Exactly! This season felt like they couldn’t generate tension in a meaningful way. Like the rebellion could have had more drama, the girl whose dad was crazy could have more going on, and the geopolitical conflict on earth could have been studied more.
On the whole it feels rushed. Like they had a six season run and were told they were getting five. Tops.
which a lot of people think will end with the first interstellar ship, or even first contact. It did feel like they wanted to cram in more than their episode allotment would allow this season, and a lot seemed undercooked. Like, they barely touched on Dev’s role in the automation plans, just assuming we’d infer that the crazy Mars-first guy who’s basically embezzling from his publicly traded company to build more infrastrucure for colonization actually needed to learn that “the right people were already on Mars.” In retrospect, I do kind of appreciate that the farm dome attack was a disaster because he couldn’t imagine life happening in Happy Valley. Not a bad idea, just didn’t have the breathing space it needed to land.
Then, as you say, Jarrett/Stevens was assumed to be interesting because of her family, not because she had anything really compelling to learn or do, and her arc with learning to hate Marsies and then overcoming it was almost laughably compressed. I did think the Baldwin family’s stuff was okay, and I like Alex more than most people do. Also, thank God they didn’t drag Ed and his age makeup through the entire season.
So, I generally agree with you. They’re sprinting through their plot outline to get to their end-game, and the “one season per decade” framing device is creaking under the weight of what they want to do.
Exactly! This season felt like they couldn’t generate tension in a meaningful way. Like the rebellion could have had more drama, the girl whose dad was crazy could have more going on, and the geopolitical conflict on earth could have been studied more.
On the whole it feels rushed. Like they had a six season run and were told they were getting five. Tops.
As I understand it, they do have one more season…
spoiler
which a lot of people think will end with the first interstellar ship, or even first contact. It did feel like they wanted to cram in more than their episode allotment would allow this season, and a lot seemed undercooked. Like, they barely touched on Dev’s role in the automation plans, just assuming we’d infer that the crazy Mars-first guy who’s basically embezzling from his publicly traded company to build more infrastrucure for colonization actually needed to learn that “the right people were already on Mars.” In retrospect, I do kind of appreciate that the farm dome attack was a disaster because he couldn’t imagine life happening in Happy Valley. Not a bad idea, just didn’t have the breathing space it needed to land.
Then, as you say, Jarrett/Stevens was assumed to be interesting because of her family, not because she had anything really compelling to learn or do, and her arc with learning to hate Marsies and then overcoming it was almost laughably compressed. I did think the Baldwin family’s stuff was okay, and I like Alex more than most people do. Also, thank God they didn’t drag Ed and his age makeup through the entire season.
So, I generally agree with you. They’re sprinting through their plot outline to get to their end-game, and the “one season per decade” framing device is creaking under the weight of what they want to do.