Hard to get too much colder than Ganymede .

So I'm hoping the fiasco at Ganymede is shown in full during a PTSD flashback at some point.

Remember that this season goes for 13 episodes, not 10. They might be trying to squeeze all of Caliban's War in the remainder of this season, which would be 8 episodes worth (and it might be feasible since they moved a few pieces of Caliban's War into Season 1).

If you read the books, of course, you'd know…

…they used it to highlight the powerful impact a new technology can have on the course of history. Which the protomolecule just might be…

That's a fair point.

Yeah, not sure why they haven't listed the last three episodes yet. Not sure why.

It's lasted longer than FIREFLY, at any rate (23 episodes in the can). So there's that, at least.

Excellent points, all.

Wow. Yikes.

Geez, where's this hostility coming from?

I concede that the show got off to a slow start. I struggled staying with it in the first few episodes. The comparisons to Battlestar Galactica didn't help - BSG hit the ground running at light speed with "33" and sustained it through the first season.

The Mote in God's Eye - you're right, that's one of the few hard sci-fi works to really deal with acceleration.

Right. We'd have lost a lot in the attempt to compress all of that into ten episodes. Miller's character was really only coming alive (despite Thomas Jane's best efforts) toward the end of Season 1. His apparent ending in this week's episode wound up having greater payoff as a result.

If it is indeed the end…

Plus, just having all the storylines focused together on a single goal was a nice change of pace.

It did, but that was with a global Total Fertility Rate in the 4-7 range for most of that period - which is insanely higher than you find anywhere in the developed world today (and even higher than the Baby Boom). And Mars would be, right out of the gate, a developed society.

Right - because Mariner Valley was mostly settled by Texans, and people from South Asia - and for some reason, the Texan accent kinda spread to most of them,

I'm still trying to figure out how you could grow a human population to 3 billion on Mars in just two centuries. Even with an insane fertility rate.

If you read Book 2….well, let's just say that this question may get addressed as the show progresses, if it tracks them closely enough.