The Expanse digital premiere is available NOW!

[The Wormhole]

Too bad that we have to wait until 2017 for it. - http://tvline.com/2015/12/31/expanse-renewed-season-2-syfy/

They say "Early 2017." I suspect they may hold off until next January to begin it, after the holidays are over. Which makes a lot more sense than premiering it eleven days prior to Christmas.

 

[Shawnster]

Do you want your gun to send you flying backwards when you shoot it?

A bullet has a mass of, oh, maybe 9-10 grams, while an adult person in a spacesuit might mass 90-100 kilograms. That means the shooter would be accelerated 1/10,000th as much as the bullet -- hardly "flying backwards." And again, if you weren't in an environment where you could be sure of accessible hand and footholds (say, a cavern in an asteroid, maybe), then you probably would be using some kind of maneuvering thruster unit, which gives you far more versatility than slogging along with your feet stuck to the walls.

Christopher, I'm really with you on most of your points. I admit I've not researched these aspects like you have. I especially understand what you're saying about the aluminum hulls and lack of magnetic attraction for boots.

However, even with my lack of research and knowledge, I think you're making a mistake with this point about bullets. The point isn't the amount of mass a bullet has. The point is the amount of recoil caused by the firing of the bullet. Even here on Earth there are some guns that can cause quite a bit of recoil.

In a weightless environment, wouldn't the recoil of the gun cause the shooter to propel backward at a rate similar to the rate the bullet is leaving the gun? Wouldn't firing multiple bullets increase the velocity of a shooter in a weightless environment?

 

[JD]

I think this one was my favorite episode so far. The big battle with Donnager and the mystery ship was great. It was very different from the Star Trek or Star Wars style fast paced battles, but it was really well done. I was shocked by Shed's death, I haven't gotten that far into the book yet so I was not expecting it.
We got some interesting new developments in the Julie Mao case.
I was really happy to see that Havelok was still alive.
Avasarala's story was pretty good to. I missed what exactly she did during the card game while though.

 

[tenmei]

I guess I have twelve months to read book two then - after getting two, three and four off my best mate for Christmas!

 

[Star Wolf]

Spoiler: In response to above.

Alex didn't get his commission restored. They just treated him better as an honorably discharged veteran.

If his commission wasn't restored, why is he wearing a uniform?

Spoiler: details up to episode 4

I take it the show doesn't have any military experts? Not that there's anything seriously amiss about how military is presented in the show, but the rank insignia on the uniforms does bother. Or in the case of the UN Admiral, lack thereof. But what really gets me is the use of chevrons for the officers in the Martian Navy. It makes them look like enlisted personnel. Hell, at a glance one would think Donnager's captain was a sergeant and Lopez a corporal.

Why do you think they must use the same insignia used today? They are 2 centuries in the future and are from a different planet.

But they are using modern day Earth military insignia, except they're using enlisted insignia for officers.

And besides, since the Donnager is described as the "Martian flagship" I'll assume their captain is an actual O6 Captain by rank, which is universally on Earth represented with four stripes. Sure Mars is a different planet, but they originate from Earth. So, being on a different planet means changing stripes to chevrons, and knocking one off the insignia for Captain.

I see the Martian Navy also uses the civilian definition of the word "flagship" just like Starfleet does as opposed to the proper military definition. Though this problem existed in the book, too.

There is the general four stripes for a commercial ship or airliner captains which is also used by many Naval services. However until rank inflation hit, like giving US Generals 5 stars to match British Field Marshals in WWII, most ship captains were not an O6 "Captain" best ship in the specific nation's fleet or not. Many a LT or LT Commander has commanded their nation's best ship and many a Commander has served as a squadron Commodore throughout our history

While the US, uses a non standard international code for insignia with changing colors and an eagles there is also the generally used world standard for military officers with two different insignia items for junior and field grade or senior not general/admiral level officers. One pip/bar/crown/stripe... makes you en Ensign/2nd LT, two a 1st LT/LT Junior Grade, three a Captain/naval services LT. Then some other kind of insignia one is a Major/LT CMDR, two LT Col/Commander, three Colonel/naval Captain

 

[RAMA]

Season 2 of The Expanse and a new ST show in January...amazing time for space shows.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

Watched the first episode. Love the visual design and the realism. I'm not as big on the characters so far and the BSG level cynicism. We'll see how the series plays out. If it continues to be about futuristic class warfare and corporate greed I'll get through it but probably very slowly. Though I might try to catch up before Tuesday.

Edit: Episode 2 still seems to be the kind of show where everybody is at everybody else's throat all the time.

 

[Hyperspace05]

A very cool behind-the-scenes video about episode 4 (DON'T watch until caught up), with quick cast comments, and it also shows the massive amount of work they do for Zero-G scenes:

[yt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gm09qi0vGcc[/yt]

 

[Teelie]

New episode tonight. Looking forward to it. SyFy has finally found some good science fiction programming to put on again (along with Dark Matter and Killjoys).

 

[Hyperspace05]

New episode tonight. Looking forward to it. SyFy has finally found some good science fiction programming to put on again (along with Dark Matter and Killjoys).

Yep! While 'The Expanse' is my favorite, I really do like 'Dark Matter' and 'Killjoys' as well. They are both fun!

 

[sojourner]

I am enjoying this show immensely. The hour just seems to fly by I am so taken in. By contrast, I watched the Shannara 2 hour premiere tonight and it felt like it was about 6 hours long. I kept waiting for something to happen.

 

[Hyperspace05]

The 5th episode was great... Not a lot of action - but lots of character moments. The naming of the ship scene was perhaps the best, but that is perhaps because I have read the books. The board is set, introductions are now over.

It's also nice to see that Millers plot (on Ceres) is progressing.

 

[Mr Light]

I would be enjoying this show more if it wasn't so relentlessly grimdark. Even BSG had goofy Baltar in it... Personally I get tired of sci-fi shows entirely lacking in humor or joy.

I was a little confused, what was the point of the entire flashback subplot about a ship of poor people getting killed? Just to establish the new villain who fragged the ship?

 

[Corran Horn]

I was a little confused, what was the point of the entire flashback subplot about a ship of poor people getting killed? Just to establish the new villain who fragged the ship?

Having read the books and not wanting to spoiler too much - yes, basically.

 

[Arrrrgggh]

I would be enjoying this show more if it wasn't so relentlessly grimdark. Even BSG had goofy Baltar in it... Personally I get tired of sci-fi shows entirely lacking in humor or joy.

Doesn't help when they wash out the colors, too. That and the constant griminess just really makes watching the show a chore.

 

[KGator]

Hmm... I wish I were more excited about this. Seeing a genuine hard-SF space show on TV is remarkable. I like the realistic approach to space and ships and physics, and there are some nifty touches like the bird on Ceres flapping its wings so infrequently -- although there are other annoying concessions to being filmed on Earth, like the silly trope of people using magnetic boots to walk around (which is enormously less efficient than just floating). And for once we get an explosion in space that doesn't look like a fiery liquid-fuel explosion in an atmosphere -- although they still cheated by making the nuclear blast endure far longer than it really would in vacuum. Without an atmosphere to heat to incandescence, the flash would be over in a split second.

The setting reminds me a lot of my own Only Superhuman -- the focus on an Asteroid Belt culture centered around Ceres, with Earth and Luna combined under the UN or equivalent and Mars as a separate sovereign nation. (Although I resisted the standard SF trope of treating "the Belters" -- or Striders, in my case -- as a single monolithic culture, instead making them a variety of competing subcultures.) So I wanted to like this.

But I'm afraid I don't find it very engaging. Too much of it is stuff we've seen many times before -- a society on the brink of war, ruthless corporations and wage slaves, corrupt cops, your typical dystopian stuff. Virtually no sympathetic characters; the only decent thing anyone did was Holden undeleting the distress call, and that was something he did reluctantly. So far, they haven't given me much reason to care about any of these characters. And the casting department did not do well on the diversity front.

Absolutely! Goodness, not another cable network, sci-fi, TV show about human colonization in the asteroid belt and mars that has decent acting and quality visuals. Sheesh . . if I had a dollar for all these sci-fi shows . . .

As for diversity, I assume you meant to say . . . "What is with this cast???" Just look at the actors listed on IMDB: a Persian man, a Dominican woman, an African american man, a Persian woman, a Greek/Egyptian woman, a couple of half Italian men, a French/thai girl, a hispanic man, a Korean woman, etc, etc. You must be beside yourself screaming "Where's all the White People at!!!!"

 

[Hyperspace05]

Yeah, saying that "the casting department did not do well on the diversity front" has to be Class A trolling at this point. Nothing could be further from the truth.

 

[Skywalker]

Honestly, I like the griminess and grittiness. If we ever do colonize the Solar System it's probably going to look more like The Expanse than Star Trek.

 

[Arrrrgggh]

Nah, I'm pretty sure we'll still have full color once we do.

 

[The Wormhole]

I don't know, I wasn't completely enthused with this week's episode. Of course, I did have a long day and watched this episode when I would have rather been in bed, so that may have been a factor. But it just felt like a retread of the second episode, Holden and his crew are stuck adrift and need to make an important decision regarding their next move while Miller learns more about Julie Mao. It doesn't help matters much that aside from Miller's storyline and embellishing things with Fred Johnson's flashback, this episode is largely an accurate retelling of the novel so there really isn't much new at all.

I don't know, maybe I should rewatch it when I'm fully awake, but this wasn't very impressive this week at all. Or maybe this was inevitable coming in after a massive space battle.