I left Season 3 alone for a few months to let Ryk release a few episodes before jumping back in. I've read the first episode and the refugees they picked up prompted me to read Fall of the Core (previously only read them as the first 2 Netcasts)
I quite enjoyed Fall of the Core but I was bugged by a big Tanna/72 Herculis error:
We know from the first series that Tanna is located in the 72 Herculis system, given a distance of around 47.8 ly
This system is mentioned several times in the Fall of the Core. The first mention is early on when the Stellar Express people are talking about their reserve fleet. They mention that one of those ships took the colonists to the 72 Herculis system.
they are in better condition now than they were during their last colonization contract, when they transported the colonists to the 72 Herculis system more than forty-seven light years away.
In Season 1 we are told:
"72 Herculis. It’s a G-type system located forty-seven point eight light years from Earth. It’s about ten light years from our current position.”
“72 Herculis is listed in the Ark as a fringe settlement,” Jessica added from the tactical station. “The fourth planet was settled and named Tanna.”
“What do we know about the settlement?” Nathan asked.
“At the time the Ark was locked down, the Tanna settlement was only twenty-two years old. Population of seven thousand, mostly miners and their families as well as infrastructure support personnel. It was a corporate colony started by one of the interstellar mega-corps. It was intended to be an industrial base to support colonization efforts farther out in the fringe.”
Finally, there are two mentions specifically of Tanna in Fall of the Core.
The first by Petra who states:
“I once survived for six months in the wilderness of Tanna with nothing more than a combat knife and the clothes on my back.”
and the second by Captain Kinnon:
“Most of my runs were between the same few worlds. Earth, McFallon, Tanna, a few others. I tried to get back to Earth as much as possible, though."
These references all tie neatly together. Unfortunately, we then have the climax of the book where 72 Herculis is the system chosen as the destination by our protagonists, and described b a super-powered AI thus::
The only inhabited system we have a chance of reaching is 72 Herculis, and it will take twenty-seven years, four months, and sixteen days.”
“I never heard of it,” Petra said.
“It was settled twenty years ago by a small group of one hundred people. However, as it is forty-nine light years from Earth, and no other ships have visited the system, we only know that the settlers were delivered successfully to the surface. There is no information about the condition of their settlement.”
We can't even chalk this up to the AI being dishonest or wrong, because it's Petra asking the question, never having heard of the system she once spent 6 months on?
Unless this is somehow cleared up later in Season 3, it's a bit of a whoopsy.
I did like other references in the book though.
The hint that the Stellar Express people might be the founders of the Jung.
Tying in mentions of the Ta'akar expedition (though that clashes with hints from Season 1 that no such long-distance journey had taken place pre-plague)
Also, time travel aside, there's apparently still a super-powered AI, the creator of the plague, circling round and round that star in the Gamaze sector. I can;t help but think he'll crop up again.
