Is anybody else watching The Expanse?

In the books there's often just recorded videos if distances are too far or conversations with x minutes delay

Avasarala's Aphorisms: Deep and Pertinent Thoughts for Your Daily Life

So good this week (and looked stunning)

Really hope this gets a third season. Critics seem to be falling over themselves to praise it but no idea what viewing figures are like.

what a fucking ep!

That was as truly spectacular piece of TV, but The conversation betwen Arjun and and Crisjen Avasarala was one of the most fantastic things and then the show just ramped up the emotional intensity.

Miller's conversation with (redacted) was a bit much, especially the way it ended, but the last shot of the episode made me forget that.

miller achieving consummation with his woman-in-a-refrigerator while performing a noble sacrifice was some grade-a neckbeard bullshit imo

haha I mean I am definitely sympathetic to that view

that said I it/they were all properly 'sploded and we don't get any "they still exist in the whispery space ether" bullshit

yeah the protomolecule is the least interesting thing about this show, maybe we can get back to taut political maneuvering now

isn't complaining that sci-fi plotting isn't realistic enough also a sort of a neckbeard disposition though adam? :p

The scene did not play as it did in the book. In the book, what remains of Mao is cocooned in protostuff, her lines are heavily dissassociative. Sticking the actress in a nude body stocking and zero-g harness and having her kiss Miller was a lovely image, but it sexualized Miller's quest in unpleasant ways.

The White Walkers are the least interesting thing about Game of Thrones, and yet *one hopes* they offer a deadline for all the maneuvering.

"properly 'sploded"

it's not a matter of realism so much as of an unpleasant aftertaste of authorial wish-fulfillment. the damaged anti-hero hits all his marks in a confluence of contemporary SF cliches. that those cliches are tinged with a retrograde sexualized othering of the julie mao character doesn't help.

I agree w/ that, I was fine with his julie mao obsession right up until then

it sexualized Miller's quest in unpleasant ways

it was skin-crawly but you could say that miller's "thing" for julie always had that unpleasant tinge to it. keeping her photo in his hat - he never got that hat back! :( - the wistful tone in his voice when talking about her.

also creepy: the protomolecule special effects having an after-school craft-club vibe to them (or would that be "crepe-y" heh heh)

i didn't follow that miller had actually succeeded in changing julie's mind lol - at the end i thought "wow SF that actually goes ahead and destroys the earth is maybe pretty rare?"

I didn't either. I wasn't sure what the hell was going to happen until they cut to Venus and showed the impact. I kinda feel like some of what happens after they lose contact with Miller is all his own daydream. Like, when he takes his helmet off, hasn't he been basically knocking holes through the whole place since he pried open the airlock? II hypothesize he just let the bomb detonate and that threw it off course, and all the nonsense with reconstituted Julie is in his oxygen-starved brain.

The latest episode was good. I finally googled Fred Johnson's lieutenant (played by Cara Gee) and I have determined that they have in fact deliberately made her up to look less attractive. Belters, man.

Dunno. I still have a soft spot for goths. Potential spoilers for 207:

http://www.nerdspan.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/NUP_174491_0062.jpg

you really are shameless about the spoliation dude

Very sorry, I've been living with the sneak peak from 207 for a couple days (and hence didn't think there was anything major here), and this was the best lit press shot of Cara Gee as Drummer.

something else i didn't understand - a suddenly sentient eros starts accelerating, kamikaze-like, toward earth, and mars gets sniffy when earth realizes it has to do something about it? mars says "we won't consider it a 'first strike'" - well why would they, anyway? eros doesn't belong to mars, right? did i miss something (else?)?

i like how nutty amos is getting

also i like how expanse mobile phone tech doesn't really advance, even over hundreds of years. it reached a point of good enough.

i started watching series one

The clear cellphone thing looks cool, but it's so ridiculous. You can see the screen from the back! Especially silly when Miller is doing police stuff on his phone and trying to be stealthy.

Earth firing a gigantic spread of interplanetary missiles at any target should be of concern to anybody in the solar system imho.

How can this already be on Ep 7???

I sorta miss Miller :(

Still think they need to take some hints from GoT and let their Jon Snow character get beat up more. Holden is still too golden-boy/authorial-self-insertion, and hence Amos or Dawes steal every scene.

I'm fine with Holden as the Hamlet-type figure, always agonized, trying to right the wrongs, live morally in a corrupt society etc.

I also miss Octavia, I had a bit of a crush on her tbrr

Holden's still too boyscout, I really miss Miller

Maybe Miller is that glowy blue monster thing that attacked Gunny.

I was thinking that as well!

I'm hoping Octavia makes a return as well because yeah, Athena Karkanis

Holden's a twit but that's been true since Ep 1. I don't mind.

Fred Johnson should have known better than to get Dawes involved with anything, but we all reap the benefits, so yippee!

Also they better not be messing with Amos. LEAVE MY AMOS ALONE

I was wondering if collision with Venus disposed of 2 characters I would have used further. But did wonder if this weird humanoid that pops up elsewhere was tied in. Only I'm not sure where the elsewhere is related to Venus.
Also not getting the drive thing that they cut back several decades to. Is it a standard feature of contemporary travel once discovered? Looked like they were setting up the character for First Contact too, did I miss that happening? Humanoid isn't him is it? Or reason for alien presence on Eros down to him?

How can this already be on Ep 7???

Thirteen episodes this season though so we still have six to go.

Really hope this gets renewed. Think ratings are down on last season but looking at this it's still one of the most viewed shows on SyFy and critics love it (not that that seems to count for anything with TV execs)

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/03/decrypted-the-expanse-the-truth-is-never-what-you-expect-it-to-be/

Belter creole

it's a lock for renewal

I wouldn't be surprised if Alcon Entertainment pursued this with Amazon or Netflix if SyFy dropped them. The lesson of science fiction television is that the syndication/merchandising tail of revenues is very long, even if the upfront ratings aren't.

But did wonder if this weird humanoid that pops up elsewhere was tied in. Only I'm not sure where the elsewhere is related to Venus.
Also not getting the drive thing that they cut back several decades to. Is it a standard feature of contemporary travel once discovered?

1. I think the weird humanoid on Ganymede is a sign that they haven't found ALL the research Protogen was involved in. Note: spoilers abound, so FYI do not google anything about this show, for reals - Sanpaku is like the least of our problems what with the immensely detailed, overlapping book/tv wiki pages that show up in results

2. The Epstein drive story was good world-building to give us background on Martian society and how the Belt was colonized. I don't know that it had a lot of other significance, I figure the guy just died and his "yacht" wound up drifting endlessly through space, out of the solar system, at 5% of the speed of light or whatever they said he got up to.

The writing room adores Jared Harris's Anderson Dawes (and Diogo played Andrew Rotilio), so we're seeing things that weren't hinted at until last year's book. This season, there's enough liberty taken with timelines that, for better or worse, the series may be approaching a fork between book and adaptation like the last couple of seasons of GoT. Readers may know the shape and dramatis personae, but can only speculate on how the jigsaw will be reassembled.

Holy cow, Jared Harris is Warhol in I Shot Andy Warhol...

Yeah, when he was in Mad Men I had one of them "he/I have gotten quite old" moments.

no series two for me yet so i am watching series one again, this time more carefully

I fully endorse this strategy. It turned out I missed a lot of stuff in the first few episodes. References sort of whiz past, like the expect you to just know the milieu already.

interim report: miller's hat annoys me even more the second time

Lol it is ridiculous.

I had forgotten that Miller was genuinely crooked - taking bribes, looking the other way. Unnecessarily violent. Kind of a nasty piece of work. Avsarala too starts off as a total villain.

He'd look a lot better with a classic trilby, that thing looks like something that would come with an Indiana Jones costume from a fancy dress shop. I liked the episode and follow up where the god-botherer mistakes his questions for some kind of benign curiosity.

had to look up the name of the guy everyone -- justifiably imo -- kept calling "anus"

hat was egregious

feel more inclined to forgive it now that he's not around :(

i'm not going to say NO SPOILERS as it's my fault for being in the thread at all when i know yr all halfway thru series two (and i already picked this plot point up)

i really think there's a lot of terrific stuff here -- i only started binge-watching about ten days ago, my first run through, and i'm finding it even more watchable the second time

It certainly rewards a second run through. Looking forward to doing that with this season although now I'm Expanse Trained I doubt there will be as much missed detail to pick up.

Miller's hat is there to help him store important clues and hide his phenomenally terrible haircut. In season two he resolves both issues.