Titan, a moon of Saturn, is largely depicted as a desert satellite first appearing in the season finale of series one: episode 13, Jupiter Jazz Part 2 during which it is described as the setting of an armed military conflict.
War on Titan:
The War on Titan is not defined exactly in origin or participants, although the Mars Army seems to have participated in the campaign somehow as Vincent Volaju, one of the infantrymen, was affiliated with that faction. Both times that it is mentioned, it is crucial to the backstory of a character who fought in it. The characters involved were victims of an ongoing exploitation by medical experimenters such as Cherious Medical. Gren, in Jupiter Jazz Part II, describes being imprisoned on charges of espionage and treason shortly after his return from Titan. He goes on to describe his deteriorating mental state as the reason that he was given an experimental antipsychotic that resulted in a hormonal imbalance causing him to develop breasts.
In Knockin' on Heaven's Door, Vincent Volaju served in the conflict on Titan until being placed into Dr. Mendolo al-Hedia's nanomachine research program. The resulting experimentation caused Vincent to lose his memory as well as hallucinate massive swarms of butterflies that appeared to be made of light. The combination of memory loss and hallucination caused a psychotic break when Vincent became unable to differentiate reality from hallucination and dreaming.
Characters Serving in the War:
Vicious: His affiliation and rank are unknown, but he was allied with Gren. Gren describes him as a great warrior, though he falsely testified that Gren was a spy.
Gren: Rank and affiliation unknown – imprisoned for espionage after Vicious framed him.
Vincent Volaju: Mars Army, Special Forces. Drafted in 2060, joined Special Forces in 2062. Reached the rank of First Sergeant before being declared legally dead in the War on Titan II in 2068.
Elektra Ovirowa: Mars Army, Special Forces. Rank is unknown though she is described as having a close romantic relationship to Vincent following his placement into Mendelo’s program. After serving in the military Ovirowa found work as a private security contractor for Curious Medical, the corporation that funded Mendelo Al-Hedia’s research.
Symbolism:
Titan seems to exist in the series as a symbol of horrific trauma and the wrongdoings of military and the medical industry. It is depicted both in the series and the movie as being monochromatic and barren desert-scape; the lack of definition in the conflict as well as Titan’s apparent lack of habitation or buildings leads us to question what it is that the war is being fought over in the first place. Perhaps Titan's vast reserves of methane and ethane.
Volaju describes Titan in Knocking on Heaven’s Door saying “There were no enemies there, no allies. Just guinea pigs to test nanoweapons…”