For the first time in a quite a while, Syfy is the home to some of the best SFF shows out there. The Expanse and The Magicians are both in my top 5 or 10 shows, and I'm only 4 episodes into it so far, but Krypton has gotten off to a good start, and has potential to be added to that same list.
A question about the railguns. I noticed that the railgun's projectile split into many pieces just before hitting the MCRN stealth nuke missile carriers. Is that how railguns work in RL ?
Rail gun is a weapon that fires it's projectile using magnetic fields - the type of projectile (whether it's solid has multiple flechette like rounds doesn't matter). I believe normally that so far in testing and development they've being using solid projectiles (i.e no explosives) because there's no much kinetic energy they don't need to explode to destroy the target. It wouldn't surprise me if most of the shipboard weapons we've seen in the series were rail guns - just they made special mention of the planetary defense ones as they were the BFGs.
IMO, SyFy's been pretty consistently "killing it", on the whole, with their scripted programming since 2003 and the premiere of BSG, what with stuff like 12 Monkeys, Caprica, Defiance, Haven, Helix, Krypton, Lost Girl, Stargate Atlantis, and, or course, The Expanse, but others' mileage may vary.
For most of this week's episode, I was racking my brain trying to remember where I'd seen those two Martian ensigns before, the hotheaded woman and the baby-faced young man. I just now figured out that they were both recurring players on Killjoys last season, Zeph and Pippin. I was going through the list of shows I know, but I guess that one's got such short seasons that I tend to forget about it when it's not on for a while. I know it was driven by the show's need to have scenes under gravity (especially fight scenes), but having them thrust continuously away from the debris field in hopes of avoiding detection seems contradictory. A ship is never going to be more detectable than when it's blasting out superhot plasma exhaust for hours at a time. If they wanted to minimize the risk of being detected, they should've gone with a brief thruster burst and coasted from there. Honestly, I'll never be happy with space shows and movies until Elon Musk or someone builds a studio in orbit and we can finally get stuff filmed in microgravity for real, for more than 30 seconds at a time on a simulator plane.
The ratings for the first 3 episodes seem to be just about on par with last season, and really a constant since the big drop at the end of season 1. If Syfy was satisfied with the ratings level before, they will probably remain so, and we are likely to get a season 4.
It will be interesting to see what happens now that Anna has the message from Erinwright. I loved Bobbi's arrival during the standoff with the younger Martians. The half transformed Katoa is pretty creepy. It'll be interesting to see what happens when a Martian sends the Erinwright message to Souther.
The Martians could transmit the message system wide on all channels but then Erinwright could easily claim it was a forged message by Mars. Anna could give the message herself to the UN secretary general while the Martians could transmit the message to Admiral Souther. Then the secretary general and the UN forces loyal to him could make their move against Erinwright and Admiral Nguyen. According to the last episode, it seems that the Martians are losing the war. But i suspect they got one or two more high tech tricks up their sleeves for those damn Earthers. Mars Aeternum
Got to watch the latest episode last night. Once again it was well done, but in a way I wish I had never read the books. They are really slow-walking the plot now. Nothing in last night's episode was even in Caliban's War. I find it hard to believe the inevitable confrontation on Io (hence the second book) will be wrapped up in the next episode alone, meaning almost all of the really weird and interesting climax of Abbadon's Gate will be pushed into the next season In a way it's depressing, because the book series is up to eight books, and going to have at least one more. There is no way Syfy will commit to the 10-11 seasons that the show would need to wrap up the plot.
I would say, rather, that they're taking the show's plot in the direction that works best for the show. I read a review pointing out that this part of the book was mostly messages and threats sent between fleets, which wouldn't be very visual or effective for television, and would be too expensive to depict on the same scale. So interpolating a smaller, more character-driven story inside the narrative worked better for a TV show. It doesn't need to. The books already did that. The purpose of an adaptation isn't to copy the source verbatim; that would be redundant, since the source already exists. The purpose is to use the source as a starting point for creating something new, an alternative exploration of the same ideas. Look how much the Game of Thrones TV series has diverged from the books (I gather), gone off in its own independent direction. It's become its own thing now, and that's good. Something can't be its best if it's trying to be something it's not. A TV series needs to do what works best as a TV series in its own right, and the books it's based on should only be a source of raw material to be reshaped. If a show creates a rich enough version of its world that it can find entirely new stories to tell that weren't in the books, that's a sign of the show's success and worth. Granted, there are movie series like Harry Potter and The Hunger Games that have been fairly faithful adaptations of their source books, but that's easier to do in movies, with a finite number of installments. And both did make some adjustments and elisions to the source stories. And there's no telling how much potential they wasted by not diverging more. If you run the same experiment twice, with different variables, you're going to get different results, and it's good to follow where they lead instead of resisting them.
I recognised Kelly McCormack and thought the other guy looked familar and sure enough he'd been in Killljoys as well.
The Expanse is the first adapted TV series I can think of where the creators of its source material are not only credited as producers on it, but are also full-time members of its writing staff even when they're not personally writing episodes for it.
Naren Shankar spoke about this at a recent convention and it sounds like it has been a positive experience for the show and for the novel writers. You can easily imagine how having the novel writers involved in the show would help the show. However, I was impressed that the process of writing for the show has given the writers new ideas and insights into writing the novels. Sounds like the process of working through various issues has been positive for all! And, the novel writers are truly a part of the collaborative effort--it's not just putting their names in the credits.
Yes, excellent point. The creators of the original work are also part of the decision of how to change it for a new telling.
I understand, I'm just impatient to get to the "good parts" like... Spoiler Miller's return, the opening of the gate, the colonization of new solar systems, and the near-destruction of Earth.
The novel series' writers, Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck, did a Skype interview with the Afterbuzz TV network's Expanse aftershow where they talked about their involvement in the show, and it really is a mutually beneficial relationship that lets both the show and the novels exist as companions to one another while also influencing one another either directly or indirectly. It's also given them a platform for promoting their work that they might not have otherwise had. They've also been able to better the novels as a result of their work on the show, and to make narrative decisions for the show that they wish they would've made in the novels... such as having Chrisjen Avasarala involved in Leviathen Wakes.