The Expanse

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Question: Have they done all five seasons one episode released at a time? Or is this a new-ish thing?
When it was on Sci-fi channel, it was weekly, for sure. Trying to recall if the first season on Amazon was weekly or if they just dumped it all out at once.
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@Austruck / @Sedai: Season 4 was dropped in its entirety on Amazon. They hadn't started the slow release model with any of their shows at that time.

So season 5 is the first slow release.
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Ah, I didn't even realize it had been on SyFy first. Still, I wonder why Amazon is doing a weekly release since most of their customers (I assume) purchase Amazon Prime on a yearly subscription basis. Or... maybe they don't? (It's a lot cheaper when subscribing for a full year at once.)

I'm on season 4, episode 7. Good thing I don't have much of a real life these days. I'll be caught up soon at this rate.



A system of cells interlinked
Not sure what @John McClane thinks, but since the show hit Amazon, it has just taken off into the stratosphere as far as the quality of the writing is concerned. Not that it was bad before, but man, so good now!



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@Austruck: The slow burn release is, and I'm purely speculating here, a better model for gauging interest (i.e. if people keep coming back every week then it is a winner). Since none of these companies release viewing numbers we are left in the dark, but I think they are doing it to see when to pull the plug on a show or not. I know with The Expanse next season is the last but that's primarily because it is a niche genre, it is expensive, and the books do a 30 year time jump that would be difficult for them to pull off with the current actors. The writers have mentioned that they were struggling with how to handle it, but I suspect we will see a major deviation from the source material in next season in order to neatly wrap up everybody's plot lines.

@Sedai: Yup, I have been with this show from the first episode premiere on SyFy (it was lonely being the only one raving about it back then, but glad to see I'm not left out in the cold anymore ) and the writing has definitely skyrocketed in quality since moving to Amazon. Pun fully intended.

When SyFy pulled the plug on it in season 3 the writing dropped off quite a bit because they wanted to leave an ending that would work in case no one ponied up to pick up the show. They had been shopping around for awhile because it had just gotten too expensive for them to continue it, which I totally understand. With that said, even with the drop off in writing, it was still infinitely better than any other show on television at that time.



A system of cells interlinked
I love how the show focuses on character development a good portion of the time, while still moving the narrative forward at a good pace, also stopping from time to time to have a little moment of contemplation for this character or that. That last thing happened again last night, I am sure you know the scene I am talking about!.



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Okay... a question about season 4, episode 7 (which I'm watching right now)...

In one scene, Avasarala's husband is teaching a literature class on Ulysses. The class is interrupted by his wife, so he dismisses everyone from class so he can talk to her. He dismisses them with instructions to keep reading because it'll be on the test... "... as well as Preston, Wordsworth, and Logan."

Surely that's a fun nod to William S. Preston and Ted "Theodore" Logan, right? Right?





A system of cells interlinked
Ha!! Nice catch. I did not notice that... Seems an odd reference for the show, though... However, Bill and Ted tossed around name drops from literature and history, so I presume he meant the actual scholars from history, although I don't know exactly who he meant.

Okay... a question about season 4, episode 7 (which I'm watching right now)...

In one scene, Avasarala's husband is teaching a literature class on Ulysses. The class is interrupted by his wife, so he dismisses everyone from class so he can talk to her. He dismisses them with instructions to keep reading because it'll be on the test... "... as well as Preston, Wordsworth, and Logan."

Surely that's a fun nod to William S. Preston and Ted "Theodore" Logan, right? Right?





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I asked myself that right away: Were there a real Preston and Logan famous enough in literature to be included alongside Homer and Wordsworth in a class centuries in the future? I don't think so. It almost has to be a nod, doesn't it?



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I'm caught up!

QUESTION about episode 9 (the current one): If Naomi is such a whiz with all this stuff on ships, why doesn't she just defuse the ship as a bomb? That seems a lot easier than everything they just showed her doing with the repeating message broadcast. No?

Also...

TIMMMMMMYYYYY!




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I suspect the series is very attractive to space opera/Star Wars/Trekkie enthusiasts. Seems like @CitizenRules ought to be following this one. I know he's a big Star Trek fan.
I'm actually not a fan of those sorts of shows. People like @Sedai keep getting me hooked on this crap! Battlestar Galactica, The 100, The Expanse... All this sci-fi stuff is probably why I also watch This Is Us religiously: as a counterbalance.



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If I time things right, season 5 will all be aired by the time I get that far.
(sigh) I caught up yesterday, so I was off by about three days. Ugh, I had forgotten how much I hate waiting for weekly episode drops.

ALSO... that Belter accent... and accents in general...

Frankly, since I binged nearly five seasons in a matter of weeks, I could much more easily see a progression of that accent. In every Belter it becomes more pronounced as the episodes and seasons go on. I noticed it especially with Naomi, who is almost purely a British accent in the first season. By the end of season 5 where we are now, she's talking like a Belter who lived in London for a few years.

Anderson Dawes's accent was a nice mixture I could handle, but again, if these people are multi-generation Belters, they likely wouldn't have traces of British accents at all anymore.

Now, PERHAPS in Naomi's case, the accent change is because she went back to her Belter folk and one's accents might naturally go back to what one grew up with. That's a plausible storyline explanation, and that's fine. But I suspect it's just the actress not being as consistent with the accent.

Kinda like if you compare the earliest representations/drawings of character from The Simpsons to the much more cartoony and stylized versions that later became the standard...

And, honestly, why is Bobbie Draper the ONLY Martian or ONLY PERSON in this entire story universe with an Australian accent??

Also also... if we continue to write about these episodes going forward, can we name them with season and episode numbers? I finally went back and read earlier posts, and so many say "That last episode was amazing!" without telling me WHICH episode it was. That's gonna get impossible to figure out as the series rolls into another season. Just my two cents on that!



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@Sedai... you've read the books then? I have them on my Amazon wishlist now but was going to ask the group if anyone had already read them. Did you start the books before the series came out?



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I'm caught up!

QUESTION about episode 9 (the current one): If Naomi is such a whiz with all this stuff on ships, why doesn't she just defuse the ship as a bomb? That seems a lot easier than everything they just showed her doing with the repeating message broadcast. No?
Um, she just survived a hard vacuum transfer between ships. The last thing you’re going to do is start messing around with disarming a bomb.

I’m sure her vision is shot. Plus, she has no tools.