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Blind Rasputin posted:Grim dark whatever that is some low tier internet sludge but have we considered that maybe this show is just going to add fuel to the current impeachment debate dumpster fire in the United States? Murtry’s character seems to be written to explicitly draw attention to the problems run rampant right now with white nationalism and racism. That’s a good thing but I dunno if a sci-Fi show is the right place for it? Bezos already has the Washington Post as a platform I don’t think Expanse should be one as well. Also Avasarrala colluding with mars is a little too on the nose re Russia collusion. Nah. The Expanse is part of a long line of Sci-Fi that preaches against big corporations crushing humanity under the boot. See: 1981, Outland 1986, Aliens ...and there is certainly more, those two give the most gritty similar feeling though of The Expanse to me personally. The debate scene between Gao and Avasarala, and Avasarala's funeral speech scene, the venal nature of a political campaign with poll-wary consultants, and Avasarala's making calls on assassination raids (aka drone strikes against terrorists) were definitely on-point for our current political life. But I don't think you could say it was directly analogous to president Trump and impeachment, more just a jaded and cynical overall view of the democratic process where you have a significant percentage of the population disenfranchised (the people on Basic). Avasarala colluding with Mars? If anything in Season 4 I think we see Avasarala becoming more like the people she displaced (Errinwright, Secretary General Esteban Sorrento-Gillis), becoming a machiavellian tribalistic rear end in a top hat clinging to power. The Expanse is very curious to me, I find it deeply subversive, something Bezos, if he is an evil genius, wouldn't be putting out. Similar to "The Boys", which is also a deeply cynical and subversive show.. but he does have the Jack Ryan series, which basically appears to be kinda like '24' all over again.
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Dec 15, 2019 16:36
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I'm impressed with these OPA terrorists and their Earth rock-throwing plan. The show doesn't give you the information if the rock(s) they are planning on throwing are 1. Extinction level rocks, or 2. City-destroying rocks with the potential for 10's of millions killed and long term devastation for billions. 3. Smaller, city-destroying rocks with potential for 10's of millions killed. Any of the above would be pretty ballsy. It raises the question; just how crazy are these OPA belters? If you gave an exploited sweat shop or coal mine worker living in China or Vietnam the capacity to drop nukes on the mainland USA and kill 10's of millions in order to avenge their poor working conditions while the capitalist pigs live in luxury... would they do it? Also note that Earth after being hit by the rocks would still probably retain close to its full military capacity. I assume Earth's navy is deployed in space and wouldn't be affected by a planetary impact. In a previous season ground-launched ISBM's were shown being launched from Earth - Earth could retaliate with strikes and deploy the navy to wipe out every single belter station and settlement in the system. Inaros seems like a smart guy, does the high possibility of massive lethal blowback not occur to him? Only possible out I see is if a revolutionary fascist movement on Mars still bitter at Earth somehow makes an alliance with the Belters and has the capability of mobilizing Mar's entire military as defense vs the Earth's military assets. The the new picture of the system would be Earth as a rubble pile and Mars and the Belt being the new potentially unified lead powers. But all through season 4 we're seeing Mars mothballing their fleet. And the show has established a strong animosity between Belter and Martian common people. Anyhow, great show, effin' love it.
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Dec 15, 2019 17:42
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tao of lmao posted:Drummers gonna be real sad and angry when she hears about ashford. My next season fantasy is an all-star killing team of Drummer, Amos, Bobbie, Fred, and Dawes hunting down Inaros in a wicked cool jury-rigged Belter gunship. So did I miss something, or is an open question whether or not Amos actually beat Murtry to death? Or just beat him within an inch of his life? It does seem a little out of character that Amos would actually *kill* Murtry in a provoked situation when he's a captive. Boris Galerkin posted:Episode 10 spoilers: That bothered me a little bit too, but I think you just have to consider that there are still budgetary restrictions. I'd assume Ashford would go in with at least a dozen or two dozen armed guys. As a nerd too, it made me consider the actual tactics of space boarding. I'd be willing to bet boarding teams would also employ some level of armor and ballistic shields (kinda like SWAT team shields), along with grenades, smoke, gas, flashbangs, and strobe/laser blinders. Probably taser type weapons too if they're trying to capture vs kill a target. They could have punched up that scene quite a bit, but as it is, they gave us a really cool gritty intense zero-G firefight that was moderately convincing and served the purpose of the plot. gfarrell80 fucked around with this message at 05:22 on Dec 17, 2019 |
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Dec 17, 2019 00:54
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Apparatchik Magnet posted:Maybe we need to see Gao’s actress fighting naked for a few minutes to be sure. Yes.
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Dec 17, 2019 04:35
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Toast Museum posted:Some do. As with the Martian marines, it's limited to elite units. Maybe none were available for the thing you're thinking of It was a semi-spur of the moment, rushed mission. Maybe that team of 12 was the closest group and not fully equipped.
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Dec 17, 2019 04:38
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Some of the Sheep posted:Don't be gross. They'd be proto-molecule clones or something. I'm sure we could write something in plausibly.
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Dec 17, 2019 04:47
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Baronjutter posted:Looking at all the secondary characters they're almost all not just Canadians but Toronto locals too. Dr. Okoye, Wei, Marco Inaros, and most all the random belters and security folks all were born or went to school in Toronto. Not casting the widest net on the casting there. No need to cast a wider net when you have local quality... I thought all the supporting actors did a great job. Kassad posted:I was actually wondering in what part of Canada they filmed the outdoors scenes on Ilus As a side note... all the outdoor visual effects were immaculately done. Very convincing. I assume there's quite a bit of overlay or background manipulation going on, it was quite convincing.
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Dec 18, 2019 02:05
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PowerBuilder3 posted:What happened to the green slugs? Maybe they were associated with the sea water, and could only survive for extended time in sea water. Perhaps after being delivered by the tsunami they were on borrowed time. At least that is the only logical explanation I can come up with.
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Dec 21, 2019 19:56
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GuardianOfAsgaard posted:Amos' contacts and schedule God, that is priceless. Thank you Expanse digital effects team. Nestharken posted:Re: Murtry--Kinda wish they didn't have him take a total Snidely Whiplash "I'm a bad guy" attitude in the second half of the season. The show has been good so far about making the motivations of the antagonists understandable if not sympathetic, but he just came off as unnecessarily cruel, even though *he was actually right about the landing sabotage and attempted murders*. I guess there's no shortage of people like that in real life, and it made the "thank you" scene really gratifying, so maybe it was worth it. Murtry being a bit of a dickhole was a little rough; they could have dialed him back slightly but it was good having him pretty ruthless; it made the Holden/Murtry final standoff pretty awesome and gave probably my favorite line from the season more weight: "I knew a guy who used historical genocide to justify his bullshit. My friend shot him in the face." And honestly Murtry was humanized and motivations made understandable probably about as much as Jules Pierre Mao, Errinwright, Dresden, Dr. Strickland, and Admiral Nguyen. Of those the least humanized/motivationally exposed was Dr. Strickland.
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Dec 23, 2019 05:25
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Tarquinn posted:The season was good, looked great, but still felt like a set-up season for the poo poo that is going down next. Except for them killing the only Belter I actually genuinely liked Are you saying you don't like Drummer or Fred, you insane person? Heck, I kinda like Dawes too.
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Dec 24, 2019 02:50
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Everyone posted:Clearly the Belters aren't natives - especially in terms of the show. The Belter squatters are pretty hard to classify... somewhere between indentured servants, illegal immigrant refugees, or fugitive slaves. But yeah, definitely not natives.
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Dec 24, 2019 05:20
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GABA ghoul posted:BSG also had a strong theme of imperialism and abuse perpetuating themselves. BSG? Strong theme of imperialism? Not so sure about that one.
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Dec 25, 2019 14:40
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GABA ghoul posted:The Colonials enslave Cylons and extract labor from them to enrich themselves. The liberated skinjob Cylons then enslave the old generation Cylons to extract labor from them. All of this has been going on for thousands of years in a perpetual cycle of overthrowing the oppressors and then becoming the new oppressors. The 1st Cylon war (the robo revolution) is background for the series, not really present. The reason why the cylons revolted in the 1st cylon war is of miniscule concern in the series, I am not sure it is really even covered. The statement "The Colonials enslave Cylons and extract labor from them to enrich themselves" is somewhat questionable. To enslave something it has to be sentient. I'm not sure the colonials in the 1st cylon war were knowingly enslaving sentient robots; my understanding was that it was kinda a skynet type moment causing the 1st cylon war. More the classic 'be wary of technology because it will kill you' myth (Daedalus/Icarus) than a warning against colonialism. Also the statement "liberated skinjob cylons then enslave the old generation Cylons to extract labor from them" is a little dubious. The exact relationship between the skin jobs and the other cylons is a little mysterious. To me it always seemed more symbiotic and cooperative rather than exploitative. There doesn't seem to be any kind of priority given to skin job projects at the expense of centurions and raiders. To me BSG was less about imperialism and more of a warning about how technology is as likely to be our killer as our savior. Also BSG had some of the typical petty tribalistic politics thrown in there. Was that thing about Caprica in the 'Caprica' show? I don't remember that in the mainline BSG story. It has been several years though.
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Dec 26, 2019 15:54
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Open Source Idiom posted:Firefly's a good, solid show. It's funny, and the characters are strong, vibrant figures with likeable personalities, set in a universe that was relatively unique at the time of airing. It's got one shade of confederate apology too much for my liking. Entertaining though. And Serenity was an enjoyable space adventure movie.
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Dec 27, 2019 03:28
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Johnny Truant posted:I thought the new husband sucked, and all of his poo poo was bad Yeah, the Avasaral/husband scenes were pretty bad. I did appreciate though how overall Avasarala's scenes do show her character changing, becoming more of a venal politician. Her motivations become more questionable; is she actually trying to promote peace and welfare or is she just clinging to power? So although not the best, the political scenes are some of the most directly relevant as a critique of our current political system and leadership. Which makes you look back to S1/S2/S3... was she ever really a good guy? She's gone from torturing to assassination strikes.
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Dec 29, 2019 17:20
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Cojawfee posted:I don't remember exactly how it ends, but I'm pretty sure it ends with the poor people realizing the value of knowing their place and not rocking the boat. Pretty much nailed it.
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Dec 29, 2019 22:04
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Captain Splendid posted:This game is going super cheap on Steam at the moment if you want yourself some realistic space combat I loved this game. Super fun.
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Dec 31, 2019 03:48
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Mu Zeta posted:I was looking for another emotional high like the Belters sacrificing themselves to save 50 in season 2 but nothing came close. And yeah I also found most of the Mars stuff boring. Still a good season of course, maybe more consistently good than season 1. This season we saw Amos with some actual vulnerability, which was awesome, it added quite a bit of depth to his character. He did have an awesome shootout at the season climax and I thought his best character line was "I'm pretty messed up cap." He went from a powerful avenger to a crippled faithful dog sorry he was a liability for the team. But he's still effin' awesome even when he's a bleeding out cripple.
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Jan 11, 2020 22:26
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Grand Fromage posted:I think it also hurts a bit that Shohreh Aghdashloo is really good and Nancy Gao's actress is not. Boobs though. booobs.
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Jan 15, 2020 03:33
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piL posted:I dont really know gfarrell80, but to give him the benefit of the doubt the implication he may be trying to ineloquently make here may be this: a young attractive person was casted as the sole other candidate for the most senior political position of a monolithic planetary government. A quick look at who stands in positions of in the real world UN and as heads of state of real world countries suggest a different demographic. Correct! If Avasarala's opponent was more of an Angela Merkel... eh, probably not going to happen on television but more realistic.
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Jan 16, 2020 04:36
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Jack2142 posted:Lily Gao is the Pete Buttgieg Stand-In someone who has been calculating a path to the presidency from as young as possible. To be fair, Lily Gao seems a lot more authentic than Buttgieg. She didn't work for The Expanse equivalent of McKinsey and do a stint in military intelligence as a puff puff resume builder. Campaign funding isn't mentioned, but it doesn't seem like she's a tool of the billionaire elite, she seems to have genuine motivation to help improve the opportunities of people on Basic.
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Jan 17, 2020 02:40
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Eiba posted:I don't know what part of her acting we're criticizing. We mostly saw her public persona which felt very much like a politician's public persona. It was perfectly convincing to me. Agreed. She was given the least opportunity for characterization, and relatively banal scripting. I wouldn't criticize her acting.
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Jan 17, 2020 03:55
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Sandwich Anarchist posted:The intro is also cursed. Does it come with your choice of toppings?
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Jan 17, 2020 04:04
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Krazyface posted:Miller is finally, 100% dead. He was only able to project himself into Holden's brain via that lump of protomolecule in the Roci's cargo hold. He's gone forever. Miller will always live on in our hearts. 
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Jan 25, 2020 16:51
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TraderStav posted:Legitimately asking, can’t we already replicate what plants need with artificial light? I’m immediately thinking of all the grow houses here in Detroit in basements, but then again pot doesn’t need nutritional value which is what you may get from photosynthesis? Agreed. I enjoyed the idea of the whole Ganymede setup with the mirrors, but agriculture would probably more likely be in underground tunnels with artificial light.
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Feb 1, 2020 23:14
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Baronjutter posted:Contrary to the extreme scarcity depicted in the Expanse, there's more than enough resources in the belt alone to sustainably keep trillions of people in luxury until the sun burns out. I imagine by the time there's any practical need to leave the solar system humans will be immortal or not even really human anymore. We'll never conquer the speed of light, but we can conquer our sense of time. What's a few hundred years journey for a being that lives for hundreds of thousands and can alter their perceptions of time? Capitalism, technology. Plus the inherently unstable nature of our habitat. Volcanoes, meteor impact, natural atmospheric changes, stellar evolution, ... pretty much everything out there wants to kill us. Setting up a self-sustaining industrial base in space I think is more difficult than sci-fi envisions.
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Feb 8, 2020 01:02
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T-man posted:I kinda hate every design ngl Pur'N'Clean T-shirt isn't bad. Subtle fan declaration.
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Feb 11, 2020 05:40
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StashAugustine posted:this was actually bugging me recently, why doesn't the spalling keep moving? also aren't they already under acceleration? If they were coasting when they got hit, the spall could possibly hang in the air momentarily, until they start thrusting again. They weren't always thrusting/manuvering during that scene. The spall pattern probably wouldn't actually look like that at all though. And there were some glaring cuts where you see the Roci manuvering, then see Amos just kind of floating on the interior (when he should have been moving relative to the walls around him). All in all though it is still pretty much the coolest space battle scene ever.
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Feb 11, 2020 05:53
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Frankenstyle posted:I thought the books were a waste of a great setting on a terribly told story, and I think the show fixes a lot of the books problems while still managing to not have a single character that isn't hate-worthy. What? If you hate Miller, Fred Johnson, Drummer, Alex, or Bobbie you have a pretty low hate trigger threshold. I'll add Dr. Okeye and Prax. Who could hate them??
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Feb 14, 2020 03:39
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Doctor Reynolds posted:I think Holden sucks and Miller sucked. I like everyone else. I get Holden sucking - he had a couple 'captain Ahab' type episodes where he had some pretty irrational behavior more for plot/tension purpose that feeling like actual character flow- But Miller? I'm genuinely curious how somebody could think Miller sucks. Is it a generational thing? Please explain if you could what you found about him to be sucky.
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Feb 14, 2020 23:30
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Nail Rat posted:A book quote out of context, spoiler free(because of the Ahab comment) The episode I was thinking of in particular was where Holden was yelling at Alex to take the Roci deeper into the wreckage of Ganymede station, trying to hunt down the protomolecule hybrid.
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Feb 15, 2020 00:51
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Anonymous Zebra posted:Yeah, I read the first book after Season 2 ended and was kind of surprised how different Miller was. In the show he is portrayed as being somewhat competent, and has a couple of other human beings he can talk to. In the books, though, goddamn is he pathetic. For those that haven't read them, Miller's chapters start out as kind of a stereotypical space detective noir story, lots of deep thoughts and brooding investigation mixed with fungal alcohol. But around the midpoint he is partnered up with another cop who is talking to him about a case that no one wanted to solve because they knew the suspect was too important to be implicated, so the cops just put their most pathetic wash-out detective on the case to look like they were trying to solve it without actually intending for it to be solved....And then Miller realizes that it's him and that no one really wants to find Julie and suddenly all the previous chapters where he is constantly downing glasses of alcohol and talking to his imaginary ex-wife suddenly have a completely different context. You realize that for the first half of the book he was actually doing jack-poo poo and the entire noir story line is the pathetic imagination of a severely alcoholic and incompetent cop. Also, the show removed the fact that he was literally suicidal after that point. He tries to get himself killed over and over while having alcohol-fueled fantasies of Julie Mao welcoming him into her embrace, and finally succeeds at the end of the book when he intentionally infects himself with the Protomolecule while talking to Proto-Julie. Alright, I'm going to assume anybody who hates Miller is also a book reader and some of this peripheral stuff is seeping over to TV Miller. That does sound pretty sketchy.
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Feb 15, 2020 13:00
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Phobophilia posted:Ashford successfully found Inaros, and instead of riddling his habitat with two tons of PDC fire and searching for his genetic signature from his remains, spent extra reaction mass to close in and board and get blindsided by some dumbshit kid with a pistol. I don't have a problem with Ashford boarding Inaro's ship. Seems like that is how Belters roll man, they like to get personal. Re-watching S1, I'm nit-picking for all the science and plot consistency stuff (I still love the show and always will, just nerding out). Another boarding action that bothered me was the boarding action of the Protogen stealth ship commandos boarding the Donnager. Why? Can anybody think of a decent reason what the mission was and what they were trying to do? Seems like the whole 'start a war' thing would have been accomplished simply with the destruction of the Donnager. Not sure what a boarding action would have done other than kick up the risk immensely and cause a lot of casualties among your employees. Not that Protogen cares about their employees, but they seem like they wouldn't knowingly go on suicide missions. They had to trick the belter thugs into the suicide mission of containing Eros; the other protogen guys were getting off the rock.
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Apr 12, 2020 00:46
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Crazycryodude posted:The real answer of course is the RPG party had to have a cool space firefight early in the story to keep it interesting. Ding ding ding
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Apr 12, 2020 01:21
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Phobophilia posted:This makes a heck of alot more sense. Agreed... still a little eggh, but okay maybe. That'll do for headcannon. The Anubis managed to hide themselves very neatly in an asteroid though - if they managed to do that, they probably had enough time to get out a tight beam distress call or location out to Protogen. Also not sure what would lead the stealth frigates attacking to Donnager to believe the Donny had specific intel about the Anubis. If you're Protogen and you wanted intel, more likely you would use internal flipped/mole intelligence sources within the MCRN rather than try to board a major capital flag ship.
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Apr 13, 2020 04:55
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Zazz Razzamatazz posted:If I recall correctly, that was Julie Mao who hid the ship there right? I'm pretty sure when she got out of her little storage cell the ship was abandoned and already hidden in the asteroid.
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Apr 13, 2020 05:06
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Some of the Sheep posted:Nope. In the episode Critical Mass we see a sequence of her piloting the Anubis into the asteroid and lashing it to the rock. Cool, thanks for the correction. Ugh though. That would be like a professional yacht racer getting on board a top-of-the-line modern destroyer and being able to pilot it. I love me Julie Mao and her character is very capable; but seems tricky. I remember when Holden Amos Naomi and Alex initially got on the Tachi, the Martian officer had to verbally transfer command over to them. Protogen apparently has a lower level of security protocols on their stealth ships!
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Apr 14, 2020 22:54
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Phobophilia posted:The plot hole status of "how was this dumbass rich kid able to park a stolen warship in the shadow of an asteroid" ranks well below "how the hell can you motivate a bunch of mercenaries to go into a shooting match against a modern military's first-rate battleship with the full knowledge that most of them are dying" and "what the hell makes you think it is a good idea to set off an apocalyptic solar-system wide war between two superpowers just so you can activate an uncontrolled alien matter reprogrammer inside a trillion dollar colony" Troof. But I still think Julie, who definitely flies just small racer type skiffs, is not equipped to fly a warship. It would be like a Ultralight pilot jumping in the cockpit of a 747 or an F35. Even if there are no security measures, stuff's got to be a little different. gfarrell80 fucked around with this message at 04:40 on Apr 15, 2020 |
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Apr 15, 2020 04:36
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uber_stoat posted:turns out Ceres may not need that water after all. Seems like every rocky dwarf body is theorized to have a sub-surface ocean these days. Ganymede too, along with Europa and Enceladus, maybe Triton and Callisto, heck, Pluto too might have a liquid water layer. Maaaybe, but I'll believe it when we actually get there with a drill rig. Ugh, clock is ticking for season 5! oh yeah baby.
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Aug 23, 2020 16:15
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Ooooh yeah that season 5 trailer looks pretty sweet. Man, I was worried after the awesomeness of season 3 that season 4 would suck, but it didn't. Looks like season 5 should rock some serious balls!
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Oct 10, 2020 01:37
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