A problem with the supply ship jeopardises the Atlas’ mission and calls into question Emma’s commitment to landing on Mars.

Episode by episode, it’s starting to feel as if Atlas’ mission to land on Mars just isn’t meant to be. There hardly seems to be a day that goes by without some new, mission-threatening event occurring, and this week it’s the supply ship sent ahead of them – Pegasus – that’s causing the issues.

I’ll give them this – the tension in the scenes as the whole world is watching live footage from mission control and the Pegasus goes through the expected duration of comms blackout as it goes through the atmosphere and then seconds drag into minutes with no further sign is tangible. It’s the sort of scene that wouldn’t have looked out of place in a much better, more consistent series based on the same ideas. Kind of a shame that the episode then reverts to its normal nonsense.

First there’s Matt’s brilliant idea to save the crew from starving to death waiting five months for the backup supply ship to arrive. Let’s forego the fact he literally doddles it on someone’s tablet because apparently a room full of literal rocket scientists couldn’t grasp his idea without colourful pictures and go straight to the real egregiousness – the simple fact that what he proposes makes no sense in terms of the time it supposedly saves because the script just waves its hand vaguely and asserts that it does without ever bothering to cover why. Worse, the script then makes the further leap that if the plan is undertaken, the only logical next step is for the crew to skip Mars which would be mere weeks’ worth of travel away and just spend another year or more coming home again.

Of course this is all done so we can set up the real conflict of the episode – Lu and the others’ memory of their Commander flaking out and saying she just wanted to go home (which inexplicably this ex-military space programme commander thinks is excused by the fact she was massively dehydrated by her own fault). When Emma agrees that Ground Control’s plan is the only way forward, the others start to question whether it really is, or whether Emma’s heart has just never been in it.

This then precipitates an actual mutiny (albeit not the fun, action-packed kind) when Lu comes up with a bright idea to make absolutely sure that the Pegasus is definitely blown up. Except it’s not really absolutely sure, more a sort of rough indicator that it might possibly have not blown up and may actually be waiting for them all down there. The absolute guff that is then spouted by Lu in an attempt to bring Emma round is the sort of thing that might go over really well in a coming-of-age movie about some bullied kids learning to have more faith in themselves but which has no place coming from a trained astronaut, much less one who’s been shown multiple times to value intellect over emotion.

Back on Earth, we seem to have forgotten Lex had a serious accident on a motorbike (no scars, no sign of any lasting damage) even though we are still tangentially referring to it. Apparently because she was fine, Matt is perfectly cool with Isaac now, Mel doesn’t seem all that fussed – in fact the only person who feels bad is Isaac, which is fine because having told Lex this, she doesn’t seem remotely bothered. But she does make a fairly big decision for absolutely no reason I can discern, to which she fears her father will object for reasons which absolutely escape me, but at least it means Emma can tell her she’s very brave, apparently.

Verdict: Beyond parody at this point. I genuinely wonder how many actually knowledgeable space-program people are watching this through their fingers and wincing in horror. 4/10

Greg D. Smith