2015-2016 science fiction, 10 episodes. When the ice-hauler
Canterbury gets destroyed, the Belters blame Mars, Mars blames
Earth, and Earth blames the Belters.
I've already reviewed the book Leviathan Wakes, and indeed made
a point of reading it before watching the series, so I won't talk
about the plot in any detail, except to say that this first series
doesn't reach the end of the first book; it gets as far as the
principals' departure from Eros, which is around 60% of the way
through. On the other hand, it adds cutaways to Chrisjen Avarasala
playing UN politics on Earth, something that doesn't appear in the
first book at all. For television, it's pretty slow-moving, taking
time to develop its plots rather than trying to squeeze a full story
into each 42-minute "hour"; this is what modern television can do when
it's given the time and space to get things right.
There are I think two useful comparisons one can make: how does the
series work as a retelling of the story in the book, and how does it
compare with other current SF television? As a version of the book, it
elides some details, but adds in others; all the key moments are here,
but not slavishly re-presented. Rather, the directors have made a
point of showing what's going on; this is a more visually-orientated
show than many that originate as TV scripts. And, I assume because the
TV audience is probably bigger than the book audience these days and
certainly more vocally intolerant of inactive female characters, the
producers have significantly expanded the role given to Naomi, who in
the book was more love interest than anything else; here she's allowed
to show off her own skills too. There is a bit more explanation of
just who is getting up to the nefarious goings-on, both at a
technical and at a political level, something that in the book was
largely displaced by action scenes.
It is lovely to see that, after many many years, a TV effects team can
say "look, the spaceship is decelerating, that means the drive nozzle
is pointed in the direction it's going" and not get shouted down by
the producers. The black goo of the books becomes glowing blue goo,
but with many scenes deliberately underlit that's probably necessary.
Most people will already have a preference between books and TV,
though. Compared with other contemporary SF series, well, it avoids
rubber-suit aliens and whizz-bang space battles. (There are space
battles here, but they're mostly quick, terrifying and lethal.) This
is probably the best TV SF I've seen since the second season of the
Battlestar Galactica remake, when it was still just about possible
to believe the showrunners knew what they were doing. This is a world
with people in it, maybe somewhat stereotyped people, but people
even so. The other SF series set in space that I've been watching
lately are Dark Matter and Killjoys, and if I had to choose I'd
take this over either of them.
The series has been renewed for a second season.
- Posted by Dr Bob at
01:14pm on
25 September 2016
Yeah I really like The Expanse. Yay, near future! Yay, politics in space! Yay, shades of grey rather than black hats & white hats.
A friend loaned me his copy. I saw it before reading any of the books (just got the 2nd volume from the library), so it is interesting to compare and contrast. Have now bought my own copy of Season 1 and am re-watching it.
- Posted by Owen Smith at
06:07pm on
17 November 2016
I bought this on Blu Ray from Amazon (through the blog link!) on your recommendation. I'm enjoying it immensely for the most part. But occasionally some really stupid scientific thing they say spoils the atmosphere. For example why does exposure to Cadmium require anti radiation meds for the rest of your life? That's not how heavy metal poisoning works, and the physics of that aren't going to be different in the future. The sad thing is it's quite clear from much of the rest of it that research has been done quite well, so how do they make such stupid mistakes? There have been three of these annoyances so far, and I'm five episodes in.
- Posted by Owen Smith at
06:14pm on
17 November 2016
Having now re-read your blog post I'm amazed female charaters have less of a role in the books, they don't get much in the TV series. Basically in the prinicipals there is the customary one female. Only in the secondary characters does this lift itself above the usual "I suppose we should have some female characters" level. If the books are worse then I'll skip them.
- Posted by RogerBW at
06:26pm on
17 November 2016
Thanks for using the link! Not that I've made enough money for them actually to pay me anything yet, but ever little helps.
The main characters are of the same sexes in the books - but Naomi gets much less to do there.
I don't recall cadmium being mentioned; in the books it's abundantly clear that the contamination at Eros Stations is radioactive.
- Posted by Owen Smith at
03:07pm on
18 November 2016
In the TV series the problem was one of the tunnels broke into a cadmium vein and the miners were being poisoned with cadmium vapour. Nothing was said about radioactivity that I noticed and it all sounded like heavy metal poisoning. And then they suddenly throw in the line about anti cancer meds.
Battlestar Galactica remake dealt with the problem of gender imbalance rather better I felt, by changing the gender of some of the characters. This immediately gave them meatier roles. I'm reminded that The Avengers scripts for Diana Rigg originally assumed a man was going to be cast in the part, or at least it would be shared with two male characters.
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