Yora watches and reviews The Expanse

[factotum]

Not really sure I can say much about this episode without getting into spoiler territory, because a lot of it is setting things up for the final three episodes of the season--it all gets very high octane from here on, though!

[Yora]

S2E11: Here There Be Dragons

That title inspires high expectations.

We start with another flashback (because, of course we do) of Doctor Strickland and another scientist taking Mai Meng away from the hospital. Mai is bored and wants to go back to her father, so Strickland distracts her with asking her botanical names of some nearby flowers. I literally had to do this stuff a year ago for my final exam as a trained gardener. For an elementary scholers, she's really good. And as a gardener, I want to say I really appreciated the trick question for the botanical name of Zinnia. I might be one of the half dozen people watching this show who gets a laugh out of this.
Before they leave, Strickland rips a few leaves from a plant and puts them in the pocket of his suit.

It then shifts to Holden and team following in the same corridor in the present. Amos tells Holden he noticed that he didn't try to stop him beating up chicken boy, and thinks Holden would have done it himself if he hadn't been faster than him. Holden does not really deny it.
Naomi tries to warn Meng that they might not find his daughter, and the conversation turns to Naomi having a son that disappeared years ago.

Bobby Draper's captain is very upset with her breaking out of the Martian embassy and wandering around the city when she had been forbidden to do so. She wants to help solving the current crisis and not be left in the dark. Captain tells her that understanding and being okay with what they're doing is a luxury that's not available to common Martians. When she gets back to Mars, she will get kicked out of the army.

The science ship tries to send probes down to the crater on Venus, with a Martian navy ship always staying close to them. Just like the story of most probes that have been send to Venus in the 20th century, the horrible hellish atmospheric conditions of Venus destroy the probes very quickly. But in this age, current space tech should normally be able to make the probes survive for a few days at least, I would assume. But they are not even making it to the surface. The scientist proposes taking the shielding from one of the two remaining probes to strengthen the other and hopefully get a better result than the previous six they lost. Readings from orbit indicate structures around the crater that don't look like anything natural.
The commander thinks MacGuyvering a probe is not according to protocol, and the scientist says that Magellan would not have sailed around the world if he had been following protocols. "He didn't, he died trying." Scientist thinks that in this situation, everything is worth the risk.

Erinwright comes to tell Chrisjen that he thinks one of Mao's children is willing to make a deal with them. Chrisjen seem to be feeling actually uncomfortable to tell him that the Security Council has decided to pick his head to roll. He takes it with dignity and asks what she has told them, and she says she hasn't revealed anything yet, so he might get some goodwill by revealing everything himself.
Chrisjen seems to feel more uncomfortable with this situation that she was even when she backstabbed her own friends.

Bobby Draper is told that her ship is waiting. As they get to the landing pad, the transport aborts the landing and returns back to space, and an officer tells the captain they got a warning that the OPA is trying to attack th transport. The whole airspace in the area has been closed to air traffic by Undersecretary Avasarala. (Not Deputy-Undersecretary.) Neither she not the captain seems to really believe that.

Alex tries to think of a way how to pick up the others from Ganymede now that the Martians have locked down the whole area for traffic. He can't even make new plans with them without giving away the hiding place of the Rocinante. The Rocinante still can receive some Martian military com traffic and gets a message that all MCR ships in the area are to let one Martian ship pass and not interfere with it in any way. Playing around with his ring gives him an idea. He has the navigation computer show him a map of Jupiter and all its moons, which looks just as messy as actual current maps of the system. He has the computer calculate a course from his moon to Ganymede using only gravity assists from the various moons without starting the engines. It's a really messy course, but possibly to reach his destination.

Back in the past again, Strickland's assistant is concerned that the space battle outside seems to go way bigger than she thought it would be, but he tells her not to worry. Mai knows that something is up and Strickland tells her a story about butterflies and how struggle is necessary for proper development. As he gives her her meds, he encourages her to look forward to the wonders that wait in the unknown.

Something happens with the air system on Ganymede and Meng says the problem started sooner than he thought. Holden wants to know what's going on and Meng starts to explain about the artificial ecosystem of Ganymede, but Amos interrupts him immediately to say that the station is starting to collapse. Meng sees a capsule of Mai's medicine on the floor of the corridor, which shows that they are on the right track and Strickland is still caring for her.

Bobby requests to talk with the captain in his office and he's having her send in. She remembers that her father is telling stories about how she saved him when he had an accident, but it really was her who had caused it. Probably because it would look better for him. She demands that the Captain tell her what really happened on Ganymede and when he refuses she starts beating him up. She makes him show her recordings from Ganymede, which show that a single space zombie had been released on the UN patrol and then turned on the Martian marines, which was all monitored by a Martian drone. She knocks him out and then his guard outside the door.
The whole MCR and UN situation seems to have been inspired very much by the Korean border, so I guess it is time to defect now.

Also, where did they get this really ugly building for the Martian embassy? It actually reminds me of some university buildings I've seen in Germany, with all the little decorations taken from the walls and a blue filter put over everything. Such an eyesore.

She just walks out the door but some guards come out behind her, and so she starts running, crossing first the red line and then the blue line to surrender to the UN guards. Very Korean again, but I am thinking primarily of one of the top ten most famous pictures from German history.

Spoiler: image

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Fortunately, the Martians probably don't have many defectors and so these guards don't have orders to shot everyone who tries to run.

Alex is flying past the moons of Jupiter and arrives at the four major moons, but as he's passing through the ice geysers of Europa, he suddenly comes up right next to a Martian destroyer. But he seems to sneak back behind Europa without being spotted.

Bobby is taken to Chrisjen's office, who actually does not look happy with this situation. She tells her that the fighting on Ganymede started as a demonstration of the space zombies, and that the Martian leadership is negotiating to buy them. The peace negotiations probably are a distraction while the price is still being haggled. She also got her captain's datapad with all his information on the project. Chrisjen then gets a call from Mao.

Meng asks Amos if he can have a weapon and Amos wants to know if he knows how to use one. He doesn't, but he wants to fight to save his daughter if he has to, so Amos gives him a pistol and shows him the basics.
They get into a room at the end of the tunnels where they find several scientists and security guards. Meng sees his daughter's bag, and knowing that the game is up, the security guards grab their weapons. They get killed and the scientists escape through another door, but Amos gets hit in the shoulder when pushing Meng to safety.

Mao wants to cooperate with Chrisjen for the good of humanity. She will have to come to him away from the UN Navy and with only a small escort. Take it or leave it. Chrisjen asks her spymaster what he thinks, and he regards it as an obvious trap. But he also knows that she won't care what he says and wants to go anyway.

Meng finds a pod with a frozen child in an incineration chamber, but it's not his daughter. Holden tells him to get out and starts the incinerator to destroy any protomolecule on the child.
Another door opens for a gap and a grenade is thrown into the room, but Amos quickly grabs it anf opens the door long enough to throw it back. There's an explosion on the other side, but it's followed by screams and gunfire, then an alarm.

The science ship drops its final probe o Venus and it makes it to the surface. The whole ground is covered in blue stuff but the camera dies quickly after that.

Holden and Amos go investigate and find a room with several dead scientists and a broken stasis chamber. There is also an airlock with a destroyed outer door, and the inner door having automatically shut to seal the room.
Strickland's assistant is still alive and begs to help her, but Holden has no sympathy for her. She says they tried to form the protomolecule into humanoids and possibly implies that the one that just escaped was Mai.
Somewhat implausibly, Alex just shows up in a space suit in the broken airlock. He says he saw a black ops ship heading for that site so he thought that would be the best place to look for them. Holden says they will come out, but Naomi tells him she wants to stay and help evacuate survivors. Because as she sees it, it's too late to stop the spread of the protomolecule and it will do more good to help people instead of chasing after it. Holden tells her to take Amos with her, but Prax Meng wants to stay with him and chase the creature. Alex spots the thing outside on the surface and looking at them.

--

Certainly quite a lot going on.

Bobby Draper's defection story is fantastic. Really very much a North Korea and East Germany situation there. I don't know if North Korean defectors ever try to run across the only border crossing, but in West Berlin that actually happened, pretty much just like that. What this episode captures so very well is how quick escapes from East Germany into West Berlin usually were. It's a stupidly short distance. The one specific case the scene emulates the most is of a conscript soldier who was guarding the construction of the Berlin wall on the first day, and he spontaneously decided to just run while the only obstacle was just a roll of barbed wire. Things got much more complicated once the wall was up and people planned their escapes for months, but the time from committing to it to reaching safety (or being shot) was often a matter of seconds. One minute you are an ordinary East German citizen like all the others (though very likely under surveillance by the secret police like most people) and could simply keep walking and return home like nothing happened. And the next that whole life is behind you and you're in a new country with no real plan what happens next.
The scene looks crazy, but that's how it sometimes really happened. Which is fantastic. Fortunately for her, the neutral strip around the embassy wasn't covered in walls, barbed wire, tank obstacles, and minefields, with watchtowers whose soldiers were ordered to kill everyone who tries to escape.

Things are finally picking up on Ganymede, but it's all scrammed at the very end. Amos throwing back the grenade is fantastic. And then the shouting, then the gunfire, and then more noises. Very well done moment. What looked a bit weird was that there was no scorching from the grenade. Which is of course much cheaper for the set dressers since they don't have to clean it up afterwards, but I guess you could say that these are fancy futuristic grenades that only cause a pressure wave with little heat. Not quite sure how, but [/s]science![/s] space-magic!

Holden seems to be getting pretty crazy now. Next step is torturing prisoners himself. He told Naomi he wouldn't, but he did, and now she and Amos are leaving to do something better with their time.

[factotum]

I wish I had more to say here...it's a while since I saw this episode, but I was binging hard on the series at this point because I was so anxious to know what happened next. Once we get into season 3 I'll have more recent memories of what happened because I only saw that a few weeks ago.

[Dragonus45]

So I've been watching along since I never watched past the first season and god is it hard listening to Avasarala talk in a network TV friendly manner. Also, I feel like the biggest thing lost in translation so far is the slow nature of the setting. All the events being packed closer to together feels a bit off. Bobbie is amazing though. I was honestly not sure they could ever do her justice in casting.

[Yora]

S2E12: The Monster and the Rocket

Erinwright is getting ready to face the music and walks with his son to school in the morning before heading for work. His son figures that something is wrong, and he tells h-im that he only lesson he really wants him to always remember is to always listen to his heart for what is right.

Alex and Holden are flying low over Ganymede to find the blue creature and spot it climbing on a ruined building. Holden wants to shot it, but Prax thinks they don't have to destroy it right away. "Don't talk down to me plant guy." (Whoa, no respect for us plant guys!)
Prax thinks that whatever the thing is now, it's still a human child.

Erinwright tells Chrisjen to take a medal he once got and give it to his son if he won't be able to do it himself. She tells him not too panic and that she will defend him for having provided the information that lead to Bobby Drapper defecting and bringing them more information from the Martians. But he has little confidence that this will save him. She tells him that Mao wants to speak with her, and Erinwright thinks she really should go as they might not get an opportunity like that again, to get the protomolecule technology away from the martians.

Naomi goes to the freighter that's still being unloaded on Ganymede and people are already crowding the captain to take them with her when she leaves. She promisses to take as many people as she can, but even so, space is limited. She doesn't want Naomi and Amos though, and Naomi says that's alright, but she still wants to help repair the ship so it can safely make the return trip to the belt. The captain can't argue with that.

Bobby is still in Chrisjen's office until her spymaster (Cotyar seems to be his name) comes to look for her. He makes it clear that he doesn't trust her but takes her to Chrisjen's shuttle. Bobby tries to argue with Chrisjen and Cotyar tells her to just let her win. She's not going to beat Chrisjen in an argument. Bobby at least gets a bit of a smile when she sees Chrisjen not taking the launch to space as well as she does.

Alex takes the Rocinante inside a destroyed dome, which is absolutely enormous in size. Alex tells Holden it's too dangerous to go further in, and Prax wants him to not shot the creature, but Holden is absolutely determined to keep going and kill it.

Erinwright writes a letter to his wife (I think) and gets out a small box with what in this context is probably poison.

The freighter captain tells Naomi and Amos that the dock's air pumps are out and they can't refill their air tank. With the air they still got on the ship, they will only be able to take 50 people and still make it to the Belt, leaving the freighter mostly empty. Naomi wants to take 300 and hope that they can get the necessary air from the Rocinante. The captain does not seriously want to fight them about that.

Erinwright has the Martian negotiator in his office. He offers him a drink, and the Martian says he just got a new liver. He tells him to take the bottle of 100 year old wiskey as a gift. (I've seen Babylon 5, so I suspect he will have to pay for the antidote?)
The Martian says they are not really interested in the protomolecule as a weapon, but for its potential for terraforming. He then keels over and Erinwright tells him he poisoned him with a drug that was created by the Martians as a very effective way to deal with gravity sickness, but was banned because of its potential to be used as a deadly poison that will only affect one specific person and cause a heart attack without leaving any trace. Everything that can be used as a weapon will be.
Erinwright then calls the Martian bodyguards waiting outside to call an ambulance for their boss.

The Martian special forces ship arrives at Ganymede and prepares to land at the dock destroyed by the space zombie, presumably to pick up Strickland's scientists. Holden wants to ambush and destroy it. (But I assume it will actually get captured.)
But Alex says that the radar shows it apparently exploded and broke apart.

Chrisjen, Cotyar, and Bobby arrive on Mao's ship, and he demands that the sanctions against his family are being lifted, and in turn both Earth and Mars can get equal access to protomolecule weapons. Obviously they will both have to pay for them, making him even more filthy rich than he already is.
An assistant comes in saying there's an urgent message from Erinwright for both Mao and Chrisjen. He tells them that the Martian defense minister just died from a heart attack, and that he has ordered the destruction of the Martian warship that was send to pick up the weapons from Ganymede. And he can also order the ship with both of them to be destroyed whenever he wants to. Of Mao's two allies, one is now dead, and the other is Erinwright himself. And he tells Chrisjen that he won't allow her to make a deal with Mao for her own benefit. He wants Mao to return back to Earth and continue with his work.
Cotyar and Mao's henchmen pull out their guns, but Mao has them outnumbered and walks out the room while his men shield him.

With the docks getting hit by more debris from the destroyed ship, the people waiting to get on the freighter are starting to panic. The captain and Amos say they can't open the airlock because then everyone will die with no air. Naomi wants to go outside to talk with the people but Amos won't let her because he thinks she will get killed. So she sedates him with the painkillers for his gunshot wound. She tells a big guy to restore some order and make sure that only 52 people get on the ship. In turn, he can take her place. He actually manages to do it. He stays as well and shoves Naomi into the airlock as the last one.

Holden finds the creature again and Prax wants to try communicating with it. Alex interrupts and say they have to help the departing freighter to get through the blockade or it will be shot down. The blockade ships shot a torpedo at the freighter and the Rocinante comes flying to the rescue in a needless overdramatic way.
Unfortunately, it seems that something blue jumped onto the Rocinante while it was squeezing through the destroyed done.

--

I praised several of the earlier episode for their restraint and understated drama that felt like a step above the typical American pathos that shows like these usually have. It might have to do with directors, but in this episode the over-dramatic and corny posturing is in full effect as usual. And I kind of feel that this actually started a while ago. Holden is being very angry and stubborn when insisting on being heroic in a cool macho way. Though I am giving this aspect the element of doubt, as being a deliberate setup to get him set straight later. I called him a Han Solo wannabe in one of the earliest episodes, and there was the episode with his mother who talked about him growing up with unreasonable expectations for him, and even very recently we had Naomi arguing and pleading with him to not become a reckless hard-ass hero. And at one point he apologized for doing it and thanked her for helping him by pulling him back. So this might be somewhat deliberate and planned to be resolved later. But it still is annoying to watch right now.
But then there's also the scene with the guy calming down the refugees and the way that the Rocinante shows up to destroy the torpedo, and those are just plain corny. And the scenes with Bobby and Cotyar felt forced. They don't have reasons to be antagonistic like that but it also does not seem to be in character for either of them.

I liked most of the Erinwright scenes. When he talked with his son and Chrisjen before work, we did get again some of the honesty and understatement that I liked. The poisoning was neat, but I still think forcing the Martian to tell secrets in exchange for an antidote would have been cooler than just killing him. Also, him writing the letter to his wife and picking up the poison is just another of these silly dramatic fake-outs.
His message to Mao and Chrisjen very much seems to be a ruse to help Chrisjen by distracting Mao, and I like the idea. But I am not really sure what the actual point of all of that is. Cotyar seemed to be completely chill about this, but Chrisjen made a look of being confused. But since the whole goal of it probably was to fool Mao, she might just have made a show for him. She's certainly able to do that. I assume some of this will be explained soon.
Thinking about it some more, him entrusting his medal to Chrisjen to give it to his son to remember him as a good man was probably a hidden message to Chrisjen. He wouldn't trust her with that if he already meant to betray her. It's a signal to her to trust him even though he will do something that could look very bad.

I am also confused what the point was of taking Bobby along? I can understand not wanting to have her at the UN building near the Martian embassy, but as the Undersecretary Chrisjen has literally the whole world and and all UN Navy bases to hide her. She does not have to have her tag along with her because she has no other place for her to stay safely.
But as with Miller's pet bomb, I assume this is for a purpose that will be revealed next episode.

That being said, not a very impressive episode.

[factotum]

I've tried to start this comment three times now and deleted it each time because what I was about to say seemed too spoilery, so I'll just give up and put this in a spoiler comment, knowing you likely won't read it:

Spoiler

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You're giving Errinwright far too much credit. Too much credit for assuming he's not a duplicitous scumbag who's entirely out for number one, and too much credit in assuming he's intelligent enough to have put together some sort of plan with Chrisjen to get Mao.

Anyway, I think you have to expect things to get a bit bolder and brasher as you get toward the climax of the season--the careful, introspective stuff is for the middle section, not at the end! The Rocinante performing last-minute rescues is pretty much what the ship does, anyway, it's the mechanical equivalent of the cavalry in the old westerns.

[Yora]

Yes, and I don't like it.

S1E4: CQB has an amazing space battle that is shown almost entirely from inside one of the ships, showing the battle as the characters see it.
S1E7: Windmills had super tense standoff with the Martian customs officers who never were actually seen.
S1E8: Salvage had the exploration of the Anubis and the amazing buildup to the firefight on Eros.
S1E10: Leviathan Wakes had Holden and Miller hiding in the arcade, Amos shooting Sammy, getting past the mercenaries at the docks.

Amazingly tense situations with really high stakes, often aspects of intrigue and mystery, and really no clue whatsoever what might happen next. They are exciting because of their context, not because there are big effects on the screen.
And no deliberate deception of the audience, no chest thumping, no "look at how amazingly cool I am".

The the first episode of season 2 starts with exactly that in the introduction of Bobby Draper.
Then we are deceived by Holden having a nightmare about being infected, in a way that feels a bit cliche.
And in both these scenes, I was able to identify how I was getting deceived very early on. The fact that I wasn't fooled doesn't make it any better, only worse.
The same episode also has Chrisjen's shuttle hit by a missile just as she walks towards it, which at that moment seems actually like a great piece of intrigue. But then there are no actual consequences from it or it really getting mentioned again, leaving us just with a big explosion. I thought Erinwright was trying to assassinate or at least intimidate her, and that would have been interesting. But no. It's an effect shot that could be cut from the episode and it wouldn't affect the story.
There is still plenty of great stuff going on in the season 2 episode of the Ceres-Eros storyline. Even the very same first episode S2E1: Safe has more great scenes in the War room and with the Martian ship trying to stop the Earthers from reaching Phoebe. It's still great stuff. But already there are clear first signs of the shift towards more editing trickery and effects to create tension.

Let's make this an early Season 2 summary.

I think the shift really comes after S2E5: Home, which even has a season finale epilog scene at the end. S2E6: Paradigm Shift has Chrisjen's Hellfire speech and the breakout of fighting on Ganymede, which are both real highlights of the show, no arguing about that. The space battle at the end is a big load of effects for the purpose of spectacle, but it works for me because it's presented in context that evokes both intrigue about what is going on any more importantly why, and increasing the tension because of the expected consequences that will result from what we see. Yes, we see ships shooting and exploding on the screen. But in the larger context of the story we are seeing a car starting to roll towards a cliff, not a car smashing at the bottom of a cliff. With everything that gets blown up, the tension increases, because the inevitable retaliation in the future will be more devastating as well.
But since then, the whole show has more or less been carried by Bobby Drapers broad shoulders. And most of her scenes still make me think that there's actually a much better story in the material than what actually gets realized on the screen. It feels somewhat underdeveloped. Amos has interesting interactions, first with Cortezar and then with Prax Meng. Who I did find intriguing at first but, but he's starting to become a bit one-note and flounder. He gives Amos interesting things to process, but doesn't really seem to respond to the replies he gets from Amos. It would be great to see the two of them interact in ways that makes them both grow and develop, but it seems to be somewhat one-sided.
While we're at it, Holden has gotten really annoying. He's gotten so bad he's in serious need of a redemption arc already. But even then the whole thing seems quite blunt and somewhat forced. Holden definitely is in a position where it would be absolutely justified to reach his limit and starting to crack. But Holden does not strike me as someone who would become a violent crusader in that situation. Naomi is also behaving oddly in a way that isn't interesting or entertaining, but I can't quite point out why.

We see bosmang legend Dawes again, but I found his participation in this season underwhelming. After Eros, Johnson also has not really delivered much of notice, except for being wonderfully smug about the missiles. I want more of them, as I want Drummer. She's already ranking above Dax and right under Ivanova in my cool space soldier ladies ranking. Gimme more beltalowda bosmangs, sasa ke?

One more episode to go, but I assume the Ganymede storyline will continue into the next season again. Curious to see what changes come with that, though.

[factotum]

TBH, the storyline pretty much goes straight from the end of S2 into the start of S3--you almost wonder why they bothered with a season break at all. They must have been very confident of getting a third series!

[Yora]

S2E13: Caliban's War

Cotyar tells Mao's henchmen to go away and let them return to their shuttle, but is refused. Those henchmen are pretty terrible, as even though they outnumber Cotyar five to one, he manages to shot two of them and the other three run away into cover while causing him only one relatively small wound.

Naomi and Amos get back on the Rocinante. Naomi is glad that Holde came to save them, but Holden admits right away that it was only because Alex made him do it. He didn't manage to kill the space zombie, but says he doesn't care anymore, because hunting for it almost ended up with Naomi and Amos dead. He's also not upset that she didn't come with him on Ganymede and promises that it will never happen again. But as he leaves, Naomi knows that it probably will.

Alex and Naomi get to take a look at the damage that the Rocinante has taken to make plans for repairs, and find a giant hole in a cargo door on one of the internal cameras. And then they see a space zombie in the cargo hold.
Holden and Amos suit up to go and kill it, or at least force it out a door into space. Prax says it's not doing anything threatening right now and they should use the time to try studying it. Holden, that promise did not last long.
While it still looks mostly humanoid, that thing is actually huge, probably 4 meters tall. It pulls some kind of implant out of it's chest and throws it out the hole in the door where it explodes immediately. Holden starts shooting and it throws a cargo container at Holden that then clamps magnetically against the wall, squeezing him. Amos has a crack in his helmet and Holden tells him to leave.

Bobby finds a way back to the shuttle, but Chrisjen and Cotyar are both not in a shape to crawl through maintanance shafts. Cotyar tells her to go back to the shuttle, where they have loaded up her power armor and then come back to get them.

The creature ignores Holden and tries to break through the floor to get into the reactor room. Amos has an idea to overpressure the atmosphere in the rooms next to the cargo hold and then open the doors to get a strong blast of air that could blow the creature out into space. Naomi thinks Holden might get killed in the process, but Holden tells them to do it anyway. Because he's Holden and his own safety is never a priority.

The science ship at Venus detects that the air above the blue growth in the crater is cooling down and becoming more acidic (which indicates massive endothermic chemical reactions going on). The scientist wants to go lower to get better readings, and the commander agrees. They picked a special Venus exploration ship that can turn into a giant airship that can hover high up in the atmosphere where air pressure and temperature are low. (And in reality, the height at which air pressure resembles the surface of Earth has a comfy temperature of 24 degrees, which makes air ships on Venus actually quite plausible.)

While they are preparing the Rocinante to overpressure some compartments, Naomi goes to Amos to appologize for having sedated him on Ganymede. Amos appologizes that he tried to stop here. He recentntly tried making more decisions by himself, and they often turned out poorly, so he shouldn't have done it and keep listening to her. Which Naomi tells him not to feel bad about.
But she also wants to know if he was lying that Holden might survive when they blow the creature out, which Amos admits. She tells him not to do that again.

Amos shuts down the reactor and the creature stops trying to break through the floor. As the gravity goes out, Holden tries to give a kick to his dropped rifle to make it float to his hand. The monster notices it and starts climbing up to it. When it drifts away from him, the creature goes to ignore him again.

Mao's men want to negotiate with Chrisjen and Cotyar. She has Cotyar do all the talking, but tells him exactly what to shout the other men. The science ship descents down to Venus and things get very shaky inside. Oh look, there's Adam Savage and he even gets to say a line.
The Martian warship tries to outrace them down to the surface.

Bobby knocks out a guard on Mao's ship and grabs his gun, but it's ID-locked and so she throws it at the other to beat him up as well. Knowing that knocked out people don't stay that way long, she takes their guns and throws them into the garbage before moving on.

Prax sees the plants growing in a circle around a lamp in the Rocinante's kitchen and gets an idea. (Plant guy power!)

Holden notices that his air is running out and he seems to be quite injured from being crushed by the container. So he calls Naomi to tell that when he dies, she should not make the same mistake as he did and recklessly charge forward looking for revenge.

Cotyar start to pass out, so Chrisjen pokes at his wound to make him wake up. The guards say that they will let him go if he leaves Chrisjen behind. He says this is a fight between the high ups and there's not need for the henchmen to kill each other over it.

Prax goes to Alex to tell him that the creature seems to be aiming for the strongest power source on the ship, which is the reactor. Instead of trying to make it stop, they should attract it to another locating. Shut down the reactor and give it a nuclear torpedo to much on outside the airlock.

Bobby makes it to the airlock and finds a technician warning her to stay back, or he will seal the door and destroy the controls with a single button press. Bobby tells him that if he seals the door, there is nothing to stop her from beating him to deeath.
"Are you willing do die for Mao?"
"I'm just an electrician!"
That answers that.

Naomi and Prax suit up to take the warhhead they took from the gutted torpedo they used to store the blue samples outside. Meanwhile Amos is on the bridge to be ready to try blowing the creature and Holden out of the cargo bay as a backup. He calls Holden to tell him that in case he has to kill him, he wants him to know that he really appreciated what Holden did and that he admires that he always tries to be a good man. It's nice for him to not have to worry if he's helping the right people.

Chrisjen tells Cotyar that if he wants to take the offer to save himself, she wants him to keep going after Erinwright. (So apparently they really do think he betrayed them.) Cotyar says he failed to keep her son save, so he feels obliged to protect his mother in his stead.
Chrisjen decides to surrender while Cotyar still has a chance to survive. Mao orders her killed. (And knowing how the show has been recently, next time we return to them, Bobby will come in with her power armor to wipe out all the henchmen.)

Naomi and Prax open up the warhead outside the Rocinante and the creatures goes back outside the door to get it. Prax hesitates as it approaches them, but at the last moment throws the nuclear core up and the creature jumps after it. Alex turns the Rocinante around and then burns it with the exhaust of the main engines.

The science ship passes through heavy turbulence on Venus and the Martian ship disappears from the radar. Suddenly the shaking stops and the blue lights are floating through the ship.

Holden is reasonably well once back inside with only a bruised leg, and thanks the others for saving him. Naomi asks the others to let them talk alone and decides it's really time to confess that she lied about destroying the sample. That's not the worst part, though. When she thought the Martian blockade would blow up the freighter leaving from Ganymede, she send a message to Fred Johnson where the torpedo with the sample is hidden. Her reasoning being that there's protomolecule all over the solar system now with both Earth and Mars having access to it, and to maintain the balance of power, the Belters need to have access too.

The science ship comes to a stop above the crater on Venus and is suddenly stripped into all its individual components, leaving the commander, the scientist, and Adam Savage floating in the air in amazement.

Bobby of course walks into the conference room and those puny pistols do nothing to her full goliath armor. Then she goes over to Chrisjen and holding out her hand, leaving the audience to fill in the words "Come with me if you want to live."

And on the Jupiter moon Io, Mai is put into statis storage.

--

Hmmm....

Hm, hm, hmm...

Not very much impressed by this one again. It's not bad, but it's also not great. Good-ish, I would say. It feels pretty corny in many scenes, like a regular generic American TV show.

There is not very much happening. Chrisjen and Cotyar spend the whole episode crouching behind a table. We do learn that Cotyar was apparently the commander of the unit of Chrisjen's son, and left the UN Marines after the unit lost many soldiers. Neat detail, but they still spend the entire episode hiding behind a table.

Strange ending for a season. I think they found a really good point to end season 1 and then put the first book ending in the middle of season 2. But now season 2 just suspends the story right in the middle of events. Naomi's monologue at the end feels like it is meant to give some form of wrap up by summarizing where things stand now and giving an outlook for what to roughly expect in season 3. And I think it does that reasonably well. But the montage of other scenes happening at the same time felt quite sappy.
And why show us that Mai is still in stasis just before it ends? If she was one of the space zombies and now dead, or possibly still alive out there would have made for a good cliffhanger element between seasons.

Nice to see Holden openly admitting that he's acting stupid.

First thing I want to say: Having Adam Savage appear as an extra and say I line is great. He's one of the coolest guys to give a spot somewhere in the background of this show.
But I think they squeezed a bit too much out of this. Having him in three shots during the descent of the science ship already felt like they wanted to make sure that people don't miss him. When he was floating in the air at the end, that really felt like too much. That's not a cameo anymore, that's a gimmick. With a bit more restraint, the whole think would have been even better.

The plants in the kitchen of the Rocinante are actually Buxus sempervirens, a plant with no use as food. But I feel 100% certain that they chose to use it because it as very stiff stems and retains its color and shape after getting cut. You can very often see bits of it in Christmas decoration made from pine and fir twigs, as it will look fine for weeks even in dry air. It's the perfect choice to give the illusion of young leafy plants in zero-g. It stays straight at every angle without hanging down, and you can leave them in place for weeks without having to worry about watering plants that are in soil upside down.
I applaud the set designer who came up with this idea.

[factotum]

It's not that Mao's men are bad, it's that Cotyar is just that badass.

Yeah, as I said earlier, this is a very odd place to end the season--as you'll see, the story pretty much picks up exactly where it left off at the start of the next season. It's not even a good cliffhanger, because all the main characters appear to be in (relatively) safe positions (Chrisjen protected by armoured Bobby, Rocinante away from Ganymede and the blue monster no longer on board)--the only real uncertainty is what's happening with Prax's daughter, and because he's a character who we've only really known for a few episodes, it doesn't have so much of an impact. The "proper" season break occurs about halfway through season 3, and I won't say more because it would obviously be spoilers!

[Altair_the_Vexed]

...
Nice to see Holden openly admitting that he's acting stupid.

100 % with you on this. Holden is my least favourite character. I only persist with the show because he's not the whole of the cast.

First thing I want to say: Having Adam Savage appear as an extra and say I line is great. He's one of the coolest guys to give a spot somewhere in the background of this show.
But I think they squeezed a bit too much out of this. Having him in three shots during the descent of the science ship already felt like they wanted to make sure that people don't miss him. When he was floating in the air at the end, that really felt like too much. That's not a cameo anymore, that's a gimmick. With a bit more restraint, the whole think would have been even better.
...

Oh, was that Savage? I honestly didn't notice him - I know who he is, and I kind of like him, but it didn't register with me at all. So it wasn't gimmicky to me in the slightest.

[factotum]

Oh, was that Savage? I honestly didn't notice him - I know who he is, and I kind of like him, but it didn't register with me at all. So it wasn't gimmicky to me in the slightest.

I think I noticed him, but it didn't occur to me it was the actual Adam Savage--I think I just thought "Oh, that actor looks like Adam Savage, isn't that weird?".

[Yora]

I looked up several reviews of the episode, and apparently I am the only one who noticed it. So apparently it's not as super obvious and in your face as I assumed.

And I admit, I saw a video of him visiting the set just a day before I watched the episode. (But not knowing that he filmed a scene.)

But when you rewatch the episode, you will see it, and won't unsee it.
(It's really only the last shot of the disassembly that I thought was a bit too much.)

[factotum]

Wow, he got two whole lines of dialogue, not the one you said! And that was definitely his corpse floating out of view after the ship was pulled apart, which makes you wonder why the captain and the scientist guy managed to survive (albeit, presumably, briefly) when they were in pretty much exactly the same position relative to the centre of the ship as he was...

I guess I didn't immediately recognise him as Adam Savage because, let's be honest, he does look quite a bit older than he did on Mythbusters. I haven't been following his subsequent career.

[Eldan]

I'm pretty sure Savage talked about it on his youtube channel and showed off some props from the show, so yeah, it's him.

[Rakaydos]

Wow, he got two whole lines of dialogue, not the one you said! And that was definitely his corpse floating out of view after the ship was pulled apart, which makes you wonder why the captain and the scientist guy managed to survive (albeit, presumably, briefly) when they were in pretty much exactly the same position relative to the centre of the ship as he was...

I guess I didn't immediately recognise him as Adam Savage because, let's be honest, he does look quite a bit older than he did on Mythbusters. I haven't been following his subsequent career.

His head is also tilted back more than we are used to seeing Savage, throwing off our image of him.

[Yora]

S3E1: Fight or Flight

The season starts with a montage of the solar system. I am sure this has no meaning to the story and was something made up by one person of the special effects team, but on the night side of Earth, you see all of Finland as densely populated as Germany, which is a fascinating idea. Also, North Korea is still completely dark at night. The effects guy might simply have modified a real map of night time illumination of Earth today and cranked it up a bit to make it look more populated, but there would be a fascinating story why North Korea still has no meaningful light at night 300 years in the future.

Mars looks like it also has serious population centers all over it. Even considering that Mars has significantly less surface area than Earth, this looks like a huge population. I would have thought the population of Mars to barely compare to Earth, like the Americas and Eurasia-Africa today. Also, there's a green glow on the horizon, indicating Mars already has a substential oxygen-rich atmosphere. (You get the same glow when looking at Earth from low orbit, which is caused by oxygen absorbing energy from sunlight during the day and releasing it as a green glow at night. It's too faint to see when looking straight up, but very visible when looking at the horizon from very high altitude.) Again, no clue if that detail was deliberately given to the special effects people or they made it up themselves because that's what their reference images look like.

There seems to be new fighting between the Earth and Mars navies at Ganymede. The General Secretary wants to keep this from growing into a system-wide war and get Chrisjen to help him, but Erinwright says they don't know where she is and can't reach her. He tells the GS that they have to go to full out war while they still have numerical superiority over the Martians, as they won't be able to beat their ships when they build up their own numbers over the next year. The GS orders a full meeting of the Security Council to vote on formally declaring war on Mars.

Holden, Amos, and Alex search the outside of the Rocinante to burn away any splats of protomolecule that are still sticking to the surface. Alex asks Amos what they can do about Holden being upset about the recent developments, and Amos thinks the only thing to do is to give Holden his space and go looking for new work elsewhere. Alex won't accept that and wants to know what Amos is thinking about Naomi having lied to all of them, and his reply is that she apparently is not the kind of person he thought she was.

Holden tells Naomi to overwrite the Rocinante's identification codes and goes to paint over the ship's name on the outside.

Bobbby tells Chrisjen to pick up a gun and shot anyone who tries to come inside the room other than her, because she needs get some things done. "I'll be right back" now makes it clear that the Terminator reference last episode was deliberate. She goes to get the electrician she captured to help them get off the ship.

Naomi asks Prax for a new name for the ship because he just happens to walk by. He's surprised that she wants him to pick one, but then has a name to name it after the Pinus contorta tree, that only reproduces after forest fires.

Johnson records a message to Dawes, offering to cooperate as he has a protomolecule samples and Dawes the scientist.

Cotyar gets patched up and assumes that Erinwright wanted Chrisjen killed. And he actually gets a message that this did not work. The door opens and Chrisjen starts to shot. It does nothing against Bobby's armor, but she praises her for having done as she was told.

Erinwright tells the Secretary General that Chrisjen was apparently conspiring to overthrew the UN government, and he has proof of her having communications with Fred Johnson and Mao. She was the one who advocated giving control of the strategic missiles to Johnson and then some of them went missing. And now she left Earth to meet with Mao, taking a Martian defector with her. So apparently he really is betraying her. Which makes me wonder what all his actions last episode were about.

Johnson tells Drummer that Holden lied to them about having a protomolcule sample, but Naomi told him where to find it. Drummer is afraid Dawes could learn about this, but he tells her he already informed Dawes about it. And that's the part that really upsets her.

Naomi tells Alex and Amos that they should go to Tycho Station, but they are both against it and still pretty angry with her. Though she does have a point that there is nowhere else in the system where they won't be attacked on sight.
Alex and Amos finish the repairs on the hole the space zombie punched in the cargo room floor, but they missed some blue stuff that had dripped on the cables below.

Amos tells Holden that he and Alex agree that the only safe place for them is on Tycho Station.

Bobby gets taken out by an electrified floor trap on the bridge of Mao's ship, but Cotyar shots the two pilots, and she's back up on her feet after a few minutes. With Plan A having failed, Erinwright now has a UN Navy ship destroy Mao's ship with missiles. Cotyar remembers that Julie Mao's racing ship is in the shuttle hangar and would be perfect to make an escape. But before they leave, Chrisjen wants the technician to get her a copy of Mao's communications because she can't go anywhere without proof that Erinwright is the traitor.

He manages to find a storage device and they had to the shuttle hangar, but the ship has only two seats to survive high acceleration. Cotyar wants Bobby to take Chrisjen to safety while he and the technician try to get to their shuttle. But the doors are locked during missile alarm anyway, so Bobby tells them to wait while she deals with it.

Alex records a message to his wife and daughter on Mars, who actually still have the same name as he does and apparently they are still married. He apologized for not having called them earlier. And he admits that he just can't help himself to keep going to space and help people, even though he does love both of them very much.

Holden seems to be randomly looking up Io on the computer.

Bobby blasts a hole in the side of the ship and tries walking on the outside, even with the engines being at full power. But the energy on her magnetic boots and gloves is to low to properly stick to the hull and she almost falls off.

Holden admits to Prax that he never intended to go looking for his daughter and only said that to get him to help them find Strickland. They would not have survived without Prax, so he wants to help him now. He discovered that while they were fighting with the space zombie on Ganymede, there was something happening simultaneously on Io, where Mao has an abandoned facility. Naomi thinks this is way too dangerous and they'll all die, but Holden think they owe it to Prax to try it. Amos is immediately for it and Alex also supports their side. Naomi's opinion is not being asked right now.

Johnson goes to talk with Drummer in the only bar on Tycho Station. She's still very angry with him but willing to hear what he wants to say. He wants her to go help getting the Mormon ship back and use it for the Belters.

Bobby gets inside the hangar and opens the door from the inside. She gets into the ship with Chrisjen and Cotyar and the technician get to their shuttle, expecting to get picked up by the UN ship. Julie's racer is basically a big torpedo with two racing seats that can swivel to better compensate during hard turns. Bobby says they will stay just in front of Mao's ship until the missiles arrive, to avoid one of them locking on their own engine before impact. But that leaves them little time to outrun the debris from the explosion.

--

Chrisjen, Bobby, and Cotyar are fun, but progress with their story is at a snail's pace. They've been stuck on Mao's ship for two and a half episodes, not really doing anything but exchanging witty lines. Which is fun, of course, but not big storytelling.

Nice to see our Belters again, but they are not really doing anything of substance either.

Alex calling his family is weird. It's nice of him to be honest that the urge to do heroics in space is bigger than being with them, but I don't see where they want to be going with this. Also not letting them know that he wasn't dead for months just feels incomprehensible. It's not like their survival is a secret to anyone.

What was up with Erinwright, really? Last episode made it look very obvious that he's prepared to go down and be remembered as a villain. I could perhaps see him giving his medal to Chrisjen as a deception to make her trust him, but he doesn't do anything with that. I really thought he was going to sacrifice himself to be the fall guy to help Chrisjen bring down Mao. Nothing he did makes sense for someone who's getting ready to execute his master plan to take over the world. Maybe he changed his mind later between looking at a poison and then later using a presumably different poison to kill the Martian minister. Why would he write a letter to his wife just before picking up the poison that will kill his enemy and leave him unharmed? I have no idea where they wanted to go with this, but at this point he seems to be all straightforward villain, in a more one-dimensional way than ever before.

Holden and Prax aren't really doing it for me either. As does this whole storyline, actually.

[factotum]

I was biting my tongue all the time you were talking about Erinwright working with Chrisjen, because obviously I knew that wasn't the case. I think it's entirely possible that he *did* change his mind, though, or at least make it up--he wasn't sure what to do, but once Chrisjen was away and aboard Mao's ship, he decided it was a perfect opportunity to get rid of her. My impression of Erinwright is not that he's necessarily after personal power, but he really doesn't like Mars and will do whatever he thinks is necessary for Earth to beat them in a war. Everything he does makes a bit more sense if you assume it's specifically anti-Martian.

The whole thing with Io seemed a bit odd to me as well, TBH. It smacked of the sort of storytelling you'd get in the 70s, where the protagonists would just randomly decide to visit wherever they needed to go to further the plot without actually giving any good reason for them to do so. It would have made more sense if Holden had just said he'd picked up transmissions from Mao's supposedly abandoned facility on Io, and they might as well go and investigate that in the absence of any other leads.

[Yora]

S3E2: IFF

Strickland takes Mai out of stasis and gets a message that Mao's ship is arriving on Io.

Bobby tries to hide their ship in the debris field until they get far enough away from the UNN ship send to kill Chrisjen. They get discovered and Bobby gives full speed to try getting away. Chrisjen tells her to use the encrypted comm on her armor to call for the Martian Navy to save them. They are both regarded as enemies of Mars, but that's still better than the UNN ship already trying to kill them.

Prax and Amos are building additional plant racks on the ship to compensate for the air filters not being at peak efficiency. Naomi tells Alex that they are using too much fuel, but his plan is to make the engines look inefficient to look like a cheap outdated mining ship from a distance. Naomi thinks she can get the same effect without actually using up as much fuel.
And they pick up Bobby's emergency signal.

The UN headquarters are crowded by anti-war protesters and we are introduced to a new character who is some kind official and tells the police to cut down on the force. She is taken directly to the General Secretary. She's not happy with how he's leading things and he wants her help him sell things to the people. She doesn't like it, but is willing to work with him in exchange for money for her church hospital that treats people with no official documentation. That's a negligible price for the president of Earth.

Erinwright gets a message from the Navy ship that they are in pursuit of the target. Since they were ordered to destroy an unarmed private luxury yacht, that's very concerning.

Alex plays Bobby's message to Holden, but Holden thinks Martian diplomats getting chased by UNN ships are something they can not get involved in. Alex says that Holden decided to assist the Scopuli even though he was ordered not to and Naomi decided to not destroy the protomolecule and give it to Johnson. Now he wants to help a fellow Martian and they tell him he can't. Then Naomi calls down to tell them that the ship is registered on Julie Mao. Holden still says that changes nothing and they promised Prax to try find his daughter, and they can't just change plans just because something else come up.

Mao and Strickland seem to working on a stealth torpedo with a space zombie as payload.

Bobby has to turn down the engines so Chrisjen doesn't die. But that lets the pursuing ship catch up to get into torpedo range and it starts firing. Another ship shows up and also fires, which I assume is the Rocinante because Prax told Holden to change his mind.
Two torpedoes intercept the two that were fired by the UNN, and the rest goes to fly parallel to them at the same speed. And I was right and it is the Rocinante coming to save them.

The woman helping the GS on Earth (Anna, I think?) calls her wife and child at home that she will be away for some time. She also still isn't quite sure why she really is helping him selling this war to the public.
She's not comfortable with the other people on the GS's staff being prejudiced hawks.

The Rocinante is hurrying to get to Chrisjen and Bobby, but a tool locker was not properly locked where Amos and Prax are sitting. Prax wants to go and fix it, but Amos tells him to stay in his seat. Alex janks the ship around and the tools are thrown across the room, ripping off Prax' air hose.

Strickland tells Mao that they have six children from Ganymede with a genetic defect that can be used to make the protomolecule controllable. Mao tells him to go ahead.

Prax can't get his air reconnected and so Amos gets out of his seat, trying to help him, while Alex is still making turns and everything getting thrown around. He connects the air and just barely manages to catch a drill that is flying at Prax' head.

Alex uses six torpedoes to blind the UNN ship and then flies straight through the explosion to rip the engines off with two more. It worked perfectly, but now they are almost out of torpedoes and have no more ammunition for the autocanons.

Prax tells Amos that he agree to try helping the Martians and delay searching for Mai because he's afraid of what will have happened to her when they find her. Amos tells him that he can not give up on this, because every child needs at least one person that will always try to save it. And this has to be him.

Bobby carries Chrisjen over to the Rocinante and Holden seems to recognize one of them.

--

So cool CGI shots with slow motion are now a thing of this show. I don't approve, but if they don't overuse it too much and stop remembering that a good battle scene is about a narrative and not effect, the harm to the show might be very limited.
Making the Rocinante appearing like a surprise is a complete failure. It's obvious that this would happen. Especially because they tried the same thing just three episodes ago.

There's not terribly much happening this episode, but we get some more information about Mao's and Strickland's activities, and we get a decent amount of introduction for what looks to be a new secondary character like Drummer and Cotyar. Curious where they will be going with her? She's basically supporting a supporting character as an adviser to the General Secretary. Maybe she'll take the role of being our eyes and ears on Earth, now that Chrisjen is on the run and having put her hopes on getting captured by the Martians instead of the UNN.
Though of course, Anna seems to be pretty much the anti-Chrisjen, having a completely different outlook on how to serve the people of Earth. I don't really know anything about progressive protestants in America, but I know a lot of protestant pastors here in Germany through family connections, and Anna seems like she would blend in with them completely seamlessly. I don't think I've ever seen someone playing such a role on TV before, but I find her completely believable so far.

[Rakaydos]

Out of curiosity, in just over two seasons of this show, how many episodes wound you NOT say "not much happened this episode" about?

[Yora]

Without going through all my reviews again, I would guess about a quarter.

Though unlike many other shows, that by itself rarely seems do be an issue that makes episodes tedious. Maybe it's because I watch the episodes for the first time, but most dialogs are entertaining to watch even they don't have much exposition or plot development in them. When characters are making speeches, I often focus much more on the performance than the words, because there's a lot going on to look at.

I think the best example would be the episode after they left Tycho Station and before they find the Anubis. I think there's an entire episode that consists only of talking with the spy and talking with the Martian patrol. Nothing is really accomplished, no progress is being made, and nothing of significance is learned. At least from what I remember. There might be some Chrisjen scenes I don't remember right now.
The Rocinante stuff is all filler, but its very entertaining filler.
Similarly, Team ABC being stuck on Mao's ship for almost two and a half episodes and treading water is also very entertaining at the moment you are watching it.
Bobby was also somewhat interesting in the first half of season 2, even though she does not do anything until her patrol gets attacked.

I think the main current shortcomings for me is that I don't really care for Holden's crusade (and neither does anyone on the Rocinante either), and despite my initial interest in Prax, I've gotten bored with his search for his daughter, too.
Since S2E9 The Weeping Somnabulist, we have not really seen anything of the OPA leaders, who always have been very entertaining, and since S2E5: Home we also no longer have a Miller storyline. (Though magic blue stuff makes me feel quite certain we've not heard the last of him. "Whatever happens, will happen to us both.", "And if we don't die, that also will be very interesting." They aren't gone.)
While I am curious how Bobby will be developing, she's not able to pick up the slack from Miller's absence, and Prax is starting to annoy me. Like Holden, he needs a firm kick in the butt to get his stuff together. He got Amos keeping an eye on him, and even trying to help him during these hard time, though it's in his own weird Amos way. There's potential to make something interesting happen, but even after seven episode I don't see much coming from it.
And that science ship on Venus did not really contribute anything to the other stories, as far as I am able to tell so far. The protomolecule was not destroyed in S2E5 Home. Which I felt was obvious even back then. Having it disassemble a ship in S2E13 Caliban's War was a nice effect to remind us how weird it is and that it's still there, but I think that could have been done without spending time watching the people on the ship philosophizing.

Apparently the story of the second book continues for four more episodes, maybe things get more gripping for me in the next one. I always see season 2 and 3 being praised as being much better than season 1 with no contest. But I am actually missing the tone and style of season 1, which carried over quite well into the first 5 episodes of season 2. Hopes and expectations are high for the second half of season 3.

[Rakaydos]

It may just be a pacing issue, like Random Encounters. They arnt allowed to jump around the system without episodes being spent in transit... or something.

[factotum]

I personally wonder why the Roci didn't use any of those handy-dandy missiles against that stealth ship it had such a problem with when they were attacking the space station a while ago--sure would have helped a lot. Instead it spent its entire time using its point defence cannons and somehow doing enough damage to take the ship out. Couldn't be that the writer (and I'm assuming this is a fault with the original books as well, although I haven't read them) decided the ship needed that feature here when it never had it before, of course...there's another facility the ship gets in season 4 which I'm reasonably sure it was never originally intended to have, but we'll get to that at the proper time.

[Yora]

While that's true, I don't think it would really have made a difference. In both cases the real challenge was to get extremely close to land a good hit that the enemy ship could not defend against. They could have destroyed the stealth ship with ultra close range missiles, or shoot the UNN ship's engine with the canons. Both fights would have turned out more or less the same.
While it very much looked like the Rocinante does not have missiles in season 1 but makes plenty of use of them in season 2, I think it's just a minor continuity error and not in any way a plot hole at this point.

Though I just remember that they use a missile to destroy the relief ship at Eros with a missile.And the ship having a laser targeting missile guidance system is crucial in the episode that follows. Unless they really changed that from the book, the Rocinante must have had missiles in Leviathan Wakes the whole time.
The way the show creators talked about planning details and telling script writers that they can't just handwave things that ignore technical limitstions of the setting, I can't really imagine that they didn't have the Rocinante's full weapon loadout defined from the start.
And the two story writers did first play around with the setting as an RPG idea. As GMs, they surely create stats for all the ships as one of the first steps.

[Rakaydos]

The major limitation of missiles in the setting, is anything with active defenses an unpredictable flight path can basically ignore them. The stealth ship versus the donnager started off with missiles, and both combatants kept shooting them down until they got into railgun range, and then boarding range. (note that the donager thought they were shooting at a crappy belter ship that missiles could take care of, and steal ship had better missiles, that the donnager had trouble shooting down.) Against a dead stealth ship, the Rossi could use a missile, but against a live stealth ship, they predicted they could not slip a missile through the railgun defenses. When Earth shot at Phobos, phobos couldn't dodge, so the missiles did a boost and went dark, so nothing for the point defenses to see until the very last minute. But anything under constant boost, minor station keeping errors on the defenders part could make a dark missile Miss by hundreds of kilometers.

When the Rossi defended the razorback, they traded missiles to shoot down missiles, and used missiles as a smoke screen, but never used missiles as an offensive weapon. Automated point defense is too good.

[Yora]

S3E3: Assured Destruction

Chrisjen is taken to the medical room and Bobby sees the Martian flag on the airlock that Amos vandalized. She is even less amused than Amos.
Naomi first wants to know why a Martian marine and the UN Undersecretary are on Julie Mao's ship with a UNN ship trying to kill them. Holden does not care as it's not their business, even when Bobby says that they need to stop the war. They can go back on their ship and continue on their own. And if Naomi does not like it, than she can take the ship and go to Tycho.

The UNN has spotted two Martian "nuclear submarines" and think they can extrapolate the position from other strategic stealth ships from that, assuming they are in optimal position to launch a nuclear strike against Earth. That gives the Earthers an opportunity to wipe them all out at once and remove one of the biggest threats to Earth. The Secretary General is worried that they might not get them all and only escalate the war in the inner system.
Erinwright thinks the Martians will attack Earth anyway because they are losing so far, but the GS thinks that fighting at Jupiter and Saturn is still a very different thing from fighting directly at Earth and Mars. The Martians are not that crazy. But he's still considering Erinwright's position.

Mao watches the children on the cameras and approves that they are kept together to play. Strickland says that has a positive effect on their body chemistry that makes the protomolecule work better, which Mao seems to find a bit creepy. He then sees the monitor of a scientist in the room show images that have been taken of Julie on Eros.

Cotyar and the technician are found by a UNN ship headed for Jupiter, which is commanded by the former Fleet Admiral. They get a message from the new Fleet Admiral on Earth that the nobody is to talk to the prisoners until he arrives to pick them up.
Cotyar knows the technician will spill everything when he gets interrogated and so kills him before they are picked up.

Chrisjen is back up to her feet and tells Holden she needs to get in contact with the new admiral in charge of the Jupiter fleet, to end the war and prevent the spread of the blue stuff. He really doesn't want to hear about that anymore, even when she tells him that she spoke with his mother, and that it's not an accident for someone like him to be at the center of this chaos.

Fleet admiral Nguyen already arrives on the UNN ship to speak with admiral Souther and take over the prisoner. Souther already has Cotyar identified as a former military intelligence officer and Chrisjen's bodyguard. Nguyen shares with him that Chrisjen is wanted for conspiring with Mao against Earth.
They both go to interrogate Cotyar, who claims that Chrisjen was killed by Mao's henchmen, but they of course don't believe him. Souther also finds it hard to believe that the UNN would blow up a civilian Earther ship and Nguyen dismisses it as a lie. Souther seems to consider his claim that it's all Erinwright, though.

Mai walks around alone on Io and runs into Mao, who is by himself, and ask him if he's a father visiting one of the other children. A scientists finds her and takes her back to the lab, and Mao follows them. She says she's excited that her friend is getting super strength to jump up the ceiling and hopes she can get that as well.

Alex receives a message from his wife, who tells him that they are glad he's still alive, but at this point he really does not need to come back to them anymore.

After having had a talk with Anna about doing the right thing and his responsibilities as a leader in war, the GS goes to the war room where he is told they have an 82% chance to destroy the whole Martian nuclear missile fleet in a surprise attack before they can return fire. He says that's not good enough to risk the lives of people on Earth and calls the plan off.

Chrisjen decides to start sharing her information with all the other people on the ship: Erinwright has ordered space zombies from Mao and she believes he wants to use them to destroy Mars. Holden shows her camera recordings of fighting the space zombie they had in the cargo hold. Prax explains that Mao and Strickland seem to be using children to create them, and that they are trying to get to Io and stop them. Holden reveals that the OPA already has a blue stuff sample and Naomi comes forward to admit that she did it.

Admiral Souther goes to a bridge officer on his ship and asks about the electrical problems on decks 2, 3, and 11, where Cotyar is being held. The officer says the problem is only on deck 2 and 3, but Souther asks again how long it will take for things to be working again on deck 11. The officer takes the hint and says it should be out for another 20 minutes.
Nguyen comes to the bridge to give order to take the ship to Io. He notices that the Souther isn't on the bridge and asks what the ongoing repairs on the monitor are about.
Souther tells Cotyar he knows Chrisjen would not betray Earth, and Cotyar tells him the whole story about Mao and Erinwright. He has no proof, but knows that Chrisjen got away with Erinwright's message to Mao.
Nguyen finds the guard at Cotyar's room gone, but Souther already left. He still knows that something is up and goes back to the bridge to tell Souther that he is taking command of the ship.

Erinwright is pestering the General Secretary to go through with the first strike anyway. They shot the railguns from Earth (which have no engine exhausts on the projectiles which makes them very hard to detect in space), but number 5 has a missfire, leading to a few seconds delay. Which is enough for the fifth Martian ship to launch one of its missiles before it is destroyed. It has multiple warheads and one of them gets past the defense guns, destroying a city with 2 million people. The missfire on the fifth railgun is attributed to an error caused by having it charge up and powered down just a few hours earlier. Which I think is something that Erinwright arranged to happen. Getting a few million people killed and blaming it on the GS seems totally Erinwright's style at this point.

Mao gets a message that Nguyen and Southern are on their way to Io. He then tells Strickland to not continue with injecting the other children with blue stuff after seeing how it is affecting the first one.

Erinwright tells Anna that the city got destroyed only because the GS hesitated attacking with full force when he had the opportunity the first time.

--

Good thing that Chrisjen arranged for Souther to get command of the Jupiter fleet when it still seemed like a somewhat minor backwater posting. He's always been on her team, even when she was still acting like she's not on his team. And he still doesn't play along with Erinwright and Ngyuen's antics. Also, Cotyar knows that he can be trusted in this situation because it was literally his job to check who Chrisjen could trust or not. Looking back over my summary, I think most of the important stuff was really happening on the UNN ship.

Taking out the Martian ships that threaten Earth was a bold move by Erinwright. I doubt this will make the Martian back down from their attack plans, which apparently were nonexistent anyway. The episode is called "Assured Destruction", not "Mutually Assured Destruction", and considering the state of UNN hardware, I would assume that Earth does not have a similar fleet that would threaten Mars in a comparable way. Since the Martians don't seem like people who would nuke Earth lightly unless their own survivial is threatened, I don't think the destruction of the five ships actually changes the balance of power very much. The only thing that really changes is that the UN now can afford to escalate the war to whatever level they want, but it will still remain a conventional war.
The Martian strategic stealth missile ships are very straightforward futuristic versions of American Ohio Class submarines armed with Trident missiles. You can barely see them, but they are always there, ready to launch nuclear hellfire and completely wipe out the enemy in a matter of minutes. With the difference that the US does not have just 5 Ohio class submarines but 14, which don't carry 10 missiles each but 24, and carry up to 14 warheads each. The MCRN can launch 500 nukes at Earth, while the US Navy had theoretically up to 4.700 on the Ohios alone.
Just putting it there in the room.

Fleet Admiral Nguyen coming to Io seems to have happened pretty quickly. There is a neat little site called Space Travel Calculator, which tells me that getting from Earth to Jupiter at constant 1g acceleration and deceleration would take 4 or 5 days. Even if you have a hardcore express shuttle that travels with a constant 2g, it still would take 3 days. It does not look like Cotyar spend half a week sitting in that chair.

[Rakaydos]

[SIZE=5][COLOR="#008080"]

Fleet Admiral Nguyen coming to Io seems to have happened pretty quickly. There is a neat little site called Space Travel Calculator, which tells me that getting from Earth to Jupiter at constant 1g acceleration and deceleration would take 4 or 5 days. Even if you have a hardcore express shuttle that travels with a constant 2g, it still would take 3 days. It does not look like Cotyar spend half a week sitting in that chair.

Dont quote me on this, but I dont believe Souther's ship is at jupiter yet. How long has it been since Avasarala got him the jupiter posting? waiting for the next ship to head in that direction is probably the reason he was on the closest ship to search for survivors from Mao's yaut. his shid had to match course with the wreckage in order to pick up Mr spy, and they were immediately ordered to fly in circles while the Fleet Admiral comes from earth. THEN they resume the flight to jupiter.

[Yora]

Those are all plausible factors that would significantly reduce the travel time. I also mistakenly assumed that Nguyen's ship would have to come to a stop at Jupiter, which it would not have to if it only needs to catch up and synchronize speed with Souther's fleet.
With some help from the juice, an express transport probably also could do a few hours at 3 or 4g at the start and end of the whole journey. No clue how that would affect travel time.

And in the end, it's not really important to the overall narrative. Cotyar spends the whole time in the same chair in the same room because building another set for a prison cell would have been expensive and not enhanced the story very much. It could very well have been a week, it's just not shown on the screen. I only pointed it out because I was remembering that later episodes mess up communication delay, which I still have not seen happening yet. Maybe it lines up better in the book and was just compressed for practical reason.
The show isn't really giving indications of time passing anyway.

[factotum]

I don't think Mao's ship (that Cotyar escaped from, obviously) was anywhere near Earth--he's recently arrived on Io, remember, and the Rocinante was also on the way there when they encountered Bobby and Chrisjen's yacht, so that suggests they were somewhere out Jupiter way in any case. As for Errinwright, like I said, I don't think he has any interest in personal power, he's just out to destroy Mars, so no, I don't think he arranged for the failure of that fifth missile. Given that the General Secretary *did* run hot and cold on shooting the missiles, Errinwright's explanation of what happened makes perfect sense.

[Dexam]

While that's true, I don't think it would really have made a difference. In both cases the real challenge was to get extremely close to land a good hit that the enemy ship could not defend against. They could have destroyed the stealth ship with ultra close range missiles, or shoot the UNN ship's engine with the canons. Both fights would have turned out more or less the same.
While it very much looked like the Rocinante does not have missiles in season 1 but makes plenty of use of them in season 2, I think it's just a minor continuity error and not in any way a plot hole at this point.

Though I just remember that they use a missile to destroy the relief ship at Eros with a missile.And the ship having a laser targeting missile guidance system is crucial in the episode that follows. Unless they really changed that from the book, the Rocinante must have had missiles in Leviathan Wakes the whole time.
The way the show creators talked about planning details and telling script writers that they can't just handwave things that ignore technical limitstions of the setting, I can't really imagine that they didn't have the Rocinante's full weapon loadout defined from the start.
And the two story writers did first play around with the setting as an RPG idea. As GMs, they surely create stats for all the ships as one of the first steps.

Having recently finished reading Leviathan Wakes, I can say that this is a very minor plot point: after Alex uses the PDC's in a fight, Holden asks why they didn't use a torpedo instead; Alex replies that the Roci only has 6 torpedoes and they don't have a way of getting any more if they run out, so he doesn't want to waste them. Holden responds that if they can use the torpedoes to end a fight quickly, then they use the torpedoes to end the fight quickly. Alex concedes the point.