After the letdowns that are Raised by Wolves and the Alien prequels; I’ll pass on a Ridley Scott series, til I hear otherwise.
Certainly a chunk of the writing so far is cliche. I'm pretty sure I saw parts of this show a dozen times in various 90s shows and 50s/60s/70s books. Anybody remember Earth 2?
Although the child actors are quite bad at acting, the adults largely make up for it.
The environment does feel like a Star Trek jungle set, where it's hard to suspend disbelief that it's not just a few hundred square meter outdoor stage in South Africa. But we've been suspending disbelief on low res sci fi shows for years, so long as the story is good, and even when the writing is bad.
For instance Babylon 5 is one of my all time favorites and the writing is bad and the acting is worse. A couple actors elevate and save it (Peter Jurasik, Andreas Katsulas, Ed Wasser, Walter Koenig). But what really saves it is story: not effects, not dialog, not delivery, just compelling world-building story.
I'm hoping Raised by Wolves turns into something great, but so far as it's at least good, I'm along for the ride.
I also liked the Alien prequels. They weren’t as good as the original, but I thought they were still interesting enough. I loved the old ship with the pilot in Prometheus, but I feel like it wasn’t finished either and there could have been more.
One thing I'm enjoying, unlike in 90s sci fi, is when the characters call out obvious threats and take them as a given, like "that creature has probably been brain chipped and given as a tool to track you".
Indeed, there is no free lunch in dystopia land, whereas 90s sci fi would have the otherwise smart characters be incredibly dumb in situations like this.
Its like Lost or Battlestar Galactica, a lot of nonsense they make up on the spot one episode ahead of filming.