Ocean #5

[Nikita]

FINALLY, the action is picking up in this story. Sadly, there is only one issue left after 5. I don't know, I was kind of disappointed to find out the origins of the alien race under the ancient ocean on Europa in this one. An ancient race of warrior aliens that did nothing but fight and destroy other planets? So, to try and "save" themselves they go into hybernation and we are their distant children? Kind of a lame "been done before in various ways" story twist wasn't it? I was disappointed. I do think it's cool that they created a giant gun that could vaporize entire planets though. That kind of stuff is always cool.

[The Adventurer]

I liked it myself, a good Sci-Fi twist in an already neat Sci-Fi story.

The problem is all this revelation droped in a single issue rather then be sprinkled through out the series, again, another flaw due to this story being a serial rather then a OGN one-shot. In One-Shot format it would have been a good climax, instead now it's just a busy issue.

[roguespirit]

I liked it myself, a good Sci-Fi twist in an already neat Sci-Fi story.

The problem is all this revelation droped in a single issue rather then be sprinkled through out the series, again, another flaw due to this story being a serial rather then a OGN one-shot. In One-Shot format it would have been a good climax, instead now it's just a busy issue.

True true, this series was just not a serial and should never have been marketed/produced as one. It's convinved me that with future Ellis stories I'm gonna wait for the collection. Something is lost reading a story like this monthly.

[Captain Blitz]

I really love Ocean. I just hope that there are some sequels planned. No matter in what form, I really dig that Sci-Fi-Mystery stuff.

[Nikita]

The problem is all this revelation droped in a single issue rather then be sprinkled through out the series, again, another flaw due to this story being a serial rather then a OGN one-shot. In One-Shot format it would have been a good climax, instead now it's just a busy issue.


I completely agree. I suppose it's just another way for them to make money. Sell seperate issues first and then sell the trade.

[They Call Me Evil]

I gotta say, 5 was a bit of let down. It seems like he forgot what the main thrust of this story was, then had to jam 3 issues of revelations into this issue to get it back on track before the last issue. I wonder how he wrote it...as one big story, or as a 6 parter. It seems the former that was probably bigger, then it just got shoehorned into a smaller package. It got fumbled a bit in my eyes. Still okay, but not great.

[DDX]

The character is great. It's funny that Ellis isn't the first to write about UN weapons inspectors in space trying to save humanity from itself - Charlie Stross' Singularity Sky and Iron Sunrisenovels feature a UN WMD treaty inspector on the hunt for causality violation devices (time machines, FTL ships on flightpaths crossing their own light cones (i.e. time machines), and nasty things like "iron bombs" that can destroy a star system in seconds). For that matter, it harkens back to Niven's Gil Hamilton and ARM, a UN body trying to limit technological innovation lest humanity accidentally or purposefully kill itself.

The characters of Ocean probably deserve a regular series - or novels. My only disappointment is how conventional the threat in this one turns out to be. After the wonderment of space in early issues (and Ellis does this very, very well), I'm a bit disappointed there isn't something a bit weirder at the heart of it all. Look at Global Frequency - the world threats there were all more inventive than just a BFG. Guns that can shatter a planet. Oh my, how unique. It just seems too commonplace - I'd prefer something smaller (not enough to shatter the planet, just enough to wreck the balance of power and lead to all out war between all of humanity) or bigger (turn it on and the solar system dies). Hell, imagine if they'd found an AI on the verge of the singularity, or the meme weapon from Global Frequency, or something like the comet effect from Rising Stars - imagine finding something that makes superheroes and what people would do to control that. My point is, there's dozens of better ideas than the perfunctory plot device of 'guns that will wreck a planet'.

Take, for instance, Charlie Stross' iron bomb from the aforementioned Iron Sunrise. A small bomb that , when fired into the heart of a sun, takes the center of the star and shunts it into a pocket universe with different laws of physics - more specifically, a pocket universe where time is one of the higher dimensions of superstring theory, rolled up in a ball shorter than the planck length. The targeted sun core goes through a billion years' hydrogen in less than a second and cools to a dwarf star, sitting in a pocket universe, surrounded by the outer portions of the star which remain hot. The dwarf star continues to cool, quantum tunnelling evaporates even more energy, the thing cools to a crystallized iron sphere, and then the device switches off and this iron sphere is in a big void at the heart of a sun.

Then the external force that had created the pocket universe went into reverse, snapping shut the pocket and dropping the dense spherical crystal into the hole at the core of the star, less than thirty seconds after the bomb had gone off. And the gates of hell opened.

THATs a cool weapon. Guns that can blow up a planet? Meh. Space opera staples, doesn't grab me.

[Huh?]

I thought this issue was okay. Overall, I would say that the series has failed to live up to my expectations. When I first saw the images of the coffins, my mind filled with all sorts of possibilities. Like many here, the final conclusion as to what they are was, shall we say, ho-hum. And, with only one issue to deal with all of the repercussions that would come with learning what we know, I don't have high hopes that I will finish issue 6 feeling fulfilled.