The cast is delightfully multi-cultural, signaling any real future attempt to set up long term habitats on Mars would have to be a truly global effort. The acting is good, if a little wooden at times. The storylines are interesting, though they tend to bow to the needs of the documentary portion of the show. And therein lies the rub. As a concept, man’s first attempt to build a long-term research station on Mars makes for a wonderful show. The problems are twofold: 1. The problems are often tidied up within a single episode, and this often happens because the other half of the episode is present day experts explaining what they see as the likely challenges on Mars. Then we cut to those same problems actually happening on Mars and how we overcome (or don’t) those issues. 2. The flow of the show is heavily interrupted by breaking from what’s happening to a bunch of scientists and politicians talking about what could happen. I get it, that’s the whole point of the show, but the problem is it doesn’t really work. A full episode of the future drama,with its fictional cast on Mars with a documentary/commentary aftershow, however, would satisfy both requirements without interrupting the flow of either aspect. This is done to popular effect by AMC, which featured aftershows for Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul and others, as well as Netflix and HBO for Stranger Things, 13 Reasons Why and Game of Thrones in varying formats. For Mars, I honestly found myself in season two simply fast forwarding through the documentary stuff and getting to the part I really cared about; the story.
How is the story? Fascinating. It’s in many ways all the best parts of Apollo 13 and The Martian, albeit with a lower budget and much faster pace. The challenges they face are interesting, and the fact that they don’t pretend the future will be utopian anytime soon, and that science, capitalism, and politics will have necessary growing pains together makes it feel very real. They also take time to slow down and break away from the plot to develop the characters some (as much as they can in six episodes a season where half an episode is devoted to documentary commentary and interviews rather than plot and characterization), though I would have liked to see more of this.
Other than the documentary/drama issue, my biggest problem with the show is that much of the documentary portion is a giant commercial for Space X. I get it, Space X’s raison d’etre appears to be using every dollar it pulls in from its commercial business to fund development of a mission to Mars. And likely any future documentary of us getting to Mars will include copious amounts of Elon Musk. But the whole thing comes off feeling like a commercial to the Cult of Musk, which turns me off pretty good. It’s one more reason they should have spent more time in the future rather than the present.
Can I recommend Mars to the casual viewer? Perhaps, if you can fast forward through the documentary parts to watch the good stuff. It’s pretty short, with fast forwarding you can get through all 12 episodes (both seasons combined) in less than six hours. They tied up the end of the second season pretty cleanly, so I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s the end of the show. I would love it if HBO or Disney+ picked up the concept and did a longer, slower version of the same thing with more focus on storytelling. This is something we want to see right now, but no one seems keen on providing it, sadly. But in the meantime, for anyone who needs a Mars fix, this is your show.
