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Grand Fromage
Jan 30, 2006

L-l-look at you bar-bartender, a-a pa-pathetic creature of meat and bone, un-underestimating my l-l-liver's ability to metab-meTABolize t-toxins. How can you p-poison a perfect, immortal alcohOLIC?


Son of Sam-I-Am posted:


Is graphene really that reactive? I know I've seen some articles lately about potentially being able to use it for improved battery tech and superconductivity, but Naomi says if they get the transponder alteration wrong they'll be a "supernova" - just a future idiom that's been watered down through overuse like how we use "awesome" to mean more like "oh, neat, that's pretty good" instead of literally inspiring awe?


You're not supposed to be able to alter ship transponders, and if you do, the security system blows up the ship.

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Winifred Madgers
Feb 12, 2002

Ah, they just made it sound to the uninitiated (me) that it was an inherent quality of the transponder design, rather than a separate security system.

Winifred Madgers
Feb 12, 2002

S1E6: Rock Bottom

I have to admit, they got me with the police chief being the one under the sway of the OPA, although it really shouldn't have surprised me. But when Miller was in the airlock about to be spaced, and the other cop showed up out of the blue to rescue him, I was suspicious of her timing, and I thought she might be with them, sacrificing the two mooks so Miller will trust her. In light of Dawes's backstory about killing his sister, well it's right there imo so I'm still holding that one in my back pocket as unresolved; her reaction to killing for the first time seemed genuine, but Miller watched the video clip with her so I imagine I'll see soon what happens there.

I totally didn't catch (nor did my wife) that Diogo, the kid on the mining vessel who got left behind as his uncle weaponized a rubble pile, was the same kid Miller accosted for water stealing on Ceres. I even told my wife, "I know I've seen him before but I can't place where," thinking it was in a different show, haha. The only reason I found out was when reading an episode recap to find and remind myself of Dawes's name.

Someone upthread mentioned the books began as a tabletop RPG campaign, and now that I know that, it's super obvious with the four setting back out on the disguised Rocinante.


An aside I've noticed, some of the Belters have buzzed hair ok the sides and long on top (Miller and Naomi off the top of my head), and off and on have idly wondered if that's an homage to the Belters of Larry Niven's Known Space.

tylertfb
Mar 3, 2004

Time.Space.Transmat.
Another cool bit of belter fashion lore is that their neck tattoos are mainly cover-ups of burns/scars they get from the seals or whatever on the faulty, second-hand space-suits and helmets they wear.

zoux
Apr 28, 2006

It's been a while since I read the books so I could be wrong, but I recall that the tattoos are actually supposed to mimic those burn scars You can see the actual scars on Anderson Dawes and a few other older Belters. In the books I think it was supposed to be flavor about the younger, softer generation with their fancy new non neck scalding gear imitating the old school OPA dudes before it got all political.

In the show I don’t think it's ever mentioned at all so I guess just a book easter egg.

Grand Fromage
Jan 30, 2006

L-l-look at you bar-bartender, a-a pa-pathetic creature of meat and bone, un-underestimating my l-l-liver's ability to metab-meTABolize t-toxins. How can you p-poison a perfect, immortal alcohOLIC?


Yep. It's mimicking them since new suits don't burn you.

Winifred Madgers
Feb 12, 2002

S1E7: Windmills

So there's a spy on board, and cybernetic at that. I suppose they had to replace Garvey somehow. I gather he's Avasarala's agent who failed to check in. Starting to see all the pieces moving towards each other, though.

Little bit on the nose, especially for this show, between the episode title, the windpower spirals in the background at the farm, and referencing Cervantes. They really wanted to make sure the viewer caught the implication, but is it Holden or Avasarala, or Miller for that matter, as Quixote? Or all 3.

Honestly I've never read Cervantes, even though I think i do own a copy of Don Quixote (just always seem to have other things I'd rather read), and about all I know of Don Quixote is that he believed windmills were giants and set off to attack some. Upon reflection, I don't even know if it was one scene where he saw a few from afar and rode off to confront them, or if that was the nature of his quest from the beginning - I'll have to count on someone more knowledgeable to fill in the gaps.

Regardless, a quixotic quest connotes foolishness and impossibility by way of same, so that describes all 3 of them to some degree. I get the sense Avasarala is both ahead and behind the others in some ways - she knows more about what's going on, but hasn't been caught up with it in the same way yet.

MA-Horus
Dec 3, 2006

I'm sorry, I can't hear you over the sound of how awesome I am.

I'm excited for you, friend. The Expanse is legit some of the best Sci-fi TV to come out in...well, a long time.
And now that they have Bezosbucks the production values go up significantly in the most recent season.

Winifred Madgers
Feb 12, 2002

S1E8: Salvage

At first I didn't recognize the scale of the Anubis. It's much bigger than the Rocinante, but somehow when they showed it tethered inside the asteroid it deceived me into thinking it was not much bigger. So now in the attack on the Donnager, it was several ships this size that split apart, or are there different models?

Anyway I hope by blowing up the Anubis they didn't just inadvertently spread whatever this glowing stuff is across the solar system. YOU FOOLS!

Got a couple of different vibes from parts of this episode. A lot of scenes in the Belt colonies generally give me Half-Life 2 vibes throughout, but the drone going down the corridor on the Anubis definitely felt like weird '70s sci fi a la The Black Hole, and I liked it. Literally had the thought "I didn't think they made 'em like this anymore."

The other was the Mormon on the transport with Miller - their discussion of faith felt a lot like a Babylon 5 moment, and I wasn't expecting that either.

In other news, Eros is a giant turd in space, I mean look at it.

Good thing Amos rolled a nat 20 on perception in the hotel lobby, lol. Well Miller's with them now and I have my doubts that the body in the room is actually Julie, but I didn't get a good look at her so I'm just not confident either way.

Defiance Industries
Jul 22, 2010

A five-star manufacturer


I think it's just that the asteroid and Donnager are both very much bigger than the Anubis and Roci.

Anonymous Zebra
Oct 21, 2005
Blending in like it ain't no thang

Defiance Industries posted:

I think it's just that the asteroid and Donnager are both very much bigger than the Anubis and Roci.

The Donnager theoretically carried several ships the size of the Tachi Rocinante inside it, so it's really huge compared to it. The Anubis and its sister ships are mildly larger than the Roci, but still small compared to the Donnager. During the Donnager attack the stealth ships were all flying close to each other, so they appeared to be only a single drive flare. When they got closer they separated enough to reveal that it was actually a group of ships.

WilWheaton
Oct 11, 2006

It'd be hard to get bored on this ship!
oh man glad you've picked this back up

Hoping season 5 might still drop later this year, but, without a release date getting announced thats seeming unlikely

Grand Fromage
Jan 30, 2006

L-l-look at you bar-bartender, a-a pa-pathetic creature of meat and bone, un-underestimating my l-l-liver's ability to metab-meTABolize t-toxins. How can you p-poison a perfect, immortal alcohOLIC?


They've already mentioned postproduction finished up a couple weeks ago, so it'll probably be out on time.

Defiance Industries
Jul 22, 2010

A five-star manufacturer


Well, assuming The Boys is another 8 episode season, I don't think we'll see an announcement before mid-October, just because they don't want to draw attention away from that. Longer, if there's more episodes in season 2.

Winifred Madgers
Feb 12, 2002

WilWheaton posted:

oh man glad you've picked this back up

Hoping season 5 might still drop later this year, but, without a release date getting announced thats seeming unlikely

I'll probably be getting at these more often now that my wife has decided it's too slow for her, haha.

Winifred Madgers
Feb 12, 2002

S1E9: Critical Mass

Starts with a flashback, pretty unambiguously Julie in the room after all, I missed my guess. Caught us up and expanded on the opening scenes in the pilot episode. I'm still not convinced the actor will be gone from the show, but maybe that's me having seen too many, shall we say, less grounded scifi shows. On that note I remember seeing her dad in Lost; he'll forever be Dr. Marvin Candle to me.

Weird that they start a new title sequence on the second to last episode of the season. I like it, though.

Please tell me that Miller starts taking after John Crichton and becomes increasingly both unhinged and done with this poo poo. So far, so good, and the allegedly fatal radiation dose should push him that much farther.

Winifred Madgers
Feb 12, 2002

S1E10: Leviathan Wakes

"She'll save us all"? Not what I expected to hear there. Obviously no one does even this kind of horrifying nefarious deed (creating or at least intentionally spreading this glowy goop) without somehow being able to justify it, but I'm kind of scratching my head about what it's supposed to even be or do. I'm assuming the goop is the metaphorical Leviathan in the episode title.

Double helix imagery showcased on the scanner when he said it, not sure what to make of that either, but it seemed a little too prominent to be just a generic science scanner readout. I don't know if I missed it before, but tying in with that (it seems to me) is the fact that Jules-Pierre Mao named his daughter after himself, which seems a little more than coincidental.

I knew with certainty that once the Eros cop pointed his gun at Naomi, Amos was going to shoot him.

I did not know at all that Miller was going to shoot the CPM thug after waving him toward the elevator. "He had it coming - long story." Just a minor thug he knew of on Ceres? Reminds me of the broken antenna I mentioned in an earlier episode that wasn't quite exposited in the traditional way. ---- Later, according to an episode recap I consulted, I discovered this was the guy who impaled Havelock. What ever happened to him, by the way? He wasn't killed but might as well have been, the way he vanished from the show. That also brings up Diogo, now that I think of it, who's still twisting in the vacuum of space for all I know. Several loose ends that didn't really need to be there; Chekhov's guns that haven't gone off. Yet, I'll grant.

With that in mind, what's the comparison with the books, then, it doesn't seem like season 1 fits a full book - especially book 1 - so is it like 2 seasons/book, or just whenever they get there they get there and the seasons are just however many they can afford to make at one time? Or is it just some Wheel of Time BS where the second half of each novel is just setting up for the next one without a really coherent structure? That did leave me wanting more, but after about four in a row by the time of book 7 I had to just give up.

Grand Fromage
Jan 30, 2006

L-l-look at you bar-bartender, a-a pa-pathetic creature of meat and bone, un-underestimating my l-l-liver's ability to metab-meTABolize t-toxins. How can you p-poison a perfect, immortal alcohOLIC?


Son of Sam-I-Am posted:


With that in mind, what's the comparison with the books, then, it doesn't seem like season 1 fits a full book - especially book 1 - so is it like 2 seasons/book, or just whenever they get there they get there and the seasons are just however many they can afford to make at one time? Or is it just some Wheel of Time BS where the second half of each novel is just setting up for the next one without a really coherent structure? That did leave me wanting more, but after about four in a row by the time of book 7 I had to just give up.


They don't match up neatly. Book 1 is season 1 and part of 2, book 2 is the rest of season 2 and half of season 3, book 3 is the last half of season 3, and season 4 is book 4 + parts of 5. Other parts of book 5 have been scattered through each season. There are also novellas, one of those was folded into season 4. A short story was incorporated in season 1 and another one is in season 2. The authors of the books work on the show, so some of the revisions are just for the medium, others are edits the authors would make if they were doing the books again.

Anonymous Zebra
Oct 21, 2005
Blending in like it ain't no thang
You'll know when Book 1 ends, I promise. You'll watch the episode and say to yourself, "That felt like a season finale, why are there [x] episodes left after that?"

Grand Fromage
Jan 30, 2006

L-l-look at you bar-bartender, a-a pa-pathetic creature of meat and bone, un-underestimating my l-l-liver's ability to metab-meTABolize t-toxins. How can you p-poison a perfect, immortal alcohOLIC?


Yeah, the end of book points are real obvious when you hit them.

Winifred Madgers
Feb 12, 2002

Thanks, also not going to hover over that particular spoiler text.

Defiance Industries
Jul 22, 2010

A five-star manufacturer


Havelock's actor got a steady gig on another show, so he just kinda vanished. They had plans for him that had to be changed.

Anonymous Zebra
Oct 21, 2005
Blending in like it ain't no thang

Son of Sam-I-Am posted:

Thanks, also not going to hover over that particular spoiler text.

Haha, don't worry, I didn't put an actual number under there. I realized saying how many episodes were left would be a big rear end spoiler.

Winifred Madgers
Feb 12, 2002

lol, it would've been fine even if I had seen it accidentally, but I appreciate the restraint.

DEFCON Clown
Jul 26, 2013

Son of Sam-I-Am posted:


I did not know at all that Miller was going to shoot the CPM thug after waving him toward the elevator. "He had it coming - long story." Just a minor thug he knew of on Ceres? Reminds me of the broken antenna I mentioned in an earlier episode that wasn't quite exposited in the traditional way. ---- Later, according to an episode recap I consulted, I discovered this was the guy who impaled Havelock. What ever happened to him, by the way? He wasn't killed but might as well have been, the way he vanished from the show. That also brings up Diogo, now that I think of it, who's still twisting in the vacuum of space for all I know. Several loose ends that didn't really need to be there; Chekhov's guns that haven't gone off. Yet, I'll grant.



That guy was the one who impaled Havelock.

Winifred Madgers
Feb 12, 2002

DEFCON Clown posted:


That guy was the one who impaled Havelock.


I know, I put that in my post after I found it out. Just wanted to record the fact that went over my head initially until I went through a recap.

coathat
May 21, 2007

It's a shame that they were cowards when casting the show and refused to hire any short actors to play characters from earth.

Winifred Madgers
Feb 12, 2002

coathat posted:

It's a shame that they were cowards when casting the show and refused to hire any short actors to play characters from earth.

That would be an interesting way to film something from the Belters' POV, just have everyone from Earth played by short, stocky people.

sebmojo
Oct 23, 2010


Legit Cyberpunk









zoux posted:

It's been a while since I read the books so I could be wrong, but I recall that the tattoos are actually supposed to mimic those burn scars You can see the actual scars on Anderson Dawes and a few other older Belters. In the books I think it was supposed to be flavor about the younger, softer generation with their fancy new non neck scalding gear imitating the old school OPA dudes before it got all political.

In the show I don’t think it's ever mentioned at all so I guess just a book easter egg.

Dawes lays this out explicitly in the show, iirc.

Defiance Industries
Jul 22, 2010

A five-star manufacturer


Yeah, I think it's in the scene where he and Miller are in the bar?

WilWheaton
Oct 11, 2006

It'd be hard to get bored on this ship!
I feel like it's actually been brought up more than once , I think Naomi explained it once as well?

Winifred Madgers
Feb 12, 2002

S2E1: Safe

In the absence of doing episode recaps I'm not sure if I have a lot to say about this one. I liked Miller's cheese anecdote, seems he and Amos are burying the hatchet. Sematimba did kinda have it coming after all; Amos may be trigger happy as Miller says, but he did nothing wrong in this case.

Strange that they parked the protomolecule sample close to an abandoned asteroid mine - maybe it's just my ignorance, but even in a Lagrange point (which I don't think they specified anyway) wouldn't it still be slowly affected by the minuscule but nonzero gravitational pull of the largish asteroid it's near? Why not park it on the surface of the big one, or hide it inside the mine itself?

Also the protomolecule has got to be an homage to the protomatter used in the Genesis Device in Star Trek II. Whether it's similar in use or just name remains to be seen, but given they already said Phoebe is an extrasolar object, I'm on board with our protagonists in thinking it's an alien terraforming method.

Winifred Madgers
Feb 12, 2002

S2E2: Doors & Corners

Ah, so the protomolecule is like Namtar from the Farscape episode DNA Mad Scientist, gotcha. Or more nearly, the Xenomorph from the Alien franchise, plus The Blob. That would explain the human-shaped wisp of lights it displayed on Eros, as it absorbs humans it gains more humanlike characteristics.

This time I caught Diogo as he recognized Miller. Fool me once, etc. Did we know that Miller has prior tactical/command experience, because I don't think I did. Maybe that's supposed to be the surprise, but when he was on the drop ship talking with the other fighters, despite throwing up, somehow I believed him anyway when he said he'd look out for Diogo.

Strange that they didn't seem to have any trouble tracking the stealth ship as they fought around Thoth station. Guess it's not that stealthy, although especially in space stealth is probably more intended for passing undetected at greater distances, and of more limited usefulness in close quarters combat.

I don't know what I was expecting to be on Thoth station, but paintball guards and the feral people plugged into the Matrix weren't it.

Now who's trigger happy, Miller? But again I can't argue that he was wrong to shoot Mengele here.

Still in the middle of formulating my thoughts, but Fred making a play for the protomolecule project doesn't necessarily square with some other facts as I understand them.

1. He wasn't at fault in the massacre, but didn't work to clear his name, and left instead for unexplained reasons. Tying that in with 2. the engines Avasarala has been looking into seem to lead back to him and Tycho station, I'd been working on the hypothesis that he was behind the stealth ships, but one already being there to protect Thoth station puts a monkey wrench to that idea.

Defiance Industries
Jul 22, 2010

A five-star manufacturer


I think they mentioned he'd done riot squad duty with Star Helix early in Season 1.

Winifred Madgers
Feb 12, 2002

S2E3: Static

For some reason I thought Alex re-running the simulation over and over again was him trying to figure out how they themselves survived, but it makes more sense this way I GUESS. I just thought they were going somewhere with the repair lady telling them how close they came to being killed, and then he reran the scenario a bunch of times and they never once made it, so I thought they were gonna go with the stealth ship let them live on purpose for some reason. Well it made sense to me at the time!

That's one of my deep fears, technology allowing someone to mess with my brain. 20 years from now I'm going to be an old Luddite and refuse to get a brain chip because that ol' sack of fatty acids is sacrosanct. The idea of it being nonconsensual is even worse. I don't know if this guy volunteered for the empathy erasure technique, but either way (and among myriad other reasons) I feel sorry for our descendants because they'll have to deal with poo poo like this that we're going to create for them. It's bad enough the old-fashioned way.

Good job laying hints so I figured out Miller was going to use the Naboo Nauvoo to destroy Eros before he went and told Johnson. That's the trick for this kind of show, make your audience think they're smart *cough* ignore my first paragraph *cough*

Hope the space Mormons bought space insurance, because I'm sensing the end of book 1 coming up soon.

Winifred Madgers
Feb 12, 2002

S2E4: Godspeed

And here I was thinking for the first half hour that this was going to be a glorified FX reel of an episode. I still can't decide if I'm more disappointed or intrigued, lol. Not that I wanted Miller to die, of course, but I really was looking forward to Chekhov's Nauvoo hitting Eros. Since it was designed to be interstellar, maybe it has enough delta-v left to get back to Tycho Station and they can be like, :q: no harm no foul?

J. P. Morgan Mao seems pretty sharp.

I saw from the description of the next episode that Eros not only changed course, it's heading for Earth. Whoops. Of note, they're usually pretty good with orbital mechanics, but the FX guys flubbed one thing at least: the proposed impact of the Nauvoo upon Eros, displayed a few times, showed Eros simply continuing on the Nauvoo's trajectory directly toward the sun. I suspect that could be at least partly a visual shorthand, but as I've observed before, they don't usually seem too interested in handholding the audience, so it stuck out to me.

Winifred Madgers
Feb 12, 2002

Oh yeah, also I noticed the Roci's readouts were measuring in exajoules. Understatement of the year when they were talking about something going on inside there.

StashAugustine
Mar 24, 2013

Do not trust in hope- it will betray you! Only faith and hatred sustain.

Very minor dialogue spoiler: I like the bit in the next episode where they realize the entire asteroid as gained a couple degrees C and Naomi comments that at least thermodynamics are still working

Winifred Madgers
Feb 12, 2002

S2E5: Home

Not strictly objecting per se, but until now this has been pretty grounded (e.g. the various time delay messages). I mean I get that the protomolecule is a black swan event but suddenly taking Eros to fifteen gee is kind of insane. Suddenly we're in Star Trek, and I choose my words for more than that reason: the ending also rips off TMP more than a little. I knew I'd see Julie again, and I have the posts to prove it.

Once again I'm deprived of large explosions, though, a department in which this show is seriously lacking so far, and not for lack of promising it. No, two seconds of the Venus impact doesn't really count.

Those nukes launched from Earth are still quite a hanging thread. Where are they now, outbound from the solar system on ballistic trajectories? Self-destruct/aborted? Swiped by Johnson/the OPA after all?

I guess that's all I've got so far. Blow something up next time, will ya?

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Anonymous Zebra
Oct 21, 2005
Blending in like it ain't no thang
Happy that you've made it to this point so I can finally say that I LOVE that the show-runners were able to go a season and a half of meticulously showing mostly hard-sci real physics and limitations of space travel without blowing their load so that Eros doing what it does shows how completely game-changing the Protomolecule is. The impact would not have been as strong if I hadn't been completely unprepared for Eros turning and completely breaking all the rules of inertia and acceleration.

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