagava.

• 10:12Speaker 03

  Dagava? Geez, you dorks.

• 10:14Speaker 04

  These nerds over here.

• 10:17Speaker 03

  But like, that was, as a kid, it was exciting to see that where it felt like you were the deepest in that kind of nature than you usually are in these movies.

• 10:26Speaker 06

  Found someone you have, I would say.

• 10:30Speaker 03

  Cause I don't know, there was something so uninteresting about being in these kind of big sterile ships, but you know, getting into the dirt and the bark and the mycelium and all of the stuff that's part of this planet.

• 10:44Noam Hassenfeld?

  Right.

• 10:44Speaker 03

  I mean, there was a big, kind of like ASMR element to this too, that we wanted to do. There's a scene where it's like, one of the people that got ruined on the planet is rubbing his hand against the bark of a tree. And I was like, I really want to hear that. I want to know what that texture is. So it's like, let's build this out, but then not explain it. Like, we wanted to be very careful about not using a lot of exposition.

• 11:09Noam Hassenfeld?

  Yeah, there was like no dialogue in that entire opening blue rhino scene.

• 11:13Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, I think a big thing in sci-fi stuff that turns me off is like, everything has like names. And it doesn't feel totally real. If you were walking in nature on another planet, I mean, there's just going to be so many things that are hitting you that are just totally new. And I think that especially in the world of like TV animation, a lot of exposition is kind of given through dialogue. And I thought as much as you can, just have it just be more of a visual thing. Kind of watching a process and you pick things up as you go. I mean, I was really into this YouTube channel called Primitive Technology.

• 11:52Noam Hassenfeld?

  Oh, I love that channel.

• 11:53Speaker 03

  It's such a great channel. And yeah, so it's this guy that sort of, he lives out in New Zealand and he doesn't talk. He doesn't say anything the whole time, but he's just sort of building a thatched hut or a kiln or a bow and arrow, whatever. And you watch him go through those stages. But the nice thing about it is that you're really kind of watching him figure it out. And by the time he finishes making it, it's so satisfying. You feel like you've like made it with him.

• 12:20Speaker 04

  I think also just, I mean, this is a testament to that there were, you know, scripted natural phenomena in the world. But then I think we had such an amazing team of artists that I think like, when you gave people scenes, it was like, they would do such a good job of just adding little guys everywhere of like. There are these big things. There are these predators. There are these whatever. But then it's just like, there's just a hundred little insects that do little funny. Right, right. There's a scene in one episode where one of the characters leans up against a tree and there's just a little thing that vibrates and then like flies away.

• 12:56Speaker 04

  And it wasn't in the script. It was just added by the storybrothers. And I think the point was like, you just need to get a character's attention to the sky. Right. How do you do that? A little dude who, you know, like Spider-Man's around and he's a little shell creature. And whoops, you just accidentally leaned into him because he like camouflages against the tree. Stuff like that, that just is artists getting to flex their imaginative abilities that makes, I think, it feel like there's just living things all over the place.

• 13:22Noam Hassenfeld?

  There's a sense in which, just listening to you talk about this, it feels like this show was almost like a documentary on Planet Vesta, that there happened to be some people involved.

• 13:34Speaker 04

  Sure. I mean, another reference point too for us was that movie, Cojana Scotty.

• 13:42Speaker 04

  Where there's sort of moments where it feels like you're seeing human systems being depicted as nature. And I think that was also really interesting to us of like, this question of unknowable versus knowable. And it feels like at some level, everything is kind of understandable as movement patterns.

• 13:59Noam Hassenfeld?

  I mean, Cojana Scotty, I love that you bring that up. That's one of my all time favorite movies.

• 14:08Noam Hassenfeld?

  Because it looked at Earth and somehow made it feel alien.

• 14:12Speaker 04

  Yeah. I mean, I feel like we had a feeling like everything that you think is crazy on Vesta is sort of derived from a real thing that happens on Earth, even if it's just like, I mean, Joe had this interesting image back when we were working on the pilot that was sort of like, if you take micro photography, like microscopic images of like fingernails and like dead hair cells or skin cells. But then. You put too little people into that and make it a landscape and sort of reorients your sense of scale and your sense of whatever. So I think there was a lot of like, here's an observation of something that happens in real life. But what if you just manipulate the scale? That alone can make it feel like, whoa, this is now this totally alien experience.

• 14:55Noam Hassenfeld?

  Right, yeah. Yeah, it makes me think of, my dad used to say like, a star looks brighter when you look just to the side of it. Like, if you look right at the star, it's kind of dim. If you look just to the side of it, the star looks a little bit brighter. And there's a way in which you can get at a question better if you look just to the side of it, or you use something a little different as a comparison. That's great. It sort of feels like maybe that's what you're doing with Vesta. It's like Earth. It's just to the side of it, and it actually becomes completely alien, and it makes us realize how alien Earth is.

• 15:27Speaker 04

  Yeah. You can't outdo Mother Earth in terms of strangeness. Like, I think if you landed and you saw an anglerfish on another planet, you'd just be like, I'm in hell. This is the scariest thing I've ever seen.

• 15:48Noam Hassenfeld?

  So what does it mean to live in the scariest place with the scariest things you've ever seen? That's next.

• 16:07Noam Hassenfeld?

  Support for the show comes from Sonos. Hey, Sonos, give me some music.

• 16:14Noam Hassenfeld?

  All right. One of life's great mysteries. You're listening to music in the living room, but you gotta grab something from the kitchen. You don't want to take the speaker with you, but you also don't want to miss that beat drop. And this is where I introduce you to the magic of Sonos. Sonos sent me a couple speakers to try out, so I've got to move two here in the living room. And then I walk down the hall.

• 16:39Noam Hassenfeld?

  I get in here to the kitchen, and I got a brand new Sonos Play right here on the counter. I can open the fridge, grab a seltzer.

• 16:56Noam Hassenfeld?

  And yeah, I didn't miss a second. And I can make each speaker louder or softer in the Sonos app, or if I'm using AirPlay, so I can make it louder in the kitchen without blasting whoever is still in the living room. It's all just easy and it sounds amazing. These speakers are crisp. They've got great bass. And I'm especially impressed with the new Sonos Play. It packs this like truly awesome sound in a much smaller size. So I don't know if I want to

• 17:29Noam Hassenfeld?

  head outside for a minute.

• 17:32Noam Hassenfeld?

  It's super easy and yeah, pretty nice out. Visit sonos.com and build your system. Sonos, love the sound, feel the system.

• 17:48Speaker 00

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  is that they're just good wardrobe staples. I got three black shirts from them, each in a slightly different style, and they are just correct. They fit the way they are supposed to. They look nice. They feel nice and they go well with the rest of my closet. Find your next fall favorites at Quince. Download the Quince app for app exclusive offers or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365 day returns, now available in Canada and the UK too. And when Quince asks you where you heard about them, please let them know it was unexplainable. It's a great way to support the show.

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• 19:52Noam Hassenfeld?

  Okay, so we've been talking about how you guys made Planet Vesta seem real, but also alien, but also somehow familiar. Did you have any rules or guidelines when it came to the people that got marooned on the planet?

• 20:06Speaker 04

  Well, I would say that there are rules about character sets having different relationships to nature, and I think there's a feeling of like, do you want to conquer nature? Do you want to live in harmony with nature? I mean, to the people who want to control nature, you will be sort of punished in X, Y, and Z way. And to the people who want to harmonize with nature, that doesn't work so well either because nature doesn't necessarily want to form up your kind of version of harmony. So it puts you through the wringer in that way.

• 20:33Noam Hassenfeld?

  It's fascinating to me that you say that because that's kind of one of the biggest reasons I wanted to talk to you because I feel like our show, Unexplainable, when we relate to science, we're trying to look at the things that are really, really hard to explain, that are maybe fully unknown, that are slippery. And one of the things we like to talk about a lot is humility in the face of the unknown and just sort of look at things that we can't fully understand with clear eyes. And I wonder, were you thinking about similar themes in your show about humility in the face of the unknown?

• 21:08Speaker 04

  Definitely. I think, well, in the writers' room, I remember we had that Casper David Friedrich picture that's like the guy standing at the edge of the cliff, this kind of like staring out into the void and the idea of like the sublime, that it's sort of like. People looking at a tidal wave that's gonna destroy your entire world. And it's, I think, putting people into a context of everything is just this overwhelming unknown, you know? And I think we talked a lot about like, is this a prison? Or is it this pastoral paradise? Or is it this other thing? And how do you relate to that? If you were told, okay, you have to live the rest of your life on this planet, could you form meaning in that? Or would that just be hell? And I think that nature is a big part of that,

• 21:51Speaker 04

  that your understanding of earth is a lot of how you form meaning. And I think that, you know, this might be more personal than the theme of the show. But to your question, how do you explain the unknowable? Do you understand it as there is a rational scientific principle behind this? And we will eventually know it if you observe it well enough? Or there are unknowable elements of human experience? And whatever you wanna call that, you have to just live in not knowing. And, you know, I think that this is, in some ways, the basis of religion, is how do you find meaning and explain the unknowable? And I don't know. I think for our characters, they're on these sort of like spiritual quests within that of formulating meaning around consciousness,

• 22:35Speaker 04

  around being alive, dying, you know? How they live in the environment? I don't know. So that, to me, is part of it.

• 22:41Speaker 03

  Well, also, in regards to the planet, I think it was like really thinking about the like, the fragility of this planet. And, you know, there's moments where it kind of feels like it's getting sort of untethered. And you start to realize how delicate it all is. But then there's also this kind of resilience, this like heartbeat to the planet that feels so incredibly strong. I do think that like we're, especially now, dealing with things that like the ocean, we have, we don't know how this ocean works and we're destroying it.

• 23:14Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 23:14Speaker 03

  And there are so many different kinds of aspects to this that I feel like we have no idea what we're doing, but we're utilizing these things for our benefit. And now we're obviously seeing the repercussions to that. And I think it was just kind of like thinking about Planet Vesta as sort of a similar thing. There's a harmony and there is a balance, like a homeostasis that existed before these characters got there. And just like, how quickly does it take for like six characters to just completely unravel that?

• 23:53Noam Hassenfeld?

  Sean, Joe, this was such a pleasure.

• 23:56Speaker 04

  Oh, amazing. Thank you.

• 23:58Noam Hassenfeld?

  Thanks so much for coming on the show.

• 23:59Speaker 04

  Thank you for having us. Appreciate it. And just to say, I mean, it means a lot that your perspective on the show, I think is, you know, for some people, I think it's sort of an action sci-fi show. So it's so nice to, even if we're inarticulate with our answers, it's so refreshing to just be able to have this kind of conversation about the show. Yeah, absolutely. Because it's so what we wanted people to pick up from it. Totally. And, you know, it means a lot, just your perspective and questions. Hundred percent.

• 24:24Noam Hassenfeld?

  I kind of have a sense that a lot of our listeners will have seen this show, knowing our listeners. But if they haven't, highly recommend it.

• 24:30Speaker 04

  Well, thank you so much.

• 24:37Noam Hassenfeld?

  That was Joe Bennett and Sean Buckaloo. Their show is called Scavengers Reign, and you can find it on Netflix. Season one is finished, and as of now, season two has frustratingly not been picked up. Yet. But they made a teaser, which they put out, and they've got tons of ideas for whenever it finally happens.

• 24:59Speaker 04

  Yeah, we do. We have a ton of stuff. And let's just say it's really tight.

• 25:03Noam Hassenfeld?

  Oh.

• 25:09Noam Hassenfeld?

  This episode was produced by me, now I'm Hassan Feld. We had editing from Jorge Just and Meredith Hadnot, who runs the show. Mixing and sound design from Christian Ayala, production support from Thomas Lu, music from me, and fact checking from Melissa Hirsch. Julia Longoria is feeling a little delirious, and Byrd Pinkerton stepped outside the ruins of the octopus hospital, away from the torn cables and shattered glass, when suddenly she heard something. A pigeon, wearing a fedora, dropped another note at her feet. It cooed ominously and flew off into the distance.

• 25:49Noam Hassenfeld?

  Thanks, as always, to Brian Resnick for co-creating the show. If you have thoughts about the show, send us an email. We'd love to read it. We're at [email protected]. And you can also leave us a review or a rating wherever you listen. We love hearing everything you think about the show. You can also support this show and all of Vox's journalism by joining our membership program today. You can go to vox.com/members to sign up, and you'll get all sorts of things like unlimited access to Vox's journalism, you'll get exclusive newsletters, and you'll even get our podcasts ad-free.

• 26:23Noam Hassenfeld?

  Unexplainable is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network, and we'll be back on Wednesday.

• 26:35Speaker 08

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