I have now watched the pilot episode of The Expanse about 4 times. It's a SyFy original TV show based on the series of speculative-future, hard(ish)-SF books by James S.A. Corey collectively known by the same title.
Season 1 will deal with events from books 1 and 2, by the looks of things: "Leviathan Wakes" and "Caliban's War".
What did I think?
OMG you guise! I LOVED it. :D
Check out the awesome main title sequence:
And the trailer:
I've been reading a lot of hard-SF books lately - Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy and associated books, most notably. I saw the above trailer last year, and got super-excited, so I immediately bought and read Leviathan Wakes.
Given that I went in with the trailer images in my head, it's hardly surprising that the pilot episode "Ducilinea" nailed my expectations in the looks department - but I have been thrilled by the cast's realisation of the characters, and the competence and confidence of the writing. The universe felt thoroughly established from moment one.
The part that buzzed me the most - and I suspect is highly important to visitors to this particular blog - is how much attention and detail was lavished on the depiction of Variable Gravity and Momentum. It's by no means perfect, but the amount of effort and artistry expended to depict everything between high-G and no-G is magnificent. There's a space manoeuvre in there that in other shows would be a line of dialogue, but in this is one of the most epic and thrilling space sequences I've ever seen on TV. Just amazing.
The pilot is available to stream online in the US and Canada now:
The rest of us have to... "get creative".
The next episode is out on December 15th, the night after the TV premiere of the pilot. It sucks to have to wait so long, because this first one was utterly sublime, in my view.
What did you guys think?
