Is anybody else watching The Expanse?

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

Halfway through this, after recommendation on the Netflix thread. So fun!

I'm ashamed to say I only really started getting into it after the ((spoiler)) headsplodey incident in episode 4. But I'm totally hooked now. The characters are super blank, but the plot and FX are fun enough that it doesn't matter. They've done an amazing job of making it look expensive, even though you know it's really cheap. I don't think I've ever seen a TV show shot in Toronto that looks expensive.

Jared Harris's accent though, bloody hell. He sounds like Adam Buxton doing a voice.

yeah it's kind of a slow burn at first, but it ramps up to be v enjoyable

Good grief that accent! Maybe JH is such a nice guy that nobody had the heart to tell him to stop doing it.

it's v upsetting

Was hoping that revival of thread might be a sign that there was a season 2 imminent. Was really getting into this when the series ended.

season 2 is slated for spring iirc?

Hope so. Would like some more

17 Jan!

boooooo

JAN not JUN!

Shame it ain't sooner nonetheless. It went over the winter last year according to IMDB. Started in November.
But great that there is a concrete date for its return. Looking forward to seeing it.

Yes. Almost as excited for this as I am for the new Nintendo

That finale was REALLY good. Some Caves of Androzani vibes. Definitely a "grim 80s Doctor Who" thing going on.

Has anyone read the books - could I pick up the 2nd book where this leaves off?

yeah otm re the dark Whovian vibe.

Weird how critical I was on this thread - in my memory this ruled unconditionally

Maybe a year of attempting to fill the void with garbage like Killjoys has done this

I've just started this. E2 was a bit slow but let's see what happens.

Yeah, the first three episodes are a slog, but it hits a groove with the 4th and keeps getting better.

That finale was REALLY good. Some Caves of Androzani vibes. Definitely a "grim 80s Doctor Who" thing going on.

Has anyone read the books - could I pick up the 2nd book where this leaves off?

Just checked. Chapter 31 of the first book is basically the last one covered in season one.

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