201: Safe

Plot points

• The Earth/Mars cold war verges on getting hot when both send ships to reach the Phoebe research station first, where experiments with the Protomolecule first took place; Mars destroys Phoebe entirely
• Avasarala survives an assassination attempt and recruits her personal security detail
• Miller learns to live with the Roci crew

Continuity

Opening credits changes [see dedicated post with images]:

• Mars from orbit has auroras on its dark side
• on Mars, slightly different shot on the view from above, with rockets landing from the left instead of from the top
• on Mars, different view from the ground (similar to Bobbie and her team), replacing a view of domed cities
• the shot of asteroid field and Ceres replaced by a shot of Tycho station with the attached Nauvoo
• around Saturn, the moons are closer to the camera
• on the final shot of Jupiter moons aligning, there is a protomolecule blue tint to the terminator of the closest moon

• First appearances: MMC Gunnery “Gunny” Sergeant Roberta “Bobbie” Draper, and her team Sa’id, Hillman, Travis; MCRN Captain Sutton (on the Scirocco); UN Secretary General Sorrento-Gillis (yes, Avasarala has a boss); Admiral Nguyen; Cotyar (Avasarala’s bodyguard).
• On the Rocinante, the crew checks Dresden’s lab notes of Phoebe research station (from 107 and 109-110), while on the MCRN Scirocco the crew views videos of Phoebe captured by MCRN Lt Lopez (from 103-104).

• Avasarala mentions that being killed is an occupational hazard in her family. Her father was a politician killed on duty (mentioned by Ambassador Degraaf in 103), and her son was killed by the OPA (photos of her son in UNN uniform in 102, story told in 106). Her son is named here for the first time, Charanpal.
• The UNN Nathan Hale, which is rerouted to Phoebe here, was previously sent to Tycho station in 108. On the Martian side, it is the MCRN Scirocco that is sent to Phoebe.

Analysis

• With the new season, we are introduced to Bobbie and we finally have a Martian point of view in the show. While a Martian, Alex, as the Rocinante‘s pilot, did not present us with the full Martian way of thinking in the same way a member of the Martian Marine Corps (MMC) does!
• The scenes with Bobbie are dense with quick dialogue and provide a lot of information on world-building: the fact that the terraforming project was pushed back because of Earth-Mars tensions; the nationalistic pride of the Marines; the racism against first-generation immigrants from Earth; the confidence that they will crush the Earth’s military; the more level-headed approach of more experienced officers that don’t think that an all-out war is desirable.
• Maybe it’s because I’m not a Marine, but the MMC war chants certainly made me think of Full Metal Jacket:

Who’s gonna feast on Earth’s sky and drink their rivers dry? MMC!
Who’s gonna stomp their mountains into fine Martian dust? MMC!
Till the rains fall hard on Olympus Mons, who are we? MMC!
I can’t hear you! MMC!
Who are we? MMC! 

• The Mars Congressional Republic flag can be seen (for instance on MMC helmets): use of red, orange and black, it shows the planet with its two moons Phobos and Deimos.

• Individual terraformers are mentioned in the dialogue: these must be these towers that are chemical processing units that spew out greenhouse gases to heat the atmosphere.
• In one of the most visually striking scenes, Bobbie overlays on her helmet the view of Mars’s Mariner Valley as it will be in 100 years, more or less fully terraformed: green and blue cover the red. This is the dream shared by all Martians, as made clear by Lt Lopez in 104. A dream straight out of Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars trilogy, shivers!

• The Vesta blockade is mentioned: an incident about a generation ago where Earth tried to take over Mars. It’s been a Cold War since, and Mars has had to divert resources from terraforming to reinforcing its military. 4 Vesta is the Belt’s second-largest asteroid after Ceres.
• “Ganymede bourbon” is highly regarded — Ganymede is a moon of Jupiter.
• We are given an incredible number for Earth population: 30 billion! Earth’s carrying capacity is dependent on technology and resources management, and some would argue that anything beyond 2 billion is not sustainable. It’s possible that future efficiency efforts would allow for such a huge population, with environmental pollution always on the brink of making the food-producing ecosystem collapse — like now with our 8 billion, but both better and worse. Not a desirable situation.
• Mars is very much pro-fertility (40+ brothers and sisters, I hope this is not with the same mother!).

• On Earth, Avasarala survives an assassination attempt, organized by the OPA faction Black Sky.
• Avasarala’s code name is “Archangel”. Nice.
• As a consequence, Avasarala recruits Cotyar to be her personal security detail. Cotyar knew her deceased son and seems to have high morals (“Robin Hood complex”).
• There are drones everywhere! How annoying! And no privacy at all.

• The Mao estate is a walled compound for the super-rich, possibly right outside New York City (Errinwright visits quickly).
• If the UN meetings seem to be where the seat of power is, the Mao-Errinwright reveals another level above, a collusion of private and public interests. The Earth-Mars tensions are orchestrated by Mao in order to divert attention from Eros.
• And yet there is still a level above: Mao describes the protomolecule as “a discovery that could rewrite the story of humankind, but your imagination takes you as far as putting the boot heel to your former colony”. Today, conflicts between two small states are small potatoes compared to the geopolitics of more powerful states; in the future of The Expanse, the geopolitics have expanded to the scope of the solar system. And yet, these differences are of little importance to humanity being confronted with alien life!

• Earth is mentioned as a “nation”, singular! Several steps ahead of the current-day situation, with emerging multinational blocs like the EU.
• Outer planets (Jupiter, Saturn) bases are shared between Earth and Mars; Belters do not have a recognized jurisdiction, they just live under Earth, Mars or shared rule/jurisdiction (eg Ceres and Tycho are managed by Earth corporations).
• The hawks like Admiral Nguyen want to deploy the fleet, the more level-headed ones like Admiral Souther (already seen in season 1) want to de-escalate. The thinking is that Earth and Mars don’t want an all-out war as it would be too damaging, similar to the US-USSR Cold War. So in the meantime, it’s war-by-proxy over Phoebe, like the Korea, Cuba, Vietnam, Afghanistan conflicts.

• Saturn is so remote that the time delay to Earth is 20 minutes. A completely different concept of conducting warfare. Nice holograms, too.
• Several moons are mentioned: Callisto (Jupiter) and Phoebe and Titan (Saturn).
• The missiles sent to Phoebe fracture the moon: this is certainly enough to destroy the research base, but is it enough to destroy the protomolecule?
• The subsidiary of Mao-Kwikowski Mercantile that conducts the research on the protomolecule is named: Protogen Inc. Contractor for the Phoebe research station.
• We get definitive confirmation that this protomolecule is proof of extraterrestrial life: apparently, Phoebe was an object initially from outside our solar system that was trapped by Saturn’s gravity some estimated two billion years ago. Indeed, it is believed today that Phoebe originated in the Kuiper belt way in the outer solar system, and it has a retrograde and eccentric orbit.
• Was Phoebe a delivery system for the protomolecule? What was the message?

• Eros has been placed under quarantine, out of the reach of humanitarian aid. Eros population is given at 100,000 Belters. Food for the protomolecule.
• Alex tests the Eros survivors of protomolecule infection: how did he know what to check for?
• Some Belter creole: the Eros survivors call Alex “sabakawala”, a dog-related insult.
• The Roci crew puts the frozen protomolecule they found in the Anubis‘ core (from 108) in a teleguided missile (specifically, in the fuel compartment, labelled He3 Li: helium3 and lithium, helium3 can be a nuclear fusion fuel and can be produced from lithium) and hide it in an abandoned asteroid mine. For future reference.
• The Expanse does have some sound in space, but often when it does it does so following the rules of physics: for example in this scene where Naomi and Holden shut off their radio and communicate by touching their helmets together, the sound waves travel through the helmets’ material and the audio is appropriately muffled.

• Following their exposure to radiation, Miller and Holden are given cancer treatment, which makes them unable to procreate. And yet, Holden says he has sperm frozen from his UNN days — is this  foreshadowing, in the same episode where he starts a hot-sex-relationship with Naomi?
• Holden, ever the idealist, wants “truth and justice” for Eros; Miller just wants those responsible dead.
• There is tension aboard the Rocinante with the addition of a fifth member, Miller, and his grudge with Amos over killing Semi in 110. It is resolved with some alpha male violence over who will dominate and who will submit — The Expanse is often…lowbrow like this, but given the characters’ background that’s to be expected? Deal with it and move on.

• The two belters, Miller and Naomi, have a talk. Naomi on Amos: “he’s not crazy and he’s not evil, he’s just always needed someone to help him out with the world”, revealing a complex inner life for Amos behind these sudden switches between calmness and brute force. Miller likens Naomi to Amos’s “guide star”, and Naomi says the same of Julie for Miller.
• Miller still has dreams/visions of Julie, ever since 110, with her telling him “You belong with me”.
• Alex brings the family together around a meal — Mars’ signature Mariner Valley lasagna, which is vegan with no cheese, but also with no wheat and no tomatoes (I mean what’s in it?)! Great bonding scene.

Behind the scenes

• This episode was initially broadcast together with 202 on SyFy in a season premiere event.
• Holden: “Do you like space gladiator movies?”: is this a reference to Airplane! (“Do you like gladiator movies?”)?
• The arm wrestling fight between Bobbie and the robotic exoskeleton reminded me of the absolute sci-fi movie with Marines, Aliens, with the scene with android Bishop exhibiting his skills with a knife on Private Hudson.

Links & Reviews

• Fandom.com page
• reddit thread (together with 202)
• Ty & That Guy podcast (beware of spoilers!)