MARS - Season 2 (2018)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2018
	Creators: André Bormanis, Mickey Fisher, Karen Janszen
	Actors: Jihae, Alberto Ammann, Clémentine Poidatz
	Country: USA
	Genre: Documentary, SF
	Conditions of visioning: July-August 2020, VOD, 10" tablet screen.
Synopsis: 2018: Experts discuss the challenges which await a permanent Human base on Mars, in particular the collaboration with private companies. 2042: terraforming progresses on the Red Planet, but living there is not easy and gets more complicated when the company Lukrum lands and start exploiting the planet's resources.
Review: I loved the first season of this series for its original mix of up-to-date Documentary, mostly interviews of people having something to say about the conquest of the solar system, and Science Fiction, not blockbuster-level but realistic and anchored in a probable Future. The second season is basically more of the same, except that this time the focus is not anymore on the motivation and means to reach the Red Planet, but the effects (on people) of staying there and even more present: the relationship between government-led agencies and private corporations. This is the heavy topic of the season, and quite timely I would say in those years when NASA has successfully sens astronauts to the International Space Station using the private company SpaceX's rockets. Of course its CEO Elon Musk is still part of the interviewees in the series. The Documentary/interviews parts are informative, but nothing you couldn't find on YouTube. The Fiction parts project the audience in the Future and make the predictions more palpable. We get to see the characters we learned to love in the first season and meet new ones. By the way I advice watching a recap like this one on YouTube if you have forgotten about the details of the first season. The Fiction is of course dramatized with coincidences and extra tension build-up, but it is still very facts-based and you can watch it like a Documentary of the future, not like pure SF using technology which doesn't make sense. I hope they keep on with a third season, maybe taking place when the population has really started to grow, and parallels made with the settling of the USA in the 1800's and at some point the will for independence. Well that comes later in the future and is already the topic of The Expanse.
Rating: 6 /10