The Expanse season 2
- Thread starter RAMA
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^Good points but I suspect the people on the ISS generally avoid being messy but still have to do a lot of cleaning.
My intuition is that accumulated food and drink detritus over the long term would lead to insanitary living conditions unless one were prepared to do a lot of deep cleaning but perhaps advanced tech (materials and robotics) could help alleviate such problems. In any case, you'd get accumulations of fibres, sweat, saliva, hair, dead skin cells and other crud so cleaning is unavoidable. There's a passage in one of the books where Naomi has to clean the deck manually on a Belter ship but I guess that's inevitable given they're the poor, exploited worker class of humans in the Solar System and likely don't have the spare cash to buy advanced tech solutions.
I believe that's part of the point about keeping the air filters clean: random floating debris (not just food, but also biowaste and dust) get sucked into those filters to keep it from floating into people's lungs whenever the ship's not under thrust. Thrust ITSELF has the effect of pulling things to the deck and then it's easier to just mop the floors and clean up, but in freefall anything you leave floating around is getting sucked into the filters eventually.
So cleaning the FILTERS regularly is going to be a pretty important task since, if the filters get clogged, everyone suffocates and dies.
Well think about it: floors and decks have to be cleaned regularly because gravity pulls debris down to the ground with enough force to make it STICK to those surfaces, and that's also where most people's feet (and shoes) are most of the time. On the other hand, how many people actually deep clean their walls and ceilings on a regular basis? Unless you have kids who've just discovered the joys of crayons, you probably don't clean your walls but once or twice a year, if that. And on a space ship without thrust gravity, there is no longer a "floor," just six directions of walls.
Even today, one can buy robotic vacuum cleaners. I'm assume they suck just as much as if not more than the one that Captain Beefheart supposedly tried to sell to Aldous Huxley back in the 60s. I'm surprised there aren't more robots and remotely operated waldoes around in The Expanse. Manual labour with its life-support requirements still appears to be a thing.
Sometimes the incongruity between the good science of this show's concepts and the bad science of their execution really gets on my nerves. Good: Alex using a convoluted gravity-assist maneuver around Jupiter's moons to get to Ganymede without using engines. Bad: portraying it as a roller-coaster ride taking only seconds to swoop between moons that are almost right next to each other. The bodies in question are hundreds of thousands of kilometers apart, so that trajectory would be a few million km long and would probably take a week or more to complete.
Also, that shot of the Rocinante ducking behind that one moon to avoid the Martian cruiser had a huge problem of scale. The moon looked no bigger relative to the Roci than Tycho Station did in earlier episodes. But it was spherical and icy white, so it pretty much had to be Europa, which is over 3000 kilometers across, nearly as big as Earth's Moon.
I'm also not crazy about the trend this show is taking toward torture porn. I hated the bit where Holden said that he was fine with bashing skulls in if it stopped the protomolecule and saved more lives. That's based on the dangerous and evil lie that torture actually works in the first place, that it actually would save lives and can therefore be justified in extreme cases -- which is really not the case, as most interrogation experts agree that torture actually makes it harder to get reliable intelligence from people. Okay, granted, they seem to be showing that Holden is losing his way and going to a dark place, so maybe that's the intent. But we saw the same implied attitude toward torture again when Bobbi beat her superior into a confession and it actually worked. I was refreshed some weeks back when they got intelligence out of that protomolecule researcher (Cortazar?) by relating to him and giving him an incentive to open up rather than trying to threaten or beat it out of him; that was smart and realistic, as well as ethically preferable. But now they're falling back on the lazy, corrupt cliche that violence works as a means of interrogation.
Then again, what I would've preferred to see was something where Bobbi talked her superior into confessing through the strength of her argument or by engaging with him emotionally enough to induce some sense of guilt or sympathy, or something like that -- but I don't think the actress is strong or charismatic enough to have pulled off a scene like that. Violence is the recourse of the weak and stupid; it takes real strength to change people's minds through conversation alone. I can buy that sort of strength from Shohreh Aghdashloo, but not from Frankie Adams.
I'm wondering about the cast credits. The actors who played the members of Bobbi's now-deceased squad were credited, even though I don't think their faces or voices appeared in any of the playback footage of the Ganymede attack. Between them and Florence Faivre, this show gives lots of credits to people who aren't in the episodes.
Also, that shot of the Rocinante ducking behind that one moon to avoid the Martian cruiser had a huge problem of scale. The moon looked no bigger relative to the Roci than Tycho Station did in earlier episodes. But it was spherical and icy white, so it pretty much had to be Europa, which is over 3000 kilometers across, nearly as big as Earth's Moon.
I'm also not crazy about the trend this show is taking toward torture porn. I hated the bit where Holden said that he was fine with bashing skulls in if it stopped the protomolecule and saved more lives. That's based on the dangerous and evil lie that torture actually works in the first place, that it actually would save lives and can therefore be justified in extreme cases -- which is really not the case, as most interrogation experts agree that torture actually makes it harder to get reliable intelligence from people. Okay, granted, they seem to be showing that Holden is losing his way and going to a dark place, so maybe that's the intent. But we saw the same implied attitude toward torture again when Bobbi beat her superior into a confession and it actually worked. I was refreshed some weeks back when they got intelligence out of that protomolecule researcher (Cortazar?) by relating to him and giving him an incentive to open up rather than trying to threaten or beat it out of him; that was smart and realistic, as well as ethically preferable. But now they're falling back on the lazy, corrupt cliche that violence works as a means of interrogation.
Then again, what I would've preferred to see was something where Bobbi talked her superior into confessing through the strength of her argument or by engaging with him emotionally enough to induce some sense of guilt or sympathy, or something like that -- but I don't think the actress is strong or charismatic enough to have pulled off a scene like that. Violence is the recourse of the weak and stupid; it takes real strength to change people's minds through conversation alone. I can buy that sort of strength from Shohreh Aghdashloo, but not from Frankie Adams.
I'm wondering about the cast credits. The actors who played the members of Bobbi's now-deceased squad were credited, even though I don't think their faces or voices appeared in any of the playback footage of the Ganymede attack. Between them and Florence Faivre, this show gives lots of credits to people who aren't in the episodes.
^Holden's persona becoming darker and more violent is also a theme of the books.
That's EXACTLY the intent. He's been on the downward spiral since Eros, which includes torpedoing the Erasmus and now this mission to Ganymede. He's sliding into a darker place than he's been before and Naomi's actually called him on it more than once. If they're on the same trajectory in the novels, he's going to have one of those "fuck this, I'm going legit!" moments after Ganymede, which sets up a totally different character arc for Abbadon's Gate.
Yeah, that was mostly bullshit, but I have to admit any attempt to play up what a hulking badass Bobby Draper is really works for me, miss "I don't use sex as a weapon. I use weapons as weapons!" If anyone can beat a confession out of a sniveling little weasel covering his own ass, it's her.
The thing I don't like is having Captain Martens be the asshole in this, though. In the novels that role is specifically given to Thorssen, and she doesn't beat a confession out of him so much as quietly tell him to go fuck himself and disappear.
She's a marine, not a psychologist.
As coming episodes will probably demonstrate, violence employed by the strong and intelligent tends to be pretty effective as well. At least, you're probably not going to convince the Protomolecule to stop eating people by dazzling it with a superior argument or engaging with it emotionally.
I mean, you SORT OF can, but that only works so well.
This.
As for Bobbi, well, they've taken her story in such a weird direction relative to where it was in the novel that this felt very much like plot gymnastics to justify where she goes next. It doesn't really make all that much sense, but it gets things over quickly so we can move on.
I haven't seen season 2 yet but It sounds like I won't like some of the liberties that they've taken with the characters and plot despite the nice onscreen SFX eye candy. I finished all of the six currently available novels a while ago so I guess I might as well start reading the short stories/novellas.
Well, that's discouraging.
It's a journey that requires him to realise he's in a downward spiral, its effect on others, and that he must take control. It's not a totally convincing storyline to me but then I haven't experienced human viciousness and nearly being killed in the several ways that he has.
I'm not so much concerned with the character motivation or destination as with my ability to enjoy watching this show. At this point, I'm basically only continuing to watch because of the novelty of having a TV show that at least tries to portray outer space in a way that isn't complete fantasy, even if it gets a lot of the details wrong. Hard SF on TV is so vanishingly rare that I feel a certain obligation to support it.
While I wait for season 2 to appear on Netflix, I've been rewatching season 1. However, I find it doesn't have the rewatchability of other series that I like. It lacks that certain quality that would make me want to invest my time in immersing myself further in its world -- unlike TOS or B5 -- mind you, I was much younger when I watched those and I had more of my remaining time to burn.
Apart from Leviathan, I found it difficult initially to see how the book titles relate to the stories. However, I found this online:
Babylon -- ancient city, once the largest on Earth, often used as a symbol of power, wealth and decadence -- I won't spoil it further.
Apart from Leviathan, I found it difficult initially to see how the book titles relate to the stories. However, I found this online:
https://www.reddit.com/r/TheExpanse/comments/3d72tx/what_do_the_names_of_each_book_mean/ -- don't follow the link if you don't want to be spoiled.
Babylon -- ancient city, once the largest on Earth, often used as a symbol of power, wealth and decadence -- I won't spoil it further.
Don't worry about them -- they're not expendable like Shed -- at least not in books 1-6.
Yeah, I think that has been very well portrayed in the series. They clearly start out meaning to do the right thing, but circumstances and tough choices have pushed them, but particularly Holden, to a darker place.
I found it to be believable. Martens wasn't going to be talked into a confession. Too much on the line. Bobby beating the crap out of him and him sniveling felt believable.
The real world shows that violence and force are often effective, sometime even more so than a well-reasoned argument. That's life. Now, an intelligent use of force might be the most effective combination. Although I agree that using reason for persuasion is preferable, that's just not always going to occur. It can also make for poor drama if the characters only talk each other into changing positions. Some of that is fine but not all.
My complaint about the last few episodes is that the pace of storytelling has really slowed down. Before, the episodes were intense, moved the story along, and really made the TV series feel special. The last few episodes have seemed like normal TV to me.
Regarding that, I ran across this post by Naren Shankar. It's an interesting read and shows they are aware of the problem(s).
http://www.danielabraham.com/2017/04/04/guest-post-losing-science-drama-finding-drama-science/There's also a followup thread on Reddit if interested: https://www.reddit.com/r/TheExpanse/comments/63hhwa/spoilers_a_preapology_from_us/
Thanks for posting that. It was a great read. Glad to see they're taking it so seriously as to consider space a character. That's difficult and sometime impossible to achieve!Regarding that, I ran across this post by Naren Shankar. It's an interesting read and shows they are aware of the problem(s).
There's also a followup thread on Reddit if interested: https://www.reddit.com/r/TheExpanse/comments/63hhwa/spoilers_a_preapology_from_us/
No, it isn't, not in this case. As I said, the vast majority of interrogation experts agree that torture is ineffective as a means of extracting reliable intelligence. Either people will lie and say whatever they think you want to hear in order to get the pain to stop, or the stress of the torture will actually impair their memory and mental clarity. The Bush-Cheney administration's adoption of torture after 9/11 was roundly condemned by intelligence experts, not only because it's a war crime and a violation of international law and moral standards, but because it objectively does not work the way it's portrayed to work in TV and movies. Expert interrogators agree that the best way to get truthful and accurate intelligence is through engagement and positive incentives, making the subject want to cooperate and see you as an ally rather than an enemy or a threat.
I'm sorry, that sounds like a contradiction in terms to me. I find a lot more drama in an interaction driven by competing ideas and emotions than there is in a merely physical confrontation. I consider the latter to be more "action" than "drama."
I really don't understand what Captain Martens's job is at this point. When he's first introduced he's recognized by Bobbi based on some decoration on his uniform as a chaplain, which he confirms. Since then, everything he does is outside the job description for a chaplain, including in this episode where he's getting live updates of an active black ops mission as its happening, to say nothing of him being the keeper of classified intel involving the protomolecule and is apparently a driving force behind getting a sample of it for Mars, and might even be connected to the stuff on Ganymede. Okay, I get it, you can't really make a religious official exciting in an action setting, even one who is also a military officer, but why did they even establish him as a chaplain if that part of the character is not relevant at all? Hell, he could have just been any old Martian officer and a friend of the Draper family and it would probably make a lot more sense at the moment.
or maybe he's not a chaplain at all but as chaplain is the sort of person people often open up to after bad experiences pretending to be one could get him further with Bobbi than a plain old superior office.
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