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Demeter 227'' and her crew
Demeter 227
A mining and transportation ship, Demeter 227 failed to make a rendezvous with the rest of its fleet and was presumed lost with all hands...
In actuality, a solar storm struck the ship, forcing the crew to abandon it and escape to the planet below.
- Dramatic Space Drifting: Seen in the opening credits, the broken ship with several of its dead crew members are framed against a backdrop of Vesta.
- Escape Pod: The ship is equipped with a number of them, which some of the crew use to evacuate to the surface.
- Ragnarök Proofing: Demeter is a hardy ship. Despite being wrecked by a solar storm, the ship's secondary systems are robust enough to be reactivated with a remote beacon. The ship can enter a planet's atmosphere and crash land relatively intact despite being heavily damaged.
- Sleeper Starship: Downplayed, most of the crew and passengers aboard the ship appear to be in some cryogenic stasis, but a skeleton crew is kept active (or perhaps in rotation) to maintain things during the journey. Potentially Truth in Television; some kind of active caretaker crew would likely be necessary to keep tabs on the ship to make sure everything was functioning properly, something which in real life is speculated would be needed even with advanced artificial intelligence and the ability to put humans into stasis.
- Standard Human Spaceship: The ship is pretty utilitarian in appearance and design, with most of its spaces dedicated to propulsion and cargo.
The Crew in General
- Action Survivor: Marooned on an unknown alien world full of strange wildlife and deadly natural phenomena means that anyone left alive by the series start has morphed into one.
- No Full Name Given: Apart from Azi, none of the crew is identified by anything other than their first names.
- Reentry Scare: As seen in the opening credits and flashbacks, the survivors arrived on the planet after a hasty evacuation onboard the Demeter via a series of escape pods. Not all of them made it down
- Space Trucker: What the crew was before their stranding on Vesta, delivering supplies to colony worlds.
Sam
Voiced by: Bob Stephenson
An officer aboard the Demeter, Sam was one of the leaders on board the ship before the crew was forced to abandon it. Making planetfall with Ursula, he's one of the few survivors on Vesta at the story's start.
- Agent Scully: While Ursula tends to be fascinated with the flora and fauna of Vesta along with their mysteries, Sam is concerned primarily with what is a threat and what can be helpful, occasionally getting frustrated with Urusla's deep fascination with some of the stranger aspects of the planet.
- Bruiser with a Soft Center: Under the guise of a straightforward and strict combat captain, he is a caring person who can be very sentimental. Including the propensity for self-sacrifice, which he commits for the sake of Ursula's safety, deciding that it is better to die as a conscious human being than to live as a hybrid and unpredictable creature in the human skin with a parasite that replaced the heart.
- The Chew Toy: Is put through the wringer in the first few episodes. His shoulder gets attacked by a large crab-like alien before being abducted by a large bird alien after getting coated in smelly goo. Is then stung by a Botanical Abomination which creates a plant-like zombie clone of him.
- Dying as Yourself: After Ursula discovers a parasite attached to his heart and keeping him alive, he pulls it out of his own chest cavity once he gets her in view of the Demeter.
- A Father to His Men: Sam was pretty close with many personnel onboard the Demeter and saw that keeping the crew safe was the most essential duty for the ship's leaders. He particularly cares about Ursula's safety and comforts her in difficult situations, as if she were his daughter.
- Genius Bruiser: He is very technically savvy and in decent physical shape for his near-elderly age. Unfortunately, this combination is not a panacea for survival on Vesta.
- Hot-Blooded: Do something to threaten the crew or the ship's safety and watch him shove you against the wall for a berating as Kamen found out after changing the Demeter's course. Ursula points out that this tends to cause Sam to lash out at people instead of actually try and sit down and get people to see things his way.
- Mangst: Not loving to show any tears, he is very courageous and collected in the face of tragedies, as befits an experienced officer.
- My Way or the Highway: Sam tends to be fairly stubborn regarding crew safety and long-term plans, much to the chagrin of others around him.
- Not Himself: He's usually focused on getting back to the ship, so when he starts wanting to spend more time enjoying the scenery and constructing mud structures in caves it's because he has a parasite manipulating his brain.
- Power at a Price: The parasite gives Sam nearly boundless energy but integrates itself with his nervous and circulatory systems. It is heavily implied that removing it will prove fatal. It's also unclear whether it's actually making him more energetic or simply restricting his ability to feel pain, hunger, and exhaustion, if Ursula's medical examination is anything to go by.
- Super Not-Drowning Skills: In his near-old age he fearlessly explores the bottom of a deep reservoir for a long time without prior preparation, besides by this time his abilities are enhanced by a parasite affecting his brain. It also helps him in saving Ursula from drowning and killing the waterfowl predatory beast that attacked her after their falling from the boat into a dangerous whirlpool.
Ursula
Voiced by: Sunita Mani
A botanist aboard the Demeter. She makes planetfall near Sam and starts working with him to get the ship to the surface.
- Awesomeness by Analysis: Combined with her background in botany/biology, this tends to be her primary skill, being able to make quick deductions as to how parts of the local ecosystems on Vesta function to figure out solutions to the problems facing her.
- Beauty Is Never Tarnished: She is certainly vulnerable to attacks from hostile fauna and flora on Vista, but even the most serious troubles never show on her pretty face... unlike Azi's face, for example.
- In Harmony with Nature: Downplayed, while she’s quite savvy about how the various creatures and plants around her landing site, once she and Sam range further out, she’s just as out of the loop as he is regarding the wildlife, relying on quick observation and study to make best guesses.
- Innocently Insensitive: She doesn't see much of a problem with looting the corpses of the dead crew members. Sam is offended, saying that they are the corpses of his friends.
- MacGyvering: Adept at using the wildlife of Vesta as tools for survival, which sometimes borderlines on Organic Technology.
- Missing Mom: Inverted, a photo in a locker on Demeter shows Ursula’s family, with presumably her husband and children.
- Nature Hero: Has shades of this trope. Out of the five, she is the most comfortable outdoors, working with and observing the wildlife around her.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Initially enjoys observing the environment, but after Sam's poisoning and parasitization she quickly prioritizes getting back to the ship.
- Science Hero: She’s easily the most scientifically inclined of the survivors. While Sam focuses on trying to survive and find ways to escape the planet, she is more inclined to observe and record the unique biology of Vesta's ecosystem.
- The Smart Guy: Ursula takes a serious interest in Vesta's ecosystem. She frequently finds ways around obstacles by observing the behavior of the local wildlife.
- Troubled, but Cute: At some moments, she loses control of her curiosity, forgetting about the original goal and can be rude. Sam usually forgives her this feature easily.
Azi Nareen
Voiced by: Wunmi Mosaku
A cargo specialist aboard the Demeter, Azi is one of the few crew members to survive planetfall on Vesta, together with her Robot Buddy Levi.
- Boyish Short Hair: Sports a buzzcut.
- Butch Lesbian: Azi rocks a buzzcut, was in a relationship with a fellow crewmember Mia, before the crash, rides a sci-fi motorcycle across Vesta and is a tough, stoic woman.
- Can't Hold His Liquor: Azi is a non-drinker, and she quickly loses her composure when Mia treats her to stolen alcohol. This led to a drunken kisses at a crucial moment for the Demeter, and Azi doesn't really like to remember it even in front of her friend.
- Cool Bike: She crash-landed with a sci-fi motorcycle, the bike wheels look like and function similar to a computer mouse trackball.
- Faux Action Girl: When surviving and achieving goals, she really tries to do her best using her athleticism as a professional loader, but most of the time she can't win in a tough situation without outside help so she has to overcome her introversion in an emergency mode.
- Humble Goal: Almost nothing is known about her past, but, apparently, all that sets her in motion is not to run wild and not be left completely alone, despite her natural introversion.
- Ice Queen: While she was a bit of a loner onboard the Demeter and acts fairly reserved, she is shown to have been in a relationship with another crew member and does genuinely enjoy Levi's company as she survives on Vesta.
- Tragic Keepsake: One of the few possessions she has left is a book given to her by Mia, a crewmember she was seeing before the crash.
- Workaholic: Out of old habit, she uses constant occupation as a way to stay sane.
- Wrench Wench: Between her job onboard Demeter and her time on the planet having to fix Levi, Azi is one of the more mechanically inclined of the survivors.
Levi
Voiced by: Alia Shawkat
One of many identical robot workers aboard the Demeter. Starts behaving erratically after encountering a strange mold.
- Big Damn Heroes: Just as the Hollow tries to assimilate Azi, Levi appears and body-slams it out of the way.
- Character Development: Levi learns to start thinking of herself as a person with her own agency as she gains sentience.
- Cyborg: The process is inverted. Instead of being a mechanically-enhanced organic creature, Levi's an organically-enhanced robot and by the end of the show is clearly both robotic and organic in nature.
- Hidden Depths: After at first dismissing Levi's irregularities as malfunctions, Azi eventually finds out they've been constructing a miniature ecosystem in one of the nearby columns, showing that something much more consequential is happening.
- Lethal Klutz:
- Malfunctions in the system led to the fact that Levi's voluntary help almost killed Azi, although later their relationship improves.
- Levi also suffers from many bumps. When this adorable and a slightly clumsy robot is just beginning to get used to an unfamiliar planet, the viewer is given to understand in detail how vulnerable Levi is to the local fauna. Until poor Levi explodes completely in the most violent way after the first encounter with the Hollow.
- Nature-Loving Robot: The mold connects Levi to the environment of Vesta, and Levi in turn starts caring for the environment.
- No Biological Sex: As a robot, this applies. Since Azi and Levi are never both present with a third character, no pronouns are used to describe Levi. Popular convention seems to be she (owing to Levi sharing Fiona's voice) or they.
- Robot Buddy: She serves as Azi's only companion as she travels to the Demeter. She is deferential to Azi, who treats her politely but clearly sees herself as the only "real" person in their partnership. Levi gradually asserts her personhood
- Too Spicy for Yog-Sothoth: The Hollow attempts to assimilate Levi, whose connection to the entire planet's ecosystem overpowers the Hollow and splits it from Kamen completely, reverting it to its original form.
- We Can Rebuild Him: After getting ripped apart by the Hollow, small creatures pile up as much of Levi's remains as they can find and the mold does the rest.
- Significant Double Casting: Shares a voice actor with Fiona, the roboticist who maintained the Levis aboard the Demeter. Levi claims to remember her and believes they inherited a lot from her.
Kamen
Voiced by: Ted Travelstead
A technician aboard the Demeter. His escape pod is tangled in a thick tree, and he spends the next couple of months trapped inside it. A small creature with psychic abilities eventually frees him.
- Asshole Victim: Considering how much of an ass he can be and how much trouble he caused, it's hard not to see him as this as The Hollow uses him as a slave. However, as a result of his misadventures, he undergoes Character Development, and this affects his fate in an unusual way for the dramatic genre.
- The Atoner: Having lived the moral devastation in the womb of his enslaver, he decides to return to the Demeter to help those who survived.
- Beard of Sorrow: While he already had a beard before landing on Vesta, his time on the planet has left it scruffy and unkempt.
- The Corruptor: He doesn't do it on purpose, but his mental link with the Hollow turns it from a bizarre if relatively benign herbivore to an extremely dangerous and unstable apex predator.
- Doom Magnet: Kamen's anxieties lead him to make rash decisions. Unfortunately for everyone involved, those decisions tend to blow up in the most horrible ways possible. One of these decisions is what destroyed the Demeter and stranded everyone on Vesta in the first place. Another creates the Hollow.
- Go Mad from the Isolation: Compared to Azi, Sam, and Ursula, he’s in rough shape at the start of the series. He is trapped inside his escape pod atop a forest canopy for months before The Hollow frees him.
- Guilt-Induced Nightmare: This becomes the Hollow's main means of controlling him.
- It's All About Me: Most of Kamen's troubles stem from this. He never had time for Fiona when they lived together before coming to the Demeter, flashbacks showing him treating their vacation together as a chore. Later, when he received a promotion, he convinced a reluctant Fiona to accompany him to the Demeter, claiming it would be good for both of them but clearly putting his career first. Once on the ship, he acts brusque towards her, stressing more about his job than his partner. When the cargo he's in charge of shows signs it will degrade before reaching their destination, he asks Sam for help by changing the ship's course. When Sam bluntly refuses, citing crew safety, Kamen complains that it would be bad for him before secretly changing the course anyway. When Sam calls him out, Kamen pulls rank and forces the change. Tellingly, when he talks to Fiona just before the disaster, he can't stop talking about how happy he is with himself for taking charge and being assertive.
- Manchild: He is a middle-aged man, but and at the same time is impulsive and obsessed with the idea of proving his social worth in front of his wife and colleagues.
- Mangst: He gradually moves into this state from Wangst and from the state of denial of the situation in which he plunged himself.
- My God, What Have I Done?: He is forced to emotionally experience his failures over and over again due to the telepathic violence of his new companion, until he begins to realize that this is a dead end for consciousness.
- My Greatest Failure: He left Fiona behind when escaping the Demeter, and had to helplessly watch her pound on his escape pod's door as it launched.
- Super Drowning Skills: In the recent past, he sank like a rock when thrown overboard while boating in a storm. Since then, his fear of water has only intensified.
- Took a Level in Badass: Apparently, he is one of the weakest members of the crew, especially in contrast to Sam. Moreover, at the beginning of the story, Kamen is slowly dying of hunger and loses his mind, being unable to leave his escape pod on his own for many days. But in just a few days after his acquaintance with the Hollow, he learns how to hunt and successfully kills more and more large and dangerous Vesta's animals using the most primitive tools.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Kamen rerouting the ship's course against Sam's advice put the ship in the path of the solar storm which caused the shipwreck.
- Wishful Projection: He sincerely considered himself right when he decided to save the cargo, ignoring the danger of solar storms. But the truth was that the nearest habitable planet was poorly studied by humans precisely because of the local unstable sun.
- You Are Not Alone: Despite his fatal role in the fate of the Demeter and his willingness to completely separate from the crew for this reason, he still had living well-wishers, like Ursula. In the end, she participates in his rehabilitation and continues to communicate with him, encouraging him to help people in her greenhouse, where they grow new varieties of edible plants.
Mia
Voiced by: Sepideh Moafi
A colonist aboard the Demeter for transport to her new colony. Cryogenically frozen during the Demeter's destruction.
- Human Popsicle: She's already in a cryo-pod when the solar flare hits the Demeter. She's unfrozen in the finale.
- Small Role, Big Impact: She got Azi drunk just to have fun out of boredom, and none of Azi's coworkers could cope with the coolant leak in the cargo department in time. After learning that the cargo could deteriorate, Kamen panicked and altered the ship's course, leading to the crash.
Fiona
Voiced by: Alia Shawkat
A roboticist aboard the Demeter and Kamen's wife. Died alone from suffocation during depressurization when the Demeter was destroyed.
- Posthumous Character: She died on the Demeter. She only appears in flashbacks or Kamen's hallucinations.
- Scary Shiny Glasses: Her glasses are normal during flashbacks, but when she appears in Kamen's visions to torment him, her glasses are almost always shining. When the Hollow finds her decomposing body on the Demeter, her glasses have the same shine.
- Significant Double Casting: Shares a voice actor with Levi, as she was the roboticist who maintained them on the ship. Levi claims to remember her and that they inherited a lot from her.
- Think Happy Thoughts: She loved Kamen enough to become his official wife. Their life together didn't go smoothly, but Fiona learned to maintain a positive attitude despite this and followed her husband into deep space. It was her fatal choice.
- Too Good for This Sinful Earth: As seen in flashbacks, she was one of the nicest crewmembers on Demeter, showing an incredible amount of patience with Kamen despite all the crap he puts her through and treats the Levi robots with a significant amount of care.
Charlie
Voiced by: Skyler Gizondo
A colonist aboard the Demeter who's accidentally jolted from cryosleep early after it makes landfall. He's killed by the Hollow not long after.
- Butt-Monkey: He's brand-new to Vesta compared to the other survivors so we get to see him make every mistake possible in dealing with the wildlife, mostly Played for Laughs until he meets Kamen.
- Neck Snap: The Hollow uses its telepathy to twist his head 180 degrees.
- Small Role, Big Impact: Seeing the fate of Charlie brings back Kamen's guilt over what really happened to "Demeter" and, in particular, to Fiona.The realization that the wife is already dead for months causes Kamen to merge with the Hollow to escape the nightmare and at the same time to infect his enslaver with the goal of reaching the main ship.
- We Hardly Knew Ye: He's alive for part of a single episode.
Planet Vesta
The Hollow *Unmarked Spoilers Ahead*
A psychic creature that forms a symbiotic bond with Kamen. It communicates with him using flashbacks of his engagement and hallucinations of his wife.
- All There in the Script: No characters refer to it as, "The Hollow." The name instead appears in the subtitles.
- Ascended to Carnivorism: It seems like animals of this species eat whatever their thrall brings them, and their usual thralls only collect berries. When the Hollow enhralls Kamen, a host capable of killing much larger prey, it starts eating meat and gradually becomes bigger and tougher as a result.
- Big Bad: It's the single most dangerous thing on Vesta for the human survivors, especially as it grows with Kamen's help. Influenced by his mind, it eventually starts going after the Demeter itself.
- Big Bad Ensemble: In the last three episodes, with Kris. It's trying to kill her as much as it is Azi and Ursula, but Kris is still a huge threat to the protagonists.
- Healing Factor: Able to quickly seal its wound after Azi manages to cut its side open. It's unknown if the species has this ability anyway or if it's something specific to the Hollow after its transformation.
- Power-Up Food: It grows from the size of a koala bear to the size of a truck in a matter of days after Kamen starts feeding it meat. Its psychic powers grow commensurately with its physical size as well; it's able to completely destroy Kris's salvage ship with telekinesis without much effort.
- Roaring Rampage of Revenge: While it's not friendly at the best of times, it goes berserk when Kris and Barry's breach charges cause a chain reaction that desecrates Fiona's corpse, implying its link with Kamen is making it seek revenge on whoever's responsible.
- Super-Persistent Predator: After it bonds with Kamen, it strays well outside its natural habitat while pursuing the survivors of the Demeter.
- The Symbiote: It's from a species that has a kind of mutualism, controlling other animals to get food and in return, protecting them with their psychic powers.
- Tragic Villain: Having relied too much on a human being for hunting, in one day the Hollow becomes a cannibal and is forced to leave its native nest after that. When traveling together with Kamen, the Hollow values him so much that it tries to destroy any hypothetical reason for parting with him. Over time, it becomes clear that its species need not only slaves but also interlocutors, which is the reason why they live in groups. Therefore, when Kamen falls into a seemingly hopeless depression, the Hollow begins to suffer from loneliness and tries to find companions among the human survivors who are also convenient for enslavement.
John's Wife
Voiced by: Masha King
An old human woman who doesn't speak and lives alone in the wreckage of her spaceship. She knows the environment especially well. Actually the host of a giant creature that uses parasitization to spread its offspring.
- A Day in the Limelight: A flashback sequence focuses on her and John when she was much younger. It also serves to establish how the tree parasite grows in its host.
- Cool Old Lady: Despite her oddities, she's extremely capable and immediately goes to work healing Sam when she comes across him and Ursula. Averted when it becomes clear she was healing him so she could implant him with a tree parasite.
- Hermit Guru: She lives out in the middle of nowhere and is able to cure Sam of his poisoning using natural ingredients and processes around her ship.
- The Speechless: She never speaks outside the flashback sequence. It's unclear if this is because of her decades of complete isolation or a symptom of the later stages of parasitization.
John
- Voiced by: James Kyson
A man who settled on Vesta with his wife after the shipwhreck and was buried under a grotesque humanoid statue many years before Sam and Ursula stop at his grave. Appears himself in his wife's flashbacks.
- Cold Sniper: As flashbacks show, he used a sniper rifle to hunt while living on Vesta. And it was a very productive hunt.
- Posthumous Character: He became one of the first carriers for the parasite and was forced to be killed by his own wife in a tense battle shortly after he infected her. She buried him with all the love she could muster after that.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: The parasite that settled in him quickly learned to use a human being for its own purposes and this species developed abilities later, living in the body of John's wife for many years.
Other
Kris
- Voiced by: Pollyanna McIntosh
The female leader of a mining crew that's extracting resources from Vesta's moon. She and her crew make planetfall after hearing Azi's distress signal, hoping to raid the Demeter for supplies.
- Big Bad Ensemble: In the last three episodes, with the Hollow. They're working against each other and it actively tries to kill her, but she's just as much a problem for the protagonists as they try to save what's left of the Demeter.
- Everyone Has Standards: Kris is opposed to helping the survivors of the Demeter, but she also avoids opportunities for overt villainy. She promises to drop Azi off wherever she wants once they leave and doesn't kill Azi after they come to blows.
- Fatal Flaw: Her Control Freak tendencies. Kris needs to get her way with everything, down to micromanaging the emotional states of her team members, and becomes increasingly hostile and abusive whenever anyone steps out of line.
- Ice Queen: She looks like the most emotionally detached and cold person in her team. This is not a deceptive impression.
- Jerkass Has a Point: Her ruthless, self-centered philosophy isn't without justification, considering she works with a very small crew in hostile environments and needs to stay focused on her objective. But she's terrible at adapting her worldview to the situation, leading her to take increasingly sociopathic measures to ensure she achieves her goals on Vesta.
- Lady Looks Like a Dude: She dresses in such a way that at first glance it's really difficult for the viewer to determine if this is a thirty-year-old guy or a middle-aged woman.
- Laser-Guided Karma: When Barry finds one of the mold flowers on the Demeter she has him put it in the cargo as a gift for Terrence's family. After she escapes Vesta, the mold interfaces with her shuttle and completely disables it; she nearly dies of dehydration before floating into the space cult's ship.
- Replacement Goldfish: After Terrence dies she briefly tries treating Azi like the third member of the crew, encouraging her to forget her past and stick with them. It doesn't work.
- The Unfettered: Her only concern is getting the Demeter's cargo back to her colony. She cares about her crew but won't relent if they get in the way of the mission. Azi and Barry insisting on saving the passengers leads to her ditching both at different points.
Barry
- Voiced by: Dash Williams
An inexperienced teenage boy who travels with Kris and Terrence.
- Heel Realization: Barry is a compassionate teenager who understands where is the boundary between the human and the monster. Therefore, when he sees evidence that Kris will not be stopped by human deaths to receive cargo on the Demeter, he chooses to save people, risking being left on an alien planet forever.
- It's All My Fault: Barry's habit of trying to record wildlife causes Kris to chuck the recorder into the woods, which gets Terrence killed when he goes after it. This pushes Barry even further towards Kris, to the point of smashing the recorder when Azi tries to give it back to him.
- Le Parkour: Despite his lack of experience, he seems quite adept at navigating difficult terrain, showing more aptitude than Azi, who has been living on Vesta for months.
- Sense Freak: He's highly sensitive to sound and gets distracted easily by any new noises he encounters.
- "Well Done, Son" Guy: He wants to earn Kris' approval, which she leverages to manipulate him.
Terrence
- Voiced by: Freddy Rodriguez
Kris's second in command, a young man acting as an older brother on the team for Barry.
- Big Brother Mentor: He acts this way for Barry, being very attentive and encouraging regardless of the complexity of the situation.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: He gets caught by a plant that constricts him in its vines, horribly twisting his body in unnatural directions. Even worse, he's still alive, and Kris has to mercy-kill him.
- Nice Guy: He shares a bit of Kris' pragmatism but is otherwise a pretty nice guy, especially to Barry. He gave Barry his recorder as a gift in the first place and slips it back to him after Kris confiscates it.
