19 ms·

How The Expanse went from game concept to blockbuster TV series

209 points by AndrewLiptak 6y ago

dreamcompiler 6y ago
I'm kind of surprised how many nerdy people I know who have never watched this show. It is by far the best (maybe only?) hard sci-fi TV show ever, and almost every episode is better than any hard sci-fi movie ever made. If AC Clarke and Stanley Kubrick were alive they'd be heaping praise on this show for getting so many of the technical details exactly right.
- dharmab 6y ago
  Planetes is also hard sci-fi and quite good.
  - dreamcompiler 6y ago
    Haven't heard of it. Will check it out.
  - AndrewLiptak 6y ago
    Oh, I've heard of this, but haven't checked it out before. Will add it to the list.
  - andrewflnr 6y ago
    Is that a show, now? I remember the manga.
    - patagurbon 6y ago
      It aired between 99-04
  - patagurbon 6y ago
    I concur, excellent show and much "harder" then The Expanse. Some people have an aversion to anime but it transcends that in my opinion.
    - decafninja 6y ago
      Howabout Gundam? Angsty teen/preteen protagonist trope can get annoying, but I'd classify a lot of UC Gundam as pretty "hard" SF. Granted there are some deus ex machina type elements to it (psychic newtypes, Minovsky particles, etc.).
      - dharmab 6y ago
        In a way you're right- Gundam was considered a "real robot" show in contrast to more magical shows like Ultraman. But Planetes is on a different level, with accurate depictions of orbital dynamics and spacer life.
      - Hemospectrum 6y ago
        Gundam was always about societies experiencing large-scale changes that no individual person has a handle on, and the struggles of people who try to make a difference anyway. In that sense, it's comparable to The Expanse, and the "magical" elements serve more or less the same purpose. Planetes, on the other hand, isn't much like either of these. Its subject matter is intensely personal, and even when the characters occasionally get involved in high-stakes situations, it's less to do with changes in society (which occur much more slowly) and more to do with someone turning their small-scale private difficulties into everybody else's problem. The political elements intrude for a while and disappear again, and I don't remember them nearly as well as the bits about a lost watch, or a marriage proposal. In a nutshell, if Gundam and The Expanse need magic because they're larger-than-life, Planetes has no use for it, because it's exactly-the-same-size-as-life.
- AndrewLiptak 6y ago
  What's also great here is that it's not just technically right, but it doesn't ignore the human element: we squabble, fight and make up, and that's a key part of the world they've constructed.
  - FreeKill 6y ago
    Yeah, I think it shows what humans of right now would be like in space, if we had the same technical progression, rather than imagining how we would be instead.
    - AndrewLiptak 6y ago
      Yeah. That's a key thing. I think it's the same reason why Babylon 5 has really held up.
      - metabagel 6y ago
        Babylon 5 has been fully remastered, by the way, available for purchase or on HBO Max. Just dropped last week, and it’s excellent. The previous DVD remaster was an abomination. Warner Bros spent 6 years on the new remaster. It was reportedly a labor of love by those involved.
        em-bee 6y ago
        can you elaborate on how the remastering affects the quality? what do you see in the remastered version that you didn't see in the older version or the original?
        majormajor 6y ago
        I haven't watched the HBO Max version yet, just seen some comparison vids and shots, but the DVD conversion handled the special effects shots very poorly. The original show was broadcast in SD 4:3 which is what the effects were rendered at. The DVD conversion went to 16:9 widescreen, since that's what the film was shot at, but then decided to get 16:9 effects shots by zooming in and cropping the already-low-SD-resolution renders. So it's now basically half resolution, and then run that through an interlaced DVD and put it on a big HDTV, and it looks awful. The effects shots also include a lot of conversations and other shots with people, since they used quite a few virtual sets. From the comparison shots I've seen of the new version, they kept everything 4:3, and instead of cropping the effects shots, did a pretty decent job upscaling them instead. So it's not HD quality like if they were rendered in HD, but at least it's not sub-broadcast-quality anymore.
- op03 6y ago
  The last 2 seasons have been really boring. Going no where really.
  - alvarlagerlof 6y ago
    Season 5 is really good so far if you ask me.
- f38zf5vdt 6y ago
  I'm not sure I'd call it hard sci-fi along the lines of Lem. The protomolecule has a deeply magical element to it, almost like the One Ring from LotR.
  - aqme28 6y ago
    It's the hard sci-fi equivalent of magical realism. Everything is "accurate" except for this one alien element.
    - herodoturtle 6y ago
      Which is a brilliantly entertaining balance imho. I love it.
    - herbstein 6y ago
      In other words, it's in the "One Big Lie"-category on Moh's Scale of Science Fiction Hardness[0]. Fair warning, it's a TVTropes thing. [0]: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MohsScaleOfScienceFictionHardness
  - detritus 6y ago
    Ijon Tichy's scratching his head, wondering if he's Hard Sci-Fi - as too the Ijon Tichy from ten minutes in the future who's just popped in and started eating the pancakes he'd just finished eating.
    - f38zf5vdt 6y ago
      Thanks for the laugh, I needed that. Obviously not the entire body of his work. :)
  - Gatsky 6y ago
    Yes, in some parts it became like Game of Thrones in space, except with protomolecule soldiers instead of the white walkers.
  - dreamcompiler 6y ago
- sillyquiet 6y ago
  I don't know if I'd say the get the technical details exactly right, as there are some concessions to story-telling over physics - the (probably) impossibly efficient fusion drives, and the protomolecule is kinda magic sometimes, but it get is right enough, and way more so than any other sci-fi show I've seen.
  - dharmab 6y ago
    It's like Mass Effect. The mass effect phenomena is basically space magic, but most of the rest of the lore is realistic (aside from a few things like the quantum communicators in the third game).
    - fullstop 6y ago
      Shohreh Aghdashloo (Avasarala) was a voice actress in Mass Effect 2, so there's some additional relationships.
      - Gatsky 6y ago
        There is one scene where Avasarala comes aboard the Roccinante and is dressed in a white textured jumpsuit straight out of Mass Effect. The camera lingers slightly too long on her, it is a clear homage imo.
    - dwohnitmok 6y ago
      Eh... Mass Effect is fairly soft sci-fi and more of classic space opera. All these things happen in Mass Effect: Sounds in space, spaceships bunched way too close together, impossibly slow projectiles for space (especially the classic "blob of light/plasma thingy" traveling at what appears to be subsonic speeds), giant 18th-century infantry-style spaceship firing lines, in general heavy reliance on "spaceships as just extensions of naval warfare" trope, all alien communication neatly glossed over with universal translation, nearly universally bipedal humanoid aliens, etc. None of these are bad things! Mass Effect is simply much more similar in tradition to something like Star Wars or Star Trek than the Expanse.
  - 6y ago
- fabian2k 6y ago
  The first season is a bit slow, I only got hooked on my second try. Which is a bit odd as the first book is quite fast-paced. I wouldn't exactly call it hard sci-fi, but it at least makes an effort to keep some parts realistic, with the obvious exception of major plot elements like the protomolecule and all stuff derived from it. You can certainly nitpick many details about how gravity is handled, they make an effort to explain it without resorting to magic, but in the end simulating microgravity just isn't feasible on a TV budget.
- CodeGlitch 6y ago
  Yeah I know a few trekkies who hated The Expanse, but love ST Discovery. I watched half of season 1 of STD and had to switch it off. I've never hated a TV show so much as STD. The Expanse on the other hand is the best SciFi since Battlestar Galactica. Edit - to expand on why I hate STD so much, it's the completely unlikeable characters. I just couldn't root for a single one of them.
  - erulabs 6y ago
    STD is so eager to hit you over the head with “see how HORRIBLE society is?!?!?” The Expanse actually has its own world with its own problems that isn’t just a shallow mirror of the writers view of today. Also much less melodrama, although not none.
    - CodeGlitch 6y ago
      It seems STD is trying really hard to push certain ideaologies, especially around diversity - but it feels so "fake" as if they're trying too hard. The Expanse on the other hand has a diverse cast but it feels natural and realistic.
      - effie 6y ago
        Very fake, forced and the overall script/narrative is pathetic with some minor bright moments. STD looks to me to be more like a political bidding/propaganda piece than a science fiction TV show.
  - meowster 6y ago
    Trekkie here (more or less). I like The Orville better than Discovery. Discovery is down-right disappointing and stupid. Picard is better than Discovery, but still didn't live up to my expectations. You're probably right about Battlestar Galactica and The Expanse being the best hard sci-fi. It's hard to beat the episodes/stories in the earlier Star Trek shows. The Twilight Zone was able to pull off a faithful modern reboot, why can't Star Trek? (Someone else mentioned Planetes further down in the comments. That is also good hard sci-fi.)
- driverdan 6y ago
  Sorry but you can't call something that has sounds in space hard sci-fi. Overall they do a good job but to me no sounds in a vacuum is a key marker of hard sci-fi.
  - barrkel 6y ago
    If you pay attention, it's actually much more subtly done than that. The engine whooshing noises are more like what you'd hear on board, if you were on board. If they left those sounds out, the conveyed sensation of motion would lose a lot of its impact. But consider how the characters touch helmets in order to communicate when their radios are down, or when they want to communicate privately. Or consider Naomi's trial on board the Chetzemoka most recently. She needed to examine the ship spec plate to find out the air volume so she could calculate how many trips she could make to the unpressurized parts of the ship; she marks the number of trips on a wall, which doubles as a narrative device to demonstrate how many trips she made. Note also the way she touched her helmet to the hull in order to hear the radio broadcast while she was in the unpressurized area. Some of my favourite parts have been the battles, the way they demonstrate the harshness of space and the way the lack of gravity confounds expectations. The way the railgun punched through multiple walls of the Donnager, into open space, and the rush to patch up the holes. Or when Prax and Amos were in the cargo bay and some tools came lose, and they flew around the bay based on the ship's manouevers - or rather, tried to stay still while the ship moved around them.
    - driverdan 6y ago
      Like I said, they get a lot right and I love the show. But the engine sounds are rarely what they'd be inside. The Razorback propulsion sounds, for example, are always a rocket engine blasting by the camera.
- expanseviewr 6y ago
  > getting so many of the technical details exactly right I'm with you. It bothers me when people are given sci fi on the hard spectrum but then debate 'how hard it really is' for the purpose of defining then diminishing the value of the material; feels very self congratulatory. Everyone who praises the expanse's 'hardness' are just as aware that protomolecule is space magic. Space magic has its place but the expanse also offers a level of hardness I appreciate outside the narrative elements requiring the space magic. I think its an important discussion in any talk of scifi to point out where the lens is callibrated with regard to hardness resolution. Turns "expanse is hard scifi" debate on its head by simply changing that statement to "I like the level of scifi hardness in the expanse". My nephew was reading a book and a character in it built a metal detector out of a radio in a survival scenario. Due to my interests my nephew asked me if it was possible; if 'he could do that'. I explained that i suppose you could construct a device to detect eddy currents out of the components of a radio, but it would be so terrible and unreliable that itd fail to detect any metal in any meaningful survival sense. My nephew was satisfied with the answer, he honestly was uninterested in if it would 'work' but rather 'how probable' it was. You could tell he was inspired to learn more about the topics that subjectively could allow someone know how to do that regardless of its objective viability. So, the story could have cut ahead to after its been magically built off screen or could magically source parts from the devices without the actual necessary base components to achieve the conversion ignoring the whole radio aspect or the character could reasonably source components that "magically" works well enough to allow their knowledge to save them (the level this story choose) or the character could sit down and read through a data sheet and spend screen time soldering components to pcbs then accept they wasted all that time, and narrative space, because its an untenable goal given what they have to work with. I think there are arguments for each of these levels depending on the narrative's slated goals, and being accessible to a broader audience is an important one of these goals. I feel the further you move down that hard ladder the smaller the audience becomes and leaves less of the 'fi' element of sci fi for you to work with narratively. I love ben eater's 6502 series and find it extremely entertaining, but does anyone expect that level of detail in a sci fi television show? Is that the end goal of these hardness debates? I simply appreciate where the Expanse chooses to push that line into the esoteric, and yes even in the other direction of space magic, while still remaining accessible to a broader audience allowing people with less technical knowledge to be inspired to pursue expanding their knowledge within those fields.
- noisy_boy 6y ago
  The only reason I haven't watched is that I've read the books and am wary (perhaps unreasonably so) of being disappointed.
- Krasnol 6y ago
  I've been into Sci-Fi as long as I can remember and I watched The Expanse but found it quite dull most of the time. I continued to watch it only because "it's Sci-Fi". I feels like the actual story is quite short but is being stretched between the first and last episode with repetitive tropes. It's too bad because it does have more potential.
- matwood 6y ago
  I do like the technical details, but I fell out of watching it one episode in to season 4.
- perakojotgenije 6y ago
  It's funny that you mention that, I grew up reading Clarke's books, along with Asimov, Frederik Pohl and many others. I've also read The Expanse and by the end of the last book I hated every word of it, I just can't make myself watch the TV series. Why, you may ask? The behavior of human characters in The Expanse is... terrible. They fight each other, everybody has their own agenda, they behave irrationally. Case in point: in the second book (as far as I remember) an alien ship appears in the Solar system - clearly a hostile force. Earth and Mars send soldiers on the ship and what do they do? They start fighting each other. No, I do not want to believe that humans would behave that way. If you read Clarke's books, when facing the new and possibly dangerous things humans behave logically, calmly. You do not see human vs human conflict in Rama, Childhood's End, The Fountains of Paradise, Space odyssey, Sands of Mars or almost any other of his books. It's about exploration, human unity, positivism, and there is nothing of that kind in the Expanse. I could not find a single character in the Expanse that behaves in the way Clarke's characters would. I apologize for the harsh words but I refuse to believe that Clarke would write such an abomination. And no, it is not just the Expanse's writers, I see it everywhere nowadays, it seems that the writers nowadays need to insert human conflict so they introduce whatever irrational behavior leads to it. </end rant>
  - nerfhammer 6y ago
    the dialogue sometimes feels like it's disproportionately characters barking or hissing at each other, even if they're in a very formal or very familiar environment where that level of rudeness and overt hostility seems out of place.
  - outworlder 6y ago
    > everybody has their own agenda, they behave irrationally Just like real life? There's a difference between being irrational versus being self-centered. > No, I do not want to believe that humans would behave that way Humanity is currently facing a potential extinction level threat due to climate change and you have plenty of people fighting one another and making emotional - versus rational - arguments.
- throwawaybutwhy 6y ago
  Not sure if praise from ~~that person from Ceylon~~ Arthur C. Clarke is worth anything. We don't go around quoting Jimmy Savile, do we? Edit: replaced the circumlocution with the paedophile's name.
  - breakfastduck 6y ago
    I don't really think that's an appropriate comparison. Television / Radio personality not really the same as one of the most important film directors of all time, is it?
blueblisters 6y ago
I love the little things in The Expanse that other space shows would typically not bother about. Like when Avasarala is pouring her liquor on the moon base and it floats away. Or when you sometimes have people simultaneously walking on both "floors" of a space station/ship using magboots.
- BlameKaneda 6y ago
  I don't think they would've attempted to show people walking on multiple "floors" simultaneously in past seasons (pre-Amazon), due to budget constraints. If anything, I'm hopeful that we'll be seeing more interesting visual quirks in future episodes.
- kspacewalk2 6y ago
  The scene in the first season when the Martian ship is attacked by projectiles that pierce it right through, and the characters struggle to plug the hole with a binder - that was awesome.
  - dharmab 6y ago
    This is incidentally also done on real ships. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXC6U0NfJg8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXC6U0NfJg8
    - KineticLensman 6y ago
      Yes, and current Royal Navy warships may still have planks of wood strapped to bulkheads because they are an excellent way of shoring something up in an emergency.
      - meowster 6y ago
        Same with US Navy and US Merchant Marine ships.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
throwawaybchr 6y ago
This show started off slow but slowly became an all-time favorite of mine.
BlameKaneda 6y ago
My SO and I were looking for a show to watch last November, so I did a search of "highest rated shows on X platform" and The Expanse was one of the frontrunners. There were some reviews that said it was slow to start, with lots of confusing world-building, but it picked up straight after. We didn't get the sense that it was slow and hard to follow, at all. In fact, one of my favorite things about it is the amount of world-building that you're presented with, especially in the beginning. We marathoned the first four seasons in a few weeks, and luckily Season 5 started less than a week after we ended. It's easily one of the best shows I've seen in a long time, and one that I've been recommending to people left and right.
- fullstop 6y ago
  I also encourage people to read the books / novellas. They are excellent.
  - brmgb 6y ago
    As a counterpoint, while I consider the shows to be oscillating between enjoyable and watchable (though admittedly only barely if we are talking about season 3), I found the books to be completely unreadable (well the first one at least - I'm not a masochist. I stoped there). Abraham and Franck's prose is at best unremarkable when it's not plain bad and they have a bad habit of relying on characters acting, well, out of character and contrary to their interest when the story is stuck (which actually happens quite often and is something the show can't entierely escape sadly).
    - goatlover 6y ago
      Season 3 was the absolute pinnacle of the show and some of the best scifi ever on tv. It completely blew my mind, and I’ve watched my share of Star Trek, Stargate, Babylon 5, Farscape, BSG, etc over the years. It completely pays off for the buildup of seasons 1 and 2.
      - e40 6y ago
woile 6y ago
My favourite show, first season is a bit slow but it gets better and better every time. I just hope they manage to cover all books
- AndrewLiptak 6y ago
  The show's going to end with the next season, before they hit the final three books. That's probably a good thing, considering that they jump three decades for the last segment of the book series. They haven't ruled out that they won't return to it at some point, though.
  - arp242 6y ago
    Worked out well enough for Twin Peaks; just have to hope not too many of the cast member die an untimely death heh.
- ra7 6y ago
  Next season (S6) is the final season for the show, unfortunately.
  - AndrewLiptak 6y ago
    I think it's probably a good place for it to leave off. The books take a 30 year jump after Book 6.
- fullstop 6y ago
  Season 6 is the end, although there are rumblings of a movie. It would be difficult to handle the time-skip between the 6th and 7 book, IMO.
- superkuh 6y ago
  Yeah, like everyone else says, 6 is the end. And they already retroactively removed one of the primary actors of the show from season 5 (clumsily, with edits and reshoots) because of unproven accusations, as is the style of the times.
ra7 6y ago
The show is simply brilliant and yet seriously underrated. Everything from the storyline, concepts, characters (and their names) and technical details are amazing. I wonder why Amazon doesn’t promote it as much.
- keanebean86 6y ago
  [POSSIBLE SPOILERS] I was mad at this season for going back to earth. It felt like a huge step back from the last season. Then I read some wiki pages about the books and I think I see what they're doimg. This season seems to be the set up for some really big stuff. I'm really excited for the next season. Hopefully there's only a one year wait.
  - barrkel 6y ago
    I don't really see this season as going back to Earth. The entire narrative arc of the series is the social dynamics of humans as they take their first steps beyond Earth; how the initial scarcity of land suitable for human life gives rise to animosity, how eventually the potential bounty causes a rush to exploit, and how space natives struggle for their independence. The current season is an interesting exploration of the terrorist / freedom fighter duality. It demonstrates clearly, through narrative, how effective committing atrocities can be to forcibly unite a people, and forge a more solid sense of identity through shared suffering and a common enemy. While I understand why many people didn't like season 4 as much, I found it interesting because it explored how people would try and export Earth-bound laws to new worlds and new contexts, and how that would conflict with the lawless nature of a frontier. In some ways, it reminds me of The Wire. The Wire is an exploration of drug crime, how it is structured, and how politics and the media are ultimately complicit in perpetuating it - or failing to stop it. The Expanse is a study of how humanity is likely to react to opportunities beyond Earth, at various stages: when there's a single viable alternative; when there's lots of scattered people collectively forming a new nationalistic identity; and when there are new settlers to new lands in a scenario of unbounded potential, and how that remote potential may reduce the will of people to fight over scraps on overcrowded (Earth) or environmentally hostile (Mars) planets.
Cmortoc 6y ago
Does anyone have any idea how big the fan base? Obviously not GoT-levels, but big enough to warrant 6 seasons. The show has some polarizing aspect to it, about half of my friends are really into it (me included). Half my friends bounced off the first couple episodes.
- kitsunesoba 6y ago
  > Half my friends bounced off the first couple episodes The show starts off quite slow, which is probably its biggest "weakness".
- ra7 6y ago
  The popular theory you see in r/TheExpanse is that S01E04 is what hooks you on to the series. The first season is indeed a bit slow, but seasons 2 and 3 really take it up a few notches and are fantastic.
  - Natfan 6y ago
    I'd concur that The Expanse S01E04 "CQB" is one of my favourite episodes of television.
    - alvarlagerlof 6y ago
      Huh this is what I've been saying to friends too
  - tolbish 6y ago
    A season and a half in for me and it still hasn't picked up, IMO.
- okprod 6y ago
  Also didn't hurt Jeff Bezos is a fan and bought the show
- baq 6y ago
  it isn't for everyone. it especially isn't for people who can't resist peeking at their phones when watching. it requires (and deserves!) attention.
wiremine 6y ago
The books are EXCELLENT, and better than the TV show (which I also like a lot). https://www.amazon.com/gp/bookseries/B00K7B2CRQ https://www.amazon.com/gp/bookseries/B00K7B2CRQ There are 9 books total, not including the novellas. The last book of the series is scheduled for later this year. It's structured as 3 trilogies. The tone and pace of the first book is maintained (for the most part) through the entire series. So, if you like the first book, you'll probably like the entire thing.
- fullstop 6y ago
  I read the first six quickly, then took a long-ish break to read Worm. I had a little difficulty getting back into Persepolis Rising for some reason.
  - wiremine 6y ago
    > I had a little difficulty getting back into Persepolis Rising for some reason. I can see that. It's a bit of a reset (without giving away the plot) but it sets up 8 extremely well, which was a great book. I'm really excited to see how they wrap up the 9th and final.
    - fullstop 6y ago
      I have Tiamat's Wrath waiting, maybe I'll pick it up again this weekend.
- AndrewLiptak 6y ago
  The authors have actually said that they look at the books as duologies, rather than trilogies (except for the last three). They're also planning to collect all the novellas / short stories into one volume at some point.
  - wiremine 6y ago
    Good to know! Kind of crazy they work as trilogies, too. (or maybe I'm just seeing things that aren't there).
roldie 6y ago
Question: I don't have much interest in plot line of season 4. If I skipped it (and just read Wikipedia summaries) how lost would I be if I went straight to season 5?
- okprod 6y ago
  I think you could do that / similar to many other shows/movies summaries online can be pretty descriptive. I've enjoyed watching all the seasons though.
- baq 6y ago
  it sets up the scene for a major series of events happening in the background of the main story, but you have to be attentive to catch those glimpses, as it doesn't appear in dialogues much, in passing at best. the background slowly becomes the foreground during the 5th season.
- leetcrew 6y ago
  season 4 is largely character building, so if that's important to you, you'll miss a lot. we learn an Important Fact in the last episode, but other than that it doesn't advance the protomolecule part of the story much. you can probably just read the wiki for that. I will say the political shifts in season 5 are going to seem out of left field without the context of season 4.
okprod 6y ago
I wish Firefly would have been able to experience some of this
- aphextron 6y ago
  >I wish Firefly would have been able to experience some of this It's a shame it came out when it did, on the network that it did. The timeslot shenanigans and network politics were the death of that show. It would have run for years as a Netflix original.
  - effie 6y ago
    Or Stargate Universe. So many squandered opportunities for a great TV.
- wj 6y ago
  You might like Dark Matter if you haven't seen it. It is available on Netflix and, imho, has a feel that is somewhere between Firefly and The Expanse.
  - okprod 6y ago
    Thanks, I added it to my list a while ago but haven't watched it yet
- gota 6y ago
  Yes. I still hold hope that we'll get an animated series that picks up immediately after the series and, ignoring Serenity, goes through the arcs initially imagined by Joss Whedon Tell you what - If _I_ become a multi billionaire I'll pay for it out of pocket and only worry about selling it after it is all done
  - okprod 6y ago
    Same. I'd bring back Firefly, The Unit, SGU, and don't hate me, Marco Polo
jaegerpicker 6y ago
The Expanse is easily my favorite show. I love the mostly hard SciFi story that is still exciting and action packed. It's just really really smart TV. I hope it starts a new trend of smart hardish SciFi series. Also I think RPG DM's and gamers don't get enough credit for the incredible storytelling and world building that a lot of us take part in. A number of great fiction series have come from RPG games.
StillBored 6y ago
I don't think the amazon show description for season 1 does it any favors either. It sounds like a detective in space show, which pigeonholes it too much.
aphextron 6y ago
Really fell downhill after season 3 and the switch to Amazon. Went from an incredible high concept sci-fi story to just run of the mill Hollywood action drivel.
- pepperonipizza 6y ago
  Same feeling, in a way I regret to have continued after season 3, I were warned that season 4 was not on the same level as the previous seasons but to continue to watch. Season 3 ended so beautifully.
  - jaegerpicker 6y ago
    5 is much better IMO, I didn't love 4 but 5 really feels like it took season 3 and stepped it up a notch.
  - crocodiletears 6y ago
    4 was a slog. 5 picked back up.
- jaegerpicker 6y ago
  of course everyone is entitled to their opinion but I don't see any reasonable view of that being the truth. Season 4 is a little like that but 5 is firmly the best of all the rest of the seasons and it has a ton of Hard SciFi in it.
richardknop 6y ago
I need to watch the new series of this show, it's on my list of things to watch next, I have seen first season only. How are the new episodes? Good quality?
remarkEon 6y ago
If anyone in here has played the game Children of a Dead Earth, it may make you appreciate The Expanse even more (if that’s possible!). The game is a true-to-physics representation of how space battles would actually happen, and the scenes in The Expanse replicate them wonderfully, albeit they look much more pretty. Hats off to the developers of this show, they really did their homework. PS Season 5 is great.
- mLuby 6y ago
  I'm a huge fan of The Expanse, Atomic Rockets, and Kerbal Space Program, so I felt like I should have loved Children of a Dead Earth too. But try as I might, I just couldn't find it fun. I have a feeling that if the game controls were slightly more abstract, it might be better. Less "burn 100m/s retrograde" and more "intercept target", "pull alongside target", etc. But part of it might just be that realistic spaceship combat isn't very exciting; it's not conducted at human-relevant distances and timescales, it's all over in the blink of an eye, and it's hard to judge whether your salvo of nuclear missiles will beat their swarm of laser drones. The Expanse does a much better job of making ship-to-ship combat interesting, but I think they only manage that by ignoring some of the more pedantic hard sci-fi rules (stealth ships in S1E4 "CQB"), and they contrive battle settings (Thoth Station in S2E2 "Doors & Corners") that are more interesting than CoaDE's open space. Still glad CoaDE was made, and it's worth a few bucks for the experience. :)
  - leetcrew 6y ago
    > I have a feeling that if the game controls were slightly more abstract, it might be better. Less "burn 100m/s retrograde" and more "intercept target", "pull alongside target", etc. I believe this reflects the creator's conclusions regarding the nature of space combat. that is, the outcome of the battle is more or less determined by the weapons loadout and approach speed/direction. so the real "fight" is maneuvering for a favorable approach and/or forcing the enemy to waste their delta-v, which the game definitely stresses. there aren't a lot of meaningful tactical choices once you're within gun range. could be a case of being too realistic for its own good. I do think the game would be less frustrating if it had checkpoints within missions. very annoying to have to redo some complicated orbit transfer over and over because you keep losing the final battle.
chrisweekly 6y ago
It went from a book to ... TV, right?? I read all the books and novellas; couldn't get into the tv show bc I objected to some of the casting decisions.
- AndrewLiptak 6y ago
  Well, it went from game concept to homebrewed game, to books, to tv series. I'd definitely recommend giving the show another chance — the actors really grow into their roles.
  - chrisweekly 6y ago
    thanks; I think I will.
- baq 6y ago
  holden being irritating is on purpose so he can get less idealistic as the story progresses (as in the books, except it's difficult to realize that holden is actually irritating when reading).
JoeDaDude 6y ago
Interesting that the idea started as a game, and now the TV series has become a game. The kickstarter campaign was successful last year and you can now buy (if you can find it) and play the game. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1780208966/the-expanse-roleplaying-game https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1780208966/the-expanse-...

209 points by AndrewLiptak 6y ago

I'm kind of surprised how many nerdy people I know who have never watched this show. It is by far the best (maybe only?) hard sci-fi TV show ever, and almost every episode is better than any hard sci-fi movie ever made. If AC Clarke and Stanley Kubrick were alive they'd be heaping praise on this show for getting so many of the technical details exactly right.

dharmab 6y ago
Planetes is also hard sci-fi and quite good.
- dreamcompiler 6y ago
  Haven't heard of it. Will check it out.
- AndrewLiptak 6y ago
  Oh, I've heard of this, but haven't checked it out before. Will add it to the list.
- andrewflnr 6y ago
  Is that a show, now? I remember the manga.
  - patagurbon 6y ago
    It aired between 99-04
- patagurbon 6y ago
  I concur, excellent show and much "harder" then The Expanse. Some people have an aversion to anime but it transcends that in my opinion.
  - decafninja 6y ago
    Howabout Gundam? Angsty teen/preteen protagonist trope can get annoying, but I'd classify a lot of UC Gundam as pretty "hard" SF. Granted there are some deus ex machina type elements to it (psychic newtypes, Minovsky particles, etc.).
    - dharmab 6y ago
      In a way you're right- Gundam was considered a "real robot" show in contrast to more magical shows like Ultraman. But Planetes is on a different level, with accurate depictions of orbital dynamics and spacer life.
    - Hemospectrum 6y ago
      Gundam was always about societies experiencing large-scale changes that no individual person has a handle on, and the struggles of people who try to make a difference anyway. In that sense, it's comparable to The Expanse, and the "magical" elements serve more or less the same purpose. Planetes, on the other hand, isn't much like either of these. Its subject matter is intensely personal, and even when the characters occasionally get involved in high-stakes situations, it's less to do with changes in society (which occur much more slowly) and more to do with someone turning their small-scale private difficulties into everybody else's problem. The political elements intrude for a while and disappear again, and I don't remember them nearly as well as the bits about a lost watch, or a marriage proposal. In a nutshell, if Gundam and The Expanse need magic because they're larger-than-life, Planetes has no use for it, because it's exactly-the-same-size-as-life.
AndrewLiptak 6y ago
What's also great here is that it's not just technically right, but it doesn't ignore the human element: we squabble, fight and make up, and that's a key part of the world they've constructed.
- FreeKill 6y ago
  Yeah, I think it shows what humans of right now would be like in space, if we had the same technical progression, rather than imagining how we would be instead.
  - AndrewLiptak 6y ago
    Yeah. That's a key thing. I think it's the same reason why Babylon 5 has really held up.
    - metabagel 6y ago
      Babylon 5 has been fully remastered, by the way, available for purchase or on HBO Max. Just dropped last week, and it’s excellent. The previous DVD remaster was an abomination. Warner Bros spent 6 years on the new remaster. It was reportedly a labor of love by those involved.
      - em-bee 6y ago
        can you elaborate on how the remastering affects the quality? what do you see in the remastered version that you didn't see in the older version or the original?
        majormajor 6y ago
        I haven't watched the HBO Max version yet, just seen some comparison vids and shots, but the DVD conversion handled the special effects shots very poorly. The original show was broadcast in SD 4:3 which is what the effects were rendered at. The DVD conversion went to 16:9 widescreen, since that's what the film was shot at, but then decided to get 16:9 effects shots by zooming in and cropping the already-low-SD-resolution renders. So it's now basically half resolution, and then run that through an interlaced DVD and put it on a big HDTV, and it looks awful. The effects shots also include a lot of conversations and other shots with people, since they used quite a few virtual sets. From the comparison shots I've seen of the new version, they kept everything 4:3, and instead of cropping the effects shots, did a pretty decent job upscaling them instead. So it's not HD quality like if they were rendered in HD, but at least it's not sub-broadcast-quality anymore.
op03 6y ago
The last 2 seasons have been really boring. Going no where really.
- alvarlagerlof 6y ago
  Season 5 is really good so far if you ask me.
f38zf5vdt 6y ago
I'm not sure I'd call it hard sci-fi along the lines of Lem. The protomolecule has a deeply magical element to it, almost like the One Ring from LotR.
- aqme28 6y ago
  It's the hard sci-fi equivalent of magical realism. Everything is "accurate" except for this one alien element.
  - herodoturtle 6y ago
    Which is a brilliantly entertaining balance imho. I love it.
  - herbstein 6y ago
    In other words, it's in the "One Big Lie"-category on Moh's Scale of Science Fiction Hardness[0]. Fair warning, it's a TVTropes thing. [0]: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MohsScaleOfScienceFictionHardness
- detritus 6y ago
  Ijon Tichy's scratching his head, wondering if he's Hard Sci-Fi - as too the Ijon Tichy from ten minutes in the future who's just popped in and started eating the pancakes he'd just finished eating.
  - f38zf5vdt 6y ago
    Thanks for the laugh, I needed that. Obviously not the entire body of his work. :)
- Gatsky 6y ago
  Yes, in some parts it became like Game of Thrones in space, except with protomolecule soldiers instead of the white walkers.
- dreamcompiler 6y ago
sillyquiet 6y ago
I don't know if I'd say the get the technical details exactly right, as there are some concessions to story-telling over physics - the (probably) impossibly efficient fusion drives, and the protomolecule is kinda magic sometimes, but it get is right enough, and way more so than any other sci-fi show I've seen.
- dharmab 6y ago
  It's like Mass Effect. The mass effect phenomena is basically space magic, but most of the rest of the lore is realistic (aside from a few things like the quantum communicators in the third game).
  - fullstop 6y ago
    Shohreh Aghdashloo (Avasarala) was a voice actress in Mass Effect 2, so there's some additional relationships.
    - Gatsky 6y ago
      There is one scene where Avasarala comes aboard the Roccinante and is dressed in a white textured jumpsuit straight out of Mass Effect. The camera lingers slightly too long on her, it is a clear homage imo.
  - dwohnitmok 6y ago
    Eh... Mass Effect is fairly soft sci-fi and more of classic space opera. All these things happen in Mass Effect: Sounds in space, spaceships bunched way too close together, impossibly slow projectiles for space (especially the classic "blob of light/plasma thingy" traveling at what appears to be subsonic speeds), giant 18th-century infantry-style spaceship firing lines, in general heavy reliance on "spaceships as just extensions of naval warfare" trope, all alien communication neatly glossed over with universal translation, nearly universally bipedal humanoid aliens, etc. None of these are bad things! Mass Effect is simply much more similar in tradition to something like Star Wars or Star Trek than the Expanse.
- 6y ago
fabian2k 6y ago
The first season is a bit slow, I only got hooked on my second try. Which is a bit odd as the first book is quite fast-paced. I wouldn't exactly call it hard sci-fi, but it at least makes an effort to keep some parts realistic, with the obvious exception of major plot elements like the protomolecule and all stuff derived from it. You can certainly nitpick many details about how gravity is handled, they make an effort to explain it without resorting to magic, but in the end simulating microgravity just isn't feasible on a TV budget.
CodeGlitch 6y ago
Yeah I know a few trekkies who hated The Expanse, but love ST Discovery. I watched half of season 1 of STD and had to switch it off. I've never hated a TV show so much as STD. The Expanse on the other hand is the best SciFi since Battlestar Galactica. Edit - to expand on why I hate STD so much, it's the completely unlikeable characters. I just couldn't root for a single one of them.
- erulabs 6y ago
  STD is so eager to hit you over the head with “see how HORRIBLE society is?!?!?” The Expanse actually has its own world with its own problems that isn’t just a shallow mirror of the writers view of today. Also much less melodrama, although not none.
  - CodeGlitch 6y ago
    It seems STD is trying really hard to push certain ideaologies, especially around diversity - but it feels so "fake" as if they're trying too hard. The Expanse on the other hand has a diverse cast but it feels natural and realistic.
    - effie 6y ago
      Very fake, forced and the overall script/narrative is pathetic with some minor bright moments. STD looks to me to be more like a political bidding/propaganda piece than a science fiction TV show.
- meowster 6y ago
  Trekkie here (more or less). I like The Orville better than Discovery. Discovery is down-right disappointing and stupid. Picard is better than Discovery, but still didn't live up to my expectations. You're probably right about Battlestar Galactica and The Expanse being the best hard sci-fi. It's hard to beat the episodes/stories in the earlier Star Trek shows. The Twilight Zone was able to pull off a faithful modern reboot, why can't Star Trek? (Someone else mentioned Planetes further down in the comments. That is also good hard sci-fi.)
driverdan 6y ago
Sorry but you can't call something that has sounds in space hard sci-fi. Overall they do a good job but to me no sounds in a vacuum is a key marker of hard sci-fi.
- barrkel 6y ago
  If you pay attention, it's actually much more subtly done than that. The engine whooshing noises are more like what you'd hear on board, if you were on board. If they left those sounds out, the conveyed sensation of motion would lose a lot of its impact. But consider how the characters touch helmets in order to communicate when their radios are down, or when they want to communicate privately. Or consider Naomi's trial on board the Chetzemoka most recently. She needed to examine the ship spec plate to find out the air volume so she could calculate how many trips she could make to the unpressurized parts of the ship; she marks the number of trips on a wall, which doubles as a narrative device to demonstrate how many trips she made. Note also the way she touched her helmet to the hull in order to hear the radio broadcast while she was in the unpressurized area. Some of my favourite parts have been the battles, the way they demonstrate the harshness of space and the way the lack of gravity confounds expectations. The way the railgun punched through multiple walls of the Donnager, into open space, and the rush to patch up the holes. Or when Prax and Amos were in the cargo bay and some tools came lose, and they flew around the bay based on the ship's manouevers - or rather, tried to stay still while the ship moved around them.
  - driverdan 6y ago
    Like I said, they get a lot right and I love the show. But the engine sounds are rarely what they'd be inside. The Razorback propulsion sounds, for example, are always a rocket engine blasting by the camera.
expanseviewr 6y ago
> getting so many of the technical details exactly right I'm with you. It bothers me when people are given sci fi on the hard spectrum but then debate 'how hard it really is' for the purpose of defining then diminishing the value of the material; feels very self congratulatory. Everyone who praises the expanse's 'hardness' are just as aware that protomolecule is space magic. Space magic has its place but the expanse also offers a level of hardness I appreciate outside the narrative elements requiring the space magic. I think its an important discussion in any talk of scifi to point out where the lens is callibrated with regard to hardness resolution. Turns "expanse is hard scifi" debate on its head by simply changing that statement to "I like the level of scifi hardness in the expanse". My nephew was reading a book and a character in it built a metal detector out of a radio in a survival scenario. Due to my interests my nephew asked me if it was possible; if 'he could do that'. I explained that i suppose you could construct a device to detect eddy currents out of the components of a radio, but it would be so terrible and unreliable that itd fail to detect any metal in any meaningful survival sense. My nephew was satisfied with the answer, he honestly was uninterested in if it would 'work' but rather 'how probable' it was. You could tell he was inspired to learn more about the topics that subjectively could allow someone know how to do that regardless of its objective viability. So, the story could have cut ahead to after its been magically built off screen or could magically source parts from the devices without the actual necessary base components to achieve the conversion ignoring the whole radio aspect or the character could reasonably source components that "magically" works well enough to allow their knowledge to save them (the level this story choose) or the character could sit down and read through a data sheet and spend screen time soldering components to pcbs then accept they wasted all that time, and narrative space, because its an untenable goal given what they have to work with. I think there are arguments for each of these levels depending on the narrative's slated goals, and being accessible to a broader audience is an important one of these goals. I feel the further you move down that hard ladder the smaller the audience becomes and leaves less of the 'fi' element of sci fi for you to work with narratively. I love ben eater's 6502 series and find it extremely entertaining, but does anyone expect that level of detail in a sci fi television show? Is that the end goal of these hardness debates? I simply appreciate where the Expanse chooses to push that line into the esoteric, and yes even in the other direction of space magic, while still remaining accessible to a broader audience allowing people with less technical knowledge to be inspired to pursue expanding their knowledge within those fields.
noisy_boy 6y ago
The only reason I haven't watched is that I've read the books and am wary (perhaps unreasonably so) of being disappointed.
Krasnol 6y ago
I've been into Sci-Fi as long as I can remember and I watched The Expanse but found it quite dull most of the time. I continued to watch it only because "it's Sci-Fi". I feels like the actual story is quite short but is being stretched between the first and last episode with repetitive tropes. It's too bad because it does have more potential.
matwood 6y ago
I do like the technical details, but I fell out of watching it one episode in to season 4.
perakojotgenije 6y ago
It's funny that you mention that, I grew up reading Clarke's books, along with Asimov, Frederik Pohl and many others. I've also read The Expanse and by the end of the last book I hated every word of it, I just can't make myself watch the TV series. Why, you may ask? The behavior of human characters in The Expanse is... terrible. They fight each other, everybody has their own agenda, they behave irrationally. Case in point: in the second book (as far as I remember) an alien ship appears in the Solar system - clearly a hostile force. Earth and Mars send soldiers on the ship and what do they do? They start fighting each other. No, I do not want to believe that humans would behave that way. If you read Clarke's books, when facing the new and possibly dangerous things humans behave logically, calmly. You do not see human vs human conflict in Rama, Childhood's End, The Fountains of Paradise, Space odyssey, Sands of Mars or almost any other of his books. It's about exploration, human unity, positivism, and there is nothing of that kind in the Expanse. I could not find a single character in the Expanse that behaves in the way Clarke's characters would. I apologize for the harsh words but I refuse to believe that Clarke would write such an abomination. And no, it is not just the Expanse's writers, I see it everywhere nowadays, it seems that the writers nowadays need to insert human conflict so they introduce whatever irrational behavior leads to it. </end rant>
- nerfhammer 6y ago
  the dialogue sometimes feels like it's disproportionately characters barking or hissing at each other, even if they're in a very formal or very familiar environment where that level of rudeness and overt hostility seems out of place.
- outworlder 6y ago
  > everybody has their own agenda, they behave irrationally Just like real life? There's a difference between being irrational versus being self-centered. > No, I do not want to believe that humans would behave that way Humanity is currently facing a potential extinction level threat due to climate change and you have plenty of people fighting one another and making emotional - versus rational - arguments.
throwawaybutwhy 6y ago
Not sure if praise from ~~that person from Ceylon~~ Arthur C. Clarke is worth anything. We don't go around quoting Jimmy Savile, do we? Edit: replaced the circumlocution with the paedophile's name.
- breakfastduck 6y ago
  I don't really think that's an appropriate comparison. Television / Radio personality not really the same as one of the most important film directors of all time, is it?

blueblisters 6y ago

I love the little things in The Expanse that other space shows would typically not bother about. Like when Avasarala is pouring her liquor on the moon base and it floats away. Or when you sometimes have people simultaneously walking on both "floors" of a space station/ship using magboots.

BlameKaneda 6y ago
I don't think they would've attempted to show people walking on multiple "floors" simultaneously in past seasons (pre-Amazon), due to budget constraints. If anything, I'm hopeful that we'll be seeing more interesting visual quirks in future episodes.
kspacewalk2 6y ago
The scene in the first season when the Martian ship is attacked by projectiles that pierce it right through, and the characters struggle to plug the hole with a binder - that was awesome.
- dharmab 6y ago
  This is incidentally also done on real ships. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXC6U0NfJg8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXC6U0NfJg8
  - KineticLensman 6y ago
    Yes, and current Royal Navy warships may still have planks of wood strapped to bulkheads because they are an excellent way of shoring something up in an emergency.
    - meowster 6y ago
      Same with US Navy and US Merchant Marine ships.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

throwawaybchr 6y ago

This show started off slow but slowly became an all-time favorite of mine.

BlameKaneda 6y ago

My SO and I were looking for a show to watch last November, so I did a search of "highest rated shows on X platform" and The Expanse was one of the frontrunners. There were some reviews that said it was slow to start, with lots of confusing world-building, but it picked up straight after. We didn't get the sense that it was slow and hard to follow, at all. In fact, one of my favorite things about it is the amount of world-building that you're presented with, especially in the beginning. We marathoned the first four seasons in a few weeks, and luckily Season 5 started less than a week after we ended. It's easily one of the best shows I've seen in a long time, and one that I've been recommending to people left and right.

fullstop 6y ago
I also encourage people to read the books / novellas. They are excellent.
- brmgb 6y ago
  As a counterpoint, while I consider the shows to be oscillating between enjoyable and watchable (though admittedly only barely if we are talking about season 3), I found the books to be completely unreadable (well the first one at least - I'm not a masochist. I stoped there). Abraham and Franck's prose is at best unremarkable when it's not plain bad and they have a bad habit of relying on characters acting, well, out of character and contrary to their interest when the story is stuck (which actually happens quite often and is something the show can't entierely escape sadly).
  - goatlover 6y ago
    Season 3 was the absolute pinnacle of the show and some of the best scifi ever on tv. It completely blew my mind, and I’ve watched my share of Star Trek, Stargate, Babylon 5, Farscape, BSG, etc over the years. It completely pays off for the buildup of seasons 1 and 2.
    - e40 6y ago

woile 6y ago

My favourite show, first season is a bit slow but it gets better and better every time. I just hope they manage to cover all books

AndrewLiptak 6y ago
The show's going to end with the next season, before they hit the final three books. That's probably a good thing, considering that they jump three decades for the last segment of the book series. They haven't ruled out that they won't return to it at some point, though.
- arp242 6y ago
  Worked out well enough for Twin Peaks; just have to hope not too many of the cast member die an untimely death heh.
ra7 6y ago
Next season (S6) is the final season for the show, unfortunately.
- AndrewLiptak 6y ago
  I think it's probably a good place for it to leave off. The books take a 30 year jump after Book 6.
fullstop 6y ago
Season 6 is the end, although there are rumblings of a movie. It would be difficult to handle the time-skip between the 6th and 7 book, IMO.
superkuh 6y ago
Yeah, like everyone else says, 6 is the end. And they already retroactively removed one of the primary actors of the show from season 5 (clumsily, with edits and reshoots) because of unproven accusations, as is the style of the times.

ra7 6y ago

The show is simply brilliant and yet seriously underrated. Everything from the storyline, concepts, characters (and their names) and technical details are amazing. I wonder why Amazon doesn’t promote it as much.

keanebean86 6y ago
[POSSIBLE SPOILERS] I was mad at this season for going back to earth. It felt like a huge step back from the last season. Then I read some wiki pages about the books and I think I see what they're doimg. This season seems to be the set up for some really big stuff. I'm really excited for the next season. Hopefully there's only a one year wait.
- barrkel 6y ago
  I don't really see this season as going back to Earth. The entire narrative arc of the series is the social dynamics of humans as they take their first steps beyond Earth; how the initial scarcity of land suitable for human life gives rise to animosity, how eventually the potential bounty causes a rush to exploit, and how space natives struggle for their independence. The current season is an interesting exploration of the terrorist / freedom fighter duality. It demonstrates clearly, through narrative, how effective committing atrocities can be to forcibly unite a people, and forge a more solid sense of identity through shared suffering and a common enemy. While I understand why many people didn't like season 4 as much, I found it interesting because it explored how people would try and export Earth-bound laws to new worlds and new contexts, and how that would conflict with the lawless nature of a frontier. In some ways, it reminds me of The Wire. The Wire is an exploration of drug crime, how it is structured, and how politics and the media are ultimately complicit in perpetuating it - or failing to stop it. The Expanse is a study of how humanity is likely to react to opportunities beyond Earth, at various stages: when there's a single viable alternative; when there's lots of scattered people collectively forming a new nationalistic identity; and when there are new settlers to new lands in a scenario of unbounded potential, and how that remote potential may reduce the will of people to fight over scraps on overcrowded (Earth) or environmentally hostile (Mars) planets.

Cmortoc 6y ago

Does anyone have any idea how big the fan base? Obviously not GoT-levels, but big enough to warrant 6 seasons. The show has some polarizing aspect to it, about half of my friends are really into it (me included). Half my friends bounced off the first couple episodes.

kitsunesoba 6y ago
> Half my friends bounced off the first couple episodes The show starts off quite slow, which is probably its biggest "weakness".
ra7 6y ago
The popular theory you see in r/TheExpanse is that S01E04 is what hooks you on to the series. The first season is indeed a bit slow, but seasons 2 and 3 really take it up a few notches and are fantastic.
- Natfan 6y ago
  I'd concur that The Expanse S01E04 "CQB" is one of my favourite episodes of television.
  - alvarlagerlof 6y ago
    Huh this is what I've been saying to friends too
- tolbish 6y ago
  A season and a half in for me and it still hasn't picked up, IMO.
okprod 6y ago
Also didn't hurt Jeff Bezos is a fan and bought the show
baq 6y ago
it isn't for everyone. it especially isn't for people who can't resist peeking at their phones when watching. it requires (and deserves!) attention.

wiremine 6y ago

The books are EXCELLENT, and better than the TV show (which I also like a lot). https://www.amazon.com/gp/bookseries/B00K7B2CRQ https://www.amazon.com/gp/bookseries/B00K7B2CRQ There are 9 books total, not including the novellas. The last book of the series is scheduled for later this year. It's structured as 3 trilogies. The tone and pace of the first book is maintained (for the most part) through the entire series. So, if you like the first book, you'll probably like the entire thing.

fullstop 6y ago
I read the first six quickly, then took a long-ish break to read Worm. I had a little difficulty getting back into Persepolis Rising for some reason.
- wiremine 6y ago
  > I had a little difficulty getting back into Persepolis Rising for some reason. I can see that. It's a bit of a reset (without giving away the plot) but it sets up 8 extremely well, which was a great book. I'm really excited to see how they wrap up the 9th and final.
  - fullstop 6y ago
    I have Tiamat's Wrath waiting, maybe I'll pick it up again this weekend.
AndrewLiptak 6y ago
The authors have actually said that they look at the books as duologies, rather than trilogies (except for the last three). They're also planning to collect all the novellas / short stories into one volume at some point.
- wiremine 6y ago
  Good to know! Kind of crazy they work as trilogies, too. (or maybe I'm just seeing things that aren't there).

roldie 6y ago

Question: I don't have much interest in plot line of season 4. If I skipped it (and just read Wikipedia summaries) how lost would I be if I went straight to season 5?

okprod 6y ago
I think you could do that / similar to many other shows/movies summaries online can be pretty descriptive. I've enjoyed watching all the seasons though.
baq 6y ago
it sets up the scene for a major series of events happening in the background of the main story, but you have to be attentive to catch those glimpses, as it doesn't appear in dialogues much, in passing at best. the background slowly becomes the foreground during the 5th season.
leetcrew 6y ago
season 4 is largely character building, so if that's important to you, you'll miss a lot. we learn an Important Fact in the last episode, but other than that it doesn't advance the protomolecule part of the story much. you can probably just read the wiki for that. I will say the political shifts in season 5 are going to seem out of left field without the context of season 4.

okprod 6y ago

I wish Firefly would have been able to experience some of this

aphextron 6y ago
>I wish Firefly would have been able to experience some of this It's a shame it came out when it did, on the network that it did. The timeslot shenanigans and network politics were the death of that show. It would have run for years as a Netflix original.
- effie 6y ago
  Or Stargate Universe. So many squandered opportunities for a great TV.
wj 6y ago
You might like Dark Matter if you haven't seen it. It is available on Netflix and, imho, has a feel that is somewhere between Firefly and The Expanse.
- okprod 6y ago
  Thanks, I added it to my list a while ago but haven't watched it yet
gota 6y ago
Yes. I still hold hope that we'll get an animated series that picks up immediately after the series and, ignoring Serenity, goes through the arcs initially imagined by Joss Whedon Tell you what - If _I_ become a multi billionaire I'll pay for it out of pocket and only worry about selling it after it is all done
- okprod 6y ago
  Same. I'd bring back Firefly, The Unit, SGU, and don't hate me, Marco Polo

jaegerpicker 6y ago

The Expanse is easily my favorite show. I love the mostly hard SciFi story that is still exciting and action packed. It's just really really smart TV. I hope it starts a new trend of smart hardish SciFi series. Also I think RPG DM's and gamers don't get enough credit for the incredible storytelling and world building that a lot of us take part in. A number of great fiction series have come from RPG games.

StillBored 6y ago

I don't think the amazon show description for season 1 does it any favors either. It sounds like a detective in space show, which pigeonholes it too much.

aphextron 6y ago

Really fell downhill after season 3 and the switch to Amazon. Went from an incredible high concept sci-fi story to just run of the mill Hollywood action drivel.

pepperonipizza 6y ago
Same feeling, in a way I regret to have continued after season 3, I were warned that season 4 was not on the same level as the previous seasons but to continue to watch. Season 3 ended so beautifully.
- jaegerpicker 6y ago
  5 is much better IMO, I didn't love 4 but 5 really feels like it took season 3 and stepped it up a notch.
- crocodiletears 6y ago
  4 was a slog. 5 picked back up.
jaegerpicker 6y ago
of course everyone is entitled to their opinion but I don't see any reasonable view of that being the truth. Season 4 is a little like that but 5 is firmly the best of all the rest of the seasons and it has a ton of Hard SciFi in it.

richardknop 6y ago

I need to watch the new series of this show, it's on my list of things to watch next, I have seen first season only. How are the new episodes? Good quality?

remarkEon 6y ago

If anyone in here has played the game Children of a Dead Earth, it may make you appreciate The Expanse even more (if that’s possible!). The game is a true-to-physics representation of how space battles would actually happen, and the scenes in The Expanse replicate them wonderfully, albeit they look much more pretty. Hats off to the developers of this show, they really did their homework. PS Season 5 is great.

mLuby 6y ago
I'm a huge fan of The Expanse, Atomic Rockets, and Kerbal Space Program, so I felt like I should have loved Children of a Dead Earth too. But try as I might, I just couldn't find it fun. I have a feeling that if the game controls were slightly more abstract, it might be better. Less "burn 100m/s retrograde" and more "intercept target", "pull alongside target", etc. But part of it might just be that realistic spaceship combat isn't very exciting; it's not conducted at human-relevant distances and timescales, it's all over in the blink of an eye, and it's hard to judge whether your salvo of nuclear missiles will beat their swarm of laser drones. The Expanse does a much better job of making ship-to-ship combat interesting, but I think they only manage that by ignoring some of the more pedantic hard sci-fi rules (stealth ships in S1E4 "CQB"), and they contrive battle settings (Thoth Station in S2E2 "Doors & Corners") that are more interesting than CoaDE's open space. Still glad CoaDE was made, and it's worth a few bucks for the experience. :)
- leetcrew 6y ago
  > I have a feeling that if the game controls were slightly more abstract, it might be better. Less "burn 100m/s retrograde" and more "intercept target", "pull alongside target", etc. I believe this reflects the creator's conclusions regarding the nature of space combat. that is, the outcome of the battle is more or less determined by the weapons loadout and approach speed/direction. so the real "fight" is maneuvering for a favorable approach and/or forcing the enemy to waste their delta-v, which the game definitely stresses. there aren't a lot of meaningful tactical choices once you're within gun range. could be a case of being too realistic for its own good. I do think the game would be less frustrating if it had checkpoints within missions. very annoying to have to redo some complicated orbit transfer over and over because you keep losing the final battle.

chrisweekly 6y ago

It went from a book to ... TV, right?? I read all the books and novellas; couldn't get into the tv show bc I objected to some of the casting decisions.

AndrewLiptak 6y ago
Well, it went from game concept to homebrewed game, to books, to tv series. I'd definitely recommend giving the show another chance — the actors really grow into their roles.
- chrisweekly 6y ago
  thanks; I think I will.
baq 6y ago
holden being irritating is on purpose so he can get less idealistic as the story progresses (as in the books, except it's difficult to realize that holden is actually irritating when reading).

JoeDaDude 6y ago

Interesting that the idea started as a game, and now the TV series has become a game. The kickstarter campaign was successful last year and you can now buy (if you can find it) and play the game. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1780208966/the-expanse-roleplaying-game https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1780208966/the-expanse-...