The Expanse

Review by JD Piche, RCRs Producer, and Pop Culture expert, follow him on Twitter at @misadventurer

We’re a hundred years in the future, people have been living on the moon and Mars, and we’re starting to mine the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. There are rocks up there the size of Texas made of pure gold. And the off-world mining colonies are hiring. Years go by, Mars is starting to terraform, but due to climate collapse on Earth, all the parts earmarked for Mar’s Dome cities get diverted to Earth. Everyone is still beholden to Earth and they keep saying “The Earth Must come first.”

Fifty years go by and then an engineer with a second-hand pleasure yacht tests an engine he designed has a catastrophic success. His new drive breaks acceleration records, but due to an unforeseen interface error, he can’t get it to stop. He’s lost forever to the depths of space, but his wife is able to use his notes, start a company to develop his drives and humanity can now reach the further planets in our solar system with greater ease, in less time. The ships that brought people from the Earth to the Belt are being used to haul ice captured from stray comets or other frozen moons to keep the colonies stocked. Mars offers to Earth the drive technology in exchange for their independence from the yolk of “Earth coming first” – Mars has a technological boom, as their whole population strives for making their red dusty lifeless planet, a garden. But a jealous Earth demands tribute and causes a trade blockade that ends up hitting the terraforming reset button, again. Another lifetime until Mars is beautiful. Resentments grow. The Belters, unmoored by the gravity of Mother Earth, develop differently, longer bodies and weaker bones.

Mars has less gravity than Earth, but they had the resources to develop drugs to keep their physiologies closer to the denizens of their blue neighbor. Tensions still grow between the Belters, Earth and Mars, coming to a boiling point when an ore refining station goes on strike because their children are sick and the corporation they work for isn’t supplying medication, one of their managers accidentally dies and it is seen as a sign the Belt is revolting, Earth sends the military to deal with it, but the corporation turned off the station’s communications. A decision is made to make an example of Anderson Station. Its destroyed. Earth hails Commander Fredrick Lucius Johnson as a hero for doing what must be done, when he finds out that his hand was forced, he abandons Earth, and begins working for the Tycho corporation, on their mobile construction platform station in an outer part of the asteroid belt, he seeks to make amends with the people he harmed. Every major space station, asteroid colony, has a criminal underground, and the various factions of the Belt have united as the Outer Planets Alliance or OPA. Very similar to Earth’s Irish Republican Army, they’re a decentralized group seeking freedom for their people. Now Earth and Mars have a scapegoat, for when sabers being to rattle.

That sets the stage for The Expanse. 300 years into the future, the series has political intrigue, a scrappy group of diverse protagonists, every side has a valid and understandable point of view as well as flaws and scars they wish to hide. Based on the book series by Ty Franck and Daniel Abraham, under the pen name of James S.A. Corey, currently with 8 novels, and 7 novellas or supplemental short stories, with a climactic 9th novel due out in 2020, the books have been coming out one per year, since 2011, the only hiccup in release was 2018, after SyFy had dropped the TV series, and Amazon green-lit for the 4th and 5th seasons. Equating roughly one novel per season, and at time of writing this, the 5th season is in production, the books take a 30 year time jump to set the latter three novels (the final yet to be published). We can hope for a 6th season, depending on how Season 4 is received.

What sets The Expanse apart from other sci-fi series, is the realism. It’s scientific accuracy also forces the viewers to take into account what real space travel would be like. Unless somehow an artificial gravity or inertial dampener as with other movies and shows lead us to believe, there’s not much casual walking around on a space ship one can do. Ships in The Expanse are also oriented differently, more rocket ship-like, like if a submarine were designed to be vertical instead of horizontally oriented. The ships travel between destinations at 1G, so the source of gravity is the rocket engine at the bottom of the ship, like when an elevator goes up, only constantly. Everyone aboard these ships also wear Mag-Boots, so if the ship isn’t moving, the crews can still walk around and function.

Amos: “It’s like walking around in Pumps”
Avasarala: “How would you know that?”
Amos: “I didn’t always work in space”

Let’s introduce the core cast. James Holden (Steven Strait) He looks like Space Jon Snow, only taller. He’s from Earth, Montana to be exact, he has 8 parents, who due to the economy in the future, are all a married family and all contributed DNA to James, though he is closest to Mother Elise, who gave birth to him. He was raised a good little boy scout and idolized Don Quixote. So much so, that when it came time to name their ship, James picked “Rocinante” which is the Don’s mount, translated from Spanish means “Work Horse.” Amos claimed to know a woman named Rocinante, who was good to him when he was young and later designed the ship’s masthead after her. Holden joined the Earth Navy (referring to Space, rather than sailing the Pacific), as the entire Earth is governed by the United Nations, and the countries are now referred to as Trade Zones, however various cultures and languages still exist. Holden was booted for refusing an order, to fire upon an unarmed civilian vessel. He then finds himself aboard The Canterbury, an over 200-year-old Colony ship, one of the first to bring people to The Belt, working for Pūr N Kleen, delivering ice. After The Cant receives a distress call, and the captain orders it to be ignored, and purged from the logs, Holden later undoes the purge, logs the call, and forces the captain’s hand, they must investigate and offer assistance, or they’ll be found liable for ignoring a distress beacon. In Space, if anyone can hear you scream, they’re obliged to help, lest being turned away from a port. A shuttle is sent with Holden and a small crew, engineer, mechanic, medic, and pilot to investigate a derelict ship. All the doors are opened and they find the distress beacon. It was Martian. As Holden and the crew return to the shuttle a stealth ship flies in, fires a torpedo and destroys the Canterbury. Holden and his people are stuck on a leaky at best lifeboat, with a stealth ship nearby.

The shuttle’s communication equipment gets replied by the Cant’s Engineer, Naomi Nagata (Dominique Tipper), a Belter, (in the books she’s over 7 feet tall, all Belters are, but due to limitations in there being enough professional Basketball players who can act, the show gives most belters tattoos to differentiate them from ‘da inners’ people from earth or mars) Naomi may as well be a dependent of MacGyver as she can fix anything, except relationships. She like the rest of the cast wound up on the Canterbury as a way of running from her past, which gets fleshed out in book 5, and she gives very few clues as to what drives her beyond, making better decisions than when she was young. Holden makes a Wide Band broadcast, so anyone listening will receive it. They are the last survivors of the Ice Hauler, Canterbury, they were responding to an SOS, and attacked by a stealth ship and found a Martian distress beacon. Then says, “Mars Killed the Cant.” – The Martians don’t take kindly to this, and send their flagship the Donneger to investigate. The shuttle gets picked up by the Donnie, and Holden and crew get placed in the brig, only to have the Martians pull Alex, the Canterbury’s pilot into a different room. When later he returns in an MCRN Uniform, turns out Alex Kamal (Cas Anvar), used to be a pilot for the Martian Congressional Republic Navy, for 20 years. Man just lives to fly.

As Holden gets debriefed by the captain of the Donneger, who demands he recant his claim that Mars killed the Cant, that stealth ship attacks. The Jewel of the Martian Navy gets bested by a single mid-size ship, that launches a couple of boarding craft and some soldiers with higher-tech weapons and armor than even the great and martial Martians possess. Holden and his crew get spirited to a Martian Corvette, the Tachi, in the Donneger’s docking bay, their shuttle would never have been able to make an escape, they’re given the keys to the ship as their martian escort falls victim to the boarders as Alex fires up the Tachi’s guns and bursts a hole out of the Donnie as the captain initiates self-destruct. And this is just the third episode of the show.

So now, everyone thinks Holden and crew are dead, scanners detected the Donneger just blew up and everyone is pointing figures at everyone else. But Fred Johnson sends a welcome message promising safe port for whoever survived, to come to Tycho Station, with it he includes information on how to change a ship’s transponder and suggest they change the name of the ship.

Amos Burton (Wes Chatham) is the last member of the crew, he was the Cant’s mechanic. An Earther, from Baltimore, proper. He’s a taciturn, warrior-poet type, but with no ego. Amos is good with his hands, be it something needs a wrenching, hammering or shooting, he’s the last man standing type, and refers to himself as such because it’s clear, he’s been the last man standing a few times before.

On Ceres Station, with little to no connection to what happened to the Cant, is Joe Miller (Thomas Jane), a detective with Star Helix Security, hired to find the daughter of one of the richest men in the solar system, Jules-Pierre Mao (François Chau). Miller was born on Ceres and raised a warden of the station, with a fascination of old detective stories Miller is a self styled Space Sam Spade. He even wears a fedora and trench coat, two things, someone who has lived their entire life inside a space station would never need, protection from rain. Miller and the crew of the Rocinante meet on Eros station, the last known location of Julie Mao, the last survivor of the ship that played decoy Holden investigated.

The last main character who never officially is a member of the Roci’s crew, but as the Vice Secretary-General of the United Nations, makes Chrisjen Avasarala (Shohreh Aghdashloo) one of the most powerful people in the system. She puts together the conspiracy from her end, and is the only person in the heavens or earth who doesn’t want to see war break out over the destruction of the Canterbury, then the Donneger, and how does this Holden guy seem to have a constant Bad Day.

The entire solar system is already a powder keg and starting to blow, when our cast discovers the source of all the strife, is caused by a company called Protogen, owned by Jules-Pierre Mao. Turns out, 16 Billion years ago, an extrasolar object en route to hit Earth wound up getting caught in Saturn’s orbit, and we’ve been calling it a moon, named Phoebe. There was a research station there, that was destroyed by the Donneger, after they discovered what was actually on Phoebe. All that’s left is in the hands of Protogen, and they’ve already branded it The Protomolecule, it feeds on radiation of all types, and absorbs and reconfigures biological matter. And it turns out everything infected with the Protomolecule, has a shared hive mind, it learns. Julie Mao found this out, the hard way. She was infected with the protomolecule, made it to Eros, hid in a hotel room till her OPA contact could meet her, and she died, sitting in the bathtub. Protogen’s scientists use her as a seed, and had determined there was an ideal size, the Protomolecule needed to absorb, and they thought it best to sacrifice an entire asteroid with over 100,000 people living on it. Skipping a bit, Eros ultimately starts breaking all known laws of physics and crashes into Venus. One of the few planets with no human life. Later a flying spaghetti monster rises from the crater, makes its way past Neptune, and reforms into a giant ring, at the start of Season 3, a Belter kid trying to impress a girl, slingshot piloting around the outermost planets, decides he’s going to try to go through the ring, and he accidentally activates it. Due to more machinations of the wealthy, a UN ship, on the blockade of the Ring blows up, and a transmission video of Holden claims responsibility for the destruction and claims that the Ring is the property of the OPA. Earth and Mars begin to open fire on Holden who has no other option but to go through the Ring. Through the Ring, they’re transported into a kind of pocket dimension, with a moon in the center, and like how Eros wound up breaking all known laws of physics, this ring space does as well. as the Martian torpedo fired at the Rocinante seems frozen in space with a purple glow, and slowly gets brought to orbit the moon. Holden gets in a spacesuit and goes to investigate the moon, which was built as a security system by the creators of the Protomolecule, aeons ago. Holden unlocks station security and season three ends with 1300 ring gates opening, in the ring space. Leading to hundreds of other potentially inhabitable worlds.

AND THAT’S WHERE SYFY LEFT IT.

In steps Amazon Studios, and a story for another article about how the fans, and a phone call from George R. R. Martin led to the rescue of this fascinating series. In my honest opinion, the Protomolecule stuff is the least interesting part of the show, the characters are the main draw.

So with season 4, The tone of the show changed, because we’re no longer confined to Space or the various sized tin cans. the show does stumble at first while the cast finally has a chance to stretch their legs, a few cast changes, with no given reason. Arjun, Christen Avasarala’s husband was recast, from Bryan George to Michael Benyaer, two very different looking actors of different ethnicities. It’s a jarring re-cast. the character was smaller in the early seasons and in 4, has a lot more to do, as Chrisjen is facing re-election, I honestly thought Michael was playing her campaign manager and not her husband. It seems Bryan, after the series was canceled by SyFy, was hired on ‘I Feel Bad’ and was not available, contractually to reprise his role. A spiteful act from NBC/Universal who already had done the series a disservice. Although there has yet to be any clarification from any party, this was what my research concluded. And some of the UN Scenes are no longer shot on location, just limited to a handful of single room office/conference room sets. Shifting a lot of the grandeur of earlier seasons, where palace intrigue guided the scene, to just “Earth Mom has to work” while the crew of the Rocinante have gone to one of the first planets colonized by refugees, fighting off a corporate charter to mine one of the planets. Holden and crew are, by their ways of always getting into the center of trouble, wind up being the best sheriffs among all parties, as they ended up revealing Protogen’s scheme and stopping them from weaponizing the Protomolecule. They’re the closes things to impartial arbiters as can be.

Season 4 moves the action from our Solar System to Ilus or New Terra, depends on who you ask, where some refugees from Ganymede station, which had been damaged during fighting in season 3, have been mining lithium.

The planet is otherwise dead and pretty uninhabited, there are a few major ruins from some long-gone civilization. But they are driven by desperation rather than a desire to explore, over a year had passed since their home was rendered uninhabitable, and no one else would let them relocate. Then the ring-opened, and word that the UN was taking charters, these sad and broken belters made a blockade run and have been making a life for themselves. Until Royal Charter Energy arrived roughly a year later, to try to muscle the Belter settlers out, and Holden and Co get commissioned by Avasarala to play 3rd party adjudicators. Season four has a shaky start, not to sugar coat, Cibola Burn is one of the weakest books in the series, with big set pieces that did nothing but spin the wheels, which were cut from the show, mostly for being too expensive, and not really important to the story, like Amos, Holden and a few people from RCE find a giant half-broken Protomolecule beetle the size of a bus going in a circle and a member of RCE security, Chandra Wei, in the show played by Jess Salgueiro, who is having a banner year with her roles in ‘The Boys’ a small role, but she left a mark and ‘Letterkenny’ as Mary-Anne one of the most foulmouthed Shamrockettes, who just shoots the Proto-Beetle because it could have made its way to their settlement. In the show she and Amos become lovers, because why not? zero complaints.

There’s some Amos Cheesecake for everyone. Wes Chatham certainly has been doing his pushups. Season 4 Episode 4, you’re welcome. But I digress, this is partially a review of Season 4 with a primer for the rest of the series, but having just finished watching, the back half of the season, episodes 7, 8, 9 and 10 are some of the most ambitious hours of television this year. I don’t know when I’m going to re-watch the whole series, now with season four, but I’ve already done so three times this year, I think there’s still time for one more. We get command performances from every member of the cast. Some of the BEST Avasarala dialog and she doesn’t curse once. That is a headline alone. Bobby has her own Captain America: Winter Soldier, political intrigue action. or Tom Clancy-like, I guess… Alex gets on dry land without a bubble above him for the first time as Naomi, though most of the drama with the Rocinante’s landing was Naomi walking on an actual planet, he still gets some big moments. Tom Jane does arguably his best performance ever in 4×09. David Strathairn’s former pirate turned naval commander, Klaes Ashford, a redeemed thief, brings major pathos this season hunting the antagonist of Season 5, Keon Alexander’s “Marco Inaros” the father of Naomi’s child, and the Che Guevara of the OPA, who gets so much glorious screen time, I’m mad we’ll have to wait another year for the next season.

One of the better parts about working with Amazon, is the freedom of cable standards and practices, not that there was anything this season that couldn’t have aired normally, no nudity and actually less cursing than when it was on Syfy (and Boatloads less than the books) And the budget. It seemed pretty par for the course with other episodes in past seasons. until the last couple episodes of season 4. Whatever budget they had reserved in the early episodes, WAS SPENT in the final episode of the season, “Cibola Burn.” Way to finish the season strong.

10/10

If you liked The Martian, you’ll love this show.
if you like Game of Thrones, you’ll love this show
if you like Battlestar Galactica, you’ll love this show
if you like The Book of Mormon, you’ll probably like the show. There’s space Mormons, they hired Tycho corporation to build them a Generation ship, biggest thing ever built by man, meant for families to live aboard while it travels to a nearby star, which would take over 100 years, so the ship has a giant self contained Drum, which spins producing gravity, they were going to fill the inner rim of the drum with farmland so they could grow crops and raise livestock mid-flight. Until Holden gets the bright idea to use it to try to knock Eros while under control of the Protomolecule from crashing into the earth, but it missed, because Protomolecule breaks physics. and then the Belters salvaged the ship and renamed it from the Nauvoo to the “Behemoth” and just tacked a couple guns on it and called it a warship. Now its in the Ringspace near the moon in the middle, acting as a port of call and air traffic control from who comes and goes through the ring gates. why are you still reading this, go watch the show…

The Expanse, On Amazon Prime Video, Season Four, out now. Add this series to your watch list and visit Amazon Prime for more info. https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/B07YL9WK1S/

About The Expanse
The disappearance of rich-girl-turned-political-activist Julie Mao links the lives of Ceres detective Joe Miller (Thomas Jane), accidental ship captain James Holden (Steven Strait) and U.N. politician Chrisjen Avasarala (Shohreh Aghdashloo). Amidst political tension between Earth, Mars and the Belt, they unravel the single greatest conspiracy of all time.

About The Expanse Seasons 2
In this noir thriller set two hundred years in the future, the case of a missing young woman leads a washed-up detective across the solar system to uncover the greatest conspiracy in human history.

About The Expanse Seasons 3
As the Rocinante crew digs deeper into the search for Prax’s missing daughter, the war between Earth and Mars turns deadly in ways the solar system has never seen. But a new threat in the outer reaches of the Belt could prove much more dangerous, threatening to test the very future of humanity.

About The Expanse Seasons 4
Season 4 of The Expanse, its first as a global Amazon Original, begins a new chapter for the series with the crew of the Rocinante on a mission from the U.N. to explore new worlds beyond the Ring Gate. Humanity has been given access to thousands of Earth-like planets which has created a land rush and furthered tensions between the opposing nations of Earth, Mars and the Belt. Ilus is the first of these planets, one rich with natural resources but also marked by the ruins of a long dead alien civilization. While Earthers, Martians and Belters maneuver to colonize Ilus and its natural resources, these early explorers don’t understand this new world and are unaware of the larger dangers that await them.

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