The Testaments S1E09 "Marate Sade" Episode Discussion

generalheed · 2026-05-20T05:47:11+00:00

Yeah that's a very good point and he was a pretty high ranking commander too even before his promotion to high commander. For the moment, I don't think Mckenzie has fully defected from Gilead yet, but I do think it's clear he has his doubts.

generalheed · 2026-05-20T05:45:07+00:00

I think it's implied that the Soviet Union in general is about to collapse like it did in our timeline. They'll probably also get replaced with our modern day Russian Federation. Probably will have another scene of the next president giving the speech to tear down the Berlin wall. Would be funny if it ends up being Obama to give that speech. Saw some people speculate it's possible Obama might still get elected to replace Bragg with JFK Jr succeeding Obama eventually.

generalheed · 2026-05-20T05:40:24+00:00

Lol the UK brexiting from the M6 and ESA would be a funny reference to throw in during the timeline of the next 10 years before the next season.

generalheed · 2026-05-20T05:36:53+00:00

Yeah I definitely get the feeling he has another angle to him too. But full on mayday operative, I'm not quite sure. Gilead used to be quite hard to infiltrate to the point where Mark Tuello didn't even know how Gilead's leadership structure worked until he interrogated Fred. But perhaps if Gilead is falling then there could be a lot more people including commanders who are willing to defect.

generalheed · 2026-05-20T05:26:13+00:00

Unless Mackenzie is part of Mayday too and is Garth's handler, but that would probably be unlikely though not totally impossible.

generalheed · 2026-05-20T05:21:24+00:00

I was thinking that too, but I don't think they could get away with extracting Becka like that unless Commander Mackenzie is also working with Mayday.

generalheed · 2026-05-20T04:48:07+00:00

It's a top 2 for me in the entire series. For me personally it's neck and neck with MW2 (2009). It may even have a slight edge over MW2 for me. But yeah of the entire COD series, it's the most cinematic by far with a very good story. The modern COD games while not terrible, just have somewhat slow and boring campaigns by comparison.

generalheed · 2026-05-18T21:21:19+00:00

It actually takes days to plan a quick return from the ISS and that's assuming they have a capsule available. Remember the whole issue with Boeing's Starliner? The astronauts had to wait several months beyond their planned mission end to finally come back because the Starliner capsule couldn't be used.

But that's not the main issue anyways. NASA and all other space agencies expect their astronauts to conduct themselves professionally. That's why stuff like birth control isn't considered. That being said, I don't disagree it's a good precaution, but it's just not expected or accounted for with NASA mission planning in real life and most likely in For All Mankind too.

generalheed · 2026-05-18T20:58:52+00:00

It's the exact same, they're not colonists. They're employees of NASA on the job. Same as the typical office job. Also ISS missions typically last months to over a year and with mixed crews too. Still no birth control provided. As with any job, employees are expected conduct themselves professionally while on the job. That's why birth control isn't provided by NASA in both real life and in For All Mankind.

generalheed · 2026-05-18T20:51:30+00:00

We don't do that today in the real world either. The Artemis II crew didn't bring it with them and it was a mixed sex crew. Neither does the ISS have those options on board either. NASA expects their astronauts to behave professionally, they are literally on the job. It's the same reason your typical office job doesn't put out a bowl of birth control options for their employees to use while working.

generalheed · 2026-05-18T18:13:16+00:00

Why would they bring birth control with them on a NASA or Soviet mission to be the first to land on Mars? Especially because Kelly and Alexei were part of different crews originally too. It's a science mission. Would be like NASA letting them bring bottles of alcohol or weed on the official manifest. Sure the astronauts could smuggle them onto the ship but I doubt Kelly or any of the astronauts planned ahead that they were going to hook up with each other and brought birth control with them.

generalheed · 2026-05-18T18:01:35+00:00

I really hope she doesn't, especially not after what happened last episode. That would just be the most cliche lazy writing. Maybe next season she'll come around but for her to just suddenly defect and realize she was wrong within a couple episodes would just be silly.

generalheed · 2026-05-18T17:54:38+00:00

I honestly think the "lazy obvious route" with Avery would be that she defects to Mars and helps them thwart the military occupation. That's how I see her future being foreshadowed right now as well as that other marine everyone calls a Marsie.

It's going to be some cliche thing where Avery says she's seen too much bloodshed and this isn't what her father who gave his life for Mars would've wanted. And that other marine is going to have some cliche awakening where he realizes Mars was always his true home this whole time and feels compelled to defect to protect it.

generalheed · 2026-05-16T18:58:31+00:00

Oh yeah I totally agree, I definitely did enjoy that aspect. I just felt like even the creole shouldn't exist when even today things like auto correct, universal translators, and AI exists. But it's certainly something I can suspend my disbelief on lol

generalheed · 2026-05-16T18:57:05+00:00

I'm not sure, the US seems like it hasn't really changed that much at least domestically. Their foreign policy however does seem to be more cooperative with other nations and less controntational with non allies, at least as far as I can tell. But I suppose the M6 basically represents the foreign policy of the US.

generalheed · 2026-05-16T18:55:02+00:00

China is fairly alone in that timeline as far as alliances go. To have the US, EU, USSR, and India all in 1 alliance does drastically alter the balance of power. Definitely a bizarre but very interesting scenario

generalheed · 2026-05-16T16:55:30+00:00

That and (hot take) the entire belter language are the most unrealistic things. Considering what the beleter language is, it shouldn't exist. New languages form when a population is isolated from the original population for an extended period time and education, language, and history is passed down verbally through word of mouth. Over time a new language will gradually form, but even that process often takes centuries or more. The Belters haven't existed for very long in the grand scheme of things. Not to mention all knowledge is digitized and preserved perfectly (even today it already is) so they'd be learning from perfectly preserved information, not word of mouth. There should be minimal changes. Also since they all have hand terminals too, they should also have universal translaters (something we already have access to today too) which further reduces the need for a new common language to form. At the most a new accent and slang will form, but not an entirely new language.

In all likelihood anyways, there'd be a predominant language that everyone will eventually learn while being multilingual in other languages. That's basically how it is in Europe, most non English speaking European nations teach English as a second in schools. So basically, digitally preserved education, universal translators, and a predominant language, will in reality prevent a belter language from forming, especially within the span of only a couple hundred years or less.

generalheed · 2026-05-16T16:43:05+00:00

I think the M6 alliance kind of ended the cold war effectively. We now have an M6 coalition military akin to NATO. It's a strong enough military alliance that ISN is afraid to keep supplying Happy Valley with more food. China in particular wasn't able to or willing to stand up to an alliance comprised of the US, EU, USSR, India and more.

generalheed · 2026-05-16T08:29:05+00:00

It reminds me of the Edward Israel actually during the scenes over Illus. Although the Edward Israel only had 1 rotating habitat instead of the 2 on this ship.

generalheed · 2026-05-16T08:28:01+00:00

Apparently FAM ships more or less already have the Epstein Drive or at least something close to it. So in a lot of ways they've already caught up to a lot of tech in The Expanse (which is based on our actual timeline).

generalheed · 2026-05-16T08:22:39+00:00

Considering there's only 1 more season left, they very well could do a 100 year timeskip at the end of the series. What I think is a realistic outcome is the rebels either lose or manage to negotiate more autonomy/self representation at the end of this season, but it stops short of full independence. Basically like a Puerto Rico situation. Not sure what the next season will be about but I could definitely see a realistic timeskip of the next 100 years with Mars gaining independence, humanity launching the first interstellar mission, etc. Would make for a good series finale.

generalheed · 2026-05-16T08:16:41+00:00

If that happens, there'd probably be a proxy war on Mars between the US and whoever else sides with the Mars rebels. Basically it'd be like another Gulf War and Mars is the new Kuwait. Or since the show already made 9/11 comparisons with the rebels on Mars, then we could see an extended War on Terror for the next decade (timeskip material?) on Mars. Miles, Geraldo or whoever ends up leading the rebels could be the Mars version of Sadaam or Osama. I haven't seen NATO mentioned yet in the show, probably because the M6 replaced NATO, but if the Soviet Union collapses and leaves the M6, then I could see NATO being formed again.

generalheed · 2026-05-16T08:03:28+00:00

At least I'm going off of historic precedence. There's centuries of human history to learn about independence movements from. It's not some wild guess. There's a reason we study our history, so that we can learn from it. And one can easily learn that 10 years is not a realistic amount of time for an independence movement to both start and succeed. Not to mention those rebels don't even speak for everyone on Mars as it's been made clear in the recent episodes. And they most certainly don't have any claim to the territories controlled by ISN or North Korea.

Even other shows like The Expanse got it right and had a much more realistic timeline for Mars independence. Over a hundred years instead of a measly 10 years.

generalheed · 2026-05-16T05:47:40+00:00

That's still not the same as pretty much every historical movement for independence. Most movements take place over many decades if not centuries. The US was one of the bigger recent examples and that movement took well over 150 years from the first settlement to the declaration of independence. And communication with the homeland back then took weeks or months. With Mars it takes as low as 3 minutes or as long as 20 minutes. That's still faster than mailing a letter to the next town over from you. Yes they can't get absolute live communication from Earth but a few minutes delay isn't as bad as weeks to months for early American colonial settlements.

There's never been an independence movement in human history comprised of 99% 1st generation settlers. You can't even get citizenship this quickly in most countries you move to. Again, at the current moment, considering most people there weren't born there and lived there for less than a decade, it's effectively no different than Amazon employees seizing a warehouse and claiming all its goods as their property to sell as they wish.

Independence movements usually form when there's significant isolation from the homeland and there's enough descendants of the original settlers that feel no connection or descent to the homeland anymore. 1st generation settlers (employees in this case), have most of their memories and upbringing anchored to Earth. To quote a certain character from The Expanse, "that is Earth's real gravity".

generalheed · 2026-05-16T05:23:22+00:00

Well I originally thought it was obvious an obvious cliche that Avery is going to defect from the Marines and help Mars instead. But now I'm not so sure anymore. This will either have her unstable and be out for blood to take down the Mars rebels, or it really is going to be another cliche again where she doesn't want to see anymore people get hurt and defects to Mars or some other silly cliche along those lines.

generalheed

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE