– – – FOLLOWUP – – –
I listened to season three and gave it an enthusiastic B+.
My in my headphones posts are usually short – I post opinions, not reviews – but this will be shorter than it probably deserves as the app I always use to take notes for stuff I listen to lost a couple days worth of notes.
I listened to this a couple times, paired with various activities and attention levels. I wanted to be sure – I heard potential but, the first time through, I didn’t hear the potential fully realized. And I’d listened to some of season one several months ago. When I saw season two was complete, I started over from the beginning.
I’ve watched countless hours of NASA missions and they succeed in making this production realistic. The procedures, details, even all the acronyms caught my attention and really started sucking me in. But, the effect didn’t last.
For me, it just didn’t work overall. I was lost with all the characters so I didn’t care about them and the story never really grabbed me. I should have loved this – it’s solid sci-fi. The setting, concept, plot, presentation, science, speculative science, crew-centered, alien world, etc. – it sounds like I’m describing one of my favorite sci-fi shows/movies/novels but it didn’t work for me overall. But all the ingredients are there so, if you’re reading this, I say give it a try, you may love it.
The last two episodes of the second season were gripping and well written.
That husband and wife scene in 210 was very moving for me. And the dialogue a bit later – “I don’t know what I was thinking. That wasn’t me.” with the reply “It is now.” That’s great writing.
Anyway, I give it a solid C. It does most everything right that it set out to do but I just didn’t care for it. When season three is complete, I’m positive I’ll listen to it and maybe even start from season one again but I’m not keeping an archived copy – a podcatcher subscription is good enough for this one.
Transmissions From Colony One is a radio drama set in the near-future of 2057. Twenty years prior, United States President Richard Thorpe (R-CO) announced the start of a “New Dawn,” a global attitude shift toward widespread space exploration. Technological advents such as fusion energy, worldwide high-speed railway systems, and internet speeds faster than ever envisioned laid the groundwork for an economic explosion, but it lacked a platform on which to occur. Thorpe gave the world an outlet for its immense wealth, asking people across the world to simply look up for humanity’s future.
In the twenty years since, the world has changed drastically. MECTI (Mars Exploration, Colonization and Terraformation Initiative) was established with the goal of starting a permanent human presence on Mars. This meant using fusion-propelled rocketry, the construction of a massive space elevator to make transportation from the surface of Earth to low orbit more cost and energy-efficient, and the creation of a mammoth space station that would dwarf today’s International Space Station. All of these things needed to be done in order for MECTI to work. Now, twenty years after the birth of MECTI, the first crew, MECTI-1, is about to land on the surface of Mars, in the flat expansive region of Amazonis Planitia. This will be the first manned mission to the surface of Mars, and the first of thousands of MECTI manned missions to the Red Planet.
Transmissions From Colony One chronicles the on-board recordings of MECTI-1 as the international crew of sixteen (eight men, eight women) conduct their mission…
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