Author Topic: Stars on Mars reality TV show  (Read 9544 times)

Offline Blackstar

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Offline Blackstar

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Re: Stars on Mars reality TV show
« Reply #1 on: 05/23/2023 01:38 am »


Offline Blackstar

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Re: Stars on Mars reality TV show
« Reply #2 on: 05/23/2023 01:38 am »
« Last Edit: 05/26/2023 10:56 pm by Blackstar »

Offline Eric Hedman

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Offline Blackstar

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Re: Stars on Mars reality TV show
« Reply #4 on: 05/28/2023 05:18 pm »
I have an article on this show appearing in The Space Review Tuesday evening. By my count, there have been 11 proposed/announced space-themed reality TV shows, and only two that have actually been produced and made it to air. The other one, in addition to Stars on Mars, was a UK Channel 4 production in 2004.

Most of the announced ones featured a space flight as a prize. That may have been their undoing, because buying a seat on a Soyuz, Dragon, or even suborbital, is expensive for a reality show. And it adds a scheduling element that is difficult to solve.

Offline Blackstar

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Re: Stars on Mars reality TV show
« Reply #5 on: 05/31/2023 12:03 am »
https://thespacereview.com/article/4592/1

Red planet reality
by Dwayne A. Day
Tuesday, May 30, 2023

Here we go. All over again.

On June 5, Fox premieres a new reality show called “Stars on Mars.” The premise is that a group of C-list celebrities are stuck together in a simulated Mars habitat and go on various missions in fake spacesuits to compete for prizes. William Shatner—Captain Kirk himself—is back in “mission control,” overseeing the entire effort. This is the latest in a long list of space-themed reality shows, most of which never blasted off.

Let’s be real: reality television is anything but. The drama and conflict on screen is often staged, encouraged, or created in the editing room. The contestants, of course, are not on Mars; the show was filmed in the same corner of the Australian desert where a crew filmed Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome, four decades ago. “Stars on Mars” was only revealed in April and then put on the schedule this month. It is now the thirteenth time that somebody has attempted to create a space-themed reality TV show, and this will only be the second one to air. The other ones probably failed because they tried to make a space flight as the prize for the winner. We don’t know what the winner of “Stars on Mars” will get, but it won’t be a trip to the Red Planet.

Offline Blackstar

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Re: Stars on Mars reality TV show
« Reply #6 on: 05/31/2023 04:20 pm »
And here is an incredibly stupid poll to find out which of the "stars" you should pair up with on Mars:

https://www.buzzfeed.com/realityclubfox/find-out-which-celebrity-youd-join-on-a-mission-to-mars


Offline Blackstar

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Re: Stars on Mars reality TV show
« Reply #7 on: 06/06/2023 03:03 pm »
I watched the first episode and it wasn't bad. The production design is pretty good. They copied "The Martian" in terms of the look of the spacesuits and hab and interiors. They went brighter with the colors, but that works. All the exterior shots are heavily red-tinted, but that is also done well, giving it an alien feeling. And the desert that they filmed in, in Australia, looks like another planet.

The challenges were based on things that might happen to a space mission, but with a sci-fi element. They were not totally stupid.

As to the celebrities, they were not as annoying as I expected them to be. I wouldn't want to hang out with any of them, but nobody demonstrated psychopath behavior up-front. So not terrible. Dunno why the daughter of Bruce Willis and Demi Moore is there--what has she done other than be born to famous parents?

Shatner almost certainly filmed all his sessions in a single day back in Los Angeles and never interacted with the celebrities at all.

Offline Dalhousie

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Re: Stars on Mars reality TV show
« Reply #8 on: 06/07/2023 07:44 am »
I watched the first episode and it wasn't bad. The production design is pretty good. They copied "The Martian" in terms of the look of the spacesuits and hab and interiors. They went brighter with the colors, but that works. All the exterior shots are heavily red-tinted, but that is also done well, giving it an alien feeling. And the desert that they filmed in, in Australia, looks like another planet.

The Coober Pedy area where it is filmed is actually something of a Mars analogue, with strong acidic weathering of the rocks.  The world's largest poly-hydrated magnesium sulphate deposit is near by at the ironically named Moon Plain.  There are also some nice examples of inverted relief in the area.  Coober Pedy is a world famous opal mining field, with many people living underground and with underground shops, hotels , and churches, to escape the summer heat.

Apologies in advance for any lack of civility - it's unintended

Offline Blackstar

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Re: Stars on Mars reality TV show
« Reply #9 on: 06/09/2023 11:39 am »
The Coober Pedy area where it is filmed is actually something of a Mars analogue, with strong acidic weathering of the rocks.  The world's largest poly-hydrated magnesium sulphate deposit is near by at the ironically named Moon Plain.  There are also some nice examples of inverted relief in the area.  Coober Pedy is a world famous opal mining field, with many people living underground and with underground shops, hotels , and churches, to escape the summer heat.


I know that there have been several movies filmed there, including Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome. It's really something to look at, although you have to be looking down at it to see the full dramatically alien landscape. I assume that they filmed in the winter when it was actually bearable. That means this show must have filmed in mid-2022.

"Stars on Mars" was only announced in April and only put on the schedule in May. I don't know what that really means. Does it mean that it sat around without a buyer for a long time? Or did they just keep it quiet? (It could have been public but under a vague name like "William Shatner Project #307.") There was a reality show that appeared during the pandemic that had been sitting around for at least a year because it was bad and no network wanted it. When they ran out of programming, they decided to put it on, where it got trashed by critics. It's hard to believe, but sometimes networks spend tens of millions of dollars on a show that they then don't like and don't want to air.

I'm rambling...

Anyway, the first episode of "Stars on Mars" was fun. It was an amusing take on The Martian. I expected to hate it and didn't. I kinda enjoyed it. And if you want to know, "McLovin" was the first celebrity kicked off of Mars.
« Last Edit: 06/09/2023 11:49 am by Blackstar »

Offline Blackstar

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Re: Stars on Mars reality TV show
« Reply #10 on: 06/12/2023 07:01 pm »
Did you miss the first episode of "Stars on Mars," where McLovin got thrown out an airlock and his head exploded? Are you sorry that you missed it? Regret nothing! Tonight you get another episode, where you can watch the "celebrities" engage in ritualized combat while extraterrestrials bet Quatloos on who will be the winner. 9 PM Eastern, on Fox!







Update: Spoilers! If you're wondering who they threw out the airlock in episode 2, it was the nepo baby.
« Last Edit: 06/13/2023 12:35 pm by Blackstar »

Offline Blackstar

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Re: Stars on Mars reality TV show
« Reply #11 on: 06/15/2023 03:27 pm »
We watch, so you don't have to...


I just watched the second episode. I am surprised that the show is better than I expected. I won't say it is great or riveting, but their concept was pretty good. What they have done is take the setting of "The Martian" and then put a bunch of celebrities in it, giving them challenges that can conceivably happen on Mars. Now it's not totally realistic, because a windstorm on Mars would not have any force, and you couldn't pour out liquid water on Mars without it turning into vapor almost immediately (if it did not freeze first). But it's close enough. They're not in a near-vacuum and they could not be--it's filmed on Earth, after all.

The celebrities are generally somewhat bland. So far nobody is really objectionable, picking arguments, etc. Maybe that's a bad thing from a drama perspective, but I don't like reality shows in general, and one of the reasons is that too many people on them are acting out or are generally bad people. That's not the case here.

There are some clever aspects, the kinds of things that are analogous to real-life space missions. Spoilers ahead, so stop reading if you care about that.

Each episode they have to pick a new "mission commander" and then a "mission specialist," who acts as the commander's right-hand person. The commander gets the perks of their own cabin and bathroom, and they get to tell people what to do. But in the second episode, we saw that the commander could also be on the send-home list if they oversee a challenge that fails. They have to be responsible for their crew.

After each challenge, the commander (possibly with the help of some crew) decides who is "mission critical" and who is going to be sent home. If the challenge fails, the commander is one of the people on the list who could be sent home.

The interesting twist that happened in episode two is that the person who lobbied to be commander was a bit trippy-dippy. She was very positive and encouraging, and a bit too much of a people person. The challenge was that their water supply was gone, so most of the crew (minus commander and specialist) was sent out to a cliff/cave site. Some of them had to rappel down the cliff. They would then go into the cave where they would use a device to catch water that would then be pumped back up to the top of the cliff to four containers. They had to fill all four within 20 minutes or fail the mission.

One of the smaller members of the crew, Ariel, wanted to go down the cliff and into the caves, and a larger, more athletic man, was willing to give up his spot for her. The mission commander had guidance saying that strength was important for the water collection. She decided to let the smaller woman go into the cave rather than the stronger man, and then during the water collection, some of the water got spilled and they failed to fill all four water containers. (The guy who was up top also made a stupid error, telling them that they had filled three-and-a-half barrels when it was only two-and-a-half. That was a speaking error--it didn't change the outcome of how many barrels were filled--but as one member of the crew later said "How hard is it to count to four?" On a space mission, giving the wrong information could be dangerous.)

So they failed the mission. The crew returned. The mission commander was one of the people on the list for being sent home. In the end, they decided to send her home, because she was in charge and she had made the error of sending down Ariel instead of the guy. It didn't matter what the crew members want to do, it's the commander's call about what they should do.

Now yeah, all of this was probably scripted rather than a real competition. It's not really "reality." But it was still a pretty good storyline that made the point that the commander is there to make tough decisions, not to be nice to people.

Could this show be better? Certainly. But I'm finding it to be a nice variation on "The Martian." I went in really skeptical, but I'm won over by now.
« Last Edit: 06/15/2023 03:33 pm by Blackstar »

Offline Blackstar

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Re: Stars on Mars reality TV show
« Reply #12 on: 06/20/2023 12:02 pm »
We watch so you don't have to...

Spoilers.


The third episode aired Monday night. This time they did the poop scenario. There was a fire and an explosion in their greenhouse and they had to evacuate in the middle of the night. When they came back, they had to do repairs. The first part of the mission was to send four people outside to fix a big hole in the side of the hab. This essentially involved covering the hole with a tarp and then taping it down.

The second part of the mission involved sending four people into the greenhouse where they had to remove the dead plants, then unload waste from the septic system and put it onto the soil. Then they had to cut up potatoes and plant the potatoes into the soil. It wasn't real human waste, it looked like the prop people mixed up a rather foul-smelling soup. Several of the crew moved quickly to deal with this, but one of them started gagging and couldn't do much. But they succeeded in both missions, which of course were under time constraints.

In the end, three people did not stand out and they were in the bottom three who were "not mission critical." They were the two football players and the gagging comedian woman (who so far has not said anything funny, so I guess she's not getting paid to be funny). Ultimately, one of the football players said that he wanted to be voted out because he didn't want to be there anymore, and his earlier actions indicated that he was tired of the whole thing.

The last scene consisted of several of the crew talking in whispers about "alliances" forming and how it was changing the game. This was partly because Rhonda had earlier indicated that the one thing that is keeping her sane was exercising with the football players, and if they left, she would go too. If you think this out, that's actually the wrong dynamic for the show, because you'd want the alliances to be about winning the game, but this is an alliance based upon quitting.

Yes, this is all fake reality. For all we know, almost all of this is scripted and before the show ever started they decided who would leave in what order. But I'm just reporting on what is happening as it happens.

To be honest, I started to get bored by this episode. This is where the challenges seemed rather dull and predictable. They're always under some artificial time constraint to force them to work together quickly. But that has gotten repetitive and boring.

Also, none of the personalities are really standing out. We are only getting glimpses of the celebrities and it's not enough to make them truly interesting. You would think that Lance Armstrong would be one of the standouts, but he's not--the only insight we got into his personality is that he said that he doesn't want to be base commander because he likes going outside. That's it. And even the intriguing hints of personality go nowhere. For instance, there was a bit of conversation with Ariel Winter who started acting when she was four years old. Somebody asked her if she wanted to do that and she said no, she was forced to do it by her mother. And that was it, nothing more. If you look up her history, however, it was a lot more dramatic than that--her mother was abusive and stole her acting earnings, and she had to sue her mother for independence before she turned 18. But we heard none of that, just a throwaway line.

There are about 7-8 more episodes to go. I'll keep watching, but my interest really dropped with this episode.
« Last Edit: 06/20/2023 12:04 pm by Blackstar »

Offline Blackstar

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Re: Stars on Mars reality TV show
« Reply #13 on: 06/27/2023 03:24 am »
We watch so you don't have to...


Spoilers



Episode 4. Okay, last week I wrote that I was starting to get bored with the show. This week was better. There were two challenges this week, one of them fun/silly and the other more serious. The silly one was race a robot dog around the hab. That didn't mean anything.

The more serious one was that a fungus was found in their hab and they traced the source to deep inside a cave complex. There were two mother sources of the fungus, so they had to send out two teams in rovers, they had to park the rovers, go down a ramp, and enter two caves. They had to find their way through the caves, looking for signs of the fungus using UV flashlights. When they got to the sources, they had to burn them out with flamethrowers. Then they had to get back out of the caves and up to their rovers before their oxygen ran out. They managed to do it, but one team reached their rover with only seconds to spare.

They got back to the hab and this time they had to eliminate two people, not one. One of the people in the bottom three took themselves out. They didn't want to be there anymore, so they were out. The other person had consistently been in the bottom three, so he was out too. He just lacked focus for all the episodes and never really stepped up and tried hard. So with two people out, they are now down to seven after starting with twelve.

So yeah, maybe the whole thing was contrived and scripted ahead of time, but if it wasn't, then everybody who has been kicked off Mars so far has been the right choice. They weren't performing or trying very hard. That said, there are a few people who have remained who haven't necessarily excelled. (Yes, it's all edited, so they're only going to show the people who get booted as screwups, but it's hard to disagree with the eliminations based upon previous episodes.)

The show keeps trying to play up the drama and the scheming among the contestants, but it's not really believable. It's hard to see the alliances that people keep talking about. They generally seem to be getting along together. That said, Lance Armstrong does seem like a bit of a dick. He's athletic, but he isn't really very social. He hasn't done anything to stand out or to demonstrate his value, and he doesn't seem to try all that hard. His athleticism has carried him along, but he doesn't seem very focused.

I think the show's biggest strength is the challenges, which have been reasonably interesting in a sci-fi sorta way. And it looks great--the scenes in the cave were beautifully lit and filmed. If they had included some creepy music from "Alien" the cave scenes could have been scary. The show's weakness is the celebrities they picked, who are not all that interesting.

And here's the big surprise: next episode is introducing four new crewmembers. We don't know who they are. Hopefully they will be more interesting than the current group.

Offline Dalhousie

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Re: Stars on Mars reality TV show
« Reply #14 on: 06/27/2023 06:46 am »
The Coober Pedy area where it is filmed is actually something of a Mars analogue, with strong acidic weathering of the rocks.  The world's largest poly-hydrated magnesium sulphate deposit is near by at the ironically named Moon Plain.  There are also some nice examples of inverted relief in the area.  Coober Pedy is a world famous opal mining field, with many people living underground and with underground shops, hotels , and churches, to escape the summer heat.


I know that there have been several movies filmed there, including Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome. It's really something to look at, although you have to be looking down at it to see the full dramatically alien landscape. I assume that they filmed in the winter when it was actually bearable. That means this show must have filmed in mid-2022.

"Stars on Mars" was only announced in April and only put on the schedule in May. I don't know what that really means. Does it mean that it sat around without a buyer for a long time? Or did they just keep it quiet? (It could have been public but under a vague name like "William Shatner Project #307.") There was a reality show that appeared during the pandemic that had been sitting around for at least a year because it was bad and no network wanted it. When they ran out of programming, they decided to put it on, where it got trashed by critics. It's hard to believe, but sometimes networks spend tens of millions of dollars on a show that they then don't like and don't want to air.

I'm rambling...

Anyway, the first episode of "Stars on Mars" was fun. It was an amusing take on The Martian. I expected to hate it and didn't. I kinda enjoyed it. And if you want to know, "McLovin" was the first celebrity kicked off of Mars.

News reports here suggest it is being filmed now.  How reliable this is I do not know.  I'll be in Coober Pedy in a couple of weeks, will ask about.

Other films SF-leaning shot at least partly there include Stark, Pitch Black, and Red Planet.

Some NASA Mars art looks suspiciously like The Breakaways, just north of the town.

Apologies in advance for any lack of civility - it's unintended

Offline Blackstar

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Re: Stars on Mars reality TV show
« Reply #15 on: 07/02/2023 03:42 am »
News reports here suggest it is being filmed now.  How reliable this is I do not know.  I'll be in Coober Pedy in a couple of weeks, will ask about.

That's interesting. I just assumed that it was filmed last winter in Australia (no way they can film in the summer). Sometimes a reality show can film an entire season and then not air for a year or more. There's no grand prize for this show that would be spoiled if it got out.

The plot twist this past week is that after they kicked five of their original twelve people "off Mars," they are now going to get four new people. Monday's show is a repeat, so we'll have to wait another week to find out who they are. I hope they're more interesting than the current bunch.

I'll repeat myself by saying that I've been surprised by the show. It's not great, but they've done a good job with the premise. And they have avoided some of the junk that other reality shows serve up like screaming fights and villains who declare that they aren't there to make friends.

Offline Blackstar

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Re: Stars on Mars reality TV show
« Reply #16 on: 07/10/2023 10:01 pm »
https://thespacereview.com/article/4616/1

Reality is underrated: Fox’s “Stars on Mars” takes off
by Dwayne A. Day
Monday, July 10, 2023

I was wrong.

Five weeks ago, I wrote about the Fox space-themed “reality” TV show “Stars on Mars” and predicted that it would be awful. I based that assessment on the commercials and the advertising, and my biases against reality television, most of which is—to borrow a trope from one of the more notorious examples—garbage. I expected to hate-watch the show.

But despite the show itself leaning into the joke that the “stars” are less-than-stellar C-list celebrities, “Stars on Mars” has turned out to be better, more clever, and perhaps even more thoughtful than I expected. I won’t declare that it is great, riveting television, but it is watchable, doesn’t take itself too seriously, and doesn’t insult the viewers’ intelligence. Surprisingly, it could even teach us a thing or two about the kind of personalities needed for a successful space mission. Unsurprisingly, it is a reflection of how spaceflight, and dreams of humans on the Red Planet, are primarily entertainment, not reality.

My article was primarily about the long and unsuccessful history of space-themed reality shows. By my count, “Stars on Mars” is only the second space-themed reality show to reach the air (or should we say the stream?) after a string of attempts over two decades—a dozen or more proposed shows that we know about. “Stars on Mars” does not involve sending anybody to space, let alone Mars, which is probably why it succeeded in getting funded. Reality shows depend upon being cheaper than scripted television, and all the previous failed efforts proposed having an actual spaceflight (possibly only suborbital) as the prize. That would cost millions of dollars, making the show too expensive to fund (see “Red planet reality,” The Space Review, May 30, 2023.) “Stars on Mars” doesn’t have a spaceflight prize. Indeed, there is no indication of any prize at all other than being declared “the greatest star in the galaxy,” bragging rights that probably won’t get the winner a good table at a Los Angeles restaurant.


Offline Docabilly

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Re: Stars on Mars reality TV show
« Reply #17 on: 07/10/2023 10:51 pm »
Musk on MarsX  :)

Offline Blackstar

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Re: Stars on Mars reality TV show
« Reply #18 on: 07/11/2023 01:23 pm »
We watch so you don't have to!




Spoilers





Okay, my header was sarcastic. I think "Stars on Mars" is a reasonably enjoyable show. Read my review for the reasons why.

On last night's episode they got four new people added to the seven already there (they started out with twelve and eliminated five). The only one I recognized is Andy Richter, a comedian who used to be Conan O'Brien's sidekick. There was also a basketball player, a woman from "The Batchelor," and a woman who I guess won on "Iron Chef" and can therefore actually cook. They got some new food too, including pizza and wings, so good nutritious stuff.

The mission that the original crew had to go on was in two parts, and I think it was pretty clever. In fact, I think that all their missions so far have been clever. The landing craft with the four new people went off course and it also dropped its two nuclear power supplies. One crew had to go out and reach the landing craft and get the people, and the other crew had to get the two nuclear batteries (meant to be RTGs) and retrieve them with robots, drag them into caves, and then detonate explosives to collapse the caves and seal in the radiation. What was extra clever about this was that the robots had been introduced on a previous episode as something they needed to learn how to control, so they came in handy now. I really thought that the whole mission idea was pretty good. The show has taken a number of possible scenarios for a crew on Mars and turned them into the challenges. Yeah, they're sci-fi, but they're not crazy.

The other part of the show was some "drama" primarily between Lance Armstrong--who has been portrayed as a bit of a jerk--and Ariel Winter, who has been portrayed as a bit pushy. Armstrong is trying to stir up trouble and has decided to pick on Winter, who is half his age. And Armstrong immediately tried to stir that up with the new people, to get them to go against Winter. There was an earlier incident where Armstrong said some things that bothered some of the crewmembers. He's being portrayed as the crusty old guy who also likes to stir things up. But one way to interpret his actions is that he realizes that he has alienated some of the original crew, so he has to ally himself with some of the new crew.

One of the things I liked about the show is that there has not really been much nasty or petty drama. I guess they decided that they need to lean into that because that's what reality shows do--throw drinks in somebody's face and flip tables. But I would rather see them working together to solve their missions instead of going after each other. Do we want the Mars-themed show where they all survive in the end, or where they all start killing each other?

But it's worth remembering that this stuff is all edited and doesn't reflect what is really happening all that well. I remember reading an interview with some reality show participants who noted that there were scenes where they were shown scowling or giving somebody a nasty look that had been shot weeks after the event during a completely different incident. So who knows how "real" any of this is? I don't care all that much, I just want the show to be more fun than back-biting.

Offline Blackstar

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Re: Stars on Mars reality TV show
« Reply #19 on: 08/02/2023 01:57 pm »
I don't know how many episodes they made of this show. After Monday's episode, they still have 8 people left, and if they get rid of 1 per episode, that implies about 6 more episodes depending on how they handle the ending. Of course, they could always toss 2 people out in a single episode, as they have done already.


Spoilers, so don't read if you... well, you know the deal, right?



Because of lack of time, I have only watched the endings of the last three episodes to see who got sent home, but I plan to go back and watch the rest. They were down to 7 people, then added 4 new ones: a reality show star, a reality show chef, a comedian, and an NBA player. Since adding those four, they have now gotten rid of the comedian (Andy Richter) and the reality show person.

I stand by my earlier observations that the show looks great and the missions (challenges) they send the crew on are also pretty good. I also stand by my earlier observation that the people they picked are not terribly interesting. Nobody clearly stands out, although I find some of them slightly more interesting than others. The show would be better if they gave us a better idea of who these people are. Maybe fewer contestants would have been a better approach. There is no real prize for winning (no obvious cash prize), and that seems to affect their motivation a bit, because three people have now voluntarily removed themselves--and if they don't want to be there, that sends a message to the audience of why should we want to watch them when they are clearly not fully engaged? There is no way to know what their contracts say. Maybe they get more money if they are in more episodes, so staying longer means more pay. Or maybe the whole thing was rigged from the start and each celebrity knew exactly how long they would stay.

Stars on Mars really is less of a reality show and more of a sci-fi series. They have taken many of the tropes of The Martian and other Mars movies and turned them into challenges for this crew. And that has mostly worked well. There have been some interesting missions for them to pursue, like using robots to retrieve nuclear debris and put it into caves where the radiation is no longer a danger. I've been impressed with the ideas that the production came up with, although next week it looks like they've decided to push things and go with an alien monster invading the hab. Maybe it won't be all that bad. We'll see.

So yeah, I expected to hate this show (and thought that I would hate watch it), but I've found it moderately entertaining.

I'm working on another lightweight article about it, comparing it to some previous Mars-themed dramas. Those dramas have often featured crewmembers who were depressed, traumatized, or otherwise morose, and did not want to be on Mars. We've already seen some of that from this show. So there are parallels. Another parallel is that the exaggerated personal drama is less interesting than seeing them work together to overcome the obstacles placed in front of them.

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