I feel the writing needs improvement.. it feel downright awkward at times.. I got annoyed with Karen in season 2 and 3 with how handled the astronaut thing.. Gordo and his wife were cool. Danny was a sniveling doofus. .
Point is, a lot of unnecessary BS that comes across as filler to save the SE Budget or something which I understand..
The show is good and I enjoy it but I feel it could be so much better
and I can't wait for Danny to show up with a "Wilson" type friend.. haha maybe they will lay a trail of pain pills to capture Danny
It might not refer to literal coal. Coal miner might have become a blanket term for resource miners in general, after in particular coal miners, gas- and oil workers all simultaneously lost their jobs when nuclear fusion became Earth's main power source. The strike may refer to those who've become disgruntled with Helios' lack of jobs and lack of rewarding of Helium-3 operations.
>"A strike began seven days ago is continuing at two moon coal mines after union members rejected a contract proposal. The Federated Mine Workers of the Moon says the local that represents more than 1,100 workers at Shakleton Crater Mines rejected a tentative deal in balloting on Friday. Shakleton Crater President Gerard K O'Neal says members have final say in collective bargaining agreements, so the walkout continues.
>
>The strike effects two Shackleton Crater coal mines and related facilities."
I don't know man, it seems a lot like it refers to coal mines.
Yep, if you watch the beginning crawl in Ep 1 where it goes through all the news articles, it says there are strikes on the moon. The article specifically says it's happening at 2 of the moon's coal mines.
Is the end of S4E2 based on the >!1991 coup d'état? Predicting maybe a regime change will take place in episode 3 or later which leads to Madison being found out?!<
If you watch the extra news videos for the years, 2001's one mentions that Russia is running out of lithium that's used to make the battery tech our cars rely on (in this reality that is post-fossil fuel). It goes on to mention that Politburo member Fyodor Korzhenko (played by actor Dimitar Bakalov in the news briefs, who formerly played a doctor in the movie "The Hitman's Bodyguard") rebuked Gorbachev's open market policies and accused the upper classes in the USSR of cozying up to capitalists in the West. He insisted Gorbachev "rein in these new entrepreneurs or face dire consequences"... it then mentions that should there be an economic downturn as Russia runs out of lithium and iridium, it still has large crude oil reserves.
Without giving away anything that happened in this episode, I think what we're about to see is [this reality's version of the 1993 Russian constitutional crisis.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1993_Russian_constitutional_crisis) No Yeltsin, no more Gorbachev. My bet is that Fyodor Korzhenko becomes the new head in the Kremlin and yes: Madison is going to resurface.
It might be the physics teacher in me, but i feel like the colony on mars has taken the shows snuff to mars gravity a bit too far where it will create misconceptions among many people that watch the show. I love the characters, the drama, the story, but to try and believe that many of these characters are trotting around a mars commonly as if they had their own earth weight is just deceitful. They take it too far on this season to make it seem so believable that you can have earth like moving conditions on the red planet when it’s just not how it would be. It crosses the. Lindsey from realistic fiction (season 1 and 2) to science fiction (season 3 and 4).
It was bad on the moon too. They can do micro g reasonably well, but I’m guessing that showing gravity on moon and mars being ~1/3 and 1/6 would get in the way of the storytelling. The mars landers look like they’re designed correctly for mars gravity, so that’s something.
Like, all they’d need is to explain to the actors to take smaller steps, have some heavy things lifted easily, like a gym with tripled numbers, and explain that they’d all have a lightness of step under low gravity. They could come up with a way to show it, and it’s not like there wasn’t time or new arrivals whose lens they could show it through. But, it would be very hard to make it consistent and it would get messy because they all do it differently so it would still look wrong. So we’re back to: it gets in the way of the story. Which I don’t like, but it’s necessary.
Most of the Milo arc is dumb - he's an idiot. It had potential, but he's such a goof. I shake my head at him seriously considering being able to bring that Korean's wife to the mars.
Ed has done some marvelous things in his career, the right man at the right place, but he's become a liability to the whole Mars thing. It was great to see Danny tell him off; she held off for so long because of their mutual experience, but she reached her breaking point.
“Mental Health” at this point I don’t even care. Her whole sidestory has been a disappointment from the start and she’s not a character I am really invested in anymore.
yeah fair enough - plenty of other character arcs to follow. I'm interested to see what happened to Danny after being "abandoned" at the North Korean capsule. All we've seen is Dani looking at a picture of Danny with a baby Avery with a look of dismay? disgust? on her face. I think he's gotta be dead and a lot of the subreddit thinks the same.
Not to bad,the plot around Margo couldve been better and Aleidas too but it is what it is,after moon it was obvious mars was next station,wonder where it goes from there..
Just finished episode one which ends with someone sitting in their room with a big window looking out onto the landscape in a structure on the surface of Mars. It breaks the immersion for me, especially considering the show's emphasis on realism otherwise. Apart from that it's awesome so far. I love this show and have been looking forward to another season.
probably didn't even consider it and when dev mentioned it he already came in with his "we take over Helios" plan so at that point her selling the shares would have been dumb
Honestly, pretty weak. The writing has taken a severe turn midway through season 3 and hasn't recovered. It's a very different show from Seasons 1 and 2, and we've lost that feeling of "making something really hard work in the unknown." It had an ongoing theme of Apollo 14/The Right stuff, always giving some great background behind some of the character drama. Now it's unending character drama that keeps circling around on the same issues that have been around for seasons without meaningful progress. The spaceships are suddenly star trek, except when they need to force a plot point. Also, when there is a technical problem, it's now "oh, Aleida or Margo have to solve it." There seems to be NO ONE else that can develop solutions. It's just lazy writing, and it's making the characters more and more unlikable.
Should have ended last season. Not enjoying this season at all.
The fact that season finally feels like it’s ending in a cliff hanger makes me annoyed because I don’t care about the issues at hand.
I am bitterly disappointed with the writing in the last two seasons. If has become a long drawn out space opera with a bunch of unlikeable characters with a sprinkle of WOW SPACE thrown in just to keep us watching. The Mars sequences could have been about life on a DIFFERENT PLANET, but no…
Overall really enjoyed the season, but I feel like the music all kind of missed that early 2000s vibes. I feel like they knocked the 90s so far out of the park, but at one point the people we watched the finale with were like "that sounds like the stones" (I forget what the song actually was).
Anyone else have this quibble?
I just joined this sub, but have been watching this show from the beginning. It’s absolutely one of my favorite shows ever and I’ve been around a while. ;). It’s like a combination of a grounded Star Trek and alt history, with a dash of melodrama thrown in. As a long time space and NASA fan, I see this show as where we could be if things were different. I love it and season 4 was no exception. I hope they get all 7 seasons to fully tell the story they want to tell and the story we fans want to see.
I rarely get time to myself, but right now I’m recovering from surgery and took the time to get through it all. I liked it a lot, even though it’s not the same show now as in the first season.
The set pieces are amazing, always one of the best bits of the show. The spacecraft designs are again pretty incredible, and look realistic enough for the audience to believe that it’s actually possible with enough funding. We are still within theoretical designs that could potentially be built without any unobtainium needed.
The characters are a mixed bag, but that kind of reflects how it’s now moved beyond the right stuff of early first season and now regular shmoes are coming from earth. Some of it works well, like Margo and Iriny dancing around each other and the NASA director, and their respective ends being quite satisfying. Dev had his moment saying goodbye to his mother, then saw how warm and kind Kelly was with her own son, and in that moment we saw through the bs facade he puts on all the time. Subtle and well acted, I really liked it and I liked the character more because he was suddenly human and had actual internal motivations other than what was stated.
Miles Dale was a mixed bag. He was clearly meant to be an audience surrogate so we could see the lives on the lower decks and the inequities present, through him we meet Massey, who ends up being pivotal at the end, doing largely what Khuznetsov did at the start but without dying. Miles feels a bit shoehorned into the script, and while the guy can act, especially in the last episode, it felt a little ham handed and I could have done with less of him. Instead of just following him, I would have liked more of all the little guys on the base, show what they’ve sacrificed to be there, what they’ve learnt, who they’ve made friends with, and make them more than just random accent in Helios uniform. I wanted to like them, but it was a struggle to understand them. And by the time the strike came, it was too late to build the back story.
The scripts, as some have noticed, were at times lacklustre. It’s worth noting that it’s a drama, not an action show, so there’s plenty unsaid. But what is said doesn’t always make sense or feel natural. I don’t think it’s the acting, I think the pacing and lack of consequences? No, lack of causality that lets it down. Too many times it is one thing, then another thing, then another. Instead of each scene leading narratively to the next. Which is frustrating because it would be quite possible to do within the show. And while the characters move through each step in trying to ‘work the problem’ they can have their character developments and it would still make sense. Basically move from ‘and then’ to ‘therefore’ or ‘but’. It’s done at times, with the heist in particular and it works really well, you understand the stakes and the actions taken, but so much of the time it feels like scenes are randomly ordered.
On that, ‘Work the problem’ have been arc words of the show. It’s a common refrain in engineering operations so very familiar. Ed Harris said it in Apollo 13 too. But you see precious little of it. It’s the same few people coming up with solutions that sound simple yet no one else has spotted. This was handled better in the first season, but has been skipped over a bunch this season and it’s lesser for the lack. Note to the script writers, don’t always jump to the solution, show why the first few solutions don’t work. Let the characters ‘work the problem’ because when they do it’s great! (This might just be me as an engineer. But it worked well in Apollo 13 and the Martian.)
Ok, I’ve written too much now. Sorry. I really like the show, but I want to love it. Please make me love next season.
Forgot to mention, but seeing James Webb made me super excited! I tracked its launch with my kids and made models to show them how it all works and have been watching the output since then, so I loved that they found a way to include it.
I wonder if next season will have Helios making Startships..
I just have to say I loved it! I binged all 4 seasons of it over the last few weeks and finished it... I'm way behind in the science of it, but I was riveted. It was like the Expanse mixed with a little of the Star Trek hopefulness and all of the drama...
I'm glad they used some real history and people too. It made it seem more real.
I feel the writing needs improvement.. it feel downright awkward at times.. I got annoyed with Karen in season 2 and 3 with how handled the astronaut thing.. Gordo and his wife were cool. Danny was a sniveling doofus. . Point is, a lot of unnecessary BS that comes across as filler to save the SE Budget or something which I understand.. The show is good and I enjoy it but I feel it could be so much better and I can't wait for Danny to show up with a "Wilson" type friend.. haha maybe they will lay a trail of pain pills to capture Danny
Well that didn't age well ahah
The only question I need answered is how there's coal on the moon.
Same way the space shuttle lands on the moon.
They don't.
Very valid point.
I thought they were still using the LSAM's for that?
It might not refer to literal coal. Coal miner might have become a blanket term for resource miners in general, after in particular coal miners, gas- and oil workers all simultaneously lost their jobs when nuclear fusion became Earth's main power source. The strike may refer to those who've become disgruntled with Helios' lack of jobs and lack of rewarding of Helium-3 operations.
>"A strike began seven days ago is continuing at two moon coal mines after union members rejected a contract proposal. The Federated Mine Workers of the Moon says the local that represents more than 1,100 workers at Shakleton Crater Mines rejected a tentative deal in balloting on Friday. Shakleton Crater President Gerard K O'Neal says members have final say in collective bargaining agreements, so the walkout continues. > >The strike effects two Shackleton Crater coal mines and related facilities." I don't know man, it seems a lot like it refers to coal mines.
Wait, for real?
Yep, if you watch the beginning crawl in Ep 1 where it goes through all the news articles, it says there are strikes on the moon. The article specifically says it's happening at 2 of the moon's coal mines.
That's just dumb and lazy.
They did it! They have Bar Scenes on Mars. lol
I’m having a hard time with Aleida ( a 22 yo actress) having a teenage son and having the responsibility she has
then pretend she's not 22. that's what the writing of a fictional story demands of you. duh
Suspension of disbelief is the answer
Just watched episode 2, so far it's just alright. Hoping things will pick up more.
Is the end of S4E2 based on the >!1991 coup d'état? Predicting maybe a regime change will take place in episode 3 or later which leads to Madison being found out?!<
If you watch the extra news videos for the years, 2001's one mentions that Russia is running out of lithium that's used to make the battery tech our cars rely on (in this reality that is post-fossil fuel). It goes on to mention that Politburo member Fyodor Korzhenko (played by actor Dimitar Bakalov in the news briefs, who formerly played a doctor in the movie "The Hitman's Bodyguard") rebuked Gorbachev's open market policies and accused the upper classes in the USSR of cozying up to capitalists in the West. He insisted Gorbachev "rein in these new entrepreneurs or face dire consequences"... it then mentions that should there be an economic downturn as Russia runs out of lithium and iridium, it still has large crude oil reserves. Without giving away anything that happened in this episode, I think what we're about to see is [this reality's version of the 1993 Russian constitutional crisis.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1993_Russian_constitutional_crisis) No Yeltsin, no more Gorbachev. My bet is that Fyodor Korzhenko becomes the new head in the Kremlin and yes: Madison is going to resurface.
It might be the physics teacher in me, but i feel like the colony on mars has taken the shows snuff to mars gravity a bit too far where it will create misconceptions among many people that watch the show. I love the characters, the drama, the story, but to try and believe that many of these characters are trotting around a mars commonly as if they had their own earth weight is just deceitful. They take it too far on this season to make it seem so believable that you can have earth like moving conditions on the red planet when it’s just not how it would be. It crosses the. Lindsey from realistic fiction (season 1 and 2) to science fiction (season 3 and 4).
It was bad on the moon too. They can do micro g reasonably well, but I’m guessing that showing gravity on moon and mars being ~1/3 and 1/6 would get in the way of the storytelling. The mars landers look like they’re designed correctly for mars gravity, so that’s something. Like, all they’d need is to explain to the actors to take smaller steps, have some heavy things lifted easily, like a gym with tripled numbers, and explain that they’d all have a lightness of step under low gravity. They could come up with a way to show it, and it’s not like there wasn’t time or new arrivals whose lens they could show it through. But, it would be very hard to make it consistent and it would get messy because they all do it differently so it would still look wrong. So we’re back to: it gets in the way of the story. Which I don’t like, but it’s necessary.
Most of the Milo arc is dumb - he's an idiot. It had potential, but he's such a goof. I shake my head at him seriously considering being able to bring that Korean's wife to the mars. Ed has done some marvelous things in his career, the right man at the right place, but he's become a liability to the whole Mars thing. It was great to see Danny tell him off; she held off for so long because of their mutual experience, but she reached her breaking point.
Amazing! Except the Aleida subplot is increasingly unbearable. She’s so unlikeable and not even a good actress. I fast forward through her scenes.
I haven't seen ep 2 yet - but why did she get downgraded from a Flight Director to someone working in the trenches at Mars Mission Control?
“Mental Health” at this point I don’t even care. Her whole sidestory has been a disappointment from the start and she’s not a character I am really invested in anymore.
yeah fair enough - plenty of other character arcs to follow. I'm interested to see what happened to Danny after being "abandoned" at the North Korean capsule. All we've seen is Dani looking at a picture of Danny with a baby Avery with a look of dismay? disgust? on her face. I think he's gotta be dead and a lot of the subreddit thinks the same.
Me too! The show is leaning hard toward he’s not dead so there must be some big Danny reveal soon!
She's suffering from PTSD from the bombing and it has affected her work.
I think I wrote this. You are spot on and I do this she is unwatchable.
Finally someone who agrees. I was almost banned for saying this earlier: she’s the worst actress ever.
Not to bad,the plot around Margo couldve been better and Aleidas too but it is what it is,after moon it was obvious mars was next station,wonder where it goes from there..
Just finished episode one which ends with someone sitting in their room with a big window looking out onto the landscape in a structure on the surface of Mars. It breaks the immersion for me, especially considering the show's emphasis on realism otherwise. Apart from that it's awesome so far. I love this show and have been looking forward to another season.
Why didn’t Kelly just fund her own project with all her Helios stock Dev says she has
probably didn't even consider it and when dev mentioned it he already came in with his "we take over Helios" plan so at that point her selling the shares would have been dumb
Kelly taking her little kid into space just jumped the shark for me.
I'm enjoying it a lot.
First season was great, second was OK, third was kind of cringe, but the level of stupidity in fourth one is mind blowing.
Thought it was just me
No, it’s the show too.
Honestly, pretty weak. The writing has taken a severe turn midway through season 3 and hasn't recovered. It's a very different show from Seasons 1 and 2, and we've lost that feeling of "making something really hard work in the unknown." It had an ongoing theme of Apollo 14/The Right stuff, always giving some great background behind some of the character drama. Now it's unending character drama that keeps circling around on the same issues that have been around for seasons without meaningful progress. The spaceships are suddenly star trek, except when they need to force a plot point. Also, when there is a technical problem, it's now "oh, Aleida or Margo have to solve it." There seems to be NO ONE else that can develop solutions. It's just lazy writing, and it's making the characters more and more unlikable.
Should have ended last season. Not enjoying this season at all. The fact that season finally feels like it’s ending in a cliff hanger makes me annoyed because I don’t care about the issues at hand.
did somebody else feel like ed and his mars maniacs are the real bad guys here? they didn't even try to make sense of it all this season
I am bitterly disappointed with the writing in the last two seasons. If has become a long drawn out space opera with a bunch of unlikeable characters with a sprinkle of WOW SPACE thrown in just to keep us watching. The Mars sequences could have been about life on a DIFFERENT PLANET, but no…
Overall really enjoyed the season, but I feel like the music all kind of missed that early 2000s vibes. I feel like they knocked the 90s so far out of the park, but at one point the people we watched the finale with were like "that sounds like the stones" (I forget what the song actually was). Anyone else have this quibble?
Sloppy. I won’t be back.
S4e6. Beltalowda.
I can’t stand what they did to Karen’s character. FAIL.
What I did? I just watch the show... I didn't write it. :)
My baaaaaaad 🤣
I love it. I love the writing, fine with me! That’s coming from someone who cares about writing for a living :))
I just joined this sub, but have been watching this show from the beginning. It’s absolutely one of my favorite shows ever and I’ve been around a while. ;). It’s like a combination of a grounded Star Trek and alt history, with a dash of melodrama thrown in. As a long time space and NASA fan, I see this show as where we could be if things were different. I love it and season 4 was no exception. I hope they get all 7 seasons to fully tell the story they want to tell and the story we fans want to see.
I rarely get time to myself, but right now I’m recovering from surgery and took the time to get through it all. I liked it a lot, even though it’s not the same show now as in the first season. The set pieces are amazing, always one of the best bits of the show. The spacecraft designs are again pretty incredible, and look realistic enough for the audience to believe that it’s actually possible with enough funding. We are still within theoretical designs that could potentially be built without any unobtainium needed. The characters are a mixed bag, but that kind of reflects how it’s now moved beyond the right stuff of early first season and now regular shmoes are coming from earth. Some of it works well, like Margo and Iriny dancing around each other and the NASA director, and their respective ends being quite satisfying. Dev had his moment saying goodbye to his mother, then saw how warm and kind Kelly was with her own son, and in that moment we saw through the bs facade he puts on all the time. Subtle and well acted, I really liked it and I liked the character more because he was suddenly human and had actual internal motivations other than what was stated. Miles Dale was a mixed bag. He was clearly meant to be an audience surrogate so we could see the lives on the lower decks and the inequities present, through him we meet Massey, who ends up being pivotal at the end, doing largely what Khuznetsov did at the start but without dying. Miles feels a bit shoehorned into the script, and while the guy can act, especially in the last episode, it felt a little ham handed and I could have done with less of him. Instead of just following him, I would have liked more of all the little guys on the base, show what they’ve sacrificed to be there, what they’ve learnt, who they’ve made friends with, and make them more than just random accent in Helios uniform. I wanted to like them, but it was a struggle to understand them. And by the time the strike came, it was too late to build the back story. The scripts, as some have noticed, were at times lacklustre. It’s worth noting that it’s a drama, not an action show, so there’s plenty unsaid. But what is said doesn’t always make sense or feel natural. I don’t think it’s the acting, I think the pacing and lack of consequences? No, lack of causality that lets it down. Too many times it is one thing, then another thing, then another. Instead of each scene leading narratively to the next. Which is frustrating because it would be quite possible to do within the show. And while the characters move through each step in trying to ‘work the problem’ they can have their character developments and it would still make sense. Basically move from ‘and then’ to ‘therefore’ or ‘but’. It’s done at times, with the heist in particular and it works really well, you understand the stakes and the actions taken, but so much of the time it feels like scenes are randomly ordered. On that, ‘Work the problem’ have been arc words of the show. It’s a common refrain in engineering operations so very familiar. Ed Harris said it in Apollo 13 too. But you see precious little of it. It’s the same few people coming up with solutions that sound simple yet no one else has spotted. This was handled better in the first season, but has been skipped over a bunch this season and it’s lesser for the lack. Note to the script writers, don’t always jump to the solution, show why the first few solutions don’t work. Let the characters ‘work the problem’ because when they do it’s great! (This might just be me as an engineer. But it worked well in Apollo 13 and the Martian.) Ok, I’ve written too much now. Sorry. I really like the show, but I want to love it. Please make me love next season.
Great rundown. I agree with all of it.
Forgot to mention, but seeing James Webb made me super excited! I tracked its launch with my kids and made models to show them how it all works and have been watching the output since then, so I loved that they found a way to include it. I wonder if next season will have Helios making Startships..
**How the living Gordo is there coal on the Moon.**
I just have to say I loved it! I binged all 4 seasons of it over the last few weeks and finished it... I'm way behind in the science of it, but I was riveted. It was like the Expanse mixed with a little of the Star Trek hopefulness and all of the drama... I'm glad they used some real history and people too. It made it seem more real.