Mars is a documentary and science fiction television series produced by National Geographic, which premiered on November 14, 2016, on their channel, and FX. Prior to its official air date, it was launched in a streaming format on November 1, 2016. It blends elements of real interviews with a fictional story of a group of astronauts as they land on the planet Mars.
The series is based on the 2015 book How We'll Live on Mars by Stephen Petranek. The narrative alternates between the years 2016, 2033 and 2037, using 2016 interviews to explain events unfolding in the story. The series was filmed in Budapest and Morocco.
A companion book to the series, called Mars: Our Future on the Red Planet, was published in October 2016 detailing the science behind the show. A prequel episode, called Before Mars, was produced and released conjointly with the series. It tells the fictional story of a moment in the life of one of the astronauts, and the decisions they made to get involved in science.
On January 13, 2017, National Geographic announced it was renewing the series for a second season.
Video Mars (2016 TV series)
Plot
In the year 2033, a crew of six astronauts launch from Florida on a journey to be the first people to set foot on Mars. During the descent into the Martian atmosphere, there is a malfunction with their spacecraft, the Daedalus. They land 75.3 kilometres away from their planned habitat. On Earth their progress is being monitored.
Intermixed with the story are real-life interview footage from the year 2016, of the crew, and their mission control; there are interviews with various scientists, and engineers, such as Elon Musk, Andy Weir, Robert Zubrin, and Neil deGrasse Tyson, about the difficulties that the crew might face on a journey to, and living on, Mars.
Maps Mars (2016 TV series)
Cast
The cast for the fictional part of the first season includes:
- Ben Cotton as Ben Sawyer, American mission commander and systems engineer.
- Jihae Kim as
- Hana Seung, American mission pilot and systems engineer, later mission commander, and
- Joon Seung, her twin sister and CAPCOM of mission control on Earth, later secretary-general of International Mars Science Foundation, the multi-nation organization funding the Mars expedition.
- Clémentine Poidatz as Amelie Durand, French mission physician and biochemist.
- Sammi Rotibi as Robert Foucault, Nigerian mission engineer and roboticist.
- Alberto Ammann as Javier Delgado, Spanish mission hydrologist and geochemist.
- Anamaria Marinca as Marta Kamen, Russian mission exobiologist and geologist.
- Olivier Martinez as Ed Grann, CEO of the Mars Missions Corporation, consortium of private aerospace companies preparing Mars expeditions.
- Cosima Shaw as Leslie Richardson, a logistical engineer who joins the expedition to oversee the base's expansion.
With the exception of Martinez and Cotton, all of these actors joined the second season, which started production in July 2017.
Series 1 (2016)
Episodes
Second season
The second season is still in progress. It has got a new showrunner, Dee Johnson. Stephen Cragg and Ashley Way join returning director Everardo Gout for Season 2. The second season's six-part arc jumps ahead several years into the future after the Daedalus astronauts have built a full-fledged colony called Olympus Town. Having established humankind as an interplanetary species, Mars examines the impact that humans have on the Red Planet and the consequences the planet has on us. Esai Morales, Roxy Sternberg, Gunnar Cauthery, Levi Fiehler, Evan Hall, Akbar Kurtha and Jeff Hephner have joined the Season 2 cast.
Critical reception
Mars has received mixed reviews from critics. It holds a 63% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes with an average score of 7.3/10 based on 16 reviews; the critical consensus states: "Ron Howard's direction ensures that Mars is an attractive endeavor, even if the show struggles to move smoothly between its documentary and fictional elements". On Metacritic, it has a score of 59 out of 100 based on 14 reviews, indicating "mixed or average reviews".
Accolades
See also
- Falcon 9 Flight 20. A flight of Falcon 9 that landed an orbital class booster on land for the first time in history, previewed on the final episode of Mars
- ITS launch vehicle (ITS), in development by SpaceX, formerly the Mars Colonial Transporter (MCT)
- Space Launch System (SLS), in development by the US government
- Mars Design Reference Mission, the standing NASA plans for a hypothetical crewed missions to Mars
References
External links
- Official website
- Mars on IMDb
- Mars at Rotten Tomatoes
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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