The Expanse

The Expanse is a sci-fi series that takes place hundreds of years in the future where humanity has colonized the solar system and where Mars has become an independent military power. Tensions between Earth and Mars have put them at the brink of war. It follows a space ship and it's crew as the race through the solar system exposing one of the greatest conspiracy theories in human history. I never watched this show while it was on cable but finally started watching it once Amazon Prime Video picked it up. I just heard so many great things about it and how it was one the best sci-fi shows ever created. I'm glad I finally gave in and watched it because I couldn't agree more...this is one of the better sci-fi shows I've ever seen! I'm so glad Amazon picked it up and continued the show. It got even better at Amazon because they gave them a bigger budget. It just finished the last season and ended on a great note. People are talking about a follow up movie so maybe there's still more to come. We can only hope!

This is possibly (probably) the best television or even cinematic experience I have ever seen (particularly in the sci-fi realm). I am very stingy when it comes to TV shows since I feel that often they are inconsistently realized. I created an IMDB account just to drop a review for this one.

I just finished an episode in season 2 that made me cry and just stare at the credits for 2 minutes, motionless. No other show has ever so consistently provided the following for me:

• Non-stop realistic character development and exposition
• emotional gravity and consequences; every action has a reaction and every single second of seemingly unimportant exposure or backstory is relevant to building character and stakes in the story. No fluff here.
• a real and believable world with new thoughts and a reason for everything
• delivered creative, thoughtful, new ideas and plot points which make me question the nature of life and humanity
• great acting from all levels of character

This series reminds a lot of the video game series Mass Effect but with even more consistency and thoughtful execution. Don't miss this, very much underrated in my opinion.

Enthralling series: intelligent, intriguing and action-packed. 9/10

(Updated after Season 6).

Hundreds of years into the future, Earth has colonised Mars but Mars is now independent, and the two planets are in a constant state of distrust and unease. Caught between these two are the people of the asteroid belt and outer planets. James Holden, the executive officer of a freighter witnesses his ship, being destroyed by what appears to be a Martian warship. This heightens the tensions between Earth and Mars and sets Holden and his remaining crew on a quest across the galaxy to find the truth behind the incident. Meanwhile, on Ceres in the Asteroid Belt, a police detective is searching for the daughter of the wealthiest man in the galaxy. These are all parts of a conspiracy that that will threaten life in the Solar System.

Brilliant. I am not a huge fan of sci fi series (Firefly was the notable exception): they tend to rely too much on gimmicky inventions and faux science, at the expense of plot. The Expanse is different: the science and future history are incredibly believable. I'm no physicist but I found it difficult to fault the physics and technology involved. More than that, the futuristic nature of the series provides the background, not the story, so the series does not rely on it.

What the series does rely on is plot, and it is a great one. Starts out pretty slowly, so doesn't immediately pull you in, but after three episodes or so it is off to the races. The seemingly-parallel stories start to intersect, things start to make more sense (though, thankfully, not so much that the mystery disappears), the characters become more interesting and the action ramps up.

The story is then intelligently developed over the following seasons. Despite the many twists and turns, the plot remains solid, with no twists for twists sake and everything fits together very well. Even when one mystery is solved, another emerges to take its place, without feeling gratuitous.

Quite grittily told too: no characters are unexpendable, making the plot quite unpredictable.

Superb special effects and action scenes. The CGI is absolutely seamless and realistic, without being too ostentatious. Like the science, the CGI is the medium, not the message.

Performances are where the series does feel a bit lacking. The main characters - the crew of the Rocinante - are reasonably well played, though there are no stand-out performances. Some of the lesser characters are quite badly played though, with the worst culprits being Shohreh Aghdashloo as Chrisjen Avasarala and Shawn Doyle as Sadavir Enright. Any scene they were in made me cringe, with Aghdashloo being particularly irritating. She wasn't helped by her character being pretty badly drawn, with the worst dialogue and most grating mannerisms of any character in the series. The two factors - the character and her performance - just compounded each other.

The lack of character depth is a general weakness in the show too. The series is about the intrigue and action, much more than the people and their relationships, making character engagement less than complete (unlike Firefly, which was highly engaging because of the characters and their interactions).

This is a minor flaw though, as the plot and its roller-coaster momentum propel the show.

Amazingly, after five seasons, the series managed to get better. Most shows would be running out of ideas at that point but The Expanse managed to stay fresh and innovative. Season 5 is actually the best season of the lot, which says a lot. The show moves from our heroes vs weird science to a good old fashioned good guys vs bad guys war.

After the brilliance of S5 I was expecting great things from Season 6. Everything was set up for a great, climactic finale. While it isn't bad, S6 feels padded and unfocussed, like the writers didn't know to end it and/or didn't have enough material for a complete season.

Best evidence of this is the girl with dead bird sub-plot that takes up the first 5-10 minutes of every episode. This was totally pointless and was just there to take up space.

Even when things get wrapped up it's sometimes in clumsy fashion: tight situations that get resolved by some out-of-the-blue force or a technology that nobody knew existed before. Between the slow, meaningless girl with dead bird sub-plot and the action scenes that sometimes get resolved in quick, out-of-the-blue fashion, the pacing is jarring in its inconsistency. The writing in S6 is definitely looser than the rest of the series making S6 the weakest of all the seasons.

Season ratings: S1-4 9/10, S5 10/10, S6 7/10.

OMG I love this show. I've seen up through S02E03 on Amazon Prime.

I only gave it a 9 because I don't like to give anything a 10.

Others have gone into good detail of what is good about this show so I'll just add some bullet points that I didn't see covered (although with 250+ reviews I probably just missed 'em)

In no particular order other than stream-of-consciousness:

* Detailed, realistic science fiction * Space behaves like, well, space * Gravity. They did a stellar job with gravity. It isn't perfect. But they emphasize realistic ways to simulate gravity (ships under continuous acceleration, spinning, ring-shaped space stations). And they shut gravity off when appropriate. * Space ship battles are incredibly thoughtfully designed, with an eye for small details. They pump the air out of the ship before a battle, for goodness' sake. I can't think of *any* other scifi space show that goes into these details * Consistency. Characters act consistently. Environments act consistently. * Details. So many details! Mag boots. Ship maneuvers. technology such as computer/handheld devices. All so believable. * Mormons! There are mormons, because, of course there are. And they aren't even the bad guys! (I only state it this way because too often, mysterious religious groups are used as hollywood shorthand for "bad guys"). The presence of Mormons just enriches the worldbuilding. * I love the fact that Eros station just looks like a giant potato with a porthole on its butt. It isn't polished. It isn't flashy. It's grimy and utilitarian. * I love that every move made by a spaceship has corresponding thrusters pushing it in that direction. The space ships do not fly like fighter jets, like they do in other typical sci fi shows. They fly like rocks. * I love the fact that space craft tracking screens look like legitimate space object tracking screens, with curved, mathematically drawn projected trajectories.

I can't gush enough about the "hard" sci-fi elements. I haven't even gushed about the production yet:

* Story is detailed, in-depth, and engaging. It's basically a political/war drama, but it is very well written. * Acting is great. Seriously. Even the throwaway characters are great. * Anyone can die at any time. Very Game-of-Thrones-y in this regard, in a good way. Builds tension very realistically. * Costumes, sets, graphics, cinematography are all excellent

Star Trek. I used to like Star Trek. Have you seen Star Trek Beyond (2016) though? That was terrible. Everything that is done wrong in Star Trek Beyond is done correctly in The Expanse. In fact, I'm not sure I can watch any Star Trek show or movie again after The Expanse.

Ultimately The Expanse feels like a combination of Battlestar Galactica (2005 one) and Firefly, more than any other series I can think of.

Starts a little slow but builds a whole believable universe. And WHAT a universe it is. Rarely does one come across characters and worlds with so much depth. Cannot recommend this show enough.