Review: The Silent Sea Episodes 2 and 3

The Silent Sea

The Silent Sea is a Netflix venture starring:  

Bae Doona as Doctor Song Ji-an 

Gong Yoo as Han Yoon-jae 

Joon Lee as Captain Ryoo Tae-seok 

Feodor Chin as Kim Hee-sun 

Harrison Xu as Lee Gi-Su

Heo Sung-tae as Kim Jae-sun 

The Silent Sea's IMDb synopsis is as follows: 

"During a perilous 24-hour mission on the moon, space explorers try to retrieve samples from an abandoned research facility steeped in classified secrets"

Spoilers: The below article discusses the second and third episode of The Silent Sea. 

The new crew 

The mystery continues in the second and third episode of The Silent Sea. There are precisely two questions that have me hooked. 

These questions are: 

• What is in the sealed container? 

• Why was Belhae Station abandoned? 

In episodes 2 and 3 we come close to getting the answers to these questions. 

The Two Deaths 

Gong Yoo as Captain Han

Within the span of two episodes two crew members died and we got a bunch of clues that's making the bigger picture clearer. 

While trying to get one of the sample containers lying just beside the corpse of a ex-crew member of Belhae Station, Gong Soochan gets infected with what looks like a droplet. 

Initially he looks fine. But gradually he looks more and more disoriented. In one of the shots from his perspective, it really does feel like he is underwater. 

After this, it doesn't take much time for viewers to piece together the fact that whatever infected him surely signed the death warrant of all the previous crew members of the station. 

After all, the diagnosis from the doctor was that it felt like everyone drowned. Eventually, Soochan's condition worsens and he starts vomiting a clear liquid that looks like water. 

Initially, the picture of a man with his mouth wide open and water gushing out of it seems a bit comical. But the performance of the actors combined with the tense music sells the urgency of the situation. 

Doc Hong takes control of the situation and orders eveyone to put on their hazmat suits. Initially it seems like she might save Soochan's life. But she ultimately fails. The last shot from his perspective shows us that he is literally downing. 

The other death is of Lee Gisu. He finds an intact capsule but gets attacked by an unknown creature, who is seemingly after those samples as well. Song Jian's bodycam footage records the entire incident. 

During an interrogation by captain Han Yoon-jae, Song Jian offers up her bodycam to him after suspicion rises of her of being involved in Lee Gisu's murder. 

In the storage they all see a blurry video of a creature. What's notable is that it didn't attack Song Jian. She explains that it might be because she observed critical distance, a theory that states animals have a boundary. 

If anyone crosses that they get attacked, if not, then they are spared. As for what happened to Lee Gisu, Doc Hong says that he has suffered multiple fractures and that almost all the bones in his body are broken. 

So whatever attacked him was stronger than a human. 

The Personal Matters

Captain Han and Song Jian 

These two episodes revealed more information about Song Jian. We got to know that her sister was one of the crew members on the Belhae Station. 

We also got to know that Director Choi convinced her to not disclose this information to the other crew members. 

And it was also revealed that the people who sent them on this mission didn't reveal anything to them except for the barebones of the matter. 

After all, the crew quickly determined that the radiation levels in the station are normal. So their talk about radiation leak was bogus. 

Thankfully, Song Jian was conducting her own personal investigation into the mission and came across a project called Luna. What is it? We don't know yet. 

On the moon, there's another thing the quickly dwindling crew has to think about- How are they going to signal to Earth that they need to be rescued? 

The engineer on board decodes that the issue isn't with the machinery but with the signal antenna on top of the station. So the solution is to go up there and fix it. 

But who is going to go up when the lift isn't even functioning? Captain Han volunteers. But he will have to take the hard route. This means that he will have to climb from the outside of the station. 

And that's the cliffhanger we end episode 3 on. 

Piecing It All Together

Bae Doona as Song Jian 

Gradually, it's becoming pretty clear that those samples contain something that can produce a theoretically unlimited amount of water. And on this earth, which is suffering from a dire water crisis desperately needs it. 

This might be the solution that saves humanity. However, it's not clear what that creature was. Is it even human? Was it created? We at least know that it knows the station way better than our crew. 

And now that Han is going up to fix the antenna, will he encounter the creature? That remains to be seen. 

Pros

• The plot is progressing at a brisk pace that makes it easy to stay invested in the story.
• Fleshing out Song Jian's backstory 
• The tense music and stellar performance carry this show

Cons

• Really nothing. I am invested in the story and waiting to see how it progresses.