The Silent Sea [Netflix]

pixelburp · 12-12-2021 6:35pm #1

Yet another Korean series; this time a mystery thriller on the moon. Spotted a couple of familiar faces from Squid Game lol.

https://youtu.be/Af_Hj0MDBBQ

Slydice · 13-12-2021 12:02am

Korea just powerhousing out good lookin action, zombie, sciene fiction, dystopian shows n films.

It's wierd.. because of Anime, I'd always thought it would've been Japan leading the way on it.

Pawwed Rig · 13-12-2021 12:05am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118312790#Comment_118312790

Korea has been producing good stuff for a decade or 2 at this stage. Mostly movies but TV has been decent aswell

pixelburp · 13-12-2021 8:10am

Korean cinema has been plugging away successfully for decades now, with the occasional big hit coming over here (like Parasite or Train to Busan). I can't imagine it's a coincidence that not long after Squid Game shows an appetite, along come two more high concept shows in Hellbound and this.

It's nice to see: of late I've watched a lot of non-English speaking drama and it has been entirely due to Netflix's own international reach. Korean, French, Danish, Icelandic, German etc. It's satisfying to watch stories without that particularly American perspective...

pixelburp · 24-12-2021 11:12am

This dropped today; 8 episodes in total.

pixelburp · 29-12-2021 9:20pm

Watched the first episode of this and it's decent. A little fanciful but the drama and mystery wasn't overbaked or excessively withholding either. Will definitely keep going, and worth a watch for others looking for some Expanse / Lost in Space adjacent adventure.

Tristram · 29-12-2021 9:29pm

About half-way through and find it quite disappointing. Suspense in space more than proper sci-fi. More akin to that terrible Stargate reboot effort from many years ago than something as good as The Expanse.

fritzelly · 29-12-2021 9:48pm

Decent series but what an absolutely stupid ending

Slydice · 30-12-2021 12:17am

1: Well, nothing quiet like it to get you motivated

to jump into an unknown status dark airlock like having absolutely no air left your space suit! 😁

The special effects are really good. The spacecraft/tech all look pretty decent and the space/moon/planet looks great.

Pretty solid opening. As for the story...

It's wierd the planet being so dried up. Guessing the Sun must be expanding or the planet is starting to lose atmosphere faster than Mars lost it's own atmosphere..

All the consequences like water rationing etc seem sensible enough.

As for this story, Hwang who died mentioned the water and I'm guessing he meant on the space station so I'm thinking two possibilities. Either the 3 things they have to search for are to restore water on the planet... or.. something on the space station.. in the water.. might kill people or turn them to zombies or something. So.. on that basis, this is a little reminding me of Aliens (the second film) except the Corporation guy dies at the start.

Slydice · 31-12-2021 12:11am

2: Well that didn't take long

splitting up in big groups, ok.. I might forgive that

but the ignoring a dead people with no radiation as the cause.. I mean.. surely that screams biohazard or chemical hazard

then this dude, the replacement co-pilot, going back in for the extra reaching until the machine/thing .. like get a stick or something but not reach harder.. that coulda been a monster took the flashlight! contender for either first/second death or an evil-corp reveal guy towards the middle/end.

Doctor Song definitely seems to have side missions or a separate main mission.. I think the leader dude knows more about her than the rest too.. because of his remark about her personal curiousity

I mean like.. it's not daft.. this group wasn't advertised as specialists or marines going in against something hostile so their decisions seem sensible enough so far

Slydice · 31-12-2021 2:29pm

3: Alright so, it looks like

this thing spreads but only in close physical contact.

I'm guessing the creature is a survivor and doesn't have the thing/virus/disease. The strenght and speed is a bit odd. Nice nod to the Alien/Aliens films how they did the radar and movement in vents 🙂

Looks like whatever it is, that it gets the water out of people.. people who are mostly water (star trek, x-men, dune, others etc have done chunks on this before).

At a guess it could be this Evil-Corp (TM) looking to make bank on turning people into water to solve the water crisis... but at the same time, it looks like any Evil-Corp (TM) team-members are dead at this point. Maybe the leader will be co-opted into working for them when he contacts the Director on Earth. Maybe he'll face a moment-of-choice.

Homelander · 31-12-2021 4:59pm

I thought it was very good. Great production values and ultimately a very simple story done well and doesn't try and shoehorn in overly dramatic or illogical twists for the sake of it like so many of these shows do. Decent characters too that I genuinely was rooting for by the end.

Although I enjoyed Squid Game and Alice in Borderlands, I didn't particularly get invested in the characters in either show and most definitely I preferred this to either.

It's not exactly 'The Expanse' but taken in its own right it's a solid 8/10 for me.

Slydice · 31-12-2021 6:28pm

4: Well that was wierd!

Maybe the survivor has build some kind of mini-inhabitable-environment.. probably with no shortage of water.

Anyway.. this lunar water then, I'm seeing three maybes:

- highest chance: human made virus/nano-tech

- maybe an 'extra-terrestrial' alien bacteria/virus/nano-tech

- weakest maybe an 'extra-terrestrial' somehow non alien but developed all by iteself on the moon bacteria/virus/nano-tech

All signs point to Evil-Corp (TM) 😁

gmisk · 31-12-2021 8:31pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118396957#Comment_118396957

You might like hellbound if you like those, another high concept south Korean show on Netflix, best to go into it blind imo

Slydice · 31-12-2021 10:07pm

5: Well! That's a development!

Yey! It's Newt (Aliens reference)!.. I mean.. Luna! 😀

At least I'm guessing that's the 'Find Luna' business. It's this kid, not the computer thing.

Looks like Evil-Corp (TM) did have another dude on the inside. Still hard to guess the motivations of the Government/Director side. Could easily be working with Evil-Corp (TM).

Now, I wonder what the deal is with this water. I'm half leaning toward nano-bots. Maybe Evil-Corp (TM) wanted to use it to kill off people but maybe Luna and the plants represent a new possibility .. a kind of hybrid human..

gmisk · 31-12-2021 10:15pm

I have just finished episode 7, it is moving at a fair oul clip, but I will say some of the CGI/special effects are letting it down a small bit. Some plot holes....but still enjoying it

gmisk · 31-12-2021 10:23pm

Not exactly a spoiler for it...but why the hell are none of them wearing the helmets if they are scared of the water...why would she stare at the water in that pipe....also plot hole wise episode 7...how the heck is there so much water in the basement I thought there were only two bodies?! There hasn't been that much out of any other infected bodies?! Dr Hong finds a body in the freezer...there is a gunshot wound in his chest....she thinks he was murdered?!...no...really!

Slydice · 31-12-2021 11:34pm

6: Aha!

She's her Niece I'm guessing.. but some kinda of genetic modifications to make that hybrid human idea

Also, Evil-Corp (TM) has a USA voice! I'm shocked! Shocked I tell you 😁 Well.. maybe not that shocked! 😀

Two more episodes but I reckon if they wrote it a bit differently, they could've packed it down to six total. Will see if there's any more of a shocker coming up that the Capn, Doctor n Newt get out while everyone else maybe dies plus maybe an ending with Evil-Corp (TM) still seeming to come out on top.

gmisk · 01-01-2022 10:51am

Episode 8 hmmm not great.

The kid is basically a superhero? She can walk about on the moon no bother. She doesn't need air or heat.

The chat with the Ryu guy while the whole thing is literally falling apart was bizarre.

Not a great final episode, it's a shame because it is a great premise and had some some excellent parts. But was let down by odd plotting and some poor CGI. Could Luna not have bit them all to make them immune to the water?!

Slydice · 01-01-2022 2:21pm

7: Well, I don't know

where you're off running to buddy, you just got done by the water. Unless Evil-Corp (TM) has a cure, I'd say you're done.

Nice shadow play over the station as I assume Evil-Corp (TM) or a Government ship arrives. Has a bit of a call back feel to the shadow that appeared over the Captain after he fell unconscious from a lack of air. Never did find out who rescued him for sure I think.

Slydice · 01-01-2022 3:29pm

Finished! (coming back from the end of my post to say that:) I'd say.. avoid this show if you want a well-wrapped story.

What a decently made Science Fiction show right up to the last ten minutes. Then it just went daft or at a guess

it looked to end a bit Kafka-esque .. which is something in my head as I only recently watched Enemy (Denis Villeneuve directed film).. which might be your cup of tea if you want something like this ending.

Credit to the show special effects and immersion into the Space Station tech etc. The one Universe thing I kept asking myself though was

how the Earth dried up so bad. Nothing really jumped out.

8: Well. That all seemed to be chugging along until they .. i dunno.. gave up at the very end?

Poor aul Gong at the end there. That seemed to be just about the line where they decided to wrap up and change to.. well whatever that ending was. Wrapping his space suit up in duct-tape, I was like.. nope don't think that's gonna help with the bleeding out inside the suit.

No sign of Evil-Corp (TM), maybe they didn't have the budget or imagination or permission or something. So wierd to have carried the audience and immersion for so long only to give up.

Future: hahaha.. I doubt it 😂

Slydice · 01-01-2022 4:01pm

I did some quick follow-up on the ending. These two videos came top of the youtube search:

THE SILENT SEA Ending Explained | Full Series Breakdown And Review | NETFLIX | 고요의 바다

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=POYHD5TEkt8

The Silent Sea Ending Explained

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6UntVHLOco

Both seem to go along with the ending, the first liked and was into it, and so for a future, to me that means

that Luna would need to be treated as a super human, maybe the virus/tech in the water has made huge changes. Possibly the show could go to a much higher scale vision of the future that this just kicks off.

I also checked the moon wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon

Mostly I wanted to know the likely temperatures she was walking around in and the range was somewhere between extreme heat or extreme cold:

"Surface conditions

The surface of the Moon is an extreme environment with temperatures that range from 140 °C down to −171 °C, an atmospheric pressure of 10−10 Pa, and high levels of ionizing radiation from the Sun and cosmic rays."

Need a Username · 09-01-2022 5:01am

I watched the first episode. Great stuff but it felt a bit rushed especially in regards to Mr. Hwang.

They didn’t explain who he was so I guessed from “contributing Balhae Station” that he was a wealthy business man with an interest in science. And that he knew more than the others what the mission was about. Which his final words confirmed.

Plus it would have been nice to see him interact with the others so his death would have more of an impact.

There are a few crew whose names and purpose haven’t been mentioned as far as I recall. Plus it is a major sausage party.

Still though good stuff.

Need a Username · 09-01-2022 5:10am

I have a question - the co-pilot who shows up at the last minute saying he is there as a replacement? I’m guessing that character is up to no good or is going to be Coffey from The Abyss type.

None of the crew expected him and it didn’t seem like the captain did either?

It was very odd that he didn’t question it or contact mission control. I assume the plot requires no one to be familiar with him for now (though the pilot does recognise him from somewhere.

pixelburp · 25-01-2022 3:43pm

Hit the halfway mark with this, and while it feels like the silliness might at any minute consume the story, I'm enjoying this hard SciFi (emphasis on the lowercase H).

However, what urged me to post, and makes me giggle every time? It's the polite swearing characters do; now, whether that's intentional or another Netflix subtitling snafu I don't know, but each time one of the crew explained "oh my gosh!" I chortled. 😂

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118442518#Comment_118442518

The whole crew have behaved very casually, kinda to the story's detriment. I get the world here is painted as if space travel has become mundane, but sometimes I found all the idleness, talking back - heck even the tattoos of the captain - a bit hard to swallow. Maybe I'm just used to all those stories with straight-cut, emotionally dead-eyed NASA types.

Bacchus · 25-01-2022 4:16pm

Finished this a few nights ago. It's a decent, self-contained sci-fi story. Carries just enough tension to keep you engaged but it does lag every now and then. The initial mystery had a nice horror vibe and sense of impending doom for the crew, and then the

first water death was pretty horrific.

I heard a few comments about a weak ending but I thought the ending was fine TBH. Cleared up what happened at the station neatly enough. The Luna thread to the plot was a bit 'out there' with the mutated clone angle and her bite saving Song but it still worked IMO. She worked well as a "there's a monster in the dark" device, and then as a "she's the key to saving us all" device. The bit with her walking on the moon at the end was a bit random alright but... meh. I was more confused about how the Captain ended up way out there. He should have been encased in ice.

Grand show, bit of sci-fi on the moon. Works as a one season thing though, I'm not sure where a second season could go that would be interesting.

Useless Lump · 20-02-2022 3:12pm

I really enjoyed the series.

nice mix of disaster movie and space survival horror

I don’t understand why the all stood so close to the infected Ryu when he was dying or why he didn’t puke up a ton of water like the others? Is it because he didn’t drown from it?

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058222553/the-silent-sea-netflix

I only recognised one from Squid Game - the tattoo thug who was the deputy administrator here. Who else is there?

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118531594#Comment_118531594

I don’t think there are plan for another season - in order for it to be The Silent Sea season 2 they’d have to go back to the Moon.

might be a story for a sequel series about Song & Luna and how water is restored but can’t see that happening.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118531438#Comment_118531438

I don’t think that is Netflix censoring profanity. There are plenty of **** and bastards in the dialogue so what would they be censoring? I see “oh my Gosh” in a lot of Korean stuff not just on Netflix. I think it is just the nearest they can get in a translation of some common utterance.

I have noticed there are things muttered on other shows and movies where no translation appears on screen - I just assumed it is stuff that has no English equivalent

I don’t remember any idleness or talking back - but certainly the SAA has a more relaxed attitude than movie NASA (even more relaxed than where I work :p)

pixelburp · 08-03-2022 8:34am

Finished this yesterday after the final two episodes sat on the shelf for a bit; hoo boy. As an old teacher used to say: a story can survive a bad start, but it can't survive a bad ending. And here is a perfect example: I broadly enjoyed this show for what it was - and for the longest time I thought I had a handle on its own internal logic. I thought it was relatively grounded - in that "day after tomorrow" fashion you get with Sci-Fi trying to ape our current tech levels.

Then that ending happened. And it shat the bed so spectacularly it kinda retroactively made the entire experience a little worse.

I could just about buy the idea of the little girl being "mutated" to handle the Lunar Water. A bit too X-Men but, fine. It was treated with enough pathos, and presented in a sober enough fashion, I bought into the idea of amoral experiments happening on the Moon. But the 11th hour twist her body was able to survive on the vacuum of space? Without any radiation shielding, pressurisation, running about in her ragged hospital gown? Uhhhh, GTFO Silent Sea.

And just killing off the Captain was a pile of shíte as well, one that just completely undercut his entire arc.

In general I thought the show was solid, but that ending man. As I said. Hoo boy.

The Silent Sea [Netflix]

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