(EERIE MUSIC) (SOLEMN PIANO MUSIC) (SOLEMN VIOLIN) (WIND GUSTS) Where are your gaiters? I fucking forgot. (WHIMPERS) Come here. Thank you, husband. Marriage. (FOOTSTEPS) (WIND GUSTS) I don't think you're going to be able to walk anywhere like that. I'm fine. Tanya and I can finish it off. We should be able to handle it. Us two old pros. I know you are. It's just... It's meant to be really beautiful over at Monument. The whole fuckin' island looks the same, to be honest. You want anything? Latte? Croissant? No? Is she OK? Yeah, she's fine. It happens to everyone before they leave. (WINCES) Foaming Plateau, 22kg. Monument Harbour, 24kg. Cossack Ridge, 22. And Smoothwater Bay, 24kg, with an additional 8kg of brodifacoum poison in an intertidal zone. (DISTORTED SPEECH ON RADIO) Hello? You there, New Zealand? (RADIO) WOMAN: Coming through now, Sarah. Oh, there must be a storm coming. OK, I'm moving my queen to F6. You've been thinking about that move for a while. Well, I've got all the time in the world. So that's the whole island covered now. Are you guys celebrating? Depends what you send down on the supply boat. OK. Last lot. I hope they haven't drunk it. They're going to be at least four days in this weather. (BARKS) (BIRDS SQUAWK, PEOPLE YELL) Speech, Tanya. Come on. Um, to my lovely crewmates, to those weeks of subantarctic freezing rain, I say,... 'Fuck you! I'm going home!' Whoo! - Pete. So, whatever brought you down to this godforsaken dot of earth for the next six months, we say nau mai, haere mai. Welcome, bro. A few ground rules. Don't fuck off the sea lions. That's for sure. No shoes inside. No shoes inside. And clean up after yourself. Anything else, Sar? Don't be a wanker? Are you going to miss us? Nah. I'm bloody homesick. (BOTH LAUGH) I reckon you need a soul patch. BOTH: Yeah. Why don't you come back on the boat with me? I'm going to worry about you. It's just a winter. Are you happy just being his accolade? Stop. Stop it. I know you think you know him, but you don't. (MUSIC DISTORTS) Dammit. Another one. Fuck me. (CHUCKLES) Hey. What's happening back in New Zealand? I don't really read the papers Is that Antarctica that way? Yeah, it is. That way. I meant roughly. It's good to have you here, man. Hey. Hey. Am I just your accolade? You're a methodical... ...beautiful scientist. Watch yourself. Stay still. (WAVES CRASH) (WIND GUSTS) GLENN: 10 years ago, this island had everything - cats, rats, rabbits, pigs, feral sheep eating the grass. Well, we killed the cats. The poison will deal with the rabbits. Now, our job is to monitor the island, take its temperature. We're going to see this whole ecosystem shift back to the way it was before humans ever touched it. (CAMERA SHUTTER CLICKS) Down at Disappointment Inlet there's been a 25% drop in chlorophyll levels. The hillside's getting eaten away, Glenn. Think we should call this stuff in now? I'm taking care of it. The island was too big for hand-baiting. We need to get choppers down there before winter. You're gonna have to trust me. (OMINOUS MUSIC) You know, in a hundred years, when the polar caps are gone, the population of the world will be a tenth of what it is today. Worst case scenario. Best case? Best case? Best case is that we wipe each other out entirely and there's no one left at all. Sorry, Pete. Glenn loves to indoctrinate everyone he meets. I'm sorry, darling. I didn't realise it bored you. Not planning on having kids any time soon, then? God, no. It's arguably one of the most egotistical things you can do, having these little versions of yourself running everywhere. (RADIO STATIC) (RADIO) WOMAN: Hey there, Perseverance. Didn't expect to hear from you for a while. Some troubling results have come in. Ah, OK. I'll just find a pen. Hang on. (DISTURBING MUSIC) GLENN: Night. Sarah! There's a front coming. We need to secure the nets. I need you and Pete to go. OK. Come on! (TRICKLING) Hey. What happened to you? Do you have something to change into? I didn't bring any extra clothes. A raincoat? OK. Well, there's a lookout about an hour away. Do you think you can make it that far? I don't feel the cold. Of course you don't. Keep moving. This way. (WIND GUSTS, RAIN POURS) (THUNDER RUMBLES) We'll wait here for the storm to pass. Shit, Pete. You're like ice. You've got to take that off. Come on. Arms up. (THUNDER RUMBLES) Sit down. (THUNDER RUMBLES, WIND GUSTS) Tell me how old you are. 23. I told you. SARAH: You ask me something, then. PETE: Why did you marry Glenn? Um... I took his class at uni. He opened my eyes to a new way of thinking. He's the most interesting person I've ever met. And the age thing? Do you like it here? It can be hard. Sometimes you feel like you're the only person left on earth. I like that. It makes me feel like I'm part of something... bigger. You sound like him. All our problems, all the shit we worry about. Our lives. None of that matters here. That's horrible. Beautiful. Are you hungry? Fucking starving. I've got protein. Fuck off. Come on. No. You go ahead. It's really yum. It's so good. You've got to eat it. Just try a little. I'm not eating that. Get off. (BOTH LAUGH) -Shut your eyes. -No. No. (SARAH LAUGHS) Ugh. What? Shit, Glenn. The radio! Yeah, I know. She was a big one. Blew the whole thing over. Should be able to fix it once we've cleared this stuff out of the way. Things to do. (STATIC) SARAH: Huge storm last night. I can't believe what it did to the radio. Yeah. Hard to feed a report home now. (SPITS) (SPITS) It's Disappointment Inlet. The creek. Landover. All those plants absolutely stripped and scarred. It's under control, Sarah. It's not the end of the world. But the point of science is that you accept failure as an extra bit of data. The fact is, we can't kill every rabbit on this island by ourselves. I don't know what's wrong with that radio, eh. I put it back together and- I'll fix the goddam radio when I get a minute, OK? (TRICKLING) (SOLEMN MUSIC) (CAMERA BEEPS) (CAMERA BEEPS) (CHUCKLES) What's funny? I think I'm pregnant. Oh. Have you told Glenn? (WIND GUSTS) GLENN: It's arguably one of the most egotistical things you can do, having these little versions of yourself running everywhere. (LAUGHS) Little human vermin. (SOBS) (GLENN CHUCKLES) What are you so happy about? Pests. (DOOR OPENS, CLOSES) (SLOSHING, CLATTERING) Hey! (TENSE MUSIC) (WAVES CRASH) (WIND GUSTS) Hey! Surprise. Surprise. Happy birthday to us. Um,... we found all this Christmas shit in the spare room. Thank you for this. This is nice. And also I... made some... Christmas crackers. Hey, hon. What do you call a letter that goes up a chimney at Christmas? SARAH: It doesn't make a noise PETE: I think you have to make it yourself. Bang. Blackmail. What? What do you call a letter that goes up the chimney at Christmas? Blackmail. You don't have a hat. Do one with Glenn. Mm. Do one with me. Bang. You only say bang if you win. (GLENN CHUCKLES) Bang. (SOLEMN MUSIC) Hey, we're gonna take advantage of this break in the weather. Beaumont shags are nesting- GLENN: Bounty. Bounty shags are nesting up in the cliffs. Do you wanna come? No, you guys go. (WAVES ROAR) (OMINOUS MUSIC) Glenn. Where's Pete? Pete! Hello! Pete! Peter! Sarah! Peter! Peter! (SARAH SOBS) It's over. Come on. It's over. (SARAH SOBS) (DOOR OPENS, WIND WHISTLES) You need to fix that radio right now. I'll help. The sooner we get helicopters down here, the better. (DOOR SLAMS) Pete! Peter! Sarah, there's no way that he would have survived in the water all this time. This is a person. He's my friend. You need to report this. (SIGHS) I once had to share a tent with a corpse. That's what we sign up for. Yeah, if we don't get helicopters down here soon, that's us trapped for the winter. OK. So that's what this is about - so you can go back to your drone life in your drone city with all the other shells and keep sucking the life out of this planet. You know what's really funny about your whole 'humanity's bad' philosophy? That you need some loser to listen to your bullshit! You lonely, lazy bit of shit! Fix the radio! No! Never! Why?! Because I'm not going back. (GRUNTS) (CLANGING) (GLENN MURMURS) What are you doing? Aah! Aah! Argh! Untie me. Sarah, untie me. (GLENN GRUNTS) No! No! Argh! Argh! (CRIES) Sarah! Please. Stop. Sarah. (GRUNTS) Under here is your lower intestine. The stab wound will hurt, but it shouldn't cause too much pain. No medical attention in three, four days will generally result in a painful infection and death. There's just something worth saving here, OK? (GLENN BREATHES RAPIDLY) (THUD!) (CRIES) SARAH SOBS: I'm sorry, but you need to fix the radio for me so we can go home. (ROCK MUSIC PLAYS) TANYA: To my lovely crewmates, to those weeks of subantarctic freezing rain, I say, 'Fuck you! I'm going home!' Whoo! (BOTH LAUGH) It looks really sexy (!) They wanted to make sure you got this. Oh yeah. (SIGHS) Bad news? Pen pushers - you know. How's the kid? He's just a kid. (SCOFFS) Seems a bit useless. Yeah, well... You want to take a bit of time with him. He's keen enough. Wants to learn. So is that Antarctica that way SARAH: Yeah, it is. No, no, no, no. That way. I meant roughly. It's good to have you here, man. (WAVES CRASH) (WHINING) Bloody difficult to get poison into them. Didn't think there was many of them left. This one's a real survivor. They were introduced to kill the rats. Un-fucking-believable. What are you going to do with it? Wanna do it? What, kill it? Yeah. You've killed an animal before, haven't you? Of course. Or you could take it back to the hut, kill it humanely, but one of us will have to bring the cage back and... (COCKS RIFLE) (MEWING) (GUNSHOT) (POIGNANT MUSIC) The good shit, eh? On the boat on the way down, we, um... we passed a pod of whales. Oh. Beautiful. And I was wondering, like... what happens to whales when they die. Do they just sink away to the bottom? It's called whale fall. See, the beautiful thing, when a whale dies, is that its carcass can sustain an entirely new ecosystem. Thousands of organisms can live and propagate off it. (BOTH CHUCKLE) Trippy. Evolution has led us to a dead end. All the empirical evidence suggests and points to us being a complete and utter failure as a species. And yet we keep getting told that we're somehow special. By who? Oh, fucking television, internet, radio, books, music, you know. Everything that mediates between us and the outside world out there. This fucking thing. Fucking stupid thing. Yeah! I'm the king of this island. I die, the island dies with me. OK. They send you here to spy on me? (BOTH LAUGH) PETE: Is the old fella not up yet? SARAH: You're raring to go. A lot of rabbits out there. GLENN: General Sherman sailed straight into those rocks in the 1860s. The survivors, men and women, they lived round here. They ate seals and grass and the odd bird. Lived like that for two years before building a boat and sailing to Stewart Island. They all made it. They were the lucky ones. About 20 miles up the coast, another ship was wrecked around the same time. 19 men washed up. A year later, only three left. They'd eaten each other. That's why there were only three left. (RADIO BEEPS) Go ahead, mate. WOMAN: We've been trying to get in touch for a while, Glenn. It looks like the rabbit population has not been affected whatsoever by the hand-baiting. Over. It's way too early to judge that. Sarah's figures are damning. The soil nutrient content, the community characteristic, the overwhelming spike in rabbit numbers... Sarah rang those through? Yep. It's a disaster. And you've made it worse by deliberately ignoring you responsibility. You got the review notice, I take it? Sarah! There's a front coming. We need to secure the nets. I need you and Pete to go. OK. (OMINOUS MUSIC) (TWANG!) This is crazy, Glenn. Is it a trophic cascade? What's that? It's when the top predatory level of an ecosystem is taken away. It causes an imbalance. The whole system could collapse. The entire island could become extinct. This is not a trophic cascade. The feral cats are wiped out. Without them as predators, the rabbits are thriving, so the poison drop's not working. SARAH: The point of science is that you accept failure as an extra bit of data. We can't kill every rabbit on this island by ourselves. (GUNSHOT) Hey, Pete. Gidday, man. Whew. What are you doing? Sarah's pretty worried about this... tropical cascade. (LAUGHS) It's trophic. Oh. She'd feel a lot better if you got that radio fixed up. So, what do you do at DOC again? All sorts. Stewart Island, eh? Yeah. So you must know Danny Cremer. Actually, he probably left before you were there. How old are you? 20. So you probably didn't know him. No. We should get back. There's a storm coming. (TENSE MUSIC) Hey! Who is this? Huh? Who is this? I don't know. I've been looking at that radio for Sarah. There's a regulator missing. I works as an internal antenna. Someone's been into it real good. You stay away from Sarah. Suit yourself, old man. (TENSE MUSIC) (FAINT CHATTER) You didn't forget Sarah's birthday, did you? Hey. I need that passport back. Let's go for a walk later, huh? There's something I want to show you. Drink up. Do you have the passport? Hey, we're going to take advantage of this break in the weather. The Beaumont shags are nest- Bounty. Bounty shags are nesting up on the cliffs. Do you want to come? Nah, you guys go. (TENSE MUSIC) (GLENN GRUNTS) I won't fall in. Don't touch me! Don't fucking touch me. Give me the passport and I won't say anything to Sarah about the radio. There's your fucking passport. If you're stupid enough to go in there, I hope you fucking drown! (THUD!) (HEARTBEAT) (GRUNTS) Pete! Pete! Pete! Fuck. (TENSE MUSIC) (BIRDS SQUAWK, WAVES LAP) (OMINOUS MUSIC) (GRUNTS) (GRUNTS) Nothing happened with me and Pete. He deserved to die. You have no idea who he was, the lying little shit. Did you kill him? (CRASH!) Aah. Shut up. (GLENN GRUNTS RAPIDLY) (YELLS) TEARFULLY: You need to fix the radio for me so we can go home (BREATHES SHAKILY) It can't be fixed. You're going to be sleeping over the window with a fucking corpse. Why didn't you tell me that?! Leave me alone. Leave me alone. Just let me look at it! Get out. (RADIO STATIC) (GRUNTS) (YELLS) (GRUNTS) (SIGHS) (DISTURBING MUSIC) (GRUNTS) (YELLS) Stop your moping. Let's just drop this arsehole off. That water pump's rooted. You're going to have to do it by hand while I start it up again. How far have we come? About a quarter of the way. Can I help with anything? Nup. This useless prick's goin to clean out the bilge soon. How long are you down there for? Uh, six months. Just a short stay. What's it like? The island? Yeah. Fuck knows. I've never been there. You don't work on the boat normally? I got the sack from my old job Dale's my brother-in-law. Helping me out. Nice to have family, eh? Not when they're pricks like mine. (MAN LAUGHS) (CHILLING MUSIC) DALE: Keep quiet. Don't wake him up. (CHILLING MUSIC, WIND WHISTLES) (ENGINE WHIRRS) (CLATTERING) TANYA: I'm going to worry about you. SARAH: It's just a winter. Are you happy just being his accolade? Stop. Stop it. I know you think you know him, but you don't. (MUSIC DISTORTS) Another one. Fuck me. (WAVES ROAR) (FRAME SHATTERS) Get your hands off me. You can't boss me around any more. You should stick to yourself. Do whatever they tell you. You all right? We're just having a discussion Oh yeah? What about? Oh, you know - chance and necessity and which drives the evolutionary biology. Well, there's no chance in nature. None at all. Take your fucking boots off inside. What are you reading? Just a biology book. What's it about? There's chance and then there's necessity, but both of them work together to drive evolutionary biology. It's like us ` we're a combination of accident and design. Sounds fun (!) How did you get the job on the island? I've been working for DOC for years - Stewart Island, Southland. Started off volunteering - weeding, replanting, goat culls. Why? Are you interested? Because they're pretty selective about who they take down. (OMINOUS MUSIC) Hey, bro. (EXHALES) The good shit, eh? On the boat on the way down, we... we passed a pod of whales. Beautiful. And, like, I was... I was wondering what... what happens when they die. You know, do they... sink away to the bottom? (GLENN LAUGHS) Well,... it's called whale fall. The beautiful thing about when a whale dies is that its carcass can sustain an entirely new ecosystem. Thousands of organisms can live and propagate off it. (THUNDER RUMBLES) (LAUGHTER) I'm not eating that. No way! (BOTH LAUGH) Shut your eyes. No. No. DALE: 'You just stick to yourself. 'Do whatever they tell you. 'You're not like these people.' Mmm. Yum, Petey. It's delicious. Cheers. Hey, it's our birthday soon. Is it? I was, um,... thinking of milking a sea lion. You know, baking a cake. Good luck. Well, these hands sure know ho to make a sea lady happy. (DISHES CLATTER) (OMINOUS MUSIC) GLENN: Hey! (THUD!) Who's this? Huh? Who is this?! You stay away from Sarah. (SPITS) (TENSE MUSIC) RIKI: Drink up. It's your last night in civilised company. Have I done something to annoy you? (LAUGHS) Will you catch me if I fall? Don't be stupid. Bro, the Southern Lights! Help! (SPLASH!) Riki! Riki! DALE: What's going on? He leapt off the fucking boat. Well, he's a good swimmer. About the only thing he is good at. He's pissed. He hasn't come up yet. I can't swim. You're on a boat; you should learn to fucking swim. Yeah, well, I wasn't planning on falling off! Fuck. Where the fuck is he? RIKI: Hey, Pete. You stupid idiot. Hey, give me a hand. Oh, fuck off. Climb up the ladder. I can't. Serious, I can't get up. Fuck you. Please. (PETE GRUNTS) (CAMERA BEEPS) (FOREBODING MUSIC) RIKI: Did you call it in? DALE: You're joking, right? With what we've got on board, there'll be cops all over this boat. I'll go. OK? I'll go in his place. I'll keep my head down. Pick me up in a month. I'll disappear. I'll get lost. No one will know. OK. You fuck it up, you're going to prison for a very long time. (COUGHS, SPITS) (WAVES CRASH) (WAVES LAP, BIRDS SQUAWK) (PANTING) (PANTS) (BIRDS SQUAWK) (RAGGED BREATHING) You're going to be a dad. Didn't she tell you? There's a boat here. There's a boat here. What? We need to leave. (SARAH GRUNTS) I thought he killed you. I hurt him. He's going to die. I have to get him. Wait. Take him down there. Are you coming? Tell them I'm dead. You tried to look for me, but I was washed away. You can't stay here. There's nothing for me there. (BIRD SQUAWKS) (BIRD SQUAWKS) RIKI: When does it get dark? SARAH: April. Jesus. The sky is huge. The infinitely big is the same as the infinitesimally small. It's all a matter of perspective. (WAVES CRASH) Captions were made with the support of NZ On Air.