The Expanse season 2

[Noname Given]

Generally, I've enjoyed "The Expanse" because they did a good job keeping it fairly 'hard' science fiction on the technical side of things and overall their Universe seemed plausible even with regard to how news traveled across the system.

But, for me this last episode dropped the ball in a n umber of those areas:

1) They got control of the 'Colony Ship' pretty easily (IMO - a bit too easily.)

2) They launched it pretty easily too. By that I mean no scenes of the Mormons going "Hey, WTF!" nor any of the governments (Earth, Mars et al) batting an eye at the fact the largest ship constructed to date, suddenly launched towards an Asteroid that is at the center of this mess.

3) Not a single in system news organization was shown saying anything regarding the taking of and launching of said ship.

4) No government ship assets were sent to intercept or see exactly what the situation was.

For me this was the first time the series writers really glossed over a lot just to get the plot point in of them trying to divert the Asteroid into the Sun and failing - (I assume because now somehow the Proto-Molecule has somehow altered all the Bio-Mass pf the people 'infected' and now somehow the Asteroid itself is a lifeform of some type but I'm sure we'll see what the cause was soon.)

Still, the whole execution with regard to the use of the Colony ship (and the noticeable lack of any major reaction from the in system Governments, News Agencies, etc. was a bit disappointing given how nicely they'd handled stuff like that to this point.

YMMV.

 

[Xerxes82]

Perhaps part of their plan was that once they got it accelerating towards the sun, it would be hard for other ships to catch up? Not sure.

Mr Awe

The bombs would destroy the docks, and irradiate the surface of the asteroid. Make it both difficult and potentially lethal to attempt to get inside.

Generally, I've enjoyed "The Expanse" because they did a good job keeping it fairly 'hard' science fiction on the technical side of things and overall their Universe seemed plausible even with regard to how news traveled across the system.

But, for me this last episode dropped the ball in a n umber of those areas:

1) They got control of the 'Colony Ship' pretty easily (IMO - a bit too easily.)

As has been noted upthread, they shorthanded that for the show. In the book all of the Mormons are arrested in a big OPA raid. It's a much bigger operation than what was shown here.

3) Not a single in system news organization was shown saying anything regarding the taking of and launching of said ship.

4) No government ship assets were sent to intercept or see exactly what the situation was.

We haven't spent much time with any news organization. They could have been blasting it on every frequency, though there's no real reason too. It's a big, privately owned, ship launching early. Could be a test run. Also, nobody knows the Mormons have been kicked off. Why is the Nauvoo launching news? Remember, the general mass of people in universe don't know hardly anything about what's been transpiring.

And I guess you missed the part where multiple UN and Martian ships were on an intercept course. They were too far behind to arrive before the team did what they came to do, but they were on their way.

 

[sojourner]

4) No government ship assets were sent to intercept or see exactly what the situation was.

The Rosinante tracked both Mars and Earth ships on intercept courses. Just too far out to be a problem.

 

[The Wormhole]

1) They got control of the 'Colony Ship' pretty easily (IMO - a bit too easily.)

2) They launched it pretty easily too. By that I mean no scenes of the Mormons going "Hey, WTF!" nor any of the governments (Earth, Mars et al) batting an eye at the fact the largest ship constructed to date, suddenly launched towards an Asteroid that is at the center of this mess.

The novels do cover some fallout from the incident, with the Mormons trying to lodge an official complaint with the OPA, though it does no good. The OPA doesn't recognize the authority of courts from Earth or Mars over what goes on in the Belt, and courts in the Belt are in the OPA's back pockets and therefore automatically side with Johnson as a matter of course.

 

[JD]

I finally got caught up today, and so far this season has been just as good as Season 1.
Some high points:
Getting some real info about the Protomolocule is nice, we still don't know everything about it, but we got enough info to have give a good idea what is going, and there's still a lot of mystery left to it.
After he spent most of last season off by himself, it's nice now to see Miller taking a bigger part in the stuff happening in the wider system.

 

[The Wormhole]

I got to admit, I do enjoy the sort of friendship developing between Miller and that young guy. And since that's new to the show (as in not in the novels) they can literally do anything with that.

 

[JD]

Yeah, that has been a high light of the season so far.

Spoiler: Something from the first Expanse book that could spoil the show

I remember in the Season 1 thread some people talked about Miller dying in the first Expanse book, and I was just wondering, have we reached the point in the story where he died yet?

 

[Xerxes82]

Yeah, that has been a high light of the season so far.

Spoiler: Something from the first Expanse book that could spoil the show

I remember in the Season 1 thread some people talked about Miller dying in the first Expanse book, and I was just wondering, have we reached the point in the story where he died yet?

No.

 

[The Wormhole]

Yeah, that has been a high light of the season so far.

Spoiler: Something from the first Expanse book that could spoil the show

I remember in the Season 1 thread some people talked about Miller dying in the first Expanse book, and I was just wondering, have we reached the point in the story where he died yet?

Spoiler: regarding that

As being the one who caused that shit-storm in the season 1 thread, I just want to point out that at no point did I say Miller was going to die, just that if the show does stay accurate to the novels, there will come a point where it won't make sense to have Thomas Jane listed as the lead actor.

However, no, we haven't reached that point in the show yet.
Although, this serves as an excellent jumping off point for one thing that's sort of been nagging me, why is Florence Faivre (Julie Mao) still listed in the main cast credits? She has had practically nothing to do this season except for showing up as a hallucination smiling enigmatically at Miller for a few seconds each episode. Hell, at this point Fred Johnson has more to contribute to each episode, yet Chad Coleman is still only listed in the guest credits. For that matter, his second in command has more to contribute, and not only is the actress listed in the guest credits, the character still doesn't even have a name, at least not according to IMDB.

 

[Christopher]

Although, this serves as an excellent jumping off point for one thing that's sort of been nagging me, why is Florence Faivre (Julie Mao) still listed in the main cast credits? She has had practically nothing to do this season except for showing up as a hallucination smiling enigmatically at Miller for a few seconds each episode.

Credits aren't based on screen time, they're based on contracts and how much each actor gets paid. If Faivre was signed as a regular for season 1 and they still want her to be available for hallucinatory or flashback appearances in season 2 whenever they need her, they'd have reason to keep her on as a regular. And so she'd retain her contracted position in the credits. It's rare for a regular actor to be bumped to a lower credit position, since that's seen as a demotion and would entail a reduction of salary or residuals.

And who knows? Maybe she'll have more to do later in the season. After all, it seems the protomolecule victims on Eros aren't dead, just transformed. Julie certainly seemed dead, but maybe the protomolecule has absorbed her consciousness or will use her image as an avatar to communicate through. What if Miller's visions of her aren't just hallucinations or a guilty conscience?

 

[JD]

Spoiler: regarding that

As being the one who caused that shit-storm in the season 1 thread, I just want to point out that at no point did I say Miller was going to die, just that if the show does stay accurate to the novels, there will come a point where it won't make sense to have Thomas Jane listed as the lead actor.

However, no, we haven't reached that point in the show yet.
Although, this serves as an excellent jumping off point for one thing that's sort of been nagging me, why is Florence Faivre (Julie Mao) still listed in the main cast credits? She has had practically nothing to do this season except for showing up as a hallucination smiling enigmatically at Miller for a few seconds each episode. Hell, at this point Fred Johnson has more to contribute to each episode, yet Chad Coleman is still only listed in the guest credits. For that matter, his second in command has more to contribute, and not only is the actress listed in the guest credits, the character still doesn't even have a name, at least not according to IMDB.

I was confused that they made her a regular at all, outside of the first and last episode she didn't really do anything in Season 1 either.

 

[Christopher]

I was confused that they made her a regular at all, outside of the first and last episode she didn't really do anything in Season 1 either.

Maybe she has a really good agent...

 

[The Wormhole]

And who knows? Maybe she'll have more to do later in the season. After all, it seems the protomolecule victims on Eros aren't dead, just transformed. Julie certainly seemed dead, but maybe the protomolecule has absorbed her consciousness or will use her image as an avatar to communicate through. What if Miller's visions of her aren't just hallucinations or a guilty conscience?

Spoiler: major novel spoilers

In fact, that's exactly what the deal is in the novels. But even then, what we're seeing in the show is largely what happens in the novel, Miller sees her pop up briefly throughout, though all she does in stare and smile enigmatically at him. She communicates with him only in the climax. And after that we never see her again. If they stick to this, she really doesn't have that much left to do on the show before they likely will have to drop her off the credits all together.

I was confused that they made her a regular at all, outside of the first and last episode she didn't really do anything in Season 1 either.

Yeah, that was odd. But I guess it might have been decided to be the easier option, given many season 1 episodes do feature imagery of her in some manner, either Miller looking through her recorded messages, or images of her seen around her apartment.

 

[Whiskeyjack]

Because his experiment was responsible for Julie Mao's death, and revenge was all that Miller cared about.

I guess its been explained now but there is more to Miller than revenge, now he has explained his reason and I believe him “I killed him because he was making sense.” Which is a great line.

He knew that this guy was going to talk his way out of this and do it again, thats why he killed him.

 

[Bruno]

Maybe she has a really good agent...

Apparently she has a couple of big numbers in the all-musical episode that comes towards the end of the season, so they had something to negotiate with.

 

[B.J.]

On the technical side, good points about Eros' trajectory that would result from the impact. I can still talk it off in my head though.

But one thing that bugged me was why didn't Miller notice Eros starting to accelerate? If it was a slow acceleration, he probably wouldn't notice, especially since he's in the spin-gravity of Eros. But the show implied that it moved pretty much at the last minute, otherwise the Roci would notice it a lot earlier. And it would seem that that amount of acceleration would be pretty noticeable to Miller. (Haven't done the math, this is all just "gut feel". I could be completely wrong!)

 

[Marc]

On the technical side, good points about Eros' trajectory that would result from the impact. I can still talk it off in my head though.

But one thing that bugged me was why didn't Miller notice Eros starting to accelerate? If it was a slow acceleration, he probably wouldn't notice, especially since he's in the spin-gravity of Eros. But the show implied that it moved pretty much at the last minute, otherwise the Roci would notice it a lot earlier. And it would seem that that amount of acceleration would be pretty noticeable to Miller. (Haven't done the math, this is all just "gut feel". I could be completely wrong!)

It's possible he was too busy (ducking debris, stopping a bomb from denotating prematurely etc) to notice)

 

[Christopher]

especially since he's in the spin-gravity of Eros.

Wait a minute, that's right -- Eros was supposed to be spinning. Which means that the way they depicted the scene was one more incredibly huge, sloppy science mistake, because Miller and the kid were walking on a catwalk mounted perpendicular to the surface of Eros. If the asteroid had been rotating for gravity, then the "down" direction would've been straight outward from the axis of rotation, and the surface would've been directly over their heads, a "ceiling" rather than a "wall."

I'm starting to think they've stopped caring about good science altogether, because the mistakes that have shown up in the past 2-3 weeks have been blatant impossibilities, not just minor detail problems like they had last season.

 

[Beagleman]

No, just like with the spining motion on a ship, the catwalk is the 'inner hull', their floor.

 

[sojourner]

Wait a minute, that's right -- Eros was supposed to be spinning. Which means that the way they depicted the scene was one more incredibly huge, sloppy science mistake, because Miller and the kid were walking on a catwalk mounted perpendicular to the surface of Eros. If the asteroid had been rotating for gravity, then the "down" direction would've been straight outward from the axis of rotation, and the surface would've been directly over their heads, a "ceiling" rather than a "wall."

Watch the scenes again. The catwalk floor is perpendicular to the rotation. Remember, the kid climbs over the railing and let's himself "fall" to escape before the bomb can go off. Think of an image of a tin can with the catwalk running around the rim of one end of the can.