grilldos posted:

Not all of Season 2's first pair of episodes is bad. The CGI battle scenes were a joy to watch, and all of the Miller scenes (with the exception of the Thoth Invasion) were fantastic, which I feel is mostly due to Tom Jane and the Roci actors. Tom Jane forces a scene to pace well. If you compare his scenes of Season 2 with Bobbie's, it's a night and day difference. He pauses, he collects himself physically. Do you remember how many scenes in the first season involved Tom Jane taking his time to do blocking bits like Stand Up or Cross A Room? It was all the loving time. Characters are drat near still in Season 2 unless the scene actively calls for something different.

So at the end of the day, most of these problems are directoral. Breck Eisner did these two, and he did none of Season 1's. I also would be willing to bet that Syfy really pushed for Big Action for the season premiere, so the Thoth Station invasion had to make it into the first two episodes. The editor had to really cram all of this in, with footage from a borderline director. I think in someone else's hands, maybe one of the 4 guys who directed season 1, things would have come out better. Especially if they didn't need to cram so much poo poo into these two episodes.

And finally, Thoth Station's invasion, specifically Miller's scenes once it's boarded, feels off. This is the one scene where all of the problems of this season premiere show themselves. You get the sense that, what, there are like 10 people on the station? That station is loving huge, and the direction does nothing to really give you a sense of the space. It feels like a set, in the way that (another Syfy show, one that is not good) Dark Matter's station sets feel like a set. The blocking is weird and without motivation for anyone other than Tom Jane, and when his invasion lackies shoot up the Matrix folks with hundreds of bullets, they're all facing eachother in a big circle and should have shot eachother up. Badly. Tom Jane also wanders around and immediately finds exactly what he is looking for, Dresden, one room over, on a station that is loving Gigantic, according to the ship fight that the viewer just saw minutes before. Dresden's rant feels less like the pointed words of a charismatic sociopath and more like an actor just spewing out lines quickly.

This scene reeks of bad direction from the start to the end, because the director simply went by the plot, which is the sign of a lovely director. The boarding party breaks in, kid gets shot, Miller notices gel, scolds his men, they find weird people, the weird people get mad, they shoot the weird people, Miller leaves everyone alone for some reason, he finds Dresden, Holden and Johnson show up, Dresden says insane poo poo, Miller shoots Dresden. All of this happens, and the director does nothing on his own accord to make any of it feel earned or the least bit realistic in physical flow. poo poo happens because it was written to happen.

I really do like the show, and I'm not at all saying it's poo poo and should be dropped or whatever extreme bullshit TV IV is known for. These were a pretty flawed pair of episodes with plenty still in them to enjoy. I am looking forward to getting on with it now that Syfy's blue balls orgasm of a premiere is done.


This is part of why the Thoth Invasion felt so off at the end of it, too. The invasion in the book was half an infantry battle and half Miller discovering the truth of that station, Dresden, and coming to a personal epiphany about who he is and what the system has become. There's none of the personal reflection in that scene. It's just action, baby! I'm fine with pure action, they gave it to us with the ship battle. So where's the character-driven emotional payoff I'd grown accustomed to with Season 1?

mastershakeman posted:

I honestly didn't like the ship fight at the end since it seemed like the enemy ship took a nap instead of trying to get an angle on them to use a railgun

Subyng posted:

No I agree with mastershakeman. Yes they were using the station as cover, so why wasn't the stealth ship attempting to maneuver around it to get a clear shot? Maybe it was, but the way the scene was presented it seemed like the stealth ship wasn't really doing anything. Maybe waiting for the Roci to pop out of cover?

AwkwardKnob posted:

So.... protomolecule is extra-solar, eh? This series has xeno life forms? Don't get me wrong, Game of Thrones in space is cool but I'm stoked if we get White Walkers in space too. (Not literally)

Platystemon posted:

This shot gives me vague vertigo but I like the attempt to show how spin stations work.

Toast Museum posted:

No space elevators. Some ships can manage takeoff and landing with their Epstein drives. Others (I guess those without Epsteins?) rely on help from ground-based mass drivers to get into orbit. I don't recall any chemical rockets.

Pretty much any ship with an Epstein drive can accelerate fast enough to kill its crew and then some, so the ability to overcome 1g to get into orbit isn't really the limiting factor.

Phanatic posted:

Yeah, but there are some ridiculous goofs in the film, like antigravity jail cells in which blood drips up towards the ceiling and people exploding upon exposure to vacuum.

It's basically a remake of High Noon in space, with Sean Connery playing Gary Cooper. Still entertaining, good performances.

WAR CRIME SYNDICAT posted:

Hey guy, not everyone here knows what's going to happen and this is a pretty lovely thing to do. I've read the books so I know, but others don't and you're straight up spoiling things. Good job.

Snuffman posted:

Overpopulated but definitely not self sufficient. The show sort of touches on it with the sea wall in NY, but Earth has been ravaged by climate change and is dependant on the resources of the outer solar system.

Where the "lazy Earthers" thing comes from is free air, free water and free money. UBI isn't all it's cracked up to be, though.

Bates posted:

The setting of the Expanse is more interesting than Space Antarctica so that's where you suspend your disbelief.

Accretionist posted:

Aren't these the space equivalent of guys who draw dicks in porta potties?

Justin Credible posted:

Well I mean they have some super fancy power armor that is literally a walking compact weapons platform on it's own, when in the previous season the guys entrusted with preventing a war by the captain of the Donnager basically just had a bit of armor on some void suits.

CLAM DOWN posted:

I like how in the future where earth is united and the UN runs the show, all the nukes are still America's

e: also are they going from silo to space in like 2 seconds holy poo poo

Number Ten Cocks posted:

If your retaliatory nukes are on the planet you force Mars to wipe out your population and provide an incentive for you to do the same if they want to disarm you. Space or Luna based nukes leave you vulnerable to being disarmed and blackmailed, making it genocide or nothing is better MAD.

Baronjutter posted:

I want to give money to the people who make the expanse but the TV industry is flaming garbage and I can't figure it out without buying physical media disks I don't really want. Space.ca just has all the episodes for free on the website. God I wish TV shows were like buying a PC game, you just load up steam, buy the game, and the creators get most of the cut.

MOVIE MAJICK posted:

No, Eros is the place where the DNA of two lifeforms mixed. Venus would be the environment it grows in or whatever

gohmak posted:

Dude the imagery is there for you to see.

Justin Credible posted:

The only thing that niggled at me and it's a minor point and all but relevant - didn't Miller only have like 12 minutes of 02 left after the rip after the ship sprayed metal all over them? And then with the communication delays they display prominently he was well over an hour breathing his own C02.

gohmak posted:

Technically the metaphor for sex and fertalization occured when Julie came in contact with the proto-molecule. Mitosis is under way long before Miller arrives with the bomb. What he really does is guides the egg to the Goddess of love and beauty instead of Earth for implantation. The imagery of the crash is still a sperm meeting an egg.

Space Crabs posted:

Also it's obvious that the launching of the missiles was the metaphor for birth control, the NauVoo was your buddy frank that likes to cockblock you all the time, and Naomi and Holden having sex was a metaphor for capitalism.

Crushing rear end to dust is an allegory for imperialism.

Number Ten Cocks posted:

which episode and yo momma joke were your favorites

Error 404 posted:

Yo momma so barren the MCRN are tryin to terraform her

Platystemon posted:

bobfather posted:

Nukes obliterate ships in a single hit.

MiddleOne posted:

That last shot of the crew over Venus was extremely anime.

Number Ten Cocks posted:

To flesh this out in show references, Julie told Miller she had to go to Earth so "the work" could continue. She accepted Venus as an alternative, so one can presume that the work is preceding there, if much more slowly because it can't hijack Earth's biosphere and has to rely on what it started with to reprocess the nonbiological materials on Venus instead. It's building glowing towers there. Those towers presumably are meant to do something or serve as an intermediate step to a final product.

The protomolecule is an adaptive biological nanomachine that reprograms any biological material it finds to build towards more complex forms that can start manufacturing nonorganic machines. We saw a very small scale version of this on Eros, but it was designed to be launched into the primitive biosphere of Earth a billion years ago and just accidentally got snagged by Saturn's gravity. Protogen found this super complex tool they don't understand that can change biological things at a fundamental level and are hoping they can learn from it how to change biological things at a fundamental level for their own purposes and override its original programming.

emanresu tnuocca posted:

I think that Eros developed some of its magical powers through the processes the protomolecule created by fusing all of the biomass together, I am not sure it's right to assume Phoebe had the ability to break physics in quite the same way.

Big Mean Jerk posted:

See this is just a quick motion though. With a machine gun your actor has to just stand there and do zombie arms while pretending to shoot people and it looks boring and bad.

If you want to continue the Iron Man comparison, look at the drone fight in Iron Man 2. War Machine just stands there and waves his arms around.

404notfound posted:

Re: Holden, do you guys think a different actor would've made his scenes land better? I don't know anything else that Strait has done, but I feel like a big weakness of the character has just been the way he's written. He's kind of one-dimensional by design, and though they've taken measures to punch up his character development for the show (yes, he's even more bland in the books), I don't know how much you can alter his trajectory while still following the major story beats.

fridge corn posted:

Im surprised no one has suggested yet that holden is some kind of deconstruction of the archetypal lead good guy by actually being played as an insufferable self righteous unlikeable prick