Thoughts
I could put up with the lack of technological details except that there’s also a lack of political details.
We’re 8 episodes in and there are no (living) named characters on Earth.
> “But the new protocols had been introduced way back in August of 2245, and we are now approaching the end of 2246. Werner himself has been on Mars for more than six months, and objectively things have only gotten worse. Back on Earth, some Omnicorp executives were starting to get concerned that the bold new direction their CEO was embarking on was taking them nowhere good.
> But Werner had two things working in his favor. First, his supporters on the board of directors were still with him. The grumbling about the new protocols back on Earth mostly came from people who had not wanted Werner to be CEO in the first place, and they were a minority.
> The majority on the board still supported him and his mission to modernize and streamline this great hulking near shipwreck they had inherited from the late Vernon Byrd. The other thing was that thanks to his centralization of control, most of the really bad stuff happening on Mars was being papered over. Earth was not really getting the whole story here.”
(Revolutions 11.8)
Compared to the same author describing the British reaction to the failed Stamp Act. (Revolutions 2.3)
> “Okay, so by the spring of 1766, the Stamp Act has been repealed, and the Declaratory Act passed.
> This formula for ending the crisis worked well for the moment, but Lord Rockingham did not long survive the solution, and in July he was dismissed as Prime Minister. In his place, George III turned to the man who had successfully steered Britain to victory during the Seven Years War, William Pitt the Elder. This was good news for the colonies, as Pitt had just come out as a full-throated supporter of American interests, but while it looked good on paper, the reality left much to be desired.
> In accepting the Prime Ministership, Pitt was also created First Earl of Chatham, taking him out of the House of Commons and plopping him into the House of Lords, where his ability to manage daily administration was much reduced. Not that it mattered anyway, Pitt was in poor health and frequently absent from London altogether. Without a strong guiding hand, the individual ministers were left to their own devices.”
I think this is a fair comparison. They’re both trying to say the same thing but the second one is actually interesting, actually compelling, because it’s giving you some level of fact. I don’t even want to say detail because they’re both pretty high level, but naming the opposition and explaining why he couldn’t do anything is so much better than not naming the opposition and explaining why they’re completely irrelevant.
And this is where I go back to the internet technology issue—you can’t just say “Earth was not really getting the whole story” with 0 explanation. You can’t just take for granted that Werner has the ability to limit the flow of information between citizens. And I don’t need it to be believable, but you can’t pretend like all information is communicated on letters that Werner is responsible for hand-delivering. And I’m not cutting anything. The explanation for why Werner’s board of directors and shareholders supported the New Protocols, despite their failures, was “Earth wasn’t getting the full story.”