Rising oceans and overpopulation on Earth have led to increasing demand for resources from space, further motivating humanity’s hope to maintain its stranglehold on the Belt. Belter terrorists can be tortured simply by sending them to Earth to suffer in its more punishing gravity. Ice and water are more valuable than gold, and a missing shipment in the Belt can lead to riots and rationing. (Eventually, it builds an interstellar Ring near Uranus that permits transit to other unoccupied systems, leading to a new Gold Rush that widens humanity’s existing fractures.)įrom the intricately-structured first episode, "The Expanse" lays out a lived-in sci-fi universe that embraces the real-world physics of space travel, and the ways those limitations can exacerbate existing human conflicts like resource distribution and political power. This is compounded by the protomolecule, the show’s sole concession to the fantastical, whose properties shift and change as it carries out its mercurial purpose. The internecine conflicts between various factions of the Belt play out through more moderate ( David Strathairn’s Klaes Ashford, Cara Gee’s Camina Drummer) and radical ( Jared Harris’ Anderson Dawes, Keon Alexander’s fanatical Marco Inaros) voices. In season two, we get a glimpse of Mars’ stake in the fight through Martian Marine Bobbie Draper ( Frankie Adams), who’ll grow to become a trusted ally of both Avasarala and the Roci crew. There’s UN undersecretary Chrisjen Avasarala (Oscar nominee Shohreh Aghdashloo, with a mouth as filthy as her costumes are gorgeous), working every political angle to stave off war.Īnd don’t forget the surviving crew of the ice hauler Canterbury-led by Steven Strait’s reluctant do-gooder James Holden-on the run from sinister forces in their stolen Martian gunship they eventually name Rocinante (after Don Quixote’s horse).įuture seasons expand the cast, and the show’s scope, to suitably operatic effect. There’s Josephus Miller ( Thomas Jane, sporting a fedora and floppy space haircut), a Belter detective of the classic mold who unravels a conspiracy surrounding a missing rich girl. That’s the stage "The Expanse" laid out for its first season, which explored this fragile ecosystem through various characters with disparate allegiances. The whole system is a powder keg waiting to explode, and that’s before the introduction of a mysterious, blue alien material known as “protomolecule” arrives on the scene. They’re sick and tired of being ground under the boot heel of the “Inners” (Earth and Mars, the inner planets), and are fully primed for revolution. Decades in zero-g have made their bones long and brittle, and they speak in a kind of space Creole that sounds silly at first (until you get used to it, and then it feels right as rain). The Moon is fully colonized, as is Mars the latter has built itself an independent military state single-mindedly dedicated to terraforming the planet, and has little love for what they see as the oppressive mother state of Earth.īut every capitalist society requires a beleaguered underclass, and "The Expanse" has that in the form of the “Belters,” people who’ve spent generations in space mining the asteroid belt and spinning them up to become inhabitable. Set 200 years in the future, "The Expanse" keeps its concerns largely confined to our solar system: humanity has expanded beyond an Earth virtually stripped of natural resources to see what plunder can be found in space. "The Expanse" also sports some of the highest production values on television the sets, effects, and cinematography are gorgeous, and the futuristic set design feels grounded in realism while also allowing for rare moments of grandeur. Stories take place along disparate groups of characters in faraway places, occasionally intersecting when the stakes get high enough (and they frequently do). Like its fantasy equivalent, "The Expanse" takes a well-worn genre-space opera-and imbues it with raw, grounded political edge. Martin’s former assistants (Ty Franck, who writes the books with Daniel Abraham, who collectively go by the nom de plume James S.A. The similarities to "Thrones" are apparent from the get-go, not the least of which because the series of books it’s based on is written by one of George R.R.
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