The Expanse

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Exactly. It could have been 2 hours and done better. I understand why it’s difficult to wrap things up this season but that episode was weak.



I thought the episode was fine.

How many gates are there on the Sol side of the Stargate system?



A system of cells interlinked
I finally get back from Luna base and I come in here talk about the absolutely fantastic season finale, and what do I find?

You lot in here talkin all crazy! Thinking back through the episode, I just can't come up with anything weak. SPOLIERS AHEAD!

- Drummer's turn and subsequent confrontation with Karal culminating and a downright bad ass space battle involving the Roci and the other free Navy ships. This is followed by a heartbreaking scene of Drummers crew being forced to watch one of their own get executed, which causes their crew to split and go their separate ways.

- The absolutely nail-biting events with Naomi putting the Chetzemoka into a spin, then putting herself out the airlock into a freefall into space, culminating in her rescue by Bobbie. This scene had us on the edge of our seats holding our breath the entire time.

- You people are on crack.

- Avasarala's rousing speech about using the Roci's crew as role models in the "victory" vs Marcos which is immediately undercut by a transmission of their blockade getting decimated, as they slowly realize how far behind events they have fallen, and how far out of the loop they really are. Amazing writing - see comment directly above!

- Clever scene with Amos doing an end-around on Holden, tricking him into letting Peaches come aboard the Roci to join the crew, since they all of a sudden need a pilot now thanks to a certain unnamed actor turning into a total ****head. A nice bit of levity to break the tension of previous events.

- Episode ends with a cryptic cliffhanger foreshadowing a sinister force behind the scenes as a ship and her crew is wiped from existence.

SO. GOOD.

You people are on crack!
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You ready? You look ready.
I remember my first rock...

GIFs don't work as attachments. Just fyi.

And your reasons are valid except for there's zero breathing room for any of that **** to sink in. That space battle was good but not great. We've seen better. The speech was good but not great. We've heard better. All around it was just a good episode but at the end of a line of great episodes which makes it meh. Big fat meh.

Amos dropping that bottle of tequila was the highlight of the episode for me. I damn near fell out of my chair during that scene.

EDIT: At this point I think it was purely a pacing problem. An extra hour (even another 30 minutes) would have made the breaks between all that action/development sink in better. I'm used to the slow burn this show has perfected. Fast and dirty (outside of space battles) has never been this show's strong suit.
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That elusive hide-and-seek cow is at it again
Spoilers incoming, but I think we're all caught up at this point.

Amos dropping the bottle and sneaking Peaches on were pretty great. Though Peaches deserved to be left on Earth with her shifting morals. I kept asking myself, "Who is this chick just out of supermax that went ballistic on a farmer just a few days earlier, now being all super naive just to create plot conflict?" I kinda felt like her introduction was tacked on for what ended up playing out. Oh so convenient, that turn of events. And the long, drawn-out efforts of Glenn Rhee Naomi Nagata with so many close encounters only to play the red herring to Alex in the end felt manipulative. Totally an opinion here, but I felt like Naomi would have detonated the ship soon after realizing her transmission edits failed and long before any other ship could have come within range. Regardless, Holden immediately telling her what's up (really so that the audience knew what just happened) seemed cold, considering how much hell she'd been through on her own, would likely feel totally responsible and just decide to jump out an airlock (again) in a suicidal guilt rage. But that's cool, I mean we're all happy and drinking at the endgame party in the end.

A lot of these details felt out of sync with much of the show to date, if not somewhat rushed and forced. Like I noted in my earlier post though, it was better than say GoT final SEASONs. lol. I'm just not convinced it holds up to the rest of the season(s) so far. Not as a finale. Oh. There's only one ship guarding the portal with all the terrorism and war playing out? That might be a detail that is explained and I missed it, but that did throw my head for a loop. going back to my criticism of being rushed, this sequence was a victim of that. IMO.

*Parts a few lines over a mirror with my credit card* Hate me.
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A system of cells interlinked
Spoilers incoming, but I think we're all caught up at this point.

Amos dropping the bottle and sneaking Peaches on were pretty great. Though Peaches deserved to be left on Earth with her shifting morals. I kept asking myself, "Who is this chick just out of supermax that went ballistic on a farmer just a few days earlier, now being all super naive just to create plot conflict?" I kinda felt like her introduction was tacked on for what ended up playing out. Oh so convenient, that turn of events. And the long, drawn-out efforts of Glenn Rhee Naomi Nagata with so many close encounters only to play the red herring to Alex in the end felt manipulative. Totally an opinion here, but I felt like Naomi would have detonated the ship soon after realizing her transmission edits failed and long before any other ship could have come within range. Regardless, Holden immediately telling her what's up (really so that the audience knew what just happened) seemed cold, considering how much hell she'd been through on her own, would likely feel totally responsible and just decide to jump out an airlock (again) in a suicidal guilt rage. But that's cool, I mean we're all happy and drinking at the endgame party in the end.

A lot of these details felt out of sync with much of the show to date, if not somewhat rushed and forced. Like I noted in my earlier post though, it was better than say GoT final SEASONs. lol. I'm just not convinced it holds up to the rest of the season(s) so far. Not as a finale. Oh. There's only one ship guarding the portal with all the terrorism and war playing out? That might be a detail that is explained and I missed it, but that did throw my head for a loop. going back to my criticism of being rushed, this sequence was a victim of that. IMO.

*Parts a few lines over a mirror with my credit card* Hate me.

Fair call on Peaches, who is a POV character for a while in the books, so get much more time/development with her, coming to understanding of how much of a conflicted and confused person she is at times.

Naomi jumped out f the airlock in an attempt to get rescued, as she had seen the Razor back incoming, She even says "Come on...see me...see me..." as she floated along.

There were multiple ships guarding the portal. I recall seeing at least 3 blips winking out as they watched helpless from afar on Luna. That last ship was their crown jewel dreadnaught battleship, I believe, which is why it was given more focus.

Back to hitting the hash pipe and clubbing baby seals, you lot!



You ready? You look ready.
@ynwtf I am glad I am not the only one that feels S5 finale was weak. But like he and I are saying that's not a bad thing when you think of how awful other shows have been with their finales. But his criticism is valid. There were a lot of actions and decisions that are completely out of step and left field for some of these characters.

Better space battles:







And the best one I can't even find is the one where Alex remarks to Holden that he must have aced zero G combat training. It's where they denote two missiles in front of a UNN ship while performing a high speed burn at it. When they cut through the missile debris all their displays go offline and when they come out the other side they shoot and sheer off the engines on a ship almost 3 times their size. They punched above their weight class but won in minutes, and the build up to that was one of the most nail biting experiences I have had on the show.

It's hard to follow up any of these battles, and the season 5 finale was the worse for it.



For the most part I agree with Sedai, maybe y'all are not on crack but I think were all spoiled by previous seasons which were admittedly slightly better than season 5, but overall quality wise it's still a way above average sci-fi TV show.




That elusive hide-and-seek cow is at it again
lol, that's totally fair and reasonable. It is still is better than most anything else currently available. What's the television equivalent of "first world problems?" I think that knowing TV serials have come so far that we come to expect cinema-level quality is pretty awesome.



You ready? You look ready.
Started a rewatch of season 5 tonight. Third time.

This show is so damn good.

That shower scene sets the mood for the whole season. This was Amos’ season for sure. He was raised for the new reality.



"How tall is King Kong ?"
I'm not a fan, but it's still a series I enjoy and respect. "Hard science" sci-fi is rare and precious. I like its general respect for distances, momentum, gravity, etc. What I'm not too fond of is :

- The Holden character (or lack of). Don't know why, doesn't really work on me. Something too artificially pure, too Tintin, that feels Gary Stu. I generally like chivalrous noble heroes as much as I like grey-ish flawed antiheroes, but something feels a bit off within that specific universe. A lack of personality, of idiosyncratic traits, beyond high morals ? Reminds me of Scott Mccloud's description of blank, empty-design characters everyone can project themselves onto. Holden is to smooth for me. Some kind of "character definition" version of


- A bit disappointed with the grand ark of protomolecules and space gates and all. With the first season, I was hoping for a grounded universe as a background for simple human stories (kidnapping, conspiracies, criminality, politics). Human-level low stake plots. But each time an author creates a sci-fi universe, there's this need to put it whole at stake. So, its realism gets challenged by reality-defining events. I wish sci-fi could, sometimes, just be a setting like the Old West, bigger than its plots. I miss Cowboy Bebop. It really captured my ideal scale of grand world building and human-size stakes.

- Uneasy with the Alex thing. Spoiler :
WARNING: spoilers below
It's the question of how the real world affects the fiction. I think the fiction should have its own life, that Alex, as a character, and his story, should not be affected by the behavior of an actor. What does it mean, in practice ? It's complicated. I'm generally against removing an actor from a project due to unrelated matters (thinking Gina Carano, removed from the Star Wars universe for expressing very dumb opinions and beliefs on twitter), but I accept that, in Cas Anvar's case, the issue was too directly work-related. So, I think, in such cases, the public should accept a change of cast. It's all a representation, actors aren't the characters, it's a theatrical play. We can wrap our minds around that. I don't t think that altering the story was required, or that stories should be so vulnerable. Plus, damn did it look artificial.

Whole thing is sad. People like Anvar are sad and creepy. But stories should survive them. I don't like the public to be assumed incapable of processing a change of actor between seasons.



You ready? You look ready.
On episode 2 tonight. That scene with the stealth asteroid is so subtle.

Holden was raised by 8 Mormon parents. If anything is going to give you the right set of conditions to make a character like him it’s gotta be that.

EDIT: One thing I find pretty interesting about this whole series is how effective Earthers are at space combat (i.e. being able to withstand heavier Gs).



The Adventure Starts Here!
Ummm... Season 6, episode 1 dropped TODAY. And it's 2 a.m. and I was headed off to bed when I caught the news. Now I have to wait till tomorrow.

But a heads-up to the rest of you!



The Adventure Starts Here!
Watched it. Will need to rewatch to get back into the swing of things. There is a recap episode (about six-ish minutes or so) that seems vital to me (mostly because I always have a tough time remembering specifics with things like sci-fi and/or space shows).



The Adventure Starts Here!
Okay, we're three episodes into season 6. I have a minor question, not really spoilery:

On Laconia, the scenes with the little girl and the birds... I'm probably forgetting something, but is she on the surface of some planet or is she enclosed in an entire eco-bubble of some sort? I ask only because the sets in those scenes are soooo terrible and look soooo fake. The lighting looks like eco-bubble sound stage.



That elusive hide-and-seek cow is at it again
Okay, we're three episodes into season 6. I have a minor question, not really spoilery:

On Laconia, the scenes with the little girl and the birds... I'm probably forgetting something, but is she on the surface of some planet or is she enclosed in an entire eco-bubble of some sort? I ask only because the sets in those scenes are soooo terrible and look soooo fake. The lighting looks like eco-bubble sound stage.

I can't remember if they pull out to reveal the location, but I feel it's on a planet as there is a scene in which her parents explain the animal life evolved differently and cannot eat things that she can.


That ongoing sequence is a very weak point for me. I'm sure it's important, and will show its value in the end. Until then, it's very distracting and awkward.