Samantha Massey

Samantha Massey is a driller at Happy Valley, the Mars base, a former Army veteran who lost part of a leg in service and now works with the same grit underground. Blunt, capable, and unimpressed by rank, she wants fair treatment for the crews doing the dangerous, unglamorous labor that keeps the base running.

Tyner Rushing plays her with a lived-in physicality and no self-pity, making Samantha feel like someone who has actually done hard work rather than an actor performing toughness. She widens the show's usual astronaut-and-engineer focus to the laborers who keep Mars functioning, and her plainspoken frustration gives the series a working-class conscience it badly needed.