Tip jar

If you like CaB and wish to support it, you can use PayPal or KoFi. Thank you, and I hope you continue to enjoy the site - Neil.

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com

Support CaB

Recent

Welcome to Cook'd and Bomb'd. Please login or sign up.

March 29, 2024, 01:46:57 AM

Login with username, password and session length

The Expanse (the SyFy series)

Started by Ant Farm Keyboard, February 26, 2017, 10:16:50 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

Ant Farm Keyboard

The show is currently in its second season, but nobody so far had talked about it here.

So, I'll take the bait.

First season started out quite slow. It had quite the budget for SyFy, and it's obviously one of their most serious efforts since BSG, but there was a lot of table setting and some mannerisms (Thomas Jane's haircut, for instance) were quite irritating at first (even if they contributed to the feeling of realism).

It's basically a leaner space opera equivalent of Game of Thrones, with the feeling there are many different factions, a big threat over everybody's head that the different leaders can't really address due to divisions and ambitions, and a long series of books, written by George R.R. Martin's former assistants.

Starting with the end of the first season, it's been on a roll. A few impressive scenes with spaceships and maneuvers, a lot more action, and finally, in the latest episodes, some much welcomed emotional payoff. I'd say it's really pretty great.

I haven't read the books so far, but the two writers, under the James S.A. Corey alias, have managed to complete so far six books in six years, with three more planned. So far, the TV show has mostly covered book one, with a few elements from the next volume added in for clarification. The consensus seems to be that the showrunners and the writers from the original novels have improved the narrative by resenquencing a lot of stuff.

Norton Canes

Started on this the other day, gave up after about fifteen minutes in. However the same happened with The Wire, which I returned to eventually and watched the whole first season. So maybe this isn't done with yet.

Mobius

I started watching this yesterday as I've seen a lot of positive stuff around the internet for it lately.

Just 2 episodes in, but really enjoying it. You can tell a lot of effort has gone into the whole thing, the lore and all that. Politics in space, good stuff.

My only complaint is what the heck is up with the sound mixing on the Netflix one! You can hardly hear the dialogue in the first episode for all the other noises.

I have to ask though...

Spoiler alert
is there aliens in it
[close]

Dex Sawash

I watched all of season 1 with no great enthusiasm for it. I tend to watch stuff like this right before bed and it neeeds more alertness than I have then so i was confused a lot.

Alberon

I watched and enjoyed the first season, I'm letting the second back up a bit before I burn through the lot.

It's certainly a cut above the usual Sci-Fi runaround, like most of SyFy's other series. It does take a while to get going but it is worth it. I've been aware of the book series for a while, but I'll probably stick with seeing it on TV first. Though there is always the safety net of the books if the show gets cancelled.

Plus I do like to see more realistic spaceship movement than you normally get. I'm so fed up of ships banking like airplanes when they turn.

surreal

I'm loving this at the moment.  Season was was very hard going, I found it difficult to keep track of who was doing what or why, the writing was a bit impenetrable and Thomas Jane tends to mumble a bit making it tricky to follow who this girl was he was looking for.

However, I watched it again and managed to get to the end, and as soon as the main reveal happened it all seemed to open up.

Apparently Netflix have taken over production which gives me good vibes for the future, and it has been terrific in S2.

surreal

Quote from: Mobius on February 26, 2017, 10:36:55 PM

I have to ask though...

Spoiler alert
is there aliens in it
[close]

Spoiler alert
Yes
[close]

Spoiler alert
Sort of
[close]

Just caught up to date with the second series and would agree it's really picked up: the first series was ok but lacked a bit of drive. It seems to have gained a new confidence, they know what works and the pace has picked up with plenty happening now.

Not read the books but if, as noted, we're at the end of the first I do wonder if it will slow down a bit for a while. Hope not, this series has been great at pushing the story forward.

Dex Sawash

Quote from: surreal on February 27, 2017, 01:11:01 PM

the main reveal happened it all seemed to open up.


Spoiler alert
the bit about the flesh eating disease/infection/whatever
[close]
?

Or

Spoiler alert
the baddies rounding up all the people at the end
[close]
?


surreal

Quote from: Dex Sawash on February 27, 2017, 11:51:10 PM
Spoiler alert
the bit about the flesh eating disease/infection/whatever
[close]
?

Or

Spoiler alert
the baddies rounding up all the people at the end
[close]
?

Bit of both - as I said I couldn't really follow the story of Miller looking for the girl, and the whole prologue of the first episode seemed to make no sense until the last couple of episodes.  I found the dialogue early on not expository enough I think.

Dex Sawash

^Oh good,  thought I missed something and would have to go back

Ant Farm Keyboard

It was clearly a transition episode, apparently introducing the events from the second book, but it was pretty good anyway, especially the small stuff with the Rocinante crew.

Phil_A

I've just started watching this and while it's nothing revelatory yet, I'm quite enjoying the low-key intrigue so far. The space station setting is giving me vibes of book one of The Ballad Of Halo Jones, with all the roaming gangs of murderous, gibberish-talking youths.



I really, really wish someone would make a series of that, although they'd have to somehow get Alan Moore to outline what the plot of books 4 - 9 was going to be first.

Alberon

The show has been officially renewed for Season 3, which will again be 13 episodes in length and is due next year.

Mobius

Since my previous post I've watched all of this, and it's fugging brilliant.

Glad I had a nice pile of eps to watch because it's a real 'fucking hell stick the next one on NOW' show.

Is it worth reading the books / how far into the books does it take over where we're at in the show?

Quote from: Mobius on March 20, 2017, 10:41:26 PM
Since my previous post I've watched all of this, and it's fugging brilliant.

Glad I had a nice pile of eps to watch because it's a real 'fucking hell stick the next one on NOW' show.

Is it worth reading the books / how far into the books does it take over where we're at in the show?

I haven't read the books so couldn't tell you if they are any good or not but I believe the end of the first book was
Spoiler alert
Miller crashing into Venus.
[close]

mothman

I've read the first three books, and while I can't remember much of what happens, it did help me to make sense of the first season. I blitzed all 10 eps last week, but am happy to wait for Netflix to put s2 up (April/May possibly when it finishes airing Stateside). It's good. I'm fascinated by Jared Harris' accent. It's a new direction for him when previously he was just this professional Brit in Hollywood (I also had no idea he was Richard Harris' son). If there's one quibble I have It's that I don't feel the open-plan Martian ship bridges seem like "realistic" layouts, but more budget-saving designs.

Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth

Season 2 has just finished. Good stuff overall, but I feel like some of the wind went out of it's sails after
Spoiler alert
Eros hit Venus
[close]
. Admittedly, this is probably in large part thanks to my having watched everything up to that point in a single weekend. That aside, I think some of the essential mystery that initially made the show so compelling has gone.
Spoiler alert
Mutant protokids are plenty freaky, but less genuinely alien than the molecule in its raw state
[close]
. Plus
Spoiler alert
Miller was an all round more interesting lead than Captain Gene Ricman of the Rocinante
[close]
. I don't particularly care about the whiny botanist either - not when they could be devoting more time to Alex, Amos, Avasarala, Anderson Dawes... all of the A characters. I think we should have been introduced to him and Ganymede earlier, so the events there would have had more impact.

Moaning aside, it is still good stuff overall.

Ant Farm Keyboard

They don't have the seasons matching the novels. The first book actually closed with
Spoiler alert
Eros hitting Venus
[close]
. Season two must be something like halfway through the second novel, which means the climax will only happen during season three.

Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth

That makes sense, as the last episode did seem a bit anticlimactic.

mothman

Oh good, it's finished. So hopefully it'll be on Netflix soon...

Ant Farm Keyboard

#21
The series, which currently airs its third season, is canceled at Syfy.

http://deadline.com/2018/05/the-expanse-canceled-syfy-after-three-seasons-to-be-shopped-1202388026/

For once, the network had reasons not to renew it beyond actual ratings. Part of the revenues for a show now comes from streaming and legal downloading, while fewer people watch it during actual broadcast. It's particularly true for sci-fi audiences, as the strategy for Star Trek: Discovery shows.
However, The Expanse, as opposed to The Magicians for instance, wasn't an in-house production at Syfy or Universal. The show is owned by Alcon Entertainment, an independent company which bankrolls every episode. Alcon also produced Blade Runner 2049 the same way, with a little help from Sony. The deal between Alcon and Syfy only applied to broadcast, and Alcon had different deals in place with Amazon in the US and Netflix in the rest of the world.

So, there's a real possibility that somebody else will take over from Syfy for season 4. Season 3 has been so far quite a thrill, with some great pacing and a few riveting action scenes.

Alberon

Arse biscuits, but I can see the network's logic. The deal they had was no good in today's market and they just couldn't sustain losses on a show even this well critically regarded.

I have good hopes this one might survive somewhere else though.

MojoJojo

Having read the first book recently, I was surprised that it wasn't as mature as the reputation of the series suggested. Do they keep the vomit zombies?

NoSleep

Giving this a go after seeing the thread, and I'm still on season 1. I'm having a bit of a problem with some terrible acting/delivery from some of the main cast; notably Jared Harris (Anderson Dawes) - On the same level of bad acting as P.H. Moriarty in the Dune mini-series, and also his terrible made-up accent; Dominique Tipper (Naomi Nagata) who doesn't seem to understand her lines (and has no excuse for that), her character or her character's motivation; and Shohreh Aghdashloo (Chrisjen Avasarala) who I assume is not a native English speaker (so maybe can be excused for not carrying the full weight of her lines; which makes me wonder how she was cast for such an important role). Considering the strength (or at least adequacy) of many of the other cast it only highlights their shortfall. Fortunately the script is carrying me through their scenes.

brat-sampson

Quote from: MojoJojo on May 12, 2018, 02:54:12 PM
Having read the first book recently, I was surprised that it wasn't as mature as the reputation of the series suggested. Do they keep the vomit zombies?

I've seen the first season and am part-way through the second and, so far, no. The proto-molecule is still some otherworldly threat, but people infected tend to just die and contribute to its greater whole, rather than vomiting and infecting others. That could change though.

surreal

Quote from: NoSleep on May 15, 2018, 03:48:04 PM
Giving this a go after seeing the thread, and I'm still on season 1. I'm having a bit of a problem with some terrible acting/delivery from some of the main cast;

I had real problems following what was going on with the detective plot etc until about ep4 when it really kicked off - S1 does finish strongly though and S2 starts really well.

surreal

Someone just posted a really good fan trailer on reddit to support the SaveTheExpanse campaign.  Not massively spoilery if you don't already know what's going on, gives a good look at what the show has going for it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNjobkmzaOY

bgmnts

What is the tits and arse ratio like?

Any alien tits and arse?

Dex Sawash

Quote from: bgmnts on May 15, 2018, 05:22:32 PM
What is the tits and arse ratio like?

Any alien tits and arse?

Can't  recall but quit watching this and stuck with Altered Carbon which is a good indication.