The Expanse - Space Politics and Proto-Molecules

Thread: The Expanse - Space Politics and Proto-Molecules
Cryptek

Cryptek

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So I decided to start catching up on The Expanse again. A couple years back I ended at the final episode of Season 2.

Currently, I just finished episode 1 of Season 4. So I'm at the start of the fourth season.

The politics are not easy to follow because I'm a fucking autist or something but I'm focusing more on the alien artifact/Proto-Molecules plot.

So now that there's a bunch of Halos open to different parts of the universe, I'm hoping they go all out with exploration and more strangeness.

Anyways it's a slow burn and in no way as fun as The Boys (which I really enjoyed probably more than I thought I would) but I really dig the more "hard science fiction" of the show.
 
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I really loved it. Caught up few months ago being in dark about everything. A certain something fuckin angered me and I never get legit angry with shows. But yea lots of fun other than that one thing.
 
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Phew, loved the first three seasons, but imo you could really see that they switched over to Amazon Prime after that.

It always feels like it could be great, but in the end they focus too much on those little subplots.
 
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Stifler's Mom said:
Phew, loved the first three seasons, but imo you could really see that they switched over to Amazon Prime after that.

It always feels like it could be great, but in the end they focus too much on those little subplots.
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There's a ton of F-bombs since Season 3 and they would only drop a "fuck" once in awhile before that.

Since I'm starting on Season 4 you have me curious.

Also I don't know if this is what @bonk is referring to but I saw a post on another forum (no not GAF or Ree) of someone who said Season 5 episode 10 really pissed them off. I didn't bother to look because I don't want to spoil it for myself but damn, something in this show is pissing people off.
 
Stifler's Mom said:
Phew, loved the first three seasons, but imo you could really see that they switched over to Amazon Prime after that.

It always feels like it could be great, but in the end they focus too much on those little subplots.
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i found the drop in budget after season 3 really hurt the show. I still love it though.
 
Liberty4all said:
i found the drop in budget after season 3 really hurt the show. I still love it though.
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Yep. It's especially obvious when you rewatch older episodes from seasons 1 or 2 now.
Lots of huge Space stations and stuff.

The Expanse world feels really small and mundane now.

Cryptek said:
There's a ton of F-bombs since Season 3 and they would only drop a "fuck" once in awhile before that.

Since I'm starting on Season 4 you have me curious.

Also I don't know if this is what @bonk is referring to but I saw a post on another forum (no not GAF or Ree) of someone who said Season 5 episode 10 really pissed them off. I didn't bother to look because I don't want to spoil it for myself but damn, something in this show is pissing people off.
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Not sure what especially made that person say that, but my personal beef with the show is like I said that it shows so much bigger things, and you get to see only such a little personal view of it.

I was almost shocked to see how they progressed after a HUGE event that happens in the first half of season 5, yet they decided to show the aftermath in the most boring way possible.

I will continue watching the show, since there is not much like it, but damn, if this isn't the poster child of wasted possibilities for greatness, I don't know whom it is then.

Sad Pepe.
 
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Cryptek said:
So I decided to start catching up on The Expanse again. A couple years back I ended at the final episode of Season 2.

Currently, I just finished episode 1 of Season 4. So I'm at the start of the fourth season.

The politics are not easy to follow because I'm a fucking autist or something but I'm focusing more on the alien artifact/Proto-Molecules plot.

So now that there's a bunch of Halos open to different parts of the universe, I'm hoping they go all out with exploration and more strangeness.

Anyways it's a slow burn and in no way as fun as The Boys (which I really enjoyed probably more than I thought I would) but I really dig the more "hard science fiction" of the show.
Click to expand...
Just skip season 4 and go back and re-watch seasons 1 to 3 instead.

Season 4 has an enormous drop in quality and budget and both writing, sets and effects look like Uwe Boll kind of budget and quality.
Did you see the s.k. "interrogation" between this military woman and the young dark martian woman with an australian accent?
That fucking dialogue, was it written by a 14 year old girl? WTF. that was when I decided to never watch any more episodes.
 
Cato said:
Did you see the s.k. "interrogation" between this military woman and the young dark martian woman with an australian accent?
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I don't believe so.

I just started Season 4 and only finished episode 1, "New Terra" where they're on that new planet in a new solar system.

Anyways that sure doesn't sound good especially considering this is one of the more mature and good sci-fi shows up to this point.

Though I can't get over how much the Proto-Molecules hybrid alien things remind me if Husks from Mass Effect.
 
Stifler's Mom said:
Yep. It's especially obvious when you rewatch older episodes from seasons 1 or 2 now.
Lots of huge Space stations and stuff.

The Expanse world feels really small and mundane now.
Click to expand...

yeah I did exactly that, went back to watch season 1 and realized how much "bigger" season 1 - 3 felt .... the huge stations, but also the mass amount of extras ... season 1 - 3 was a bustling vibrant world in those stations. The world building in season 1 was incredible.

season 4 I hated, season 5 was good with the exception of one huge thing which I won't spoil. Both seasons though felt smaller, with clearly much smaller budgets to work with — it really shows.
 
Liberty4all said:
yeah I did exactly that, went back to watch season 1 and realized how much "bigger" season 1 - 3 felt .... the huge stations, but also the mass amount of extras ... season 1 - 3 was a bustling vibrant world in those stations. The world building in season 1 was incredible.

season 4 I hated, season 5 was good with the exception of one huge thing which I won't spoil. Both seasons though felt smaller, with clearly much smaller budgets to work with — it really shows.
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Another thing I recall why I hate season 4.
I earlier seasons you had a proper set, people in the background would walk around, sometimes through doors or airlocks in the background. Things were always happening. There were always people around that had their thing to do and did their stuff. It felt alive.

Then shit-season. In the background you see a nobody walking around with a clipboards, walking straight to this big sliding door/airlock. In the foreground people are having a retarded dialogue written by a 14 year old girl.
In the background, that person reaches the "door" but then instead of the door opening, the person turns hard left and walks off the set. Then you look more carefully and see, it is not even a prop. The "door" is just painted onto the plywood wall!
I mean, seriously for fucks sake. This is UWE BOLL kind of set.
When you now look more carefully you see it is not even craftfully paintd, it is fucking poorly painted fake door in the background and they had some fucking extra walking around with a clipboard in the scene to DRAW ATTENTION TO THE FUCKING FAKE DOOR PAINTED ON THE CHEAP PLYWOOD.
What the fuck?

This is just one more reason why season 4 the expanse is shut and you should not watch it.
 
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I watched a little bit of those chats on youtube where "Amos" would talk with the authors and several actors, and they said that scene with

..Bobby shooting at these assholes in her marine suit in space
was so super hard to make and used a lot of their budget..

And I was like "what the fuck guys, this would have been standard run of the mill shit in like almost every second scene in season 1 or 2."

Nah, cheapening out really hurts this show.

Amos boringly running around after the attack on earth feels so unfuturistic it hurts. A few hundred years into the future, and this is how earth looks like? 21th century buildings and that's it? They did a much better job conveying future earth in the first two seasons.
 
That sucks it gets worse.

I would have thought the production values would have gotten better ~after~ moving to Amazon Prime.

Guess not.
 
Nah it gets better, Season 5 is the best season, the drop in budget theory is stupid and based on no real sources. The fact is book 4 is set entirely on that planet, season 4 added plots off planet not in the book so it's actually bigger than the book version so this idea that they had to go small over budget holds no water, if you read the books you'd know and if you saw how huge season 5 is and the crazy effects showcases it contains you'd also question any legitimacy to the idea Amazon isn't spending money on it. Agreed on something that happens in season 5 being angering, though, I'll have trouble getting over that decision.
 
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Explosive Zombie said:
Nah it gets better, Season 5 is the best season, the drop in budget theory is stupid and based on no real sources. The fact is book 4 is set entirely on that planet, season 4 added plots off planet not in the book so it's actually bigger than the book version so this idea that they had to go small over budget holds no water, if you read the books you'd know and if you saw how huge season 5 is and the crazy effects showcases it contains you'd also question any legitimacy to the idea Amazon isn't spending money on it. Agreed on something that happens in season 5 being angering, though, I'll have trouble getting over that decision.
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The big problem with season 4 is that unfortunately the storyline it is based on in the books is pretty terrible tbh. Still haven't gotten around to the current season yet (something it taking up near all my time ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ) , but I want to give it a go. I've heard about certain events that arose out of RL stuff which sound quite lame (regrettably the Writers are big on the VS Twitter scene..) esp given the notable role a certain individual played in helping get the show renewed, but its one of those a rock and a hard place kind of situations. Amos is still MVP though.
 
Kadayi said:
The big problem with season 4 is that unfortunately the storyline it is based on in the books is pretty terrible tbh. Still haven't gotten around to the current season yet (something it taking up near all my time ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ) , but I want to give it a go. I've heard about certain events that arose out of RL stuff which sound quite lame (regrettably the Writers are big on the VS Twitter scene..) esp given the notable role a certain individual played in helping get the show renewed, but its one of those a rock and a hard place kind of situations. Amos is still MVP though.
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Yeah I get why people aren't big on the storyline for book four or season 4 I thought the actor for season 4 doing the villain really did a good job though. Season 5 is pretty great though the worst thing about the decision they made though is that it doesn't really make sense, basically they had finished filming when they made this decision so the show doesn't entirely support what happens you'll see when you get there.
 
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Explosive Zombie said:
Yeah I get why people aren't big on the storyline for book four or season 4 I thought the actor for season 4 doing the villain really did a good job though. Season 5 is pretty great though the worst thing about the decision they made though is that it doesn't really make sense, basically they had finished filming when they made this decision so the show doesn't entirely support what happens you'll see when you get there.
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Yeah . I'm looking forward to it in a lot of ways as I stopped reading the books around that point so the series could be more of a surprise. Agreed on Burn Gorgan though, he always makes for a great villain. He will always be Karl Tanner from Gin alley to me



Fooking Legend ;)
 
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Something I've noticed about this show.

It has a very diverse cast but never really goes "woke" and everyone from the half black/half Asian woman to the white guys are all competent but flawed.

Character's races are never brought up and everyone is on equal footing. There's none of this "oh look it's a badass woman and she's fighting some dudes so it's obvious who will win" kind of Disney type bullshit.

None of the diversity feels forced.

Just well written and mostly likeable characters. This is how you do diversity. This is how you do a sci-fi show.
 
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Cryptek said:
Something I've noticed about this show.

It has a very diverse cast but never really goes "woke" and everyone from the half black/half Asian woman to the white guys are all competent but flawed.

Character's races are never brought up and everyone is on equal footing. There's none of this "oh look it's a badass woman and she's fighting some dudes so it's obvious who will win" kind of Disney type bullshit.

None of the diversity feels forced.

Just well written and mostly likeable characters. This is how you do diversity. This is how you do a sci-fi show.
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They do sort of have a "woke" aspect but it's handled quite well. The Belters are basically every minority you can think of, amalgamated. That's what happens when you have an actual sci fi writer, and not someone creating something for oppression points.
 
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CleverMedicine said:
They do sort of have a "woke" aspect but it's handled quite well. The Belters are basically every minority you can think of, amalgamated. That's what happens when you have an actual sci fi writer, and not someone creating something for oppression points.
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True but like you said it's handled well.

Marco's Inaros reminds me a lot of ISIS especially.
 
I received a very sweet "thank you" from the Secretary-General of the UN herself.

eluXyIn.jpg
 
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Cryptek said:
So I decided to start catching up on The Expanse again. A couple years back I ended at the final episode of Season 2.

Currently, I just finished episode 1 of Season 4. So I'm at the start of the fourth season.

The politics are not easy to follow because I'm a fucking autist or something but I'm focusing more on the alien artifact/Proto-Molecules plot.

So now that there's a bunch of Halos open to different parts of the universe, I'm hoping they go all out with exploration and more strangeness.

Anyways it's a slow burn and in no way as fun as The Boys (which I really enjoyed probably more than I thought I would) but I really dig the more "hard science fiction" of the show.
Click to expand...
This is a very rich and complex story that's replete with social and political intrigue, science, technology and action.
 
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Aiden Pearce said:
This is a very rich and complex story that's replete with social and political intrigue, science, technology and action.
Click to expand...
Yup.

I almost kind of take back what I said in the original post because I'm enjoying it a lot more than I did when I wrote that.

Trust me it gets better.

What episode are you on right now?
 
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I know her as Dina from season 4 of 24... don't care for her, can't stand the frog voice. She's gotten better as Expanse goes on, though.
 
Just finished Season 5.

Oh fug.... Dat ending.

Now I don't know how long I'll have to wait for Season 6. :(
 
Season 5 Ending Spoilers

Alright first let me get it out of the way it sucks they killed off one of my favorite characters, Alex, but I guess the actor has been accused of sexting underage girls so yeah....

And wtf happened to the Martian ship at the end? Looks like the mysterious aliens that are in opposition with the Proto Molecule aliens that we find out about in Season 4, up and "swallowed" the Martian ship.

Shit just getting more intense with Space ISIS guy Marco Inaros.

Season 6 can't come soon enough.
 
Bumping this since the new season started up weeks ago. Been pretty good so far. The only issue is the one created by last season, where they ignored the protomolecule story to focus on space terrorists and now have to try to weave it back in.

However, Drummer's speech in the most recent episode so good. Cara Gee does a great badass bitch.

edit: Found it, will put it undah SPOYLAH BOSSMON

 
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Yeah, I need to dig into this. Are all the episodes released now?

Albeit I know it's the end of the official series I'm rather hoping that the showrunners might create some spin-offs set within the same universe.
 
Loved the show and books but stopped watching half way through season 5 and haven't touched the books since finishing book 5.

The authors extreme wokeness turned me off and what they did to my boy in season 5 because of metoo made me never go back.

I might check it out again because I live some hardcore sci-fi and the world is fantastic. Much better than fantasy sci-fi like the mandolorian.
 
Finally got around to watching the last season. Overall I enjoyed it (binged it last night as it was just 6 episodes) but it does, unfortunately, leave on a cliffhanger of sorts with stuff happening beyond the ring that is tangential to the main plot.

Naomi was thankfully less annoying and everyone else was largely on point. The tangential side stuff was a bit ropey in terms of execution though (clearly filmed on a set even though it's supposed to be outside).

Still, everything got wrapped up for the most part, and they definitely left the show open for some spin-offs, which I hope will happen (Day One on that Telltale Drummer Game, as she is Bossman). I'm not au fait with the later books as I opted to go into the last couple of seasons spoiler-free, but my broad understanding is they are set 30 years in the future so I'm not sure if the Roci crew even feature in them (I can't imagine they're still flying about jobbing in a 30-year-old Gunship still for starters..). so if there does exist the opportunity to do a The Expanse: The further adventures of I'd be up for that.

With that said one thing that was notable was that Steven Strait (who plays Holden) genuinely looks like he is ill in real life (which might explain the shorter season). The dude was always quite TV buff early on, but he looked decidedly gaunt this season like he's lost 20-30 lbs. Maybe he was going a bit method and didn't feel Holden would be packing that much weight having been out in the belt for so long, but I can't imagine there was any necessity to pare down that much, and it's not like the other actors on the show were doing the same. Here at least is hoping that I'm mistaken in that observation.
 
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Kadayi said:
With that said one thing that was notable was that Steven Strait (who plays Holden) genuinely looks like he is ill in real life (which might explain the shorter season). The dude was always quite TV buff early on, but he looked decidedly gaunt this season like he's lost 20-30 lbs. Maybe he was going a bit method and didn't feel Holden would be packing that much weight having been out in the belt for so long, but I can't imagine there was any necessity to pare down that much, and it's not like the other actors on the show were doing the same. Here at least is hoping that I'm mistaken in that observation.
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