Where are Luke Skywalker and Poe Dameron when you need them?
Shadow Raiders can accurately be described as a Cosmic Horror Story set aimed at a younger audience. As these moments can attest to, it fits that description well.- The Beast Planet in general.
- The Beast Planet is a gargantuan, jet-black sentient planet that goes around from solar system to solar system, devouring worlds and obliterating all life on them. It is capable of creating an endless army of mindlessly obedient soldiers capable of destroying physical matter with a single touch.
- Most hauntingly, no matter what anyone does, it cannot be stopped. From the lasers of the Battle Moons to ramming other planets into it entirely, nothing so much as damages it. The only hope for the Cluster's survival is to use the Prison Planet to teleport the Beast Planet into another corner of the galaxy. Even then, the last shot of the series is the Beast Planet preparing to devour yet another world, as active as it was before.
- The alliance of worlds succeeded in doing one thing: making it angry, and that made the situation go From Bad to Worse. Its arsenal, rarely used, can annihilate you from many astronomical units away. It doesn't need to take its time devouring you, it just wants to, and pissing it off proper is the last thing you'll ever do.
- The opening scene of the series where we see Planet Tek and everyone on it destroyed does an excellent job of cementing just how powerful the Beast Planet is.
- The design of the Beast Drones themselves is unsettling. They're made entirely of null matter, which is capable of destroying organic matter with a single touch. More strikingly, none of them appear to have heads, just mangled jawbones.
- It gets worse. Those who are consumed by the Beast suffer A Fate Worse Than Death as they are absorbed and studied often by the monster as it learns from what it's devoured and grows even more dangerous. They are only briefly released from this nightmare in the form of null matter copies, if it wants them to do its bidding. The Beast Planet can even go so far as creating fake planets and evil clones of loved ones to lure in enemies to devour. It's not only a monstrous unstoppable planet-eater, it's a sadistic Manipulative Bastard to boot!
- The Beast planet arrives in a very intimidating fashion, taking the defenders of the Solar system under siege completely by surprise by warping inside the sun and emerging from it like it's nothing. An impressive display of resilience that sends a clear message: The Beast is here, and it's invincible.
- Even more horrifying is that the Beast Planet is so large it's gravitational field can literally wreck a planet just being close enough to it, bringing an apocalypse to a planet's residents just by being present!
- The humanitarian refugee crisis the Beast creates for any advanced space-fairing peoples who manage to escape it devouring their world, only to find they've delayed the inevitable. The Beast and its minions pursue its prey relentlessly, while those homeless pitiful souls risk starvation as their resources dwindle away to nothing.
- The Beast Generals, Blokk, Lamprey, and Voyd. Even in spite of Blokk's humorously exaggerated Arnold-esque accent, the pair are still nonetheless a trio of merciless, planet-destroying sadists with nary a redeeming or humorous trait between them. Blokk and Lamprey get to some particularly cruel things over the course of the series, the former especially so towards the end of the second season. The last one, Voyd, never talks, which only serves to make him even more unsettling - even ignoring the fact it's responsible for the prolonged torture of the Beast Generals once they fail the Beast after the first season.
- Blokk in particular is the most blatantly sadistic among the three, since he puts great detail on enthusiastically wanting to '''slowly''' torture Pyrus and Zera to death for humiliating him instead of quickly vaporizing them like his other victims. Keep in mind, the two are children!
- In the episode Ragnarok, Blokk flippantly retorts to Lamprey that their plan to destroy system's defenses by converting a dead world into a battle-station has never failed them before. Lamprey warns Blokk there's always a first time, and she's proven right as Remora had an Achilles' Heel in its cannons because of its rushed and botched construction into a superweapon. This mindbogglingly means, as well a formidable and endlessly spawning Armada, the Beast Planet also potentially has hundreds, if not thousands of fully-functional battle planet Remoras throughout the entire galaxy all at its disposal, to wreak havoc on many unsuspecting worlds long before the Beast itself arrives. How can the Alliance hope to survive against not only a virtually invincible enemy, but a threat that spans the cosmos? And the Beast was furious after just ONE of these monstrosities went up in smoke! Enough that it teleported to the Cluster's sun to deal with the Alliance personally!
- The battle between Lamprey and Tekla in "Mind War." Lamprey is trapped in a comatose Tekla's body after the events of the previous episode and is largely left to the mercy of the heroes. What does she do to try and gain back control? Mind Rape Tekla with the images of her planet being destroyed and her father dying while promising to suck the life out of her slowly. Lamprey nearly gets the best of Tekla several times in the episode and even uses her body to directly threaten the life of Femur, all while the others are completely helpless to stop her as destroying her would result in Tekla's demise as well.
- The ending of the series. In true cosmic horror fashion, the Beast Planet still exists, is still unstoppable, and closes the series about to destroy Planet Reptizar.
- Maybe minor, but the CGI has not aged well.
- Jewelia is a particularly twisted example of The Vamp with a touch of Depraved Bisexual and her actions are not played for laughs at all. She's possibly the most evil character in the series not connected to the Beast Planet and, unlike the rest of the cast, has no problems being destroyed as long as she can make others suffer.
