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Author Topic: "The Expanse" by Amazon [Formerly by Syfy]  (Read 100765 times)
Khaldun
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Reply #245 on: January 21, 2021, 09:25:23 AM

Yeah, I honestly wouldn't want [/spoiler]
Abagadro
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Reply #246 on: January 21, 2021, 10:46:58 AM


"As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”

-H.L. Mencken
Khaldun
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Reply #247 on: January 21, 2021, 08:21:13 PM

True enough--really old people (with money) are common in this universe.
Abagadro
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Reply #248 on: January 21, 2021, 11:15:24 PM

Ya, one thing they have sort of conspicuously left out of the tv version is how the Roci crew became incredibly rich running all these errands for various powers.

"As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”

-H.L. Mencken
Khaldun
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Reply #249 on: January 22, 2021, 06:32:12 AM

Which is kind of too bad, but I get why, mostly just because they've wanted to tightly chain the narrative sequence across and within seasons, so there hasn't been a long status quo moment where that could have been happened, except maybe if they'd done it as an expositional insert before the Ilus expedition.
Shannow
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Reply #250 on: January 22, 2021, 10:40:49 AM

Just watching ep 4 now. Daaaaamn.

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NowhereMan
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Reply #251 on: January 22, 2021, 01:33:44 PM

The last 2 episodes have been really great television, this show does an amazing job of horribly tense scenes. I am finding myself utterly buzzed just watching it and have go walk around a bit afterwards. I really, really need to read the books for this...

"Look at my car. Do you think that was bought with the earnest love of geeks?" - HaemishM
Khaldun
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Reply #252 on: January 22, 2021, 05:18:45 PM

My wife got up and anxiously paced around after the last one--Naomi's suffering felt really visceral to her.
Teleku
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Reply #253 on: January 23, 2021, 03:16:05 AM

Heh, I'm sort of torn on it.

I fully agree that Dominique Tipper did an amazing job with her acting and selling just how fucked up and desperate she was.  When the previous episode ended, I literally yelled at my TV because I thought they were doing the stupid "the super freezing vacuum of space really isn't that bad!  Just jump through it with no suite and be fine!" horseshit that Hollywood does so often.  Then this episode rolled around and they really hammered in how badly it fucked her up.  Which is great!  But then they spent so much time on her desperately trying to accomplish something, and failing.  At everything.  Over and over.  It was great acting, but especially with the limited amount of airtime this series has left, it felt a bit excessive.  Every time they cut back to her, it was her just yelling out in pain as she failed again.  By the second half of the episode, every time they cut back to her I was just like "OK, I GET IT, MOVE THE PLOT FORWARD, I KNOW SHE'S NOT GOING TO DIE, FUCK".

"My great-grandfather did not travel across four thousand miles of the Atlantic Ocean to see this nation overrun by immigrants.  He did it because he killed a man back in Ireland. That's the rumor."
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Tale
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Reply #254 on: January 23, 2021, 06:48:35 AM

Did you not notice she succeeded?
Khaldun
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Reply #255 on: January 23, 2021, 07:55:25 AM

I mean, jeezus, if she'd instantly rewired the ship, removed the booby traps and found a way to zoom off to safety, you'd be shouting that it was all too easy and it doesn't work like that. The whole point is that the character is both clever and driven and despite that, in a nearly impossible situation.
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Reply #256 on: January 24, 2021, 01:06:42 AM

Did you not notice she succeeded?
Yes, at the very end she did.  After watching her painfully fail at 800 other tasks beforehand.
I mean, jeezus, if she'd instantly rewired the ship, removed the booby traps and found a way to zoom off to safety, you'd be shouting that it was all too easy and it doesn't work like that. The whole point is that the character is both clever and driven and despite that, in a nearly impossible situation.
You're probably right.  It's just a hard thing to balance.  I want to emphasize my little rant was just a very minor thing that in no way made me hate the episode, and I overall thought the entire sequence was well done and well acted (particularly for a TV Series).  It's just always a bit hard for me personally in these sorts of situations when they do this on a TV show.  Because I KNOW the hero is going to eventually win, and get away.  So when they spend an entire episode focusing on the struggle of a character trying to not die, it annoys me because I already know what the end will be, so please use the screen time to advance the plot for me instead.  Just a personal quirk.

"My great-grandfather did not travel across four thousand miles of the Atlantic Ocean to see this nation overrun by immigrants.  He did it because he killed a man back in Ireland. That's the rumor."
-Stephen Colbert
Tebonas
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Reply #257 on: January 24, 2021, 03:39:22 PM

The protagonists almost always survive. Plus prequels and flashback scenes also got a fixed conclusion, as do all  Historical dramas. Hell, that "x amount of time earlier" gimmick is really prevalent in modern television too.

Just saying you must be annoyed quite often while watching TV.
Khaldun
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Reply #258 on: January 24, 2021, 07:46:49 PM

I think it's one of those episodes where it's the repetition that sells the narrative. A bit like a time loop in Star Trek, etc. It's also a consequence of the show trying really hard to play straight with the world-building rules they've established--that there is a drug that lets you survive (briefly) an exposure to vacuum but with severe physiological consequences, that in setting the ship up as a booby trap the Free Navy has stripped it of anything really valuable not so much to keep someone from taking control but because that's how they operate as scavengers, that they've left nothing but the one room with atmosphere for the same reasons and that they took the cannisters for suits but not the suits because the suits aren't particularly valuable but the atmospheric cannisters are, etc.

I appreciate that the show undertakes narrative bits to pay off the physics of its setting. They're pretty restrained about it--it's never an infodump where some character eats up fifteen minutes just explaining how magic works etc.
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Reply #259 on: January 25, 2021, 06:38:58 AM

I was only half paying attention during this episode and I missed a lot of the nuance that you just mentioned, Khaldun.  That attention to detail makes it all the more interesting for sure!
MahrinSkel
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Reply #260 on: January 25, 2021, 07:17:07 AM

Yeah, in the book they did a better job of conveying that reaching the point where she could switch off the transmission required a lot of separate tasks disabling redundant systems, opening up spaces not meant to be accessed in flight, and so on. What the show carried better was that she had to do this while running back to her air supply every few minutes.

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Tale
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Reply #261 on: January 27, 2021, 02:03:21 AM

IMHO episode 9 was the best episode of The Expanse.
Khaldun
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Reply #262 on: January 28, 2021, 08:28:10 PM

When I read the book I was at first disconcerted by the crew splitting up (which the book makes clear is at least going to be for a period of years just because that's the way the physics works in the show) and then I was kind of delighted by the way the plot draws them slowly back together. I'm enjoying it even more in the show.
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Reply #263 on: February 02, 2021, 05:07:34 PM


This spoiler applies to Episode 10 BTW. I know not everyone watches it the minute it posts.
« Last Edit: February 02, 2021, 05:18:38 PM by Abagadro »

"As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”

-H.L. Mencken
Khaldun
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Reply #264 on: February 02, 2021, 07:39:55 PM

The  left my wife reeling in confusion particularly the very last bit   

Abagadro
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Reply #265 on: February 02, 2021, 07:42:20 PM

I don't think they are.  The scuttlebutt is that they are going to do book 6 for season 6 and then maybe do movies or limited series for the rest. Likely with a completely different cast.  Some are even talking theatrical release-type stuff but I doubt that.

"As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”

-H.L. Mencken
Khaldun
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Reply #266 on: February 03, 2021, 06:35:52 AM

Do we know why next season is the last? Is that Amazon cancelling an option to buy more or is it the production company or is it the cast being too expensive to re-sign?
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Reply #267 on: February 03, 2021, 09:48:10 AM

There's a time jump in the books of 30 years between effectively seasons 6 and 7 so it's possible things may be put on hold while they recast things or figure out how to deal with that time gap. Or it may just be too expensive to keep producing.

https://screenrant.com/expanse-season-6-ending-cancelled-reason-explained/

https://www.polygon.com/2020/12/10/22167489/the-expanse-season-6-canceled-or-season-7-beyond-plans
Tale
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Reply #268 on: February 03, 2021, 04:11:52 PM



I loved this season. It felt too short, however, with too much packed into the last 15 minutes of episode 10. I started watching the episode again a few hours after my first watch, to try and digest some more of what occurred at the ring gate and the new location. I'd even read some book spoilers so it wasn't a surprise, but the fine details were too numerous to understand. Haven't finished my second watch yet.

Another thing that was confusing was the space battle between the Roci, the Free Navy and Drummer's crew. It was hard to identify which ship we were looking at and what exactly happened with all the missiles and PDC activity. I've watched it twice and still need to read some kind of breakdown of what happened and to whom.
« Last Edit: February 03, 2021, 04:14:20 PM by Tale »
Khaldun
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Reply #269 on: February 03, 2021, 05:52:18 PM

When you think about Alex, both series and book Alex but especially series Alex,

He's kind of like the divorced sadsack friend of a close-knit group of people. Like the guy you all like but nobody knows him that deeply and he's kind of fucked up and if you have him over to a party he gets kind of drunk and offends a single woman by making a bad pass at her, but he's a fucking genius at one thing you all do together, whatever that is. So if he croaks everybody is sad but there's a slight part of that social world that's like well, fuck, ok. Life goes on.

That's what's kind of weird about Cas Anvar's real-life behavior--it is a worse version of his character's behavior. It would be vastly more gut-wrenching if it was Steven Strait that was being the sleaze because his character is Space Atticus Finch.

I struggle honestly to remember what Alex does in the books past this point. Amos and Bobbie and Holden and Naomi have character arcs that feel completely indelible going into the Laconia storyline and beyond, but Alex in my head just does pilot things and says some things about his family and Mars. I am probably forgetting something.

MahrinSkel
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When she crossed over, she was just a ship. But when she came back... she was bullshit!


Reply #270 on: February 03, 2021, 06:42:35 PM

Nah, that's about right. After this point in the books, he's just taken for granted as an amazing pilot. No viewpoint chapters I remember, not much dialogue.

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Khaldun
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Reply #271 on: February 04, 2021, 09:07:41 AM

I agree with Tale, by the way, that the three-way battle between the Roci, Drumm'er's ship and the other Free Navy ships could have been improved with even a single line of expositionary dialogue. If at one point Holden said something like "one of the ships is firing at the others, it's got to be a rebellion within Marcos' ranks, let's help out the rebel ship!" and then Bull said something about a firing solution on the cruiser or whatever, that might have been enough.

I totally get why they wanted the Laconia operation to spring out of nowhere in the last episode, but again, maybe even one or two lines would have helped out people who haven't read the books, because we've been told all season long that some of the Free Navy ships are Martian-built and I think for most non-book readers, they lost the thread of Bobbie's investigations at the point that Bobbie and Alex were spying on the handoff and then got pulled away to help Naomi. Something like Bobbie urgently pulling Avasarala aside at the start of the cocktail party scene to say something like, "Ma'am, I've been thinking about the investigations you had me doing, and there is something that still doesn't make any sense--the big players don't seem to be making money by supplying Inaros and they're the heart of the Martian Navy's command structure, so what is it that they were getting in return from Inaros? And I don't think all the ships that have gone missing have been transferred to Inaros' control. There's something wrong here that we haven't seen yet."  Something that primed the audience to understand that there's a big shoe left to drop.
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Reply #272 on: February 04, 2021, 02:24:54 PM

Alex in the books is not so much the "sadsack friend" but the guy who is the center of the group. Everyone else in the group has other friend-groups, but this one person only is friends with the others in the group. He's the lasagna-cooking stitching of the group. IMO.

He does have one of the best lines in the later books though.

Khaldun
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Reply #273 on: February 04, 2021, 04:20:33 PM

I dunno. I haven't read all the side books, but Holden, Bobbi and Naomi mostly look on Alex's relationship and family troubles with a kind of distant empathy but also a bit of pity, I think. (I was always incredibly grateful that the writers in the books didn't decide to pair up Bobbie and Alex in a romantic relationship rather than a close friendship, which would have been a terrible idea.) Obviously they'd never dare to poke into Amos' life without explicit invitation (the scene with Peaches in the season-ender is beautiful, even better than in the books) so that's not really an issue in the group's bonds.
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Reply #274 on: February 18, 2021, 06:44:40 PM

Finally binged the season this last week. It was good not great because it really felt like half a season's worth of story. Keeping the characters apart for the entire season makes sense in real life but makes for a bit of a tease in the show because you really want to see these characters together. I felt like the stuff with Amos on Earth didn't really give a good sense of how fucked up things were - I mean clearly shit was fucked, but there wasn't any kind of context for what cities got destroyed, what the authorities on Earth were doing or even which ones were left. In the books it is likely explained better and I gather from the show that there is this layer of rich people, politicians and well-off that is so totally separated from the working class and the poor that it really is like two separate worlds. It just seemed like there needed to be a bit more explanation for why things were so bad so quickly. I like the Amos/Peaches dynamic though and Amos had some good lines in this. A lot of this felt both too compressed and too drawn out at once. Part of it may be that we don't really get a good sense of the time scales, which is felt most acutely in the Amos On the Road scenes.

The resolution with Alex was abrupt and I gather it's because it had to be based on the situation. Way to fuck up your life, dude.

I do look forward to the next season though. I'm only through the 2nd book so I will be continuing it. The showrunners have said that after season 6 is a pause not a cancellation, so we'll see if that holds true.

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Reply #275 on: December 09, 2021, 04:07:33 PM

Episode 1 of season 6 is now at Amazon Prime Video.

This short final season is being released weekly.
Khaldun
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Reply #276 on: December 09, 2021, 07:51:43 PM

Reading the last book now; I want to finish before I start the last season, plus we're binge re-watching with a friend who never saw it.
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Reply #277 on: December 09, 2021, 09:57:06 PM

Devoured episode 1, which was pretty bleak, and felt nothing much really happened for a thing that's supposed to be wrapped up in another five episodes. I'm gonna have to watch it again though, because I can't be expected to wait another fucking seven days to soak up fresh Expanse. This show happens too rarely and it's ending and I've rewatched the other seasons already and something else had better come along to fill the gap.
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Reply #278 on: December 10, 2021, 11:10:19 AM

Felt really rushed. Sucks that budget it making them cram all this into six 45 minute episodes.

"As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”

-H.L. Mencken
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Reply #279 on: December 10, 2021, 11:52:04 AM

Felt really rushed. Sucks that budget it making them cram all this into six 45 minute episodes.

oh man... I don't need to hear this.  Ohhhhh, I see.

My wife and I binged this a few years ago and we've been waiting on the next season - hated to hear it was the last, and now this? I'm waiting for them all to be out before watching, but I'm a little less enthusiastic now.

Does any one know where the love of God goes...When the waves turn the minutes to hours? -G. Lightfoot
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