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Comment by jancsika | Hacker News Reader

Important off-topic The Expanse conundrum:

In the very first episodes a tall, stretched-out skinny space-born dude is getting tortured simply by making him stand and be subject to Earth's gravity.

Then the rest of the series-- few to no tall, stretched-out skinny space-born peeps anywhere.

What gives? I imagine the director realizing how expense it would be to continue seeking out a bunch of tall, skinny extras...

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I remember an interview with the showrunners that basically said that. There weren't enough tall and skinny people to perform all the roles adequately, not to mention background extras. And it limited them from casting the actors they really wanted to cast, like Jared Harris as Dawes.

They do still deal with the disorientation non-natives deal with in Earth conditions, though. There was an episode that spent a significant amount of its story showing Bobby dealing with being on Earth for the first time and seeing unfiltered sunlight and the extra gravity. There's been a few other instances of it, but it has definitely taken a backseat since that torture scene you mentioned.

Also in the books. In the beginning, belters were hardly able to live on Earth let alone move around. Later, they colonize planets. So I get why that was dropped as a plot device. And since it was only one scene, it didn't have much of an impact anyway.

It was because in the beginning they wanted to put the idea that belters were different in people's head, but to do it the entire series would be too expensive. They got rid of the issue in-universe with the bone-growth meds (?) that Miller and probably others took (in the books this didn't exist, and all belters are tall).

> how expense it would be

Apparently the insider moniker for the show is, “The Expense.”

Hee hee.

I can imagine an alternate universe failed version of The Expanse where they spent all their money up front on CGI to create stretched-out skinny extras.

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