Seeing red over gadgets
SHALL I tell you what I’m finding most implausible so far about THE FIRST (C4, 9pm), the Sean Penn drama about a planned human mission to Mars? It’s not the actual bit about them zipping off to a planet 34 million miles away, nor even that they’re serious about trying to colonise it to create some kind of overspill zone for humankind. I can well believe that both those things could happen.
And it wouldn’t surprise me if they already had. Nip in to Argos tomorrow, buy yourself a sufficiently powerful telescope, point it in the Red Planet’s direction and what’s the betting you’ll be able to make out at least a dozen branches of Starbucks?
No, the thing that doesn’t ring true about The First is its tinier detail, the everyday home-based technology that seems to have become commonplace in this story’s “near-future” setting.
Commonplace, that is, and implausibly hassle-free.
“Screen on!” Penn’s character Tom will cry, for example, when he wants to watch his television. And, hey presto, on his television will come, simple as that. “End call!” he’ll say, when he needs to finish a phone conversation. And, hey presto, the call will indeed be ended, no problem. This is patently absurd. Tell me, do you have any techy gadgets or gizmos in your own house? Right. And does a day go by when at least one of them doesn’t go: “Sorry, I don’t understand” or “Unknown error” or “Unable to connect” or “I am an absolutely worthless piece of gimmicky junk and you have my permission to grab a hammer and smash me to a squillion pieces.” Exactly.
There’s even a scene tonight where Penn (right) is oh-so-matterof-factly pootling along in the back seat of a driverless car with – get this – absolutely no random pedestrians being ploughed down and hospitalised. As if that would ever happen. But leaving aside such nitpicking, the main story here is hotting up nicely.
Their first attempt at launching a human Mars mission didn’t, shall we say, go entirely to plan (you’ll notice how, for the benefit of those who’ve yet to watch episode one, I’ve very cleverly avoided revealing the fact that the rocket blew up…) so now it’s a question of convincing the powersthat-be – specifically, Congress – to let them blow a load more money by having another crack at it, although ideally not arguing their case with those actual words.
Laz Ingram (Natascha McElhone), the woman who runs the company in charge of the mission, frankly makes an utter pig’s ear of trying to win backing from Congress, her heavy-handed argument, where she effectively tells them Earth is doomed and that it’s basically Mars or nothing, proving less than popular. The question now is whether Penn’s somewhat volatile Captain Tom Hagerty, still bearing a grudge after Laz ruthlessly relieved him of his role as the original mission’s commander (none of that “there but for the grace of God” stuff for our Tom), will agree to step in and try to save the day?