Is anybody else watching The Expanse?

It's silly voice that Adam Buxton does, isn't it?

belter accent = jamaican + boer? idk driving me crazy figuring it out

https://arstechnica.com/the-multiverse/2016/02/nick-farmer-knows-dozens-of-languages-so-he-invented-one-for-the-expanse/

wow that's v cool

I loved this.

Anybody else notice that the haircuts were just a LEEEETLE bit different? Particularly Amos' - no longer just a buzzcut but with a slight soccer-player part in it now. And the pilot's (refuse to learn his name) (but yes he is slightly more tolerable this time around).

Loved the lasagna scene. So great. I doubt we'll see them this relaxed again. I like Miller's tentative steps to becoming a part of the group. None of them quite know how to deal with him. Or whether they can trust him. It might feel like that for the actors a little bit as well! They barely had any scenes with him at all last season. In any case the slightly stilted way he injects himself into their conversations feels totally real.

I'm confused at how the research base had such hair-trigger deadly defenses when their ship approached, but once inside security were only armed with paintguns?

Oh and BRING BACK THE HAT

this has started again very strongly. The scene where Fred Johnson effortlessly airlocks the big troublesome agitator/gobshite was cool as!

yeah you knew it was coming but still was 😮

If only my ex-flatmate's netflix account i've been piggybacking on for 3+ years hadn't finally shut me out.

omfg S2:E2

the space combat is so good in this show

ep 3 pretty dope

i dont remember anyone's names itt but the scene with the scientist prisoner & the hot kinda Tim Riggins dude was so good! love how they are only just starting to realize how in over their heads they are with this Eros stuff ... and as viewers we only know a little bit more than they do, do it's kinda exciting/scary to see what's in store

*so

I'm confused at how the research base had such hair-trigger deadly defenses when their ship approached, but once inside security were only armed with paintguns?

Nah, they had one stealth ship which doesn't seem like it was crewed for combat, and a mining projectile that hit a shipping container on a straight trajectory. They clearly never planned on being seiged.

Note the scientist with induced permanent sociopathy. In the books, there were around a hundred scientists on research station Thoth (dozens survived), and all of them, including head-honcho Dresden, had undergone this procedure. They still were valuable assets, so all the riot control gear was intended to prevent lethal conflict between the scientists.

BTW, Ep. 3's Dr. Cortazar is featured in one of the novellas (The Vital Abyss (#5.5)).

all the riot control gear was intended to prevent lethal conflict between the scientists

This was touched on in Ep 3

TOm I guess I need to watch that scene again - I thought they got absolutely hammered? And in Ep 3 the pilot runs the simulator over and over again to see if he can figure out how he could have done it better? I will admit I was about three gins deep at that point

Comparing 202 (the second half of the premiere) and 203, its pretty clear the more time should have been spent on the assault. Consider how rushed the conference with Fred Johnson in 202, persuading him to assault the Protogen station, and yet this episode had time for handball courts, dance sequences, and the Alex resims. Were I in the writing room, I would have placed the 202-203 cut right when Miller's breaching pod touched down, moving the assault and Dresden's apologia into 203.

I get the feeling the writing staff knows they'll have 5 seasons (at most) to tell their story, so they're racing to the 2nd books climax for this season's cliffhanger, compress all of books 3 and 4 (the 4th, Cibola Burn, added little) into season 3, books 5 and 6 (a single arc) in season 4, and books 7-9 in season 5. 10-13 episode seasons don't provide a lot of room for the characters to breathe.

I see what you did there

I think my made-up excuses for why they even survived the spin station assault aren't completely terrible but the fact that they seem just about as plausible as the real reasons (martian gunships are incredibly hardy, they got lucky, and the guards are just there to keep the scientists from killing each other) is also symptomatic of the show's deliberately minimal exposition approach occasional being too show-don't-tell for convenient comprehension. Which is one of my favorite things about it.

Sanpaku I disagree with your 202/203 idea; I appreciated that this episode was much more lackadaisical and chatty, and I think the raid was perfect, a bisected version would be less awesome.

I miss Dawes and Muss and the rest of the Ceres milieu. Are we going back there? Can we replace the Mars Marines punching each other with Dawes Sings The News?

Minor spoilers:

In the books, the Eros feed is also transmitting video. I don't think it would have spoiled too much to have accompanied the electronic groans with artifacty video where an infected severed arm is pulling itself along a corridor.

Major spoilers:

Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck were so impressed with TV Dawes that they and the writing team gave him a bigger role in S1, and he (as does Shaddid) returns in books 5-6. It seems parts of that story arc may be pulled earlier in the narrative, but I don't expect them to recreate the more expensive Ceres sets. As for Marines, we've only a couple more episodes of tolerating arsenal room hijinks.

Hai! Please Sanpaku would you mind not posting book-based spoilers in this thread before the events have happened in the show?

K.

Thank hoss.

ThankS

This is such a fanatastic show, my wife introduced us to it last year and then binge read the books in a spectacular effort of end semester procrastination.

What the spin station battle brought home to me is how much The Expanse owes to the Patrick O'Brian book. I half expect Holden or Alex to start banging on about the importance of having the weather gauge. Clearing for action, splinters, improbably successful manoeuvres. The other thing that mirrors o'brian and I'm really pleased these really started to bring out in season 2 is the importance, closeness and complexity of the relationships aboard ships and especially the Rocinante.

I'm up through part 1 of the season 1 finale.

I like the pilot guy, Alex, partly out of sympathy, and Holden, I feel a bit sorry for too, because he seems to carry the burden of being a second rate Timothy Olyphant. Amos is the best, kinda a sociopathic jock version of BSG's Chief (prob because they look a bit alike).

I've always wanted to but never read the O'Brien books - they're good, are they?

I read the whole set last year and really enjoyed them. He historical fiction equivalent of hard sci-fi, incredible attention to detail;. Despite he last 18 months of the napoleonic wars taking 15 books, there's a lot of varie, plots and stories. . You'll end up loooking stuff up because o'brian doesn't explain everything; you'll know all parts of a full rigged ship by he end.

Taken as a whole it's a great set of work but that's not to say there aren't flat spots. Battles and gun drill get very repetitive and for a couple of books Jack becomes a fat punning buffoon pacing up and down the deck. You'll also have to be down with a lot of 18th century admiralty politics.

They are great though and O'Brian truly loves Aubrey and Maturin and the best aspect of the books is the growing and deep friendship between the two main characters. Worth reading the set but maybe skim a few passages.

oh i need to go back to the obrien books, i loved them

obrien is dope

It was piss funny the way they run totally roughshod over the god-botherers in this ep. yeah we'll send your temple hurtling into the sun, now sit down + stfu! Joe taps his future smartphone "the network must be down mate!".

that was a really excellent fakeout at the end of this week's ep

I just binged watched to catch up, and I quite like it! Oddly though for all of its hard SF allegiances it has (for now anyway) a very strong idealistic streak that seems very genre.

But anyway...

that was a really excellent fakeout at the end of this week's ep

Yes! One thing that GOT did right was to establish the possibility of killing off central characters a lot more plausible for a whole bunch of series.

Buying our first ever big TV has really enhanced our enjoyment of this, there is so much detail in the background.

And this goes without mentioning, but Shohreh is so awesome.

Holy fleurkin shiiit ep 4 was TIGHT

that was like an Apollo 13 series of unfortunate events plus moral crisis plus impending outbreak fuuuuuhuuuck I love this shit

stealing the church to use as a fuckin battering ram is the greatest idea ever, how could anyone say no to getting in on that plan srsly

it was funny the way they did it in such an impenitent manner, as if like fuck these idiotic god botherers sideways!

Did I miss some world building regarding interplanetary communications?

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"