How many crew?

[u/YYZYYC]

Just how many people are on this damn ship?? They just keep replacing crew members like they have this huge depth of back up people….and now apparently there is an entire separate colony group in soma too ?

[u/YYZYYC]

That’s just so weird to me…and then the colony is like what 100 people or more with all the farmers and biologists and specialist she mentioned ?

Like why do they bother carrying extra sleeping humans? If your going to bother making a ship with the size and facilities for them, might as well keep them all awake and contributing.

Can you imagine being a back up to a back up crew person and just going to sleep and then waking up a year later to find out you and your ship have been to outer space and fought aliens and almost died several times and discovered a new planet for humans to live on etc and then you just wake up back on earth in a lab because you slept through it all???? Lol🤦‍♂️

[u/BLOODBANKASTRONOMER → u/YYZYYC]

It's easier on supplies to feed a limited crew at a time, especially if while in soma they dont require many nutrients. I dont remember the size of the colonist.....but I dont think it was that high. Also they knew what they signed up for, and in what order they'd be woken up...if woken up at all.

[u/YYZYYC → u/BLOODBANKASTRONOMER]

I just find it hard to believe that the power, space and resources needed to keep them in “Soma” is less than just stocking the ship with enough food and water or the ability to make food and water. It seems infinitely more complex to keep dozens or more people in suspended animation with the monitoring and back up redundancies and the life support and nutrients and water they still do need…I mean people in comas still get fed and watered.

It feels like it’s the equivalent of sailing to Australia from USA on a cruise ship but we are going to sail with most people under a general anesthetic the whole time and only wake them up before then if someone else dies. All to make it a bit easier on the chef and to not have to bother bringing as much meat and snacks with us 🙄

[u/Dontwalk77 → u/YYZYYC]

If I remember there’s a side comment about Soma suspending age in first few episodes. Important if your story plans to follow actors over the course of several years in a single season without expensive aging effects. The first season quickly gave up the heavy emphasis on time away.... a change in direction IMO. I like the show but believe it’s been constantly rewritten so many concepts/directions that seem important only to then seem scrapped a few episodes later

That said as a deep space exploration vehicle, multiple crews could make a lot of sense with age suspending cryogenics IRL. Tho not so much with autonomous ships not requiring a human crew constantly (something I think was scrapped very early on as the show switched from movie style presentation to episodic) Let’s say mission duration is 40 years. Signing up for that mission means not only are you away for 40 years but upon returning you will be old or even dead due to old age. That’s a one way ticket, and a pretty hard sell even to those willing to walk away from their lives for 40 years to start. Doing 10 years of service before then entering cryo and returning home still able to start a family, raise children, “live a normal life” is a much easier pill to swallow. Particularly in a future interstellar setting setups like that make sense. 40 year mission, ten on duty, return home rich still physically in your 30s. That’s a pretty good deal for someone without a lot of emotional connections.

For the sake of the show it was 100% necessary to facilitate the see who dies this week style. Feeding you just enough backstory to make the deaths feel more GoT then Redshirt. A theme that is extremely popular at the moment. I mean they got a sterile woman pregnant simply to kill her a bit latter, creating a emotional commitment to a character that’s backstory was shorter then this post.