Mars has captured human imagination for millennia, appearing in cultural settings spanning ancient Babylonian mythology to the lyrics of David Bowie. Now, National Geographic is combining modern science with small screen fiction to offer a new take on our relationship with the red planet.
In six one-hour episodes, Mars tells the story of an imagined first crewed mission to our planetary neighbor, set a mere seventeen years in the future. The dramatic story of the crew’s journey forms the backbone of the miniseries. Interspersed throughout are “flashbacks” to the real present day, consisting of interviews with scientists and entrepreneurs whose goal it is to launch a mission to form a permanent settlement on Mars.
Despite the hype that has labeled Mars “genre-busting,” the fictional aspect of its storytelling remains firmly conventional. In the first two episodes, the crew members encounter a series of misfortunes during landing that bring them to the brink of disaster. As their odds of survival become ever bleaker, they navigate a series of close-shave scenarios with the help of a crack team of engineers and analysts back on earth. This storyline is reasonably entertaining, but apart from boasting a significantly more diverse cast, it will not strike anyone who has seen producer Ron Howard’s better-known Apollo 13 — or any myriad other space disaster movies — as particularly innovative.
Yet in spite of this, Mars brims with ambition in compelling ways. The blending of a fictional narrative with the hopes and fears of real people today who are really working to make this story come true infuses the series with a sense of tantalizing possibility. The scientists, astronauts, and industrialists interviewed all share a drive to broaden human horizons.
They also share a sense of urgency and implicit duty. More than one interviewee pointed to the fragility of life on Earth.
“Either we’re gonna become a multi-planet species and a space-faring civilization, or we’re gonna be stuck on one planet until some extinction event,” SpaceX founder Elon Musk said.
For many involved in the human endeavor to reach Mars, success is a matter of life and death. The corollary to this premise, reinforced by the characters speaking from the year 2033, is that trailblazing the colonization of space is a brave and sacrificial act.
Mars underlines this sacrificial theme by emphasizing the physical and emotional brutality of space travel. We are reminded again and again, both in the present-day interviews and the fictional story, that even a successful mission requires huge sacrifices from its members, who risk their bodies and their Earth-based relationships to make the journey.
Such a premise should open a rich landscape of philosophical issues, ethical worries, and human concerns. But two episodes in, Mars has left this terrain largely unexplored. While it recognizes the nobility of an adventurous spirit and the bravery required to undertake dangerous missions, it tends to channel the viewer’s appreciation of these attributes towards a bravado that glories in the pain and grit of human survival.
There’s nothing wrong with celebrating human ingenuity and determination, but the approach here is simplistic. It may well be true that settlements on Mars are the only hope for our species to continue, and should humanity pursue this course, acts of heroism may well be required. But going about this endeavor the right way must involve a healthy dose of self-reflection, and in this regard Mars has missed an opportunity. For one thing, despite the message that expansion to Mars is imperative for the survival of the human race, there is no discussion of the human contribution to our planet’s eventual uninhabitability. It’s possible that Earth could be hit by a sizable asteroid, or that a super volcano could erupt, but anthropogenic climate change and nuclear warfare pose far greater threats to our flourishing over the next few centuries. If we are going to switch planets in order to save ourselves, we can’t ignore the fact that we bring our destructive power with us.
Perhaps future episodes will delve into and reckon with this truth. I hold out some hope: The writers have named the fictional spaceship Daedalus, after the inventor in Greek mythology notorious for constructing wax-and-feather wings that killed his son Icarus when he flew too close to the sun. It’s tempting to read this choice of name as a nod to the idea that grand scientific endeavors often have unintended consequences.
When asked why she wants to be a part of the Daedalus mission, one of the fictional crew members responds, “Becoming an interplanetary species is our best chance to guarantee humankind’s long-term survival, and getting to be part of that is just … it’s everything.”
This seems to be the message that the creators of Mars want viewers to come away with. But in a poignant interview, real-life Charlotte Kelly, 12-year-old daughter of astronaut and erstwhile International Space Station resident Scott Kelly, has something else to say. She reflects on what her father misses while in space and what she misses when he’s gone.
“It’s the things that don’t seem important at a time, but when it comes down to them being gone, you realize they’re the most important,” she said.
That’s something humanity would do well to remember, if and when we leave Earth behind.
Jenna Freudenburg is an astronomer at The Ohio State University who studies the large-scale structure of the universe. You can follow her on Twitter at @TheJFreud.
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