Aidonian's blog

I recently watched the entire first season of the kdrama The Silent Sea, that you can also watch on Netflix. The plot is: a group of Korean astronauts are send to their abondaned lunar base, where an accident 5 years before killed all inside. This was due to a radiationleak, but when the astronauts arrive, they find no radiation. Meanwhile the annual rainfall has been plummeting each year making water worth more than gold and its been rationed. No explanation is really given as to why the annual raindrop is falling each year. We follow a couple of astronauts Captain Han and Dr Song. Each character is driven by their own reasons to be on the mission. The fact that Dr Song had a sister there (which was revealed early on) is not something we haven’t seen before. Captain Han who does it so that he can get bumped up on the rationing of water for his daugter is also not new. The difference is that they feel and act human. And here is where kdrama succeed far better at it than most western shows do. They aren’t cliche characters or cardboard characters that we have seen before. They act and feel human. The decisions they make feel real. I will try to stay away from spoilers.

5 years before the show start, the Korean lunar base Bahae was struck with a tragedy where radio-activity ruined the base for safe use. So when the astronauts crashland, they have to make way to the stattion and realise that there is no radiation at all. From there you get the sense that things are not what they appear to be. Soon they discover that they are not alone on the station.

I loved the show from beginning to end. The effects was very well done. The moonscape was really beautiful. The sets were well done, music also. They nailed it. I would recommend it watching if you are a fan of sci-fi shows and kdrama’s.

Side-note: when viewing that lunar station i couldn’t stop to wonder how South-Korea would have been able to build something like that. The shuttles used are today not used. The successor for the space shuttle has yet to be deployed. I doubt that one country would be able to build a station like that for research only. It wouldn’t be economically viable to do so. It would bankrupt a country. The USSR had build a fleet of space shuttles but couldn’t use them due to the high maintaince that came along with and they couldn’t maintain them. I think that in order to build something like that on the moon, there would be a United Nations space agency who could then build that. No country should have ownership of the moon or a piece of it.