Mars: Season Two

[Dalhousie]

I have read that Greenpeace got interviewed for Er. 2.  Is this correct?

Yes, and it's actually pretty good. No matter what your opinion of them, or their position on this issue, you come away understanding them. And you understand that there are people in that organization that have the courage of their convictions. I actually thought that the focus on Greenpeace in ep 2 was better than the focus on the company guy (an oil worker) in ep 1. His story was mainly about being separated from his family and feeling isolated. The Greenpeace story was more about having a cause and sacrificing for that cause.

Thanks.  It's not so much having courage on one's convictions that matter, but what those convictions are.

[Blackstar]

Thanks.  It's not so much having courage on one's convictions that matter, but what those convictions are.

I like whales.

[su27k]

The analogy to Mars is a good one too--mess up on Mars, do something to wreck the environment, and nobody will fix it, the damage will be permanent.

Mars' environment is already messed up, I don't see how we can make it worse.

There was also a good comment by one of the talking heads when referring to terraforming: we're having a hard enough time keeping Earth livable, so it's incredibly hubristic to think that we can go to another planet and make that one livable.

There're fairly cheap (in the billion dollars range) geo-engineering methods on the table that can change the climate, but everyone is (justifiably) worried about the negative effects they may have on our daily lives. Fortunately this is not a concern on Mars.

It's also arrogant to assume that we trashed Earth and can simply walk away from it.

Nobody is assuming this.

[Blackstar]

Meanwhile, back on Mars...

Episode 3 was pretty good. Probably the best of the season so far. But it also has some of the same problems that all of them have, which I attribute both to casting and tone. I'll deal with the drama segments in this post, and the documentary segments in the next post. This is all filled with spoilers, so if that bothers you, don't read it.

Hanna Seung (the science base commander) is still depressed about her sister's death.
Amelie (the doctor) is still depressed that she's pregnant and her relationship with Javier has fallen apart.
Javier is actually rather happy about the pregnancy.
Marta (the scientist) is mad and brooding and obsessed with the corporate drilling team.

The drama segments had two main themes, both of which were pretty good. Marta is very concerned that the Lukrum Corp. people are drilling into an aquifer that could harbor undiscovered life forms and that could destroy them. She's become a real jerk about it, picking fights with her coworkers and her commander. She steals a rover and heads out to their drill site. When the drillers leave, she takes some water samples. As she's heading back, there's a massive solar flare that knocks out power at both the science base and the corporate base and affects her navigation system. I was not totally clear how that latter part worked, because I thought they referred to terrain relative navigation. She didn't really need a GPS system, because at least for awhile she could follow her own tracks in the dirt, and you would think that in the future they would do a lot of navigation by scene matching--having a camera on the rover spot terrain points and figure out where they are. But eventually it gets dark and she is lost. She shuts down systems on her rover, then more systems and more systems. It's getting colder and colder and soon she's suffering hypothermia. As she's dying, Marta has flashbacks that help to explain her better. She left a boyfriend/husband back on Earth, deciding to go to Mars for scientific research, which she told him "is bigger than both of us." We start to see that her scientific pursuits are all she has left. She gave up life and love on Earth. And she's been on Mars for almost a decade studying the same boring microbes. There's a hint in an earlier scene where she's talking with Amelie and reveals that she's not a total automaton, and it pays off well here.

Eventually the science base gets partial power restored which allows them to locate the rover's navigation beacon. It turns out Marta has been heading in a completely wrong direction and is very far from the base. They call the corporate base and tell them, and the corporate guys show up and rescue Marta. The corporate commander (Kurt) actually comes across as a decent guy in this episode (he's been a dick in the previous episodes) and he lets Marta have her samples, saying that they could have just asked for samples in the first place. As Marta is being taken into sick bay, still being a jerk herself, he shouts "You're welcome!" in one of the few bits of humor in the entire series. (Seriously, you can count the number of laughs in all of the episodes shown so far on one hand.)

The other dramatic story arc involves Amelie and Javier and her pregnancy, and it's just straight soap opera stuff and I just don't really give a fig. Amelie is insufferably French, and Javier seems to be the only person on the whole freaking planet who is happy.

As an aside, I rather liked the confrontation between Marta and base commander Hanna. Marta was clearly over the line and being rude and disrespectful. Hanna was also way too disengaged from her job due to her duties. But Hanna's blowup at Marta was also unprofessional and a bit over the top and awkward. And it reminded me of something that I've seen in my career, that often people in leadership positions have not had any training in leadership. The military provides it, but civilian life often just promotes somebody based upon various attributes without training them how to lead people. Hanna is suffering from depression, but it is likely that she didn't receive any training on how to handle people in such situations. So what might seem like sloppy writing and acting to some viewers struck me as rather realistic.

(Next week: it looks like something in the water is making everybody sick. Obviously the Lukrum people did not bring Brita water filters with them.)

[Blackstar]

Now on to the documentary segments of episode 3:

These were really pretty good. One thing that I wonder about this show is how they write it. The documentary segments are very well integrated into the dramatic segments. The two mirror each other, and I wonder how they do that. Do they gather the documentary material and figure out what their theme is and then write the drama segments to match it? I think it would be a lot harder to write the drama segments first and then try to assemble the documentary segments--which are mostly interviews--based upon that.

As a reminder, episode 1's documentary segments were about a guy living on an oil drilling rig. It was mostly about his isolation and the long hours and separation from family. It didn't match well with the drama segments, where the Mars corporate commander (Kurt) was mostly portrayed as a rather reckless jerk. Episode 2's documentary segments dealt with Greenpeace activists protesting oil drilling in the arctic. What was interesting about those segments is that even if you disagree with their protests (and I do, somewhat), it's clear that they are committed and willing to make sacrifices for their beliefs. Those segments, while good, were a bit of an awkward mesh with the drama segments, which were mostly about the Lukrum people being rather reckless and Kurt continuing to be a jerk. Oh, and everybody was still pretty miserable.

The episode 3 documentary segments meshed very well with the drama segments. We saw several scientists who do work in the arctic, and we got a sense of their inner drive and personality. One of them commented about how his family seemed to think that his science is "work" that keeps him away from his family, but he pointed out that his scientific work is his life. It's not a separate part of his life. One of the talking heads commented that many scientists are more at ease with nature than they are with people.

An aside: I think they failed to make a distinction here. Most scientists work in labs and universities and don't do field work. Their jobs don't isolate them from society or families. Their jobs are often 9-5, five days a week. And while they are not comprehensible to many non-scientists, they are still comprehensible as jobs and not a lifestyle. I thought that the episode showed that the scientists they were referring to are the ones who go out into the field, but it's still an important distinction.

Something else that the documentary segments showed was that these field scientists are willing to accept isolation and risk in the pursuit of their work. That's obviously a theme of all the episodes so far (the oil worker, the Greenpeace activist, and now the scientists all are taking physical risks). The early segment of the scientists being dropped off by the helicopter in Greenland made a great case. To paraphrase the scientist: climate change is real, they need data to understand it, and that requires taking risks to gather the data; they could die out there on the ice sheet. (Cut to a few blathering nabobs who say that it's all a myth to emphasize the point.) There was also the guy who was trying to drop the sensor into the water chute and talked about the dangers, and then a talking head who mentioned that scientists can often get tunnel vision when pursuing a goal and become unaware of the risks they are taking. Then some shots of scientists doing some really risky things like going to the edge of a volcano or climbing very high trees.

These segments did a great job of providing context for Marta's actions on Mars. As the show has established, she found life on Mars nearly a decade earlier. But they spent all their money on a high-tech laboratory and not on sample collection or drilling equipment. And for ten years they've only discovered those initial samples, which are now rather boring to them. Marta wants more data, and she's willing to break the rules to go and get it. It was a pretty good story arc, because we understand her motivations and we also understand more of her personality. She has nothing else besides her work. That's it.

When this show premiered a couple of years ago I wrote in a TSR article that they could cut out all the drama segments and simply go with the documentary segments and they'd have a great show. That remains true for this season, although I thought the oil drilling segments were rather weak.

[GWH]

It does bother me somewhat that all the documentary's focus this season has been around fossil fuels and climate change. I can understand the parallels to the exploitation of the frontier with the oil rigs, but there are certainly OTHER cases of frontier living to extract other resources in remote areas (mining for example).

The issue I have with focusing on fossil fuels and climate change is that this is something we can ween our way off of, but face considerable opposition in doing so, where as mining is something that is (mostly) needed to grow the economy. Of course recycling can reduce that need, and in the case of Mars reuse of resources would be critical.

The focus on fossil fuels and climate change just strikes me as being heavy handed, its a dirty habit of humanity, although maybe it does parallel the space based economy in that water is essential for creating propellant and enabling transportation in that economy.

[Blackstar]

but there are certainly OTHER cases of frontier living to extract other resources in remote areas (mining for example).

Come up with a plausible material to mine on Mars that could provide storytelling and drama opportunities. I cannot think of any.

In fact, I have a hard time with the concept that Lukrum is there to drill water. Why? Who are they going to sell it to? This is the classic space resources dilemma/conundrum that everybody likes to skip past. The first episode featured various people saying things like "If there is money to be made, companies will show up to try and make it." But nobody has an answer to the "if" part of that equation. What is the commodity? I see this every day in the space field. Two weeks ago I was at a lunar workshop and people were talking about all the amazing water to be found at the lunar south pole and how we just need to go there and get it. And capitalism/free enterprise/public-private partnerships will enable this to happen. And sell it to whom? Nobody ever answers that, and so it's not surprising that this show falls into that same conundrum.

[GWH]

but there are certainly OTHER cases of frontier living to extract other resources in remote areas (mining for example).

Come up with a plausible material to mine on Mars that could provide storytelling and drama opportunities. I cannot think of any.

Not where I was going with that, I am merely pointing out the focus on OIL and nothing but OIL is a bit much.

In fact, I have a hard time with the concept that Lukrum is there to drill water. Why?

Terraforming plans in the show clearly involve building giant mirror arrays in orbit, requiring mirrors built ISRU and launch services. Obviously someone is paying for this work to be performed, lets assume the space agency or more succinctly "government". This means lots of propellant and local mining of resources.

If Lukrum can drill for water and mine/build mirrors at a lower cost than whatever the space agency is doing there exists opportunity for profit.

What is the commodity? I see this every day in the space field. Two weeks ago I was at a lunar workshop and people were talking about all the amazing water to be found at the lunar south pole and how we just need to go there and get it. And capitalism/free enterprise/public-private partnerships will enable this to happen. And sell it to whom?

The commodity in that case is deltaV. "Government" wants their moon missions and they want to do it as cheaply as possible. Mine the water, make the propellant, provide the transportation service. If one can provide that transportation service cheaper than say, SLS, there is profit to be made. If transport to GEO, or Europa, or anywhere else can be made less expensive there is potential profit.

But yes, the concept of "showing up to make profit" is a fallacy unless there is some potential anchor customer that one is providing for is silly. In this case Lukrum couldn't just show up and make profit without that space agency already being there and requiring services.

[mlindner]

I'll watch the season if the capitalist guy turns out to be anything other than "evil boogeyman" and is shown to have actual merit. So far it sounds like that's all he is.

[TripleSeven]

but there are certainly OTHER cases of frontier living to extract other resources in remote areas (mining for example).

Come up with a plausible material to mine on Mars that could provide storytelling and drama opportunities. I cannot think of any.

In fact, I have a hard time with the concept that Lukrum is there to drill water. Why? Who are they going to sell it to? This is the classic space resources dilemma/conundrum that everybody likes to skip past. The first episode featured various people saying things like "If there is money to be made, companies will show up to try and make it." But nobody has an answer to the "if" part of that equation. What is the commodity? I see this every day in the space field. Two weeks ago I was at a lunar workshop and people were talking about all the amazing water to be found at the lunar south pole and how we just need to go there and get it. And capitalism/free enterprise/public-private partnerships will enable this to happen. And sell it to whom? Nobody ever answers that, and so it's not surprising that this show falls into that same conundrum.

Good comments.  Of course these people (the original group) are going "now now" (off the deep end).  Its unclear any of them have been "off Mars" since the story started.  They dont have any "vacations" ("Hello I am going to Demios for two weeks and get drunk or swim on the beach or whatever") and its unclear that they have any real "get away" oppurtunities...to well blow off steam and get away from the operation.

The American west was hard but it was not without parties, booze, saloons, or "get aways".  When my relatives settles in the 1840's where we live now...they went to Galveston sometimes and "Hung out"...the oldest bar in the city was once a saloon...and the relatives are known to have gone there.  I have friends in the South Pole who "get away" from it all...and when they are there...there is "booze" ...when I was on the CVN the skipper would every so often declare "the flight deck ashore" and the parties started.

The knife gets dull if all you do is the same thing over and over again and have the same pressures, even if you love what you are doing.  This is why after X time on the oil rig, most companies have manadatory time off...

Mars might be great scenery when you first get there but after a bit its going to look the same everywhere you go and you are going to nkow every little space "on the base" from sheer boredom.  unless you find a holodeck or something to try and give you some perspective from what is every day life...well before long you are going to start day dreaming about what real life was.

Or you had none   and these people are dangerous.

[Blackstar]

The commodity in that case is deltaV. "Government" wants their moon missions and they want to do it as cheaply as possible. Mine the water, make the propellant, provide the transportation service. If one can provide that transportation

Nope. That's tautological and it falls apart. If the government is the customer, then there's no market and it's not commercial, it's contracting. And what private company would advance significant capital to mine a resource that the government might want 10-30 years from now? Nobody would bank on the government's human spaceflight policy being consistent for more than a decade. Governments can be fickle.

And it doesn't work for "Mars" either: Lukrum shows up, nearly wrecks the IMSF base with reentry debris, demands water and power, and decides to take a shortcut through IMSF off-limits territory. Why? So they can mine water to sell to the IMSF? For starters, IMSF doesn't need the water (they're giving it to Lukrum). Also, it's best not to punch your customer in the nose before offering to sell them something. The best strategy for IMSF would be to refuse to buy, let Lukrum go bankrupt and leave, and then just take over their camp.

The show has not answered who Lukrum is going to sell anything to. Maybe there is a wave of space tourists who are eager to visit Mars and Lukrum is going to set up the resort. But as of episode 3, we haven't gotten any indication about what they're going to sell to whom.

[RonM]

but there are certainly OTHER cases of frontier living to extract other resources in remote areas (mining for example).

Come up with a plausible material to mine on Mars that could provide storytelling and drama opportunities. I cannot think of any.

In fact, I have a hard time with the concept that Lukrum is there to drill water. Why? Who are they going to sell it to? This is the classic space resources dilemma/conundrum that everybody likes to skip past. The first episode featured various people saying things like "If there is money to be made, companies will show up to try and make it." But nobody has an answer to the "if" part of that equation. What is the commodity? I see this every day in the space field. Two weeks ago I was at a lunar workshop and people were talking about all the amazing water to be found at the lunar south pole and how we just need to go there and get it. And capitalism/free enterprise/public-private partnerships will enable this to happen. And sell it to whom? Nobody ever answers that, and so it's not surprising that this show falls into that same conundrum.

Good comments.  Of course these people (the original group) are going "now now" (off the deep end).  Its unclear any of them have been "off Mars" since the story started.  They dont have any "vacations" ("Hello I am going to Demios for two weeks and get drunk or swim on the beach or whatever") and its unclear that they have any real "get away" oppurtunities...to well blow off steam and get away from the operation.

The American west was hard but it was not without parties, booze, saloons, or "get aways".  When my relatives settles in the 1840's where we live now...they went to Galveston sometimes and "Hung out"...the oldest bar in the city was once a saloon...and the relatives are known to have gone there.  I have friends in the South Pole who "get away" from it all...and when they are there...there is "booze" ...when I was on the CVN the skipper would every so often declare "the flight deck ashore" and the parties started.

The knife gets dull if all you do is the same thing over and over again and have the same pressures, even if you love what you are doing.  This is why after X time on the oil rig, most companies have manadatory time off...

Mars might be great scenery when you first get there but after a bit its going to look the same everywhere you go and you are going to nkow every little space "on the base" from sheer boredom.  unless you find a holodeck or something to try and give you some perspective from what is every day life...well before long you are going to start day dreaming about what real life was.

Or you had none   and these people are dangerous.

They do have a bar in the second season.

[Blackstar]

They do have a bar in the second season.

And a bar fight!

Hopefully, some Klingons will show up.

[Blackstar]

Spoilers here, so if you don't want to be spoiled, don't read.



Episode 4 dealt with the outbreak of a disease at the Lukrum base, spreading to at least half a dozen people. Severe respiratory illness. Back at the IMSF base, the researcher who was scientist Marta's assistant also catches the disease. He is found by Javier and is in very bad condition. Marta is still in sick bay, recovering from severe hypothermia.

Soon the scientist dies and Javier is sick. Marta goes into the lab in a protective suit to try and figure out what happened. They now realize that the contagion came from Marta's samples--so it started with her, not back at Lukrum. What Marta discovers is that although her samples contain what appears to be the same organism that they found on Mars years earlier, it is a different strain and became activated in a warmer temperature, thus multiplying rapidly and becoming lethal. (Sidenote: although this happened with Marta's samples, one would expect that eventually it would have happened at the Lukrum facility anyway, because they were the ones drawing all the water.)

Meanwhile, they have tried pumping everybody full of antibiotics and it does not work. After frantic effort, Marta determines that a simple antibiotic--penicillin--may work. The problem is that they don't have any. But the Chinese station does and they call back to IMSF asking permission to request it be dropped down from the Chinese station. IMSF, which is now in partnership with Lukrum, hesitates. The Lukrum boss is a pretty heartless bastard and he says that if they make the request to the Chinese, the situation will become public and that will tank their stock value. He says no to the request, adding that the families of the dead will be well-compensated.

Back at the IMSF base Hana finally shows some real backbone, ignores the order to wait, and puts in the request to the Chinese, who send down the penicillin. They apply it to the sick crewmembers and they recover. The final scene is Hana's #2 calling back to IMSF and saying that he believes that Hana is depressed and no longer fit for command.

This was a really strong episode for the dramatic segments, the best of the season so far (better than last week). A couple of things marred it a bit. The Lukrum CEO was a little too cutthroat. He was perfectly willing to let a bunch of people die. The show did a good job of illustrating that this is the reality for many companies on Earth, where companies will cover up deaths or allow them to happen in order to keep making money. But it was just a little too much with this guy. Plus, you would think that losing a big chunk of the Lukrum crew, and possibly even having the contagion spread to the rest of the base might wreck Lukrum's operations.

The other thing that bugged me a little bit was Hana's subordinate calling for her removal. We will see how that plays out in future episodes, but Hana was the on-site commander and she made a tough call and SHE SAVED PEOPLES' LIVES. You'd think that by this point Hana would be a hero to her people, not to mention the Lukrum people. Maybe that's how it plays out--with an effort to remove Hana protested by both the IMSF and Lukrum crewmembers.

(the documentary segments in the next post)

[KelvinZero]

Not fully on topic.. but how high could a whale leap in mars gravity anyway? That would be quite a sight.. and the slow fall would probably actually make it look larger.

[Blackstar]

Not fully on topic.. but how high could a whale leap in mars gravity anyway? That would be quite a sight.. and the slow fall would probably actually make it look larger.

That is the kind of question best answered either by a combination of whale biologists and mathematicians, or a group of stoner dudes.

[Johnnyhinbos]

Not fully on topic.. but how high could a whale leap in mars gravity anyway? That would be quite a sight.. and the slow fall would probably actually make it look larger.

That is the kind of question best answered either by a combination of whale biologists and mathematicians, or a group of stoner dudes.

(is there a difference?)

[MickQ]

Only in the name.

[Blackstar]

Spoilers here, so if you don't want to be spoiled, skip along.



I know I was going to summarize the docu parts of episode 4, but I got lazy. So I'm only doing that now. They focused on a Russian Greenpeace activist who has been reporting on an anthrax outbreak in Siberia that killed a bunch of people as well as thousands of reindeer. The government came in and tried to cover it all up, destroying most photos and videos and burning everybody's cellphones. As the episode makes clear, the oil companies are developing Siberia, and the Russian government is a major shareholder in these companies, so if the companies want the information destroyed, the government complies. There was also some discussion about how disease outbreaks are often covered up by governments for economic purposes, and this can result in the disease spreading even farther and faster. They mentioned the example of the SARS outbreak in China, where the government refused to reveal that it was happening and by the time they admitted it, SARS had spread beyond China's borders. The theme of these segments--echoed in the dramatic segments--is that there's a very blurry line between corporate and government interests, and the corporations will quickly cover up deaths and environmental destruction in the name of money.

I thought that these segments were really pretty good, in part because they're so surprising: you think that governments would want to stop the spread of deadly diseases as quickly as possible, but the reality is that other interests, primarily economic, prevent that from happening. The first instinct is to cover it up, which only allows the disease to spread further.

[Blackstar]

Spoilers for episode 5 here, so if you don't want to be spoiled, I suggest watching an episode of Gilligan's Island instead, where once again they fail to get off the island...


The dramatic segments for episodes 3 and 4 were pretty good. I thought that episode 5 was almost as good, but dropped a little bit.

The episode starts with Mike, who is Hana's #2 at the IMSF base, being told by IMSF on Earth that they reject his concerns about Hana's stability. They're going to keep Hana in charge. He doesn't like this, and so we know that he's going to cause trouble.

Lukrum is now drilling for water, but keeps running into problems--they get down a ways and then run into a hard layer that they cannot get through. So they call up the IMSF base and ask for more power. It's not quite clear what is going on, but the implication is that the Lukrum base is sending all their power to the drilling site, and is running off of the power that they get from the IMSF base. There's a bit of dialogue about how the Lukrum guys are fulfilling their part of the deal to manufacture mirrors to be sent into Mars orbit to help with the terraforming. (As a sidenote: this show cuts corners a bit by telling us things instead of showing us. So for several episodes it has been unclear if Lukrum is actually upholding their deal, and then it's passed off casually in a single line of dialogue that they are. This should have been explained several episodes ago, because otherwise it made it look like IMSF was being taken for a ride.)

There is some remote sensing data that indicates that a portion of Mars may be getting wet from the terraforming efforts. Hana then heads out to that area with Robert. They look around and find nothing. It's not happening. Hana then screams in frustration, fed up with not accomplishing anything on Mars. (I had a brief flashback to the movie Red Planet, which has an amusing scene where Val Kilmer's character fails once again and collapses to the ground in exhaustion and say's "Well, that's about it. I hate this planet...")

Meanwhile, back at the IMSF base, Mike has decided to make his power play. He's keeping a close eye on the Lukrum power usage, and as soon as they go over the agreed amount, he orders his people to cut the power to Lukrum. He informs Lukrum that they had a deal, Lukrum broke it (not for the first time), so screw you guys, we're cutting you off.

This causes chaos back on the Lukrum base. They were sending all their power over to their drill site, and now they've overtaxed their systems and stuff is burning out and sparks are flying and alarms are going off and it's just all higgledy-piggledy. They have to evacuate to their medical bay where they should be safe.

And this is just, well stupid. If their power goes out, the oxygen doesn't simply evaporate from the air. The air quality may go bad, but that's not going to happen in just a few minutes, it's going to take longer than that. And as soon as all of this started happening I kept thinking to myself I bet this is going to involve the dog...

And then of course somebody says "Where's Marvin?"

What then happens is the IMSF base commander woman (Kurt's #2 person) seals everybody in the med bay and then goes off in search of Marvin the dog. This requires her to walk about 100 feet, where she finds Marvin sleeping in a corner. She picks up Marvin and then struggles to make it back to the med bay as the oxygen runs out. Will she make it? Will she save Marvin, the only decent human being--well, dog--on the entire Lukrum base?

CUT TO COMMERCIAL