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And the best thing was, it was real. "Ridley loves practical [real physical] effects," explains Guzikowski. "The more practical effects that you can work into sci fi, the more weight it starts to carry." The only CGI augmentation to it was a single addition. "We added what we affectionately called 'Mt. Ridley,'" a 60,000 tall mountain, says visual effects (VFX) supervisor Ray McIntyre, Jr., put in place as needed to make the mountains appear to be a different environment from the Settlement. "It's that same set, but you'd never know it."

The Settlement itself is rooted in one of Guzikowski's ready references — Little House on the Prairie, and, in this case, lots of sticks and stones. "Constructing these Barracks," the "home" structure the Androids use to raise the children, "out of these rocks, that only these androids are strong enough to move, give it an almost Medieval aesthetic," he explains. "Because even though we're in the future, they haven't been able to bring much technology," the exception being the androids themselves. "They essentially are living off the land." The concept for the entire encampment was fleshed out by British concept designer Ken Friedrickson.

While Scott's team shot its Barracks interiors in the practical set itself, a standing interior set was built at Cape Town Film Studios, used by following production teams. Interior lamps are seen as fascinating luminescent balls. "It's like hi tech candlelight," notes Wolski. "We had license, because it's the future. Who's to say that such light wouldn't exist."

The one other technology exception is the Lab — a small red coffered dome that easily pops up from a ball Mother tosses onto the ground, one item she and Father were able to rescue from their ship before it teetered down into a large hole into the ground after their landing. "Ridley wanted something in there that gave it some geography, so you knew where you were," Seagers states. "So we ended up creating that Lab. Something that they could grab, like a ball, that would morph into a kind of Lego hut." The pair went in circles trying to come up with a design, until Seagers came upon an old 1930s Jello mold. And thus he found his Lab.

The dome was built from fiberglass casts, in five different sizes, allowing for replacements, should one become damaged. And, like the Barracks, an interior set was built at the studio. Those growing embryos seen in the first episode, by the way, were made by the production's prosthetics group, visible in jars filled with. . . jelly. "Ridley likes jellies, the texture of the see-through gel that you see," explains Eatock.

While Seagers notes that the settlers' source of water was decided to be a cool rock in the back of the Barracks, collecting condensation, their source of food is "carbos," tubers from plants Mother and Father found growing in a very large spiral pattern outside.

The spiral pattern is based on the shape of the skeletons of humongous serpents which once inhabited the planet. One such skeleton is indeed visible on the surface, at the Settlement, built by the Art Department. "We had a full Fabrication Department," housed back at the studio, explains Eatock. "We actually were fabricating so much — trees, rock faces, etc. — that we needed to augment the team, bringing in fabricators from Australia to help us with the bones."

The plants used to make the unusual-looking crops are actually an African Aloe — nearly 1,000 of them, brought in by the experts in the Greens Dept. "The beauty of being in South Africa is that you have all of this natural plant life you can tap into, which the majority of the public has never seen before," says Seagers, allowing for truly alien-looking vegetation.

Similarly, a rather bizarre collection of 1000 other trees — Kokoboom trees, with large exposed roots — are seen when facing away from the Settlement. "They grow in a very arid landscape here in South Africa," Eatock explains. "We trucked them in and uprooted them — and then, took them back home at the end of the shoot, which his quite a great success story itself, environmentally." Because of the arid environments the plants come from, a complex drainage system was built, to keep them from drawing too much water in the much damper location, which might have killed the plants.

If you're wondering what those giant holes are, seen everywhere — like the one the androids' ship falls down — you're not alone. You also wouldn't be alone to think they're somehow connected with the giant serpents, whose skeletons seem to be just about that size. "They're totally mysterious, at this point," notes Guzikowski. "They're definitely bottomless, and the characters, the audience, no one really knows how bottomless they really are, where they go, or how they got there. It's an inexplicable part of the landscape, as soon as they arrive."

Scott had originally wanted those flying in spaceships over the planet surface to see the large holes. "You don't know what's in it," says Seagers. "They land on the side of the hole, and you just feel this hot air coming out, from the center of the Earth."

A real/practical hole was indeed dug at Lourensford, about a hectare in area and 30 feet deep, with a few others just about five or six feet deep. The main hole's depth allowed Wolski to place his camera in the bottom and look up, to see Father or Campion looking down — or for visual effects to look down and create a deep extension. A second hole was also built back at the blue screen visual effects stage at the studio, 35 to 40 feet deep — but with a roof hole which was much smaller than the bottom, for shots, say, when Father has climbed down and is looking up. "It's the old 'forced perspective' method," Wolski explains. "The camera can appear to be 100 feet down, but it's not. That's what people used to do before visual effects."

The cinematographer gave the Settlement a decidedly monochromatic look. "It's not dark, it's just very desaturated," he explains, something which fans of Scott's work know to be part of his aesthetic. Night scenes were actually filmed during the day, using another old technique, known as "day for night" — lowering the exposure to give an appearance of nighttime, while letting available natural light to the work. "When you light at night, you can only see so much. And those mountains were so spectacular, it just allowed us to give the image a full dimension," he explains. "So the nights are very twilightish. It's a new planet, so we had artistic license." Adds Luke Scott, "Keppler had two moons and three suns. So who's to say that night on a distance planet wouldn't look like that."