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Chalks
Sep 30, 2009

OldMold posted:

I was more skeptical of the application than the strength of the barrier. Like, they just sort of leaned it against the hole. A hole that they exploded with jagged edges sticking out. They didn't really seal it or have a gasket or anything. It looked in the outside shot like the hole itself was underwater, so wouldn't water just get around the metal panel between the wall of the spire and the panel itself, and just flood their hiding spot like a toilet tank?

The structure they were hiding in was vast and the surfaces looked like they could allow the water to drain away. I figure as long as it didn't let water in faster than it drained it wouldn't be a problem for a very long time.

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Chalks
Sep 30, 2009

PriorMarcus posted:

It's worth pointing out that at the same time as this message they also posted a retweet saying they stand in solidarity with all victims of sexual harassment.

Also, let's be honest, for as good as Cas was in the role Alex is easily the most expendable and replaceable member of the crew.

Yeah, although I'm a big fan of him I'd be a lot more upset to lose one of the other main characters.

Get loving Miller to fly the ship.

Chalks
Sep 30, 2009

Nail Rat posted:

I really loved Babylon's Ashes but it's incredibly divisive. Either you think it's one of the best or you think it's one of the worst. Nobody thinks it's middle of the pack.

edit: didn't see it mentioned so they announced today that on December 16th they will release the first 3 episodes, and then it's weekly after that for the rest of them. I think this is new news but I could be wrong. I kind of like going back to a weekly release (with a little mini binge to start).

Yeah, I agree. Although part of me will be desperate to watch the next episode immediately, I also miss discussing the episodes with people as they air and speculating about what's going to happen and you really miss out on that when they dump a whole series at once.

I like that they're experimenting with different release schedules trying to find out what people prefer.

Chalks
Sep 30, 2009

Mu Zeta posted:

I didn't like the season with bezos bucks but I'm hopeful for season 5

I felt the same but it was more about the setting than anything else for me, and the new season seems like it'll be much more interesting.

Chalks
Sep 30, 2009

BrotherJayne posted:

Why, is there a shortage of humans?

They're the weakest part of a ship, limiting its acceleration and manoeuvring as well as requiring a bunch of additional systems and resources. It's a plot device to have humans in all the ships, but in reality removing them would be a pretty high priority.

Chalks
Sep 30, 2009

Loved Bobbies little smirk when Alex got slammed to the floor on the Razorback.

Also wanted to say that Avasarala's acting at the start of the show was extremely good. A really believable portrayal of someone like her trying to cope with an incredibly distressing situation.

Chalks
Sep 30, 2009

uXs posted:

How does Alex and Bobby's ship still have an engine? Didn't they eject the core or whatever to escape that torpedo a few episodes ago?

I think they essentially dumped all the currently combusting fuel from the reactor

Chalks
Sep 30, 2009

Azhais posted:

Why are we still pretending that Alex does anything but sit in the car with the ac on and his favorite music playing?

They didn't need to cut anything for Alex now or in the future. Find someone new to cook and he's fully replaced.

Yeah, we're lucky that Alex is the one character that they could recast or drop without much of a problem, he really doesn't have anything interesting going on besides a wife that hates him for some barely explained reasons.

Pretty surprised seeing people dislike this season compared to adventures in slug land last season. The latest episode was a bit slow maybe but there's way more going on this season and I'm finding it far more interesting.

Chalks fucked around with this message at 19:34 on Jan 26, 2021

Chalks
Sep 30, 2009

It was nice to see that Naomi's confusing message manipulation thing just made everyone confused rather than anyone suddenly realising what it meant. I dunno if there's going to be any payoff for that specifically but I thought it was a good illustration of how she's trying everything she can think of but there's no easy solution.

Enjoyed the episode but I kinda agree that the focus of the series during the last few episodes has seemed a bit confused. Lots of time spent on some things but not on others without much relation to the relative weight of those events.

Rather worried the final episode will be a bit unsatisfying given now underdeveloped the various plot threads are. Will it be one cliff hanger and everything else just kinda left hanging until next season, or will we get a whole bunch of cliffhangers? Either way, I have mixed feelings.

Chalks
Sep 30, 2009

I thought he was pretty good

Chalks
Sep 30, 2009

The character struck me as someone who has had to be ruthless in order to become powerful, but it's all an act and he probably has trouble being ruthless with people he cares about.

Because of that perspective on the character, although at times he seems unconvincing, for me that's actually part of the character.

I wonder if that's what people are picking up on. This way of viewing the character isn't explicitly stated so someone else could easily see him as someone who's meant to be a threatening mob boss and consider it poor acting that he's often unconvincing.

For me though, it works really well.

Chalks
Sep 30, 2009

Yeah, I feel like the stuff with Naomi has been nice but could have been shorter, especially considering that several other significant events are either shown very briefly or skipped entirely.

Spending a bit of time seeing what happened between talking to Erich on the rooftop and them suddenly landing in a helicopter at a deserted rich person's house would have been nice, and the retaliatory attack on a belter station isn't shown at all but it feels like there could have been an illustration of the effect it had on more moderate belters.

Chalks
Sep 30, 2009

I'm kinda amazed they did something that clunky with Alex, it feels like they could have done more subtle things - like just have him not be in next season and have the characters talk about how he decided he really needed to spend time with his family at last.

So about the protomolecule tech at the end - is it a ship? A shipyard? A station? Nobody knows but it looks cool so they want it?

Chalks
Sep 30, 2009

Grand Fromage posted:

I am going to tell you that you will get answers to this in time and ask my fellow book reading degenerates to not post details please.

Yeah, sorry, to be clear I wasn't asking for book spoilers but rather whether it was obvious in a way that I'd missed that the martians know what it is based on what they'd said or previous things we'd seen.

Chalks fucked around with this message at 20:46 on Feb 3, 2021

Chalks
Sep 30, 2009

BrotherJayne posted:

Wait, who here has a season ranked under 5?

I really wasn't a fan of adventures in slug land. Miller really saved that season, but I'd still rank it below 5

Chalks
Sep 30, 2009

Zzulu posted:

There was nothing particularly good about it. I liked the last episode when things actually happened

The stuff on earth with Asmos was great. The stuff on Tycho was good. The Lunar politics was short enough to be interesting without being boring. Drummer stuff was fine and didn't outstay its welcome and had a good payoff. The Naomi stuff was fine but too long and the main low point for me.

Plenty of space battles and exciting moments, a lot of variety of perspectives. I enjoyed it overall. If they took out half of the "Naomi is angry on free navy ship then has a really lovely time on a floating bomb" stuff, using the time to flesh out the other events a bit more, I would have even called it great.

Chalks
Sep 30, 2009

The more I think about the Poochieing of Alex the more frustrated I get. It seems like it was handled in such a needlessly clumsy way.

How I would have preferred it done:

Don't show the stupid dead Alex still floating blood scene. When Holden is chatting with Naomi back on the Rosi they talk about where they're going next, Holden mentions that before going to Luna they're going to drop Alex off at Mars. He wants to spend some time with his family. After what happened with all the people being killed on Mars his ex has reached out to him and wants to give him another chance to be part of his son's life. "Big tragedies like this tend to alter people's perspective about what's really important". Something like that.

Then cut to Luna, have everything as it was but without the hamfisted "oh yeah sucks that he randomly died" conversations. Next season someone mentions that Alex is still on Mars, we never see him again.


I feel like that would have been way less jarring and easier to edit in, plus it fits his pre-existing back story. Just better.

Chalks
Sep 30, 2009

notaspy posted:

I am still at an utter loss as to what Marcos plan is.

Is it:

Take over ring space
Stop anyone from leaving Sol
Build up the belt
Telling the inners to gently caress off

Or

The above but only belters are allowed to go to new systems

Seems like he found some planets beyond the ring that are hospitable to belters and wanted to colonise them to start a new belter civilization. Made a deal with rebel martians to steal the protomolecule in exchange for their ships and assistance. Marcos gets a fresh start free from the inners, the rebel martians get a smoke screen for long enough to get control of the ring network plus the protomolecule. Presumably they plan on activating some super strong protomolecule tech and using it to conquer Sol for the pure martian race at some point later.

Now it's all played out, Marcos had a pretty brilliant plan.

Chalks
Sep 30, 2009

Nail Rat posted:

Marco set up the Chet, which Naomi had bought Filip, as a bomb broadcasting a deepfake distress call from Naomi, hoping the Rocinante would come and dock with it, killing Holden and destroying a symbol of cooperation between the inners and the Belt. Naomi jumped over to it to try to stop it, but comms were down. She tried making a makeshift radio using a helmet, but it didn't work and Alex radioed that he was coming to help. So she started going into the unpressurized space between the hulls, pulling on wires until she found the one that was broadcasting the signal - she changed the signal as an attempt at a message and then cut it off.

Alex was still coming to get her, so she went and started hammering on valves until she found one that turned on a thruster that put it into a spin so they *couldn't* dock. But Alex still said he was gonna figure out a way, so she jumped out.

I really liked that Marco was pissed that his trap failed but the conclusion was "gently caress this it was a pointless distraction anyway, onwards with the plan" rather than obsessing over his petty revenge.

Chalks
Sep 30, 2009

Anita Dickinme posted:

They’ll definitely have Bobbie sticking around as they’ll need a Martian on the Roci for the crew of Martians, Earthers and Belters well-rounded thing they have. At least I’m hoping cus Bobbie is one of the best parts of the show.

Any bets on who on the Roci crew will die next season? As long as it’s not Amos I’m good.

If it's someone from that list, I'd prefer it to be Bull. So far he's not done much to seem like a very interesting character, he's just a bit of a surly rear end in a top hat. Peaches can handle the piloting it seems so he seems a little superfluous too.

I don't really think they need to kill anyone off though, it's not really that sort of show. It's nice watching something with a bit of plot armour rather than constantly having to speculate on the next time they'll ~~subvert expectations~~

Chalks
Sep 30, 2009

It seems like they want to kill humans so.... I guess that makes them the good guys?

Chalks
Sep 30, 2009

Elias_Maluco posted:

Alex was written out because of that whole mess the actor got involved into right? His death come out of nowhere, it was very weirtd

Yeah, it was clunky as hell but at least it's done with

Chalks
Sep 30, 2009

Chef Boyardeez Nuts posted:

"Why did they kill the Donnager?" is easy. They wanted to muddy the waters between Earth and Mars. The Skorpuli was probably a trap for the Donnager that the Canterbury stumbled into.

"Why board the Donnager?" is a harder question as they didn't particularly need anything on board so long as it died. The best way I can make it work in my head is that killing the pride of the Martian Navy is hard, even with cutting edge stealth ships. Perhaps they managed to disable the ship but lacked the torpedos or functional railguns to finish the job kinetically, necessitating the assault.

Yeah, I always thought it was to force them to destroy it themselves. It can't be easy to destroy a ship of that size by poking holes in it with a bunch of small ships.

Chalks
Sep 30, 2009

twistedmentat posted:

It has that thing I hate about some sci fi when everything has to be a giant convoluted and silly mystery.

Making sense is overrated

Chalks
Sep 30, 2009

I'm enjoying the season but knowing there are only 2 episodes left I feel like it's going to be super unsatisfying.

Assuming they don't leave things on a cliff hanger, presumably the alien dog thing will revive the child and that will be it. The weird ships and ring transits will both need to be revealed and resolved in just two episodes.

It certainly doesn't feel like it's rushing things, but given the short season.. maybe it should?

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Chalks
Sep 30, 2009

CPColin posted:

That latest episode had a lot of good character moments that would have fit in great during a season that had some loving room for such things.

The whole seasons been like this. It's not that it's bad, it just feels like nobody told them it's a short season so big stuff needs to happen a lot sooner.

It's also kinda weird how the only threat has seemed totally under control for a few episodes now. The asteroid threat was neutralized faster than expected and the raid on their secret supplies has been on the cards for a while now. It's fun to watch it play out but it feels like we're just watching the free navy's plans slowly fall apart.

Holden's disabling of the torpedo would have seemed a bigger deal if it didn't seem like such a foregone conclusion already.

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