Well, previously it was zero fucks. There was a recent interview where Naren Shankar mentioned that partway through the production of season 2, they got a memo from SyFy saying "we changed our Standards & Practices document, you can say fuck now." So maybe they'll be adding in a few more every week.

I didn't mind the old haircut, in that it didn't look any dumber to me than 80% of the things people do with their hair now or in any past era. I did get a kick out of the new one because, if they're implying that a full-on Mohawk is more of a pure Belter style (in keeping with Miller's recent ethnic solidarity),…

I'm pretty sure Alex mentioned something in season 1 about his Martian Navy career being not particularly eventful, like basically he just ran some transport missions. Hence his goofy excitement at finally getting to fly a gunship in combat. Mars is very militaristic but they haven't really been in a shooting war for…

Avasarala's behavior there isn't really inconsistent for her, though; even though she's always taken a hard line on the OPA, Errinwright was always more hawkish on Mars than she was. Remember the season 1 storyline where Mars was being accused of supplying the stealth ships, and Chrisjen used her friendship with the…

There's actually a pretty funny Blade Runner reference in "The Vital Abyss" (the novella that fills in the backstory for the Protogen scientists). Dresden is interviewing Cortazar and measuring his response to various anxiety-provoking questions, as a baseline before trying out the anti-empathy procedure on him. At…

Same character on the show, two characters in the books. She's credited as Drummer (though I don't think anyone said her name) but seems to be getting some of Sam's role.

Hmm… OK I had to go look stuff up, which I should've done in the first place, my memory sucks (no idea why I said 2012, Cassini was 2004). As far as I can tell it's all guesswork based on 1. Phoebe looks like it has a lot of dark-ish rocky material in it and 2. they think that's what Kuiper Belt objects tend to be…

Also fun-ish fact: the idea Dresden briefly mentioned about Phoebe, that the whole little moon was originally an "extrasolar object", is an exaggeration of a real theory— that it originally formed in the Kuiper Belt (edge of the solar system, full of comet-like crap) and then was captured by Saturn's gravity. This was…

Not that it necessarily matters, but in the only flashback we get of book-Dresden (Cortazar's job interview in "The Vital Abyss"), he says he's had the procedure himself, as a way of convincing potential employees that it's no problem. Whether he's telling the truth, who knows.

"The gorgeous imagery of the credits": I agree, the (full) credit sequence deserves a lot of love. It doesn't just look nifty, it's really well edited and gives you a lot of nonverbal information about what this is all about— like the time lapse from early NYC to future NYC (with seawalls), then pan up from there to…

"Holden is forced by the script to pose it solely as a moral issue"

Yeah, but everyone is cool with it, until the espresso machine shows up.

Personally I liked "The Churn" and "The Vital Abyss" a lot; was less crazy about "Gods of Risk" even though it was nice to see some more of Bobbie and Mars. The shorter stories are pretty quick sketches but I liked them (whoa, I see now there's a 3rd one I hadn't seen yet… and here it is online).

I was kind of wondering why they had made Bobbie so much more gung-ho at the start, but after this episode I think I see it. They're building up how much she wants to see action, and how prepared she is to fight Earthers, and then she gets posted to what she thinks is a stupid boring assignment… and it's Ganymede,…

I don't see much point in responding to this except that I do kind of wonder why "middle aged Italian man" is supposed to be automatically a bad thing.

Yeah, I think Alex was just really upset to see that their victory was such a close call and that it didn't mean he had developed great battle skills, so the next time something like this happened it could still go as badly as the simulations.

I agree, "The Vital Abyss" is some of their best writing. I remember it a little differently though: I thought that that first temporary sociopath-izing was voluntary too, like they told him "Here, we'll give you a taste of this and you tell us if you want to sign up and make it permanent." And for someone who'd had a…

Spoiler: nothing happens from this point on. The next six books are just everyone hanging out drinking coffee. Everything is fine.

Social_llama's last paragraph could be considered a minor spoiler, I guess, if the show hasn't actually spelled that part out yet - it was addressed more directly in the book (where the scientists weren't allowed to have any sharp kitchenware, for the same reason). But you can sort of see it in the way they all…

Rome has a shitload of street cats but unfortunately most people don't have any interest in taking care of them (even to get them neutered), it just comes down to a handful of volunteers who try to do it all. On the plus side, the cats do seem to enjoy climbing around on ancient ruins.