Is anybody else watching The Expanse?

unbearable contrast between the near-lethal speed of the roci and the lumpy wheel of miller's dolly ker-flopping along the infected corridors of eros

"you're going to negotiate with a woman who thinks she's a spaceship??"

i wrote a thing far upthread abt it being hard to judge scale and position in the actual outerspace scenes but it now strikes me this difficulty (in fact somewhat resolved after the first series in the CGI or animation or whatever) is replicated in the metaphysics of the story: let's use a spaceship as a bomb! what if a person was a molecule? what if a molecule connected the entire cosmos together?!?

it's like a sequence of fevered panics abt how things fit alongside one another in proper relationship once we enter a zone (nearby space) where a lot of the ways we judge such things just aren't around us any more

also everyone onscreen is always super-aware which moon is where! i'm not! are you? ceres? it's er no i don't know which planet ceres goes round

(i mean obviously it's important to them and anyway they have tech which instantly reminds them but there's a kind WOAH factor to all these extra layers of knowledge, plus the need to file things in three dimensions rather than just two, which i think is quite well brought to bear)

Ceres is an asteroid/dwarf planet/whatever, not a moon, but diagetically, I think most people know about it because it's one of the first/biggest objects in the solar system that humans were able to spin up to create gravity and begin to make habitable, and thus one of the largest achievements in human engineering.

And besides, there are only a handful of colonized extra-terran astronomical bodies.

i didn't put what i was getting at very clearly ("no!" i hear you cry)

i don't find this surprising or unconvincing, it's part of their world -- yes of course they know in their bones lots of stuff i have a v dim grasp of at best -- but the show is i think very good abt getting across the mind-expansive* element of this newer layer of technical knowledge, even as they're showing basically p ordinary people who've mastered it (alex is an excellent space pilot but he's not a marvel superhero). so we get the high-speed mastered competence but also retain a sense of the OMIGOD WOW cultural effect it's going to be having

a LOT of onscreen SF is not actually that good at bringing these two wings of SF into such intimate working contact? (except sometimes conceptually sometimes, like with the stunt eps of o/g stark trek where the alien is an omnipotent baby or all the people on a planet are under the age of 10 or whatever). but i'm talking abt a different kind of juxtaposition of ordinary and extraordinary: like we can actually get a sense of it in the fingertips of these ppl, even if some of them are basically twerps like the Xtreme rockhopper-racer -- they have casual physical dominion over a space and its technics that we can currently only dab it on diagrams, but this show is good at getting across a (of course faked) sense of what might be practical; and routine and even tiresome abt such mastery, without masking what we find startling

lol i need to go to bed, i don't think this is any clearer at all

*blimey i think i just twigged something

What’s very clear is that belters have become very good at orbital mechanics and survival in deep space. The ones that didn’t got dead. I assume they imbibe complex ballistics with mother’s milk and grandpa’s kibble. I love the whole slingshotter subculture because it is a very recognisable.

drummer: "you control thirty nukes, you're the most powerful man in the solar system"

Johnson: "then how come you won't make me a cup of coffee?"

drummer gives him the stinkeye.

BUT after eros blorps into Venus and Earth is saved.... johnson's watching it on TV and drummer walks in with.. coffee

also I'm pretty sure when the Roci and the belters return to Tycho as conquering heroes, Diogo gets with the bartender who had earlier laughed him off. "this one's for you, Miller" he says as she leads him away

What’s very clear is that belters have become very good at orbital mechanics and survival in deep space. The ones that didn’t got dead. I assume they imbibe complex ballistics with mother’s milk and grandpa’s kibble. I love the whole slingshotter subculture because it is a very recognisable.

mark i love your thoughts on the big-smallness of this show.

xp:

http://up-ship.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/feb59a.jpg

For those who never handled one, that's a slide rule.

Maybe this is a stretch but the sudden thrust of Gs, the maneuvering of such vast hulks of gear in frictionless space, feels like it has a narrative echo in S2E5-7 - when the ballad of Miller and Mao slingshots into a new story of factional conflict. The story of Phoebe and Eros, which has been barrelling along at a million miles an hour, skids into a new trajectory. Suddenly it's not just the military brass who has a tribe. The Roci crew get testy with each other. As everything starts splitting apart, Dawes appears. Holden keeps saying they have to stick together, but who's he talking about? The Roci? Alone in the universe (apart from maybe the poor Medécins sans Frontières dudes) it's a genuinely cooperative unit - Mars, earthers, a belter - all working together, partly out of necessity, partly out of fear, partly out of idealism. But everybody else? C'mon Holden - you're dreaming

re slide-rules: i keep my BRITISH THORNTON AA010 (comprehensive) within reach of my writing desk! Still in its (p ugly 1970s dark grey plastic case). It was a bit of a swank purchase as a 15-yr-old, we were steered towards a much more basic one

https://i.imgur.com/nNQ7VuG.jpg

(note breakfasty croissant crumbs i shd probably have swept up first, what can i say, i'm a PIRATE)

for some reason reading irony-poisoned twitter this morning reminded me of this exchange

naomi: are they hypoxic?
krisjen: they're whistling past the fucking graveyard

mark - did you notice that all-in-one spraypaint technology has been leveraged for tattoo parlours? diogo gets his belter neck tattoo in about 10 seconds flat! another set of craftspeople put out of work by technology :(

There's this old SF magazine cover of a space pirate gripping a slide rule in his teeth:

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/7a/27/85/7a278551149fbd27a84644729e8851d2.jpg

Oh, fuck, already posted, somehow it didn't show for me until I made a dickhead of myself.

tracer: this technology already exists!

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D_yFpMNU8AA2iN4.jpg

the hair!!!!

The stare!!!! (Drummer)

the two white men in the center!

Yeah, both Naomi and Alex should definitely be featured more prominently than than Amos.

It should be Drummer in Amos’ place. A male earther, a female belter, it all makes sense.

or y'know ... Naomi? ... if this season is going to be about what the next book was about, Naomi has as significant a role as Holden iirc

I don’t even read fiction

holden shd be v tiny on that poster, w/red-rimmed bug eyes and also wearing miller's stupid hat

I sincerely hope that the holden family are into massive egg beater sculptures because it’s testing my suspension of disbelief to think that the laws of fluid mechanics have changed enough in the future to allow ground mount vertical axis wind turbines to be worthwhile.

Ack the are shrouded by trees and the damned house.

Actual goosebumps.

Definite higher budget feel. But boooo to December.

Welcome to Ilus. pic.twitter.com/X84gZMf2Gu

— The Expanse (@ExpanseOnPrime) July 20, 2019

One thing I did miss is that Season 5 has already been confirmed, so yay

How many books have been televised, and how many are there in total?

There's going to be 9 in total (8 released so far) and the new season will be book 4

Thanks.

we just started this and are pretty into it, just dropping in here to note that. I like how they go for the "everything in the future is rusty and broken" look most of the time.

also cool to know that there will be an S5, thanks

lol yes, basically the future looks like Gary, Indiana.

If S5 is based on Book 5, then damn .... looking forward to that for sure

My guess:

Season 4 will be book 4 + the Bobbie Mars novella + Sol system background from books 5 and 7.

Season 5 will be the arc from books 5-6.

Season 6 will be the arc from books 7-8.

Season 7 will be the forthcoming book 9 (the confrontation with the what fans are calling the Goths), plus a healthy amount of denouement.

plant guy
"half the station's in ruins, infrastructure's smashed.. how are we supposed to find anyone there?"

alex
"the first step is getting there. we'll leave the Somnabulist once we dock and then we'll mingle with the locals"

plant guy
"and then?"

alex
"and then we'll assess the situation"

plant guy
"are your plans always this vague?"

amos
"this is about average"

except amos plays the punchline like he's proud of average which is like punchline 2.0

His name is Praxidike Meng, and he deserves more respect.

one of my all-time favourite characters but they barely know him at this point - they actually call him 'plant guy'!

I was kinda more mocking the authors, there...

ok! certainly did not intend disrespect. but i never knew his name was praxidike so thank you.

they call him Prax fwiw

when bobbie lays eyes on those cucumber sandwiches in jules pierre-mao's luxury cruiser

<3

s3e1 is just so good.

- avsarala's security guy is hot
- drummer doing upside-down chin-ups with a visibly bleeding abdomen
- drummer's full-body revulsion at johnson's revelation that he volunteered the existence of the protomolecule to dawes. every lines drips with disgust. (tho there's a scene in s2 where it's implied they used to have a relship.. hmm)
- drummer is reminded of the existence of naomi. '-bitch.'
- despite their sophisticated electronic navigational systems johnson/gee's command centre is festooned with neatly hand-drawn equations and notes on orbits and telemetry
- that said the spaceships are not really as crud-punk as some people make out
- the escape from pierre-mao's spaceship is sensational. a set piece that not only spans episodes, but seasons - and thoroughly worth it. the mech suit. the esprit de corps. sometimes it's a pleasure just watching people you admire (and even people you don't) working out how to wriggle free from a bad situation. trying every door, having every door slam in their face. now what?
- s2 was full of moments for amos - some weird, some suddenly profound, some no more than a pause held a moment too long. feel like alex now is like OK I get a backstory goddammit! i have softened towards alex, the big galoot, but i'm not sure i needed his guilty, pathetic call back home. just when i was warming toward ya kid. turns out you're kindof an asshole. iirc his wife calls back in a later episode and is like "hi alex. sorry, i've moved on. BYEEE!' which makes me kinda feel for him here. but not really. she's right.
- after the Tycho vs Io power struggle i feel like Naomi wants to say, 'well, could you drop me off?'
- Avsarala's bodyguard has an emotional moment prior to Avsarala's escape with Bobbie in the racing skiff. He turns to Bobbie. 'good work, Marine.' without hesitation Bobbie replies 'same to you, spy!'
- 'Hitch your tits and pucker up, it's time to peel the paint!'
- 'Brace for impact!' Bobbie i appreciate the consideration but we're at 6G suckin juice, i can't do much more than i'm doing right now

security guy = 'cotyar' i have just discovered. the wonders of subtitles! the actor's from beirut.

we need a gallery of Bobbie's reaction shots when she tries new food - the 'red kibble' face was priceless