That was…mostly better than expected, actually.
After such a tour de force last week, this episode could not hope to sustain the same kind of excitement, and the folks making the show seem to have been smart enough to see that, and keep a nice and somewhat relaxed pace to most of this. Maybe that's what the Epstein…

I'm a little confused, he was pulling about 9G at the time, which I think is still within what a well-designed fighter aircraft is supposed to pull with its pilot still able to control the maneuver, so the whole arm being thrown back stuff seemed a little excessive.
Actually it's a pet peeve with the ergonomic design…

Well, the old aphorism is that war is "long periods of boredom punctuated by bursts of frantioc activity", so presumably they're going with that for now.
But the show used the Marines to represent Mars, and seeing how trained, focused (and itching to go) they are lent additional weight to everything else in the season:…

Flash forward two years, The Expanse casts Kunal Nayyar to play Avasarala's grownup son.

They actually reference that. Miller asks why he's still got gravity even though the rotation has stopped, and Holden answers that it's probably something done by the protomolecule which -as the scientist said- "will break all the rules". And a little later Miller says that he doesn't feel any acceleration, even…

You could assume that Miller and Julie (and the protomolecule) deal with that after the two of them hug and the camera cuts away- I think that's why it never occured to me as a question.
But there was a sort of light splurging sound and some material discharge when Miller put Julie's hand on the panel. Let's not…

Someone's been watching Jodorowsky's Dune.

I keep expecting someone will make some obvious Trek joke here, but apparently we're all too classy for that.

Well, this could be projecting, but the Earth/Mars relation does seem to reflect the Cold War a fair bit. Especially the fact that both sides are too hesitant to actually let the balloon go up -because the consequences of defeat are too dire to be offset by the reward of victory as long as there is an element of risk-…

(slaps forehead)
Can't believe I hadn't made the connection between the Roci and Miller putting on a Quixotic mantle. Well spotted!

Yeah, but it meant that they resolved the two big story arcs sort of back-to-back within that season, and it actually worked beautifully- hopefully the folks making this series will pull something similar off.

Well, a whole lot of the original Trek still holds up, fifty years on. Enough for it to be king of the hill, anyway.

Oh, I absolutely agree with you on technobabble. It's just that…well…I'm all worked up to find out how the damn thing managed to move a whole asteroid, for one thing. It is such an intriguing mystery! All the Rocinante detected was heat, but apparently no exhaust, and the package tour included artificial gravity as…

Hmmm…the protomolecule's blue glow as a visual nod to the Cherenkov effect? Fascinating!

Oh man, that movie rocked! And what an ending.

Didn't the computer at some point flash "LEVEL: TOXIC" at Alex when they were chasing Eros?

Well, the nukes' detonation is still under Earth control, and they do show up on the radar throughout. I bet there's someone (probably a junior lieutenant!) whose job is to keep count of the blips.

Yes, yes!
Another great thing about this episode's writing, it was so clear that even with everything going on everybody kept their mind in problem-solving mode. You could see Miller figuring things out, coming up with a new plan, and you could see Holden actually think it over. It didn't feel like a leap of faith, it…

Chest pouch! Chest pouch!

That was pretty damn good!
I loved how they just went from Mao and Miller to the news footage of Eros headed Venus-way, they really know how work with restraint. Seeing Miller's story finish mid-season reminded me of the fourth season of Babylon 5, where they finished one big intergalactic story with plenty of episodes…