As many reviewers have pointed out of the whole series, this episode was slow moving, a tad repetitive, talked a lot about earth sciences, and had earth-extrapolated alien life. That now said, the content still has some interesting science fiction.
I got a little hung up on the establishing analogy of the bucket of sea water - clearly no marine biologist was consulted on this analogy. The first scientist pulls a bucket of water out of the pacific ocean and says though there is life throughout the ocean "they're just not in this bucket", and likewise there's got to be life throughout our universe, it's just not in the fraction of what we've seen. Now though he's right, that you can't see any life, there absolutely is life in that bucket, in fact "There are approximately 10 million viruses in every drop of surface seawater" according to a study in 2011 by Craig A. Carlson, professor of ecology, evolution, and marine biology at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
The argument then should be we just haven't studied our explored-space/bucket well enough. This is of course a tough position because life may be hiding, rare, or in another form or scale than expected so we can't know definitively until either we find other life or we've found none in every aspect of our universe.
This brings us to the presumption that life cannot, does not exist in the vacuum of space. Is it likely, no. Is it within our understanding, no. Should that matter, no.
Speaking of alien life, it's unfortunate the show chose hive-mind, purely-intellectual beings, and chose not to elaborate on either.
Hive minds (as far as I know) all have a leader and hierarchy; even the Start Trek and the Ender series' extraterrestrial hive-minds do (by no means evidence I know).
What does an intellectual being that never dies think about if there is no physical art, no diversity in food or location, no individual thought, no thought beyond their solar system (perhaps a little presumptive on my part), and limited if any reproduction? Does it have thoughts such as the meaning of its ascended, yet-vegetative life, or designing better safeguards from threats such as solar flares, or why are we staying in this solar system, or what's the range of our hive mind, or why are we bothering to create an entire ecosystem on the second planet if we're staying in our bubbles, or can't we come up with a better name then Terra II?
Perhaps the choice was simply because glowing cubes is more alien to us moving creatures, or it was simply cheaper to design glowing cubes than to design moving creatures.
Ultimately, it's decent science fiction, but by no means is it original, fast, or focused. It's far more about life on earth and the research beyond it, than about the hypothetical extraterrestrial world from which it gets its name. Watch if nasa, astronomy, and ET web-boards are your thing, but otherwise it's just probably not worth it.
I got a little hung up on the establishing analogy of the bucket of sea water - clearly no marine biologist was consulted on this analogy. The first scientist pulls a bucket of water out of the pacific ocean and says though there is life throughout the ocean "they're just not in this bucket", and likewise there's got to be life throughout our universe, it's just not in the fraction of what we've seen. Now though he's right, that you can't see any life, there absolutely is life in that bucket, in fact "There are approximately 10 million viruses in every drop of surface seawater" according to a study in 2011 by Craig A. Carlson, professor of ecology, evolution, and marine biology at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
The argument then should be we just haven't studied our explored-space/bucket well enough. This is of course a tough position because life may be hiding, rare, or in another form or scale than expected so we can't know definitively until either we find other life or we've found none in every aspect of our universe.
This brings us to the presumption that life cannot, does not exist in the vacuum of space. Is it likely, no. Is it within our understanding, no. Should that matter, no.
Speaking of alien life, it's unfortunate the show chose hive-mind, purely-intellectual beings, and chose not to elaborate on either.
Hive minds (as far as I know) all have a leader and hierarchy; even the Start Trek and the Ender series' extraterrestrial hive-minds do (by no means evidence I know).
What does an intellectual being that never dies think about if there is no physical art, no diversity in food or location, no individual thought, no thought beyond their solar system (perhaps a little presumptive on my part), and limited if any reproduction? Does it have thoughts such as the meaning of its ascended, yet-vegetative life, or designing better safeguards from threats such as solar flares, or why are we staying in this solar system, or what's the range of our hive mind, or why are we bothering to create an entire ecosystem on the second planet if we're staying in our bubbles, or can't we come up with a better name then Terra II?
Perhaps the choice was simply because glowing cubes is more alien to us moving creatures, or it was simply cheaper to design glowing cubes than to design moving creatures.
Ultimately, it's decent science fiction, but by no means is it original, fast, or focused. It's far more about life on earth and the research beyond it, than about the hypothetical extraterrestrial world from which it gets its name. Watch if nasa, astronomy, and ET web-boards are your thing, but otherwise it's just probably not worth it.
