Goodnight Mars
The Dandelion Mystery
Episode 7 of Away begins with the flowers starting to die in Kwesi’s garden. Curiously though, one dandelion starts to sprout. Together with Lu, Kwesi decides to start a new experiment to get to the bottom of what’s happening. With water a constant issue and the pressing loneliness creeping in, Emma struggles to deal with the mental side of this space mission. This spills over to everyone else too, including Ram who does his best to calm the crew down. He gives a psych evaluation for Misha but both of them start coming to blows in the process. When Emma shows up, she asks them to fix the comms. But the comms are obviously fine given they’ve all been emailing.
Commander Green
Back on Earth, Matt gets involved with his team trying to decipher the water problem and fix it. Only, this is strictly off the books. While he does, Lex continues to go biking with Isaac. As they grow closer together, Matt notices them driving and pays particular attention to the bike in the boot. When they talk later that evening, Lex promises not to go biking. However, she does mention Emma’s erratic behaviour from her last email, paying specific attention to the way she signed off as “Commander Green.” Hiding his concern, Matt recommends writing back to her Mother. Eventually she does just that and opens up about how she feels about Isaac. This gets Matt thinking and he begins messaging the ship, specifically Misha, asking to check in on Emma. Misha suspects she’ll be okay but encourages Matt to keep in touch in the future. Only, in the morning Misha has soon changed his tone. He’s starting to get a little worried and he feeds this back to Matt. He speaks to Emma’s psychologist but he’s not giving anything up either. Instead, he turns the attention back to Matt and tells him to look after his own – namely Lex. No sooner has he said this then things take a turn for the worst. Lex is rushed to hospital after a motorbike accident. When the crew onboard the ship find out, they try to deal with this situation and work out how to break the news to Emma.
Mystery Solved
They don’t have to wait long though, as Emma shows up and the group immediately rally around her. However, she retreats from them. As she does, Lu figures out the water situation onboard. It turns out Emma has been using her own water supply to feed the plants. When Ram learns of this, he speaks to Emma in her cabin and cares for her. Specifically he tries to hydrate her again given she’s basically been killing herself. After sleeping for an extended period of time, Emma awakens with newfound clarity and sends an email back home. She apologises for her behaviour and promises to do better.
The Episode Review
The mission to Mars requires mental toughness. The mission to Mars would require a certain level of mental toughness and withstanding a heavy amount of isolation. A lot of the training would be these isolated bouts to acclimatize to this but here everyone is so emotional and over the top. I do appreciate this makes good TV but it also makes Emma a really questionable Commander. She’s supposed to be leading them but killing herself for the sake of crops isn’t the right way to go, regardless of how selfless an act this is. Anyway, beyond that the episode does well to continue the familial drama at the heart of this one. The focus back to Emma continues to build up the past while raising stakes for the mission at hand.
