THE WORLD OF

accept their life, the Atheists, has led to the Earth becoming uninhabitable. The Mithraics send a large space “Ark” vessel, Heaven, holding 1,000 settlers and military in suspended animation for the 13-year journey, to a distant planet, Keppler-22b, to begin resettling humanity. But they are beaten to the punch by an Atheist rebel, Campion Sturges, who converts one of the Mithraics’ levitating killing machines—a “Necromancer,” a female-appearing android—into a nurturing, maternal edition, known simply as “Mother.” Sturges pairs her with a generic service android—“father”—and places them aboard a small craft, along with six human embryos, and sends them ahead to the planet.

They land and begin their new life, Father constructing a simple settlement, while Mother births the children in small gel-filled tanks inside a red dome they have brought with them. But five of the six children mysteriously perish as they grow, after eating the “carbo” tubers that emanate from the bones of large serpents which once inhabited the planet. After an exploration team from the Mithraics' Ark meets them and attempts to take over, Mother accesses her buried Necromancer talents, destroying most of them with her terrifying “death scream” (which causes them to be eviscerated in an explosion of flesh). She then takes their small Lander vessel, goes to the Ark and captures another handful of children, for a fresh start, before crashing the Ark into the planet, killing nearly all on board.

And, after that, it gets really interesting. . . .

which would be in winter during the filming period—the production settled on South Africa.

Upon their return, Scott and Seagers sat with Guzikowski, the director making use of his well-known talents for creating hand-drawn storyboards to flesh out his visual ideas. “Ridley’s real superpower is his ability to use very elaborate and clear ‘Ridleygrams,’” says his son, director Luke Scott, who helmed three of the ten episodes. The storyboards, then, were set on the walls of the production office henceforth, available to anyone from the production team who might want to reference Scott’s thinking. “We all made sure that that was the cohesive element that marries all of our work together,” says concept designer Darren Christien.

Prep began on location in October 2018, with construction taking a full three months. While Cape Town Film Studios and a few other locations in town were used for some sets (see below), the main location was at a place about 20 miles east, which would become the home of the Settlement set. Located just at the foot of the HottentotsHolland Mountain Range, part of the Jonkershoek Nature Reserve, is the Lourensford Wine Estate, on whose grounds the Settlement was constructed.

“We stripped the topsoil off with two big Caterpillar D8s and sculpted the ground to create our world.” The mammoth construction team of 460 grew to nearly 700, including greens, special effects, and other departments, according to Line Producer Cheryl Eatock, a member of the local film production community.

Eatock explains. “We trucked them in and uprooted them—and then, took them back home at the end of the shoot, which is quite a great success story itself, environmentally.” A complex drainage system was built, to keep them from drawing too much water in the much damper location, which might have killed the plants.

If you’re wondering what those giant holes are, seen everywhere – like the one the androids’ ship falls down – you’re not alone. You also wouldn’t be alone to think they’re somehow connected with the giant serpents, whose skeletons seem to be just about that size. “They’re totally mysterious, at this point,” notes Guzikowski. “They’re definitely bottomless, and the characters, the audience, no one really knows how bottomless they really are, where they go, or how they got there. It’s an inexplicable part of the landscape, as soon as they arrive.”

A real/practical hole was indeed dug at Lourensford, about a hectare in area and 30 feet deep, with a few others just about five or six feet deep. The main hole’s depth allowed Wolski to place his camera in the bottom and look up, to see Father or Campion looking down— or for visual effects to look down and create a deep extension. A second hole was also built back at the blue screen visual effects stage at the studio, 35 to 40 feet deep— but with a roof hole which was much smaller than the bottom, for shots, say, when Father has climbed down and is looking up. “It’s the old ‘ forced perspective’ method,” Wolski explains.

The cinematographer gave the Settlement a decidedly monochromatic look. Night scenes were actually filmed during the day, using another old technique, known as “day for night” – lowering the exposure to give an appearance of nighttime, while letting available natural light do the work, giving it a “twilightish” appearance. Notes Luke Scott, “Keppler had two moons and three suns. So who’s to say that night on a distant planet wouldn’t look like that.”

The production had to constantly adapt to changes in weather, sometimes day to day. If a day was cloudy, Wolski would add additional fog/smoke—via 5 km of piping built by the Special Effects Department, buried around the set—to give it a dusk-like look.

There is seemingly constant wind and dust—and sometimes snow— present, because that’s what was there. Additional snow was blown from snow machines, if necessary.

Indeed, the wind is a constant on Keppler-22b, something always audible, which kept the sound department busy. “Ridley was very adamant that we feel what Keppler-22b was, as a thing,” explains Re-recording Mixer Russell Smith. “The planet is actually a character in the series. He wanted you to have a sense of what the characters, android and human, were going through. It had to be an omnipresent thing.” His colleague, Ronald Eng, would take advantage of the multiple sets of stereo wind tracks sound designer Jamey Scott provided, skillfully placing them around the 5.1 surround field. “I’d put one pair always up front, to help smooth out the dialogue, and then between the left/right and the surrounds. You should feel it all around you.”

The inhabitants of the Settlement are constantly terrorized by one kind of native beast, a four-legged thing known simply as a Creature. While originally planned to be covered in hair and other details (such as a slight tail and genitalia), the design was simplified as the bony, hairless, frightening animal seen onscreen, to simplify things for VFX. “There are male, female and even smaller children,” Guzikowski says, all of which, it is eventually revealed, are devolved humans.

On set, the Creature was performed by an awardwinning South African dancer, Lee Shayne Buoyson, who was placed inside a Creature costume. But about halfway through the season’s production, the team realized, “The suit was really good, but, when you took a step back, you could still tell it was a person in a suit,” explains Mcintyre. So though Buoyson was indeed filmed for every appearance of the Creature, he was rotoscoped out by VFX vendor Pixomondo and replaced with a new digital design, which better reflected the devolved human sensibility. And besides providing a true lighting reference for the VFX team, Luke Scott notes, “You get a more real, visceral experience from the actors he’s interacting with. We even had him surprise the kids, jumping out from behind a door! You can’t get that kind of reaction from a green ball hanging on a pole.” has a few buttons,” says his son. “I had one, and he must have seen it and gotten himself one.” Notes Seagers, “One morning, when we got back to London, we were going over the script, discussing the ship, and he said, ‘The funniest thing is, I was having a shave this morning, and I liked my shaver.’ Adds Luke, “Well, that’s what he does, clearly, in the bathroom— he plays spaceships with his cosmetic materials.”

The design was fleshed out by renowned concept designer Steve Burg, and then built by the Construction team in South Africa, using a plastic specifically developed for the show. “We worked with The Polymer Institute, here in South Africa, to try to get the slickest finishes we could,” notes Eatock, for that ship and other sets.

The Mithraics had arrived on the planet from the orbiting Ark on an even smaller craft, known as the Lander, which looks much like a whistle (though Eatock notes that production team members came to refer it as “the Bee Sting”). It is controlled, as all the ships are, by “Operational Hologams,” or “Holocontrols.” Instead of physical controls, the user simply holds their hands out over the dashboard, and globes of images appear, in which they can either see what’s going on or place their hands inside and operate the controls of the ship.

Executed by French VFX house BUF Compagnie, Mcintyre explains, “Every one of the holograms was designed to also tell the story, visually. Whether or not the character is telling you what’s happening, you should be able to get it by watching the hologram.” Color also helps identify the severity or importance of what’s going on, greens and blues for some simple controls, with red indicating a danger mode, such as when the Lander is headed toward the Earth’s core in a later episode.

It is the Mithraics’ Ark, though, which plays such a key role in the story. Guzikowski originally figured it might carry 300 people, but Scott insisted it be much larger— big enough to carry 1,000— massive. “It’s a colony ship,” says Seagers. “It’s taking all of these bodies to the new land.”

The Ark design, like the Lander’s, is sleek, inside and out—as is everything about the Mithraics. “The Mithraics are all about purity,” the writer explains. “And that translates into their aesthetic and their design. Everything’s white and smooth and clean.” The interior of the Ark contains

SIM pods—for a special type of hibernation for the 13-year journey, called Shared Simulation. “They go into hypersleep, and basically share the same dream as everyone else who his in hypersleep on that ship,” he says. The memory they retain is of interactions between each other in something known as the Virtual Monastery. “It’s this cavernous, endless structure, that they’re all able to move around inside of. And they can talk to one another and live with one another. They basically start to exist as a community, before they arrive on the planet. It’s a way of practicing, so that they can begin to terraform and be a ready-made community on Day 1.”

The Virtual Monastery set was built in a building in Cape Town known as the Good Hope Centre. Built in 1976, the structure – used as an exhibition hall, conference center, and even, with a 7,000-seat capacity, gymnastics tournaments and jazz concerts—was designed by architect Pier Luigi Nervi— something that didn’t escape Scott on his location scout. Recalls Eatock, “I was shooting a Vin Diesel film in there when Ridley came to have a look. And he knows his architecture— he saw the interior of the building and went, ‘Oh, my gosh, I know this – Pier Nervi. This is his work!’”

The Monastery’s unique high, cross-shaped ceiling was inspired by the Zeita MOCCA— the Museum of Contemporary Art Africa. “At one point,” remembers David Zucker, “Ridley wanted to shoot inside the museum for the Monastery, but we couldn’t. So we rebuilt that inside the Good Hope Centre, with their permission.”

In passing, one might note the medallion floor design at the center of the Monastery. “That’s true Mithraic imagery,” Guzikowski notes. The symbols represent the Seven Rites of Initiation, from the real Mithraic religion/cult that actually existed during Roman times, skillfully reproduced by graphic artist Sonia Stavn. “That came from real research, though not much is known about them— which is another cool aspect of Mithraicism, how mysterious it

is. During Roman times, they had these cult activities, congregating in these underground temples, which would have astrological things engraved on the ceilings.”

The Ark’s fate is sealed, unfortunately, when Mother takes the visiting Mithraics’ Lander up to the ship, collects some children, and, after killing whomever else she meets, programs the ship to crash into the planet before she returns to the surface. The crash of such a massive vessel is, of course, horrific to behold, though it is handled with gracious care, both by the visual effects team and sound team. The ship (by VFX house Pixomondo) passes quietly overhead above one young character, before exploding in an atypical collection of magenta and blue light (crafted by another VFX house, Mr. X) and with a thoroughly unsettling distant rumble.

“Ridley didn’t want to see the typical orange fireball, like we see today—because the power source would be something we don’t know about, something that would exist 100 years from now,” explains Ray Mcintyre. “He said, ‘ We don’t know what the power source would be in the future.’”

Similarly, the sound design eerily portrays the massive size of the crash. “We really laid it back,” says Ron Eng. “When it goes overhead, it’s pretty big, but not like you’d think, because it’s so huge. And as it passes, and you see the explosion in the distance as it hits a mountain, we put a lot in the boom channel of the surround, so it shakes the room.”

One of the most remarkable sights and pieces of art direction for the series is the Ark wreckage itself, appearing not simply as a scattered field of miscellaneous debris, but with various chunks/ sections seen for miles. Explains Mcintyre, “Ridley said that this ship is massive. And when it would hit, it wasn’t colliding into the side of a mountain and, boom, it’s done. It was hitting a valley on the other side of that mountain. He said, ‘It could hit that valley and break up and scrape along the planet for 10 miles. There’s a piece of wreckage here, and then a different looking piece of wreckage in a different place.’ It left different pieces of itself as it trenched through the environment,” leaving something unique for characters to discover and interact with in different places.

“Every time you encounter one of these pieces,” says Guzikowski, “it’s a discovery. It creates all these interesting opportunities.” Mother, for example, finds a section with a functioning SIM pod, allowing her to connect and explore her own history. Its overall, very detailed design and construction is what is amazing. “You have to ask,” Luke Scott notes, “What does a crash site like this look like? What did this Mithraic vehicle hit? And at what point did it break apart? And, in doing so, how was it oriented? What is it we’re looking at – what is the material we’re thinking about?”

It took the 26 members of the

Set Decoration team eight weeks to assemble the massive collection of debris seen in the wreckage set piece, constructed near the Settlement set at Lourensford, beginning right at start of prep. “It took an army,” says Eatock. “It was a big hunt. We got stuff from all over— like junkyards, and we manufactured some pieces, as well,” including tanks and storage containers, as one would find on a ship going on a long voyage. “Nobody wanted it to look like a just a heap of space junk. It had to look so much more than that.” Notes Guzikowski, “They were amazing, scavenging all of this real-world material—a piece of a truck, a piece of a plane engine or an old Russian helicopter, that they then turned inside out. Just incredible improvisation. And it all just becomes part of the landscape.”