Doc Watch: Implosion - The Titanic Sub Disaster (2025)

Watched:  06/21/2025

Format:  Max

Viewing:  First

Director:  Pamela Gordon

Friday when I wrapped work, Jamie informed me that there was, in fact, a different documentary about the Titan submersible disaster currently playing on Max (part of the Discovery/ HBO partnership).  And so it was we put on Implosion: The Titanic Sub Disaster (2025).  

Just a couple of days ago, we wrote about Titan: The Oceangate Disaster which we watched on Netflix, so, yes, this is a second doc on the same topic.

Thanks to streamers seeing documentary as a fairly inexpensive endeavor, we often get more than one documentary on the same hot topic - and since the Fyre Festival adventure, I've liked watching dueling docs.  It gives me a chance to get more than one POV on a topic, and you do start feeling like you're triangulating on some version of reality as different film makers will pursue different angles.

In that prior write-up, I sort of raged against the myth of the maverick entrepreneur, so I won't repeat myself here.  

This doc is actually a great companion piece to the Netflix film with different interview subjects, some of whom share more of the mentality of Stockton Rush, some of whom were on the boat and are not covering their ass, and some saying out loud what you kind of have to suspect based on the evidence provided in both films, but which we still don't know for sure.

There's an interview with a fellow submersible builder who was alluded to in the Netflix doc, who rode in Titan and didn't trust it - and seemed quite peeved about how all of this went down.  There's a fellow risk-taking buddy who paid and was part of one of the successful trips down to Titanic.  A crew member who seems maybe like he's not entirely wrapped his head around his part in all this.  A contractor who tried to raise alarms and was dismissed.  And - maybe one of Discovery's lynchpins for doing this, Josh Gates of Expedition: Unknown on Discovery, who had looked into going down with Stockton Rush and decided "these people have no idea what they're doing, and this guy is full of shit".

This doc is less quick to point to the "Oceangate was run like a cult" determination that Netflix went with, but it also hints at it with the experiences of some interviewees - including someone whose concerns were dismissed.  

And this is what put a fine point on when you should be able to know you're in a bad situation.  This contractor was told, after bringing up her concerns with her supervisor, that she "didn't have an explorer's mentality" for suggesting that the *very loud* pop they all heard when the sub came up should be looked into.  

That's a real "you're not one of us, and we're warning you and dismissing your valid concerns with some made up nonsense" stuff that the witness rightfully took as an invitation to leave.  And it's the sort of language people use when they're knowingly doing something ill-advised...  This sort of stuff is how many, many orgs get taken down over time - purity of ideal rather than practicality of mission.

Also, risking the lives of high-paying tourists is *not* an explorer's mentality.  

(a) You're building a tourism toy, not an exploration vehicle.  No one thinks taking a Jeep to the bottom of the Grand Canyon is "exploring".  (b) Disney did not build its 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea ride for anything less than a 100% safety record because it knew what it's actual job was.  (c)  We are not in the era of ships guided by astrolabes.   If people died on Captain Cook's voyage, it was a years-long endeavor where you couldn't get a helicopter ride to a hospital if they got a boo-boo.  Things were different.    

And you aren't exploring to find the Titanic. You're tooling around something they found 40 years ago.   when I was ten or so.  I remember the news they'd found it and the subsequent issue of National Geographic with the pictures.   Hell, the Titan was not outfitted with mapping equipment nor did it have a mission to find new territory.

Taking risks in the modern era is a small part of the explorer's mentality.  It's all about minimizing risk.  Folks exploring the Arctic and Antarctic do so with the intention of living long lives.

Josh Gates' testimony is surprisingly damning.  But it makes sense.  He's a guy who actually willingly throws himself into sketchy situations for a living, but it's just Gates and crew.  They also have to get okays from the network and their insurance providers, so they can handle their situation.  Gates knowing that their coverage would be an endorsement of Oceangate and pulling the plug is no small thing.  He also knows a sales pitch when he hears one, which is not something I'd say for a lot of people.

And that's the thing.  Somehow being a "disruptor" has become an end unto itself and something we thing is an automatic good.  And, it's clear, that's what Stockton Rush thought he was.  It's how he got investors.  But we don't hear about tech disruptors who fail.  They just fade away. They don't implode at 4000 meters with billionaires along.

This doc speculates a bit more about something I was pondering - if Oceangate was funded by investors, maybe Rush knew he was going to fail, but couldn't turn back.  He had to keep moving, like a pyramid scheme, in order to keep the money coming in.  Stopping and doing the right thing was going to take the boat out of the water, at minimum.  Admitting carbon fiber was not going to work would be a huge problem when it came to cash flow and showing that upward swing on the chart for the investors.  It would, likely, end the whole venture.  And it's possible Rush simply couldn't financially afford that - the more likely scenario - his ego couldn't handle that.  

While finding out what of the Titan submersible physically failed and why is important, to me, what would be most vital would be seeing the investigation get into the finances of Oceangate, which neither doc was able to do.  But I'm glad they brought it up in this one.