Is anybody else watching The Expanse?

there was

that was the origin story of the drive!

thankfully he left the schematics behind, because his test journey was a one-way trip

in the show the flashback is narrated by epstein himself, which lends an odd effect once you realise he is speaking from the great beyond

the expanse, if you will

The first person narration makes more sense in the written context. The novels, and anciliary novellas like "Drive", all have viewpoint characters (which rotate in the novels).

Wise for most of the broadcast series to avoid this, as it would be 30 hours of voiceover ala the studio cut of Blade Runner.

there's a rotation of viewpoint characters, but I believe everything I've read so far is second person perspective. not omniscient, although there's enough overlap between chapters to provide a preview of what's about to happen before they rotate

it's like Game of Thrones that way

second person perspective

Third person, surely?

hmm yes, not sure how I thought "third" and typed "second"

Miller? MILLER!!

coupla tidbits from wiki

"Ty Franck began developing the world of The Expanse initially as the setting for a MMORPG and, after a number of years, for a tabletop roleplaying game. Daniel Abraham, who had authored a number of novels on his own, suggested, given the depth of the setting, that it could serve for the basis for a series of novels. "People who write books don't do this much research", Abraham has said."

"Franck writes all the Holden, Bobbie and Anna chapters, while Abraham writes the Miller, Melba, Avasarala, Bull and Prax chapters."

"You don't sa-sa nothing--me crush ass to dust!" lmao

My only complaint is that a lot of the character arcs and dialogue in the finale seemed off. Ashford in particular, I get that they were trying to make him a noble antagonist but but it really seemed to come out of nowhere. And Melba, whose storyline has always seemed kinda dumb tbh, asking a stranger if one good deed will make up for a lifetime of bad choices was just awful writing and totally unnecessary.

JoeStork i found myself agreeing with this once I finally got to the last episode on my rewatch last night. It's extremely weird that these things happen in this sequence:

1) ashford and drummer have a profound near-death experience together, where each is willing to sacrifice their lives for the other
2) once holden's plan to turn off all the ship drives is hatched, they immediately consider ashford the enemy - they don't even bother trying to explain it to him
3) and this is BEFORE they even know of ashford's plan to turn the comms laser into a giant knife.

the less said about melba the better. though i would appreciate knowing where her intermittent superstrength / ham-mode comes from? i don't recall it being explained

it is explained fairly quickly -- her powers come from these glandular modifications(?) which is in keeping with the sci-fi biotech being used for sketchy purposes that figured more in the first season.

The “Pinus Contorta”? Haha

I'm so happy I watched this show. This is right up next to tng as my favorite science fiction TV ever.

Way better than TNG! (I'm not particularly a Trek fan)

i've only started watching this (which is to say I binged all the way through the second episode of season 2) and it's really impressive. The plotting is maybe the most impressive part thus far, but the acting is mostly really good as well. Thomas Jane is great and makes for a really fine antihero/detective in over his head/asshole with a heart of gold. The character walks a fine line between understanding why most other people think he's a dick but also why he's an extremely good guy who is covering up the fact he's damaged goods. Shohreh Aghdashloo just completely owns.

What's most impressive though i think is the sense of a fully populated system -- to cite a recent example, Game of Thrones had multiple episodes taking place in a city of a million people and it felt like there were a couple thousands people at most in the entire place (vs earlier seasons, where the filmmaking was crafty enough to use less scope to hint at a more populated world). And the entire world of Westeros just felt sparsely populated, like an empty game board upon which you moved around the pieces that were main characters until half of them were gone, collected by your opponent. But here, even with a much lower budget, you get the real sense of humanity having spread out. And I appreciate the limited reach of the story; they've only gone so far into the solar system, but not beyond (at least at this point that seems to be the case). I'm sure it's been pointed out previously but it makes life in space look like a real chore, you can see how easy people have it just living a life on earth vs the strain of trying to be merely normal on an asteroid or Mars.

I've got to really get moving on my reading or renew my library loan

The books are a lot closer to the show than what I'd been led to believe, but I am guessing the deviations start to pile up after a while. With the exception of Bobbie and maybe Naomi, I've had no difficulty envisioning the tv actors in the book roles.

Really hard to cast it in a way that really gets the belter body types that are described in the novels

i know Bobbie is a main character moving forward, but I've only seen her in several scenes since they just introduced her. Even so at this point the particular intensity of that actor's performance is really something.

it's a good character arc, someone who's highly competent and gets fucked over and thrown into a mess, only to be offered opportunities that are completely foreign to her

They did kind of drop the "Belters can't function at 1G" thing after the early S1 gravity torture bit. I mean, I don't think they've ever shown a belter visiting earth, but there have been lots of times that belter characters have been shown to be exposed to artificial gravity sources, right? (especially that notable occasion near the end of S3) Was the guy that got tortured a special kind of never-felt-gravity Belter, or are they all supposed to be like that?

COME DOWN BELTALOADA

Some belters are born and develop on the float (0 g), others in places like Ganymede (0.146 g) or Ceres (0.33 g). Also in the premiere, there's a huge variation in quality of bone-development medication, ranging to sub-par (Miller's) to counterfeit (the skinny belter with the shivers).

makes sense!

I was reading about a real-life rocket plane test flight program yesterday and actually mumbled, "I didn't think you could take that many Gs without being on the juice"

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/10/04/tetraplegic_patient_ai/

Teaser trailer for season 4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Jc76QrX5Vg

Niiiice. Burn Gorman living up to his name very explicitly there.

i'll take that with a side of fries

yes!

Just started the books, so far so good. though it's fair to say that they don't spend a lot of time of visual descriptions--wondering how I'd be imagining most of the settings if it weren't for the TV series.

I imagine it as a lot crappier and more cramped than the TV also bigger physical distinctions between betters, earthers and Martians

My physics nerd side still prefers the book's Razorback cabin, no larger than a Gemini capsule. There's absolutely no reason for the gimbaled seating, in a cabin larger than my living room in the TV version, aside from visual appeal. All that mass comes at a price...

yeah i never really got why it was so ~spacious~
seemed v impractical

In the book avasarala gets the one couch and Bobby wedges her power armour in place and lets the armour deal with the Gs. It’s actually a much better image in my mind.

N Y C C 2 0 1 9 :) @ExpanseOnPrime #TheExpanse pic.twitter.com/T4rXKy9hFr

— Dominique Tipper (@Mi55Tipper) October 5, 2019

yeah i never really got why it was so ~spacious~

That's because they are in
.
.
.
.
... space.

an expanse, if you will

I have now read all the books, but have yet to read any of the short stories. a

I think I started with the series around August 20 so it’s been a ride

"Strange Dogs" gives background to some of the stuff in Tiamat's Wrath, but I found the short stories to be poorly written.

I just enjoyed the backstory they gave to various characters like Bobbie, Amos & Johnson.

The writing seems pretty variable in the main books too. Perhaps one of Corey is better than the other Corey?

Ty Franck devised the universe of the Expanse (a binder full of background info) as setting for a tabletop role-playing game, and handles half the viewpoint chapters, including those for the character Holden. Daniel Abraham, former assistant to George R. R. Martin and published author in his own right, handles the other half of chapters, including those for detective Miller. They plotted out the 9-book arc before starting, divy up plot beats for each book, and then write their respective viewpoint chapters, then the other author reviews and lightly edits the other's chapters for continuity/science. Abraham has the harder job editing, as many of Franck's "pear-shaped" situations and air "tasting of copper" still find their way in.

Reading the novels, it's surprising how unpadded they are, despite their size. The big action set-pieces are usually resolved in just a few pages.

with the exception of the on-planet novel that I seem to have enjoyed more than most, there’s pretty much an action/plot/character beat moment per chapter and they all move the story forward

It’s not deep literature, but as a pulpy space science fiction adventure it works really well! The dumbest criticism I’ d seen is about why all the huge galactic events seem to hinge on the actions of Holden and company. Of course it does, they’re the main characters and that’s how the genre they’re going for works!

Also, shit follows them everywhere.

i think proto-Miller even explicitly asks Holden - have you noticed how you're always in the middle of it?

I love proto-Miller.

Was looking at the Expanse role-playing game, and the designers/illustrators seem to be under the impression that the main characters are all trolls:
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/70/ce/f1/70cef1ebb360e3f20ce24a750b6a3b4f.jpg
https://i.pinimg.com/474x/c6/39/d4/c639d4eb1d58a4b1713e142dd5d99e70.jpg