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I just binged the show over like 2.5 days. Gotta make the most of that Apple+ free trial, and it certainly wasn't gonna be watching past Episode 2 of Foundation, lol. I've mostly enjoyed it except for the parts most of the thread has talked about (Danny, the other failson with the receding hairline, Karen's... whatever she's doing, etc). The little mini-features between seasons/after episodes are such a nice touch and good world building. The production values on those "Science behind..." videos is also really great. Data Graham posted:Not sure how it burnishes China's pride to have them be a complete non-factor in the space race Yeah, this has been bothering me, and using North Korea as a sort of proxy is kinda baffling until you think of the IRL "don't make babby China mad" dance that so many corporations are willing to do in order to access that market. The writers doubtless thought it was going to be too tight a tightrope to walk and said "stuff it, let's use DPRK". China's total absence is nearly as jarring as North Korea's sudden resources and prowess though; India and Turkey have sent probes to Mars, but not China? I don't think there's been any mention of the Sino-Soviet split; the Soviets had a Cuban cosmonaut along with them to Mars, but not a Chinese one? Is the only time China is even mentioned when the girl at the Vietnamese restaurant tells Kelly that Vietnamese food is kinda like Chinese food? If I was one of the showrunners, I'd be so tempted to swap out any world maps in the background with one where China just isn't there, like it goes USSR/Mongolia/MORE PACIFIC OCEAN/Southeast Asia, just as a bit of a wink to the absurdity of what the corporate censorship requires. The only way you could really spin it as making sense would be China doubling-down on the Great Leap Forward and flinging themselves back into the Dark Ages or something, but it's not like that portrayal is going to make the CCCP very happy either.
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Jan 6, 2023 10:12
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Senor Tron posted:I can't remember now, did we definitely see that NK didn't have some kind of hab module or something for the trip to Mars? I was having a look at the Soyuz on Wikipedia and it has both an orbital module and a descent module (the orbital module is meant to be disposable and isn't heat shielded, this helps them cut down on weight and cost, and gives the crew more space). We would have only seen the descent module on the surface which makes sense. The article did say the Soyuz only carried enough life support for 30 person-days in space, so nowhere near what a Mars trip would require, especially not for the two dudes shown. In episode 1 the North Korean shrapnal was from... I forget what, but maybe their Soyuz was docking with a previously launched supply rocket and picked up an additional module with more food/air/propellant? Let's say they did. I think for a long time, the NASA Mars proposals involved refuelling/further assembly in orbit as a means of sidestepping having to develop a massive launch vehicle to do it all in one go, so it's not at all farfetched. There are two main options then: 1) The NK mission was always meant to be one-way, or 2) there was a plan for a later recovery mission during the next launch window. With Option 1, in recent years there have been some people in the West semi-seriously discussing making the trip to Mars one-way as a means to increase the feasibility, generally in the context that it doesn't seem like we're otherwise going there anytime soon (and there are enough Mars stans to find people to crew it). It's not a huge jump to think NK might do this as a chance to gain a massive amount of prestige on the world stage and among its own people, especially if the leader were trying to really cement their power. Option 2: This is rather farfetched, but the North Koreans could have seen their only way at beating the other three teams to Mars as launching their guys with the minimum to get there, and launching an unmanned ship with a lifeboat capable of escaping Mars gravity/enough supplies to return to Earth in the next window to go pick them up. It's also possible the recovery ship was launched at the same time (maybe it was the thing that got destroyed at the start of S3?) and the guy was trying to make contact with it to get his ride home, but couldn't because his radio was busted or something. Comedy option is a combination of 1, and the exit strategy being to hijack one of the other countries' ships if they landed successfully in a close enough area. Maybe the guy who survived was the scientist/pilot and the guy who was killed was the North Korean black ops soldier that was supposed to pull it off. Anyways, while it's an interesting idea, the thing I really don't get about it is introducing the guy right at the end of the season, right before the time skip, means he's barely relevant to the plot. If it was a couple episodes earlier there could have been tension/fish out of water stuff as he interacted with the NASA crew, but as it stands the writers have asked the viewer to take a massive leap of faith in plausibility for... narratively, what, exactly? A delay of a few minutes while Dani and the cosmonaut brought back the docking McGuffin?
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Jan 8, 2023 02:26
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Whenever China’s not on screen, all the other countries should be saying “Where’s China?”
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Oct 13, 2023 19:36
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