Television

Love this show and the books, especially the audiobooks narrated perfectly by Jefferson Mays. If you haven't checked out the books, you're missing out on some of the best sci-fi in ages. I love that they are set in a very unique time period in the future that we don't see a lot of: earth has colonized the solar system but interstellar travel is not possible. No warp drive or hyperspace. That means traveling from one planet to another can take months.

The show does such a great job of showing and explaining accurate space physics. No artificial gravity. You want gravity? Best we can do is engine-generated thrust.

All the characters have great arcs too. I was sad that the final three books were never adapted, but the way the books were written means that they can easily finish the series with a movie trilogy if they want.

James SA Corey started a new sci-fi series I am digging so far, The Captives War. VERY different from The Expanse but still fascinating

The expanse is one of the best space shows I've seen.

It's as good as advertised. The adaptation of book 2 (S2E6-S3E6) is still my favorite season of television ever. The character of Camina Drummer is also one of those wild TV adaptation stories where the new writing and the actor were so good that they had to keep bringing her back.

I'm okay with where the series ended--even successful shows these days aren't likely to get full adaptations--but the shortened final season still makes me sad. It's even shorter than it looks on paper, too, as part of the runtime includes one of the novella plots, which only serves to set up a future storyline. Maybe they'll pay that off eventually with a new production, but it's awkward as hell in hindsight.

They made my boy Holden into a shit bag for the show. Like total fuck stick. Book Holden is much more realistic.

James fucking Holden!

i could have watched an entire show just about Mars. i loved that worldbuilding.

a fantastic show. if you like sci-fi and political drama, it's a must watch.

If only Amazon didn't need to waste a billion dollars on a failed LotR series.

Oh yes. Loved the books. Still trying to get my hands in the complete blu-ray box.

Book 4 was a difficult read because the antagonist is ridiculous. His motivation was “the company” without any real reason for it beyond a paycheck. No one is that blindly loyal without a personal reason, it was dumb. Up until this character, we had nothing but rich characterization. This antagonist felt lazy and 2D, making the book difficult to get through. An entire antagonist built out of tissue paper.

Then, in later books, we sort of lose the crew, to old age, so we have to rewire our brains to accept them in different roles, as old people. Aging changes the landscape. It’s like that last season of Fringe where you’re questioning what you’re watching. You even check the vid to make sure it’s actually Fringe. Later, you accept it as Frimge, but it’s not immediate.

The show is fine, but books are fantastic.

The casting was really great, but overall the show had the feel of a cheaper SyFy channel show and not an HBO quality show.

I know SyFy doesn’t have the same budget as HBO. I know that science fiction isn’t cheap either.

For me personally, the low budget SyFy shows are fine, but for mainstream America,it’s not going to break through that way.

PS: if you haven’t read the books, I highly recommend it. It’s my favorite series.

10? Wow.

Still think it's one of the best things (if not the best) ever on TV. DVDs get frequent replays as well.

If you haven't - the books are excellent as well and audiobooks outstanding. Jefferson Mays was born to narrate them ;-)

I watch the whole show 3 time, and now reading the books. Still worth it. Such a shame that the tabletop RPG does not use any social mechanics well described in this universe

This sounds stupid but the most consistent reason I have heard as to why people dropped the show was Miller's hat. It definitely has a slow and overwhelming start, but somehow the hat exacerbates that for people. I guess it's not necessarily the type of thing people expect to see going into a science fiction epic so it throws them off a bit and they think the show is less serious/ambitious than it actually is. Even I found it quite weird at first (not knowing at the time that it was inspired by film noir and hardboiled tropes).

I really enjoyed it, apart from the casting of the ship's captain who I found didn't emote the lines and actions of his character ... to me, he just looked like a kicked puppy all the time.