The Expanse has a new home, but it’s as excellent as ever
The Expanse is still one of the best science fiction series out there
TV Reviews The Expanse
On The Expanse, every choice has weight. Sometimes literally. Early in the show’s compelling fourth season, a character decides to leave her spaceship home and go planetside. It’s a decision her crewmates have made multiple times before, but in Naomi Nagata’s (Dominique Tipper) case, there are special circumstances. As a Belter, Naomi was born and raised in low-gravity environments, which means that her body hasn’t built up the necessary muscle mass to endure planetary gravity. The series hasn’t lost its sense of scope since it left the SyFy channel for Amazon Prime. If anything, it’s broadened its horizons, taking in new worlds and the political strife of multiple systems. Yet a small but meaningful amount of tension is generated out of wondering if a person can walk across level ground without collapsing.
Naomi’s struggles, and the attention paid to those struggles, is emblematic of what makes The Expanse so effective. The show’s canny use of consequences ensures that its wilder sci-fi concepts exist in a context that grounds them without diminishing their impact. Even more importantly, those consequences always exist for narrative purposes. Information is never introduced simply for its own sake, but rather to ensure that the viewer is constantly aware of the cost of all this space travel and terraforming. Unlike the pulp fantasy of Star Wars or the utopian vision of Star Trek: The Next Generation, The Expanse is a fictional future that takes what we already know about humanity and the systems we cling to, and just gives us more room to fuck everything up.
Season four picks up months after the end of season three. The Sol Ring, alien technology that offers a gateway to a galaxy untouched by human concerns, is complete, and refugees are flocking to the new opportunity that galaxy represents. Worried about the potential for another proto-molecule disaster, U.N. Secretary Chrisjen Avasarala works to keep access to the Ring restricted, but some ships break through. When a group of Belters sets up a colony on a lithium-rich planet, they inadvertently discover evidence of an alien civilization—a civilization that might have ties to everything Avasarala is working to avoid. She sends James Holden and the crew of the Rocinante to investigate, along with a team of U.N. scientists and peace-keepers to begin “negotiations” with the settlers. Meanwhile, Camina Drummer and Klaes Ashford hunt smugglers to keep the peace between the Belt and Earth, and Bobbie Draper does her best to acclimatize to civilian life on Mars.
That “meanwhile” is important. The show remains strong, but if the fourth season has a major flaw, it’s the number of side plots running adjacent to the main focus. Season three remains a high-water mark for the series because its subject, the Ring, brought nearly every major character into its orbit. But while the after-effects of the Ring’s existence serve as a thematic connection, the actual stories in season four are considerably more disparate, with multiple character groupings existing in isolation, separate from one another outside the occasional news story and conversational reference.
In a weaker series, one with a less developed ensemble, this could’ve been a disaster. Instead, we get something that’s imperfect, but still strong. Performance helps a lot: Shohreh Aghdashloo is a force of nature as Avasarala (and now that the show is off cable, she gets to swear a lot), and Frankie Adams’ work as a brilliant soldier faced with a culture that no longer needs or values her skills keeps the Mars sections from falling flat. Out of everything, the Belter storyline, which has Drummer and Ashford balancing loyalties and pride against a possible future for their people, feels the least essential, but it’s hard to be disappointed about getting to watch Cara Gee and David Strathairn spar against one another again.
Really, that’s the saving grace of all of season four’s adjacent storylines. At this point, the show has such a deep bench of developed characters that it seems a shame to lose any of them for good, even when keeping them around means using material that, while still strong, lacks the urgency of the central plot. It’s impossible to shake the impression that the time spent away from New Terra (the name for the Belter-settled planet) is a kind of padding, but when the padding is as high quality as this is, it’s hard to be too upset about it.
Still, the real draw here is the main storyline, which follows a structure that has become something of an Expanse staple: Holden arrives in a complicated situation and, in trying to do what’s right, makes things worse (before they ultimately get better. Presumably.). Unsurprisingly, the show has a fair bit to say about the rights of the disenfranchised against the larger systems that work at best to exploit them, and at worst to erase them from the equation entirely. Much of the first half of the season is a juggling act of tension between rival factions on New Terra, as the Belters fight to defend their home from the forces that have betrayed them in the past, and the newcomers work to maintain order in the face of people already inclined to mistrust them.
We’re introduced to a few new people, including Burn Gorman as Adolphus Murtry, the trigger-happy head of U.N. security, and Lyndie Greenwood as Elvi Okoye, a biologist looking to see what the new planet can teach us. But the heart of the show remains the Rocinante’s crew. Steven Strait has finally settled entirely into the role of James Holden, leavening the character’s potentially insufferable righteousness with a healthy dollop of calm and world-weary concern, and Cas Anvar’s Alex Kamal is as charming and warm as ever. Dominique Tipper brings convincing determination and suffering to Naomi’s efforts to expand her horizons, and Wes Chatham’s Amos Burton is still an absolute wonder, a bracing mixture of pragmatism and honesty so direct it’s like nothing else on television.
Minor misgivings aside, it’s a relief to have a new season of The Expanse to get lost in. The show is still one of the best science fiction series out there, and it appears to have made the move to streaming with minimal compromises.
61 Comments
I just finished my rewatch of Season 3 yesterday. I am so absolutely pumped for this.
SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE I am in nerd overload waiting for thisThe main thing I want is just for them to have a sense that the show can breathe and they don’t have to rush through two books in the space of an episode out of cancellation fear, last season could have been like three seasons.
Agreed! I really hope they don’t put book five and six as one season. Book five is gonna rock! 🙂
Also the benefit of this being a TV show is that we won’t have to hear Elvie constantly obsess over her crush on Holden.
I have not read the books, am I wrong in thinking they are not doing a terrible job at, at the very least, not making us subject to the author talking Holden up the way Lee Child talks up Jack Reacher? Jack Reacher was written for Brett on The Good Place. Holden is pretty annoying a lot of the time, listening to somebody swoon over him a lot does sound kind of painful.
The novels are all written from various viewpoints, and trust me—Holden isn’t swooned over.
I read the first two novels after watching the show, and I was shocked at how much Holden-worship there was in Leviathan Wakes. It gets substantially better as the series goes on (and I like the books quite a bit; the only reason I haven’t finished out the series is that I was trying to go into the show not knowing everything that happened next), but the show has done a better job simply because we’re never literally seeing things through Holden’s eyes.
“Jack Reacher was so handsome his face hurt other people when they looked at his face. He could do a roundhouse kick and that was awesome. He could beat up six guys with his eyes closed, no wait, ten guys. He punched bad guys in the face and it was lights out, let me tell you.”so better caliber than that pretty accurate Lee Child impression
Don’t forget how his hands were like Christmas Hams. Or a turkey. Or the size of a bunch of bananas. Something big and food-related.
you know where he kept his steamed ham
It’s not too bad. Elvie is probably the closest the series ever gets to blatantly gushing over how awesome Holden is. She’s probably the second most underdeveloped character in the series next to Book!Ashford, who was more an asshole/raving lunatic than he was in the show. The end of her arc is literally getting laid by her scientist friend so that she’s no longer obsessing over Holden.It gets better as the series goes on as later books start focusing on more than Holden and two new characters. Hell book five has the Roci crew split up so they have their own separate storylines.
Thats definitely not the end of her in the books at all. She’s pretty important in the most recent one? (Don’t want to say too much)
This may be one of my favorite things about season 4: no Elvi swooning over Holden. I know it did not last long in the book, but it was still incredibly grating to read even for just a few chapters.
Yeah, if they actually pull this off until Season 9, at the pace that it should be at….well, that would certainly be something.
I’ve watched the first six episodes, I’ve read books 1-4 and part of 5. So far it looks like they have brought in a bit of book 5, but I’m thinking it’s set up for next season. Kind of like they had to merge books 1 and 2 for the first two seasons.I’m absolutely loving this season. Amos is… just great.
Finished the season, no drop-off in quality at all from the previous, even might have looked a little more $$$ but not too much.Amos is the man. Dating him is like dating Michael Corleone.
So I am books-on-taping Leviathan and…I’m shocked at how Amos is a nonentity. Did his character in the show come about later in the books or did whoever came up with the show create him? So far I prefer the show. We also just met Diogo in the book (instead of when you meet him early in the show) and I’m curious to see if he’s as hilarious a scuzzbag.
I’m really looking forward to this. The show has consistently gotten better over time.
So excited for more of this. It’s the best sci-fi show since Battlestar, for sure.
Three strong seasons complete, it’s undeniably better then Battlestar, which dropped off hard after 2
Better. Battlestar had a great first season, a so-so second season, and it was downhill from there.
Way better than BSG
Definitely looking forward to this, although the fourth book was my least favorite in the series so far.
I’m gonna miss Naomi’s sweet ass mohawk though!
Yeah, it’s my least favorite as well (but, “least favorite” in a series I regard across the board as “really good to near perfect” isn’t a bad thing). I think it might also be one of the hardest of the novels to adapt, so I’m happy to see all of the positive reviews so far.
Finished my rewatch last week, ready to go for season 4!
As a die hard space sci-fi fan I am thankful the cancel community hasnt taken away the darkness (real life) in this series. This is by far the best space sci-fi show even eclipsing Battle Star Galactica. Thank you Bezos!
This show is so good I almost don’t want to binge it, but I probably will anyway.
Also, we (the Internet) got Tatiana Maslany an Emmy (she got herself an Emmy, but you know what I mean), so can we start the campaign for Wes Chatham? I’m re-watching the series in preparation for this, and he’s better than I remember.
I want in on this campaign. Amos is my absolute favorite thing about this show. Wes Chatham is effing brilliant.
Oh I was delayed by, well, life. But I ripped through season 3 and got to first 5min of season 4 all in the first week of January… and had a moment of panic that it would be all over too soon! So I went back and rewatched a lot of season 1 and 2. It soooooo rewards rewatching!! It was brilliant and exciting all over again.So now here I am, and I’ve just watched the first 4 episodes of season 4, months after the debut, and I had to stop scared it would be over too soon again! And then of course I grabbed my Roci coffee cup from NYComicCon and came to AV Club to see what my fellow nerds thought of the eps, but Zach wont be doing an ep by ep review?!! Say it isnt so Zach!! As someone who read every last one of your S.T. Deep Space Nine recaps, I demand you give us some reviews for this season’s episodes!!We need a place to jointly celebrate Amos’s odd affective responses, Alex and his wool hat, Naomi’s bad @$$ ability to look fine as she slowly falls apart inside. And more time to discuss how amazing Avasarala is this season – simply resplendent! And I want her to convince Bobbi to leave so much – “If these people cant see how glorious you are then F-them!” Well said Madam Secretary, well said.
(and now that the show is off cable, she gets to swear a lot)It’s funny, the Canadian airings had lots of swearing. I guess not the US ones?
It’s Localized. Didn’t you wonder why all the cussing, was Leafs-related?
Of course!You probably know it is filmed in Toronto, I love when they use downtown TO as future New York or someplace on the Ryerson or York campus as future something or other.A buddy of mine is a set designer on the show which is kinda cool.
I think they just threw “hosers” in the wild lines everytime somebody was speaking offscreen
I dunno, I could be misremembering, but it definitely seemed like more cussin’ to me.
The Amazon streaming versions of the first 3 seasons must be based on the Canadian version, as there is the same frequency of swearing as Season 4.
They were limited to a couple of swears per episode. But now they could just do and entire episode of everyone saying fuck if they wanted. All i want to know is does Avasarala ask Naomi “what the fuck she’s done with her hair?”
Like I said, in the Canadian ones there was a lot of swearing. Well, not a lot per se, I guess an amount consistent with how people talk today, but more than most TV shows that come from the US.
But seriously what did Naomi do to her hair?
That’s correct – Space(where it showed in Canada) didn’t have a problem with the f-bomb, but SyFy in the states felt the need to protect the kiddies from bad language. Probably more related to a channel-wide policy than a failure to understand this showed is aimed at adults, but still, another indication of the incongruity of a broadcast network trying to show adult fare. The model is slowly dying, eventually everything will be streaming.
Holden arrives in a complicated situation and, in trying to do what’s right, makes things worse
Spoilers after the puppy…
That’s a feature, not a bug. From a certain point of view.
And another spoiler, after the sleeping catto.
It’s impossible to shake the impression that the time spent away from New Terra (the name for the Belter-settled planet) is a kind of paddingOh, you sweet summer child.
SPOILERS SPOILERS, scroll scroll past thishaving just finished the season and not having read the books, it’s abundantly clear now that New Terra is actually the filler in the grand scheme of things (other than the bit where Holden deactivates the protomolecule) and the real sauce is getting cooked up on Earth, Mars and with this Marco guy
Friday can’t get here fast enough.
So uh, they’re just ignoring the whole Belter thing, now that there are planets and gravity wells to explore, huh?
They very much don’t.
Steven Strait looks way to skinny in that photo.
It reaches out….Can’t wait to binge.
I disagree that the side plots with Bobbie, Avasarsla, Drummer and Ashford are a diversion. From what I see from watching the first two episodes is an interlacing of the plots of books four and five. One of the big problems in the pacing of the three SyFy seasons was the need for table setting for the breaks between Leviathan Wakes, Caliban’s War and Abaddon’s Gate. It looks like Amazon is committed enough to completing the story that they are advancing elements of the next volume to make a seamless transition between Cibola Burn and Nemesis Games. Evidence of this with the name of a certain OPA leader coming up in S4:E2 that I’m pretty sure doesn’t get mentioned until Book 5. There’s a bunch of foreshadowing in E1 and E2 that will make readers smile knowingly and give viewers aha moments in re-watching. Also if anyone casting the show happens to read this, Charles Dance would be a fantastic coup in the role of a certain Martian officer who will be playing a part in upcoming seasons.
Not really seeing Dance as Duarte (assuming that is who you mean). He is too old given the timeline of the later books. Trying to think of a good actor for that role. If Riz Ahmed were 8-10 years older I could picture him in that role.
Disappointing we’re not getting individual episode reviews. Just finished ep01 and that ending has got me pumped for the rest of the season.
“Holden, don’t put your dick in it. It’s fucked enough already”Avasarala says the best stuff since Batiatus!
Oh if I had my daughter’s name to come up with today (instead of before this show existed, since she was born early 2013), she would so be called Avasarala!! That woman is Amazing!!
First question people will be asking that answering is not really a spoiler: this season CLEARLY and NECESSARILY sets up another season, we’re getting more!SPOILER
There isn’t anywhere else to discuss this show, it would be nice if they made a spoiler space or something. I can’t complain too much that this felt like the first half of a season if I complained that last season was at least two seasons (maybe three). The stuff with Frankie is so slow, the stuff with Drummer leaves her very much nowhere (other than giving her a “this time it’s personal” against Inaros). The idea that Frankie would work with murderers (who the show tries to turn into the same morally grey people as the Belters were but never quite succeeds) over the UN is necessary, but she is already giving up on Mars to join the black marketers so makes little sense…although watching her lose her sense of self is a good idea that could have been explored more deeply, she never seemed like a room service lady. The UN political storyline is also really slow, we need Frankie and Chrisjen together quick. The main problem this year is that all of the traps are so obviously traps and they are sprung SO slowly. Adolphus also needed a little more to be more than a stock villain, more than just his “you need me” speech.
Now for the good: MOST EVERYTHING ELSE. Amos is my hero, but his girlfriends fare as well as Michael Corleone’s. Holden is way less insufferable. It’s pretty pure sci-fi goodness.
Bobbi. Frankie is the actress, who hopefully isn’t involved with black marketers…
whoooooops
The CGI was rubbish.
I’m surprised about this score. For me, this season was a serious drop in quality from previous seasons.For one, Holden & co. gets stuck on an alien planet for the entire season, wherethe plot really drags out, especially in the middle section. Far too much is spent on miserable colonists and psychopathic mercenaries, all of which has been done by sci-fi shows many times before. There’s little tension in this section; the colonists are predictably miserable and the mercenaries are predictably psychopathic, and it’s too obvious that Holden will play the moralistic mediator who will help the colonists and hold off the mercenaries. The larger point about power struggles is of course well made, but did we need 10 episodes to tell make it?There’s nothing wrong with the plot itself— Avasarala, Bobbie Draper and the OPA people all do some important things — but far too much time is spent on all of it. In the hands of more economical writers, the entire Holden plot could have been told in 2-3 episodes tops. Establish the colonists, set up the alien artifacts, get Holden there. The additional impediments (the scheming psychopath, the blindness bug, the deadly leeches) feel constructed, like the writers are stalling. (What happened the leeches, by the way? They were the most dangerous menace one moment, the next they’re just gone.)Overall, the opening episode and the final episode pack the most action, and much of the rest of the season feels like filler.I haven’t read the books, so I don’t know if the show is catching up with them. Might it be that the producers are diluting the source material to make it last longer, to avoid ending up in the same situation as HBO with Game of Thrones?
I only got through three books (and a little into book 4) before I petered out a bit on the series…. and none of the S4E1 plot arcs were remotely familiar to me. Does anyone have a take on which of the novels this season attempts to adapt? (Or is it going Game of Thrones on us?)
Covers the entirety of book 4, plus the cutaways to Mars/Earth/Belt are either new (only show) stuff or are parts of book 5 necessary to really set up the main plot of that book. That book could easily be 2 seasons even with the prep, so no idea what the plan it at this point for season 5.
This season is largely from book 4, but appears to be pulling in a few things from book 5 so that other plotlines don’t get stale.
So we’re never going to get the full season reviewed here?