if by lately you mean... right now... maybe... with this 1 show... maybe...



Syfy has been putting out utter garbage lately and this show might be a return to good sci-fi... or it might not... time will tell.



 

Total war is dumb in that future. Losing an army on a frontier is a small risk compared to having your planet bombarded with dinosaur killers or your asteroid habitats slagged.



In the modern day equivalent, even the drunk Soviets weren't dumb enough to start a nuclear exchange.

The premise seems to be based on the oldest unstated objective for war  ....resource acquisition.  

I haven't read the books, and know absolutely nothing about them, but it looks like the human population of the solar system has exploded.  The Earth is run by government bureaucrats, Mars is some sort of opposition to that, and "The Belt" is run by corporations.   There seems to be enough here for me to suspend my disbelief and accept that there might be a good old fashion "resource war".  

Star Trek was set in a universe with no limits, it's magical.  Warp, replicators, socialism, no money, no basic resource limitations, and technology that is almost indistinguishable from magic.  The Expanse universe is a little more believable.  Yes, they have powerful technology, but it's not magic.  This is a universe of limits.  

I can see them going to war.

How are you going to get resources when you no longer exist? Every player can annihilate another. Actually one of the characters explains this exact thing half way through the book. I just passed that part.

X2 Farscape was awesome!

hmmm...

I suppose desperation causes people to act irrationally.

IF you're going to suffer or die anyway, why not take a shot?  I know it seems stupid, but we all have a survival instinct which motivates us to do desperate things.  

That's pretty much how it works.



Long Version, this is "historical" stuff so not really spoiler-y unless you don't want to know/don't care about some of the history as in the books:



Earth, which is run by the UN, established Mars as the first planetary colony and about 100 years after Mars was originally settled the Martians eventually got sick and tired of it and some of them (their version of the Sons of Liberty I guess you could call it) published a manifesto saying Mars should be independent and a lot of people on Mars agreed, the UN didn't like that so much and launched a fleet to attack Mars but because it took so long to get from Earth to Mars at the time that by the time the UN Navy got there things had calmed down so they went back to Earth without shooting. Since Mars was full of more of the rugged individualist types as opposed to the sort of people the welfare state of the UN produced they eventually were making better technology than Earth was, including more technologically advanced ships. After a decade or so of this it again pissed Earth off so they said that all Martian ships had to be constructed on Luna (which was UN territory) so they could monitor what the Martians were putting into them since they assumed (correctly) that the Martians were putting weapons on them to have warship capability. The Martians ignored them and kept building (war-)ships on Mars so the UN was getting ready to send a fleet (of you know "inspectors") to Mars again, but because of their relative positions it'd take a year for the UN Navy to get there, in the meantime a scientist on Mars made a technological breakthrough in starship drive technology, in exchange for Earth letting Mars become independent the Martians traded the drive tech to Earth and again avoided a war. They've been independent since then and the Martian Congressional Navy is still considered to be quite a bit better (if smaller) than the UN Navy. Near as I can guess Mars has been independent for close to 100 years or so by the time of the show.



The Belt is "technically" under UN control the same way that Mars used to be, but in reality it's governed by whichever company put the colony or station down. Like Ceres is technically UN territory, but the cops like Miller are a private police company Star Helix which was hired by the people who first started colonizing the asteroid Tycho Manufacturing; the general public on Ceres are controlled by Star Helix, and Star Helix gets its marching orders from the Tycho board to a much greater extent than anyone listens to what the UN has to say. People in the Belt generally don't have much use for either Earth or Mars and both Earth and Mars screw around in the Belt to try to get the advantage. The population of the Belt is a fraction of Mars' let alone Earth, but because they have access to resources that aren't commonly available (or at least not in quantities like in the Belt) on the other two planets they're still pretty important even if exploited to hell and back. There's a group in the Belt called the Outer Planets' Alliance, they're basically an umbrella group made up of smaller groups ranging from people who advocate for better conditions in the Belt, to some quasi-unions, to more hardcore revolutionary/independence movement types. But like it's said in the books "There's OPA and then there's OPA," some OPA types are like labor unions and others are like the Red Army Faction, so just saying someone is OPA affiliated doesn't tell you a whole lot unless you know the context. Earth and Mars consider them as a unified group, but they aren't, some on Earth think they're all terrorists but they'd be wrong, some in the Belt would say none of them are terrorists and they'd be wrong too.



So yeah, there is plenty of conflict going on, even though Mars and Earth have never (or at least not yet) gotten to the point of dropping rocks and/or nukes on one another. But in the Belt there are plenty of Mars/Earth conflicts that get settled more explosively, but clandestinely, and they usually don't directly attack one another's "official" stations or ships. There are plenty of actual mercenaries and pirates out in the Belt, but there have also been some instances of "mercenaries" and "pirates" that are nothing more than UN or Martian Marines or Navy without any unit patches and flags, with matte black paintjobs and fake transponders on their ships.



 

They operate under MAD conditions when it comes to Earth and Mars relations, they really do not like one another but so far no one has been crazy enough to launch a full scale attack that would result in the bulk of humanity being taken out by rocks or nukes. That doesn't mean that at some point they won't decide something is worth risking an actual full blown war.
Everyone on Earth and Mars knows what full scale, total war between each other would mean; just like Reagan and Andropov did. But that didn't mean we didn't back Contras while they were backing Sandinistas either. A couple of situations may be "bring me the football" worthy, but most of them are not. Doesn't mean they don't fight through proxies and covertly, because they do, but at a lower level even than our historical Cold War proxy fights. Same thing with the major Belt stations, they can push to a point but there's an undefinable line that if they cross, they'll either get occupied by Mars or Earth, or someone turns them to plasma. If the OPA could actually unite enough of the Belt to act as a government and get the various stations/colonies to cooperate, then they could do the same to Earth and/or Mars (not the occupying but the bigbaddaboom-ing) too. Which is another reason that Mars and Earth tend to slap down any Belters that get too uppity, or look the other way when someone else does it, depending on the situation.
 

Tribalism is inherent in our reptilian brain. No matter how far you break the unit down from country, to state , to town, to race, to religion, to neighborhood, to family, to sex. There will always be an us vs them mentality and thus war is  natural part of the human condition. War ends when you can use that tech to remove our free will.

Farscape at least got a decent run. Stargate universe was just getting good. Hell even stargate atlantis was cancelled too soon.

Agreed on every point, although they did not give Farscape its proper due at first. It took a near fan riot against them to give it closure.

I like it. I think I'm going to pick up the books as well as keep watching.

The first two books are pretty good. The third is ridiculously terrible, not sure what happened.

I'm trying to like it.

But it has typical bullshit space-ignorance from pleb-class "Science" Fiction.

1: OMG NUKES!!! NUKES IN SPACE ARE THE ULTIMATE WEAPON!!!!!!!

Well, except they aren't. Nukes are worthless in ship-to-ship space warfare. They are literally a waste of mass, volume and resouces. Completely, utterly useless. Might as well bring some swords, halbards and blackpowder deck cannons, they're just as relevant to space warfare. Arrr!


2: OMG!!! THEY HAD STEALTH SHIPS!!!!

Well, except stealth cannot work in space warfare. The laws of thermodynamics must be obeyed. Ships must radiate their waste heat or die. If you radiate your waste heat, anyone within line of sight with a current-technology IRST system can detect you. Line of sight is nearly unlimited in space. There is no stealth in space warfare, period. Concealment is plausible, but unlikely to work very often in a networked battlespace with a few sensors scattered around.


3: OMG!!! WE GOT PINGED BY RADAR!!!!!!

Except radar is just about useless in space warfare. Thermal detection is so godlike, why would you bother bouncing radio waves around? Handy for close-in shit like docking (however, even today it is becoming obsolete in this role). Handy for peering through atmospheres. It might be handy in a few electronic warfare scenarios (at knife-fighting ranges). But for general detection purposes, radars are wasted mass and energy in space warfare.


4: "Torpedoes" (kinetic energy kill vehicles) are shown as being a close range weapon. In reality they would be long range weapons, while lasers would dominate the closer range engagements (and point defense against kinetic weapons launched from far away). This is where you discover who actually understands the priciples of space warfare... Ship mounted lasers are not long ranges weapons in any realistic application.


5: Orbital Mechanics? Never heard of her.

The cartoon-like combat kinetics of the first episode are just sad. That isn't how orbital mechanics works.


6: OMG!!! THEY GREW UP IN LOW GRAVITY!!!

Nope. Every bit of research suggests there is no growing up in low gravity. That shit will deform kids horribly and they will simply die out in a generation. The gravity problem is easily resolved with centrifuge habitats at 1g. There's no reason for any colonist to grow up in low gravity and if they do they will simply die out.


7: MARS!!!!

Mars is a dead rock which is nearly as difficult to escape from as Earth. How would a colony focused on just surving on that sunbaked frozen hellhole build massive rockets to launch themselves back into space? Fuck all of that. Mine asteroids and live on smaller, easily escaped from bodies.This allows easy commerce for a colony instead of trapping everyone on a useless red rock with too much gravity to leave but not enough to live on without centrifuge habs. Mars is a horrible candidate for colonization.

Goddamn, I still want to beat the fucktards who produced and directed Stargate: Universe upside of their heads with poodles and kittens.
That show was sooo fucking BORING.

I love it when someone says something along these lines, then just lets loose with a torrent of inane horseshit.

Unfortunately arfcom doesnt let multi quote blocking, so I'll just reply via numbers. Since you conveniently numbered your BS.



1: You’re clearly ignorant of how nuclear reactions occur…  A spacenuke for all intents and purposes is a GRB and without an atmosphere there would be no physical attenuation of the radiation. Flux density degradation would simply be a function of distance. The unfettered gamma radiation would ablate massive amounts of material, very large distances away.  But wait, there’s more. Below is for a small 20kt yield.



So even if you’re far enough away that your ship isn’t instantly vaporized, you’re fucked anyway.

I actually have to commend the show, the explosion that they showed looked very similar to starfish prime. You know, when we actually did explode a nuke in space…



2: Because in the future an internal thermal mass battery is impossible and high R value materials magically stop existing.

3: wtf are you even talking about? Not even ONCE was radar talked about.

4: Except a torpedo isn’t a kinetic kill weapon, by definition.  And you have it exactly opposite of how combat would work in space. Actual kinetic weapons, would only be viable at short ranges. At range, it gives the target WAY too much time to move out of the way. In fact it was made very clear that had the captain dumped the ice cargo they would have been able to perform a 30g maneuver to prevent impact.

Lasers (or any other form of excited energy for that matter) are IDEAL for long range.  A collimated beam is subject to minimal (if any) attenuation in a vacuum and range then becomes a function of beam divergence.  Instantly hitting a target, hundreds of thousands of miles away with damn near zero energy loss is EXACTLY how space combat will occur.

5: Orbital mechanics didn’t even once come into play in this episode.  I must have missed the part in the episode where they fucked up a Hohmann transfer.

6: Addressed in the episode quite well. Multiple medical procedures and medications to help living in low g environments. The people that don’t use them end up fucked up, deformed or dead. Did you miss the entire bar scene where this was explained?

7: At no point was Mars EVER indicated as just scraping by trying to survive. In fact, the whole beginning montage fricking shows mars advancing well past the early stages of trying to survive. So, if it was already shown as being past these stages in the 1st minute or two of the episode… then for the rest of the episode is shows they are now a superpower… why in fuck would you assume they couldn’t even get off of mars or were barely scraping by just trying to survive. How did you miss the basic premise of this whole series?

Here’s a pro tip. If you’re going to rant about something, it’s best to have seen it 1st. It’s also a good idea to understand what you’re ranting about. Because some "space combat ace," you are not.

As a reminder the pilot airs on Monday, and the second episode airs Tuesday.

If you're that critical, just skip it.

It's a TV show for chrissakes...

At most generous but semi-realistic energy scales (i.e. nuclear-electric plasma drives), kinetic weapons are point-blank only. Newtonian mechanics don't extend the effective range, because as their range increases, so does dwell time of the defending laser, until it hits a limit where it can fend off x number of projectiles perfectly. It takes an ICBM scale bus delivering submunitions armored to demand significant dwell time before kinetics have reasonable Pk. A similar mass laser can generate similar Pk but with better range, capacity, and flexibility.

But they don't have weapons lasers in this series, which in my mind is a plot hole. There is some talk of using the comm laser to blind enemy sensors which is pretty limited use.

LOLOLOL.






The way they described it was perfectly plausible. Stealth from a single point in space for a limited time.
 

Finished ep#4.This show rocks.

I"m going to wait for them to air live.  No spoilers please!   I was wondering why no one talked about the new episodes.  

Seems like an interesting world and I look forward to learning how it all ties together.

I didn't even know there were new episodes yet. Off to go find them.

I am watching ep4 now online. Good show

Fair enough.



But yeah all of the episodes 1-4 are now up on Demand and on their webpage for people interested in getting them early. I watched Ep. 2 when it aired last night and saw the announcement that 3&4 were online so I just had to watch them. So if anyone is looking for them there they are.



I thought the books were awesome, and the show followed the first book very closely for the first episode with the exception of introducing the Chrisjen Avasarala at the UN in it, she doesn't show up in the books until the 2nd one so that was interesting. But it made sense bringing her in early since it tightens up the "what the hell is going on?" story a bit. In episodes 2-4 there are even more points of difference between the books and the show, but honestly the things that were changed in the show add to the story instead of being changes just for the sake of changes, and they make the story tighter and add to character development so I'm all for them. If it keeps going on like this it'll wind up being even better than the books actually.



Episodes 3 & 4 were awesome too though by the way, the show keeps getting better with each one.

When they said at the end of ep. 2 that you could watch them on demand I almost watched them all but I hate doing that and then waiting.  

It's awesome to hear that they are staying true to the books.   As soon as S1 is over I'm going to start reading them.

Yeah they're very true to the books, I'd say about 75% of what you see/hear is taken directly from the books, of the 25% that isn't it adds to the story instead of being changes just for the hell of it or for budget reasons. Actually it's the opposite of budget reasons from what I'm seeing because the added scenes actually add to sets used and special effects done, but in a good way. Most of it is either adding to the backstory, making the story flow better for a viewer (since you can't get into the heads of characters on a screen like you do in a book) and/or fleshing out the characters a little better. So like I said, the changes from book to screen have all been a net gain.



Some of the character development additions have been pretty outstanding actually, but I'm not going to do a "book vs show" breakdown on them because that'd be spoiler-ish. Well maybe one since it was in Ep 2 and I'm assuming following this have seen it by now, spoiler tags though anyhow just in case...




Click To View SpoilerThe main storyline though is completely from the book, with a few tweaks here and there so far, the different scenes are just adding some color to it. Again, in a good way.
 

just finished ep 4.  pretty good so far

I agree.  Best space drama in ages!

Better Call Saul probably has him tied down

I have read and enjoyed all the books.

After watching the first two episodes I would say they are getting more right than wrong.    
I realize it is impossible to translate everything but they have got the important things down and I can live with the changes they have made.

Even the casting is good - as an avid reader it is sometimes difficult to stomach some of the actor choices Hollywood makes - "Did they read the descriptions in the book????" - but again, overall I am happy.

I was equal parts excited and nervous about the start of this series.   After watching I will say I will continue to watch.   If they can maintain things at this level it will be epic tv.

Pretty much this, and THAT show won't be canceled

Yep.  I saw that he was in the episode and told my wife that she might be pissed (as Mike is her favorite character).


Then he was toast (or at least I suppose he is), so I told her not to sweat it.





 

Great show!

I watched all four episodes over the last couple days.  Good show.
The book it is based on was okay, not great but well written enough.  I think it works better as a TV series than it would as a movie.
For the people  bitching about scientific realism...give me a fucking break.  We're lucky it's as realistic as it is.  It's SyFy for Christ's sake.

This is relevant to my interests. I will be watching for sure

I admired their resourcefulness with the zero gravity scenes.



 

youtube video shows private

Saw all 4 episodes, totallyyyy digging it!

They do say LADAR which probably is more commonly known as LiDAR but oh well its a fun show!

Lol@the assumptions about future tech.  Humble your fucking selves god damn.

Do you even future science bro?

So far I've been disappointed by the MARS folks in that we haven't seen much character development regarding anyone from MARS yet. It's been entirely focused on Earth and the Belters.

I'm also really looking forward to seeing what the MARS colony looks like and it sounds very much like MARS is trying to terraform.  I always envisioned MARS colonists as being true independents and highly capable people unlike the welfare types that would remain on Earth.

Alex (the pilot) is from Mars and he does a whole lot of shit later on in the books and you get to know him better. He's from the Mariner Valley to be exact, and yes everyone from the Mariner Valley has a Texan accent too, no matter where their ancestors were from on Earth.



As for seeing more Mars and Martians as major characters (aside from Alex) that doesn't really come about until the 2nd book. On the show, who knows but there is another character from Mars that is introduced as a main character in Cailban's War.



 

Darn, was hoping for a lot more Mars.

I think they're supposed to be a closed off, mysterious society. Earth has no idea what they're really doing.

Guys who have read the books:
I read Leviathan  Wakes, and really enjoyed it, but did not really care for the infection/space zombies component.  I read the excerpt of the second book included in the first, and from that it seems that the space zombies take an even more encompassing portion of the story as it proceeds. Is that the case?

Click To View Spoiler

Click To View SpoilerAnd yeah, seriously don't click that if you're just watching the show without any idea what happens in the books at all, there are no-shit major  spoilers in there. Don't say I didn't warn you, control your mice.





 

Mars is basically Clint Eastwood doing his best sour faced, Get Off My Lawn Impression...but with nukes and Rods From God instead of an M1.







My GF and I were talking after we finished watching Episode 4 (she hasn't read the books yet but my Leviathan Wakes is curiously missing from my bookshelf...) and she now agrees with me that if we lived in the time of the Expanse and got to pick where, it'd definitely be Mars.
 

Thanks! If my wife hasn't already bought the rest of the books for me, I'll be picking them up.

Also, just descovered that if you 'quote' a post with spoiler tags, the spoilers are displayed I'm full text in your reply box. FYI, ha