Danielle Poole was retired when NASA came calling at the beginning of the season. She was, at least as far as we can tell, happy with this decision, and returning to Mars hasn’t seemed to change that. Her time as commander at Happy Valley hasn’t revealed she really had unfinished business up there, beyond some Danny flashbacks: as she prepares to run the Ranger mission that will send Goldilocks to Earth, she’s mostly thinking about her stepson, and about getting the chance to see her granddaughter grow up in a way she missed out on for the boy she’s so proud of. She is looking ahead to a time when all the mess of space exploration is no longer her responsibility.

However, I’m guessing I’m not the only one who experienced a deep sense of foreboding when Danielle started making promises to her stepson about what she’ll do for her grandchild in the future. She might not have known it at the time, but Dev and Ed are about to try to effectively reclaim Mars as an indepe…

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