The sci-fi adventure Scavengers Reign is an anomalous alien wonder

polygon.com:

With a handful of exceptions, nearly every episode of Scavengers Reign opens the same way: a close-up shot of some bizarre creature skittering across the surface of an alien world; a microscopic peek at the ecology of Vesta Minor, the uncolonized planet where the survivors of the starship Demeter have found themselves stranded. As the Demeter’s crew move through this unfamiliar terrain, each must forge their own bond with and understanding of the planet’s wildlife in order to survive. In Scavengers Reign, survival isn’t a matter of conquering the terrain, but of learning to adapt and cooperate with the planet’s various ecosystems. And those details — no matter how small, or how bizarre — are vital to understanding it.

Based on Joe Bennett and Charles Huettner’s 2016 animated short Scavengers, this 12-episode sci-fi series follows the surviving crew members of a deep-space freighter ship that is damaged by a solar flare and marooned in orbit above an uncharted planet. Separated from one another, without any clue as to who else might have escaped alive, the four survivors — plus one robot — must trek across this beautiful yet inhospitable world in search of a means of retrieving their ship and securing rescue. While traversing this strange world, the crew of the Demeter are forced to reckon with their own respective pasts as they forge ahead into an uncertain future.

In terms of the series’ capital-P plot, Scavengers Reign relies more on showing than on telling. Sure, there are flashbacks to the crew’s time aboard the Demeter, revelations born from their explorations of Vesta Minor, and conversations aplenty between the survivors. But often the most memorable and truly remarkable moments throughout the series transpire