On 2023-02-09 11:18:23 +0000, anim8rfsk said:

> S01E02 “ like It Touched the Sun“.
>
> previously on.
> I saw three more examples of them getting the gravity wrong.
>
> Somewhere between here and alpha Centauri, racing along at either less than
> the speed of light, or more than the speed of light, for some reason, it’s
> very hot. Also, if you turn off the engines, the ship stops dead in space.

Yes, I hate this - this is a common trope among sci-fi shows written by
people who don't know science... That's how it works on Earth, in the
air or in the sea, but not in space!!

> Let the headshaking begin.
>
> A space walk to see what’s hit them! A wheel section that spins for no
> apparent reason has stress fractures on the starboard arm supports (I’m not
> really sure how they’re defining starboard here) and pieces suddenly
> abruptly, and without warning, snap off and fly at right angles to any
> possible direction they should go!
>
> Lane, probably the top character I’m rooting for to die, takes an impact
> from a hunk of debris bigger than him to the helmet!

Yeah, not sure what Lane's deal is (he makes you miss Zed from "The
Outpost!") - the "Coming up!..." scenes at the end of the pilot include
one with Ingram warning about Lane, so maybe there's more to this...

> A similar hunk of
> debris has speared Scholnick like a narwhale!

You knew that guy was a "redshirt" from the very opening shot!!

> In the sick bay, where it is inexplicably hot, the equally inexplicably,
> hot soul

"sole"!! :p

> surviving doctor does what she can. Inexplicably cute girl

NOT!!

> with
> glasses enters and keeps talking and talking and talking and talking and
> talking and talking and talking until they tell her to shut the hell up and
> she leaves. Somewhere Ian is cheering.

When does she get speared with debris?!?!!

> Multiple sequences of people running into each other in the endless
> hallways and telling each other stuff. The other one either knows or should
> know.
>
> Funeral ceremony with obligatory flashbacks. The only girl who can fix the
> water reclamation system spits on the lifeless body of Dr. Smith. Gardner
> guy stops them from throwing the bodies out the airlock because how could
> anybody trained for a multi year space mission be so stupid that that’s
> what they were going to do? After a lot of speechifying, they take a vote
> because that’s how command decisions are made in emergency survival
> situations and decide to toss the bodies in the composter.
> Only the Serbian android security goon votes against that plan.

Lane was also against it - his "vote" was perfunctory so he didn't
bother to raise his hands.

> Weird flashback to three days before the launch where Ark One is inside the
> construction space station from Star Trek the motion picture and the crew
> is inside the rec room from Star Trek the motion picture and they keep
> saying how this is aboard Ark one but somehow this room didn’t make it to
> the series. A giant hologram of the guy in charge wishes them well. He
> looks like Robert Picardo. Now that would’ve been inspired piece of
> casting.

They can't afford Picardo!!

> Hot blonde is apparently a blogger and was put a board the ship to be the
> social media face of the program…

Yep - which further confirms my contention that she should have just
been left out of the pilot entirely, and her "story" saved for this
episode #2...

> But five days out they’re all going into cryo- sleep for the for five years
> of the mission, so what the hell is she going to do?

Explained later - she was there to "report on" the mission back to
Earth. (The fact that the transmissions would take 4+ years to get back
to Earth was apparently not considered!!)

> Serbian robot security goon has picked up a hot assistant,

From "The Outpost"!! She was actually in the pilot too - I just didn't
notice that she was his secturity "second" until this episode.

> whose apparent
> only function is to stand behind him, silently, striking hot assistant,
> security, goon poses.
>
> In the dome that has no reason to exist, gigantic pipes under high-pressure
> burst, shooting the 100 gallons of water into the air, where it lands upon
> the fledgling plants that are at all times kept brilliantly lit. All of
> this water is lost forever. I have no idea how or why. Where is it going?
>
> The only woman who can fix the water reclamation system is missing! They
> find her crying in her bunk. The scrawny ginger Captain can’t get a rise
> out of her. Luckily, the hot blonde is sleeping right next door and
> together they manage to convince her to get up before they all die.
>
> They talk about how they used to feed the birds together before there
> weren’t any birds anymore. Whatever is causing earth that is to become
> earth that was must’ve happened fairly abruptly I would think.

So, both the show's new opening, and the scene from "3 days before
launch", show the Earth in the same state it was at the end of season
#5 of "The 'Hundred[sic]"! ("Primefaya"!!!) They never explain why.

> Lane, who should die, refuses to provide an alibi for the time of the
> murder of Dr. Smith, to the android, Serbian security goon, or his hot
> assistant, who is just posing wildly behind him.

It should be noted, Garnet doesn't have an alibi either, and actually
has the strongest motive to "ice" the stowaway, because he apparently
knew her "deepest, darkest secret".

Of course, this episode reveals that Garnet's almost certainly the
(secret) daughter of the industrialist ark-building dude that you
wanted played by Robert Picardo - if so, it explains why she was added
to the crew at the last second, and why she "knows the most about the
ship", as she probably helped daddy design/build the ship or
something...

> Back in the dome of lost forever water they find a batarang in the mud. It
> must be the murder weapon! Dumped in a tank where it made it through the
> giant high-pressure lines to the tiny garden, causing them to burst! Since
> this can’t be traced to anyone, why did they bother? If this can be traced
> to someone isn’t the fact that it’s missing just as big a problem?
>
> The only woman who can fix the water reclamation unit returns to where they
> keep the water reclamation unit and without checking to see what progress
> has been made, or the status of anything proclaims to the people striving
> to get the water reclamation unit working:
>
> We have to get this water reclamation unit working!
>
> (No shit, Sherlock.)
>
> Stark, check the pressure on valve 42J!
> Novak, report on her intake two and four!
>
> (Because those out of nowhere instructions make perfect sense.)
>
> She proclaims only she can be in charge because she’s the most up-to-date
> on the ships engineering! Too bad this isn’t a ship component it’s just
> something they had in storage for planetary use that they dragged out.
>
> On the bridge a completely idiotic argument ensues over who should do
> another EVA.

Actually, Garnet was completely right here - they should have sent
another red shirt to do the EVA. The fact that Brice and Lane
completely rejected this idea shows that they are even dumber than
Garnet!!

> The batarang isn’t on the ships manifest. It can only mean that this is the
> murder weapon! So why not just leave it with the body?
>
> In the cafeteria, the ship’s thugs attack the only one who can grow them
> food because, well, they are the ship’s thugs. The security goon starts to
> pummel them, but he’s out numbered! His cute posing sidekick is nowhere to
> be found!

I found that incredibly annoying - that she was conveniently absent
from this scene, meaning Garnet got to throw some fists... :|

> Luckily, the scrawny gingeresque captain

"captain" - in "quotes"!!

> happens to be walking
> by, and effortlessly clobbers half a dozen guys twice her mass, mostly by
> hitting them over the head with food trays that must be made out of solid
> neutronium. Somewhere, BTR1701 quits watching in disgust.
>
> Hot assistant security gooness arrives in time to twist tie the bad guys
> wrists. The erstwhile ginger captain assigns the hot blonde celebrity face
> of the mission to talk to everybody and make them all happy. She’s the one
> to do it!

Another annoying bit - Garnet keeps calling her "Dr", but they never
say what kind of "doctor" she is! If she's an MD, she should be helping
out Kabir in sickbay!! I'm guessing she's some kind of Ph.D., but they
never say!! If her Ph.D. is in Psych (psych!!) or something, then her
new job actually makes sense.

This would only have take one line of diagolue to explain!!

> Another EVA! This time they stop the wheel section from spinning. (why the
> hell is it spinning anyway, since everybody that was on that section is
> dead, and it’s uninhabitable?) Inside a hole in the fuselage, the space
> walker finds a whole bunch of hunks of quartz that look like diamonds! He
> decides to test their compressive strength to see if they really are
> diamonds by… squeezing one with his gloved hand.
>
> Yuh know guys just because you saw Clark Kent do this in a SUPERMAN comic
> book doesn’t mean it’s a good idea.
>
> The crushed diamond instantly disintegrates, and burns off spaceman Brice’s
> glove and fingers! He hurls himself at incredible speed towards the airlock
> door in another section (you can only re-pressurize the airlock from within
> the ship!)
>
> In the sick bay the sole surviving doctor tells Brice that although he’s
> got a Dr. Phibes hand,

Ha!!

> it will heal up just fine apparently all by itself.
> She says it’s a good thing the stuff that reacted with his hand and ate all
> the skin off his fingers doesn’t react with human skin or he wouldn’t have
> any skin left. Say what now?

Yeah, I kind of caught that - it was just dumb...

> The quasi- ginger captain gives a bunch of people five hours sleep. The
> only woman who can fix the water reclamation device, and who clearly
> doesn’t know English as a first language, refuses to let her crew rest.
>
> 2/3 of the acting Captains go to their cabin to get their five hours sleep
> but find the blonde has taken it over for her therapy sessions which
> include fabulous robes.

Who wants some "therapy"?!! ;)

Don't forget, she also pretty explicitly offered them a threesome!! To
which Lane and Brice were disgusted by!!

> One of them double bunks with the hot assistant security goon (I think),

Yes - from "The Outpost"!!

> and hydroponics boy gives his bunk to the other one saying he can just go
> sleep in the mud in the dome there’s no reason for.
>
> They get the water reclamation unit running! But it only provides them
> enough water for two days. So in four days they’ll all be dead. Why? Is it
> going to fail?

Yeah, I don't see how at 67% efficiency (or whatever), it's going to
give them water for 4 days, instead of, say, 2 of the originally
proposed 4 weeks!?!

> Because she drained the cooling system the engines shut down and the ship
> comes to a complete stop. Because that’s how it works.

And she would be dumb to do that!

> Ian, several scenes from the previews, weren’t actually in this weeks
> episode, including any mention of FTL drives.

Yes - the "Coming Up!" scenes at the end of the pilot were for the
whole season, not just ep. #2.

That said, I noticed that a lot of those scenes did end up coming from
ep #2. So there's only a small scattering of scenes from later episodes
in that "Coming up!" teaser.

I hate it when Siffy doesn't offer scenes for "the next episode" at the
end - they wouldn't do that with "The Outpost" either, and I always
hated that. It means the network doesn't care enough about the show to
bother the promos department to do "teaser" scenes for the next
episode... :/

> There is a scene they keep
> showing, though where in that cryo- pod chamber, the pods themselves are
> falling up…

--
"Who would ever do this to him!?" - HottCiara on DOOL (04-27-2020), asking
who would stab Victor Kirakis... How about ANYONE WHO'S EVER MET HIM??!!