Wow, I am loving SciFi’s The Expanse. It’s really, really good.
Tons of zero-G stuff, awesome, deliberate pacing, near-future tech level, great story, and so far, no bad characters:
(spoilers, don’t watch long if you want to keep the surprises fresh)
Reminds me a lot of Alien in how slow but interesting it is. Hard sci-fi problems dealt with by characters who have lived in this world their entire lives. Just really fascinating to watch.
I am curious about this show because I liked the first book well enough. Not well enough to immediately read the second book, though, I guess. It’s been a few years now.
I like how many of the asteroid belt people are actors with marfan syndrome, clever budget method to render someone as looking like they were born to live in low g environs.
I expected that I would hate the fedora wearing crooked detective but turns out everyone on the show gives him shit for his poor sartorial sense and he has a level of sleazy desperation that works.
Is this the first space opera show in years to bother with making a coherent conlang?
I’ve seen all of these so far. I’m still not sure how I feel about it. It’s got pretty good world building, but I don’t think the plot is terribly gripping, nor are the characters.
I think the detective (of whom I had the same first impression that @Tulpa did) is probably my favorite. I find most of the space crew pretty boring, and everything the senator has done so far has been pretty obvious. I guess it doesn’t help that James Holden (“leader” of the space crew) is my least favorite character. An episode explores his backstory a bit, but that didn’t seem to help me appreciate him more.
That all sounds really negative, but I’m still watching it, so it can’t be that bad. I do like the world and the apparent attention to detail.
Yeah, the main guy is without a doubt the least compelling character, strangely enough. He just kinda reacts to things, has no apparent wants or drives, doesn’t have the most interesting backstory, etc. I don’t dislike him, but I don’t really like him, either.
The subway poster for this actually got me intrigued, I guess just because I like serious SciFi.
My piqued interest was immediately followed by a twinge of, “Oh man, I think SyFy just tricked me into remembering something I saw on a wall.” Cool to hear that it’s pretty good. Need to remember to check it out. Maybe Tulpa will remind me.
It really does feel like someone at Syfy said “remember when people thought we were great for putting nu Battlestar Galactica on the air?” and have made a concerted effort to put out shows at least as respectable as season 1 of BSG
Hopefully none of them will become as disreputable as the latter seasons of BSG (Childhood’s End gets a semi free pass for being sci fi steeped in religiosity just because it’s Arthur C Clarke)
Man the Pegasus arc from season 2 of BSG was the series highlight
Yeah, I meant Seasons 3 and 4 when I said latter seasons
Just watched the final two episodes of this season tonight; I think this show grew on me.
It took a while for everything to come together. And even once it did, I’m not sure if the show was tangibly better in any way, but nevertheless I’m interested to see where it goes.
There were actually a lot of different set-pieces and sci-fi tropes throughout the season, and I don’t think any of them were handled that poorly. That’s sort of the thing about this show: I don’t know if it has the highest highs, but it also hasn’t had too many low points either. It’s impressive in its consistency.
I’m still most impressed by its world building and setting. The plot mostly does its job, and the characters are getting better, if just by the additional context that more episodes provide.
I kinda decided by the last two episodes that I could care less about everyone on the show but the detective and the socipath strongarm guy. Like, having the main guy paired up with the detective did nothing but make me wonder if the whole thing would’ve been a lot cooler with JUST the detective working his way through the station. Then I started noticing how the girl who’s been with them this whole time has had zero memorable moments? It’s weird.
I still love this show, I’m just now starting to notice a few elements that are weirdly static.
Yeah, Holden is pretty aggressively boring. Even when he’s making decisions you don’t expect, he just feels inconsistent, not interesting.
The chick has mostly just been a plot device to solve whatever problem they’re currently having.
I was sad that in the last episode they killed the stowaway guy with the robot eyes. I found him more intriguing than most of the other characters, at least.
The earth senator lady’s scenes feel mostly like an afterthought; they don’t give her enough screen time to build her character, and at the same time, she doesn’t do enough to warrant more screen time. There are some hints that she’ll be more important in season 2, but it just feels sort of like they’re stalling the meantime.
This thread made me remember Extant what a pile of shit that show turned out to be.
EXACTLY, why the hell did they kill off roboeyes and nameless black friend?!
I’m just glad thomas jane is getting to be in something that’s supposedly pretty good, and as a character with great hair too. I’ve been worried about him ever since he was drunkenly rambling about not getting to be in punisher 2 at some convention and showing up in punisher fan short films and his personal cosplay photos of jonah hex showing up online.
how can I apply to play a belter on this show
marfan syndrome probably helps
Just watched all of Season 1 last week. If not for a few things like the “okay but lacking in interest and development” characters, and weird pacing that led to a very abrupt conclusion, I’d consider The Expanse so far…very good, almost great. Something about the actors or shooting sometimes feels very…off, too in a cheese way. Yet there’s so much done extremely well. I’m trying not to touch Season 2 till it’s almost done.
The stowaway spy with the Augmented Eye, his voice killed me with familiarity for a bit until I realized it was Elias Toufexis, of Adam Jensen / Deus EX fame. 
Season 2 is fantastic so far. They hit the ground running.
I was worried they were going to drag a lot of shit out but boy howdy is this moving along, and in a cool direction.
i met one of the writers of this show, really good guy. I liked this, but I like the trashy sci fi of dark matter too