I think that was the point of the big flashing red light on the back of his helmet.
Im guessing that the assault on and the obliteration of a police cruiser will likely bring both an immediate armed response as well as a rescue crew for any possible survivors.
Well, that is not from the first book. I watched episode 6 last night and probably 80% of that either didn’t exist in the first book or was changed so much that it might as well be considered new content. I am enjoying the show though, it just leaves me wondering what they may have changed in the future. For instance I have no idea how they can wrap the first book up in only 4 episodes. (This is just a 10 episode run, right?).
Hey, what’s with all the Don Quixote* allusions, BTW? Dulcinea, Rocinante, Windmills (all titles of episodes or names of things in the story).
BTW, the script got it wrong when it said Rocinante meant workhorse–kinda. It was a play on the word “rocín” which indeed means workhorse, but the joke is that Rocinante (Don Quixote’s “steed”) was in fact a work horse before (“antes” in Spanish).
*Amazing story if you’ve never read it–often considered the first modern novel. Read the first part, at least, and find a good translation (I read it in an annotated Spanish version so I can’t be of much help there).
Shit, I’m Spanish and I didn’t know about that word pun. I never head of the “rocín” word before, it has to be archaic at this point.
It could be the authors just really liked Don Quixote or maybe they liked lots of peyote. Or perhaps its because politically in this story everyone is tilting at windmills. My money’s on peyote.
The TV show treats them as allusions, but in the book, Holden specifically makes a Don Quixote reference. His answer to Naomi’s “What does that name even mean?” is “It means we need to go find some windmills.”
Thanks, Thierry. BTW, who else finds it weird/interesting to see Mad Men’s Lane Price (Jared Harris) as a mob boss sporting a neo-African accent (as far as I can make out).
@TurinTur
I didn’t know the word rocín either before I read Don Quixote. I’m not Spanish, but my mother is Salvadoran of criollo heritage and my dad was a college professor of Spanish and Spanish literature and wrote his dissertation on a work by Calderón de la Barca, so we spoke Spanish at home. :-)
http://i.imgur.com/qCrXaUp.jpg
Always I heard rocinante described in spanish is described like “rocin flaco”, because is a very thin animal, almost only bones and skin.
Is rocinante a belter? probably ;-)
Belter is a term used to refer to persons born in the Asteroid Belt. They are an oppressed and mistrusted working class that provide many goods for Earth and Mars through the mining and other work facilities built on the asteroids. Although they are a weaker, less organized faction, they have started to resist the powers of Earth and Mars. The Outer Planets Alliance (OPA) was formed to bring together the Belt and to further their interests.
Humans born to the Belt are taller and thinner than those on Earth and Mars because of the decreased gravity. As a result of these physical differences, Belters are dehumanized by many Earth and Mars residents because they superficially seem to be a deviation from the species norms of humans.
Too bad the name is wasted on a mars ship :P
Don Quixote is not easy to read! This is the first sentence of Don Quixote De La Mancha (1911 folio, but apparently it’s words straight out of 1600. You can see pictures of the original 1608 text here. It’s pretty surprising this is spelling from the 1600s when contrast it with English, but the vocabulary is too hard for me! I’d need a kindle version with all the definitions on top or something. Maybe my Spanish is just really bad - I remember we were reading this book in 7th grade (as a native). Can you guys understand this?
“En un lugar de la Mancha, de cuyo nombre no quiero acordarme, no ha mucho tiempo que vivía un hidalgo de los de lanza en astillero, adarga antigua, rocín flaco y galgo corredor. Una olla de algo más vaca que carnero, salpicón las más noches, duelos y quebrantos los sábados, lantejas [sic] los viernes, algún palomino de añadidura los domingos, consumían las tres partes de su hacienda.”
Lanza is easy, we know our basic spear weapon.
Astillero: a place where you store the lance.
Adarga: oval leather shield?? Who’s supposed to know this other than Spanish D&D fans?
“Una olla de algo más vaca que carnero” - this feels like a pun I don’t get. A pot more cow than meat? Maybe vaca supposed to mean empty instead of cow.
“duelos y quebrantos” is apparently some traditional egg/bacon bits fry up.
“rocin flaco” I could guess because I remembered he had a skinny nag, but I suppose that’s cheating.
Trying to read a non-annotated version of Don Quixote (even as a native speaker of Spanish) is madness–too many archaic allusions and words. I think the clause about the pot refers to the fact that what was in the pot was often meat considered to be of lower quality–cow instead of steer. The whole intent of that first paragraph is to point out that Don Quixote, the aging if not downright old petty aristocrat (hidalgo-from “hijo de algo” literally “son of something”) didn’t have much of an estate, that it had seriously declined from how it had been in previous generations.
Also, 7th grade is much too young to try to read that. In another thread someone talked about having to read Great Expectations in 6th grade–NUTS. 16 or 17 is the earliest one should be reading stuff with that much nuance. I myself read it in grad school, and it was awesome then (again, a well-annotated version).
It really is interesting that Spanish spelling was way more regularized even by the end of the 16th Century than that of English. Probably because it’s much more adapted to the Latin alphabet, given its origin in Romance which in turn came from Vulgar Latin.
He sounds like an Afrikaner.
That character doesn’t exist in the book.
Anderson Dawes? He’s certainly a different character in the book, but he still plays a big part.
In the book, he’s the guy that puts pressure on Miller’s captain to officially pull him off the Julie Mao case.
I haven’t heard all that much Afrikaner speech in English, but to me it sounds like the actor is doing something beyond that.
He sort of exists in the book, he’s just not nearly as important/fleshed out.
As for how are they going to wrap everything up? Based on the last episode I would say they clearly are not going to.
Overall I like it and think it’s a good adaptation. I’m just confused by a lot of their choices, mostly in regards to the use of Avasarala. It just seems like her segments don’t add much. But, it did help supply the Holden backstory which is pretty useful for establishing his character.
Also, I still don’t understand that Jonathan Banks cameo. Is he a huge fan of the series or something and wanted to be in a scene?
I think she is just in the story to add some drama and background in the mars vs Earth vs Belters vs Mars story. Also to show how this seems to be an unknown group doing this (which is why we are getting so much Andersen Dawes as well).
Can we avoid introducing book spoilers into this thread, and just leave it as a discussion of the TV show, for those of us who don’t want to have future events revealed or foreshadowed?
I don’t know that having read the books helps much with this series. I am not sure what above actually would qualify as a book spoiler since I can’t think of a significant character who hasn’t been changed from the book. Although I will admit at least one seems to be getting closer.
She’s the mouthpiece for Earths point of view in the Earth Mars Belter political byplay. She’s more than that in the books and I expect her role will expand in the future but for now she basically a plot setter.
Desslock, I havent seen anyone blowing out major plot points, just filling in some character background but I do hope people keep any major spoilers in tags for those who havent read the books yet. While it doesnt follow the books exactly, most of the basics are there and Im sure that the big events to come will likely be covered and those of us who have read the books will want to discuss the similarities and or divergences.