Amen x10.
It was clearly a training exercise given the mention of “you beat your best time”. And much of what we saw was probably simulated–their helmets have the capability of overlaying simulated imagery over the real world (as they demonstrated with the green Mars view). We also already knew that the Martians rely heavily on combat simulations–it was mentioned that the Donnager crew only had simulation experience, and we saw this again with Alex practicing the station attack on the Rociante.
The Donnager attack wasn’t sorted out, at least as far as the Martians are concerned. Earth and the OTA are still blaming each other and neither side has irrefutable proof. The Martian captain guy in the new episodes cited this as a reason to not go in with guns blazing.
I also found it confusing (even after reading the books), so I re-watched it. It does make more sense now.
Yes, the initial Mars battle is a simulation.
Earth and Mars have a long history of tensions. In the past Earth took (limited) military action against Mars and in response Mars reallocated terraforming resources to their military. Hence Bobbie hating Earth as their actions have delayed the terrforming to where she will never see a green Mars.
Sadavir, the guy in the UN council that keeps trying to escalate military action against Mars, meets with the father of Julie Mao who is one of the main drivers of the protomolecule experiments. Sadavir is redirecting UN attention on Mars, away from Eros.
I really liked it, but I needed a second viewing. A big reason for that was probably lack of sleep, though…
I needed a second viewing, but I think it was due to the audio. The show in general has a little bit of a problem with dialogue being clear over the ambient noise, especially with the range of accents and dialects.
Is there a name for Thomas Jane’s hair style in this?
So true. I have the SyFy channel, but I watch it from a pirate source because the pirates have perfect subtitles. Tried watching with subtitles on Syfy but it’s so badly synced I had to turn it off.
It’s back?!!!
YAYAYAYAY!! Some of the best Scifi in a looong time. Can’t believe I missed this. But ever since Syfy left my cable lineup, it’s been hard to keep up.
Will watch tonight.
^This.
Almost turned me off it. Really bad sound mix.
This is it. I missed the dialog about the training exercise results, and there were entire exchanges between people I simply couldn’t make out. That led significantly to the confusion, I’m sure.
I’m having a really hard time buying the crew of the *Rocinante *as anything but a bunch of schmucks with barely enough training to keep it pointed in the right direction. They’re four space miners. Only one, Alex, has significant military experience (and wasn’t he mostly flying transports?) Jim was in the Earth Navy, but got kicked barely after finishing Naval Combat 101: Space Is Really Big. They shouldn’t be able to go toe-to-toe with the kind of Super Secret Stealth Ship that could take out the flagship Martian battleship.
Unfortunately, judging by the books, this is only going to get worse…
Ah well, there’s still a lot of fun space battles and intriguing ideas even if the characters don’t really fit the plot.
They’re all experienced space “mariners”, with several years or even decades of experience flying, operating, maintaining, and repairing spaceships. And their pilot was a pilot in the Martian Navy, which is helpful in flying their Martian warship.
In the battles, it’s been the pilot who does almost all the work, so all we have to really believe it’s that Alex is a very skilled and talented pilot.
Dialogue mix problems make sense. I always watch with subtitles for just that reason.
Several answers to that:
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This is a space opera trope. The plucky heroes always have an amazing ship that can defy the odds, and the crew is always a band of misfits who nevertheless have skills way above what anyone recognized before.
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Given the above, I think The Expanse has done an excellent job of making this plausible. Holden was the XO of a large spaceship before because of his abilities, even though he was a slacker. His gifts were recognized. Naomi has always been regarded as a top-flight engineer. Alex was good enough to be a pilot in the Martian Navy, the toughest service in the solar system, but was overlooked for reasons I can’t remember. And Amos is so good at fighting and security that he’s almost on the autism spectrum for violence and needs Naomi’s calming influence just to keep him from rampaging.
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The ship itself is a top-line Martian gunboat, heavily retrofitted with even more capabilities by a brilliant shipyard with almost unlimited resources. It’s not a rag-tag freighter like Serenity. It’s probably the deadliest ship of its class in the system, outside of the mysterious stealth ships.
Also, we see that Alex gets his ass kicked by the simulation over and over, but practices until he gets it right. He had the advantage of being able to plan for the attack, whereas the station defense was caught by surprise. That makes up for a big deficit in either skill or firepower.
Not to mention the ever-useful anthropic principle of stories: we aren’t watching the show about the plucky band of misfits that didn’t quite have the right combination of skills, or had a bad run of luck, because they died immediately.
There’s an Oglaf panel I can’t quite find about this. Kid wants to be an adventurer. Dad tells him no, most of them are killed by the first highwayman they come across, says the stories are just ‘survivor bias’.
Kid goes out and is immediately stabbed by a highwayman.
Good points on the tropes. I just feel a lot of dissonance between the “plucky band of misfits” trope and the (relatively) hard scifi setting.
I should probably shut up, quick my nitpicking, and enjoy the set piece explody action scenes with reasonably accurate physics.
To be positive, I should say that I’m really impressed with the portrayal of Amos in the show. He’s like a rottweiler puppy with a gun… so eager to eliminate any threats to his “pack”.
I always like how mater-of-fact he is about it, no pointless melodrama. “Okay, so I killed your friend, and I understand that you’re likely upset about that, so if you want to have it out, I’ll be waiting, but otherwise don’t be all pouty about it…”
Really shoulda given him that first hit for free.
Maybe even spot him another one, just to be sure he got it in right.
Loved the first double episode. The season is starting out in tip top shape. As someone who doesn’t have the Syfy channel (I bought the season on Amazon - pretty steep price, but I considered it a birthday gift to me) on what day do the new episodes actually air? Not sure when to go looking for new episodes.
Couple of niggles though:
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Not enough of reaction to aliens I thought. That’s some fucking huge news.
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Why was the ship designated a stealth ship? The crew didn’t seem to have any problem spotting it. I guess it’s it’s radar profile that’s stealthed? Not visible in long range? But if that’s the case how did they know the ship was at the station?
Also, I kind of agreed with the scientist fellow. Not with his methods, but yeah it does look like something has designs on our solar system. We need to find out what those designs are somehow.