Unexplainable - An imaginary planet that feels extremely real

Episode Date: May 12, 2025

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! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠[e-mail]⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 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

Hey, I'm Matt Bouchelle, comedian, writer, and floating head you may or may not have seen on your FYP. And I'm starting a brand new podcast. Wait, don't swipe away. It's called, That Sounds Like a Lot. You know that feeling when you check your phone, read a few headlines and think, That sounds like a lot. I can't do this. Well, I can, and I'm going to get into it every Friday.

You can watch on YouTube or listen wherever you get your podcast. I'm going to start by breaking down whatever insanity is happening in the world. And then I'll sit down with a comedian or actor or writer or, honestly, anyone who responds to my DMs. This is not the place to get the news, but it is a place to get the news. but it is a place to feel a little bit better about it. That sounds like a lot, coming May 1st, part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. I want you to try and picture something. It's pretty weird, but just stay with me for a minute.

A middle-aged man is on this strange, lush, far-away exoplanet. He walks up to this enormous blue kind of rhino-sized animal, slices it open, and he crawls inside. The blue rhino thing is still alive and fine, by the way, and its skin closes up behind him. Now the guy's inside the animal, and he grabs something that looks like a sort of tendon, which releases a sack, 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. 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. 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. 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 Arachus and 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.

But the planet in Scavenger's Rain 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. I've watched scavengers rain twice now, and it already feels like one of those things I'm going to 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. If 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? So today on the show, we're going to try something a little new. Every once in a while, one of us is going to pick something we can't get enough of, and we're just going to ask, why? Why does this thing hit me like nothing else does? So, I'm Noam Hassenfeld, and my unexplainable is scavenger's reign. I want to know how it's possible to create something this alien that still somehow feels real. All right, let's just,

let's jump right in. Why don't we introduce both of you, your names and the best way to introduce you on the show? I'm Joe Bennett. I'm one of the co-creators of Scavenger's Rain. And I'm Sean Buckaloo. I'm one of the writers and a co-executive producer. So tell me about the planet these people are marooned on in Scavengers Rain, Planet Vesta. So yeah, Planet Vesta is like a mirror to planet Earth. Like this is a planet that just happens to fit in that little Goldie locks 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? Yeah, that was a really important thing. 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?

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? Right. 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 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. 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. 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. Yeah, and a big source of inspiration was Warner 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. The trees here are in misery, and the birds are in misery. I don't think they sing. They just screech in pain. There's predators, there's prey, but they all are kind of 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. There is no real harmony as we have conceived it. It is the harmony of overwhelming and collective murder. 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 never really see this, but how great would it be if Luke goes on tattooing

and we spend just a little moment on this? on this incredible planet, like, what if he just, like, decided to go for a hike? Yeah. Or, I mean, I don't even remember the name of the planet, but where, like, Yoda lived, and Luke was... Dagaba. What is it? Daegaba. Degava.

Degava? Degovah? Dorks. These nerds over here. 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. Found someone you have, I would say. 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. 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. Yeah, there was like no dialogue in that entire opening blue rhino scene. 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. things that are hitting you that are just totally new. And I think that, especially in the world of 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. Oh, I love that channel. It's such a great channel. And yeah, 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 fatched hut or a kiln or a bone 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 made it with him. I think also just, I mean, this is a testament, too, 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

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 And it wasn't in the script it was just added by the storyboarders. 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 shelled 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. 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.

Sure. I mean, another reference point, too, for us was that movie Koyana Scotzi, 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 understanding. as movement patterns. I mean, Koryana Skatsi, I love that you bring that up. That's one of my all-time favorite movies.

Because it looked at Earth and somehow made it feel alien. 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, microscopic images of like fingernails and dead hair cells or skin cells, but then you put two 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. 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 different as the 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. how alien Earth is. 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. So what does it mean to live in the scariest place with the scariest things you've ever seen? That's next. It's all about you. And when you fly with Virgin Atlantic in their upper class cabin, they take the VIP treat to the next level. With a private wing to check in

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I'm a Sted Herndon, and this is America actually. We're all talking to each other to see what did we do wrong? What did we not see? I'm in Washington, D.C. this week to interview Ruben Gallego. He's a Democratic senator from Arizona, and he's been thinking openly about running for higher office. But he's recently run into some hot water because of his connection to Congressman Eric Swalwell. I have to learn from this, and I will learn from this.

But for me, it's not a 2028 question. It's about what it means to be a better. first boss in my office, and also a better senator to my constituents. This week on America, actually, we asked Gallego about predatory behavior in Washington, his plans for immigration reform and more. 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?

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 your kind of version of harmony. So it puts you through the ringer in that way. 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? 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 going to 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 held? And I think that nature is a big part of that, 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 want to 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, around being alive, dying, you know, how they live

in the environment. I don't know. So that, to me, is part of it. 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 don't know how this ocean works and we're destroying it. 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, 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 was 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?

Sean, Joe, this was such a pleasure. Oh, amazing. Thank you. Thanks so much for coming on the show. Thank you for having us. 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 because it's so what we wanted people to pick up from it. And, you know, it means a lot, just your perspective and questions. 100%.

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. Cool. Thank you so much. That was Joe Bennett and Sean Buckaloo. Their show is called Scavengers Rain, and you can find it on Netflix. Season 1 is finished, and as of now,

season 2 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. Yeah, we do. We have a ton of stuff. And let's just say it's really, tight. Ugh.

This episode was produced by me, now I'm Hassanfeld. We had editing from Jorge Just and Meredith Hodnott, who runs the show, mixing and sound design from Christian Ayala, production support from

Thomas Liu, music from me, and fact-checking from Melissa Hirsch. Julia Lengoria is feeling a little delirious, and Bird 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. Thanks, as always, to Brian Resnick for co-creating the show.

And if you have thoughts about the show, send us an email. We'd love to read it. We're at Unexplanable at Vox.com. 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 in all of Vox's journalism by joining our membership program today. You can go to vox.com slash 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. Unexplainable is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network, and we'll be back on Wednesday.