Morgan and Dan revisit menstruation and urination in space before they discuss episodes 3 (Remember the Cant) & 4 (CQB) of the first season of The Expanse.
Listen to “Ep. 5: Season 1, Episodes 3 & 4” wherever you get podcasts.
Recommended Reading
Hammer of God by Arthur C. Clarke
Footnotes:
Transcript
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[Music fades out while voices fade in]
Dan: The question we did calling the listeners things.
Morgan: OK.
D: Like, hey, ‘Loonies’ like or we wanted to chant like pick one or if you want to change it every time. You started out there, Dusters.
M: Like—
D: Just use a pejorative term in the book that they’re referred to as.
M: Yeah. Like, instead of ladies and gentlemen, it’s you Dusters and Belters.
D: Right.
M: I don’t know. We need a name for our clique. How about ‘The Expansive Ones?’ [laughs]
D: That’s a bit much.
M: ’The Expanded.’
D: Or that could be like our call phrase, like ‘Have you been expanded?’
M: Yes, but what do you mean specifically? [both laugh]
D: What’s up, Loonies. [Morgan giggles] If you haven’t read that book or listen to previous episodes, you don’t know what I’m talking about, so, but I’m not going to tell you you’re going to have to go back and do some research and figure it out.
M: Yeah, it’s a very derogatory. So go go back and listen.
D: Yeah. We’re just going to call any listeners pejorative terms from various sci-fi universes. We’re just going to insult you constantly, [Morgan laughs] but we can’t, you, We’re not going to get in trouble because none of it’s real. None of it means anything. So we can’t do anything about it.
M: Yeah, it’s loaded with sexual innuendo. [Dan laughs] It’s my favorite thing about hard sci-fi is although hardcore graphic sex. [laughs]
D: They, they like to slip it in at weird moments sometimes. And and also so many of the authors are men and that—
M: Yeah.
D: —that’s quite the enjoyable trope now that everybody’s calling out on the internets of—
M: Yeah, right.
D: —men writing women just just so, so badly and so weirdly sexually and just in the and, and it’s it goes right over your head. I think as a male, as a as a kid and then looking back at some things now it’s just, Oh my god, you weirdos. Have you ever met a woman? Like. [Morgan laughs] This is a cool story and all, but jeez dude.
M: They write science fiction, Dan.
D: Uh yeah yeah yeah. [Morgan laughs]
M: Yeah. Reese Witherspoon gave this amazing speech about wanting to be more behind the camera in Hollywood and saying how every, every time she got a script, you know, there would be a scene where a woman would turn to a man and say, ‘Well, what do we do now?!’ And it’s like, ‘Look for it.’ She said, ‘Look for it and you’ll you’ll see it,’ and it happens in The Expanse. You know that happens. Bobbie Draper turns to Alex and goes, ‘Well, what do we do now?’ [laughs] Thanks, guys.
D: Yeah.
M: But I mean, that’s what made Star Wars, the first the original three Star Wars movies, which I didn’t see until I was in my thirties. So I think that kind of—
D: No!
M: Oh yeah—
D: Oh Wow.
M: I think that changes the way that—
D: Did I know that?
M: I don’t know. I, you know, I don’t all the classic stuff like I, I missed completely. So I finally watch Star Wars and I found out that George Lucas’s wife, was his writing partner and he was writing those movies,—
D: Yeah, yeah. [laughs]
M: —which is why the way people connected with them emotionally and they have great character development and like personal character growth. And—
D: Yeah, with her involved.
M: Yeah, when he wrote the prequels, he wrote them by himself. And that’s why they’re so dry and boring.
D: They’re just dog shit.
M: Just senate meetings. [laughs]
D: The writing is so bad! I mean, I’ve always maintained that his story beats are often really, really amazing. Like, he comes up with great stories. You know, that’s his strength, but he’s like a—He’s like a storyboarder is really what he is.
M: Yeah.
D: That’s his. That’s where he shines. And then when he’s in charge of absolutely everything, he can’t handle it.
M: No.
D: It’s so many things that he gets wrong, his direction is terrible. And he took some of the best actors in the world at the time and—
M: Made them do the most boring things…
D: —got absolutely nothing out of their performances. It was like—
M: He literally drained all the sex appeal out of Ethan Hawke, which is hard to do—
D: Wait what?
M: Especially like— he drained all the sex appeal out of Ethan Hawke.
D: Do you mean Ewan McGregor?
M: Ewan McGregor, whatever.
D: See, I got you. I got you on the Gattaca kick. Did you watch Gattaca?
M: No. [laughing]
D: OK, you have to watch Gattaca between now and whenever the next.
M: I’ve been. I’ve been working my ass off, Dan.
D: I understand—OK. After, you said you’re done after Thanksgiving, right?
M: I’m done after this weekend.
D: Oh, right, OK. Perfect. Did you read Packing for Mars?
M: No.
D: Why not?
M: When was when was I going to have time? Dan.
D: You have flights, don’t you?
M: Yeah, that’s that is true. I will get all—
D: I listened to it. So.
M: Yeah, no I would prefer to read it.
D: Sure. Takes about as much time though, I think.
M: Yeah, but you absorb it differently, like take it in through your skin when you read a book. Yes. Yeah, when I go on long road trips like and I’m driving through four or five states and I’m listening to podcasts. And they’ll advertise for a local community college. Like, how do they know where I am. Like, right at this moment? They know I’m in Tennessee.
D: Well, yeah.
M: I don’t like that.
D: You’re doing. You’re listening to it on a tracking device. [Morgan laughs] What do you expect?
M: I’m actually I’m actually OK with it. But like, I don’t like this in-between shit. It’s like just put a chip in my arm with all my credit cards and my passport on it or nothing. Like this. This is, like in between, where the phone kind of knows what you’re doing and what kind of toothpaste you’re buying. Like, I don’t like that.
D: So you’re all in.
M: I’m Full Monty.
D: It’s—
M: On the tracking.
D: —Cyberpunk or nothing.
M: Yeah.
D: So…
M: I’ve nothing to hide.
D: This is your uncanny valley situation right now with technology. You, we’re at just the point where you’re uncomfortable.
M: Yeah. Like, I have too many freedoms left to like let go of the ones that are being taken from me. [both laugh] Like, like we like, we have to just fully dive in or not at all because this is this, this in-between shit freaks me out. Like, I’m just at the point where Facebook is sending me the right ads, and I’m like, Yes, these are relevant to my interests, but my podcast, knowing what state I’m driving through is, that’s a little weird. Meanwhile, I downloaded an app on my phone so my daughter can watch my every movement.
D: Oooh.
M: Oh yeah, like pinpoints my exact location everywhere I go.
D: Is that for her benefit or for yours?
M: Both. I like knowing where she is, but yeah, I’m from, like in Seattle and I go missing. It would be really nice if someone could find my phone and call the police.
D: Make sure no scientist just abduct anyone.
M: I’m okay with that.
D: Oh ok. As long as they’re making her into some sort of magical human alien goo hybrid.
M: Yeah, we have too many people already.
D: This is The Expansing, by the way. If you’re just pressing buttons at your phone and don’t know how you got here and listening to this, this is a podcast called The Expansing, which is about the universe of the show, The Expanse, and all the other things that makes us think of because it would be boring to just talk about the one thing. And my name’s Dan Winburn. I’m joined by Morgan. C.W. McCall, no, Wilson, wait, right, Wilson, Wilson, I keep forgetting various old timey people that you’re named after.
M: Wouldn’t it be fucked up if my name was short for Woodrow?
D: Like.
M: It’s actually Morgan Woodrow Woodrow Wilson.
D: OK. That would be unfortu— That’s not true, is it?
M: It’s better than my real middle name.
D: Oh, I don’t. You’ve told me before.
M: No.
D: No?
M: No.
D: I’m talking about other people, but I won’t push.
M: It’s bad. [laughs]
D: I’ll figure it out eventually. I have ways, anyway. I will—
M: You’ll never find it.
D: I wanted to start real quick with just some corrections from last time I mentioned it. And I think in a voiceover that Octavia Muss, which I think that’s how you would say the last name, that character, the detective that comes in and is kind of a foil for Miller. And essentially the show presents her really weirdly compared to the way she’s presented in the books. And I just forgot. Basically that she’s. She’s in the books because it’s so totally different that just went right over my head.
M: Well, I hope it’s better in the book.
D: Yeah, I would argue that it is. Because I think she was used as sort of a fill in for his ex-wife, who he visualizes in multiple scenes in the books. And—
M: Yeah.
D: —he kind of says things to her or thinks what she would be thinking right now of his behavior. So Octavia sort of fills in as that feminine archetype of disappointment in this man who has thrown his life away, Sort of thing. You know, he’s divorced—
M: Yeah. To serve. To serve the narrative.
D: Yeah. And she doesn’t really have a strong narrative in the books she. But she is just kind of a tight ass who’s doing her job and is interested in and really befriending him and sort of rebuffs any type of relationship like that. And in that way, she’s a stronger character, but you just don’t see as much of her, and she’s she’s really kind of barely there. And she actually comes in after Havelock. So it’s a contrast because they have this relatively close relationship comparatively, even though they’re more at odds. And then she comes in and it’s just like, Yeah, I don’t really have time for you. So there’s stuff going on and they do not have this like teary goodbye and all that stuff that none of that happens.
M: Good.
D: Then there was one other thing I wanted to mention, which I never liked using the word anachronism for this. But from the from episode one, that song that they used “Tighten Up” by the Black Keys, which kind of just comes out of nowhere that that whistling tune that you hear when they’re making love in in Zero-G. I kind of like that they did that just because it made it feel like, Oh, this is the sort of lighthearted times before all this stuff starts going really wrong for everyone. And it’s an anachronism in a sense, or a reverse anachronism where it’s sort of applying a cultural feeling that we would have at the moment now.
M: Right.
D: Well, they’re not saying that they would be listening to this song necessarily…but.
M: Yeah, this, this 200 year old song.
D: Right. It’s it’s that or we have to write a new song that sounds like it would be from 200 years in the future, but hit the same emotional beats for the story. It would be kind of hard to do that.
M: You know—
D: There’s a lot of failure on that front with with sci fi because it’s really hard—
M: Yeah.
D: —to think of something cool that you’ve never heard before that.
M: Yeah, but professional musicians do that every day.
D: True. No, I get what you’re saying. But when you when you apply 200, like, we have no idea where things will go in 200 years.
M: Well, you know, things swing back around.
D: They do.
M: Like, we’re, we’re reliving the Nineties right now. Who’s to say in 200 years?
D: And if they keep preservation of archives, it’s possible that a lot of tastes might not change as fast or as much in the intervening span.
M: It’s like in that adaptation of I, Robot with Will Smith, and I guess there’s this whole thing about his, he wears his red Chucks?
D: Yeah.
M: These red Chuck Taylors. And he’s like, These are classic, nobody on—
D: Where they red or are they black? I thought they were black. I don’t remember.
M: I don’t know. I didn’t even see it.
D: But yeah, I remember the… The I the one thing I did really like about that movie is they visually combined worlds pretty well. They they kept a little bit of the grime and the older buildings and things. Visually, I liked it, but that was about it.
M: I didn’t even see it. I won’t even give it that much bandwidth in my brain.
D: You don’t need to. It’s fun.
M: But he’s like,—
D: I wouldn’t watch it again. I watched it once and was like “Eh, whatever.”
M: They have to have in sci-fi, they have to have that connection. So like, what we recognize is cool because like hipsters have always been into things that are not fashionable anymore.
D: Right.
M: You know what I mean? So like, Will Smith being so in love with his fucking Chuck Taylors, which are the most uncomfortable and impractical shoes
D: And what, is it’s like a gasoline motorcycle too, I think, that he uses.
M: Yeah, which, like, is just bad.
D: It’s because he’s ‘Old School.’ And it’s like…
M: I mean, literally that’s. bad for the environment.
D: I’m not sure that’s going to be legal. [Morgan laughs]
M: Those are going to be banned soon. Like.
D: Yeah, it might take a while for motorcycles because they are way more efficient. But yeah, it’s it’s only a matter of time.
M: Like we’re going to have gasoline forever.
D: Now. Yeah, exactly.
M: I mean, like what, 15…
D: 10, in 10 years it’ll be. Maybe you or maybe you’re allowed to use a motorcycle that’s gasoline.
M: Yeah. So they have to always throw stuff in that like. We recognize it’s like, ‘OK, this is a cool guy.’ You know. [laughs] He’s listening to cool music from the 21st century.
D: Uh, and then finally, I guess, to tie up the the last of these loose ends is my shameful performance on knowledge of Zero-G menstruation from last episode.
M: Oh God.
D: But I actually did my homework.
M: Yeah?
D: Thank you very much. Unlike some people.
M: Well, share it with the class.
D: I admittedly, I listened to Packing for Mars by Mary Roach on your recommendation because we really wanted to find out. And Morgan, you theorized quite correctly that it’s basically no big deal compared to being on Earth. However, she doesn’t really mention in that book, which is very frustrating. Because I—
M: Oh shit.
D: —listened to the whole thing and she doesn’t really talk about that at all. She talks about a lot of stuff, and—
M: She talks about fucking in space, though, right?
D: Oh yeah.
M: Yeah.
D: There is. She talks about that. And in particular, there has been a single pornographic film that has been filmed in Zero-G, however—
M: Oh, I knew that.
D: —it was not like a full scene. It was like one single shot that I guess was the only thing that they could get.
M:Yeah.
D: They aid a parabolic flight and—
M: Yeah.
D: —it’s not impressive, let’s say. [laughs]
M: It’s it’s like underwater sex scenes. It’s like—
D: Yeah, that’s…
M: —you think it’s going to be cool, and then you see it and you’re like, that is not graceful.
D: It’s not impressive.
M: It’s actually very awkward.
D: But she doesn’t really mention menstruation at all. And so I basically had to go do a little bit of sleuthing. And the long and short of it is that it’s the same level of kind of difficulty or discomfort and all of that. But you’re essentially your only option is a diaper like the pad situation doesn’t work the same way, I guess in the suits and everything. So essentially that’s what happens. But most female astronauts that are menstruating essentially will try to get like an IUD or some other device that will prevent them from menstruating at all. And that’s usually their solution.
M: Yeah, that’s how—
D: Just avoid it entirely. Because it’s it’s more of a mess than it would be on Earth because of the fact that just the practical applications are fewer and it’s it’s just more of a hassle than it’s worth.
M: Yeah, that would be my solution, too. Like I was on Depo-Provera for over a decade, and it’s amazing because you don’t get a period at all. But that raises a whole different question of like, if that’s the go to birth control method in space or on the Belt, like how do how do you make babies?
D: It also raises a host of questions about if that does anything else physiologically, that would make you more susceptible to problems.
M: Yeah. Depo-Provera actually decreases your bone density—
D: Big Problem.
M: —which is already happening in space.
D: And it’s this sort of Catch 22 for female astronauts because they actually perform much better in many ways physically in spaceflight and sort of just their ability to take maneuvering. And the fact that they are typically weightless means that they’re much more useful as far as keeping the weight down and payload size and all of that. But the bone density thing is the problem that is going to have to be figured out for everybody, but especially for.
M: Yeah, that’s a huge side effect of Depo-Provera and blood clots. So.
D: Neither are good.
M: Yeah.
D: What I, what I did discover, though, in particular listening to Mary Roach’s book was that my suspicions or my my hesitancy to say, ‘Oh, it’s probably the same’ was based on some very real thinking. Because when when we were starting out in the beginning, a lot of scientists were very worried about multiple different bodily functions like urination has actually been a huge problem for some people because part of what allows you to feel the sensation of needing to urinate is based on your body’s reaction to gravity.
M: Oh yeah.
D: It’s happened before where someone had to be catheter, because once you get to a certain point, if you haven’t, if you wait too long now, all of a sudden you can’t. And that’s bad. [laughs] So and they were also concerned about, you know, menstruation for similar reasons. It’s like, Well, it’s never happened before. We’ve never done this before. We’re not 100% certain what will happen. Maybe it’ll be fine, maybe it won’t.
M: There’s also very little science at all about women’s bodies because—
D: Oh yeah.
M: —nobody wants to deal with it.
D: Even, even Miss Mary Roach doesn’t mention it. And I hope I’m not wrong about that. I listened to it twice. I know I would like to read it, and actually, she’s got several other books that I think would be interesting to talk about as well.
M: Oh, yeah, yeah. I’ve read a lot of her other stuff.
D: Like Grunt, I’m looking at.
M: Yeah.
D: I’m thinking about looking into that because of the Space Marines conversation. But yeah, she doesn’t mention it as far as I could tell, and I was surprised at that. But you were talking about babies, for sure. I like that they dimensions that people go to Ganymede for gestation and birth and all of that to try and keep things sort of normalized for gravity and make it easier. Do they even address that? And the show, actually, they talk about that in the book quite a bit.
M: No, I don’t remember it ever coming up.
D: Yeah, that’s part of the reason why there are so many families and such on Ganymede—
M: Yeah.
D: —it’s, it’s I think it has partly to do because of the gravity, but also because it’s shielded from a lot of the radiation and it allows you to gestate normally. So people will come from all over the system to come and have their children there so that they have proper, you know, safe gestation period.
M: Yeah, that was even mentioned in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. When Wyoming Nod is talking about coming to the Moon and how they’re like, craft got stuck on the surface and she was exposed to radiation for hours, right? And that that affected her ability to have children. So she she got a hysterectomy, but she got her tubes tied, basically. But that like space radiation was already something Heinlein was thinking about in the sixties.
D: Right. Moving on. This is supposed to be a plot episode, but I wanted to get some of that stuff out of the way, especially because we we left it on a question mark. So in other words, if you are going to space and it’s going to be that time, you might want to think ahead and bring a diaper. Apparently.
M: Eeew.
D: It’s the solution.
M: Pads are diapers, they’re just smaller. [laughs]
D: That’s, according to my research, according to my research, this is not the solution that works in space. You just go full diaper because they have those anyway.
M: Ew.
D: And they are way more absorbent than, like any normal thing, apparently.
M: Well, now I’m curious about space babies.
D: Yeah, we’ll have to do a little bit more biological research.
M: Yeah.
D: So we’re going to talk about episodes three and four of season one of The Expanse. Those episodes are titled “Remember the Cant” and “CQB.” So essentially, what we get here in these two episodes is the after effects and fame spreading of the crew of the Canterbury, the remaining crew of Canterbury, and their adventures on the Martian, their adventures on the Martian flagship the Donnager.
M: God Damn it.
Producer Theresa: I think that was the cat trying to get in. [Morgan laughs]
D: And essentially that’s that’s the, the long and short of these steps is we get some side stuff with we we learn a little bit more about the Mormons and the what’s going on over there with Fred Johnson. But primarily, we’re talking about what’s happening to them on the Martian ship and how they come under attack and now escape before everybody dies again, except them. Lucky, lucky them.
M: How convenient.
D: Your favorite part of the storyline.
M: Losing their, their plucky comic relief in the process.
D: I do like a lot of the world building that happens here, even though some of it doesn’t square up with the book like the crowd casting on Ceres, like you had mentioned—
M: Yeah.
D: —is a really nice touch. It’s done really effortlessly and and it’s something that we can imagine now that, you know, would absolutely work. Um, I like that Lopez is right about the things he says about Earth. A lot of what he says, at least, is correct. He’s making commentary on the decaying nature of Earth, culture and motivation and comparing that to the Martian drive and their vision for their future. But that he can’t see that he is just as much of an extremist as anyone he would be pointing the finger at on Earth.
M: Yeah.
D: That is, it’s pretty relatable nowadays, unfortunately. But—
M: Yeah, I like—
D: —snot seeing his own reflection and realizing that. Sure, you could say that, but you’re also in a very privileged position to be able to do these things, to be able to have this vision like you were born into it, just the same as any of those Earthers that you’re essentially saying are garbage and their lives are worthless, and none of them care enough about life. You weren’t born in that.
M: Yeah, I like that the show. Yeah, the show is not kind to Earth, which I like—
D: Absolutely.
M: —because it seems like in sci-fi, Earth is always home. And it’s, you know, this like glorious vision. And it’s like blueprint for how we colonize space or move out into space. And I think that’s like a very western view of like a love affair with democracy and Manifest Destiny. And yeah, I like that they don’t glamorize what life on Earth is like. And in a way, Mars is kind of Manifest Destiny at work—
D: Yeah.
M: —and the Belt and moving past the rings.
D: Especially later on. Yeah, once once they get past the rings, it’s very much that they, Mars, The extremist Martians see themselves as literally better than everyone else, and that we can just cut them all off and make make our own way and it’ll be better. And we don’t need them and they can die. That’s fine because humanity will live on, like, they’re very cold—
M: Yeah.
D: —about their vision. I also really like that this was not in the book that I can recall when Miller’s sort of going to the party to try and find this person that he’s after, he’s looking for the data miner guy. Yeah. And he goes to the betting party and then the girl in the hallway. And they have this exchange that just back and forth of ‘Why you Pensa?’ ‘Why you Pensa?’ Like, and this sort of implied like this is what do you think or what are you talking about? Like, what are you doing here greeting that they go back and forth? And I just really like that little moment that kind of shows that he’s plugged in to the culture, even though he’s outside of it. He’s he’s a cop, but he’s also a Belter. He’s never known another life.
M: Yeah. You weirdly forget that Miller is a Belter sometimes, you know, because he is a cop or what I guess serves for a cop in this world. But then like, Oh yeah, he is a Belter.
D: Yeah, he knows all these little nuances that are that they show in the show sometimes. And I like that he kind of grows into that and starts to accept it more.
M: Yeah. And how ultimately his allegiance is to the Belt. The, you know, basically knowing that people are stealing water and he’s like, ‘You take a little bit not enough for them to notice dummy.’ And I like that. But it’s kind of like how, you know, people that are born into poverty now and can’t get out of it, you know what I mean?
D: Yeah.
M: And people kind of mistake that for laziness or a lack of ambition. And it’s really just status. And if you gave people the opportunity to go and manifest their destiny, they would take it. We did it during the gold rush. You know where they were basically giving anybody [White People anyway] who wanted to move out west a plot of land to develop and like some people were on the venture capitalist side of things where they went out and they exploited that, like the guy who founded Knott’s Berry Farms in California, who’s a turd? [Dan laughs] But yeah, I mean—
D: Not to be confused with, if we have any Miami listeners, Knaus Berry Farm in Miami or Homestead [Florida] Local.
M: Yeah, this is the one in California.
D: Who are awesome, super cool people and they make great cinnamon buns. So not to be confused.
M: No, I think you send a bunch of desperate people out west that, you know, want to start their life over for whatever reason, you kind of end up with the Wild West. You don’t, you don’t get that any other way.
D: Yeah. And that same scene, we get another sense of that because there’s this gambling culture that—
M: Oh yeah.
D: —he’s interacting with and the that part of it is whatever. But I really liked some of the little interactions that happened there, like when he’s showing Julie to people and he’s like, She’s a pilot, and the one guy is like, ‘Oh,’ this just this little moment that felt like this could have been at any club, anywhere with somebody like, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah, OK.’ He just did not care at all, but just humoring him for one second so that maybe he won’t be a dick to them later. I like that.
M: And yeah, that’s a huge—
D: One guy really getting down, you know, in the front. And that it’s gravity racing.
M: Yeah.
D: That’s awesome. Like, that’s such a fun idea that, you know, would totally happen because if you get on the right trajectory, you’re going to feel that intense G-force maneuver and it’s going to slingshot you so much faster… That’s, that would totally be a thing people would do. It would be an absolute daredevil thing to do, for sure.
M: Oh, totally. Yeah. I mean, that’s in the gambling aspect is in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress here where everything on the Moon is is based on gambling, because what else are you going to do? You can’t have, you can’t have fair economics.
D: Yeah, it’s something that that doesn’t get enough attention in some universes, like in particular, like in Star Trek, it was, I think they turned a corner when they introduced, like in Deep Space Nine, when Quark became such a big part of the plotline there, where it was just running a gambling place like that, just this just becomes suddenly this richer part of the culture as opposed to just being Ferengi or greedy.
M: Well, the whole point in Star Trek is that Earth is beyond money.
D: Mmhmm.
M: There, they’ve solved greed and hunger, and so they don’t really want for anything like, you know, they have the replicators. Everything is just accessible and provided, and they’ve moved past greed. But in reality, you know, you have Mars or the Belt where people, basically transplants, and you go there with nothing, you have nothing. So you can’t get ahead of anybody else unless you gamble. [Dan laughs] Like, that’s the only way to accumulate wealth. Or, you know, have more than your neighbor is, is to—
D: I mean, that’s literally what capitalism is.
M: Yeah, it’s like I have some capital and I’m going to gamble—
D: It’s just very high level gambling. That’s literally—
M: —on the chance that I’ll double it or make more. Yeah.
D: That’s literally how it started as well. We’ll put together some money on this ship, go steal some spices and we’ll make double our money back. It’ll be awesome.
M: Yeah.
D: Just everything came from that.
M: It’s like you and me moved to Canada and we each have $5, you know what I mean? Like, how am I going to eat a little bit more than you tonight? Like, we’re going to gamble, I’ll gamble one of my dollars. [laughs]
D: Speaking of being beyond money. Do you know what I really like is how we have the technological capability of doing almost any of the things that we can imagine in our sci fi universes? And yet if we want to do something with our time that we enjoy and that other people enjoy, we have to ask for money.
M: Yeah, yeah. The monetizing of every single second of your life and all of the labor of your body and mind. Yeah, that’s great. [laughs]
D: Anyway, here’s some ads.
[music fades in] [ad] [music fades out]
D: And we’re back. [Morgan laughs] Thank God for money.
M: Yeah, whatever that was, it was. I love it. [laughs]
D: All right. So now we need to talk about some changes, some things that are different than things that are problems. one of the biggest things in the beginning here is that Havelock doesn’t have this whole interaction with this prostitute at the beginning, like there is a scene. That scene happens, but it’s mostly about Miller talking to her because it’s establishing that he knows the patois and he knows their sign language and how to talk to them because he’s is a Belter, right?
M: Yeah.
D: As you’re just saying, and then it becomes this, ugh, this sort of weird savior white knight thing going on with Havelock and this prostitute who he’s, granted, he starts up befriending. But it’s clear that there’s like some some romantic interest between the two of them and they they’re clearly having feelings for each other, which is all fine, but it changes that person a lot. The character of Havelock and his whole arc is very different in the books. As I said, he actually gets out before all of the craziness goes down. And the reason he disappears from that interaction with Miller in the book is because he’s been replaced with Octavia, with Octavia Muss, who comes in and she’s like, ‘Oh yeah, I’m your new partner, like, whatever your your, you’re a has been, you’re washed up’ and doesn’t have this personal relationship with him.
M: Well, I’m the one who—
D: He kind of disappears and he doesn’t have this this whole thing with that girl.
M: On the one hand, it I mean, this is just a visual television storytelling thing where they’re like introducing the fact that Belter’s do you have a sign language—
D: Mmhmm.
M: —and a language and this guy is attempting to learn it because he wants to bring the communities together, but they’re resistant and, you know, he gets jumped despite his best efforts. So it’s cool that they can introduce that to us that way. But this is such a Hollywood trope or a literary trope that it’s a fucking Samson and Delilah situation [Dan laughs] where, like a man’s desire for a woman weakens him.
D: Yeah.
M: And because he had that affection for her and he had like a softness for her and was trying to, like, learn from her and understand her, he gets fucking stabbed in the heart.
D: Mmhmm.
M: Like—
D: Also—
M: —that’s bullshit! [laughs]
D: Yeah. And they and they they actually do even more disservice.
M: That is such an, that is such an UGH.
D: It’s it’s even more forced than it needed to be because that scene with the guy getting spiked happens in the book. But it happens to someone else. It just happens to a random person and you just kind of hear about it as a thing that happened to indicate that things are getting worse, that things are getting unstable.
M: Yeah.
D: But it wasn’t Havelock at all.
M: The way they pieced—
D: It didn’t happen to him.
M: —that together is like, it’s just it’s a narrative trope.
D: Mmhmm.
M: To show that, like, you know, a man who is above the seduction. Like, think about, you know, crime noir like—
D: Yeah.
M: —detective stories like the man who’s above the seduction is the one who’s smarter and cooler and survives. And your affection for a woman is actually like, What makes you weak? And she cuts your hair off and, you know, like, steals your power?
D: Right? I also—
M: Is that not what happened? Is that.
D: It sort of, you know, you’re right. It’s his his desire to save her, to protect her.
M: Yeah.
D: Is what gets him hurt.
M: Right.
D: That’s what takes him down, is his desire to go and protect her.
M: And I’m glad. I’m so glad it didn’t happen like that in the book. But—
D: No. No.
M: I can’t like not mention that because…
D: The problem I have with that in the in comparison to the book as well is that they don’t really have this relationship. And if you wanted to do that, that’s fine. But it doesn’t have to turn romantic, you know, like he could be going back to see her and like, like it implies that he’s going to go be a client and then, ‘Oh, no. See, he’s doing sign language.’ Well they should have just leaned into that if that’s what they were going to do and be like seriously—
M: Yeah, but how—
D: —he’s just doing the sign language.
M: How else do they demonstrate that Miller is the one who gets to advance in the story?
D: Well, he be—
M: How else do they demonstrate that like, he’s not qualified to basically be the hero of this story?
D: Well, I think it would be nice if they had shown have like really genuinely befriending this woman and being like, ‘No, we’re friends. I’m actually not interested in her in any way. We’re literally like, I just care about her because she’s been teaching me and we talk and she’s my friend now. And I’ve never been friends with a Belter.’ They’re like, That’s cool. It’s unique for him. And Miller does not give a shit about friendship really anymore.
M: Right.
D: Except for his already close friends from childhood. So he could be dismissive of just that relationship. Just the idea that he. Would be friends with a Belter, let alone a prostitute. It could be dismissive on Miller’s part, and that could be how we show, that we know Miller’s real a—
M: Yeah, that’s a more mature, responsible way of telling that story.
D: That would have been be nice.
M: Yeah, well…
D: And it still could have. It still could have been his downfall in a certain way, because it could be. ‘Well, I got to go help my friend’ like that’s still just as much motivation to desire to go down because he’s still a cop and there’s like crazy stuff going on. He’s, the only thing he’s doing is leaving his post to go do a thing he’s not really needed for, but is totally within the scope of his job.
M: Yeah. Well, this is like when you’re we’re talking about how male writers write female characters and how it’s so important to have women in writing storytelling positions for multiple reasons. And this is kind of one of them because like the way they wrote this for the show is like leaning into a narrative device that everyone recognizes without thinking about it—
D: Mmhmm.
M: —which is the Samson/Delilah situation, which is it happens all the time. If you look for it, you see it and you can’t unsee it. So putting this as part of the story just kind of tells the viewers things that you don’t have to say out loud. You know, that like Havelock is, you know, he’s not tough enough to be the one that goes and fights the protomolecule. Miller is.
D: Mmhmm.
M: And this is just one of the ways that they show that.
D: Right.
M: You know what I mean? And yeah, so this will probably be one of those things we look back on in 50 more years as like—
D: Yeah, maybe.
M: Ugh, I can’t believe how sexist they were. Towards men, too.
D: It’s kind of—
M: It’s offensive to men! It’s not even like as a as a, you know, angry feminist like this is a bad portrayal of women. It’s bad portrayal for men.
D: Yeah. I mean, Miller—
M: That Belter prostitute, she was, she was doing everything right. She’s she’s a pretty cool chick, you know?
D: Miller’s main motivation for really driving the story is because he becomes obsessed with Julie.
M: Yes.
D: And it’s kind of weird.
M: The idea of Julie.
D: You know, it’s a weird thing to allow to drive you at that point in your age that you’re just sort of obsessed with this girl who’s probably dead.
M: Yeah.
D: And then, yes, she is dead. It’s like—
M: But he still really wants to kiss her.
D: Yeah, yeah.
M: And he saves himself for her. That’s how you know, it was meant to be. Because he won’t kiss anyone else.
D: Continuing on with the ongoing theme of of hiding things, for some reason, in the books, there is no hiding the fact that Alex is Martian Navy.
M: Yeah.
D: That’s not a secret. Everybody knows that. Of course they know that. Why I wouldn’t like there’d be no reason to hide that they weren’t at war at the time. It’s not a secret. Just another one of those things that, for whatever reason in the show, they decide that everybody has to be hiding all this stuff from each other constantly. [Morgan laughs] And that’s the thing that drives a lot of the moments of tension instead of it being the plot points that are driving the moments of tension. Like. That’s just not a thing for the real moment of tension is more the freaking out about close quarter battle. Where—
M: Yeah.
D: —it’s sort of like ‘Why are, well, aren’t you a Navy guy?’ And they say that, but it’s his reaction isn’t the same, either. He’s not the sort of emasculated like ‘I was just, I didn’t do the hard stuff.’ That’s him in the show. But in the in the book, it’s made clear, no, you don’t understand this ship is invincible, and this has literally never happened in Martian history. We have never had a ship like this go into close quarter battle because it should be able to handle anything before it ever gets close enough for that.
M: Mmhmm.
D: So the fact that they’re suddenly engaged at close quarters is extremely alarming to Alex because he understands the implication of it. He knows that, ‘Oh shit, we might be in serious trouble because this is not supposed to happen, ever.’
M: Yeah.
D: It’s not just, ‘Oh, he’s a he’s a wuss who was just a freight pilot.’ No, he understands the seriousness of the situation. They, they don’t get it. But…
M: Maybe there is saving that drama for the rocks being hurled at Earth, like because nobody could really wrap their head around how these rocks got past the Space Guard system that they have. I can’t remember what they call it. Arthur C. Clarke called it Space Guard when he invented it, [Dan laughs] which he did, and he wrote a book called Hammer of God about Asteroids. And he basically invents the idea of Space Guard, which is like laser spotters that look for asteroids and explode them before they can destroy us.
D: Which, let’s do that, governments.
M: Yes! And then people, OK. So people started reading his book and they were like, We should do that. And they did. NASA actually, like, started developing. Yeah, maybe we should point telescopes into space, keep an eye out for giant fucking asteroids and come up with a plan, which is how we got movies like Armageddon and Deep Impact. Like, Yeah, that could happen. So thank you, Arthur C. Clarke. [Dan laughs] But like, maybe they saved the drama of that like dawning realization for later.
D: I just wish that—
M: They spoiled it, they spoiled it with like, ‘Wow, this stealth attack is so new.’ Like, if they’d kind of blew their load early on, it wouldn’t have felt as scary later.
D: Yeah. It’s again one of these subtle things that sometimes do a disservice to the complexity of a character, because Alex being sort of chickenshit about battle is—
M: But Hollywood doesn’t like complex character.
D: No, I know, I know, but it’s not hard to just to do it, though it’s—
M: They want simple archetypes.
D: It’s not that hard. [sighs] Fine, moving on. [Morgan laughs] I don’t. I don’t think, Theresa, can you check if Frank de Graaf is in the book? I don’t think Frank de Graaf is in the book, so he is an invention that I really like. And if I’m wrong, he’s just a character I really like because he gets us to see our Avasarala as, not only her best side, but also, well, one of her best sides. But also, we get a personal window into how devious she can be and how ruthless she can be that she’s even willing to essentially ruin a friend’s dream to get her job done.
M: Yeah.
D: Knowing that if he’s found out this will, that he’s so in love with Mars. He’s so in love with the idea of going there and staying there and living there. And he has so much admiration for them that when she basically outs him as a source of information because she she needed to, his dreams are ruined, he is banned forever. And while standing in front of it or sitting in front of an image of a cracking piece of glass, a bolt of lightning sort of symbolism, he says, I’m never playing with you again. And she broke his heart, and now he’s breaking hers—
M: Yeah.
D: —in turn, you know, it’s a really good moment where you learn a lot about her through that character.
M: Yeah, that was that was especially cutting that scene, that exchange.
D: Yeah. And in a show with writing like that where you’re used to almost flipping this sort of, it flips that a kind of trope on its head while altering it in a realistic way. Say that this man is being used to tell us more about her and to further her development and her story. And it’s nice to see that—
M: Mmhmm.
D: —that normally isn’t portrayed, and you see her like stepping on this person to get what she needs. And then move on.
M: Yeah, and in a way, she’s she’s just as plodding and manipulative as like Errinwright in the show.
D: I’m getting confirmation he does not exist in the book. So, yeah—
M: Oh.
D: —they made frank for the show. And the casting was great too.
M: Well excellent choice, guys.
D: Absolutely. That’s that’s a real win as far as alterations go.
M: Yeah, but it’s another example of how like Avasarala is like just as devious and backstabbing as like the bad guys, you know, like Errinwright?
D: Oh yeah. I mean, I we’ve already discussed how much we both love her, but she’s not a good person.
M: Well, I don’t think there are good people.
D: No, no. [Morgan giggles] And that’s why she’s, it’s so easy to love her. And yet,
M: I do like how they—
D: —she’s a war criminal, you know? And—
M: Yeah, I like the character.
D: there are almost no leaders that aren’t.
M: Yeah, I like how, like Holden and and Marcos are like the same person. You know what I mean?
D: Yeah.
M: They’re just on on opposite sides, but they’re basically—
D: And Lopez talks—
M: Yeah.
D: That is a pretty strong theme throughout is they have these two sides of a coin, and it’s made clear to the audience that they are in fact the same. And I, as much as I’m praising that it’s also a very subtle danger in terms of commentary on society, on our culture and politics and all that, because that’s true a lot of the time for a lot of things, but there’s certainly not always this both sides dichotomy, which is—
M: Yeah.
D: —we get a lot of the things that are going badly lately for us.
M: Yeah. Like how there’s ‘very fine people on both sides.’
D: Right, right.
M: A Swastika? No, there’s actually not.
D: Sometimes there’s not. Sometimes it’s not. It’s fine…
M: But I think it’s nice to have like these moments where it kind of shines a light on the fact that people are just people—
D: Mmhmm.
M: —and like, we’re often motivated by the same things, but motivated towards different objectives. And the objective is what makes you the good guy or the bad guy in the story.
D: Mmhmm.
M: Like, Holden is a fucking idiot every time, but he’s always making the right choice for the story and everybody just, you know, believes in him. And ‘Yay Holden!’ and he’s always right.
D: I like, go ahead.
M: But it’s because his his motivations are pure, you know, so he can forgive the stupid bad things that he does because he’s like doing it for the right reasons.
D: Yeah, it’s—
M: You know same as Chrisjen.
D: —it’s interesting. It’s interesting that a lot of my favorite characters are the ones that do what’s best for their cause, or for the story if you want to argue that, but it’s not what’s best for them personally.
M: Yeah, it’s very problematic.
D: The sacrifices that some of these characters make are really believable.
M: Yeah.
D: And. Like, in particular, another little change, I think the captain’s name is Yao of the Donnager, and we see the bridge crew a lot more in the show in particular because they’re being a lot more aggressive with Holden and all of the interrogations. Those also don’t really happen. They don’t really mistreat them. That’s another thing that just doesn’t. It’s not part of the book. It’s not part of their time there. They’re mostly just talking to Holden and mostly just interrogating and trying to figure out what’s going on.
M: Well that’s not believable.
D: Again, it’s like a business thing, right? They’re mad about remember, the company said, Well, you need to go talk to the Martians. Yeah, that was the whole thing. So it’s a lot less confrontational. But in the show, we ,that does allow us to see that bridge crew and see that them go through those sort of stages of disbelief and denial about what’s happening and then slowly start to realize, ‘Oh my God, we’re going to have to scuttle the ship’ and then her [Yao] realizing that her own arrogance. But while still doing the noble thing and saying, ‘We, there’s no choice, we have to do this.’ It’s an impressive moment, and it managed to make an emotional connection with her character with a very small number of scenes.
M: Well, it’s like jumping on a hand hand grenade. You can’t have a story like that about self-sacrifice, like without somebody jumping on a hand grenade.
D: Speaking of jumping on a hand grenade.
M: Sorry, I’m busy this weekend. [both laugh]
D: Speaking of jumping on a hand grenade, wouldn’t you like to sell your soul for money? And, and—
M: I do it every day.
D: Not a very good ad outlet. Speaking of, [Morgan laughs] speaking of jumping on a hand grenade: Ads!
[Music fades out][Ads][Music fades in]
D: Wow, golly. That sounded like a great ad for for that product that is local to you. Most likely.
M: [laughs] Yes.
D: Because it knows where you are.
M: If you happen to be driving through Tennessee.
D: We always know where you are. Ah, weird thing with with Miller, a little another weird side mission that he goes on is this data broker stuff. Very little, if any, of that is in the book as well. That’s another almost wholesale, just giving him something to do, I guess, while we’re following the other things because they wanted to focus on the Martian storyline so much.
M: Yeah.
D: You know, the whole thing is just a little weird, and I don’t really know why they did it and him go into the morgue and digging in the guy’s leg, and none of that’s, it’s not there.
M: Yeah, it was so forgettable that I actually didn’t. Even it didn’t even register the first time I watched the series. It was so forgettable.
D: Yeah, it only hit me when, when he’s when he’s sticking the thing in the guy’s leg, I thought, is, is a scalpel not just fine? What? What’s this thing?
M: Yeah, the second or third time I watched it, I was like, ‘Did I see this before? Did I walk out of the room?’ Like, mentally I was. So I was in the other room when it was happening because it was just so boring.
D: Yeah.
M: I mean, I guess it’s like a cool little piece of like, this is the future [Dan laughs] busting out the tricorder to like, read someone’s vitals and the medic bay. Like, ‘Oh, wow. Like, they can do these things?’ Why else would you include that?
D: Speaking of, or getting back to the close quarter battle when we again, spoilers for if you guys problems of spoilers, just don’t even listen to our show. Like, it’s, it’s going to be a problem for you. Ongoing.
M: I say instead of watching the show, just listen to this.
D: Yeah, just don’t bother. Just listen, it’s fine. [Morgan laughs] Go read the books. Shed gets killed by a shell that just punches right through everything. And. His death, it just takes his head clean off, and it’s perfect. I mean, when I read the scene in the book. It was, I almost got chills because it was so like the scene in the show—
M: Yeah.
D: —like the way you describe just the way that a hole just perfectly appears. It’s very, it’s described very dryly as just as just this thing happened.
M: And everyone’s reaction.
D: Instantly, yeah, it’s just gone. And it’s, you know, there’s blood is getting sucked out. The only difference really is is sort of after which I thought would have been better if it’s not as clean after the fact that the actual moment when he dies is is really, really well captured.
M: Yeah and so it was so shocking too because up until then there weren’t any hints that that was not going to be a like, a long term member of the crew. You know, it felt he felt just as permanent as everyone else.
D: Yeah.
M: Just as much development and screen time and dialog. And then all of a sudden, he’s dead! Like big time dead.
D: And it was suddenly.
M: Yeah, I remember being very shocked because I was like, ‘Oh, fuck, anybody could die.’
Like, wait a minute, actually.
D: Yeah, it would have been—
M: At any time! I don’t like that.
D: It would have been nice if they’d kept that a little bit more. Actually, the show, [inhale] kind of unfortunately, the reasoning for it is unfortunate, but the show went further than the books and killing off—
M: Killing Alex.
D: Yeah, with Alex.
M: Which I love, too, as much as I like the character and I was, I was devastated to see him die. But it was like, ‘Thank you, thank you for doing something that was actually really shocking.’
D: Oh. So actually to talk about. I was disappointed with what happened after Shed died because it was much more of a a scene between Holden and Naomi. But Holden’s not in the fucking room. In the show.
M: Yeah.
D: He is in the book. He’s already been brought back. Right? And this is a moment where he fails to deal with something in in the right way and he fails as a leader. Naomi basically has to do most of the bossing around like he—
M: Oh, you mean in the book?
D: Yeah, sorry. In the book, he fumbles.
M: Yeah, and then he totally missed it.
D: He freaks out. Naomi kind of takes over and it’s like, ‘OK, guys. We’re like, We got to seal these holes’ right?
M: Are they? There are a couple in the book?
D: Yes.
M: Why would book Naomi fuck book Holden?
D: Well, he he improves! That’s the thing. In the book, he has an arc that is a lot clearer, where he becomes self-aware and improves himself as a person.
M: Oh in the show it that makes sense because he’s like—
D: She sees him grow—
M: Yeah.
D: —and become this better man. And—
M: In the show, it makes sense where he’s like, ‘I’m not leaving without my crew.’ And like…
D: Yeah, yeah.
M: Yeah, he has to save them. And it’s like, it’s more dramatic because of because there is a hole in the wall.
D: Yeah. And it’s like a race against time and all that. No, he totally totally drops the ball on that. And that’s why it was the moment of Shed dying was perfect. And—
M: Yeah.
D: —afterwards they missed an opportunity because they’d already had had this set up with him on the bridge and everything. So by taking him out of that situation again, it changes the character arc just slightly. Just this little trajectory change where you don’t get to see him be weak as a leader and have to confront that part of himself and realize that he failed in the most important moment.
M: Well, I would much rather see that story.
D: Yeah, of course. [laughs]
M: Yeah, like, I like a redemption story. I like human frailty and all that. It’s like my biggest gripe with the James Holden in the series is so he’s just always like doing the heroic, you know, throwing the Hail Mary pass and winning the game, you know, getting the girl, like, please. [laughs]
D: Oh, and another thing, this is a little bit of a technicality. It would have been really hard to do this, but we’ve talked about the little details about Zero-G and everything in the book. They don’t get the drive back on at all for the ship after they get the drive never comes back on, so Shed’s blood is just forming a huge sphere—
M: Eew.
D: where his head, which is exactly what would happen after the arterial pressure let off. It just is just collecting instead of flopping—
M: Like a globule?
D: Yeah, instead of, instead of getting it all over his hands and stuff. Although I think maybe he does a little bit, but it’s and you don’t see that splatter, I guess, because the drive never comes back on.
M: Ew!
D: It’s a lot worse in a way.
M: Yeah, I don’t want to see that!
D: But it’s more realistic.
M: Oh my God! Can you imagine how shocking it would be to see that—
D: Oh God.
M: —just like a realistic depiction, like sometimes it’s fine to bend reality a little bit, make it more comfortable, because that would, that would be gruesome. I would—
D: I don’t know.
M: I would rather see blood splatter.
D: I think I’m used to it because I do. You remember Star Trek VI?
M: What? Which one was that?
D: That’s The Undiscovered Country with the Klingons homeworld—
M: No.
D: —in crisis, and it’s it’s there’s a whole scene where there’s an assassination aboard a Klingon vessel and their gravity is disabled and somebody comes in wearing magnetic boots and like a Federation suit. It’s a whole thing. They have to figure out who did it and they just come in and blast a bunch of people. But it was one of the first scenes in Star Trek, really that was fairly violent, where he’s just shooting straight through a bunch of these Klingons and they’re actually having a wound that’s spurting blood and it’s Klingon Blood. So it’s sort of like a pink kind of color, like it’s a pinkish-purple and there’s just globs of blood floating around everywhere and they’re like getting shot and spinning. And it’s just [makes a spraying noise]
M: Ew.
D: Little globules. And you see it forming together and it’s very lava lamp looking. Yeah, you should check it out. And then the similar thing where the gravity, when the gravity is back, you know, you get splatters everywhere, but but you got to see it, which was really cool. So as a kid, I already saw that. I was like, ‘Gah! You should have done it.’
M: Yeah, that one scene where all those proto— way, way future, but the protomolecule’s like running rampant on that ship and everyone’s dead, but they’re like maggots are still connected to the floor. So they’re just kind of standing there, floating vaguely with their like— Euuuaagghhh!
D: Yeah.
M: That was very unsettling.
D: Yeah, I like stuff like that for sure.
M: Well, I understand why they don’t necessarily like, go totally realistic with a lot.
D: Yeah. I just I hope that maybe we’ll will get maybe a movie or something afterwards that that covers some of the stuff that happens after and maybe they can get a lot more aggressive about certain elements like that.
M: [laughs] I want it X-rated.
D: Yeah. [both laugh]
M: I want full peen.
D: Get to it. Man. We might have to do one episode at a time because there’s so many little things that I just didn’t talk about. We would just skip, but I think we’re going to have to close out. And Morgan, do you have any book recommendations? You mentioned some Asimov.
M: Arthur C. Clarke’s Hammer of God, which is just about asteroids.
D: Right. Yeah, him.
M: And actually it’s worth a read, it, every chapter of the book opens with a little paragraph about an actual asteroid strike—
D: Hmm.
M: —that has happened on Earth. It mentions this asteroid that basically hit in Russia, and if it had been off by just a couple of minutes, it would have taken out St. Petersburg.
D: Are you talking about Tunguska?
M: Uh, I think. Yes, yes. And I actually have a fragment of it in my house and a little specimen box.
D: What?
M: So, yeah, because I think that’s so fucking cool.
D: Nerd.
M: And then, of course, like living in Florida, you know, like the Gulf of Mexico was formed by an asteroid.
D: Well a lot of it, yeah. [laughs] It’s interesting. He must have written this prior to them knowing about the impact from the K-Pg Boundary, the, the one that killed the dinosaurs. Because at the time, no, he wouldn’t have known that.
M: No, I think that’s been not, like known for a while. Right?
D: No, they the that’s actually—
M: K-T Boundary Cretaceous. It’s the Cretaceous Tertiary Boundary.
D: You are out of date on your science. I’m afraid to inform you.
M: When was that? When is that known.
D: It’s, it’s new now because of the just the classification systems, because they don’t think of it as the tertiary thing. So they changed it.
M: Did they?
D: Yeah.
M: Oh shit.
D: It’s KGB, it’s not. Yeah, it’s it’s different now. But, but a lot of people do still like people would still know what you’re talking about, like us and especially older scientists like, they still say it all the time because that’s how you think of it.
M: Call me old fashioned.
D: Yeah, but no, that was the first paper that was seriously putting that forward was—
M: Was the Seventies, right?
D: It was late Seventies and—
M: ’76.
D: —I think the first paper, though, was published in 1980. That was that officially, we think this happened.
M: Yeah, it was a father, son team.
D: Right, right, right.
M: Yeah.
D: But that’s when when was this book written?
[Theresa] 1993.
D: ’93?!
D: Yeah.
M: Yeah.
D: Oh my God, that’s so much later than I thought.
M: Arthur C. Clarke was very prolific.
D: I, I know he, Goddamn. [Morgan laughs] I guess it’s—
M: So, it’s a good one.
D: I got so associated with him as a young child that I guess I, I always thought of him as just being from before, the before times.
M: Oh, he was before times, now times, yeah.
D: Any time. Arthur C. Clarke is a man of all time.
M: I like to think he is. He’s always with me now in spirit. [Dan laughs] He’s my rock. [laughs]
D: So next time, I hope you’ll join us for our Thanksgiving special on, a two part special, colonialism in sci-fi.
M: Oh hell yeah.
D: And obviously, there’s quite a bit to talk about in The Expanse, but we’re going to we’re going to go elsewhere, too. And Morgan, you have you have got a couple of assignments. I think I know you don’t have a tremendous amount of time, but you said after this weekend, you don’t have to do this one right away, but you got to read Dune at some point.
M: Oh God.
D: You gotta.
M: No!
D: And you should watch the new movie.
M: Why would I do that?
D: It’s really good. They made a good Dune movie [2021] in the first few moments.
M: How long is it? How long is it?
D: I’s long. [laughs] in the first few moments, and this is part one. I realized it was going to be good because it made me feel the way that I felt when I was a child watching the other Dune movie [1984], which is a piece of garbage. It’s cinematic just, doo-doo, its, for multiple reasons. There are many great things about it. I love that movie so much, but it’s not a good movie, but this is a good movie.
M: I have to watch it.
D: It’s actually quite good. I was really impressed. There’s there’s things you can say. There’s there’s complaints to be made sure, but compared to what we’ve had before, oh my God, because Villeneuve gets it, he understands, he’s a real fan.
M: What if I don’t like it, Dan?
D: You don’t have to like Dune. But if you watch that movie and think, ‘Oh, this was a bad movie,’ I would have, we’d have to have a discussion, I think, because we’d have to start talking about our definition of art.
M: And taste.
D: It’s a good movie.
M: All right.
D: You would enjoy the movie, even if even if you’ve never read or seen Dune before.
M: But uh—
M: Is Ethan Hawke in it? [laughs]
D: I was about to mention you should probably watch Gattaca, so that [laughs] that one might be much more approachable. OK.
M: I hear Ewan McGregor’s looking for work. [laughs]
D: Oh, he’s got work.
M: I’m Dan Winburn. You can find me on Twitter, but I wouldn’t recommend it. I just talk about politics all the time. But you can find—
M: Oh, goodie.
D: You can find us on Twitter. As in us, the show @theexpansing, as well as on our website, theexpansing.com. Morgan, where can they find you if they want to, like, throw money at you and and buy art?
M: I, I mean, my art stuff is on Instagram @LuxNovaStudio and also Facebook if you still do that. If you refer to the whatever, whatever as the K-T boundary still, then you’re probably on Facebook.
D: If your last science class was in 1999, follow LuxNova Studio. [laughs]
M: And then find me on Facebook. Yes. Otherwise, I am on Instagram. It’s just my art stuff. I don’t really talk about Science Fiction. Maybe I should. Maybe I should share my love with the world.
D: Maybe you should.
M: I may start revealing things about myself.
D: Yeah, I may have to start nerding out about video games a bit more because I got I got a lot of space video games that we could talk about.
M: Oh.
D: Sure.
M: Yeah.
D: They need to make it an Expanse video game. Seriously, there, I have ideas. We’ll talk.
M: I mean, it would just be survival. It would basically be the Oregon Trail, but with space.
D: Exploration!
M: That’s the Oregon Trail in space.
D: That’s just not dying. Same thing. OK, bye!
M: Bye.
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