1648

Speaking of Steven Strait, is it just me, or does he look particularly skinny verging on gaunt this season?

Watching episode 3 right now.

1649

Strait mentioned that he had intentionally lost some weight for the season to convey how the circumstances are slowly wearing down Holden. Gaunt is exactly what he was aiming for.

1650

I’d go against that in a friendly manner, he’s a victim of circumstance trying to keep the family together. I can’t really recall Holden’s past, but Alex was getting away from the MCRN, Naomi from the radical OPA, Amos from his gang life in Detroit, etc. He found a family that kept being bumped into the galaxy-defining big things and just kept trying to keep them together while also doing the right thing, even if that thing constantly raced ahead of him in impact and importance. He never wanted to be the axis point of the entire precursors-Mars-Earth-Belter-Laconia-OPA struggle, but once he was caught in it he did his best to remain a conscientious human being while protecting his own as best he could.

1651

Not to mention he’s supposed to have permanent health complications due to radiation exposure.

1652

Yeah, I kept expecting that connection as well.

1653

This confused me the first time it was posted but I didn’t want to look forgetful, but now I do! He was Dutchmanned when she destroyed the Free Navy, wasn’t he?

1654

IIRC, in the books he actually walks away at the Pella’s last port of call, changes his identity to Philip Nagata, and presumably goes on to live a full and normal life, because he’s never heard from again. And since the Pella goes dutchman, nobody thinks to look for him.

1655

Huh, I have no recollection of that. Good for Philip!

1656

Yeah I remembered that, but still expected him to reach out at some point in the 30 years later books. There were a lot of opportunities.

1657

I finally finished watching the 6th (and likely last) season yesterday. Sucks that they’re leaving the story there and that they spent all the time on the Laconia storyline just to drop it.

BTW I wasn’t super clear on where everyone’s ship was relative to the Ring during the final battle. Was the Medina (a station) just hanging out near it (but on “our side”-- our solar system side)? Where was the Pella during all that part where Bobbie goes all “Leeroy Jenkins” and the immediate aftermath?

And what does “getting Dutchmanned” mean?

1658

I agree it was unclear where everyone was, spatially, in the show. My recollection (from the books) is that the Medina is in the pocket universe that you reach by going through the gate. Once you’re in the pocket universe, all the other gates (as well as the one back to our solar system) are there as additional gates, but Medina – by “anchoring” near the center of the pocket universe – has a controlling position. There’s also an abandoned alien outpost in the pocket universe, and that alien outpost was where the railguns were located that Bobbie and Amos went after.

The Pella was, if memory serves, outside the gate (on the Solar System side) but I don’t recall that specifically.

Re: “Dutchmanned,” I assume that’s when the ships disappear (which happened when too much mass/energy tried to transit the gate(s) in a short period of time). In the show, that was when everything went red. The ships that "Dutchmanned’ disappeared and became “ghost ships”, so like the Flying Dutchman.

1659

Thanks for the explanation. I didn’t realize there was a pocket universe that was sort of a central station but now that I think of it they showed something like that a couple of Seasons back, where Holden goes and “talks” to the beings that apparently killed the ring builders.

Before all that, I didn’t really get the explanation of how the Free Navy had built their huge rail guns onto the surface of a ring (multiple rings?) when somehow it had been established that the rings couldn’t be touched.

1660

I think the show has an easily missed throwaway line or two to the effect that it’s the Laconians who built the defensive railgun array on the alien station, not the Free Navy, and that it wasn’t so much built into it as around it, like putting rubber bands around a ball, and mounting your railguns on the rubber as opposed to the ball.

1661

Right, the central alien station is in the middle of the ring space and is more or less completely outside of physics, in the sense that you can’t drill into it or stick to it, it’s just a sphere that is utterly impregnable. So they had to lash supports around it and mount the railguns to those supports. I didn’t remember that it was the Laconians that built the railgun network, my memory was that the Laconians pretty much flew in and flew out and peaced-out to Laconia, setting up books 7-9. The Nauvoo (Mormon colony ship) was taken over a few times and wound up being Medina, the human control presence in the ring space. Naomi figured out the power profile that would cause the Dutchman effect and used it to wipe out the Free Navy when they tried to transit.

1662

The Laconians had built the railguns, but am pretty sure the Free Navy strapped them to the station–also remember they had been scrapping a lot in the system for resources, especially titanium, for the bands.

— Alan

1663

Thanks, that makes my memory feel better. My recollection was Medina was controlled by the Free Navy, Our Gang slipped in with a massive container-based attack from the Belters (I’ve been re-reading Hyperion, took me a while to not say Ousters) took control, and Naomi overloaded the ring space to Dutchman the Free Navy.

1664

Always a worthwhile pasttime

1665

Ain’t it tho? Really remarkable books, at least through the first two where I’m at. It helps enormously that I’m older and smarter and familiar with Buddhism. The first book is really a horror novel, where Simmons excelled, and honestly even when it got fairly sci-fi he had enough Macguffins to cover the hard questions and it is holding together.

1666

You’ve got sci-fi horror, definitely, but I remember him using the tale structure to explore other sci-fi genres, like noir/cyberpunk, military sci-fi, etc. I missed that in the other books.

1667

True, we haven’t gone deep but obviously it was a sci-fi/horror retelling of The Canterbury Tales, that’s an easy one to agree on. My take on the first book is that every story, more or less, devolves into horror rather than hinging on anything sci-fi; the crucifixes were pure horror, Kassad and his eternal wars were horror, reverse-aging of Rachel was pure horror (see also: Thinner by Stephen King). Brawne Lamia is maybe not pure horror, more bringing in the poetry aspect and the TechnoCore aspect as necessary. Het Masteen was barely there, the Consul’s story wasn’t horror other than the horror of war. Who did I miss? Silenus! The poet is both horror and more poesy, I read Hyperion before I read “The Stress of Her Regard” by Powers which really got me up to speed on all the strange aspects of Keats, Byron, and Shelley. Silenus’s tale brings home the horror of hubris brought low.

Fall of Hyperion is where sci-fi kicks in a lot more, all the players we’ve been introduced to suddenly are working in a sci-fi world despite the MacGuffins, time debt and slow time transitions and whatnot, plus deeper understanding of the TechnoCore and what it wants/means. But I would also argue that overall the story is still horror because the thrust is that humans have suffered massively from hubris and reach that point where they realize that they have both sold their souls to the AIs as well as sold their bodies to the Ousters, who have suddenly changed from dismissed barbarians to existential threat.