The Women of The Expanse ep. 14 - “Babylon’s Ashes”

Black Girl Squee!

Let’s find out what the girls, women, and non-binary people of The Expanse did in season six, episode six, the series finale, “Babylon’s Ashes”.

Transcript:

The Women of The Expanse podcast, ep. 14 - “Babylon’s Ashes”

Introduction

Welcome to The Women of The Expanse podcast. I’m your host, Didi.

So, the series finale of The Expanse aired last week and already the fandom is discussing whether the show ‘stuck the landing’. I’ll leave the whole ‘stick the landing’ conversation to people who get paid to talk about TV. It’s not really interesting to me. But I will say that I felt more satisfied by this finale than I did after watching the finales of all them other shows y’all love to compare with The Expanse. The show that’s been called “Game of Thrones in Space”, managed to wrap things up fairly well for this book reader. I hope that maybe now we can stop making these comparisons when one show is clearly better.

As for the much-maligned cold opens in Laconia, I see them as a follow-up to the mass exodus of Martians and their technology during seasons four and five. Where were those Martians going? Well, they went to settle planets beyond the Rings. Laconia is one of the settlements where the Martian way of life is taken to the extreme. That, plus the protomolecule experimentation leads to dangerous consequences for the entire solar system, as shown in books seven through nine. So for me, the cold opens served as a bridge that connected the Martian storylines from seasons four and five to the final sixth season. It also introduced us to Admiral Duarte, a character we’d only previously heard Sauveterre talk about. And we needed to know who he was before he hammered one of the last nails in Marco’s space coffin. It can make narrative sense whether you’ve read the books or not. But people like to complain. That was gonna happen either way.

Now let’s find out what the girls, women, and non-binary people of The Expanse did in season six, episode six, the series finale, “Babylon’s Ashes”.

Cara

We start the episode in Laconia with Admiral Duarte gazing up at the protomolecule monstrosity of a ship. There’s a sense of success on his face as he watches the ship flash its blue lights on the planet.

Cara’s parents, Gary and Dot, are waiting restlessly in their home. Cara comes back finally and the parents’ postures sag with relief. Cara apologizes for being gone so long and taking Xan’s body with her. But she didn’t know “how long it was gonna take to fix him”. Then the reanimated Xan walks in the door asking for a hug. Gary is freaked out by Xan’s black eyes with no iris or pupil, the paleness of his skin and the twitchy movements he makes ever so often. He pulls a knife off the kitchen table and cuts Xan’s hand. Black blood drips onto the floor. The wound heals right away.

Gary locks Xan up in a cabinet and calls the soldiers on his hand terminal. They look around and Cara’s gone again. Dot goes out looking for her. They find her hand terminal in the woods with a recorded message. Meanwhile, Cara has gotten Xan out of the cabinet and is headed into the woods with him. Xan reminds Cara that she can’t eat anything in the forest. She’ll die out here. But that’s okay with Cara. She tells her brother that if she dies, “the dogs will fix her”. We see Cara through Xan’s eyes, shot through with protomolecule. One last look at the protomolecule ship above Laconia before we leave this story.

It’s pretty much beat for beat what happens at the end of the Strange Dogs novella.

ChrisJen Avasarala

Leaders from the UN, MCRN, the Belt, and the Rocinante are with ChrisJen on UNN One to make plans to engage with Marco before he gets to Medina Station. The Roci’s going to hit the rail guns at Medina while the other ships go after Marco.

Avasarala meditates in her quarters until she gets a message about locating the Pella. She tells a nervous junior UNN soldier that she will not stay in the rear guard. She needs to be up front and close enough to have real-time communication with the fleet. She is determined to give certain orders herself. The junior soldier keeps talking, this time saying that he's disappointed that more Belters didn’t join the cause after her efforts to aid them on Ceres Station. But for her, that effort was “too little and too late”.

Sometime after the battle, ChrisJen says that war ends at the negotiating table. She starts with things that everyone agrees on, ring traffic must be controlled, the creation of a transport union. But they don’t agree on who should lead the union. After some back and forth between Camina and ChrisJen, they decide on giving leadership of the transport union to an independent party - James Holden of the Rocinante.

Rosenfeld Guoliang

Rosenfeld got Filip reassigned to the bridge for this battle. She tells Filip that she got Marco to reinstate his son because she thinks he will be a better leader with Filip at his side. She thinks that Marco needs Filip, though he’d never admit it. She says that the rest of the Free Navy needs to be able to count on him. Filip assures her that they can.

Rosenfeld meets with Marco to discuss strategy. The enemy has split their forces but Rosenfeld still does not like the odds. She’d rather fight after they’d made it to Medina behind all those Laconian guns. Marco hints at more surprises coming from Laconia.

Walker’s last stand against the Pella does some damage but doesn’t destroy the ship. Rosenfeld gets hit and dies at her station. Filip tries to get her a medic but it’s too late.

Marco gets a surprise from Admiral Duarte but it’s not the one he wanted. Duarte denies Marco’s request for more weapons, closes communications between the Free Navy and Laconia, and warns that any ships that enter Laconian space will be destroyed. “You were a useful distraction, but I’ve got gods to kill.” That statement means more to readers of the last three books but also gives non-readers an idea of what Duarte’s focus is.

Filip comes in at the end of Duarte’s message to tell Marco that his XO died. Marco shrugs off the news, saying it’s an honor to die for the cause. Filip wonders aloud if they’re dying for the cause or for Marco. Marco tells Filip that he cannot see what he’s been given. Filip says he does now and goes back to his station.

Marco gives a speech about the ‘end of the Inners’. But it’s a speech with no conviction, given to weary, demoralized Free Navy soldiers. Filip has heard enough and turns his back on his father.

Bobbie Draper

Bobbie and the crew of the Roci are on an ice hauler called the Giambattista. Fans will remember that before there was a Rocinante, the people who would go on to crew that ship first met on an ice hauler called the Canterbury. Full Circle.

Bobbie and James reminisce about the former pilot as they unpack weapons and such.

Bobbie, Amos, and the rest of the strike teams land on the ring station. But a lot of them get hit as they land. The railguns are using armor-piercing rounds. Bravo and Charlie teams are cut down to single digits before they can start the mission.

Bobbie decides to bomb the railguns before the Free Navy can come take them over. She’s hit with a lot of heavy fire but Amos shields her from most of it until the Roci can provide cover fire for them.

At the end of the episode, we see Bobbie piloting the Rocinante.

Clarissa Mao

Clarissa stumbles again, this time, it’s in front of Amos. He tells her to get some rest. She says she’ll do that once everything is ship-shape. Naomi gives her a task to check on the juice injectors so she can talk to Amos.

She hears a high-pitched ringing sound in her ears and falls down. When she gets up she goes to the medi-dock and lets it scan her. She finds out she has Complex Endocrine Collapse Syndrome (CECS). Symptoms include fatigue, dizziness, salt craving, seizures, weight loss. Average life expectancy is five years. The syndrome is a result of continued use of endocrine mods that increase the risk of sudden death.

Instead of telling anyone, she decides to make the crew a home cooked meal of textured mushroom seco de carne and soy tequenos. Amos tells Clarissa that he’s going to fight on the ring station, leaving her to be the ship’s mechanic. She tells him he sure ends up being a hero a lot of times. The crew have a big dinner together before the big battle.

During the fight against the Free Navy, she leaves the bridge to fix the reactor on the ship. She finds the problem with the coolant pipe but gets hit in the helmet. When Naomi comes to check on her a bit later, she’s barely conscious but she’s managed to fix the reactor without using her mods. “I’m gonna earn my keep,” she says.

Camina Drummer

Camina gets dressed while listening to the message that UNN One has located the Pella. She takes one last look at Michio’s bed before leaving her quarters.

On the bridge, Liang Walker calls her and asks if the Belters will get cut out of negotiations should the Inners get to Marco first. Camina is not sure but will stick to her part of the plan for now. Their target is the frigate. If they destroy it first, they believe the rest will surrender or flee. Walker proposes taking the frigate instead of destroying it. And Camina seems to like that idea, a pirate till the end.

Camina calls off any actions on the freighter, urging them to focus on the frigate. Camina watches as the freighter releases all the plates disguising them to reveal the Pella. They fire at the Belter ships in their way, destroying four of Camina’s ships and cutting power to another five. There is a huge hole in the Tynan and Camina’s pissed off enough to head straight for the Pella on a one-way mission. But Walker beats her to it. Camina watches until his transmission is cut short.

The reactor on the Tynan is low but they can limp away from the battle. She tells her Communications Director to send a tightbeam to the fleet apprising them of the Tynan’s status. She wishes the Rocinante luck, as they’ve done all they can do now.

Camina becomes President of the Transport Union after Holden resigns.

Naomi Nagata

Naomi patches things up with Amos by comparing how Clarissa calls him boss the same way that Amos used to call Naomi boss on the Cant.

Avasarala tells the Roci crew that Inaros will reach the Ring with what’s left of his fleet. The UNN doesn’t have any ships within range to cut Marco off from the Ring. She says she’s sorry.

The crew runs through several options. There’s not enough time to power up the railguns using the Roci’s reactor. No one wants to ‘cut and run’ through any nearby rings and even if they did, they don’t have enough fuel. They could hurl the Giambattista at the Free Navy and shoot at them with whatever weapons that the Roci still has left.

Naomi has another idea. She has figured out a way to trigger the ring entities using all the mass and energy of the ice-hauler and the Roci’s torpedoes, it could work. It’s a bad idea, but the only one that they might survive long enough to complete. James is worried that once the entities are woken up, they might stay awake.

As the Pella approaches the ring, Naomi flashes back to baby Filip. She closes her eyes and pushes the button to overload the reactor. The crew watches the Pella disintegrate with various looks of victory and relief. Naomi wails in agony for what she’s done.

After resigning from the Transport Union, Holden asks Naomi if he did the right thing. She says he did, because he did it not for the accolades or ‘a pat on the head’, but because it was what he believed in. That’s all you can do, whether you know the outcome of your efforts or not. As she speaks, we see that Filip left the Pella during Marco’s last speech. He got on his own ship and changed his name to Filip Nagata. Naomi may never know that he survived because of the things that she told him about Marco. All Naomi has is the knowledge that she tried.

As Naomi tells James, “The universe never tells us if we did right or wrong. It’s more important to try to help people than to know that you did. More important that someone else’s life gets better than for you to feel good about yourself. You never know the effect you might have on someone, not really, Maybe one core thing you said haunts them forever. Maybe one moment of kindness gives them comfort or courage. Maybe you said the one thing they needed to hear. It doesn’t matter if you ever know. You just have to try.”

James brings up a few plot threads that the finale did not tie up. What will the Roci do for work now that the battle is over? What about the protomolecule sample? Naomi stops him and urges him to stay in this moment for a while. And we end the series with the Roci flying off into the vast expanse of space.

Outro

That’s it for The Expanse on television. For now. And that’s also the end of The Women of The Expanse podcast.You can tweet about The Expanse with me @blackgirlsquee or email blackgirlsquee at gmail dot com and put Women of The Expanse in the subject line. Thanks for listening.