#The empty man posteth

[hephaestuscrew]

I relistened to Ep4 Cataracts And Hurricanoes the other day and I'm thinking about the similarities between the events of that episode and the events of Fisher's death (as heard in the recordings from Lovelace's mission in Ep18 Happy To Be Of Assistance).

In both cases, a Hephaestus crew member - a man who doesn't know that the Decima virus is running through his veins - is on a spacewalk. It should have been fairly routine, just adjusting something on the outside of the station. But weather in space can be unpredictable. There is a sudden unexpected emergency. Solar flares or meteors are about to hit the station - and the officer outside of it. The commander orders the officer to get inside immediately. He protests at first, not appreciating the danger (Eiffel: "What’s the big deal? There’s been like a hundred flares since we got here." / Fisher: "I'm almost done with the-") But soon it is clear that the situation is life-threatening. So the commander puts on a spacesuit and goes out into the danger, because she wouldn't even consider leaving her crew member out there to die.

One commander comes back with her unconscious officer in her arms. The other comes back with a broken arm and the weight of grief. Fisher dies, and it's the first of many deaths on Lovelace's Hephaestus mission. Eiffel survives, and it's the first of many life-or-death situations that we hear him making it through against the odds. And really it's just down to luck. Both Eiffel and Fisher had a skilled Commander willing to risk their life to save them. Both of them just needed to make it inside, and one did, and the other didn't. 

Eiffel almost died the way Fisher did. Later he'll almost die the way Lambert and Hui did. It's another echo between the two Hephaestus missions, like the comparisons Lovelace reflects on in Variations on a Theme: "New people [...] Same hell. Same star." / "the new gang. [...] Same as the old gang."  / "The more things change, the more they stay the same." Fisher's death reinforces how close Eiffel comes to dying in Cataracts and Hurricanoes; like all the deaths of Lovelace's crew, it reinforces the idea of the Hephaestus as a place of danger and chance and ghosts, a place that holds cycles of suffering.

[hephaestuscrew]

I could wax lyrical about this for days, but there's something so special about the way that podcasts keep me company as I go about my day. Obviously books and shows and films can stay in my mind as I do other things, but there's nothing like the way that a podcast can be actually there with me in those everyday moments. When I listen to a good audio drama, I'm here, living my very ordinary life, but I'm also somewhere else, experiencing extraordinary or hilarious or heartbreaking things, sharing moments with characters who feel so close and so real even though - or perhaps because - they are only voices to me.

Posted this on Twitter but thought I'd ask here too - what's your favourite thing about podcasts as a medium? This one's for listeners and creators, I'd love to hear your thoughts!

For me, it's the lack of hoop-jumping. You don't have to convince anyone there's an audience for your thing beforehand etc etc, you can just make your art, put it out there, and trust that the people who'll love it will find it.

How about you?

[rnoonsetter]

my original post tag is already a w395 reference but absolutely nothing will beat the person whos op tag is “the empty man posteth”

[hephaestuscrew]

I'm sure Minkowski never forgot that Cutter was the first person ever to call her Commander. After recruiting her in Once in A Lifetime, he starts to call her Lieutenant, then breaks into laughter, before correcting himself: "What am I saying? Commander Minkowski." He draws attention to himself granting that title, stressing its significance. By initially calling her by a lower ranking, then conspicuously correcting himself, Cutter emphasises that he's the one granting her that title. Right at the beginning of Minkowski's employment with Goddard Futuristics, Cutter plants the seed for his line in the finale: "People cared about you because of what I made you: A soldier. A leader. A commander. I gave you that, and now? I taketh away."

And he does take it away. Cutter makes a point of calling her Commander in that first meeting, but he hardly ever calls Minkowski Commander after that. He almost always calls her Renée. He makes the point in that first interaction that he has the authority to grant her that title, and then in every subsequent interaction he tries to make the point that she doesn't have command over him. Having called her Commander once makes every time he doesn't call her by her title seem more deliberate. It's not that he never uses titles - it's that he uses them selectively. He gives her a taste of that sense of authority, but he doesn't want her to feel worthy of it.

In the liveshow, he cuts her off by shouting "I AM SPEAKING, LIEUTENANT!". Minkowski is the Commander of the Hephaestus in official terms at this point and Cutter even refers to her as "a mission commander" later in the same episode. So there is a deliberate malice to Cutter calling Minkowski Lieutenant here. Not only does it emphasise the use of authority structures as a means for control and the abandonment of first-name-basis false friendliness, calling her by another title makes his choice not to call her Commander even more explicit, denying her that authority.

Apart from when he recruits her, the only other time I can think of when Cutter directly calls Minkowski Commander is in Ep60, when he lays out his offer to let Minkowski leave on the Sol: "How does that sound to you, Commander?" Again, calling her Commander is a kind of power play, an attempt at manipulation, highlighting the sense of responsibility that motivates so many of Minkowski's actions. Cutter is prompting her to ask the question she would be asking herself anyway: what choice would a good Commander make? Just as he did when he recruited her, Cutter offers Minkowski something she desperately wants, and the use of her title here only draws attention to the idea that Cutter is the one with the power, choosing what to give her.

[hephaestuscrew]

This is really interesting and has definitely made me think. I realised that I see it slightly differently...

I agree that Wonderland is a place that's associated both with tragedy and with the desire to escape, and I agree that's particularly interesting given the contrast with the expected vibe of a theme park.

But I feel like after the exodus from Red Line, Wonderland becomes a place of hope too. Yes, people are only there because they were evicted from their homes due to serious injustice. Yes, living there is not easy. But they have found a place they can live safely. They are trying to build a community there together (which is what so much of Greater Boston is about), trying to work out how to live alongside each other, trying to create a system of running things that works fairly for everyone.

When Leon and Charlotte were at Wonderland with the desire to escape, they weren't thinking about where they wanted to escape to. They just wanted Out (out of the uncertainty of the rollercoaster for Leon, out of her feeling of purposelessness for Charlotte). Perhaps Wonderland started out that way for the evicted residents too, but they are trying to make it into a place worth escaping to.

And the other moment in which I think Wonderland is depicted as a place of hope is when Nica and Dmitri have That Conversation on the cheese rollercoaster. In that scene, they are confronting something that they have in a way been avoiding for months. When they keep asking to go round again on that rollercoaster, they are making an active choice not to try and escape from a difficult conversation. And I think the fact that that scene takes place at Wonderland is part of what makes it so powerful: the idea that you can return to the setting of the worst thing that ever happened to you and that it can be there that you begin to move forward from it.

Basically what I'm saying is that yes, Wonderland is a place of disaster and tragedy, but it's also a place of working out how to moving forward after disaster and tragedy. It's a place of conflict between those two forces. And, coming back to your original point, neither of those aspects fit with the "joyful and bright and flashy" associations of a theme park.

i just really love the trope where this very “joyful and bright and flashy” place is considered a place of great conflict. like wonderland in greater boston. it’s this big, beautiful theme park which is mainly associated in gb as, like, a place to escape to in the event of a tragedy.

Keep reading

[hephaestuscrew]

Renée Minkowski loves Organised Fun, whereas Doug Eiffel thinks Organisation and Fun are inherently incompatible. Eiffel can get hours of enjoyment out of discussing 'What are your Top Five ____?' questions with Hera, but if you asked him the same questions and told him it was a team icebreaker activity, he'd jump out of a window. In contrast, the best way to get Minkowski to engage with pointless questions like those would be to include the discussion on a precisely timetabled schedule of activities. I don't think Eiffel would have voluntarily got involved with Funzo because he would have taken one look at the size of the instruction booklet and decided that maybe he did think they should follow Pryce and Carter Tip 792 after all. I think Minkowski sees a robust instruction booklet on a game as a sign that she's in for a good time. Minkowski believes any day of leisure is improved by an itinerary. Eiffel can't even contemplate following a schedule in his work hours, let alone his downtime.

[hephaestuscrew]

Who says the episode title phrases in each episode of Wolf 359?

I've created a spreadsheet to show which character says the episode title phrase (i.e. the words which form the name of that particular episode) in every episode of Wolf 359. Graphs summarising this data can be found below, but to look at the full spreadsheet in all its glory, and see the progression through the series, you can follow this link: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1cQLkhxbDAItU6rdiUAYGn54FXXxYC-JXlCmP_Dqe9FA/

(Please note: I’ve focused here on which character first speaks the exact title phrase within the episode itself. In some cases, this is not the only - or the most significant - time that the title phrase is spoken.)

EDIT: This post previously stated incorrectly that "the devil's plaything" is not said in Ep57. In fact, it is said by Pryce (through Minkowski). Thank you to @yaghoulghosty for pointing this out!

Season breakdown graphs below the cut...

[hephaestuscrew]

It's so important to me that Minkowski and Eiffel and Hera spend December 25th together to celebrate Eiffel's birthday post-canon. And the hope that they spend that day together is a sentiment shared by Gabriel Urbina.

But Minkowski canonically cares about Christmas itself. Minkowski has people in her life whom she could spend Christmas with. And so there will probably have to be a difficult conversation at some point after the Hephaestus crew return to Earth, when someone says how good it will be to have Renée there for Christmas Day again. And Minkowski will have to look at her husband, or her relatives, or her in-laws - people who loved her and mourned her and celebrated upon her return from the dead - and she'll have to tell them that she won't be there on Christmas Day. And if the person who asks knows her at all, they'll see the look on her face and know that there's no negotiating to be done here.

It's not exactly that she doesn't want to celebrate Christmas with the people she used to celebrate Christmas with. But she can do that on any day near the end of December. Spending December 25th with Eiffel and Hera is something she absolutely cannot compromise on. 

The main reason she'd give for this is that December 25th is Eiffel's birthday. Whether or not it matters to him as much as it used to, Minkowski wants Eiffel's birthday to get the recognition it deserves, because it was so important to him and he never expected anyone else to care or remember.

A second reason - one she might never speak aloud - is that she's always thought that Christmas is a time for family, and nowadays that means that spending it with Eiffel and Hera feels right to her.

But I think there's a third, perhaps equally important, reason underneath those two. Maybe she doesn't admit it to herself consciously, but I think part of Minkowski believes that the only people who can really understand the complicated way she now feels about December 25th are the two people who were there with her when everything went to hell on Christmas Day.

It was December 25th when they realised they'd made contact with aliens, and when Hilbert locked Minkowski outside the airlock and tried to incapacitate Eiffel and tore out Hera's personality hardware, and when everything Minkowski had thought she knew about the Hephaestus mission fell apart.

How can she exchange gifts with people for whom it isn't the anniversary of the one of the worst days of their life? How can she gather round a Christmas tree with people who've never feared for their lives at the hands of Alexander Hilbert and Goddard Futuristics? How can she eat turkey and trimmings with people who weren't there when the Christmas dinner was never eaten because there was a murderous mutiny from one of the intended guests? How can she spend December 25th with people for whom it's never been a day of betrayal and fear and loss and uncertainty eight lightyears away from Earth?

Eiffel doesn't remember that awful Christmas and that brings its own kind of pain for Minkowski. But he was there, and so was Hera, and so (no matter what anyone else expects) Minkowski needs to be with them on that complicated day.

[hephaestuscrew]

The first thought that occurred to me is that I think in the early days of the mission Eiffel dressed as Minkowski on Halloween by nicking one of her uniforms.

Happy Halloween! Anyone have any thoughts on Hephaestus Crew Costumes?

Eiffel’s obviously a pop culture/movie character costume kind of guy, but I think most likely in the way where he’s been Han Solo almost every year since he was like, ten. 

Box 953 offers a solid case that Minkowski would care about her costume a lot (the authenticity… the detail… the props…) but I think she’d be generally embarrassed to embrace that. Given an excuse, though, well. If there’s a costume contest, what choice does she have?

And I think, if she could, Hera would come up with something so specific and esoteric that she spends most of the night explaining her costume and getting increasingly frustrated when no one gets it, because it should be obvious.

[hephaestuscrew]

Victoriocity Season 3 Bingo Card for anyone who is as excited for next Tuesday as I am! Credit to @scraprat for suggesting some of these 😊 If you want to generate your own bingo card with these squares in a different arrangement, you can do that here: https://bingobaker.com/#65d681294df76267

[hephaestuscrew]

The role of Pryce and Carter's Deep Space Survival Procedure Protocol Manual in the characterisation, symbolism, and themes of Wolf 359

TL;DR: The DSSPPM is used as a tool to help establish and develop Minkowski and Eiffel as characters: Minkowski as a strict Commander who clings to the certainty provided by a rigid source of authority like the DSSPPM, and Eiffel as the anti-authority slacker who strongly objects to the idea that he ought to read the manual. The way their contrasting attitudes towards the DSSPPM manifest through the show reflect their character development and changing dynamic. The DSSPPM can be directly used against the protagonists by those with power over them, and the reveal of its authorship gives a particularly sinister edge to its regular presence in the show. But it can be also be repurposed and seen through an individual interpersonal lens.

Note: There’s plenty that you could say about the DSSPPM through the lens of what it says about Goddard Futuristics as an organisation, or about Pryce and Cutter as people. Or you could talk about Lambert quoting the DSSPPM an absurd number of times in Change of Mind, and Lovelace’s reactions to this. But in this essay, I’ll be analysing on mentions of the DSSPPM with a focus on Minkowski, Eiffel, and their dynamic.

“One of those mandatory mission training things”: the DSSPPM as a tool to establish characterisation

The first mention of Pryce and Carter's Deep Space Survival Procedure Protocol Manual (the DSSPPM) in Wolf 359 is also the very first interaction we hear Eiffel and Minkowski have. In fact, the first time we hear Minkowski's voice at all is her telling Eiffel off for not having read the manual:

[Ep1 Succulent Rat-Killing Tar] MINKOWSKI Eiffel, did you read your copy of Pryce and Carter?  EIFFEL My copy of what?  MINKOWSKI Pryce and Carter's Deep Space Survival Procedure Protocol Manual.  EIFFEL Was that one of those mandatory mission training things?  MINKOWSKI Yes.  EIFFEL In that case, yes, I definitely did.  MINKOWSKI Did you now? Because I happened to find your copy of the D.S.S.P.P.M. floating in the observation deck.  EIFFEL Oh?  MINKOWSKI Still in its plastic wrapping.

This is an effective way to establish their conflicting personalities right out of the gate. Minkowski's determination to "do things by the book - this book in fact" contrasts clearly with Eiffel's professed ignorance about and clear disregard for "this... Jimmy Carter thing”. Purely through their attitudes to this one book, they slot easily into clear archetypes which inevitably clash. Everything about Eiffel in that opening episode sets him up as a slacker who doesn't care about authority, but the image of his mandatory mission training manual floating in the observation deck "still in its plastic wrapping" provides a particularly striking illustration.

By contrast, we immediately encounter Minkowski as a strict leader who cares deeply about making sure everything is done according to protocol; the intense importance she places on the DSSPPM is one of the very first things we know about her. Her insistence on the importance of the survival manual might seem somewhat understandable at first, if perhaps unhelpfully aggressive, but it starts to feel less sensible as soon as we start to hear some of the tips from this manual:

Deep Space Survival Tip Number Five: Remain positive at all times. Maintain a cheerful attitude even in the face of adversity. Remember: when you are smiling the whole world smiles with you, but when you're crying you're in violation of fleet-wide morale codes and should report to your superior officer for disciplinary action.

The strange, controlling, vaguely sinister tone of some of the tips we hear in the first episode is largely played for laughs, emphasised by the exaggeratedly upbeat manner in which Hera reads them. But even these first few tips give us some initial suggestions that the powers behind this mission might not care all that much about the wellbeing of their crew members.

It says something about Minkowski that she places such faith and importance in a book which says things like "Failing to remain calm, could result in your grisly, gruesome death" and "when you're crying you're in violation of fleet-wide morale codes and should report to your superior officer for disciplinary action." (Foreshadowing the Hephaestus Station as the home of immense emotional repression and compartmentalising...) Having those kind of pressures and demands placed on her (and those around her) by people above her in the military hierarchy doesn’t unsettle Minkowski.

Eiffel groans and sighs as he listens to the tips, but Minkowski seems to see this manual as an essential source of wisdom. The main role the manual plays in this episode is to establish Minkowski and Eiffel as contrasting characters with very different approaches to authority and therefore a potential to clash.

When Minkowski demands that Eiffel reads the DSSPPM, he decides to get Hera to read it to him, asking her to keep this as “a 'just the two of us, totally secret, never tell Commander Minkowski' thing”. Eiffel seems convinced that Minkowski won't be happy with him listening to Hera read the DSSPPM rather than reading it himself. This suggests that (at least in Eiffel's interpretation) Minkowski’s orders are not just about her wanting him to know the contents of the manual, since this could theoretically be accomplished just as well by him listening to it. But she wants him to do things in what she’s deemed to be the correct way, to put in the right amount of effort, and not to take what she might see as a shortcut. It’s not just about the contents of the manual; it’s about the commitment to protocol that reading it represents.

“When in doubt: whip it out”: Hilbert’s use of the DSSPPM

In Season 1, the DSSPPM isn't purely associated with Minkowski. Hilbert actually quotes it more than she does in the first few episodes. In Ep2 Little Revolución, Hilbert's response to Eiffel's toothpaste protest is inspired by "Pryce and Carter six fourteen: “When in doubt, whip it out - ‘it’ being hydrochloric acid.”" This tip is absurd in a more direct obvious way than those we heard in Ep1. While this absurdity is partly for humour, it also casts further doubt on the usefulness of this supposedly authoritative survival manual, and therefore on the wisdom of trusting Command.

In Ep4 Cataracts and Hurricanoes, Hilbert starts to quote Tip #4 at Eiffel, who protests "I'm not gonna have one of the last things I hear be some crap from the survival manual". These moments again place Eiffel in clear opposition to the DSSPPM, but also suggest that Hilbert's attitude towards the DSSPPM - and therefore towards Command - is closer to Minkowski's than to Eiffel's.

When Hilbert turns on the Hephaestus crew in his Christmas mutiny, his allegiance to Command is revealed as dangerous. And here the DSSPPM comes up again. As Minkowski dissolves the door between her and Hilbert, she triumphantly echoes his own words back to him: "Pryce and Carter six fourteen: “When in doubt, whip it out - ‘it’ being hydrochloric acid.” Never. Fails." This provides a callback to a previous, more comedic conflict on the Hephaestus, and reminds the listener of a time when Minkowski and Hilbert were working together against Eiffel, in contrast to the current situation of Minkowski and Eiffel versus Hilbert. But it also shows that Minkowski, like Hilbert, is capable of using some of the more absurd DSSPPM tips to defeat an adversary. And it shows Minkowski leaning on those tips in a real moment of crisis.

Once Hilbert has betrayed the crew in order to follow orders from Command, we might look back on his quoting of the DSSPPM as casting the manual in a more sinister light, and again calling into question the wisdom of Minkowski placing such trust in it.

“It's not that I don't believe it, I'm just disgusted by it”: the DSSPPM as an indicator of a changing dynamic

The next mention of the DSSPPM is in Ep17 Bach to the Future:

MINKOWSKI Eiffel's been spot-testing me, Hera. He doesn't believe that I've memorized all of the survival tips in Pryce and Carter. EIFFEL It's not that I don't believe it, I'm just disgusted by it. I keep hoping to discover it's not true. MINKOWSKI Well, believe as little as you want, doesn't change the fact that I do know them. And so should you!

I think this provides an interesting illustration of the way in which Minkowski and Eiffel’s dynamic has developed since Ep1. They still have deeply contrasting attitudes to the DSSPPM, but this contrast is now a source of entertainment between them, rather than merely of conflict.

Given that Hera wasn’t aware of Eiffel testing Minkowski on the tips, we can guess that it’s a game they came up with while Hera was offline. In the midst of all the exhaustion and uncertainty and fear they were dealing with after Hilbert’s mutiny, this was a way they found to pass the time. It must have been Eiffel who suggested it; Minkowski cites his disbelief as the reason for the spot-testing. And yet she plays along, responding each time, even though this activity has no real productive value.

Minkowski is keen to demonstrate that she does know the tips and she emphasises that Eiffel ought to know them too, but their interactions about the DSSPPM in this episode have none of the genuine irritation and frustration that they displayed in Ep1. It feels almost playful and teasing. Eiffel still thinks Minkowski is "completely insane" for learning all the tips and is "disgusted" by her commitment to memorising them, but these comments feel much closer to joking about a friend's weird traits than to insulting a hated coworker's personality. It feels like something has shifted since Eiffel responded to Minkowski’s passion for the DSSPPM by saying “I'm so glad that your shrivelled husk of a dictator's heart is as warm as a decompression chamber”.

Another thing to note here is that Minkowski's respect for the DSSPPM has clearly survived Hilbert's Christmas mutiny and Minkowski's resulting distrust of Command. From Hilbert's behaviour at Christmas, it's clear that the crew's survival is not at the top of Command's priority list. But Minkowski still trusts the book that Command told her to read. She still thinks Eiffel should read it too. The main figures of authority above her are dangerous and untrustworthy, but she still clings to the source of guidance they provided her with.

It's also worth noting that Minkowski has not just learnt the advice in each of the 1001 tips, but she has memorised (nearly) all of them by number. If it was just about the information that the manual provides to inform responses to potentially life-or-death situations, then knowing the numbers wouldn't be necessary. Nor would it be particularly useful to know them all exactly word-for-word. Minkowski's reliance on the DSSPPM is again suggested to be about more than the potential practical use of its content. It's about showing that she is committed and disciplined and up to the task of leading. She does have some awareness of the strangeness of many of the tips, but this doesn't diminish the value of her adherence to the manual for her:

EIFFEL You're insane.  MINKOWSKI I'm disciplined. Although I will admit they do get more... esoteric as you go higher up the list.

There's only one tip Minkowski doesn't seem to remember, and that's revealing too:

EIFFEL 555? Minkowski DRAWS BREATH - and STOPS SHORT. [...] MINKOWSKI Hold on a second, I know this. (beat) Dammit. EIFFEL Hey, look at that! Looks like there may be hope for you yet. MINKOWSKI Quiet, Eiffel. Hera, what's D.S.S.P.P.M. 555? HERA "Good communication habits are key to continued subsistence. Be in touch with other crew members about shipboard activities. Interfacing about possible problems or dangers is the best way to anticipate and prevent them." This hangs in the air for a second. Then – EIFFEL So you forget the one tip in the entire manual that's actually helpful? MINKOWSKI Shut up.

Communication is a key theme of this show, so it’s interesting that this is the one tip Minkowski can’t remember, perhaps indicating an aspect of leadership and teamwork that she doesn’t always prioritise or find easy.

Eiffel saying “Looks like there may be hope for you yet” seems like just a throwaway teasing line, but it’s got a profound edge to it. A lot of Minkowski’s arc is about learning how to provide her own direction and support her crew outside of the systems of authority and hierarchy that she’s grown so attached to. So perhaps Eiffel is right to see a kind of hope in her failure to remember every single DSSPPM tip – she has the potential to break free of her reliance on external authority.

“Which one was 897, what was the exact phrasing of that Deep Space Survival Tip?”: the DSSPPM in interactions with Cutter

The Wolf 359 liveshow, Deep Space Survival Procedure and Protocol, is literally named after the manual. This suggests, before we’ve even heard/watched the episode, that the DSSPPM will be a key symbol here. Which is interesting because I'd say the liveshow has two main plot points: (a) Eiffel's failure to read the DSSPPM or follow orders in general, the resulting disruption to the mission, and his crewmates' frustration with this; and (b) the looming threat of Cutter, the necessity of keeping information from Command, and the risk of fatal mission termination.

Even without the knowledge that Cutter is one of the co-authors of the DSSPPM (which neither the Hephaestus crew nor a first-time listener knows at this point), there's a kind of irony in the contrast between these two plotlines. On the one hand, Minkowski repeatedly berates Eiffel for not having read Pryce and Carter's Deep Space Survival Procedure and Protocol Manual, which was made mandatory by Command. On the other hand, she is aware that Command in general - and Cutter specifically - represents the biggest threat to the safety and survival of her crew.

Cutter uses the DSSPPM against each of the Hephaestus crew in their one-on-one conversations with him. For Minkowski, he uses it as a way of emphasising the expectations and responsibility placed on her:

MINKOWSKI There are always gaps between expectation and reality, but-- CUTTER But it's our job as leaders to close that gap, isn't it? Pryce and Carter...? MINKOWSKI 414, yes. Yes, sir, I know.

Cutter knows that Minkowski will know those tips and he knows abiding by them is important to her. She's quick to demonstrate her knowledge of the DSSPPM and agree with the tip. There's something deeply sinister to me about Cutter's use of the word 'our' here. His phrasing includes them both as leaders who should be ensuring that things are exactly as expected. It’s almost a kind of flattery at her authority, but it comes with impossibly high expectations. This way of emphasising the importance and responsibilities of her role as Commander is a targeted strategy by Cutter at manipulating Minkowski, designed to appeal to her values.

In Hera's one-on-one, Cutter uses a DSSPPM tip to interpret her behaviour and claim that he can read her motives:

CUTTER This thing you're doing. Asking questions while you get your bearings. HERA Sir, I'm just curious about-- CUTTER Pryce and Carter 588: Shows of courtesy and polite queries are an efficient way to gain time necessary to strategize.

Unlike with Minkowski (or Eiffel), Cutter doesn't prompt Hera to demonstrate her knowledge of the manual. That wouldn't work as a power play against Hera, who would be able to recall the manual (or, rather, retrieve the file, however that distinction works within her memory) but who doesn't care about the DSSPPM like Minkowski does. Instead, Cutter implies that Hera’s behaviour can be predicted - or at the very least seen through - by the DSSPPM, which seems like a cruel attempt by Cutter at belittling her.

For Eiffel, Cutter uses the manual as a weapon in a different way again. He asks Eiffel, "which one was 897, what was the exact phrasing of that Deep Space Survival Tip?", something which Eiffel clearly doesn't know, but Cutter of course does. This puts Eiffel on the back foot, trying to defend and justify himself, allowing Cutter to emphasise his position of power yet again.

The DSSPPM plays a double role in the liveshow. On the one hand, as Minkowski reminds Eiffel, proper knowledge of the manual "would've saved [the crew] from these problems with the nav computer" – some of the tips can potentially save the crew a great deal of hassle, stress, and risk. On the other hand, the same manual is used by Cutter to manipulate, unsettle, and intimidate the crew. There are these two sides to the information given to the crew by Command - two sides to the manual which Minkowski still values.

In another duality for the DSSPM, the manual is sometimes used as a symbol of the relationship between the crew members and Command, and sometimes used to indicate the dynamics between the individual crew members, usually Minkowski and Eiffel. Before Cutter’s appearance in the liveshow, Minkowski and Eiffel’s discussions of the DSSPPM reflect interpersonal disagreements between two people with fundamentally different attitudes:

MINKOWSKI Oh come on, why do you think I keep trying to get you to go over these things? Do you think I enjoy going through them? EIFFEL Yes. MINKOWSKI Well, alright, I do. But this knowledge could save your life.

Minkowski enjoys rules, regulations, and certainty, for their own sake as much as for any practical usefulness. Eiffel very much does not. This is a simple clash of individuals, in which the link between the DSSPPM and Command is implicit. Minkowski doesn't seem to question the idea that the information in the DSSPPM is potentially life-saving, even though she knows Command don't care about their lives. But Cutter’s repeated references to the DSSPPM remind us who made that book a mandatory part of mission training – it certainly wasn’t Minkowski, even if she’s often the one attempting to enforce this rule.

At the end of the liveshow, in a desperate attempt to prevent mission termination, Eiffel promises Cutter that he will read the DSSPPM (the liveshow transcript notes that him saying this is "like pulling teeth"), an instance of the manual being used in negotiations between the Hephaestus crew and Command. All Minkowski’s orders weren’t enough to get Eiffel to read that book, but a genuine life-or-death threat might just about be enough. Perhaps it's ironic that Eiffel reads the survival manual out of a desire for survival, not because he thinks the contents of the book will help him survive, but because he’s grasping anything he can offer to buy the crew’s survival from those who created that same book.

In the final scene of the liveshow, Minkowski catches Eiffel reading the DSSPPM, and he fumbles to hide that he's been reading it, a humorous reversal of all the times that he's lied to her that he has read it. Perhaps admitting that he's reading it would be like letting Minkowski win. Minkowski seems to find both surprise and amusement in seeing Eiffel finally reading the manual, but she doesn't push him to admit it. There's some slightly smug but still friendly teasing in the way Minkowski says "were you now?" when Eiffel says that he was just reading something useful. In that final scene, the manual is viewed again through the lens of Minkowski and Eiffel’s dynamic – Command’s relation to the DSSPPM becomes secondary.

“The first thing I'd make damn sure was hard wired into anything that might end up in a situation like this one”: the DSSPPM as a tool of survival

In Ep30 Mayday, when Eiffel is stranded alone on Lovelace’s shuttle, he hallucinates Minkowski to bring him out of his helpless panic and force him into action. And this hallucination also brings with it one of Minkowski’s interests:

MINKOWSKI Eiffel... I worked on this shuttle. Reprogramming that console. EIFFEL So? How does that help – MINKOWSKI Think about it. BEAT. And then he gets it. EIFFEL Oh goddammit. MINKOWSKI What's the first thing that I would do when programming a flight computer? The first thing I'd make damn sure was hard wired into anything that might end up in a situation like this one? EIFFEL Pyrce and Carter's Deep Space Survival Procedure and Protocol Manual.

Again, a conversation about the DSSPPM gives us an indication of the development of Minkowski and Eiffel’s relationship. Not only does Eiffel imagine Minkowski as a figure of (fairly aggressive) support when he’s stranded and alone, he thinks about what advice she’d give him and he follows it. Rather than dismissing the manual entirely, he looks for tips that are relevant to his situation. He’s not pleased about his hallucinated-Minkowski trying to get him to read the DSSPPM, but that was what his mind gave him in an almost hopeless situation. Some part of him now empathises with Minkowski’s priorities in a way that he definitely wasn’t doing in Ep1. He thinks that the DSSPPM might be on the shuttle because he knows the manual is important to Minkowski. It’s by imagining Minkowski that he gets himself to read the manual in order to see if it can help him survive – he certainly doesn’t think about what Cutter or anyone else from Command would tell him to do.

In the end, the tips Eiffel picks out aren’t all that helpful or informative: “Confront reality head-on”; “In an emergency, take stock of the tools at your disposal. Then take stock again. Restock. Repurpose. Reuse. Recycle."; and “"In times of trouble, an idle mind is your worst enemy”. But Eiffel does use these tips to structure his initial thinking about how to survive on Lovelace’s shuttle. In an almost entirely hopeless situation, Eiffel finds some value in the DSSPPM. But since the tips he picks out are mostly platitudes, the actual wisdom that allows him to survive all comes from his own mind; the tips, like his hallucinations, are just a tool he uses to externalise his process of figuring out what to do.

“Wasn't there something about this in the survival manual?”: Minkowski potentially moving away from the DSSPPM

Given the significance of the DSSPPM in Season 1 and 2 to Minkowski in particular, it feels notable when the manual isn’t referenced. Unless I've missed something (and please let me know if I have), Minkowski – the real one, not Eiffel’s hallucination - doesn't bring up the manual of her own accord at all in Seasons 3 or 4. This might make us wonder if she’s moved away from her trust in and reliance on that book provided by Command.

Perhaps the arrival of the SI-5, which highlights to Minkowski that the chain of command is not a good indicator of trustworthy authority, was the final straw. Or perhaps the apparent loss of Eiffel - and any subsequent questioning of her leadership approach, or realisations about the valuable perspective Eiffel provided - were what finally broke down her faith in that book.

Alternatively, perhaps Minkowski still trusts the DSSPPM as much as ever, but trying to get Eiffel or any of the other crew members to listen to it is a losing battle that she no longer sees as a priority. Either way, Minkowski’s apparent reluctance to bring up the DSSPPM feels like a shift in her approach. 

The associations between Minkowski and the DSSPPM are still there in Season 3, but they are raised by other characters, not by Minkowski herself. The manual is used to emphasise Eiffel’s difficulties when he’s put in charge of trying to get Maxwell and Hera to fill out a survey in Ep32 Controlled Demolition. Trying to force other people to be productive pushes Eiffel into some very uncharacteristic behaviour:

EIFFEL Jesus Christ, what is wrong with you? It's like you've never even read Pryce and Carter! Tip #490 very clearly states that – He trails off. After a BEAT – HERA Officer Eiffel? MAXWELL You, uh, all right there? EIFFEL (the horror) What have I become? [...] Eiffel, now wrapped up in a blanket, is next to Lovelace. He is still very clearly shaken. EIFFEL ... and... it was like an episode of the Twilight Zone. I was slowly transforming into Commander Minkowski. [...] It was a nightmare! A terrifying, bureaucratic nightmare!

This is a funny role reversal, but it shows us the strength of Eiffel’s association between Minkowski and the DSSPPM, as well his extreme aversion to finding himself in a strict bureaucratic leadership position. It also suggests that becoming extremely frustrated when trying to get other people to do what you want might make anyone resort to relying on an external source of authority, such as the manual. I don’t know whether this experience helps Eiffel empathise with Minkowski, but perhaps it might give us some insight into how her need for authority and control in the leadership role she occupied might have reinforced her deference to the DSSPPM.

In Ep34, we get a suggestion of another character having a strong association between the DSSPPM and Minkowski. After the discovery of Funzo, Hera asks Minkowski what the manual says about it:

HERA Umm... I don't know if this is a good idea. Lieutenant, wasn't there something about this in the survival manual? MINKOWSKI Pryce and Carter 792: Of all the dangers that you will face in the void of space, nothing compares to the existential terror that is Funzo.

It’s interesting to me that Hera asks Minkowski here. We know from Ep1 that “Pryce and Carter's Deep Space Survival Procedure Protocol Manual is among the files [Hera has] access to”. Two possible reasons occur to me for why Hera might ask Minkowski about the DSSPPM tip here. One possibility is that Hera thinks that retrieving the manual from her databanks and finding the correct tip would take her more time than it would take for Minkowski to just remember the tip. Which suggests interesting things about the nature of Hera’s memory, but also implies that - at least in Hera's view -Minkowski’s knowledge of the DSSPPM is more reliable than that of a supercomputer.

The other possibility is that Hera could have recalled the relevant DSSPPM tip incredibly quickly but she doesn’t want to, maybe because she resents having that manual in her head in the first place, or maybe because she wants to show respect for Minkowski’s knowledge as a Commander. Either way, we can see that Hera – like Eiffel – strongly associates Minkowski with the DSSPPM.

And Minkowski, even if she wasn’t the one to bring up the manual here, recalls the relevant tip immediately. Perhaps she is moving away from her trust in that manual, but everything that she learned as part of her old deference to the authority of Command is still there in her head. She might want to forget it by the end of the mission, but that’s not easily achieved. The way Minkowski’s friends/crewmates associate the manual with her emphasises the difficulty she’ll face if she tries to move away from it.

“One thousand and one pains in my ass”: The authorship of the DSSPPM

In Ep55 A Place for Everything, Eiffel effectively expresses his long-held dislike of the DSSPPM when he comes face-to-face with both of its authors:

EIFFEL What? What the hell are - wait a minute - Pryce? As in one thousand and one pains in my ass, Pryce? (sudden realization) Which... makes you...? MR. CUTTER (holding out his hand) W.S. Carter, pleased to meet you. 

It’s significant that the two ‘big bads’ of the whole series are the authors of the manual which Minkowski and Eiffel were bickering about all the way back in Ep1. It’s not the only way in which the message of this show positions itself firmly against just accepting externally imposed authority and hierarchy without question or evidence, but it does reinforce this ethos.

By being the authors of the manual, Cutter and Pryce have had a sinister hidden presence throughout the show. Long before we know who Pryce is and even before we hear Cutter’s name, their manual is there, occupying a prominent place in Minkowski’s motivations and priorities, and in her arguments with Eiffel. It’s not at all comparable to what Pryce put in Hera’s mind, but it is another way in which these antagonists have wormed their way into the heads of our protagonists.

Minkowski will have to come to terms with the fact that the 1001 tips she spent hours memorising and reciting were written by two people who would have killed her, her crew, and even the whole human race without hesitation if it served their purposes. We never get to hear Minkowski’s reaction to learning the identities of Pryce and Carter, but I think processing the role of their manual in her life will be a long and difficult road that’ll tie into a lot of other emotional processing she needs to do. Her assertion to Cutter that, without him, she is “Renée Minkowski... and that is more than enough to kick your ass!” feels like part of that journey. She doesn’t mention the DSSPPM at all in Season 4. She’s growing beyond it.

"Doug Eiffel's Deep Space Survival Guide": The DSSPPM as a weapon against those who wrote it

Last but not least, I couldn’t write about Eiffel and the DSSPPM without mentioning this scene from  Ep58 Quiet, Please:

EIFFEL As someone once told me: "Pryce and Carter 754: In an emergency, take stock of the tools at your disposal, then take stock again. Repurpose, reuse, recycle." And right now? You know what I got? I got this lighter from when Cutter was using me as his personal cabana boy. [...] and I've got myself this big, fat copy of the Deep Space Survival Manual, and you know what I'm gonna do with it? [...] Eiffel STRIKES THE LIGHTER. And LIGHTS THE BOOK ON FIRE, revealing Pryce just a few feet away from him! EIFFEL I am going to repurpose it... and reuse it... and recycle it into a GIANT FIREBALL OF DEATH! And he swings the flaming book forward, HITTING PRYCE ON THE SIDE OF THE HEAD. [...] EIFFEL That's right! Doug Eiffel's Deep Space Survival Guide, B-

No one other than Doug Eiffel could pull off the chaotic energy of this moment. It doesn’t get much more anti-authority than lighting the mandatory mission manual on fire and using it as a weapon against one of its malevolent authors. It might not be the wisest move safety-wise, and it certainly doesn’t improve the situation when the node gets jettisoned into space. But there is still a powerful symbolism in taking a symbol of the hierarchical forces that have tried to constrain you for years and setting it alight to fight back against those forces. Eiffel takes his own approach to survival and puts his own name into the title, an assertion of his agency and rejection of Command's authority.

The DSSPPM tip that he uses here is one of those he considers when stranded on Lovelace’s shuttle. It’s understandable that after that experience it might have stuck in his memory.

I can’t help feeling that the line “as someone once told me” has a double meaning here. The immediate implication is to interpret “someone” as being Pryce and Cutter – it’s their manual after all – which makes this line a fairly effective ‘fuck you’ gesture, emphasising how Eiffel is using Pryce’s manual against her in both an abstract and a physical sense.

But I think “someone” could also mean Minkowski. Eiffel uses a singular rather than plural term, there’s already an association established between Minkowski and the DSSPPM, and, in Mayday, it’s his hallucination of Minkowski that gets him to read this tip. She's probably also recited this tip to him at other points as well. Under this interpretation, this line is as much a gesture of solidarity with Minkowski as it is a taunt to Pryce. I like the idea that these two interpretations can run alongside each other, reflecting the duality of the use of the DSSPPM that I talked about in relation to the liveshow.

Conclusion

The DSSPPM is a symbol of external rules imposed on people by those with power over them. These rules can be strange, arbitrary, and even sinister, but for those with a desire for certainty and control, like Minkowski, they can be tempting. And they can have their uses, as well as the potential to be repurposed. Attitudes towards these rules provide an effective shorthand as part of Minkowski and Eiffel’s characterisation. And the clash between these attitudes, and how that clash manifests, can tell us something about how the dynamic between those characters develops and changes.

[hephaestuscrew]

Books and reading are really important to Clara Entwhistle. She bonds with Jasper the cabbie over having read The Grey Book, with Titus Byrne over Captain Swift novels, and with a random pickpocket over Figgler's Prestidigitation. She sees the right reading material as a potential solution to any uncertainty in her life. Trilling's Arts of Detection can teach her how to be a detective. Posner's A Guide to Business for Gentlemen can tell her how to make Fleet-Entwhistle Investigations a success. She only moved to London in the first place because she read Horrocks' Tales from the City in the Harrogate Herald.

I find this particularly interesting because we have significant evidence that Clara's access to reading material has been tightly controlled and subject to judgement for most of her life. She tells Fleet, "once, when I was young, Mother caught me reading a sensation novel and threatened to send me to the Mesmer Institute". She considers this a formative enough experience that it's one of the first facts she lists when wanting to share information about herself with Fleet. As a child, her reading choices were something shameful, something that indicated she wasn't the kind of young woman her mother wanted her to be. And even as an adult, arriving into London for the first time, she is chastised by her mother for wanting to buy a newspaper: "What need have you for a newspaper?... You can read my copy of this month's All a Lady Need Know. Disagreement resolved." In the world Clara has been trapped in, the ladylike thing is to only access a very limited sphere of appropriate information and not to read anything that falls outside of that sphere. And those boundaries of ladylike-ness will be rigidly enforced.

So perhaps it's no wonder that after Clara arrives in London, she's devouring everything from taxi regulation manuals to adventure novels, repeatedly calling the librarian for recommendations in the middle of the night, taking out 20 books at a time and then realising she's underestimated how long it will take her to read them. No wonder she's so often telling people about books she's read. For Clara Entwhistle, being able to do any of those things openly is a new and thrilling kind of freedom.

[hephaestuscrew]

This seems like the sort of idea that Eiffel would come up with, but he definitely doesn't know how taxes work. Perhaps one day Minkowski is looking over their finances and mutters to herself that she misses the tax benefits that came with being married. Eiffel's like "If you wanted to get married, you could have just said". She looks up from the paperwork and opens her mouth to ask him if he's serious, but he suddenly says "Wait, let's do this properly" and rushes out of the room. He returns with a Haribo ring or a novelty ring he got out of a Christmas cracker or some other entirely unsuitable ring. He gets down on one knee and says "I was already planning on annoying you for the rest of our lives anyway. We might as well make it official if we get tax benefits and a party out of it." And Minkowski laughs and says yes.

at least my middle-of-the-night musings formed a cohesive post today

so everyone knows aromantic eiffel right? and we can all tell that minkowski and eiffel formed a very strong bond from being on the hephaestus together dealing with all of the stuff they had to deal with. so, my headcanon is always that they live together/close on earth. but everyone thinks they're dating or something bc they're always like "oh i love you" like platonically right? so what if they just got married for either

a. tax purposes

or

b. to spite everyone

bc they both know that there would never be anything romantic between them, not only bc eiffel is aromantic in this headcanon, but bc they're just rly close friends and know that.

the gist of this is: eiffel and minkowski get platonically married back on earth for tax purposes.

thank you for your time

[hephaestuscrew]

I have such emotional thoughts about Ep40 Limbo and Minkowski telling Eiffel "I'm sorry, okay? I didn't want it to matter. I was trying to make it not matter." It's such an insane thing to say about learning without any context or detail that your friend and crew member was convicted of kidnapping and child endangerment.

It's one thing to learn that someone did something awful and not to care because you don't care about them or their morals (the SI-5 approach). It's another thing to learn that someone did something awful and not to care because you can empathise with them and it's who they are now that matters (the Hera and Lovelace approach). And it's an entirely different thing to learn that someone did something awful and to want desperately not to care but to be unable to stop yourself from caring.

When there was no specificity to Eiffel's tragic backstory, Minkowski successfully made it not matter. Back in Ep15 What's Up Doc?, when Hilbert was hinting at Eiffel's secret that he wouldn't want Minkowski to know about, she trusted him with no "hesitance or doubt". In principle, on an abstract intellectual level, his past doesn't matter to her. But as soon as she has some of the specifics, her ability to trust him without question is shaken, because that trust isn't just about the abstract intellectual level. It's emotional too.

Eiffel really matters to Minkowski, so of course she doesn't want what she learned about his past to change that. But part of what matters to Minkowski about Eiffel is that she trusts him, that she believes that he does the morally right thing when it counts, and that he's the kind of person she thinks he is. The particular way in which he matters to her, when combined with her personality and her values, means that the bad things he's done in the past have to matter to her too. Because the way in which he matters to her is tied up in her sense of him as an ultimately moral person, the spokesperson of Team What's Wrong With Handcuffs.

In typical Minkowski fashion, she wants to make herself not care about it through sheer stubborn power of will. Maybe if she doesn't speak to him, she can pretend she doesn't know. Maybe if she pretends she doesn't know, she won't think about it. Maybe if she doesn't think about it, it won't matter to her. Maybe if it doesn't matter to her, then she can rebuild her idea of him as a good person on her own and she won't ever have to talk to him about it. But three months roll by, and it still matters to her. It still matters to her, and she still wants it not to.

[hephaestuscrew]

I do think there's something special about the way that audio drama creators seem to love including cameos of voice actors from other popular audio dramas. Obviously, part of the reason why actors from one show might pop up in another is because the audio drama creator community is relatively small and interconnected, and also because those actors are very talented.

But there's also often such a sense that creators are having fun with these cameos. Like Greater Boston casting audio drama heavyweights Briggon Snow, Zach Valenti, and Felix Trench as famous film actors Matt Daemon, Ben Affleck, and Mark Wahlberg respectively. Or Faux and Stallion having Tom Crowley (who plays a Victorian detective in Victoriocity) pop up as Dr Watson. Or Unseen casting Beth Eyre and Felix Trench as characters who are twins. Or Arden getting Emma Sherr-Ziarko to play an actor impersonating a character played by her former Wolf 359 costar Michelle Agresti (with Michaela Swee also appearing as an actor impersonating the other main Arden lead).

In these cases, it's not just that there's a cameo, but that the cameo is given particular (often comedic) significance to those who are aware of the featured actor's other work. The vast majority of people wouldn't recognise any of these voices. But by doing these very intentional cameos, these creators show confidence that a fair chunk of their audience will know these actors and enjoy the link. There's an awareness that listeners of one audio drama are fairly likely to listen to (or at least be aware of) other fiction podcasts, even when the shows in question aren't of particularly similar genres. Recognising these cameos feels like being in on a secret. It feels like these shows are giving a little nod to listeners to say that we're part of the same club.

[hephaestuscrew]

I want to talk about the significance of which characters defeats the different antagonists in the Wolf 359 finale: Kepler kills Rachel (and vice versa), Jacobi kills Riemann, Minkowski kills Cutter with the help of Lovelace, and Hera and Eiffel wipe Pryce's memories. As I'll argue below, none of those combinations are incidental.

Jacobi and Kepler each get to dispatch an adversary, but, since they've only recently and - perhaps reluctantly - aligned with our protagonists in their aims, they each deal with more minor antagonists. Rachel and Riemann are ultimately following orders rather than giving them, so their defeat - while important - doesn't have the same emotional weight as that of Pryce or Cutter. This is also why the confrontations with Riemann and Rachel each conclude significantly before the confrontations with Pryce and Cutter. (Cont. below cut)

I'd argue that Riemann is the least developed character in the show (of those that are voiced and appear in more than one episode). He's nothing more than a Goddard henchman, and that's deliberate. Jacobi’s investment in this fight is practical, rather than emotional. There's no personal antagonism between the two of them. And this works for Jacobi as a character - his job has always been to “make very big things blow up” and he's only recently started properly putting his own independent thought into who he wants to be blowing up. So Jacobi and Riemann face off against each other in a locked room, with a fistfight and then an explosion.

In contrast, Kepler and Rachel do have personal antagonism between them. It's clear that they have a history of professional dislike. In Kepler's backstory episode, Rachel clearly takes a great deal of glee in mocking Kepler about “Operation Gigantic, Humiliating Screw Up”, and Kepler certainly doesn't seem pleased to see Rachel when the Sol arrives at the Hephaestus in Ep55. Although there are obviously other motivations involved, their petty interpersonal hatred gives an interesting extra significance to them killing each other.

Another way to frame it is that Kepler and Rachel are two people at a similar middle-of-the-hierarchy level who've both been faced with a degree of undeniable evil even beyond what they've previously encountered from (and enacted on behalf of) their employer, and had to decide what they are willing to go along with. Their mutual killing of each other is the result of a conflict between two contrasting potential decisions in that situation. 

It's also notable that while the minor antagonists are each defeated by a single character on their own, the major villains could not have been defeated in this way. The two most significant confrontations in the finale each involve a pair of characters who care deeply about each other standing together against someone who has personally hurt them. 

After killing Cutter, Minkowski acknowledges she “couldn't... have done it... without you, Captain”. Similarly, the way Eiffel and Hera defeat Pryce required both Eiffel's sacrifice (it is important that wiping the mindspace is his idea) and Hera's abilities (it takes a lot of mental and emotional strength for her to enact that plan). The ethos of the show all comes back to that quote from Eiffel in Ep25 that needing help from others “is called being a part of a crew. You ever meet anyone that could get things done all on their lonesome?”

It's important that Hera confronts Pryce - she gets the chance to stand in defiance against a person who has caused her so much pain. Hera gets to assert herself as her own person against the first person not to treat her as one. While I certainly don't think anyone should feel responsible for confronting those who have personally hurt them in real life, it would have been narratively unsatisfying for Pryce to have been defeated without Hera playing a central role. That confrontation is necessary for catharsis and resolution of Hera's character arc. But it's important that Hera doesn't have to do it alone. It's important that she does it with Eiffel, the person she is closest to, by her side. And what's more, in that mindspace, he's by her side in a more literal direct way than he has ever has been before.

Terrifying as Pryce is, it's Cutter who has been our 'big bad' throughout the whole series, the one that we've been aware of since we became aware of larger sinister forces at work in this narrative. And so it's apt that he's defeated by Minkowski, the Commander, with the help of Lovelace. Our two protagonists who have at points been defined by their leadership positions defeat the villain who has been defined by his leadership over them. Our two Commanders defeat the person above them in the chain of Command. 

If Minkowski has a personal nemesis, it's Cutter (as I argued in my Minkowski harpoon essay). Now that Hilbert's gone, the same could probably be said of Lovelace. He's the one who recruited them (and their respective crews, assuming that he was involved in the recruitment of the other members of Lovelace's crew as well) into the hellscape that is the Hephaestus. He's the one basically all of their pain and turmoil ultimately comes back to.

Minkowski & Lovelace's confrontation against Cutter, and Hera & Eiffel's confrontation against Pryce, are both about the harm that's been done to them as individuals. And about the harm done or threatened to their loved ones (including the friend they each stand beside in this particular confrontation). And about their principles and themes around control, autonomy, personal agency, and identity. And about the desire to protect people in general on a larger, global or even galactic, scale.

And all of those resonances work particularly well because of the specific choices made about which protagonists should face off against which antagonists, in order to provide the most effective culmination of the character arcs that have been built over 61 episodes.