S01.E06: I Think We're Alone Now

[paulvdb]

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While Niko races against the clock to save her ship and crew, she remembers the first time she met Cas; Sasha fears his mental state is deteriorating.

Premiere date: July 25, 2019

[DoctorAtomic]

Cool getting stuck outside and flaring up so the ship could Niko. 

Sorry show, I do not give any fucks about Michelle. You (show) even had Cas rip her for bitching (your words) all the time. I don't care. 

I do get that it was a more a plot for Cas' leadership and parallel with Niko. 

This show is gorey. The FX is cool though. 

[shrewd.buddha]

I was surprised they bumped off Michelle  - probably because I had wanted her gone from the first episode. It would have helped to make her demise a bit more tragic if she had been a more like-able person. Either bad acting or bad directing made her character too over-the-top to be considered a candidate for a space program. 

[DoctorAtomic]

1 hour ago, shrewd.buddha said:

Either bad acting or bad directing made her character too over-the-top to be considered a candidate for a space program. 

Yeah she made my teeth grate.

I can accept the premise as to why they selected the 20 something crew, but for someone with her temperament, it's hard to see how she made the cut. If they made her some genius then I probably could buy it.

I think regardless of age, the lack of crew discipline struck me as egregious.

[iMonrey]

I'll admit that Michelle's death was effectively gruesome. I'm not sure I understand the mechanics of it though. I get that she was basically dissolved by the anti-matter or whatever it was, but then Cas rushed right in and was totally unaffected. If all the anti-matter had been dispersed by then why was Michelle still deteriorating? 

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I think regardless of age, the lack of crew discipline struck me as egregious.

This remains the show's glaringly weak spot. It's not only their lack of discipline, it's their lack of skill. Nobody on this ship seems to know very much about how it works, or how to fix it. The one medic they have admits to not know much about the soma sleep pods. WTF. They can't seem to fix the comm system to get messages back to earth. They can't figure out why the ship is malfunctioning until Niko literally goes outside and looks at the hull. What kind of lame-ass ship is this? Now we find out Cas was some kind of street gang kidnapper (?) and Niko got her a job on a space crew? WTF? No background checks?

I think the reason it all seems so out of place is that the future we are seeing on earth isn't some post-apocalyptic dystopia where ragtag rebels are running the show. In fact it seems to be taking place in the not-too distant, seemingly civilized future. One that, inexplicably, hires the least qualified people on earth for their space missions. The crew represents a typical Sci-Fi trope but it's contrasted against the wrong premise.

[DoctorAtomic]

1 hour ago, iMonrey said:

If all the anti-matter had been dispersed by then why was Michelle still deteriorating?

If you get dosed up by a radiation source, and then the source is shielded and someone else runs into the room, they're going to be fine. You're still going to melt. The radiation already shredded your DNA. 

It seems to me that the ship is the only of its kind as well. Which is dumb AF. You don't only build one nuclear weapon. You build two. You'd think whomever invested in building it would want to be damn sure the right people were on it. And that they won't destroy the ship on route, which to be fair, Niko was the right choice. The other guy was the one that fried everything. 

They could have made something up like for some reason people over 45 die in soma after 8 months or something, limiting the selection of crew. 

[Ottis]

This was probably the best episode of the season so far, for me. Leaving aside the fact that this crew seems so unqualified, we had plots that generally made sense. While tropy (I groaned at the "three hours earlier" shtick), this ep still allowed the characters to grow, and we lost one (which made me happy). And there were some nice moments with Niko. Katie continues to kill it.

I do think the show has not positioned Niko correctly. She has been painted as a mom who is an astronaut who was caught up in a bad situation on her last ship. Her actions that we see, including her behavior while kidnapped, are more like a special forces soldier.

I'm NOT digging the whole "political guy sees hallucination" bit. It's annoying when we see characters who know something is wrong, and none of the rest of the characters know. We're just waiting for it to become an issue. 

On 8/12/2019 at 12:58 PM, DoctorAtomic said:

They could have made something up like for some reason people over 45 die in soma after 8 months or something, limiting the selection of crew. 

That's true. Though right now I keep thinking they must have way better people in soma, so wake them up and put these people back to sleep.

[whiporee]

Aren't they lost? The whole "Go Home" protocol only works if they know where they are. Or did they somehow find out where they are and I just glossed over it. 

And how does a space bug avoid any notice during a decontamination sequence?

[DoctorAtomic]

They showed really quick that the bug fell through a crack right before. I mean, I know, but they at least tried.

I think they were able to figure out where earth was by following the signal they were tracking and knowing where Canis is.