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Comment by Sharlin | Hacker News Reader

I like pretty much everything else about The Expanse, but honestly, the crew of the Rocinante are just... unsympathetic. Forgettable. They could basically be killed off and I wouldn't care. Seeing that they're (intentionally) a microcosm of the system at large, with better writing their interactions could meaningfully reflect and comment on the tensions between their homeworlds, while still making me care about them as individuals and, indeed, as a crew.

Crisjen Avarasala is pretty much the only interesting main character in the show.

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Could not agree more. I still wonder what their motivation is to stay together and make each decision that puts them in ever more dangerous situations, that part was poorly developed.

I've been skipping every Holden/Nagata scene for the entirety of this season, it's pure filler and so utterly tedious to watch, excluding it entirely would have caused no damage. If it is supposed to help explain the crew's motive, well, it doesn't help with that at all. I'd have thrown myself out an airlock in preference to remaining aboard with such utterly wooden personalities

Would love to see a lower budget breakout series of Avasarala just doing her ninja politics stuff -- she is the main reason I kept watching at all. But perhaps that is just the corner of me that misses Babylon 5 :)

Have you read the books? I personally don't mind most of the scenes you mention, but that's probably because I know where they're going. Like - minor spoiler - Nagata's mention of her child in last episode. Sounds mostly irrelevant and ham-fisted if you're only watching, but if you've read the books, you know this is introducing a really huge major subplot. So maybe one of the problems of this show is that it's not tuned enough for people who don't know the source material?

> Would love to see a lower budget breakout series of Avasarala just doing her ninja politics stuff -- she is the main reason I kept watching at all. But perhaps that is just the corner of me that misses Babylon 5 :)

Me too. Avasarala carries this show by herself. And I miss Babylon 5 too. I wish someone would remaster and re-release it.

Regarding the remaster of B5: It’ll (probably) never happen.

Star Trek TNG was the first and probably last analogous show to get the remaster treatment. The issue is that, even though the acting was shot on 35mm, post production and VFX all happened at broadcast resolution.

TNG essentially redid the entire post production to bring us updated visuals. By the time CBS/Paramount got around to considering DS9, the financial cost of remastering TNG, plus the move for many people to Netflix, meant expected DVD/Blu-ray proceeds.

DS9 never got the TNG treatment as a result. B5 is in the same boat, needing totally redone postproduction and CG. B5 was a niche show, and the remaster would be an expensive and herculean task. In short, we’ll probably never see it done :-(

:(.

God damn it corporations, you aren't making any money off those old shows anyway. Just give them up to public domain, let the fans do the work for free, and find a way to reap the benefits of revived popularity of the franchise.

(Alas, the current owners of Star Trek rights seem to be actively hostile towards fan productions.)

Yeah, I think it would be AMAZING if the B5 rights holders would turn over the reels to a film archive who could then digitize and release those materials to the public domain.

I have no doubts that the fan base would give B5 the remaster it deserves.

DS9 too. TNG was the Star Trek I grew up with, but having rewatched all of the Treks in recent years, DS9 is the clear stand-out in terms of quality writing. DS9 deserves better as well.

As for fan productions of Trek, it’s true Axanar got some bad treatment. Star Trek Continues, on the other hand, managed to do what they set out to do.

Holden seems either miscast, misdirected, or something. In the books he's super charismatic, and in the show he's super whiney.

Book crew is better, I agree. But Avasarala IMO carries the show by herself. The casting is perfect here, and I'll miss her the most.

If the book crew is better, I'd hate to see what the crew on the show is like. I've only read Leviathan Wakes so far, but I found most of the characters to be really flat. I think the book suffers from the same issue as many other books in the science fiction genre: there's so much focus on developing the setting that the characters are underdeveloped and seem very generic.

To each their own, but I personally didn't find the book characters flat in any way. They're developed just enough for my taste.

But my view is that if I wanted to read a character development story, I'd pick up just about any other genre than science fiction. A romance novel, a crime novel, a drama novel, etc. I like my sci-fi when it's about something else than usual, mundane interpersonal drama that real life is so full of already.

You learn a whole lot about each of them in the later books. The first book is a slower start to the series.

>I think the book suffers from the same issue as many other books in the science fiction genre: there's so much focus on developing the setting that the characters are underdeveloped and seem very generic.

I'm okay with this because it's more realistic.

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