ExoSquad S1E3: "Hidden Terrors"

Back to ExoSquad. And probably back to me being very uncomfortable at the politics being put from and center, but things can still hopefully still turn around, at least somewhat. Where we left off, Ex-Officer Acab was seething at the existence of neosapiens diplomats in his city, Phaeton was being a lovable dork, and the ExoFleet was charging ass-first into a moon bristling with antiship weapons. Let's see what happens next!


The fleet creeps up on Tethys...wait, they just said Enceladus! Which moon are we attacking, again? Okay, they refer to it as Tethys again shortly afterward, so that was probably just a script slipup. Anyway! The fleet starts a long ranged bombardment of the moon's surface over Zembacca's base. His (minimal) surface facilities get destroyed almost immediately. A few laser turrets feebly return fire, but get obliterated before they can do any real damage. Most of these turrets seem to be automated, but a couple of them have pirate operators who quickly give up and flee below the surface as their weapons get destroyed.

In his sanctum deep below the ice, Zembacca receives damage reports. His underlings are getting pretty anxious, but he assures them that they need to just hold out a little bit longer before deploying the big guns.

He seems to be betting that the ExoFleet will move in closer to use precision weapons and/or deploy ground forces, rather than just patiently blasting their way into his base from long range. It's a gamble, but probably his only real path to victory at this point, and Zembacca has been pretty consistently characterized as a high-risk-high-reward sort of commander.

We then jump over to the Resolute's bridge, where Admiral Winfield is coming to the conclusion that charging in with the capital ships was the right decision after all. The limp pirate response so far seems to suggest that they've caught them during their preparations to evacuate the base, with most of their soldiers and hardware already out of position. So, time to close in to geosynchronous orbit and start landing troops.

God, these poor dumb schmucks lol.

Able Squad (along with other E-frame squads? Maybe? They've been seen in the background here and there, but the other E-frame groups are largely being ignored by the narrative, even though we see that there are many other mech hangars even on just the Resolute itself) is sent to provide close air support for the infantry. Guard the drop-pods until they reach the surface, and then suppress the pirate defenders to cover their advance to the deep bunker's entrance.

Marsh expected this, and had instructed Able Squad to be ready for the order when it came. Takagi, who is still having some minor neurological issues in the wake of that last battle, is having to sit this one out.

Takagi helps the others get their e-frames ready, but is morosely forced to stay back on the ship as they cast out.

And, of course, as the capital ships close into orbit and deploy the drop pods and e-frames, Zembacca raises his heavy anti-ship missile launchers out of the deep ice trenches and starts blowing them out of the sky. At this range, their ExoFleet's point defences are virtually useless.

The infantry and E-frames reach the Tethyn surface with little issue, since the pirates' own point defence weapons were wiped out in the initial bombardment. But that's small comfort for those soldiers when they can see their ships exploding into chunks of smoking degree in the sky over their heads.

Also, for some reason Burns is just landing with the troops in what looks like heavy infantry armor instead of flying her e-frame. Why? Maybe she and Takagi's squad roles are interdependent or something, idk.

Or, no, she was flying alongside the others a moment ago. I guess her exoframe is just one fifth the size of the others' and I just didn't notice until now? I guess?

The e-frames and infantry try to destroy those missile batteries, but the pirates have deployed some infantry and IFV's to guard them, so it's easier said than done. The e-frames destroy the IFV's pretty easily, and the infantry outnumber their pirate counterparts enough to continue advancing once that's done, but it still takes them a little while. And in that little while, the missile batteries eat the fleet alive.

...

As an aside: while I do like this show's main fight theme, it's already getting badly overused. It's catchy, but it's also short, so during extended battle scenes like this it just loops over and over until it gets grating. This isn't helped by the fact that it also plays over the show's intro, so you'll have already had it played at you for a while before each episode begins.

I've liked every song this show has used so far, but it seems to have precious few of them to pick from.

...

The Resolute itself starts getting hammered once its screening frigates go down, and once it takes enough missile hits its Starfleet OSHA Approved computer consoles start exploding in people's faces with lethal force.

Star Trek at least usually has the sense to have other random parts of the bridge spark and smoke and explode when this happens. In ExoSquad though, it's literally just the consoles. Beautiful.

Admiral Winfield is blown halfway across the bridge and burned horribly by his computer monitor's abrupt decision to relay the pirate explosives directly into his face. Captain Marcus calls over the medics, but at least for now the fleet is down its flag officer along with many of its ships. Which, well...good. I'm not rooting for the pirates exactly (even if I like Zembacca as an antagonist), but I am absolutely rooting against the ExoFleet and its masters.

To remind me of why that is, the show then cuts to an industrial park just outside the Martian capital, where Phaeton's finance minister has called him over for a clandestine meeting.

Phaeton greets Minister Geedis cordially, but asks why he asked to meet with him in secret out in this empty factory instead of coming to his office like normal. Geedis apologizes for the irregularity, but explains that this situation is both highly sensitive and needs to be seen to be believed.

Escorting Phaeton into the facility, Geedis explains that the exorbitant new industrial budget seems to have largely just vanished into the ether. Huge sums were allocated to buy new equipment for this production facility and several others, and for materials to fuel their use, but there isn't a single new assembler or conveyor belt to be seen. Someone has apparently infiltrated their budgetary bureaucracy and fleeced the damned planet right when Earth and Venus were relying on them for industrial support. So, he's telling Phaeton all of this before informing the rest of the government so that he isn't blindsided when it hits the news. He's also offering his resignation.

Phaeton assures Geedis that no resignation will be necessary; he's already aware of the situation, and indeed is responsible for it. Oh, let me guess, he somehow built a whole complex of secret war factories and training facilities overnight without anyone noticing. That's totally going to be it, isn't it.

Phaeton brings Geedis to an inconspicuous looking corner of the factory floor and presses a button, and a hidden elevator lowers them down into the secret war factory and training facility under their feet.

...maybe I was giving Zembacca too much credit for his ability to thwart the terran intelligence agencies. It evidently is a very difficult task to fail at lol. Anyway, we also now know the real reason that Geedis had Phaeton come out to this factory; it was to save the writers and directors from having to come up with a good transitional scene of Phaeton bringing him out here to show it to the audience. How very considerate of you, Geedis, making everyone's jobs easier like that.

I know, I know, this kind of silliness is all par for the course for SatAm cartoons. But most SatAm cartoons didn't try to be this geopolitical, at least on any kind of regular basis. So, it calls a lot more attention to itself here.

Also...with how many people Phaeton must have had in the know in order to build all this shit, plus the soldiers to actually use all the weapons he's making, why the hell would he have NOT told his finance minister? You could say it's because he didn't think he could trust him with that knowledge, but in that case he wouldn't be showing it to him now either.

So, they descend into the bunker full of shiny new E-frames and heavy weapon platforms. Geedis asks Phaeton what the fuck, and Phaeton explains that this is the only way to actualize the destiny of the neosapiens. Nothing they do will ever earn the terrans' respect, or even tolerance. The terrans will just keep Mars as a colony in all but name forever unless neosapiens have access to violence, and said violence will have to be overwhelming in order to not just bring down brutal retaliation for their defiance.

Phaeton's argument is supported by...well...by literally everything we've seen in the show thus far. He's just right. No caveats.

Geedis protests that the neosapiens can't handle another war, not after the horrors they experienced in the previous one. Isn't this just going to throw away all the progress they've made so far? Phaeton dismisses these arguments contemptuously. They never stopped being at war, in Phaeton's estimation. The current regime of sanctions and restrictions placed on Mars basically amount to the neosapiens being slaves on their own planet, and slaves and masters are necessarily in a state of war. The "progress" that they made after the last rebellion was a compromise that the neosapiens literally made at gunpoint, under threat of genocidal orbital bombardment. And it wasn't really a compromise at all so much as a more dignified surrender.

...and, really. Going by the newscast we saw back in the pilot? Even the common terran street knows that this is the reality, and they're not even trying to hide it. The conventional wisdom appears to be that the neosapiens were effectively resubjugated after the war. I'd inferred that the history since then must have complicated things somewhat, but no, apparently not. They've just had Mars itself turned into a giant sweatshop with space as its walls, and the recognition of its unarmed, import-dependent Commonwealth government is little more than window dressing. The damned terran news still considers them to be enslaved, and half the terran population seems to still be seething with rage over the minimal concessions made to them half a century later. Even terrans whose parents were likely children at the time.

And, um. I'm probably sounding like a broken record at this point, but when on-duty terran soldiers land their high-end heavily armed mechs on your soil, unannounced, just to stomp around on your historical sites and vocally fantasize about reconquering them? That's when you can take it as a given that things are only going to get WORSE for you from here if the status quo is allowed to fester along its current trajectory.

So, yeah. Phaeton is just right. You can play villain music and frame his face half-shadowed in a scary upward angle all you want (and trust me, the show isn't holding back with that), but he hasn't spoken a single untrue word.

Now, what do you think the chances are that he's going to do something pointlessly, puppy-kickingly evil by the end of the next episode? I'm calling it 90%, with the qualifier that the chances rise to 99% in the one afterward. The show is aware that it can't refute Phaeton's message, given the world that it's established, so instead it will just refute the messenger and hope the audience doesn't catch it. Which is a pretty sure bet, given that the intended audience of this show was the 8-13 age range.

...

I will say: if the show DOESN'T have Phaeton go full villain, or if it counterbalances him with more measured neosapiens revolutionaries, then I'll admit to having badly misjudged it. Everything I've seen up to now makes me doubt it will do that, but if it does then I'll eat crow.

...

For now, we return to the battle of Tethys. The ground forces manage to reach the pirates' missile batteries and start taking them out to save whatever's left of the fleet. Somehow, Burns manages to crash her e-frame INTO one of the damned batteries, destroying it but also disabling her frame. She's forced to eject, and...

...wait a second, how big is her e-frame supposed to be again?

Okay. I'm just going to infer that that earlier shot showing her next to the infantry was *really* badly scaled. Take a look:

It's not just the scale, either; she's actually off-model in a way that goes along with it. Her head is three times the size it should be in relation to her own suit. Like, she's supposed to be wearing a helmet inside of that helmet, but there visibly isn't any room for that.

This is a much bigger visual fuckup than I'd expect, given the general high quality of this show's art and animation. Weird.

Okay, well, moving on.

The surviving pirates flee underground now that there are no more missile batteries left to defend. The rest of Abel Squad catches up to where Burns crashed into the battery, and find her battered e-frame empty and her nowhere in sight. It appears that the pirates captured her before retreating into the ice tunnels. Unusual; as Marcala points out, the pirates don't usually take prisoners.

I actually forgot Marcala existed up until now. The battle scenes have really avoided showing him, most of the time. Which is weird, because this time Abel Squad was down a man from the outset, so you'd think now would be the time for him to get more attention in battle.

I'm not going to comment about how this relates to the show's politics until a bit later, when I've seen more. For now, it's just a data point.


And, I'm at two and a half thousand words and only halfway through the episode. As per my usual policy, I'll be splitting this one.