In the course of the episode, “Remember the Cant” (short for Canterbury, the ice freighter destroyed in episode 1) becomes a battle cry among the “Belters.” This episode left me a bit flat from the effort to absorb all the diverse elements being introduced. Having a large number of micro-plots helps the show feel more real. There are limits to the usefulness of this device, and the episode fired a barrage of them. I didn’t feel vested, either in the individuals or story lines. It is as though the number of episodes for the season got out of hand, and several of them were jammed together to create this one. An alternate possibility stems from the series being based on the trilogy of the same title. All of the sub-plots do fit together and may be necessary for the overall story arc to function. There is not much more to say without getting into spoilers. I would stick around for the next episode, if for no other reason than to see what they do with all of it.
//Spoilers Follow//
The crew on the shuttle/lifeboat watch missiles from an unknown vessel impact their ship, the Canterbury. They barely survive when debris destroys their communications and most of their oxygen supply. Communications are restored just as a vessel shows up to rescue them. That rescue belongs to the Martian navy, the very forces they are certain destroyed their ship. As the ship approaches them, James Holden broadcasts in the blind what they think happened, and that if they don’t return, the Martian navy killed them.
On Ceres, Detective Miller finds the missing heiress shipped out on the derelict ship the Canterbury was trying to help when it was destroyed. He also determines that she was with the OPA, an extremist group bent on independence for the Belt. His boss orders him to drop the search, which he ignores. Meanwhile, the blind communication from Holden gets to Ceres, and is soon playing non-stop on every video screen in the Medina, where the lower class people live. Remember the Cant, or Canterbury, soon becomes a war cry, especially since water availability on Ceres is dependent on the ice freighters bringing it.
Mars says it did not destroy the ship, and knows nothing about the situation. On Earth, after initially thinking that Mars was stirring things up on Ceres to give them an excuse to take over militarily, a high government official gets information that Mars probably didn’t do it. Not only that, there appears to be something out there not belonging to any of the parties they know about.
At the same time, the Martian navy interrogates the crew, trying to turn them on one another in order to pry more information from them. They succeed in getting the crew to fight among themselves. Attempting to stop it, Holden agrees to speak to the ship’s captain. The captain wants him to broadcast a full retraction of his original story.
Finding out whether he agrees, as well as the nature of the incoming unknown vessel, will no doubt keep things moving for a while. For now, I’m writing horseback.
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