Comment by grue007 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by grue007 | Hacker News Reader

I love the books, devour them as soon as they come out, and I think the show has done a fine job adapting the story.

I'm happy that the show has survived the weakest part of the book series - Detective Miller - and gotten past the admitted cribbing from Firefly without looking derivative. The show has truly gotten stronger from every episode.

One change I would make is to subtitle the Belter dialogue. It's such a fun part of the books which in translation to an audio track ends up getting lost as a word-mash.

HOWEVER! As far as whether the show will survive: The show either needs more cash, or to allocate that cash in a more narrow, strategic, and modest way. It suffers the problem endemic to all under-budgeted TV sci-fi: the low budget always visibly bleeds in at the edges. "Yeah, that actor's really not the best fit for that part, and we could have made the plot easier to grasp with an additional scene, but with the money we save, we can afford some CGI for the rail gun!" Maybe it's just me, but I would rather watch an excellently executed sci-fi drama on an obviously artificial Dogville-like set than watch an "OK" space opera that has a nominally realistic looking space-ship brig which I won't remember anyway.

(Not to diss The Expanse's actors! - the majority are quite good, subtle, and growing on me with each episode.)

Action and special effects together are the number one self-defeating conceit of all sci-fi, especially television sci-fi. In order to please the action-craving audience (I guess?), they starve the heart and soul of the show: focusing on characters. What I love about Star Trek: TNG, one of my favorite shows of all time, is that in the Riker's Beard Era, it focused on the truth and depth of the characters through and through. That focus allows the audience to overlook the latent camp of the setting, and forgive the sometimes poor execution. As a result, TNG is still watchable today.

Special effects age. Characters are immortal.

Funny - I felt that Miller was the most interesting part of the first season. Mostly everybody else seemed to just be 2D cliche templates (Amos continues to fulfil the 'Space Gorilla' cliche so hard it hurts), and I consider most of the acting for the main characters rather forgettable. At least Miller had a narrative and a motivation, rather than just being tumbled round by whatever was happening at the time.

I started reading the books and it seems like a lot of subtleties got thrown out - there's an awful lot of "Drama" injected into the series by having the characters make stupid decisions/hiding irrelevant information just so that it can be 'discovered' or reversed later,

I also get the feeling that they stopped bothering to remember the setting was mostly supposed to be "Hard" Scifi, outside of specific references to the books, but that's a pretty specific complaint.

I don't know. I would watch Shohreh Aghdashloo read the phone book. She's a very compelling actress.

She is - but not somebody I'd classify as a main character, especially this second season. She's turned up, what, twice?

Right? And she's not in the plot of the first book AT ALL so all of her characterization is completely irrelevant until Ganymede.

I love the books, devour them as soon as they come out, and I think the show has done a fine job adapting the story.

I didn't love the books because too many of the sentences are weak, obvious, or clichés: https://jakeseliger.com/2016/04/28/briefly-noted-leviathan-w... , but I gave the show a shot and hoped for something better than what it is, or what the first few episodes showed. Still, I think the cash shortfall problem is probably real and accounts for some of the show's challenges.

I'm reminded of SyFy's making of The Magicians, which is a lovely book (https://jakeseliger.com/2009/08/28/the-magicians-lev-grossma...) and a TV show that I really wish HBO had made.

I wonder, in The Magician book - do the characters also drink semen to become more magical?

The show is made for middle/upperclass teenage white girls, is the book for a different audience?

Yes, they do.

Interesting that you would hint at a budget shortfall showing up on screen. I've thought quite the opposite. With the exception of a couple of actors (really just specific moments with certain actors), I feel like the show is full of splendor. I've been asking myself how they could possibly pull off some of the effects and sets as a SyFy show that seems not very popular. They must either have a nice budget or be extremely resourceful.

Netflix effectively bankrolled the new Trek series which is bound to tank on CBS's streaming service. It would seem that they could take over funding The Expanse too.

It would seem that they could take over funding The Expanse too.

At least here in Sweden it says "A Netflix Original Serier" at the start of each episode, so I'd assume Netflix is at least partially funding it already. In fact is was only very recently that I discovered that it wasn't a Netflix exclusive show in the US.

I don't know how much Netflix money goes into the production, but Netflix takes a fair number of US/Canadian series and pushes them to other markets where they otherwise wouldn't be aired or released for months or years. This certainly does help the series (Netflix is paying them), but it's paying for distribution rights which may not impact production budgets significantly.

As I understand it, "A Netflix Original Series" only means that they have exclusive distribution rights in a given region/country.

Well said, I haven't seen the show yet myself but I absolutely relate to the desire to see characters and their development prioritized over special effects usage, etc.

It stings to see characters go underdeveloped for any reason, whether it's poor writing or simply mismanaged priorities like you mentioned.

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