Forty three minutes of excellent science fiction. This episode is one long battle between the Martian space navy flagship Donnager and an armada of six unknown ships (with a few scenes where we cut away to the asteroid belt and Earth, but I'm going to focus on the battle here).
The battle begins with Martian arrogance that they have everything under control. As the episode and the battle progresses, that arrogance erodes as it increasingly becomes obvious that the Donnager is outmatched. She manages to destroy 4 of the 6 enemy ships, but by that point she's crippled. The remaining 2 ships start a boarding action against the now-toothless flagship. During the boarding action, we find out that these are Humans aboard these strange ships, but not much more than that.
After ensuring that the remaining survivors of the Canterbury are safely away in the Donnager's armed shuttle Hitachi, the crippled flagship self-destructs. It's unclear if the explosion takes out the remaining enemy ships.
During all this, Martian officer Lopez reveals that they were dispatched to investigate a loss of communications with their base on Saturn's moon Phoebe. The Donnager found the base destroyed, everyone was dead, apparently an accident until they found that the computers on the base had been purposely smashed. The Donnager was on its way back to Mars when it picked up the distress call from the Canterbury survivors.
There's also some potentially dark foreshadowing with respect to the mention of asteroid impacts and the extinction of the dinosaurs. There's also the suggestion that a faction of belters might be responsible for the strange enemy ships.
We are faced with many questions: How will Mars respond to losing its flagship? Might they blame Earth? Earth has deployed the Orinoco to the area. Will they find the Donnager's shuttle? Will they be ambushed like their Martian counterpart? Why was Martian base on Saturn's moon Phoebe destroyed?
The battle begins with Martian arrogance that they have everything under control. As the episode and the battle progresses, that arrogance erodes as it increasingly becomes obvious that the Donnager is outmatched. She manages to destroy 4 of the 6 enemy ships, but by that point she's crippled. The remaining 2 ships start a boarding action against the now-toothless flagship. During the boarding action, we find out that these are Humans aboard these strange ships, but not much more than that.
After ensuring that the remaining survivors of the Canterbury are safely away in the Donnager's armed shuttle Hitachi, the crippled flagship self-destructs. It's unclear if the explosion takes out the remaining enemy ships.
During all this, Martian officer Lopez reveals that they were dispatched to investigate a loss of communications with their base on Saturn's moon Phoebe. The Donnager found the base destroyed, everyone was dead, apparently an accident until they found that the computers on the base had been purposely smashed. The Donnager was on its way back to Mars when it picked up the distress call from the Canterbury survivors.
There's also some potentially dark foreshadowing with respect to the mention of asteroid impacts and the extinction of the dinosaurs. There's also the suggestion that a faction of belters might be responsible for the strange enemy ships.
We are faced with many questions: How will Mars respond to losing its flagship? Might they blame Earth? Earth has deployed the Orinoco to the area. Will they find the Donnager's shuttle? Will they be ambushed like their Martian counterpart? Why was Martian base on Saturn's moon Phoebe destroyed?