Five hundred years before the Motherworld clashed with the rebels on Veldt, Moa and its colonies were under the thumb of the flamboyantly cruel King Ulmer (hello to Jason Isaacs). Bored of his usual depravities, Ulmer demands novelty. Raina (Ella Purnell) and Adwin (Alfred Enoch) have it: a robot, a perfect representation of Raina. One destined for more than just depravity at the hands of Ulmer…

What an odd project this is. Firstly, there is no writer credited anywhere. There are script and narrative supervisors, and three layers of producer, but the person who actually was (hopefully) paid to sit and write the scripts that needed to be supervised and produced, is unnamed. Which is as ridiculous as it is idiotic and I hope is corrected on future episodes.

That, eye-popping, absence aside this is a good start. Rebel Moon feels like a richly detailed world that struggled to fit into the story of the two movies and The Seneschal speaks to that. This is the origin story of the Jimmys, the species of robotic knight voiced by Sir Anthony Hopkins in the movies and Peter Serafinowicz in some delightfully portentous narration here. Enoch and Purnell play their creators, a pair of scientists from an overlooked world whose first creation is a robotic version of Raina, Purnell’s character. They’re the heart of the show, and it’s a smart move to put Purnell and Enoch in these roles. They’re instantly likable characters and that survives the extreme situation they’re put through. I’m going to be interested to see how their focus being forcibly shifted from sex bots to warriors will change that. Especially in the face of the towering murderous presence of Ulmer, Isaacs on typically good form. Naveen Andrews, as his long-suffering advisor is great fun too but hasn’t been given a tremendous amount to do yet.

The cast are uniformly great and its directed with that exact sort of 40kian portent that the movies have some fun with. If I have an issue it’s that the one element of the movies that really didn’t need to be explored in more detail is… explored in more detail.

The Rebel Moon movies have a difficult relationship with sexual assault. The first one, or at least the initial cut of it, leans on sexual assault and the implication of it as deeply lazy shorthand for evil and does so with remarkably little subtlety and even less compassion for the victims. It’s not that this issue doesn’t need to be discussed, it really does (I’m writing this as yet another genre luminary is revealed to be a predator). But Rebel Moon struggles to get past using it as sensationalism and so does The Seneschal. The fact the first robot Ulmer buys is a sexbot is enough. The fact that it’s over enthusiastic shrieks of increasingly worrying orgiastic delight become a running gag is too much. If you’re going to do sex in SF, do sex in SF. Don’t be edgy about it, don’t be weirdly coy about it and somehow this is both. Hopefully future episodes will explore the consequences of Raina being essentially sold to Ulmer and there are hints of that for sure but it’s early days and there is a lot of work to do.

Verdict: If you liked Rebel Moon, any version of it, you’ll like this. If you didn’t, the cast alone may sway you. And maybe next episode we’ll find out who wrote it. 8/10

Alasdair Stuart