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Season 1
- Why was Yerxa kept on the crew after being removed from command? Sure, desperate times, desperate measures, they needed to get the mission off the ground ASAP, etc, etc, but he's so aggressive and volatile that surely a basic psych eval should have picked up that he couldn't handle having to serve under his replacement. It takes him about five seconds to mutiny (and it certainly seems like he was just waiting for an excuse, instead of his decision being specifically triggered by the slingshot vs soma question, although YMMV on that). Were there no red flags about that before liftoff? Of course, one explanation is that the writers didn't mean to make him that clearly a problem so soon, he just ended up coming off that way, but that's not an in-universe answer.
- This extends to other crew members as well. Michelle, in particular, seems completely unsuitable to serve in a high-stress environment. In the first episode, there is some talk that there is a policy of using young crews on space ships because they are more willing to take risks, but if so that policy seems highly dubious, especially when you see the resulting mess.
- This is dealt with in Season 2. William woke the wrong crew in Season 1. These individuals were intended to be backup for the actual A-team.
- What exactly was the mission supposed to accomplish? The stated intent was to protect humanity in case the aliens were hostile, but how? The ship is unarmed and in any case, it is clear from the beginning that the aliens are far more technologically advanced. A cautious scouting expedition might make sense, but the idea that one unarmed ship, manned by a group of people with little or no combat experience, or even military training and discipline, could somehow neutralize a threat of this magnitude seems wishful thinking at best.
- It's first and foremost a First Contact mission - while Erik's team on Earth tries to contact the artifact, the Salvare is meant to pay the artifact's creators a direct visit, like a preemptively launched backup plan of sorts. It's actually not too harebrained an approach when you think about it. We'd probably do the same if we had the necessary technology. Here's hoping we'd staff the crew with qualified personnel, though...
Season 2
- In Season 2, why is there a colonist team aboard the Salvare, a ship heading towards a potentially dangerous alien civilization, and how are 24 colonists meant to help humanity survive in the event the Achaia devastate the Earth? Wouldn't it have made more sense to send a dedicated colony ship—possibly even a self-sustaining one—with orders of magnitude more people to another location?
- How did the Decuma maintain the ability to perform faster-than-light (FTL) interstellar travel while the Achaia were still at large?
- In Season 2's finale, how do all the other alien species know humans have defeated the Achaia and, more significantly, how do the aliens know where to send their thank you letters?
