If you're a fan of the show, you should really check out the aftershow because they've also done phone, Skype, or in-person interviews with Naren, Steven Strait, Cas Anvar, Dominique Tipper, and Wes Chatham, and also do a really great job of recapping and/or analyzing each episode. In fact, I'd recommend the entire network as a whole because they have a lot of great content for almost any property you can think of both past and present. http://www.afterbuzztv.com/expanse-afterbuzz-tv-aftershow/ http://www.afterbuzztv.com/shows/
That's the difference between fans and writers. Fans often resist seeing a work changed from its original form, but writers will almost always seize the opportunity to improve on what they did before.
^ And in this case, it's not even really improving on "what they've done before" since they're writing for the show while simultaneously continuing to work on the novels, meaning that they can make changes/adjustments to both the show and their books simultaneously and let both influence each other.
Even if they weren't adding these sideplots like this week's Martian officers, you'd still be waiting a good while for those last two things you mentioned.
Wasn't GRRM pretty heavily involved with the early seasons of Game of Thrones? Neil Gaiman is the showrunner of the adaptation of his novel Good Omens, and he's also going to be taking a more active role in the second season on American Gods after being unhappy with some of what happened in Season 1.
GRR came in freelance and wrote one episode for each of the first four seasons of the GoT TV series, but Daniel and Ty are actually part of the full-time writing staff for The Expanse. I didn't know about the Neil Gaiman thing, so thanks for that.
Before this season started, there was a roundtable discussion on The Churn where all the actors alluded to big things happening in episode six, so I take it that's when the CW plot will wrap up and we'll transition into the next phase of the story.
Comforting to see ol' Aaron Doral is a bit of an unimaginative buffoon in every universe. I wonder if this one likes the burgundy or the teal jacket better.
Wow, the show was certainly firing on all cylinders tonight! Great drama, and such a great and diverse cast of the UN and Mars ship crews. And nice effects work as well around IO and Jupiter.
Admiral Augusto Nguyen is turning to be a good Villain. He is hawkish towards Mars because he lost many of shipmates to the MCRN years earlier. He believes that in order to overcome Mars's technology edge, the U.N needs to be more aggressive, like shooting first. He reminds me of those Cold War Soviet Admirals.
I was wondering who that was - as it looked familiar. Anyways awesome episode. Best so far this season. But the Battle of Io was something I was looking forward to.
Except for the shot of the Pinus and Razorback still accelerating toward Io even though they were close enough to see it resolved into a disk. Logically, if you're using continuous thrust throughout a voyage, you'd need to flip over and begin decelerating at the halfway point. We saw that with the military ships, so why'd they get it wrong in that one shot?
The Roci was in a rush, and even though they usually don't, Expanse ships can accelerate at more than 1g. The crew probably juiced up for a faster deceleration just before landing.
Even if that were true, they would've had to start it well before Io became naked-eye visible, or they would've had to thrust at far more than the maximum safe gs that have been established. Remember, it was only a few weeks ago that Bobbi had to hold back from pushing the Razorback to its thrust limits because Avasarala couldn't handle the acceleration and almost died. There's no way they'd risk her life again so soon.
Oh yeah! This is going to be a wild ride! This episode was a tremendous setup for is coming (or at least so I imagine not having read the book). Looks like all hell is going to break loose and they kept amping it up at every turn. And, I love how the Roci is becoming quite the menagerie of improbable misfits! "Who else? The tooth fairy?" Ha! As for accelerating towards Io, Holden did say they were coming in hard!