Is anybody else watching The Expanse?

maybe moving fast is the wrong way to say it since the 2 main plots for most of the season are detective investigation and space survival neither of which involve a lot of direct conflict, but i never got the feeling of it being stretched out like i do with a lot of shows

I've been watching it... really enjoyed the most recent episode, promises to be a good finale

Feels more like Chinatown In Space than anything

Mr Veg & I joked the other night about "the mystery of why people mumble in space, and who is giving everyone bad haircuts"

in space, no one can hear you

Mr Veg & I joked the other night about "the mystery of why people mumble in space, and who is giving everyone bad haircuts"

― Flamenco Drop (VegemiteGrrl), Sunday, January 31, 2016 11:23 AM (55 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Thomas Jane went to the space barber and said "give me the Gary Oldman in Fifth Element"

lol

Make me look like I used to own a skate shop

lolol

i admit that I got a bit bored with all the worldbuilding, and that fake southern?/texan? dude who talks to spaceship computers like they're truckstop waitresses was almost a bridge too far... but I appreciate having a halfway decent scifi show on SyFy again so I am not complaining

the books are good n' popcorny. kind of a shame that the TV series starts w/ the first novel, which is definitely the worst of the whole shebang.

So the second-to-last episode of Season 1 spends a LOT of time inside a derelict and it is great creepy television. I loved how they mixed the soundtrack low so you're really just listening to magnetic boots on metal gangplanks almost the entire time, which you then realize is also the only thing any of the characters can hear.

I was gonna watch this but Hulu won't let me watch on TV. Booooo

i watched it at syfy's website

oh wait missed the "on TV" part n/m

amos and the UN lady are both super compelling actors, look forward to more of this show

One small nitpick - the action sequence towards the end (of the second to last episode) was a little choppy. I rewound it a few times and still had to just make some assumptions about how a couple things happened / who did what. Even then - how did that grenade not go off?

3. Hard sci-fi space combat that resembles submarine warfare but with lots of slug weapons! Ship "gravity" entirely dependent on constant acceleration! People surviving limited exposure to vacuum! People with sort-of-visible deformation* and musculoskeletal issues due to growing up in low-G!

also a pleasingly hard sci fi plausible-ish near future involving asteroid mining and no (at least so far) fanciful alien species or completely out there tech. like it seems like space travel actually involves orbital mechanics in this

finale 2-parter was great

xp yeah one of the things i like most about this show is that it really gives a sense of how fragile humanity in space is

Just binged. Its been such a desert for good space sci-fi that I didn't look too closely for seams. The gumshoe with the dodgy haircut was the comic relief, some good character actors in the bit roles, the sets are appropriately gritty and/or antiseptic, the effects crew clearly communicate the lonely peril of deep space, and the show runners are clearly love their hard sci-fi. And I want the actress playing Avasarala to purr in my ear.

Glad to have some episodic sci-fi to look forward to, now that Continuum has wrapped its loose ends.

Winchell Chung, creator of the terrific hard sci-fi resource Atomic Rockets, gives The Expanse his Seal of Approval. I agree with every word.

can't believe we have to wait 9 months to find out what the hell is going on

if only there was like a whole bunch of books based on the tv show but like that actually ran ahead of the tv show that we could read

wait did continuum turn out to be good? the pilot was kinda rough and i never saw more

It was better than any time-travelling cop series had a right to be, and while the budgets shranked, the writing became more interesting. I'll be frank, though: My initial attraction was Rachel Nichols in a cat suit.

guys i watched the first episode and.... really?

"UN BLACK OPS SITE"

space sex

COOL FEDORA GUY

it was like every crap 90s 'graphic novel' cliche throwd into one

only thing i liked apart from the awesome opening exposition title cards was the tense horror movie stuff p much

ok i've actually read the thread now and

People with sort-of-visible deformation* and musculoskeletal issues due to growing up in low-G!

made-up accent that no one has - it's supposed to be a kind of 'third world' Belter accent, right? to hammer home the allegory of the exploited other-class?

'flip n burn' was pretty good

GAH I DON'T KNOW

I've read (and really) enjoyed all the pulpy popcorn books & novellas and thought the first episode was pretty ropey. However, it gets much better and by the end is easily one of the best sci-fi shows in years and probably the best thing SyFy have done since BG.

space sex only happens in the first episode because there's an unwritten rule now that all tv pilots need sexual content regardless of the tone of the show

By ep 4 it starts getting really good afaict

It has been distracting seeing my doppelganger the medic

I couldn't get past the first ep of this, might give it another shot.

the other recent new SyFy show The Magicians (which is imo better than The Expanse) ALSO had gravity-defying midair sex in the pilot

I like both shows a lot, nice to see SyFy step it up

I've read all the Magicians books too and whilst I'm enjoying the show, I think The Expanse is much better.

Do they go out at different times in the States? It's noticeable that whilst Avasarala is very foul mouthed in the books, on the show she's not whereas The Magicians seems to have no problems dropping in the f-word several times each episode.

There's been a recent trend towards series that air on non-sweary networks to throw in curses they can't actually air and just blank them out. (This is especially glaring on American Crime, where - I assume as a deliberate aesthetic choice - every "fuck" is announced with a few frames of completely blacked-out screen.)

I assume it's because they know/hope the unedited versions will be available on DVD

They announced to book fans that TV Avasarala would be very different in her first scene (water balloon assault punished by tickling). When combined with the 20 hour gravity torture she becomes a complex character in just two scenes. The comic relief has been redistributed to Alex & Amos. I expect Avasarala will provide profane fan service once removed from family and immediate superiors, and with her progressive exasperation.

Upon reading the books, there's some remarkably efficient screenwriting going on, particularly in episodes 1, 3, and 9. There's also so much background detail to catch in reviewings: the 90 second tracking shot at 4 minutes into the premiere encompasses 40 pages of descriptive text.

the pilot of the Canterbury / Rocinante is one of the worst actors I have ever seen in anything, pro or amateur - it is astonishing to watch the man work

I like how certain bits of the world-building they just sort of gave up on, like, yeah, everyone's basically got phones they look at all the time, and bars will probably be playing Basic Channel style techno, good enough

ugh hate the pilot sooooo much

Cas Anvar (who plays the Alex, pilot) has [a career of hamming it up](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKvSt69Whr8), but to be fair Alex in the books has the Texas drawl adopted by Indian and Chinese immigrants to the Mariner Valley, and in the books the accent disappears during stressful events (MCRN conditioning). The authors also view Alex as the dumb one who blurts what's on his surface.

When we have Oscar winners most notable for squinting meaningfully, its hard for me to kvetch about acting according to some weird marionette strings.

xp: A few have gone ahead and gotten the full cybernetic implants, but for baseline humans, the smartphone, or as they call it in the books, datacube, is a pretty optimal format. It also allowed them to shorthand the pathos of Miller with his perpetually cracked phone.

It's not his accent - most of the accents are weird in this show - and I don't think he's actually that hammy - Thomas Jane is way hammier. It's like he literally doesn't know what speech rhythms humans use to communicate with each other.

P sure he thinks he's in Firefly

Before/after reels from Spin VFX and Rocket Science VFX. Spoilers to Season 1, obv.

the guy who plays Amos is awesome, probably my favorite actor in the whole thing.

Yep. I'd rank em (Why? its ILX):

Wes Chatham - Amos Burton
Shohreh Aghdashloo - Chrisjen Avasarala
Thomas Jane - Joe Miller
Chad L. Coleman - Col. Frederick Lucius Johnson (shone in The Wire, utterly wasted in The Walking Dead)
Dominique Tipper - Naomi Nagata (sometimes a bit too inscrutable)
Florence Faivre - Julie Mao (impressive, considering she's a model with a few walkons)
Steven Strait - Jim Holden (too young, not enough gravitas for this role)
Shawn Doyle - Sadavir Errinwright (a Paul Reiser for our time)
Cas Anvar - Alex Kamal (I defended him above, but he's got the worst script)

Special mention:

Greg Bryk - Lopez (the Martian intel officer who went from creepy to heroic in 2 episodes)
Elias Toufexis - Kenzo (the stowaway spy. Stayed creepy, and convincingly played unconvincing)

how can you be forgetting Jared Harris as Anderson Dawes, leader of the OPA on Ceres?? He'd be #2 on my list. Despite having to say some of the most ludicrous lines in the series, which is saying something, and despite having to adopt this weirdo Belter Afrikaans/Carib patois

For all of Thomas Jane's quirks & corniness, when he finally finds the girl (spoilers etc) it was genuinely sad & v moving

It is sorta funny that the first protagonist (Miller) gets sidelined fairly quickly, and Holden pretty gradually loses his lock as main character too. After the season on the alien planet it seems like he never really had a whole lot to do. It became about the rest of the crew.

the most awkward part of the show was dealing w/the Alex character at the end, but the production was in a no-win situation.

― omar little, Wednesday, January 25, 2023 bookmarkflaglink

They definitely did what they could with that last season - getting on abruptly without Alex, limited number of episodes... and I would assume they didn't fully know they were getting canceled until after they'd committed to the awful subplot with the little girl on the other planet, which never resolved.

At first I was a little let down by how much is unresolved by the end of the series but after talking with a friend I kinda like it as a metaphor for global warming. They come to some great conclusion about how to get along with each other but they just willfully ignore this massive threat looming in the distance. They know its there but after everything they went through with the protomolocule, the idea of something out there that is even more malevolent is just too hard to comprehend.

The awful subplot with the little girl becomes central to the final 3 books. Really worth reading to see how everything plays out. Shame they didn’t have the backing to finish out the series.

and I would assume they didn't fully know they were getting canceled until after they'd committed to the awful subplot with the little girl on the other planet, which never resolved.

Correct me if I'm wrong but I don't think it was canceled a second time? IIRC the showrunners specifically said that season 6 would be its last, not that it was a diktat from on high (FWIW Amazon rescued it from its first cancellation because Bezos is a notable fan).

IIRC the showrunners specifically said that season 6 would be its last, not that it was a diktat from on high

Well that makes that creative choice really perplexing then. It took up so many precious minutes in such a short season, only to go completely unresolved.

I get that it relates to the books, and that the door could always be open to a future season... but as pure television it's irritating and unsatisfying.

I honestly think the Amos/Clarissa plotline in S5 is one of the best TV achievements of the last decade, just riveting

otm

I just finished the first book Leviathan Wakes and was amused to find that Holden is even more of a pretty boy dumbass in there than in the show. The way he ends up together with Naomi in the book is pure comedy - the show handled that much better imo (and is also far better in its treatment of women in general. Naomi is barely sketched out so far, Julie is mostly seen through Miller's POV *eyeroll*, and we don't meet Avasarala or any of the other main female characters until later books).

I'm actually glad I watched the show first cause I'm not sure I would have liked this series as much based on how the characters are portrayed in Book 1 - Holden is good but way too naive and impulsive, Miller is a washed-up asshole in love with a perfect young girl in his head. Yikes. It's a credit to the show and the actors that they managed to turn them into tolerable protagonists at all.

The book's strengths were the space horror elements, the world-building, and Amos lol. still looking fwd to reading the rest though!

To be fair, a lot of the show was written by the book authors, so I guess they were aware of some of the book shortcomings themselves and rewrote them.

does anyone else find it jarring that Cas Anvar was a big enough asshole they had to drop him immediately from the show, yet they spend all this time in s6 being all emo about Alex's sudden death? I feel like they should've treated the character the same way and just said "oh well, fuck him" and never mentioned him again.

coulda just began season 6 with "Well after hearing about all of that startling testimony against Mr Anvar I guess we can all say we're glad he's dead, yes?" and everybody looks straight into the camera.

That would work too. Naomi being shitty to Amos for "replacing" Alex with Peaches was a bit much. Like really who gaf?

yeah, just drew more attention to things overall. plus she was a much more interesting character

There was really no easy way to handle that, they probably did the best they could. And I mean it's not the character who was problematic, so it was a farewell to Alex not to the actor.

best way to handle it would be to move on instead of continually reminding us by trying to turn it into a plot point

I thought the bigger objection against bringing Peaches in was her entire quest to kill Holden

water under the bridge, who hasn't wanted to kill Holden at one point or another?

Maybe but I don't think it was really that big a deal

Thought they did the best they could, but I also still found it slightly odd. It was just a quick moment though, I thought? There's no good way to acknowledge the death of a character people loved from the books without making us think of the POS who played him on TV

Mythic Quest had a similar situation with F. Murray Abraham and had nearly a whole episode about him in S3, but I only learned of what he'd been accused of after watching the episode. Still makes it weird in retrospect

I don't remember that much emo time about Alex but it would have been much weirder to not acknowledge the tragic death of a core character.

Yeah, this seems a deeply weird complaint. Actors and characters are actually different things.

I know, it just felt weird to me that after dispatching with him and doing a bit of mourning last season, now we're back with tensions between the crew based around who is or is not feeling the loss of Alex appropriately. This is obviously something that wasn't originally supposed to be part of the plot and I think if they just skipped it the fans would be ok with that, especially since this is all taking place some months later. I can't remember what happens after the first episode, maybe this is the last we hear about this particular thing.

I honestly just wish they would have replaced the actor. Shows have pulled that off in the past, haven't they? People would have gotten used to it. Because they wrote him out of the show even if they do ever pick anything back up again, they're going to have to deal with what they did to that character, when they could have easily explained a different actor with aging or whatever.

throw Michiel Huisman in there, that's his specialty!

He dies in a similar way in the books IIRC, not at the same point but out of the blue.

now that is something I did not know, figured he just kept on keepin' on with his Texan BS

Oh no I'm misremembering, it was another character who died that way - they just cut and pasted the names.

I don’t remember Alex dying in the books?

It was Fred who stroked out at the end of a high-g chase/battle.

Xpost there

Yes: Milo has the correct answer

GOT re-cast the Mountain TWICE (i.e. they had three different actors playing him).

so i saw this article a few days ago on mashable which made me think of a post here

taken me this long to try and post and also never tried linking to an older post, so lets see if this works

original post: Is anybody else watching The Expanse?

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.

and in new tech stuff. https://sea.mashable.com/laptops/31413/lenovo-thinkbook-transparent-laptop-hands-on-yes-its-actually-see-through

bah why didn’t you all tell me this game came out last year??

https://www.telltale.com/the-expanse/

Oh shiiiiitttt!!

It's cool that it focuses on Drummer

S2 E6 - Holy shit.

For the Telltale game, I love the focus on Drummer but I hate how high the bar is for choosing correctly in order to avoid very unpleasant story line turns. I love hearing that actor play that character again, but right now I'm trying to decide whether to start over on the game or abandon it.