Why should I watch The Expanse?

[psikeyhackr]

Okay.....

I decided to rewatch the first episode and give it a second chance.

And it turns out that I did not see the first episode last week.... I watched episode nine of the first season....

So it was no wonder that it did not make much sense. There was no story beginning, nor explanation of the setting, nor character introduction... I thought it was the worst starting point for anything I'd ever seen.

I do not know how I started with episode nine... but you can now understand my disbelief at how people liked this show.

You see!

The protomolecule was messing with you and you didn't even know it.

 

[Rodders]

I think it's worth watching. I think the co-authors were quite heavily involved in the story, which sticks to the books it covers very well. I didn't think it was "brilliant" as others did, but I think its an above average piece of TV Science Fiction.

The effects are excellent and I liked the flawed characters, although I found Holden to be quite tiresome near the end.

 

[Toby Frost]

Moid in England

I think you'll find it's "Ingerlund" my good sir.

I watched the first season and gave up. Nothing really made me stop; it just didn't grip me particularly. I expect that the right viewer would really enjoy The Expanse. It's certainly worth a look.

 

[Boaz]

UPDATE

Okay, so originally I watched episode ten of season one.... and it was the worst pilot I've ever seen.

So... in order to give The Expanse a chance, I began watching from the real beginning, Season One, Episode One.

Let me give a few thoughts...

SPOILER ALERT
This is a summary of the first two and a half seasons....
I could rename it, A Game of Protomolecules... starring Jon Snow, Indira Stark, and Popeye Doyle. Jon Snow is Jon Snow. If you watched A Game of Thrones, then you'll know that there is only about two seasons you can take. He has his Ygritte, a Belter (a Wildling), living beyond the Belt. Anyway, Jon and Ygritte, along with Rooster (Goose's son) and Chewbacca, steal the Millenium Falcon and ride around saving the universe from the protomolecule. Unknown to them, Popeye chases the protomolecule from the other side while Lady Indira Stark plays the Game of Thrones on Earth. Jon and Popeye team up and figure out that Dr. Pierre Chang from the Dharma Initiative is controlling the protomolecule and moving the location of the Island. Dr. Chang's daughter, Arya, tried to stop his nefarious plan but is consumed by the protomolecule and telepathically seduces Popeye to join the protomolecule. Dr. Chang kidnaps Jean Valjean's daughter, in order to turn her into River Tam. But Jon and Jean Valjean save the girl while Brienne of Tarth battles the protomonster. Chewie destroys the Dharma Initiative. Once, Lady Stark finally meets Brienne, she's able to win the Game of Thrones. But Dr. Juliet Burke from LOST shows up and bores the three powers in the solar system (Earth, Mars, and Fred Johnson) into peace. Then Dr. Chang's other daughter, Sansa, vows revenge upon Jon Snow.

 

[Vertigo]

UPDATE

Okay, so originally I watched episode ten of season one.... and it was the worst pilot I've ever seen.

So... in order to give The Expanse a chance, I began watching from the real beginning, Season One, Episode One.

Let me give a few thoughts...

SPOILER ALERT
This is a summary of the first two and a half seasons....
I could rename it, A Game of Protomolecules... starring Jon Snow, Indira Stark, and Popeye Doyle. Jon Snow is Jon Snow. If you watched A Game of Thrones, then you'll know that there is only about two seasons you can take. He has his Ygritte, a Belter (a Wildling), living beyond the Belt. Anyway, Jon and Ygritte, along with Rooster (Goose's son) and Chewbacca, steal the Millenium Falcon and ride around saving the universe from the protomolecule. Unknown to them, Popeye chases the protomolecule from the other side while Lady Indira Stark plays the Game of Thrones on Earth. Jon and Popeye team up and figure out that Dr. Pierre Chang from the Dharma Initiative is controlling the protomolecule and moving the location of the Island. Dr. Chang's daughter, Arya, tried to stop his nefarious plan but is consumed by the protomolecule and telepathically seduces Popeye to join the protomolecule. Dr. Chang kidnaps Jean Valjean's daughter, in order to turn her into River Tam. But Jon and Jean Valjean save the girl while Brienne of Tarth battles the protomonster. Chewie destroys the Dharma Initiative. Once, Lady Stark finally meets Brienne, she's able to win the Game of Thrones. But Dr. Juliet Burke from LOST shows up and bores the three powers in the solar system (Earth, Mars, and Fred Johnson) into peace. Then Dr. Chang's other daughter, Sansa, vows revenge upon Jon Snow.

Yes!

 

[Boaz]

So after the third season, I just put on The Expanse as background noise while on my computer. I think I stopped somewhere in the fifth season.

 

[Swank]

So after the third season, I just put on The Expanse as background noise while on my computer. I think I stopped somewhere in the fifth season.

Most SF TV shows are such soft science soap operas - I really don't get bashing the Expanse. It isn't going to be everyone's taste, but it is so much better crafted than just about anything else.

 

[Vertigo]

I'm not bashing the TV show itself; I did watch the first few episodes of the TV show and I thought it well made and moderately true to the book. My problem is the story itself, I read the first book and was so shocked by how it was completely filled with cliches, story elements, plot elements, characters, in fact pretty much everything that I never read any of the sequels. It struck me that the authors had got together and identified a bunch of different extremely popular stories and pulled what they considered the key popular elements out and combined them into The Expanse:
Burnt out drug addicted cop
Misjudged court marshalled military officer
Female engineer who can fix anything
War between Earth and its colonies
High political infighting
The list goes on and I guess make for a pretty good ingredient list for success.

So it's not the TV show itself that I am knocking. It's not the TV production that stopped me watching, it's the corny, cliched characters and story that it inherited from the books that I'm 'bashing'.

 

[msstice]

I really, really wanted to like it. I haven't read the novels, but I wanted to watch a Sci-Fi series that wasn't sword and sorcery without wands.

Vague spoilers follow.

1. I liked the start. I liked they didn't have FTL. I liked that they mostly respected gravity and inertia. I liked they were restricted to reachable space. I liked some of the ships. I ignored that their ship accelerations were too high.
2. There was a tad too much political intrigue.
3. The man has a cracked cellphone screen. Little details like that can throw me off. We're in the future. Ok so we still use cellphones, but surely we have self-healing screens?
4. The accent of the guy who leads the native asteroid faction begins to bother me more and more.
5. Then this alien goo or crystal that moves asteroids without a reaction engine appears. Bye bye inertia.
6. Then in one episode the stocky guy with a strange affect brutally beats a man to death with a wrench or something, and I was like: I came here to watch Sci-Fi, not The Sopranos. Bye.

 

[Parson]

I really, really wanted to like it. I haven't read the novels, but I wanted to watch a Sci-Fi series that wasn't sword and sorcery without wands.

Vague spoilers follow.

1. I liked the start. I liked they didn't have FTL. I liked that they mostly respected gravity and inertia. I liked they were restricted to reachable space. I liked some of the ships. I ignored that their ship accelerations were too high.
2. There was a tad too much political intrigue.
3. The man has a cracked cellphone screen. Little details like that can throw me off. We're in the future. Ok so we still use cellphones, but surely we have self-healing screens?
4. The accent of the guy who leads the native asteroid faction begins to bother me more and more.
5. Then this alien goo or crystal that moves asteroids without a reaction engine appears. Bye bye inertia.
6. Then in one episode the stocky guy with a strange affect brutally beats a man to death with a wrench or something, and I was like: I came here to watch Sci-Fi, not The Sopranos. Bye.

I came very close to this conclusion during the first season as well. But I persevered and most of the final seasons I was rewarded with SF that very seldom makes it to the screen. It was fairly realistic, people were people with all their flaws, and there were grand visions in what most people saw has the ordinary mess of life.

 

[LordOfWizards]

~Warning~
*Vague spoilers*

I was absolutely thrilled with The Expanse. I voted for the realistic Sci-Fi. I agree that the political stuff was overblown, but the way current society is organized I would expect there to be an 'underclass' when we start mining asteroids. Water being scarce, cities inside asteroids, it seemed fairly realistic to me. Perhaps I was just ecstatic that there was a decent Sci-Fi series for a change!

 

[psikeyhackr]

I think you'll find it's "Ingerlund" my good sir.

Sorry, my British accent is really bad.