In Isaidub — The Martian

At first, he thought it was a hallucination. A grainy, teal-and-orange-tinted Tamil movie appeared on his screen, the audio dubbed so badly that the actors’ lips moved to a completely different rhythm than the words coming out. The background music swelled at random moments. A hero punched a villain, and the voiceover screamed, “Oru nimidam! (One minute!)” while the villain flew backward into a stack of hay.

Mark looked at her, then at the other crew members. He took a deep breath, stood up straight, and in a voice that was not his own—a voice that was pure, unfiltered, bathroom-echo-chamber isaidub —he declared:

Mark Watney wasn’t supposed to survive. That was the first thing the NASA briefing got right. The second thing they got right was that he was, in the words of the Director, “unreasonably, irritatingly resourceful.”

“I’m alive because of potatoes, Commander. And terrible, terrible dubbing.” the martian in isaidub

The crew stared in silence. Martinez whispered, “He’s lost it.”

And a voice, dripping with misplaced gravitas, announced: “Mudivu. (The End.)”

But Mark just smiled, pulled out his jury-rigged drive, and plugged it into the Hermes’ main viewer. As the ship pulled away from Mars, the screen flickered to life. A badly-cropped logo appeared: ISAIDUB.COM – WATCH ONLINE . At first, he thought it was a hallucination

Mark began to mimic them. “Potato,” he’d say in his best dubbed-Tamil-hero voice, deep and dramatic. “You are… the rasi of my kudumbam .”

The Hab’s airlock blew out. A catastrophic failure. Mark patched it with canvas and spare plastic. Exhausted, he collapsed in his chair. On screen, a grainy rip of Mersal was playing. The villain had just revealed his evil plan. The dubbed voice, a man clearly recording from a bathroom for the echo effect, declared, “Nee yaaru naan thedikardhu illa… aana nee yaaru-nu therinjukardhu romba mukkiyam. (I don’t care who you are… but finding out who you are is very important.)”

And boredom, on a dead planet with only 1970s disco for company, is a terrifying thing. A hero punched a villain, and the voiceover

What they didn’t get right was how he spent his first hundred sols alone. They thought he spent them calculating potato yields and distilling water from hydrazine. In reality, after the initial panic subsided, Mark discovered something far more vital to his survival than oxygen: boredom.

“Indha senai… indha manushan… indha MARTIAN kum… ungalukum naduvula… oru chinna vishayam irukku. (Between this army… this man… this MARTIAN… and you… there is a small matter.)”

He paused for dramatic effect, just like in the movies.