“My name is Lamia. What fun we’re going to have today!”

Raised by Wolves returns, as the most problematic survivors of earth’s apparent destruction deal with internal and external conflicts and whatever challenge #7 presents.

Title:

Cast and Crew

Directors: Ernest R. Dickerson
Writers: Aaron Guzikowski, Caitlin Saunders, Jon Worley

Amanda Collin as Mother / Lamia
Abubakar Salim as Father
Winta McGrath as Campion
James Harkness as Tamerlane
Niamh Algar as Sue
Jordan Loughran as Tempest
Felix Jamieson as Paul
Kim Engelbrecht as Decima
Morgan Santo as Vrille
Travis Fimmel as Marcus
Aasiya Shah as Holly
Ethan Hazzard as Hunter
Matias Varela as Lucius
Ivy Wong as Vita
Peter Christoffersen as Cleaver
Selina Jones as Grandmother
Bongo Mbutuma as Santos
Susan Danford as Justina
Loulou Taylor as Cassia
Litha Bam as Bartok
Garth Breytenbach as Den
Shoko Yoshimura as Mastema
Daniel Lasker as Furfur
Jenna Upton as Danjal
Jennifer Saayeng as Nerva
Michael Pennington as the Voice of the Trust

Premise

The Atheist collective revives Mother and Father and brings they and their Mithraic children into their settlement on the “side of the planet…less intent on killing” everyone. Tensions exist within the colony, however, and the fanatical Marcus hopes to bring the dissatisfied into the way of Mithras.

High Points

The show trusts its audience to be intelligent and patient. The characters are developing naturally within an unnatural setting, and the writers do not appear to be taking sides. The Atheist collective has provided much for the colony, but it’s a world organized by machines and seems best-suited to them. The Mithraist extremists offer a more emotionally-comforting world-view that veers into unhinged, irrational fanaticism.

Some series have higher budgets, but Wolves receives full credit for using it to create an original future and an alien world.

Low Point

I’m going to hold off for now on the larger issues. I do note one rather petty nitpick, that some of the backgrounds seem a little artificial. They’re far better than anything we had in twentieth century filmmaking, but not on par with the best we see today.

Hey, I said it was petty.

The Scores:

Originality: 4/6 Raised by Wolves uses some familiar tropes, but it remains unique among current SF offerings. There’s been nothing quite like it before on TV.

Acting: 5/6 The androids, in their deliberately stilted way, make a difficult journey to being more human. The characters show the strains of being caught between hyperorganized collectivism and religious fanaticism. It’s clear that the extremists on both sides favor their ideological world-view above the survival of humanity.

Story: 5/6

Production: 6/6

Effects: 5/6 The Mandalorian has a bigger budget and its visuals look perfect. Mostly, however, it creates things we’ve seen before, in previous Star Wars films and old westerns. Raised by Wolves reaches. Of course, it has intrinsic limits. The planet has to be habitable, and it needs to blend with actual locations.

Emotional Response: 5/6

Overall: 6/6

In total, Raised by Wolves, Episode 10, receive 36/42

Lingering Fear

Someone will pitch a spin-off that crosses this series with Stranger Things, so we can have a 7-11 adventure.