Jumped in and watched the new episode tonight, right after it released:
Man, that was a bloodbath. At least Ed and Danny made it out okay; I don’t know how much longer they can hold out on Ed not finding out about Danny and Karen.
Regarding my comment about Alexei and Kelly and hoping the mission included birth control … apparently, they didn’t.
The fact that Helios didn’t bring along a spare lander for a long mission is just another example of how half-assed all three groups are just about everything.
I agree; that was incredibly stupid. Ed wouldn’t let Danny be the co-pilot for that little trip but he did give him a critical role to monitor the drilling equipment? Though even if he hadn’t fucked up, would the marsquake still have occurred?
I wish they addressed this a bit more head-on in the show. Mention that obviously it would have made more sense to have a backup but they were under massive time pressure to get the mission launched, etc.
I liked this episode a fair bit, although the rescue was ridiculously time-compressed. Maybe a dig-from-the-bottom plan could be planned and executed if there was weeks of air rather than hours.
For once, I did actually like Danny as a character, when he was talking about Shane… started out being his usual dickish self and then it turned introspective. Well done.
How do we think they’re going to get off of Mars? Fix NASA’s engines? Will will along the way expose Margo’s treason?
Even that is very bad. Launching a half-finished, dangerous mission just to be first is profoundly irresponsible. Which is par for the course for the show. Every death on the mission so far has been from preventable human error.
The same goes for the drilling in the previous episode. They were cutting through the rock at the rate of feet per second. I’m not sure how fast a heavy-duty rock drill works, but I’m pretty sure the answer isn’t “feet per second”.
I mean, yes, that is true, and something that I think the show itself should acknowledge more. All the missions cut tons of corners and went years earlier than they “should” have. Which was a big plot point back in episodes 1 or 2 (whenever that was happening), but they’ve hardly mentioned since.
3x09:
Okay, I did not see that coming.
And again, they throw away all attempt at plausibility. Did the North Koreans invent a TARDIS to squeeze all the consumables for the months of the voyage and the months on Mars into the space of a closet?
This may be a mission profile similar to that seen in the 1968 film “Countdown”. Countdown (1967) Official Trailer - James Caan, Robert Altman Movie HD - YouTube
I mean, maybe we’ll find something out next week that somehow makes it plausible. Maybe. But I doubt it.
Fun episode aside from that, though.
See Post 92
Perhaps the North Koreans sent multiple missions, ones containing the supplies and other stuff? Or perhaps they’ve perfected suspended animation, and that technology is how the next season is going to be about an interstellar voyage?
It would have to be suspened animation, because that voyage from Earth to Mars takes 259 days. A “real world” Soyuz has life-support for 30 man-days (three people for 10 days, one person for 30 days). So we are talking expanding life-support at least 9x. Plus all the food and water for 9 months.
Wonder how many fictional North Koreans died testing it.
Just finished up the season finale:
Boy, they sure like to kill people off this season! I’m going to miss Karen and Molly quite a lot. I was thinking that they might as well kill Ed too, but apparently we’ll be subjected to his aggro microaggressions for one more year.
Anybody else think that sending Danny Stevens into exile on Mars was a little over the top? Jesus, people, you’re in this together! Wait until you’re back on Terra Firma before exerting punishment.
Sergei in his new suburban life at the end of the episode couldn’t help but remind me of Henry Hill at the end of Goodfellas. Granted, Sergei probably doesn’t feel like a schnook, but still.
And Margo fakes her own death and now lives in exile in Russia. Personally, I think prison in the U.S. would have been a better outcome.
Counting the days until next season…
I thought that was a massive misstep on an otherwise pretty good episode. The Korean guy (Lee?) being there in the first place still massively strains plausibility, but I really enjoyed his little montage, and they took seriously the strain he would be under.
Then lots of fun soap-drama-y space stuff.
But then they end up on Mars with just a few humans for 18 months needing to stretch their resources to the very limit… and they’re going to spend time and effort (and reduce their manpower) by making 18-hour round trips every month while leaving a human being in a presumably-not-very-sound North Korean space capsule? I don’t buy it at all.
Yeah, taking Danny to the North Korean ship should have just been cover for Ed to murder him. When the first supply run happens, Danny is nowhere to be found and it’s assumed he just went on a suicidal walkabout. Ed blew it.
There’s still that gun, buried with a helpful lug wrench as a marker. Perhaps Danny finds it and ends his own life? BTW, he still hasn’t told Ed about sleeping with Karen. Had he done so, I think Ed really would have killed him.
And I wonder where the show will be in the next season. Will there be colonies on Mars?
Off to the moons of Jupiter?
I’m trying to figure out what the terrorists’ plan was. They told Jimmy to install something in the communications room of the JSC that would allow them to hack into the signal, but it was unclear what exactly they were going to broadcast. Some kind of manifesto, maybe? A list of demands? Or was this just some busy work they were giving Jimmy to distract him while they implemented the real plan? The bomb was too big to bring into the JSC, so it seems it was always the plan to detonate it in the parking lot, but they didn’t really need Jimmy for that. I’m guessing they wanted to be out of the area when it detonated, but do you think there was anything else to the plan?
Visually, it was obviously meant to invoke the Oklahoma City bombing, which would have taken place around the same time of the events of the show – I wonder if this timeline got the JSC bombing instead of the Oklahoma City bombing. I wonder if 9/11 happens in this timeline.