The Expanse Postmortem
Jan. 31st, 2019 10:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
opensummerI finished up all three seasons of The Expanse and I have Thoughts. So my dears buckle up for this load of nonsense. Spoilers for all three seasons, lots of opinions, told in no particular order.
Stuff I liked:
Literally anytime Chrisjen Avasarala was on screen everything is better. I just love her… a lot?
The way they use Space as a character. The Expanse doesn’t have FTL travel or any sort of portal technology (until the end of the third season and even then it’s external to the solar system not internal and is explicitly stated as the beginning of a nu gold rush) so every time the characters travel there are very real stakes associated with it. The main characters don’t have a station to dock? Welp, time to go scavenge a dying ship. They're running on empty on fuel? Guess it’s time to make some hard decisions about who to ally with. The air filters stop working before your ship is full up? Cool, there’s a mob outside your ship and you can save 52 people of roughly 300.
(Incidentally that was one of my favorite scenes in the third season. It’s grumpy humanism at it’s finest.)
Both the first and second season are well paced, and cleverly plotted. I don’t know how much of that is from borrowing from the books but I guess I’ll find out soon.
Amos and his concept of morality is delightful, especially when it’s giving us lines like: “And she said, if the end ever came, she'd grab a bottle and her two cats and go to the roof, have a toast, and then jump. With the cats, like a freakin' pharaoh.” *Clasps Alex on the shoulder* “Don’t worry, I’ll take you with me.”
Amos imprinting on Anna like a duckling is also amazing.
Alex’s stupid overdone Texan accent and the knowledge I have in my heart of hearts that Mars is space!Texas and that’s the reason we barely spend any time there.
They really don’t pull any punches on the moral choices they characters have to make. The Rochinate straight up murders an unarmed humanitarian ship to conceal the protomolecule in the first season and while it’s probably the right choice, that doesn’t make it a good one. And it’s never forgotten by the narrative or the characters. (It would have been even better if they actually had to face consequences for their actions but like at least they get callbacks?)
Bobbie Draper’s character arc from hardcore Martian nationalist to someone who manages to see nuance and sympathize with other cultures. The episode with her defection from the Mars embassy was a masterclass in character growth, which is funny ‘cause this show is not a show about character development. At all.
Somebody clearly put a lot of thought into how cultures would develop as separated by vast distances and how distance as a character would create tensions between those cultures.
I love that Space shows have like 10 actors and use them in all of their shows. I recognized Zeph, Fancy, and Pippin from Killjoys by name and about half a dozen other people in the background with no names and that’s delightful.
Bobbie running around on Mao’s ship with no weapons or armor, taking down enemies and fucking shit up, culminating in her power walk to save Avasarala and her bodyguard *kisses fingertips* good shit.
The Belter racer in Delta-V splattering on his windshield as a magnificent way to show us the consequences of the ring. It made the consequences of the second slowdown that much more horrifying and readily apparent to the viewer.
Camina Drummer. Just everything about her. I have no idea why Naomi would choose Holden over her.
Ring!Miller standing on the shore of an alien planet, asking for a ride to the stars. Obvious sequel hook is Obvious and I didn’t even care.
Stuff I didn’t like:
Holden bores me. He’s a white dude who doesn’t know if he’s special; worse, he’s a white dude he doesn’t know if he wants to be special, and I’ve seen this story before. Admittedly he got more interesting when he starts going mad but prior to that? Nope.
Miller and Julie Mao. Y I K E S guys. Just Y I K E S. I get that it’s a noir pastiche IN SPACE but the way he “falls in love” with her is sketchy AF and felt really really dangerous. I was actually grateful that she was dead when they got to the hotel on Eros, as a person who yells at the screen whenever a woman get fridged, because I Did Not Want to watch them interact.
We never go back to Ceres after halfway through the first season and that’s frustrating. Miller’s partner survives? Cool, that would mean something if we ever saw him again. Same with his language tutor/prostitute friend. Lets totally shift the political unrest on to a new set of characters instead of using the ones we spent the first five episodes introducing! That’s a great idea guys!
Why does Dawes Anderson go to Tycho station? How does he get there? Who knows and fuck you for caring.
Same with him and Fred Johnson disappearing in the third season. Where do they go? Who knows and fuck you for caring. And because I Am That Person I went and read up on commentary and apparently there’s a reason in the books but if it that reason doesn’t a make it to screen, it’s a bad adaptation and it should be ashamed of itself.
The pacing on the third season was crap and I think they knew that going in and Didn’t Care. Which is bad form. From what I’ve read they tried to get two books into one season as opposed to the one book one season of the first two and it was Real Fucking Obvious. Bad form and poor design y’all, done by a creative team who knew they were gonna get canceled and thought that if they could get an obvious sequel hook in Netflix, Amazon, or Hulu would respond to fan outcry and pick them up for more seasons. And they were right. Amazon’s gonna produce season four.
Actually I changed my mind, I’m kinda pissed about the Obvious Sequel Hook. It doesn’t matter how awesome it is. Tell the story you have, within the scope you have. As a set piece its super cool but it could have opened the next season with no problems.
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Date: 2019-02-01 11:34 am (UTC)Probably because a lot of them are filmed here in Toronto, so they use the same pool of lesser-known Canadian actors for background/minor roles. That includes The Expanse, Star Trek Discovery and Killjoys.
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Date: 2019-02-01 04:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-02-01 01:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-02-01 04:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-02-03 01:27 pm (UTC)