On Thu, 9 Feb 2023 04:18:23 -0700, anim8rfsk <anim8rfsk@cox.net>
wrote:

>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.
>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! A similar hunk of
>debris has speared Scholnick like a narwhale!
>
>In the sick bay, where it is inexplicably hot, the equally inexplicably,
>hot soul surviving doctor does what she can. Inexplicably cute girl 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.
>
>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.
>
>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.
>
>Hot blonde is apparently a blogger and was put a board the ship to be the
>social media face of the program…
>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?

And even if she is blogging at the new planet isn't everything she
sends back going to take five years to get back to Earth? After all no
one has mentioned any sort of FTL communication so they can't contact
Earth and her blogs along with every other communication is going to
take five years to get there and any response will take five years to
get to them. Though they do bring up later on that she had some friend
that was high up in the command structure that got her on board. I
suppose that sort of thing would happen when they had hundreds of
people assigned to the ship even though they lost most of them in the
'accident'.

>Serbian robot security goon has picked up a hot assistant, whose apparent
>only function is to stand behind him, silently, striking hot assistant,
>security, goon poses.
And provide cozy sleeping buddy later on.

>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?

Well, without a reclamation system that works it's going to be lost
into the air. So it isn't truly gone but it also isn't useful for
keeping the people alive.

>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.
>
>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.

I liked how she refused to move when Lane was leaving as though she
was truly the tough one that was going to intimidate Lane into
answering their questions. (Must be saving money by not giving her any
lines.)

>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.)

As much as most of the engineering instructions on Star Trek.

>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.
>
>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?

Because then they might trace it back to the owner with future tech
forensics (though not having a forensic lab that is apparently out of
the question.)

>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! Luckily, the scrawny gingeresque captain 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.

I could see the one guy getting into a fight over something that
stupid, but there was no reason for all of the others to join in to a
free for all.

>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 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.

Hey, maybe the radiation they are being exposed to might have given
them super strength. Only way to know is to test it out by compressing
this unknown substance with his hand.

>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!)

He did move amazingly fast to get back in despite the pain he had to
be in.

>In the sick bay the sole surviving doctor tells Brice that although he’s
>got a Dr. Phibes hand, 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?

Future humans are much tougher than puny modern day humans. I think
the point was all the damage to his hand wasn't caused by the Stuff.
Instead it was all caused by the cold and vacuum of space.

>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.

Yeah, like they are going to be doing good work after days without
sleep or 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.
>
>One of them double bunks with the hot assistant security goon (I think),
>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?

I think the point was that at 62% utilization it could provide them
extra water but not enough to keep up with their burn rate. Though
that raises the question of how even getting the utilization up to
100% would be much better. Sure it would give them maybe a week or
more time but they still seemed doomed to using more water than they
can produce. Unless there are more of the reclamation units in
storage?

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

Yep, momentum isn't a thing in their universe. At least not for ships
out in space, but it does exist for people, even when doing an EVA,
and for broken parts of the space ship.

>Ian, several scenes from the previews, weren’t actually in this weeks
>episode, including any mention of FTL drives. There is a scene they keep
>showing, though where in that cryo- pod chamber, the pods themselves are
>falling up…