Anyone watching "The Expanse" ?

Has anyone been watching "The Expanse" on syfy? I've been catching it on my cable's streaming option and it's shockingly good.

Trailer here

It's based on a series of Syfy errrrr Scifi... novels by James S.A. Corey which I first heard about after Rorie vouched for them on some forum post or another. Haven't read the books but this series is really solid (4 episodes in)

The effects are great and the acting has been solid, with the only cringe-inducing bit so far being some bad space-language.

It's very comparable to Battlestar Galactica, in tone (Dark), aesthetic(Functional/Realistic) and effects (Good). If you liked that series this one is a no-brainer.

Most of all, I recommend it because it seems of a high quality but also totally at risk of disappearing after 1 season. Syfy is pushing like 5 other original series and mini series at the same time as this one, hoping one sticks. To me that just says that they're subdividing the Syfy channels' small viewer-base into even smaller chunks, dooming all that new programming to fail when it's ratings are too low because people can't be expected to watch 5 different scifi shows at once. (TV as a whole is really suffering from over-abundance of shows.)

So if you have seen it, what are you thinking?

If you haven't, give it a shot!!!

I read the books; they're pretty good and make the world(s) feel real. I haven't gotten around to watching it, but after finding out Thomas Jane was in Deep Blue Sea I have to watch it now.

deepest bluest my hand is like a shark's fin

I'm not sure I'm liking it. Admittedly I'm only two episodes in, and I'm going to continue giving it a shot, but what I've seen hasn't really kept me interested. The dialog can be hard to understand, sometimes because of the accents and sometimes because the music drowns it out. The plot seems to jump around a bit too much--and too quickly--for my liking; I understand they're trying to create a larger inter-connected narrative, but wish they'd focus on one thing at a time for longer stretches. Most importantly though, I'm just not sure I care what happens. Of the three focal points to the story: Earth Government, the asteroid colony, and the miners, I've only really been interested in what's happening with the miners--and most of them were killed in the first episode! I like Thomas Jane but he plays kind of a scumbag, and as for the colony, the show hasn't really given me a reason to empathize with their plight. I'm also not sure how I'm supposed to feel about what's going on with Earth vs Mars. Indifference seems to be winning.

Anyway, like I said, I'll continue to watch it and hope it picks up, but I'm not holding out hope. I am liking Dark Matter and Killjoys though.

Crap! I didn't realize it already started.

I read the first book and enjoyed it a pretty decent amount, also I only caught the first episode so my opinion could change with the next one.

Stuff I like:

Holden and his crew doing their thing.

Some interesting shots, like putting the camera way up inside the helmet while they explore the ship.

Having them have to take drugs to deal with the G-forces while flying the ship, nice touch.

Stuff I didn't like:

Tom Jane's dumb hat

Tom Jane's dumb hair

Listening to the Black Keys in the 23rd century

zero g sex

Knowing where this is going I could see myself sticking around, but I'm not feeling super hooked right now.

The dumb pork pie hat is straight from the book :-)

Not sure I want to listen to the Black Keys in the 21st century, never mind the 23rd.

Haven't seen the show as it's not available in the UK yet :-(

I like that they are attempting to make a fairly hard scifi show, no anti-grav or FTL. They also get into the affects of low-g on body shape which is cool. It'll be a good show if they can keep it running.

Something that turned me off from the books (the first one anyway not sure about the others) were the frequent jumps between two different storylines. Despite a slowly growing link, I found it jarring/frustrating that it alternated literally every chapter. How is this handled in the show?

I've checked out the first two episodes and I'm really digging it so far. It has some excellent, true sci-fi world-building and a good tone, as well as a really cool look. The directing makes it feel more like movie than a show, and the effects aren't half-bad either. The story certainly is slow-moving, but it's intriguing enough so far for me to want to know more. I'd kinda like to give the books a shot some day.

@original_hank:Yes... that hat is quite silly. Chalk it up to style being strange in the future? And I love the black keys but it was silly to hear it haha.

Any scifi show that avoids techno-babble is ok in my book. Only star trek can really get away with spaceteam-esque phrases.

@bill_mcneal:@chosenone said:

In comparison to something like Game of Thrones (both the books and the show) the plotlines in this show are way more manageable. In the GoT books you would have 6 chapters in a row, each with a different character telling their story and in a entirely opposite end of the world. It was good but confusing. This show has 3 plotlines, which are all converging towards eachother. One on Earh with a UN official, one on Ceres station with a detective and one in the asteroid belt.

I haven't had much trouble keeping up. But I can understand why that may be a problem. By episode 4, those plot threads have become much, much closer together.

Watched the first two episodes and yeah... not sure what i think about it yet. I fell asleep doing the first one, but the second one was decent. My big problem with it right now is that i don't care about a 2 out of the 3 plot lines, so whenever they jump to the UN person (i think, she might be working for Mars, idk, and don't care) or the guy in the hat, i tend to tune out... So yeah... if that keeps up, am done with this show.

I'm enjoying it so far. Watched the first 4 episodes on SyFy's site and I was going to say that the one thing I didn't like initially were Thomas Jane's character looks and the UN lady's story arc. As I got to episode 4 I felt things were starting to build up a little better and the UN's arc felt more intriguing while Thomas Jane's character arc seemed kind of disjointed. Holden's story arc in my opinion is the most interesting with the most things happening in it so far.

I was really impressed by the action in that episode. It has one of the craziest effects i've ever seen in a tv show, where someone's head is shot off by a railgun round and then it cuts back and the blood is being sucked out of the neck into space as the room looses vacuum sooooo gross but impressive. It's effects and moments like that which make me think this show has something going for it. I've also been watching The Man In the High Castle, which is also on it's first season and also has fairly high production values. But nothing in that show has been anywhere near as exciting as the premise would have promised. The Expanse is doing so much with what it has.

Don't read the books, they're a travesty in characterization. The world building is they're only positive feature. The writer had a great vision for world building, but characters are really shallow, and flipflop as if everyone is bipolar. It gets worse in the sequels, where he digs in, and goes heavy into typical/simple sci-fi tropes, and characters turn into typical bipolar clusterfucks. There's better modern sci-fi books to spend you time on, the show will give you anything of value from the books. Unfortunately I felt compelled to finish the agony I started, but the world building could only get me through the first three books. Even my complesionist nature can't get me to pick up book four.

The show though is pretty good, it looks like they hired some better writers to rework the characters, dialog, and interactions. The only negatives are, the actor playing Chrisjen Avasarala (The UN Lady), and the shows version of patoi (dialect used by Belters). Jesus Christ, every time Chrisjen says something threatening I want to laugh out loud, and the shows version of patoi sounds more like Klingon then mixed culture slang. All the other changes they've made seem really smart to me, and it looks like Syfy really has invested in quality across the board.

(Early Book One Spoiler)

The make or brake point of the show, will be the shows portrayal of the interactions between the Rociante crew. It also looks like the show might rework Naomi, hopefully meaning the Holden/Naomi relationship will be more complex and mature instead of 14 year old's in 30 year old bodies.

A lot of it reminds of stomping around on Omega in Mass Effect 2. That is a good thing.

I've read the first 2 books in the series, which I really enjoyed. But does this mean because I already know who the characters are, and the results of each story arc, that it's harder for me to be objective when it comes to determining if the show is effectively portraying the story's universe in a cohesive manner? Am I unconsciously filling in holes with my existing knowledge that the show fails to properly address? And if so, am I therefore enjoying the show more than someone that has no preexisting context?

Who can say... but the show has some some pretty cool looking space ships.. so I give it 2 thumbs up!

The UN lady voiced a Quarian in Mass Effect 3 actually.

I wondered the same thing in reverse about Game of Thrones, because I read the books after the first season of the show. Eventually you just reach a point where you treat them as separate products.

I'm liking it a lot more after the third episode. The jumps don't seem to be as severe and they're spending more time on each narrative. I'm also caring more about the other two parts than I was before--probably because things are actually happening and the 'inter-connectivity' is more apparent.

Is it just on the TV or is it online anywhere.

Syfy's got the first four episodes up on their site (with commercials most likely) http://www.syfy.com/theexpanse/episodes

Those books were kind of ehh and the shows trailer looked like your typical Syfy low budget affair. Not quite sure what people saw in the first book - it was decent, but certainly not one of the better sci fi novels I've read lately.

@humanity:

I couldn't disagree with you more. Especially on the budget, this show looks like they spent a lot of money on it

@defaultprophet: I watched it once and it was just the trailer so hey if you say the actual show looks good then thats great. All I know is that the trailer didn't make a great impression on me. Especially the detective character who I imagined to be this downtrodden, burn out, who in the trailers looked like a goofy caricature of a space-noir private eye.

Watched the first three episodes and excited for more. I think this series could be really good. It's not Syfy's typical low budget show. Production values are there, more like a film. I love the myriad of futurey details...especially the portrayal of low-g on the human body. Hopefully the various story lines don't get too confusing...previewers have mentioned that. Starting the first novel, Leviathan Wakes now too.

Oh, so this show was based on those books. I kept wondering if they were the same. I tried to read that first book a while back after reading a blog by one Matthew Rorie talking about it. I didn't get very far in before getting sidetracked though. I would certainly like to give it another try.

I've been digging it so far. Just about to start episode three. Might check out the books, if I get into it a bit more.

I kinda like that after the first episode, where it made you think you'd be following the Canterbury for a while, just blew it up and turned it into a space survival thing for the next few episodes.

The visualization of zero g has been cool to see too. Like the pool of blood when one of the characters gets decapitated and then it splashes all over once gravity is restored.

Lots of super cool visuals.

I'm reading the books at the same time as watching the show and enjoying both. The only thing that I think the show missed out on is in the first episode

They made up for it with the gauss cannon thing in the forth episode though, which was surprising that they'd show that on TV and was closer to the feeling I got in the books.

Also Avasarala should be cursing a lot fucking more.

Ok, I'm really glad I stayed with it because the fourth episode has been the best so far. It really kind of bummed me out when Paulo Costanzo died, I like him as an actor and as the character.I hope they keep the Martian XO around a little bit longer.

The show is real good! I should probably get to reading the second book.