I had this on my watch-it-someday list for a while, and since the series wrapped up earlier this year, I figured it was time.
tl;dr - I liked it, but then I’m a science fiction fan. I doubt anyone not already a fan will love it, but if you already like time travel then this is a fun series.
It is pretty well done time travel, compared to most time travel writing attempts out there.
The final few episodes (10?) are kind of a mess, though.
The tail end of season 3 and start of season 4 wasn’t that great. Too bad, since James Callis was awesome as Athan. But the last three or four episodes of the series were great, starting right after that silly Hilter episode.
James Callis was wonderful in this. He should be in more stuff.
edit - and I see I already wrote this few posts above. Meh, he deserves it.
Just got through this. It started off a little campy, but by mid-season 1 the characters started clicking and by the end of season 1 with the full plot in effect it became a great show. Sure, it has its broken plot holes as most time travel type shows do, but it stayed fun enough to not matter. I was kinda hoping for a different ending, but was thrilled to finally watch a syfy show that actually got through the whole story without being cancelled on a whim (looking at you Continuum, Eureka, Dark Matter, etc.).
And yes, all props to James Callis. Though it is hard to not see Baltar in everything he does, he’s still great.
I am in the middle of it so forgive me for not reading through the thread yet, but I stumbled upon this in my episode today:
I guess they really are on a budget at SyFy :O
I feel bad for SyFy because my viewing habits simply no longer include regular pre-scheduled TV shows. I tried streaming The Expanse in the past from their website, but there were missing episodes/seasons preventing me from “catching up” properly.
So I started watching this a few days back when I subscribed to Hulu (they have all the seasons, it looks like). I’m about 9 episodes in and enjoying it, mostly. There’s some good sci-fi ideas and room for possibilities for more ideas that keeps me coming back to the show, plus some good performances particularly by the actress playing Dr. Jones and the actor who played the Colonel in charge of Spearhead. In terms of this thread, I’ve read up through the episodes I’ve watched, up to post 50-ish or so. I’ll come back when I’m further along.
But I wanted to post now to just vent: TOO MANY OF THESE PEOPLE ARE FUCKING IDIOTS WHO DON’T ASK THE RIGHT QUESTIONS! There’s a ton of “well if X true, then we all die!” in this show and people just keep not testing for X. Like over and over and over and over and over and Jesus wept. I get it, that some of the characters are not trained scientists (though some are) but it’s like they don’t have basic logic, at all.
And on top of that, Cole is a fucking dumbass. He operates with no plan, always doing desperate bullshit that mostly doesn’t work, is obsessed with Cassie to the exclusion of thinking straight, and makes bad decisions all the time. I understand we are supposed to FEEL HIS DESPERATION MAN! but I just want to kick the shit out of him most of the time he’s on screen.
Of course I’m a crotchety middle aged dude raised on competent protagonists in sci-fi. The more modern “I’ve suffered and I’m desperate and MY EMOTIONS WILL CARRY THE DAY!” protagonist style just pisses me the fuck off. Can we get some competence here, by God? Jesus.
OK, venting done, back to watching.
I don’t disagree with your critique, but i have to say that not asking the right questions, and making bad decisions is a staple of SF tv, as well as most of most other genres. This show is no worse than most and better than some.
Again, popping into this thread as I plow through the show, but once you’ve seen the first 12 episodes of the show you have to rethink many of the assumptions and much of the information provided earlier in the show. Several characters, in hindsight, know much more than they are saying early on. Specifically, there is reason to believe Dr. Jones was full of LOTS of shit in her early talks with Cole.
Basically, some of the “foundation” of the show turns out to be false or misleading. I normally hate this sort of thing, but I felt the show actually earned it (at least partially) over the course of the first season. They built a new foundation as they went along and so far at least it is holding up, through S1E12.
The thing to remember about the show and assumptions about character motivations? People lie. A lot.
Especially Jones, but she has reasons.
