Everything about the science, engineering, and timetables so far has been profoundly unrealistic. So they can just send up a rescue mission on zero notice.
That’s one aspect that made it hard for me to enjoy the show. Space travel can’t be both so hard that only the US and China can do it, yet so easy that this group of imbeciles can launch a moon base. If this group can do that, then any country could do it. There would probably be some corporations that would do it, too. They should have instead have the show set in some side project–like astronaut nutrition–where scientific accuracy wouldn’t have been so important.
I’m like, wait, they have a rocket that can take ten people to the moon, and tons of gear (but not toothbrushes!) and TWO moon buggies and food for how long and life support? PLUS, they have a live feed camera at Tranquility base? Who set that up*?
Is this set in 2030? And then they name drop the year and it’s set today? What were they thinking?
*considering that not only did the flag get knocked down when Apollo 11 took off, but even if it didn’t the flag would have no color left.
I was wondering about that ending. All that trouble to get to the moon and then just to ruin everything. Plus the moon is a pretty big place; why the need to be so close to another base?
I thought the show was just okay. It bothered me that the science was so bad. I could forgive it small tech errors, but come on - everyone by now is famiar with basic aspects of space travel, such as that it takes days to get to the moon and that we are nowhere close to being able to build the kind of moonbases we saw.
This is essentially an office comedy about Space Force. Office comedies have to be at least slightly rooted in reality for the zaniness to play off. And the characters should be relatively consistent - the office doofus tends to remain a doofus, the uptight hardass is always an uptight hardass, etc. That way, once in a rare while when they show different sides of themselves it’s funny. General Naird is alternatively played as being the only grownup in the room, and then suddenly the dumbest person in the room. He gives a great, nuanced speech, but also demands that a rocket be launched for no reason even though the weather is out of spec. He’s smart enough to know that the wonderful fuel lady is a con artist in over her head, but then acts incredibly stupid in many other ways. The character just doesn’t make sense.
I’m willing to give a pass to the incredibly boneheaded science and engieneering around the ‘wonder fuel’, as that’s the kind of tech stuff the public wouldn’t be expected to know. But everything else about that plot was also stupid.
They had the scales totally wrong. At one point they showed the Chinese base on a Moon map, and the American base on the other side of Tranquility, and said it was about ‘100 kilometers away’. The Sea of Tranquility is in fact about 850 km across. And the Apollo 11 site is right near the bottom edge of the Sea of Tranquility.
True, but Netflix got to the trademark first.
https://www.pcmag.com/news/netflix-secured-space-force-trademark-before-us-armed-forces
Season 2 - Amazon to the rescue!
As for 90% of the complaints in this thread - just roll with it. Asking the show to be an accurate portrayal of anything is like looking to Spongebob Squarepants for lessons in Marine Biology.
Sort of the same way you have an extremely loose meaning for “90%”?
Plus or minus 50%. I use the same margin of error that Rasmussen and MLB umpires use.
Me too! I just watched the whole thing this weekend and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
I don’t know shit about science so I wasn’t distracted by that.
I had watched Avenue 5 and it was a “space farce” and I didn’t quite like it. Too many jokes. I really liked this one…I liked the tone.
I actually thought the chimp thing was too drawn out. I couldn’t have watched 10 episodes of that sort of humor. I talked to a friend who said he wasn’t loving the show, but he loved the chimp episode. I think that episode might be a litmus test!
Late to the party – I just finished watching the series. While I agree that it was all over the place, I enjoyed it. For some reason that may be why I liked it. I guffawed from the chimp episode but agree that it may have gone on to long. Also didn’t like the ending.
But I liked the Russian spy “Did you have a childhood pet? What’s you grandmother’s maiden name?”
My favorite is probably Angela, and her relationship with Chan (arguing manga and doing Korean pop dances)
If there is a season 2, I will likely watch it, but probably will not be on the top of my queue.
Brian
Just watched season 2. I complained about season 1 being all over the place in tone, style, and quality. They fixed that in season 2 by making all seven of them dull-as-dishwater bottle episodes. The production budget was apparently slashed 90% for this season, and they should have renamed the show Force!.
Aw, that’s a shame to hear. I found season 1 to be all over the place too, but I thought it had potential and I was hoping the show would find its footing in S2, which I haven’t started watching yet.
So, did everyone die on the moon, or did they just forget that ever happened?
The new season picks up 3 months later, the Americans and Chinese had came back together in the same capsule, and there is basically no more explaination (or discussion of it) than that. There are no more space scenes*, no more work on building a space program, no mission launches, and the entirety of the season is the people dealing with a government-mandated budget cut, mostly by talking about it. It is like the whole season was made up of zero-budget webisodes made by CollegeHumor.
*Except for 2-3 Zoom-ish calls (with no light-speed delay) with Patton Oswald, a lone astronaut on the way to Mars, and a couple of shots of an unmanned satellite.
It kind of seems like after a disappointing launch and a failure to meet its goals and properly carry out its mission, the administration lost faith in the leadership of Space Force, drastically cut its budget, and ordered it scale back its more ambitious elements. The result is stodgy, risk-averse, and sub-par work, which is even more disappointing, and has probably doomed Space Force to a death spiral.
I am referring to the show itself, of course.
(But seriously, it did kind of seem like Amazon cut the show’s budget and they had to scale back, so they decided to make the whole second season a meta-commentary about it).
Yeah, that’s what I think, too. The same way Monk used to work comments about season renewals and things into conversations about the detective work. (Only, Monk did’t make a whole season about it.)
Marci Maven: Oh, you are the greatest detective in the world. You are the greatest detective in the universe. You should have your own show!
Adrian Monk: No. No, I’m…
Marci Maven: You should. You have to promise me something. Will you promise me something? If you ever do get your own show, you have to promise me that you will never change the theme song. Okay?
Adrian Monk: I promise.
–followed by the playing of the defunct original theme song
*Netflix
And as someone who works for the federal government, I found the budget stuff to be highly amusing. But different strokes!