The Silent Sea (2021)
Review of The Silent Sea / 고요의 바다 (2021)
I binge-watched this show in one day for work, and man I couldn’t take my eyes off of it. I rarely watch a show without skipping through something, but The Silent Sea had me captivated.
It was fascinating that the main four roles (Dr. Song, Han Yoon-jae, Ryu Tae-suk, and the other doctor) were larger actors, but the other actors were smaller ones I’d never seen or heard of before. Power to the new generation and Netflix, I guess.
Anyways, everyone at work was raving about this and I assigned myself some articles to write and got watching. The Silent Sea is only eight episodes long, which seems to be the standard nowadays.
Most Korean dramas are sixteen episodes, and so they’re setting these kinds of shows up to be two seasons, but, in actual Korean standards, it makes up a single show. The pacing on this show was a little wonky, which I’ll talk about, but let’s get into this review.
A group is sent to space in order to retrieve a sample from an abandoned base, but, instead, they find a deadly secret.
Our main three characters in The Silent Sea are played by three very big actors in South Korea. Let’s go through each character one by one.
But for quick context: the characters live in a world where there isn’t enough water, and there’s some hints of class at play here.
People are assigned ranks based on their socioeconomic status, and based on what rank you have that dictates how much water you get. This is very much like a Dune situation going on here when it comes to the planet Arrakis in that world.
Song Ji-an is played by Bae Doona, who is best known for her early roles in Park Chan-wook and Bong Joon-ho movies (I LOVED her in The Host). Song is an astrobiologist who lost her sister Won-kyung in the Balhae Station accident. Won-kyung was the lead researcher at Balhae, a lab on the moon, and there was a supposed radiation leak that killed everyone on the station.
Before she died, she was able to send Ji-an one last message telling her to find Luna, which Song could not understand at first. When she’s asked to go to Balhae Station as part of the team sent to retrieve the samples, she agrees because of this message.
Han Yoon-jae is played by Gong Yoo, with a neck tattoo that made me think it was a squad tattoo.
He goes on this mission as the captain because he’s promised a higher water rank. His daughter needs more water or she’ll need an amputation, but because he doesn’t have high enough status, he can’t do anything. He’s promised a higher status if he succeeds, but when the mission turns deadly, it becomes something he never expected.
Ryu Tae-suk is played by Lee Joon. He’s one of two traitors on the team, which isn’t obvious until it is. Park Gi-su, the second casualty, is the other traitor, but Ryu’s reasoning is more legitimate.
He was one of the men sent to kill the original researchers at Balhae, and he was consumed by his guilt and turned on the government because of it. He also shows a conscience as he has to kill his teammates, despite locking them in and preparing the place to be flooded.
The Silent Sea starts out as a mystery, as we don’t know how all the researchers ended up in contact with the lunar water. Lunar water is the sample that the team was sent to retrieve, but they’re not told that.
When lunar water comes into contact with living tissues, it multiples rapidly. So when a human comes into contact with it, it spreads rapidly in the body and forces them to drown in the sheer amount of water being produced.
We don’t realize this until the third death: Soo-chan. He accidentally disturbs a corpse and gets droplets in his eyes. He begins to act weary and sees starfish, and in the control room he begins to vomit up extreme amounts of water.
As he sinks into the mental ocean, he dies, having drowned in the water. It’s with his death the two doctors discover how the water multiplies, and then they discover another secret: Luna 073.
The original researchers at the base were experimenting on clone children, killing seventy-two children until their experiment worked.
Luna 073 is inhumane because she has super strength, gills on her face, and she heals when coming into contact with lunar water.
When Song Ji-an is exposed, Luna bites her and Ji-an is cured. Luna becomes a question of concern, because if she’s brought back onto Earth, she will definitely be experimented on.
It’s interesting how everyone dies except the women in this show. It’s also interesting that the main antagonist (the director) doesn’t play much of a hand, and instead the antagonist role falls onto the one hurt the most by this: Lee Joon’s character.
That offered a fascinating critique to me about politics and status. The everyday underlings end up traumatized and in a cycle of guilt and revenge, while the people at the top continue to cause havoc.
There were definitely a lot of plot holes in this show, especially towards the end. I found myself so confused when they just took off infected Hazmat suits with their bare hands, as well as the pacing in the last two episodes.
Like Ryu took so long to die because of the lunar water—it seemed to convenient that he had the chance to just stand there and keep apologizing. It adds depth to his character, but it was so much time wasted as the base is literally flooding.
Overall Thoughts
I found this show to be quite interesting—I keep using that word, but it fits the bill best. There’s a lot of undertones about class and greed that will probably be expanded upon in the next season (if Netflix renews; they probably will because they left this show on too much of a cliffhanger), as well as some pretty big plot holes.
I hope they fix their science if they get to the next season. There were also some big tropes that had me constantly comparing this show to Alien (they’re very similar).
Would I watch it again? No. But I’m glad I watched it once. It was pretty entertaining outside of the frustrating moments.
