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Fired on Mars

Entry updated 5 June 2023. Tagged: TV.

US animated tv series (2023). Pat & Mike Productions, NN Productions, Rough Draft Studios. Created by Nate Sherman and Nick Vokey (based on their 2016 short of the same name). Directors include Andrew Han and Ira Sherak. Writers include Nate Sherman and Nick Vokey. Voice cast includes Luke Wilson. Eight circa 25-minute episodes. Colour.

In the relatively Near Future the Mars.ly corporation has established a colony on Mars (see Colonization of Other Worlds), but after several months decides that a graphic designer is not an efficient use of the settlement's resources, so puts the post on hold. Returning the now unemployed Jeff Cooper (Wilson) to Earth is not an option and, finding nobody has any time for him, he becomes increasingly introverted and obsessive. His hopes rise when another employee dies, as he assumes he will fill the vacancy; but it goes to the man in the colony's sleep tank (see Suspended Animation) and Jeff will replace him.

A malfunction means Jeff briefly dies in the tank, and as a sop he is given an internship in the colony's Dreamspiration Department (formerly Human Resources). This is short-lived as an attempt to keep his Head of Department happy by raising her office's oxygen and nitrous oxide levels coincides with the lighting of her birthday cake. He eventually ends up moving rocks on the Martian surface, unaware that this is an exercise to monitor the effects of radiation; he discovers a network of disused buildings beneath the settlement, where the Buckys, a group of intellectuals and Scientists, store supplies for a planned breakaway colony, free of corporate tyranny. Jeff joins them and is given the task of feeding the grasshoppers, farmed as a protein source. However, the approaching celebrations to mark the colony's anniversary (the Marsiversary) mean a graphic designer is urgently needed: Jeff's star rises and he mixes with the settlement's elite. Overworked, he jury-rigs an automatic grasshopper feeder, triggering a series of events whereby the insects end up infesting the colony, leading to the discovery of the group's supplies and – as they include saltpetre for fertilizer – the authorities concluding they are terrorists. Consequently the Marsiversary is a disaster, but Jeff has had an epiphany and the final scene sees him loading up supplies and leaving the colony, headed for an area where the Buckys discovered ice deep in the soil.

Many of the early episodes' stories might comfortably have taken place on Earth, but as the series progresses the Martian setting moves into the foreground: the practicalities of survival in such a hostile environment are acknowledged, and we learn there have been many deaths. There are strong hints that some history is being suppressed: the Buckys find a group of long dead astronauts in a cave but do not know who they could have been. Mars.ly wishes to eventually Terraform Mars, with one impatient executive suggesting a "nuclear event" at the north and south poles to fast-track the process: "It'd have to be an accident ... well-behaved men rarely make history."

This is a noteworthy comedy, densely packed and somewhat downbeat: Jeff is not a bad person, but neither is he particularly likable. The viewer might recognize several of their own flaws in his character; nonetheless he does want to do the right thing. Mars.ly's senior staff are the unctuously positive, self-serving uncaring monsters that typically feature in media Satire of office life and corporations (see Clichés); the Buckys, though idealistic, are also flawed individuals. Given the loose ends at the end of the first season, it is to be hoped that more will follow. [SP]

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