The Expanse - Syfy

A lot of the Mars bits were based on the Expanse novella "Gods of Risk",  which follows Bobbie's life on Mars after the events of Abaddon's Gate.  It was a standalone story that they adapted  in the series to hook into the overarching storyline that leads into Season 5. I really loved those Martian sets.

episode 2:

The Mars scenes are totally fun. The Draper and Avasarala encounter especially. Maybe Draper should have said yes.

What did Holden unleash? He's got to stop listening to his imaginary friend.


Meanwhile New Terra is turning into Old Mess. At least there's still sex.

I feel bad for Naomi. Her scenes of attempted adaptation are really good.

We need more Belter action on Medina (I don't like the name). I imagine it's coming.

E1:

Avasarala to Holden about the mission:  Try not to put your d*ck in this. It's f*cked enough already.

E2:

Trading Bullets for Booze, definitely an Old West motif.  What's Amos getting himself into?

Yes. I was also thinking that New Terra seems like the old American West.

MrBill60 wrote:

E1:

Avasarala to Holden about the mission:  Try not to put your d*ck in this. It's f*cked enough already.

E2:

Trading Bullets for Booze, definitely an Old West motif.  What's Amos getting himself into?

Oh, the Avasarala quotes just get better.

Avasarala commenting on her political opponent's agenda ..

So, ponies and blowjobs for everybody.

lmao.

TBC wrote:

Well, that was a hell of a ride. Was not as intense as Season 3 but still pretty edge-of-the-seat.

Some non-spoilerish stuff...

Different actor playing Chrisjen's husband and I don't like him. I don't think he did as good of a job playing the spouse of a strong character who knows how to be the foil and support for their partner. The original guy did that well, this guy just threw tantrums and acted like an asshole.

Shohreh was great as usual, this time playing Avasarala as someone doing their best in a position they neither asked for nor were well suited for.

One thing to keep in mind is that the Expanse books are set up as trilogies and S4 is the beginning of Phase 2 or the Second Act.  Like S1, there are many seemingly divergent arcs that will eventually come together in an epic collision.   Hard to imagine but I have a feeling that where we end up in S5 & 6 will be even more epic than S3.

The ninth and final book in the series should be published this summer.

I'm going to try and post an intro and setup to S4.

Here's one of the best Fan made trailers that I've ever seen ...  shows a lot but spoils very little.

MrBill60 wrote:

Avasarala commenting on her political opponent's agenda ..

So, ponies and blowjobs for everybody.

lmao.

I want that one clipped. I laughed so hard at it.

"Everyone gets a fucking pony...and a blowjob."

episode 3:

The Avasarala quote was hilarious. But I also liked: Leak it. Discretely. Her tone there was pure Avasarala.

However Amos had my favorite moments. He just waltzes through the settlement taking what he wants without a moment of fear. Also, he basically challenges murdering man (forgot his name) to a duel which Amos would likely win. However I wonder if Amos has any sympathy for the ambushed Belters. I think Amos' loyalties are with the Roci and the rest of distraction. But he'll take the sex as long as he can.

Draper is falling into a pit. I hate her opponent.

I wonder if Holden did the right thing or the wrong thing to correct the right thing or the wrong thing.

Naomi would be better off on a ship. She can still be vital there.

davidalan wrote:

episode 3:

The Avasarala quote was hilarious. But I also liked: Leak it. Discretely. Her tone there was pure Avasarala.

However Amos had my favorite moments. He just waltzes through the settlement taking what he wants without a moment of fear. Also, he basically challenges murdering man (forgot his name) to a duel which Amos would likely win. However I wonder if Amos has any sympathy for the ambushed Belters. I think Amos' loyalties are with the Roci and the rest of distraction. But he'll take the sex as long as he can.

Draper is falling into a pit. I hate her opponent.

I wonder if Holden did the right thing or the wrong thing to correct the right thing or the wrong thing.

Naomi would be better off on a ship. She can still be vital there.

Given that Amos is literally giving bullets to the Belters in exchange for drinks, I don't think he gives a shit about the mediation mission they're supposed to be on, hehe. Notice that he stayed on the ship while orbiting Earth so I think he's making up for lost time and it appears that he's quite at home in the new frontier.

Side note: That Grand Tour episode I mentioned seeing the preview for. I watched it and it was as good as advertised. Nailed it on two of the boats. Jeremy was indeed driving a PBR, that is "Patrol Boat River" in U.S. Navy parlance where they put the noun before the adjectives (my dad served on two ships of the classification Landing Ship Dock), but not an authentic one. It seems there are not any left so he built it himself from the blueprints. The original model was made by Hatteras after the Navy came to them and said "We love your 35' jet boat, and we would like to use it for riverine warfare, with the following mods. Think you can do that?" They said "Sure thing." and had the prototype ready six days later. Nothing like the prospect of money from the government to motivate people.

Richard's boat...recall I said "Biscayne Bay"...and women in strapless bikinis. It was a Scarab, a high-end speed boat. The name, written in garish red and gold letters in '80s shock font on both sides of the hull, was Razzle Dazzle, but on a night stop in Phnom Penh Jeremy and James got some paint and cunningly defaced it to read "Jizzle Drizzle". It took Richard over a day to notice as he could not see it from dockside and of course it was not visible from inside the boat. Best gag ever by the trio, IMO. And here's the killer part. They never made a point of it, but in several shots you can see on the side of the hull just below the deck line he letters "FL", four numbers, and then two more letters. Yup...A Florida registration. I totally nailed it.

James's boat was a tiny wooden thing, built in 1939, with a 4-cyl diesel engine which put out a whopping 99 HP. Yup. So while Jeremy and Richard were speeding along the top of the river on a plane there's James putting on at a stately 8 kts.

The journey actually began at the upper end of the Tonle Sap Lake, not far from Ankor Wat. They traveled the length of the lake and then down the Tonle Sap river, which is the only river in the world that reverses it's flow seasonally. In the rainy season there is so much water coming down the Mekong from upstream in China that it floods back up the Tonle Sap and into the lake. They traveled down to Phnom Penh where the entered the Mekong, crossed into Vietnam, did some ill-advised canal journeys through the delta in an attempt to avoid open ocean on the way to their destination, a bay up the coast from the mouth of the river. Hilarious and entertaining as always.

TBC, did anyone get impaled by a spear?  

Apocalypse Now was actually a book entitled Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad relocated to Vietnam. The book was set in what was then the Belgian Congo and concerns the efforts of a mining company agent to report on the affairs of a mine run by an engineer named Kurtz. Conrad wrote the book at the time when the world was becoming aware of the horrific treatment of the Congolese tribes by the Belgians. King Leopold essentially treated the entire area as his own private wealth asset and ordered his companies to exploit the resources as rapidly as possible. This resulted in the locals being essentially shanghaid into labor camps and worked to death.

Yep, i believe they shared .. "The Horror.. the horror.."

More Avasarala love.  Language, Chrisjen...language.  
*** Spoiler warning - some S4 content




They missed a couple of her best lines during the Earth / Mars conference in S2.

I have a feeling Shohreh is going to have even more fun in Season 5.

episode 4:

what a fun episode. things are definitely heating up.

avasarala goes on a tirade to holden (who she cant control) and then calmly exposes her political opponent for crimes against the state. wish she was here...

meanwhile holden and the roci have pretty much taken sides. but continental problems will make the human ones seem puny.

draper needs to kiss mars goodbye. she needs a more meaningful life.

i was ready to vote for marco's life. what a speech. while floating in zero g.

holden may not have killed the guy but amos will. just because.

About Bobbie and Mars...Remember Prax explaining the greenwall on Ganymede to Amos? About how it's a simple/complex system because it's artificial? Mars is a lot like that. Not the biological life support system but the socio-economic one. "Millions of Martians united towards a single goal". Admirable. Maybe. But Admiral Nguyen was also correct in his disdain for it because it is a load of horse shit, pardon my Avasaralan.

In order to unite an entire population towards a goal it is not enough to give them a goal and say "There it is, let's work together and get it done." The leaders need to mind-control them to a huge degree. Constant flood of propaganda? Check. You see it running in the background of every shot of Mars and Bobbie not even paying attention to it because it's just something that is always there. (Production Note: It was no problem to film Bobbie not paying attention to it because it was all added in post-production.) Ongoing existential threat? Check. Mars ain't the kind of place to raise your kids. But we can make it better than it was...better, stro... Sorry. Got hung up on my childhood in the '70s there for a second. I'm fine now. External enemy? Check in a big way.

I think the detente with Earth damaged the control over the populace as much or more than the presence of the Ring Gates did. Something that has happened many times in human history is that when peace starts to break out, the people "over there" become less of a perceived threat, folks tend to be less zealous about silencing internal dissent. And yes, they also tend to be less scrupulous. This is not to say that Mars will not be terraformed. Merely that the ones who continue it will be the ones who are doing so because they actually believe it should be done and not because they have been manipulated into doing so.

In the first episode of this season,  Drummer showed Naomi her disdain about Belters living down on the newly discovered planets and they'd turn out to be no different than the Inners.  On the other hand Naomi believes that people should have a choice.  
I'm going to agree with Drummer here.  One thing that's not really covered in the show is that Ceres and Eros are only a small portion of Belters.  There's a large population living on other asteroids that haven't been artificially spun up, like Palas, where the gravity is closer to zero.  Those Belters couldn't survive down a gravity well, so there will be those who can survive and those who can't which will cause a class division in Belter society. Eventually the super-class who can live on planets will disenfranchise the other class and most likely exploit them, making them no different than the Inners.   I think that was Drummer's point.

TBC wrote:

About Bobbie and Mars...Remember Prax explaining the greenwall on Ganymede to Amos? About how it's a simple/complex system because it's artificial? Mars is a lot like that. Not the biological life support system but the socio-economic one. "Millions of Martians united towards a single goal". Admirable. Maybe. But Admiral Nguyen was also correct in his disdain for it because it is a load of horse shit, pardon my Avasaralan.

In order to unite an entire population towards a goal it is not enough to give them a goal and say "There it is, let's work together and get it done." The leaders need to mind-control them to a  huge degree. Constant flood of propaganda? Check. You see it running in the background of every shot of Mars and Bobbie not even paying attention to it because it's just something that is always there. (Production Note: It was no problem to film Bobbie not paying attention to it because it was all added in post-production.) Ongoing existential threat? Check. Mars ain't the kind of place to raise your kids. But we can make it better than it was...better, stro... Sorry. Got hung up on my childhood in the '70s there for a second. I'm fine now. External enemy? Check in a big way.

I think the detente with Earth damaged the control over the populace as much or more than the presence of the Ring Gates did. Something that has happened many times in human history is that when peace starts to break out, the people "over there" become less of a perceived threat, folks tend to be less zealous about silencing internal dissent. And yes, they also tend to be less scrupulous. This is not to say that Mars will not be terraformed. Merely that the ones who continue it will be the ones who are doing so because they actually believe it should be done and not because they have been manipulated into doing so.  

Mars experienced what would be equivalent to a major market crash since their only investments are in Terraforming and weapons manufacturing. With the ring gates opening up to new systems, it took the wind out of that whole purpose and everyone is scrambling to find new ventures. I kind of feel sorry for Bobbie's nephew who just graduated with an engineering degree in Terraforming. Maybe he'll go to a planet that just needs a jump start. It will be interesting to see if Martians will stick it out on Mars in their 50 year terraforming program.

The temptation is to say "Why would the Martians bother to keep up with the terraforming when there are 1300 habitable worlds just on the other side of the Ring Gate?" But those worlds are each at least four months travel away, when you consider the trip out beyond Uranus, then through the gate, then once there from that system's gate hub into the inner system to the planet itself, which will likely be another long haul. This is rather the equivalent of heading across the Atlantic in a sailing ship that only does 6 kts, or walking from St. Louis to some place on the west coast with your whole family and everything you own in a Conestoga Wagon pulled by a team of oxen.

The people of Europe didn't stop building up their cities and infrastructure just because a few folks were heading for the New World. In early 19th Century America the cities along the Atlantic Seaboard didn't stop building just because folks were heading west. And there is a simple matter that all those 1300 worlds is just a number. It might as well be a million or 20, for all that it makes any difference in the near future. Humanity can not get enough people through the gates to significantly reduce the population on this side.

I think the major difference is that the early settlers left Europe due to political and religious differences, not environmental. Mars is still a lifeless rock outside of the Mariner Valley domes and underground cities. I'm sure that there will still be a large population left to stick it out and build their dream, but the Ring has definitely let the air out of its tires.

MrBill60 wrote:

I think the major difference is that the early settlers left Europe due to political and religious differences, not environmental. Mars is still a lifeless rock outside of the Mariner Valley domes and underground cities. I'm  sure that there will still be a large population left to stick it out and build their dream,  but the Ring has definitely let the air out of its tires.

The "political and religious differences" thing is vastly overrepresented. Certainly there was a lot of religious conflict in Europe in the years following Luther (my take is that many of the Electors and Princes in Germany followed his cause not because they necessarily believed that he was ecclesiastically correct but because they saw it as a way to break the complete economic, social, and political hold which the Papacy had over the HRE), but a lot of people came for opportunity because there was little to none. The Irish Potato Famine should be atop the list, but Italian Unification is another biggie. In the 1870s the Garibaldis overcame internal and external resistance to unite all of Italy into one nation, with the minuscule exception of San Marino, and include Sicily and Sardinia in the bargain. This actually caused the opening of an exit door for people who hadn't had one before under their previous regimes. All the Italian-Americans whose ancestors came here in the late-19th Century, they did so because the Ministers of the Kingdom of Italy saw the wisdom in relieving the population pressure a little. Many came to the US but many also went to Argentina, Paraguay, and Uruguay. About half the population of Uruguay have Italian last names.

Most of what we think of as "Spanish" last names, Perez, Castro, Gutierrez, etc. are actually Andalusian regional names. The Andalusia region was economically depressed in the 16th Century, particularly in the Gaudalquivir River Valley. Cadiz was the primary departure point for ships bound for the New World so it became the recruitment point for young adventurers who wanted to join the army, travel to distant lands, see new things, eat exotic foots, meet interesting people with different customs, and kill them. Then settle down on a land allotment and marry a cute young one. Of course all the gold from the New World that came back in through Cadiz went directly to Madrid, do not pass Go, do not collect 200 Pesetas de Ocho.

And that's only a small sample.

I want one!

Sign me up!

Pulls string: I AM THE FUCKING HERO WHO HELPED SAVE MOTHER EARTH!

Chrisjen Avasarala

I want her to replace Siri, lol.

I want her to replace Trump. No contest there.

Meanwhile episodes 5 & 6:

Some slow patches for me. Things improved though with the disabling of orbiting ships and the predicted wind storms and tsunami. And the people stranded on the planet oh figuring out that they might have to work together to survive. The Belters should have a counter plan to massacre the Earthers. Otherwise I won't feel to sorry for them. And what is with this eye irritation? A couple of people were experiencing it. The earther woman who yelled at Holden and the orphaned belter kid.

The Mars stuff is running dry for me. Draper should just leave.

And if Avasarala loses the election on earth she should just leave as well.

Avasarala and Draper are wasted in their respective planetary squabbles and dramas.

And Drummer needs more action. She's standing around too much.

Episode 7:

Eye irritation identified. Not good. Next confinement problem. Even worse. A mirror of the protomolecule. Trouble is that was the best part of the episode. I found the more interpersonal problems and conversations lacking. I don't think there's enough tension or urgency or meaty purpose. I still like the season though.

Episode 8:

Things definitely picked up in this episode. I was happier. Starting with Drummer's response to a long-missing Fred Johnson. That was great. I was also glad that science saved the day.

Episodes 9 & 10:

Truly great. Exciting and compelling. If these were earlier episodes though more great stuff could have been added. Amos' fightin' look in episode 10 was worth the price of admission. And of course the ballad of the singing spaceman. The fates of Avasarala and Draper---yes please. And I hope that Naomi will find some joy. But I have my doubts. Good luck to the next season.

The book, Cibola Burn, which this season is based on, takes place solely on Ilus and I really enjoyed the inclusion of Bobbie's and Avasarala's arcs which were not in the book. A lot of Bobbie's arc is covered in the novella , "Gods of Risk", but all the storylines were modified to lead into books 5 and 6 to complete the second act. I hope the series continues all the way through the final trilogy, book 9.

I might read book 5 (I did buy it afterall). I am also glad that Draper and Avasarala were included. But I wonder if the meat and bones of the Ilus Belters were diminished in the process. For the most part I had litte idea who those characters were in a narrative sense. I happened to think just now Ilus was probably named after Ilus and Ilium (ancient Troy). And if so is the implication flight in reverse? Fleeing the Belt for a new land named after an old one (as opposed to Rome). An allusion towards the idea that the Belt strives for its own identity beyond that of the Inners.

It was interesting that nothing has really changed in the power structure. The UN still dictates policy and is "babysitting" the OPA's Medina Station, the gateway to the Ring gates. I felt Drummer and Ashford's frustration at having to fire on their own ships to keep the peace and Ashford testing the limits of their authority, "Aw, give them the damn code!". Drummer has a great right hook, almost floored Fred. He deserved it for leaking Inaros' location to the Inners when they were going to handle it internally.

I really enjoyed this season, some great interpersonal stuff and love the planetscapes. Loved seeing the Martian culture. One of the moons glowing red in the Ilus sky because it was melting was especially eerie. I really enjoyed this season and the uptick on the vfx. It was pretty awesome overall.

In mythology Ilus was the son of of Troius, founder of the city, who had three other children. One was a very attractive lad named Ganymede, and you should pronounce the final "e" long, gan-uh-MEE-dee. Zeus decided that Ganymede was the most beautiful of all mortals and, taking the form of a golden eagle, bore him away to Olympus to serve as the cup bearer for the Gods. Ilus was incensed at this but Zeus placated Ilus by informing him that Ganymede was now immortal.

Plato called this story a bunch of hogwash invented by the Cretans to justify their cultural fondness for pederasty.

And then comes the folks I spent a great deal of time delving into for the benefit of the readers of the Richard III thread, the Hittites. The people who sacked Troy in actuality were not Greeks. The Elleni didn't migrate into what is now Greece until after the Bronze Age Collapse, possibly from the Pontic Steppe. The inhabitants at the time were the Mycenaean Culture. They wrote in what scholars refer to as Linear B, traded with the New Kingdom in Egypt and the city states along the southern coast of Anatolia and the Levant.

In Anatolia the inhabitants spoke a variety of closely related Indo-European languages and wrote in Cuneiform borrowed from the civilizations of the Fertile Crescent. The only significant find in the ruins of Hattusa, the Hittite capitol, was a wealth of Cuneiform tablets which baffled translators for years because they were looking for commonality with Middle Eastern languages. It was not until someone noticed the words "vasser" and "akva" on the same line, basically the German and Latin for water, they they figured our which tree they should be barking up.

The ruins of Troy sit at the southwestern entrance to the Bosporus. That, not some stolen wife, was the real reason for the sack of the city. In the 16th Century BCE a Mycenaean force attacked Troy, sacked the city, but could not hold it and so retreated eventually. The city was rebuilt, again, and continued for another couple hundred years until it was abandoned, along with a great many other cities in Anatolia in the 13th Century BCE. In the 5th Century it was rebuilt and lasted well into the Roman Era. For all their military prowess the Hittite Empire, which controlled most of Anatolia, never managed to gain sway over the west coast. Instead, it is highly possible that the seafaring people of the west coast composed at least a part of the "Sea Peoples" which raided the Levant at the beginning of the Bronze Age Collapse, and conceivably attacked and destroyed the Mycenaean and Hittite civilizations themselves.

Storytellers tell their stories. The real reason was for the Trojan war was probably position and greed.

As for Plato I just laugh at him. Most of his buddies were pederasts. Who else would offer him stimulating conversation???

I did a lot of research for the R III thread and learned a lot in the process. Went off on a tangent into Bronze Age Europe and the Middle East and the interconnectivity between cultures and ages.

One of the most valuable materials in the Bronze Age was amber. It was a hundred times as expensive as gold. The amber which was discovered among the funerary treasure of Tutanhkamun has been analyzed and determined to originate on the Baltic Coast. That discovery came as no surprise to anyone. Baltic Amber and the trade in it has been been mentioned in writings going back to the Bronze Age. The trade routes themselves were never mentioned, but it doesn't take a rocket scientist.

The Danube is a superhighway from the Black Sea into the heart of Central Europe and has been since the Mesolithic. When the earliest people who started cultivating grain in the Fertile Crescent brought the idea into Europe (along with the grains themselves) they came up the Danube, which traders had already been using for centuries.

Georgia was a likely source of gold in the Bronze Age. That's the location of the home of the fabled Golden Fleece that Jason and the Argonauts traveled to. After the collapse of the Western Empire the Eastern (Which never called itself "Byzantine", that was the invention of a 18th Century German academician), which just kept using the name Roman Empire, added Georgia to it's realm and established the first trade with China. As for the fleece itself, there might be some fact in that.

Not sure how viable this is, but it's a method that sure beats spending all day knee-deep in a cold stream with a pan in your hands. Kill a sheep, skin it, and tie the pelt down in a stream where there is alluvial gold. Then disturb the silt upstream from the pelt. A lot. You want the sediments to flow over the pelt. So maybe you want several pelts strung across the stream bed. maybe you take your horses and have a game of creek polo, something. Just get the silt stirred up. Supposedly the heavier gold will get caught in the wool while the lighter silt will get rinsed through. Neat if it works. As for how to get the gold out, that's simple. Let the pelt dry out and then burn it. Flat rock somewhere, start a bonfire, toss on all your pelts, burn everything down to ash, sweep up all the ash, dump everything into a pot, add water, stir, pour out some of the water, rinse, repeat, the gold will be the heaviest thing there.

All that and a lot more trade good were coming through the Bosporus into the Med and heading the other way. That is what made Troy a strategically important city. But the Hittites controlled the other end, so they didn't need to capture Troy, really.

Might work...

Some more Drummer love (and Ashford). Heavy S4 spoilers.

Drummer is the greatest.

More Expanse love ..

That was fun.

i love that they included Mei in there. She's a little badass, herself, with the shin kicking.. lol.

Yes. There were some unexpected appearances by quite a few women of various ages. The Drummer revenge scene was of course my favorite.

This guy does a pretty entertaining in-depth analysis of our favorite characters ...  

Amos and Drummer are the best.

The Expanse cast are hosting an online panel on Season 5 at NYCC on Thurs, Oct 8 @ 5:10 PM EST.  Hopefully they'll be airing a trailer.

https://youtu.be/PnWsUCd5Cok

The Season 5 trailer has been released!