TV Show Review: The Silent Sea
Korean television dramas or more commonly known as “K-dramas” have been growing in popularity and establishing themselves in mainstream television in the US.
A Netflix eight-episode series called “The Silent Sea” that averages about forty-five minutes per episode is a science-fiction dystopian set in this world, in the future. The global earth is experiencing a massive drought that is so severe that water is strictly rationed, in a class-based system, and pets are considered a drain on resources and illegal.
Desperate to save humanity from its impending doom, the Republic of Korea’s Space and Aeronautics Division (SAA) sends a team to a lunar base shrouded in a mysterious radiation accident that killed the entirety of its research staff five years prior to the starting point of the show.
The team’s objective? To collect samples that the government allegedly has no record of what they actually contain. When the team finally reaches the base, nothing is what it seems.
Spoiler warning ahead!
After watching this TV series, I can’t help but ask: How do we, as in humanity as a whole, get to decide that morals are bendable or even replaceable in the face of extreme circumstances?
Those samples turned out to be “lunar water,” a liquid that possesses the ability to divide and multiply when it comes into contact with living tissue. It became humanity’s hope. However, it is lethal to humans and can drown them from the inside out if it comes into contact with human skin or ingested. Their last hope was human experimentation and genetic modification of clones. These clones were young girls that were injected with lunar water in hopes that the modifications would render them immune, it took them seventy-two failed tries to get it right. And when they finally succeeded? The government ensured secrets would be kept.
Such a concept to us, in a world that is not yet plagued by that level of a drought, is utterly despicable and morally reprehensible. It is horrible even to people that are living within this fictional world. But to the scientists, they were only trying to save their families and humanity that were slowly dying. Their morals were able to be bent and swept away because of their desperation and for the “greater good.” So when does desperation begin to take over reason?
To me, morality is subjective, any outside view will take a different approach because of personal bias but there are still foundational values that are commonly shared. But would I, or even you as a reader and viewer, think differently if we were in a world that only guaranteed death?