#but then he saves their asses by being simultaneously bold and self-deprecating

[hephaestuscrew]

In the Wolf 359 liveshow, Minkowski slips up when talking to Cutter by saying, "Sir, whatever unorthodoxy you may have been observing in our logs, rest assured that it is based on my commitment to getting Eiffel and Hera back home in one piece", which gives away that Hera is back online. Part of the reason Minkowski makes this mistake is because she gets defensive under Cutter's questioning about the mission and her personal feelings, but I love that another part of the reason is that she automatically includes Hera as one of the people she's trying to keep safe. [cont. below the cut]

The thing is, that line would have been a slip up even if the crew hadn't been trying to hide from Cutter that Hera was back online. Because getting the AI "back home in one piece" isn't meant to be an objective of a Goddard Futuristics deep space mission. From Goddard's perspective, an AI's wellbeing is only of concern in relation to how well they can do their job. Hera says in Do No Harm that the crew "were always going to" leave her up there on the Hephaestus. And in Am I Alone Now she talks about how one day the crew will have "all gone away".

Of course, it becomes fully clear later that getting the Communications Officer home in one piece wasn't on Goddard's actual agenda either. But even in the official version of Command's plan for the Hephaestus, which Minkowski would have been presented with at the beginning of the mission, it seems that getting Hera back to Earth safely wasn't seen as a desired outcome. And yet, by the time of the liveshow, getting Hera back to Earth safely is such a key part of Minkowski's motivation that she declares it automatically, without thinking, to Mr Cutter himself.

Minkowski says the line above in response to Cutter implying that she might have lost sight of what's important. At the mention of what's important, she talks about her commitment to protecting her people, even though she knows that that isn't what's important to Goddard. In a moment of stress, she reveals what truly drives her, which isn't an objective from Command at all.

This moment reminds me a bit of how in The Devil's Plaything, Eiffel gives away that he's no longer under Pryce's mind control by calling Hera by her name instead of Unit 214. In both cases, the part of the lie that the characters can't maintain is pretending that they don't care about Hera. In both cases, they don't even notice their mistake until it is pointed out to them, because what they said - calling Hera by her name, or expressing the importance of keeping her safe and getting her back to Earth - just came naturally to them without question.