Weakness, War, and a Different Drummer
THE EXPANSE – Season 6 Episode 4 – SPOILERS
Rosemfeld Guoliang (Kathleen Robertson)
Camina Drummer (Cara Gee) and her crew board one of the Free Navy‘s supply depots and find it unexpectedly guarded. After a battle to capture the place, there is an intense scene in which Michio (Vanessa Smythe) is forced to amputate Josep‘s arm after it is pinned under a crate. (She uses a knife, and one wonders why a laser cutter is not available, but Michio is clearly much better as a field medic than as a weapons control officer.) Drummer broadcasts a challenge: “This message is for the traitor, the coward, Marco Inaros. You hunted me and mine, and still we are here, unbent, unbroken, unbowed. And you, you are nothing.”
Monica Stuart (Anna Hopkins) and an unidentified assistant amid the body bags from the attack on Ceres
Spinning the storage depot up with equally weighted sections on the ends of a tether works to simulate gravity, but the length of the tether (and therefore he distance from the center of rotation) seems quite short. If, as described by the The Investigator in Episode 3.8, the deeper tunnels on Ceres have a nausea-inducing level of coriolis effect, then shouldn’t the same be the case for this storage depot?
Inaros (Keon Alexander) scolds Rosenfeld Guoliang (Kathleen Robertson) for failing to follow his order to space the captain of the Granicus, and she explains to him that to do so would have made him look weak. Inaros decides that having someone around who is not afraid to be honest with him is a good idea, and eventually asks Goiliang: “What do you expect of victory?” and she replies: “Governorship of Medina.” His response: “Control of the crossroads of empires? Is that all?”
Clarissa Mao (Nadine Nicole) and Jim Holden (Steven Strait).
Avasalara watches Monica Stuart‘s interview with Owain (Vieslav Krystyan), a Belter who says he only wants air, water, and freedom, and doesn’t hate anybody. Then the best exchange of the episode happens.
AVASARALA: “This makes us look weak.”
STUART: “It makes us all look weak. That’s why it works. If you want the enemy to see you as human, you have to see them as human.”
AVASARALA: “I’m not sure Belters will ever do that.”
STUART: “I’m not sure I’m talking about them.”
On Laconia, Cara (Emma Ho), whose brother has died, has gets a short talk about grieving from a surprisingly mellow Admiral Duarte (Dylan Taylor). It is interrupted by former Protogen scientist Paolo Cortazar (Carlos Gonzalez-Vio), who was last seen in conversation with Admiral Sauveterre of the Barkieth in Episode 5.10 just before that ship disappeared. Cortazar tells Duarte: “My new co-ordination protocol returned a coherent reply pattern.” and then “I think I can turn it on. I know I can.” Next we get a view of that mysterious object in orbit that the Laconian military is working on.
Cara Bisset (Emma Ho) and Laconian Admiral Winston Duarte (Dylan Taylor) have a chat about coping with grief.
Cara waits for everyone else to go away, and quietly wheels her dead brother’s body toward the clearing in the forest.
On The Pella, Filip (Jasai Chase Owens) and his co-worker Tadeo (Joe Perry) locate the torpedo from the Rocinante that failed to explode, and note that it has been disarmed. Tadeo says it was probably caused by a malfunction, but by now Filip must be reasonably sure that someone on the Rocinante saved his life. They take the torpedo on board.
The complete series is available on Blu-ray.