Apologies if this is a duplicate but a search turned up nada. I just got through Season 2 myself, and for mass media "science fiction" it has been pretty watchable. You could also see it as a sorta kinda Star Trek prequel, set after the Bell Riots but pre-Cochrane. Their take on gimmies turning into either Basic Income Earthers ("takers") or when able going on to Mars and then the Belt seems a realistic prequel to the extreme income inequality of the Federation.
Like the show it a bit better than the books. Kinda odd how the seasons don't match the events of the book (book 1 ends halfway through Season 2), but it's structured well.
For me, it's actually the books that got me back in to the show. I watched a couple of episodes first and wasn't hooked. I picked up the first book for a flight and got hooked and ended up binge watching the first two seasons (and purchasing the rest of the books).
I've seen the first season, thought it was pretty decent. Waiting for the second season to show up on Amazon Prime (where I watched the first), Netflix or Hulu.
I've been slowly watching this, I've started season 2 and the show has improved. I'm getting into it. Best of all.... Spoiler: game changing thing Thomas Jane got rid of that STUPID haircut which looks great on 19 year old girls but isn't so hot for 40+ guys.
Spoiler I would've preferred he got his hat back, but at least he didn't look like he had a drowned weasel flapping over his eyes anymore. The only thing I don't like about the show is that I understand it's kind of on the bubble, and it's hard enough for even a successful show to last ten seasons or however long they'd need to cover all the books. It adds an entirely unwelcome element of tension.
According to Naren Shankar at Gallifrey One, the current plan has The Expanse returning to SyFy on April 11--although that's not official and could change. He also showed us a clip from season 3.
Huge fan of this show - early today, SYFY posted the trailer for season 3 and said it would be happening on April 11, as Mr Awe said above. *excited*
I saw the first four or so episodes. I really liked The Expanse's presentation of the future, it seemed very realistic and accurate. What kept me from getting into it was I found none of the characters at all compelling.
+1 for a fan of The Expanse. I’ve found it really engaging, but it didn’t immediately catch my eye until someone at work recommended it. It’s good stuff.
Agreed on the science, but I really enjoyed several of the caracters, the way they played off the alcoholic detective trope with Miller and Amos your friendly local serial killer in the making....
I have a mixed reaction to a hard-SF show like The Expanse. On the one hand, it's deeply refreshing to finally see a TV show that's trying to be scientifically accurate in its portrayal of space, the way I try to be in my own writing. For the most part, it does quite well with that. On the other hand, because it is trying to be accurate for the most part, I hold it to a higher standard of plausibility than I do with most shows, and so the few things that are still implausible just grate at me. My main problem is one the show's producers really can't avoid but that still distracts me, which is the way they have to fudge weightlessness while filming in the Earth's gravity. The whole "magnetic boots" dodge is scientifically ridiculous. Magnetic boots would screw with a spaceship's sensitive electronics, and spacecraft aren't really made out of magnetic materials anyway because they're too heavy, and it's so much easier to maneuver by floating in freefall and pulling on handholds. Using magnetic boots to move in space is equivalent to trying to swim by strapping lead weights to your ankles and walking on the bottom of the pool. It has no advantages to people actually operating in space -- only to Earthbound filmmakers trying to pretend their actors are in space. Honestly, given that the show already posits an advanced, high-acceleration space drive to enable its ships to travel from world to world quickly, I wish they'd just posited that the same principle behind the Epstein drive also let them generate artificial gravity. It wouldn't be any more implausible than the magnetic-boots thing, really. The other small thing that bugs me is the failure to design props with microgravity in mind. The characters use standard soda/beer cans and bottles that would never work in microgravity, and the main starship set includes a drip coffeemaker that could cause a medical emergency if the drive ever shut down while it was operating.
I'm a big fan of The Expanse, and I just started working my way through Season 2 on Amazon Prime over the last week or two. I actually saw most of the season when it originally aired on Syfy, but I missed the last one or two episodes, so I'm trying to make it through the whole season before 3 starts in April.
Criticizing the producers for filming the series in Earth's gravity rather than space is pretty ridiculous. Maybe a series will be filmed in space one day, but right now it isn't feasible. Until then, the producers will be stuck "pretending." I'm OK with that.
^And it would have probably been a logistical nightmare, and probably really uncomfortable for the actors, to try to film every single space scene with the actors stuck in the wirework rigs.