The First King of Mars: Series 2, Episode 3 – “A Shocking Discovery” (2008)

 

The captain is a bit more subdued today.  He’s still very much a jittery talker, needing to fill any silence with sound, but his stream-of-consciousness rambling is more introspective and less helter-skelter, more contemplative.  He tells us that, while this is the first successful mission to Mars, previous expeditions dropped their habitation modules here, even though their astronauts weren’t so lucky; as a result, automated systems have been nurturing greenhouses here for years, and ample plant life has been quietly growing in protective modules all over the planet.  So really, the captain and his crew may be the first humans on Mars, but they’re not the first earthlings.

 

He also gets to thinking about the long history of animal contribution to space voyages, from the chimps to the stick insects.  Some seem to have been doomed to failure from the first – as if one could hope a cat would deign to follow orders.  Others seem to have been inscrutably pointless; what exactly does one aim to achieve by sending a tortoise into space?

 

I suppose he’s earned himself a bit of contemplation.  The initial steps on our neighboring planet have been difficult ones, fraught with peril and not without some tragedy.  Now that the immediate stressors and dangers have put their feet up for a few minutes, he might as well have a bit of quiet time with his thoughts.

 

Better take it while he can – by episode’s ends, there’s another massive, perplexing, potentially worldview-shattering issue to be addressed.  Until tomorrow!