|
It would be cool if the show did a take on the Arthur C. Clarke style first contact, distant and unfathomable beings who just go "ALL OF THESE WORLDS ARE YOURS, EXCEPT FOR EUROPA. ATTEMPT NO LANDING THERE because screw you, that's why". This show has its silly bits, but I don't really like the idea of having 30 different alien species running around with slightly different forehead bumps. There's enough sci-fi shows like that already, dammit.  Also, the show seems to have at least a semi-realistic take on space travel so far, and it's just an unfortunate truth that without magical FTL stuff, there's really no point in trying manned missions to other solar systems. Either you're screwed by relativity out of anyone you ever knew and cared about, or it's some kind of ridiculous generation ship deal which would just suck for a whole bunch of other reasons. I would like seeing Ed swing a cane at an alien, not gonna lie 
|
#
¿
Jun 11, 2022 13:54
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 10, 2024 17:12 |
|
|
teacup posted:If we are talking politics of this show did anyone think it kinda rehabilitated Reagan a bit or am I just being an over reading into it goon? Having him see the handshake and immediately go and sign a treaty with Moscow makes it feel like he was good the whole time he just needed someone to show him the way or some poo poo. The Cold War we're seeing on the show is fairly different, so Reagan's politics would've been formed around that. Also his brain wasn't total sludge yet, which may have helped, may have not. The show did bring in Lee loving Atwater, and I think to a viewer who didn't catch the reference he was presented as a... Not very offensive political operative? Obviously the plot narrative juxtaposed this vile creature of a man offering something to Ellen, who was having a personal crisis due to being in the closet. You could read it either way, but since they name-dropped him it's fairly obvious they wanted people to catch the reference.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 12, 2022 15:08
|
|
|
Ed will hit him, with a cane 
|
|
#
¿
Jun 13, 2022 12:58
|
|
|
Now I'm just picturing this scene, with a despairing Ed clutching a dead Not-Elon, Ed understanding he will never get back into space without his cyborg bits. 
|
|
#
¿
Jun 13, 2022 14:47
|
|
|
Do we have a giant smilie vomiting smaller s? Guess I'm 100% #teamHelios now, 
|
|
#
¿
Jun 17, 2022 06:20
|
|
|
Solkanar512 posted:Man, gently caress Molly. She was way out of line and the reason you have committees is to prevent stupid poo poo like “the old geezers club” from forming or deciding that it’s a great idea to turn the first mission to Mars into a two year “take your daughter to work day”. poo poo is too serious now for cowboys and loose cannons. Counter-point: Margo is a Nazi's apprentice who is, at the very least, compromised by the KGB (or their timeline equivalent)
|
|
#
¿
Jun 17, 2022 16:53
|
|
|
Space_Wizard posted:I don't think Margo has too much of a leg to stand on here. Margo chat My post about her being a Nazi's apprentice was light-hearted, but let's look at her actions. She actually absorbed everything Wernher taught her: ambition, black-mail, egotistic accumulation of personal power. She may or may not have been genuinely upset about the slave labour camps in his past, but she certainly left her feelings on the way-side when it came to career guidance. Margo is a sort of sympathetic character, sure, she's an oddball survivor in a hostile world, and she played a (sort of) peaceful foil to the general in season 2, but at the same time she wasn't all that horrified at what the military-industrial complex was doing, just that it interfered with her own precious space launches. Even if she didn't realize she was used as a KGB asset, which come on, she's supposed to be smart, even her deliberate actions are morally dubious.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 18, 2022 05:09
|
|
|
Bulky Bartokomous posted:For a second when Karen was yelling at Danny about needing to stop I felt like she was the audience and Danny was the writers. Sadly, the scene with Danny stalking Karen's house in the middle of the night seems to suggest this will be a major plot point for the season 
|
|
#
¿
Jun 18, 2022 19:06
|
|
|
Yeah, my bet at this point is that Big Love Elon will turn out to be some combination of over-confident, callous and moronic about things like celestial mechanics. Season 2 wound up being a bunch of disasters that they managed to wrap up together into a sort of package by the season finale, so hopefully (?) they're aiming for something similar with the Mars missions. Though it doesn't have to be the finale necessarily, they have to set the stage for season 4  Venus? Jovian moons?
|
|
#
¿
Jun 19, 2022 03:36
|
|
|
nexus6 posted:Not to mention they've decided to go years before the establishment have decided it's a good idea. I thought the point was that NASA and the Soviets would have to build (even design?) their 2+ - year craft for the Mars voyage, shoot all that crap into orbit and assemble it etc., and they'd decided to aim for the launch window 4 years away, but Big Love bought the hotel which he at least thinks can be made into the ship itself, so all that's left is bringing their super methane cannons into orbit and bing bing bong, next window is 2 years away so suck it NASA?
|
|
#
¿
Jun 19, 2022 12:34
|
|
|
tokin opposition posted:The moral of this story is that the ussr is based and its success is the success of humanity So Margo was an angel all along?
|
|
#
¿
Jun 22, 2022 08:47
|
|
|
bawfuls posted:It is a curious sort of straddling this show has taken, where overall the message is very clear that the survival of the Soviet Union has been very good for world history, but the Soviets are still portrayed largely as a menacing, mysterious, reckless force in space. Isn't that partly due to the simple fact that the show is illustrated through And as posted above, the show has directly shown US forces be reckless and stupid in space. The fear of the Cold War was that either side could ignite a huge, civilization-ending conflict by some jerk (Ed) doing something stupid that seemed sensible to the jerk at the time.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 2, 2022 08:29
|
|
|
MarcusSA posted:Well someone is fuckin around in our current timeline thats for sure.  Yes I know this isn't a Disney show
|
|
#
¿
Jul 6, 2022 18:09
|
|
|
What a great episode all around. Space drama: I even sort of ended up liking the Danny insanity, because he's obviously becoming totally unhinged. I expected him to confess to Ed over their card-game just to be a smug poo poo. And then Ed pulls the brakes on being the first to land on Mars because he didn't want to risk "the kiddo"'s life. Murder on Mars orbit ahoy! And Danielle just losing her poo poo after landing was priceless. They should've had a sad space suit fist fight / rolling around in the dirt for another 2 minutes Earth stuff Holy crap Sergei  "They just hosed up most of my internal organs" *coughing fit* and then he's in the control room celebrating, genuinely happy. But at least the Margo plotline is going places since now someone else knows there's a spy at NASA. My tentative guess is that she'll try throwing someone under the bus, most likely Aleida herself.I also wonder what Big Love Elon will do now. Karen left, and Ed didn't seal the deal. How will an insane billionaire tech-bro react? And we still have 5 episodes to go, right?
|
|
#
¿
Jul 8, 2022 20:59
|
|
|
Grand Fromage posted:It'd be great if someone just yeeted Danny out an airlock so we could move on. I mean, Ed is stuck with him for another year or so
|
|
#
¿
Jul 9, 2022 14:43
|
|
|
Data Graham posted:I've always wondered about that actually. Doesn't that mean every director has to be an actor, basically? Doesn't the director have to act out every line exactly the way they want the actor to do it? Otherwise there are so many ways to misread the text off a flat script without even bold or italics to emphasize particular words or whatever. There's an interview with Kyle MacLachlan about working with David Lynch. Some of mr. MacLachlan's quotes about being directed: "David would tell me 'It needs more Elvis! More Elvis!', or 'think about a wind'. And it would make sense for me!" It's probably more about how the director and the actors are able to communicate these concepts to each other.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 11, 2022 14:31
|
|
|
Excuse me. Wild Bill Adama jumps right into the atmosphere, like the mad man he is, and jumped right on out as Galactica was plummeting towards the ground. The Sojourner just glides into the Martian atmosphere, and lands, like a bunch of total chumps.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 12, 2022 01:51
|
|
|
I'm starting to get real horror movie vibes from Danny Good episode all around, Margo plot does not seem headed to the electric chair sadly but at least it's progressing, and the conflict between the Soviet and US missions bubbled to the surface a whole two episodes in to the collaboration
|
|
#
¿
Jul 15, 2022 04:54
|
|
|
Wee Bairns posted:Camera sure settled lovingly on the cans of Pepsi for a little of that sweet product placement, but having that fare available makes sense from the fact they flew a goddamned hotel to Mars. I figured that was a nod to Pepsi's Cold War shenanigans. Even Dick Nixon acted as Pepsi's spokesman towards the USSR at one point! Which reminds me, I was extremely at the giant Nixon portrait in the Oval Office, you show 'em Ellen!
|
|
#
¿
Jul 15, 2022 16:26
|
|
|
The age thing is a problem moving forward (go go cyborg Ed!!!), but season 2 had a lot of plot lines around the mid-late episodes and it wasn't until the finale that the plot lines not only met each other but were also resolved. Or in the case of Margo left as a teaser for season 3, but either way.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 16, 2022 07:37
|
|
|
Jerusalem posted:Basically, Danielle owns, and deserves better, is what I'm saying Danielle does own, but the lesson of the 'Nixon's ladies' storyline (not just the episode) was that being an astronaut means dealing with other people's cowboy bullshit all the freaking time. The story of this entire season is predicated on NASA (and the Soviets) going along with dangerous cowboy bullshit: Big Love goes on live tee-vee to announce that his ship is going to Mars 2 years ahead of you, neener neener, and the consummate professionals running NASA/the US respond by pushing everything up 2 years, gently caress the consequences. Bill even tells them this is a really bad idea! So Danielle has to keep improvising, but she's still explicitly a part of the cowboy bullshit rodeo the whole way, since that is their entire mission! And we get glimpses of it when she literally races the Soviet commander for the first step on Martian ground. In a vacuum ( ) Danielle would've been great running a well-planned NASA science mission to Mars, sure, but that didn't really end up happening. It's the saying about wrestling pigs, except I suppose in this case Danielle was shoved into the pen by Margo and the US government. And she didn't back down because she does have some of that cowboy mentality too  That's a good point about Ed and the Soviets, though. But given Ed's general ornery bull-headedness, I guess we could chalk this up to Ed having a fairly large chip on his shoulder towards NASA, and he doesn't care about corporate non-sense that much now that he's actually on Mars? He does roll his eyes at the NDA stuff, at least.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 16, 2022 16:53
|
|
|
Bugblatter posted:I missed anything about her joining. I thought Ed was just promising to sneak samples so she can study them at the US base? I also interpreted the scene as her asking to join the Russian-Helios-trip, but you're right, she just says she "needs to see those samples" and that she "needs to be a part of this", and Ed says he'll see what he can do. Although she did express concern earlier in the conversation that the Soviets + Ed/Helios would kill any potential life in the liquid water they'll be excavating, and her getting the samples after the fact won't be that helpful, at least from a conservationist point of view. I guess we'll find out in a week
|
|
#
¿
Jul 17, 2022 01:42
|
|
|
It's also possible that Martian bacteria would not be compatible with Earth biology, and trying to ingest them would lead to violent diarrhea and or painful death!
|
|
#
¿
Jul 19, 2022 21:33
|
|
|
I was actually thinking of Clarke's 2061 and the Europan parrot-shark (?) that ate manflesh and found out 
|
|
#
¿
Jul 19, 2022 22:11
|
|
|
Human Martians and Robot Martians, surely!
|
|
#
¿
Jul 20, 2022 01:33
|
|
|
Oof, this episode was a lot of set-up, huh? I was really expecting Danny to confess to Ed during the "hit me!" scene, guess they'll cover that next episode when it's claustrophobic withdrawal times. So Ellen's gonna do something reckless, isn't she. Liked the Karl Rove guest spot. Are dems the bad guys in this timeline? Was also thinking the other failson's friends would just bomb NASA offices, but they... Wanted to steal a statue? That is very lame hillbilly taleban, boys and girls! And I guess Aleida figured out it was Margo all along
|
|
#
¿
Jul 22, 2022 04:10
|
|
|
Escobarbarian posted:The downturn in quality between the rest of the season and this ep was WILD holy poo poo. I know some of you haven’t been into the season as much but I’ve still been loving it aside from the Danny stuff, but this episode felt like so much wheel-spinning and idiotic decision-making and now there’s ANOTHER lovely Stevens kid to reckon with??? Hopefully just an off week before poo poo goes down as we approach the climax. I'm not quite ready to call this a jumped shark just yet, but this episode definitely had a lot of plot "progress" but absolutely zero pay-off, except for the last 2 minutes or so. And as you and other say, a result of several questionable judgment calls. I'm starting to get the feeling they're trying to replicate the season 2 last half experience, where there were a lot of dangling things that only converged and some resolved in the season finale. It was cool at the time, but this feels less... Organic?
|
|
#
¿
Jul 22, 2022 07:57
|
|
|
I'm sort of willing to give a pass on Ed's dumbass calls about Danny for two reasons. One, and this is the main one, Ed is and has always been a not very smart person with his emotions, and in a very hamfisted way this season has underlined time and again that Ed has conflicted feelings about and for Danny*. He's not objective, at all. Which in a sane work environment would mean that he'd remove himself from the decision making process and externalize it to Big Love or whoever is supposed to be second-in-command on Phoenix. Ed doesn't do this because of reason One. Reason two, and this still hinges on a lot of people making dumb decisions, but it seems somewhat plausible that there was never any much thought given to who would be the "police" on a space mission that lasts several years, and how that would work in practice. The Soviets might have had a gun or two on their ship in case of Martian bears, but I doubt Phoenix (tech-bro libertarians woo!) or Sojourner (NASA eggheads) would have even brought a taser. And the social dynamics of it, well we saw the general mood in the NASA base this episode where everyone has a grudge on someone else in the base, how exactly would it play out if Ed started putting people in house arrest? Who would enforce it? If Danny (in a scenario before the marsquake) got violent for his  , what then? Repeat the lunar experience with the captive cosmonaut?It's a stupid plotline that keeps getting dumber, though, there's no way around that *This is obviously also grist for the mill for when Danny finally blurts out that I hosed YER WIFE, ED, and Ed will get emotional and do something very, very stupid Cojawfee posted:I don't even understand what we're supposed to feel for Ellen and Larry. Are conservatives supposed to empathize with them because they are Republicans and progressives supposed to empathize with them because they are gay? Ellen is just too lovely for me to care that something bad is happening to them. She joined the party that thinks she should not exist just because she likes lower taxes? She joined the party whose previous president watched his best friend die of AIDS and did nothing about it because the guy was gay and gays are icky. Her being outed would probably make things worse for gay people because it would generate some narrative that gay people are secretly infiltrating all of society to destroy christian values. I think Ellen is a Republican out of mostly emotional reasons. She's one of Nixon's women, and she got (some of) her career boosts from Tom, whose career in turn was carrying water for the Nixon and Reagan administrations. There's a scene in season 2 where Tom explains to Ellen that while he's a heartless careerist bastard on the outside, on the inside he really, really cares about space, and this is his way of participating, etc. Now since obviously this season's Ellen plotline is that Larry hosed her over viz Pam etc., Ellen "chose" to be a careerist for the wrong reasons from her perspective, and it's meant to be a tragedy I guess. Larry is just a careerist, though. The previous seasons have had a lot of "emotions driving people" - scenarios; Ed captured the cosmonaut because Ed is Ed and was going crazy on top of it, Danielle staged an international mutiny to shake hands with a cosmonaut (which turned out to be the deus ex machina that stopped the Cold War from going hot, in part!), Molly is blind because she couldn't let the goofy Dutch (?) boy die in the proton storm, Ed didn't nuke the Soviet shuttle on the far side of the Moon, etc. I'm sure I'm forgetting some other good ones too. But those for the most part were still compelling. They've not done a good job with the Danny-Ed dynamic this season, since Danny is coming apart at the seams and is a "villain", but Ed's hemming and hawing towards Danny is supposed to make Ed look like a good dude, somehow? I'm a little confused on this myself. And it seems like once the writers got Ellen into the White House, they can't really help themselves from working in the alt-history parallels to our time-line with DADT, and trying and IMO failing to tie this into Ellen's inner turmoil. This episode clearly shows she resents Larry, because he lives a double life and now it's going to gently caress them both, which implies to me that Ellen hasn't. That doesn't absolve her from being a lovely person towards other gay people!
|
|
#
¿
Jul 22, 2022 21:11
|
|
|
Hold on to your butts, season 4 is on the launchpad
|
|
#
¿
Jul 23, 2022 01:19
|
|
|
I think the geek dude is legit afraid of both Ed and Danny, especially after the robopooch bit it.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 24, 2022 06:48
|
|
|
I liked this episode a lot more than the previous one. Still not exactly their A-game, but I have hope for the finale again. Are we doing spoilers still for the latest ep in the thread? I'll do spoilers. The vastly reduced amount of Earth drama certainly helped, and what little of it there was, was... Pretty okay? The Other Fail-sons tantrums were a bit dumb, as is everything about the anti- Ellen's drama was OK, Pam left it a bit open and Ellen threw Larry straight into the dog-house, so good on her. I'm still expecting some dramatic westwing-esque end to her presidency, presumably viz LGBT rights things, but I can live with it because of that ridiculous Nixon portrait. The Mars drama was pretty good! We got a whole load of fresh corpses (or freeze-dried corpses I guess), the ridiculous lava tube thing was fun, and some of the astronauts got over their petty bullshit, at least temporarily. Danny and Ed's little heart-to-heart was ehhh, but it is the message we've been fed throughout the series (for Ed) and this season. And Danny was saved by the boom Future stuff: The Helios computer geek died, so does anyone actually know that Danny hosed up besides Danny? Going forward he might do more cRaZy poo poo now that he doesn't think he has hours to live. The Russians are plotting to secretly abort Mars Baby? Comically evil for the sake of being comically evil, I guess. They also said at the start that they're all stuck on the Martian surface now (?), so I guess losing half the people again helps with the limited supply situation.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 29, 2022 06:04
|
|
|
Chef Boyardeez Nuts posted:Edit: They should absolutely abort the Mars baby. Having unprotected sex on a mission to Mars is so wildly unprofessional it's the kind of thing that could legitimately set back women's rights. Yeah having the baby would be beyond Danny stupid, but the comically evil bit is the Russians being all clandestine and "we must inform the
|
|
#
¿
Jul 29, 2022 06:23
|
|
|
Mustache Ride posted:What happened to nerdy spreadsheet guy? He was the first corpse the Soviet lover boy found.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 29, 2022 11:49
|
|
|
Right, but he's an Evil Russian Communist, who knows she was bumping uglies with a Comrade, so of course he'd run that test. Get with the program 
|
|
#
¿
Aug 1, 2022 13:49
|
|
|
This season finale better be even more fantastic than season 2. And the season 2 finale was incredible. Gigantic vomiting smaller Please give Molly something to do in the finale, even if it's a one-liner 
|
|
#
¿
Aug 5, 2022 13:26
|
|
|
bawfuls posted:Never. Mars baby will rule Mars not Earth. The title of the next episode is a reference to a 60s sci-fi novel about a man born and raised on Mars, who comes back to Earth, so who knows!
|
|
#
¿
Aug 5, 2022 18:02
|
|
|
Rochallor posted:It feels like I'm the only one who's actually interested in the brewing anti-space terrorism storyline. It's been a lot of setup so far but there's plenty of places they could take it, and whasshisname is a much more sympathetic character than Danny. Hey, I mocked the hee-haw-talleyban for stealing a statue instead of bombing poo poo But, under no circumstances, do you "have to hand it" to the Other Fail-son, they're both awful dog-poo poo characters. At least the conspiracy whackadoos were manipulating the Other One fairly well, but there was no follow-through!!! Unless the anti-NASA-Kaczynskis do actually blow something up in the season finale, which is a real possibility
|
|
#
¿
Aug 6, 2022 06:52
|
|
|
mancalamania posted:A probably dumb question: why is there a prominent giant portrait of Richard Nixon in the White House? I know he didn't resign in this timeline, but isn't he just a random one-term president in their timeline? It's Ellen's White House, and the POTUS gets to decorate. Ellen was one of Nixon's Women who made it.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 6, 2022 07:12
|
|
|
Jerusalem posted:I know they're not quite in the same state as they are in the real world thanks to the Soviets still providing support, but maybe it's a situation like "Glorious Leader played golf once, scored a perfect 18 and never played again!" where they're constantly telling everybody that they sent a cosmonaut to Mars and he's there RIGHT NOW and everybody just smiles and nods and says,"Sure thing buddy," then ignores it! I honestly doubt this is what they went with, but it would be amazing if they had
|
|
#
¿
Aug 6, 2022 14:14
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 10, 2024 17:12 |
|
|
pokeyman posted:I'd love to see a lil montage or something of his journey. I'm worried we won't because of how little we ever see from the USSR: seems like if our main characters aren't in the room, we get nothing. This latest episode was only ~45 mins, could those 15 mins be towards a longer season finale? How does Apple TV+ "air time" work? That'd be a little time to spare for a Best Korea montage.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 6, 2022 18:00
|
|