The Expanse (2015)

Another Sci-Fi show purporting humanity to be "hundreds" of years in the future and the only really new tech seems to be spaceships, see-through smartphones and ... nothing. People are still running around with guns, having surgeries with Y2K tech, working manual labor, believing in gods and living in a class-based society.

Where are the statis pods? The quantum computers? The nanotech and AI? The bionic implants and posthumans?

And what would a Sci-Fi show be without some good ol' romance between the main characters? Or a protagonist who was level-headed for half a season and then just loses his marbles to start shooting everything?
Can't do without that!

The fantastic imagery aside, the story isn't gripping and the world is boring. It's been repeated too many times.

If you're having a hard time to sleep and your sleeping pills don't work, you gotta try this TV show. It will work with 100%.

I was told that it's a great TV show, a bit slow, but would get better and to not give up… So I started watching it and episodes were very dull. I was dragging with it. So shallow, so dull, so boring... None of the characters seem to be interesting. Same can be said about plot. Episodes were so dull that I was almost falling asleep. They were so uninteresting that I didn't even remember them. Production seemed cheap too with the same locations… It felt like that whole show was shot in one room.

I tried to not give up, I tried it hard and made it to whole one season, but now I'm giving up to continue watching this crap show & I regret that I wasted my precious time on it. And I'm not one of those people who dislike SCI-FI. I liked Prometheus a lot, I liked Alien a lot and I like some good SCI-FI movies, but this TV show isn't definitely of them.

The Expanse is an adaptation of a series of novels by James S. A. Corey, the pen name of the two authors who co-write the book series.

This series adheres to the books quite well, though it isn't one-novel-per-episode, more like one novel per season.

All of that aside, this is an excellent series. The characters are believable in their setting of a mostly-corporate-controlled future. The pacing is a bit iffy in the first few episodes, but by and large it isn't a problem and it does get better a few episodes in.

The setting is this:

There's Earth, whose government is torn with some seeking to control or best the government of Mars and the emerging government of the Belt.

There's Mars, who consider themselves pretty autonomous (and they are), and who are bent upon a generations-long project to terraform Mars so that men don't have to live under domes.

There's the Belt, which basically includes people in the asteroid belt and beyond.

If that amount of political upheaval isn't enough, something new is coming...

Let me just say this: read the books instead, but watch the show immediately afterwards? The production was beset by issues, dropped by SyFy and picked up by Amazon, then a key actor committed assault and the show was diverged to adapt for his absence, and when the Amazon bucks ran out the last season collapsed without delivering. The source material is great, vast geopolitical space opera with a micro lens through political intrigue, detective stories and the established trope of a tiny ship's crew falling in over their heads. Besides the production issues, I found that while the rest of the cast was excellent, Holden's character was played poorly, and his development didn't really come across without knowledge of the books. While the plot suffers from the production constraints, the story still feels exciting and it's fun to puzzle out which patois the Belter lingo is borrowing from at any given time. I can only wish they had a few more seasons to work with, but that's television as a medium...

**One of the best Sci-Fi shows ever made!**

Oye! First time viewer? Make sure to make it to the episode 4 "CQB".

About the books: Yes, they are fantastic. The show is also fantastic. It's okay to like both even if they aren't the same.

A note on other reviews here: I'm surprised by all of the negativity in the other reviews considering how overwhelmingly positive the show has been received and reviewed on other sites. As Beltalowda say, Xetamang tili du xeta.

I'm going to be intentionally vague here:
There are several elements at play in the show. One arc of the first season focuses on the mystery of a missing person and a detective's journey finding out what happened to her. The second focuses on who's responsible for a ship that was destroyed. A third focuses on a dangerous and valuable substance that was found, and a fourth that focuses on the political climate of the solar system while certain events trigger tension between Earth, Mars, and The Belt.

The first and second mysteries are solved in the first season, but the rest evolve and grow throughout the rest of the series. The series has a diverse cast of strong characters without resorting to the usual lazy denigration that other series' and movies have latched onto lately. There's just enough attention to scientific detail to make the show feel grounded (thrusters on the back of turrets to counter rotation while firing), while still leaving enough to the imagination to be awe inspiring. There's a depth to The Expanse's universe that is intoxicating.

The Belter Creole language made by a linguist that you can actually learn on memrise (yes, really) illustrates this perfectly.

Oyedeng!