Season Review: Strange Planet Season One

Overview:

Strange Planet is set in a world that is most definitely not Earth, and yet feels oddly familiar. A population of good-intentioned aliens go through their everyday lives while they question their daily tasks and what motivates them and the grander world around them. Life, death, love, hate, and everything in between are the rich talking points that give Strange Planet power and show its audience that the world is only as weird as you allow it to be.

Our Take:

There are endless animated sci-fi comedies that are set in space and yet Nathan W. Pyle’s Strange Planet is wholly original. Strange Planet makes a distinct impression through its unconventional, edutainment-esque quality to its storytelling that almost functions like a documentary where each episode tackles a different random topic, such as airplanes, sports, astrology, or birthdays. These subjects then become the impetus for tangential sketch-like gags. Strange Planet celebrates the odd, nonsensical hypocrisies that define humanity. This omniscient narrator type of structure is strengthened through the absurdist material that’s explored and the playful misinformation that fills each installment.

There are very few series like Strange Planet and it’s a structure that authentically captures the energy of Nathan W. Pyle’s original webcomic, yet also finds a way to effectively translate it into half-hour episodes of television that, by necessity, require some sort of plot and narrative propulsion. It’s a strategy that may prove to be controversial and it’s easy to picture a different version of Strange Planet that establishes a small core cast of aliens that are the series’ focus rather than this broader approach that tackles the entire society through selective storytelling. This risk ultimately pays off and it turns Strange Planet into a much more interesting series and not just any other alien sci-fi comedy. 

Strange Planet is uniquely in a class of its own when it comes to animated series. That being said, it perhaps bears the closest resemblance to the short-lived Midnight Gospel and its stream of consciousness slice of life storytelling. Strange Planet also bears a heavy tonal resemblance to wry British comedies like Look Around You or The Brass Eye that are so dry they’re brittle and pride themselves on their believable misinformation. It’s both illuminating and mystifying. Strange Planet makes the audience think about the ways of the world–or the ways it’s not–and then question why.There are even shades of Adam Ruins Everything or even How To With John Wilson in Strange Planet through its quasi-documentary approach to this weird, foreign world that’s also all-too familiar.

Each Strange Planet episode becomes the perfect jumping in point and any of these episodes can be enjoyed on their own without any of the others. This is a freeing structure that makes it easier to give Strange Planet a shot. However, many audiences may feel detached to this approach and wish that there was more of a dedicated cast and conventional storytelling. There’s endless bizarre commentary on the topics that Strange Planet deconstructs in each episode, but this gets a little repetitive. The clinical nature of many of the characters may wear thin and feel like episodes are derivative of each other even if they all tackle radically different territory. The show’s recurring perspective that’s carried out in every single character like some alien hive mind is fun, but ultimately limiting. Audiences will be entertained with these characters, but their lack of names and grander identities does rob them of grander character development. Strange Planet is not a show where its characters grow and reach epiphanies by the season’s end, but it also reinforces that this is okay when the real focus is society as a whole. It’s the “Strange Planet” that’s the show’s main character and it does experience a sense of change over these ten episodes.

-these detached characters and their unusual always of life oddly remind the audience what it truly means to be human through these breakdowns of societal norms. Strange Planet is gloriously alien with its sensibilities, but in doing so it cleverly holds a mirror up to humanity and pushes the audience to re-litigate why society is the way that it is and if it even needs to be this way. It prompts intellectual change and reflection through the silliest visuals, characters, and digressions.

Strange Planet gives audiences a lot to digest and there’s a visually sumptuous world to take in that feels fully fleshed out. This extends into Strange Planet’s music, which is often used to reinforce the episodes’ themes in quirky, catchy ways. This music contributes a lot to Strange Planet’s energy and it’s often entertaining. At the same time, it’s not that groundbreaking of a tactic and there are occasional musical interludes that feel more perfunctory than authentic.

Dan Harmon and executive producer Steve Levy’s influence here almost feels reminiscent of Harmon’s old podcast, Harmontown, in terms of intense deconstructions of singular ideas that get examined to the nth degree. Community and Rick and Morty would adeptly do this too, but Strange Planet feels freer than Harmon’s other television series in the sense that this isn’t restricted to a conventional plot. Harmon’s interest in taking ideas as far as they can go and the unique world that Pyle has created beautifully complement each other and they really feel like the perfect fit for this series. Strange Planet feels distinctly representative of both of their unique styles of comedy.

Strange Planet is ultimately not for everyone, but that’s also one of its greatest strengths. It’s a series that absolutely deserves a chance and it’s important that there are more unconventional animated series like this that can take advantage of the medium’s limitless nature. Apple TV+ is slowly building an impressive animated library of content and more esoteric risks like Strange Planet–whether they work or not–would be in the streaming service’s interest to better establish a daring style. It’s hard to imagine this type of show airing anywhere else, even on Adult Swim, which is a testament to Apple TV+’s trust in Strange Planet and its willingness to take chances on unique ideas and strong storytellers.