I hope it gets back to the superb level of Season 2, but I will watch it nonetheless, It’s my favourite Telenovela.
If I like it or if I don’t, I think I’ll be calling the spin-off Spatula City.
And season 5 has started. Slow first episode.
I would characterize it as painfully dull and lifeless. I did get a kick out of Mireille Enos appearing alongside Joel Kinnaman for at least the third time.
Oh. Cool… Didn’t realize it was back. I really hope they make the tech bro billionaire out to be the obvious villain. Finally. And I hope everyone who followed him onto Mars dies. 
I really enjoy the alternative histories. Oh! what might have been! How did we end up in the “The Darkest Timeline”? It seems like the histories are written as to be exactly opposite to what’s happening now.
IMHO they missed a big opportunity last season to have labor unrest IN SPAAACE as the main theme, instead we got tech bro millionaire glorification.
Still watching because semi-realistic space is catnip for me and in the hopes of better writing.
Maybe, just maybe, they are setting us up for Techbrogeddon later in the series. Remember, not everyone thought Elon Musk was a complete knob at the beginning.
Bumping the thread due to the major development in this week’s episode: Ed Baldwin finally shuffles off the mortal coil. The ending sequence featuring Michael Dorman and Shantel VanSanten returning was a nice touch; the end credits against the image of the Gemini capsule orbiting the Earth was very cool as well.
I doubt it. While not at all MAGA, the series is a very Republican show - probably the most Republican (in the classical, idealized sense) show currently on TV. They’re not going to go with a “billionaires are evil” plotline.
It is indeed. There are a bunch of shorts in the FAM episode stack that provide historical context and connection points for each season. They are well worth the ~10 mins it takes to watch. They are trying loftily to not slip in current topical allusions, to keep the big-picture, serious tone of the series.
Wife and I are catching up with the latest season.
Mars looks like Babylon 5. I mean, the sets are at that level and while very charming and effective for the budget of Babylon 5, it looks cheap on this show.
It blows my mind how cheap and flimsy the whole Mars base/city looks.
And…we’ve lost most of the best characters at this point, too. I’m still following the show, but with the most recent 18+ month break, I found myself quite lost.
I still occasionally grumble about how gravity is apparently the same everywhere unless the show suddenly decides to do the zero-g effect.
I just watched the episode that ended with them stepping onto Titan. Yep, normal earth-gravity level. I mean, even on their Moon-base(I mean Earth’s Moon-base)…gravity was just normal.
I complain, but I do like the show. I think it has declined this season, though.
Season 5 was the worst one yet. Mostly soap opera/drama, minimum space stuff. And yes, the science of the space stuff is pretty bad. Spoiler for the final episode:
The life on Titan is “based on methane, not carbon, like on Earth”. (Methane is a carbon surround by four hydrogens. Methane is based on carbon. And once it combines with something, it is no longer methane. It is some other type of molecule. Based on carbon.) Also, the sample was thriving in the laboratory sample. The equivalent of bringing a sample on Earth into a poisoned blast furnace to observe it. That is at least as bad as the Soyuz to Mars.
On a different note, the Star City sidequel has started. I’ve watched the first few minutes of the first episode.
But she died a noble death for science! Never mind that if it was that important Kelly should have made it back over the injured crew.
Wait, what? What’s this? I haven’t heard of it.
She had to die because it was her fault they were all on Titan to begin with. She was willing to risk everyone’s life to find life on Titan, and she did. It’s only fitting that she should then take the short straw, particularly as it seems almost inevitable that they will eventually figure out what happened to cause the landing. I daresay that, had anyone else died, she would have been guilty of their murder. Not only morally, but quite possibly legally as well (under a depraved indifference theory of mens rea).
Anyway, I am ever so pissed this series expects us to thin Devon is anything but the chief antagonist of the series at this point.
But you know, I am glad that after that impassioned speech about the sanctity of life, whatshisname just said screw it and barbecued the whole command team. It’s good to know they’re still willing to “go there” every now and then.
I look forward to the ill-advised Christmas Special.
Agree with others that the series lost a lot of muscle mass once it was outside Earth’s gravity. Probably not a contender for the biggest slide in quality and expectation across a five season run, but I’m really disappointed in losing a show that I really relished in its first few seasons.