1688

I just finished the 6th season and was pleasantly surprised with the finale despite reservations of the shortened season and so much to wrap up. While the Laconia story was a bit hokey, I didn’t mind too much, and the action scenes in the finale were really awesome.

I hope they eventually continue the series in some form, but I’m pretty satisfied with what we got.

1689

I just finished this series a couple days ago; I appreciated it as a whole. I think season 5 was my favorite, but the last season (6) felt really strange: it was as if they canceled it halfway through and had to scrap an ending together.

1690

Don’t want to get folks’ hopes up for a new season of TV, but the authors of the books are working with some artists on a series of graphic novels that take place between books 6 and 7 - with the likenesses of the TV actors!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/boom-studios/the-expanse-dragon-tooth-reveals-the-missing-years

Ever since the TV series ended, I’ve been reading all the books. I absolutely love the hell out of them, and would recommend anyone who loved the TV show do the same. This graphic novel will hopefully bridge the divide well!

1691

I came to the series after having recently (last year) devoured all of the books; loved them. At first I was non-plussed by the first few episodes. I set it aside and later, on a whim and while laid up with pneumonia, binged all six seasons in a matter of days and absolutely loved it too.

I recall having problems with the casting being not what I’d imagined from my reading. Amos and Holden in particular. Now I can’t imagine their being played by anyone else. (Amos, imo, they got just right by the end of it; character-wise.) Some of the other casting were perfect from the get-go; in particular Bobbie and Chrisjen. Chrisjen, for me, practically steals the show.

1692

Yeah that is pretty much accepted as fact. Shohreh Aghdashloo is perfect as Avasarala. Bobby Draper, Miller and Amos were also cast very well. Frankly I had no complaints with any of the casting. Strait was fine as Holden. The Expanse is definitely one of my top sci-fi series of all time. I was very glad that Amazon snapped it up when Syfy cancelled it.

1693

I still don’t like Strait as Holden. He just always looked too wan and callow to match the picture I developed of the character reading the books.

I didn’t think that Wes Chatham as Amos or Frankie Adams as Bobbie matched up either, but both actors eventually eclipsed my mental model… unlike Strait.

Don’t get me wrong – I love the series as much as I love the books.

1694

I loved The Expanse, but I just kept imagining how much better it would have been if the crew were replaced by the cast of Firefly.

1695

I’m more or less right there with you. Holden just looked too young and disaffected in appearance, if not in speech and action. In my head he was an older man that was cynical about those outside his circle and passionate about those in. Amos really grew on me, I wanted Dave Bautista as the character, but the actor’s fantastic deadeye stare won me over. Naomi I always liked, Alex I always liked, as far as meeting book expectations. Avarsarala, well, she was perfect.

1696

Bautista would have been a worse choice overall, to affable and likeable. I respect his ability for sure, but Amos is a sociopath, and knows he is. And Wes absolutely nails that in his performance.

His ‘I am that guy’ moment really sells just how killing someone impacts him exactly as much as blowing his nose would. You only matter to him if he chooses you to matter to him, and if you are outside of the circle you are of absolutely zero value to him.

But if you threaten or harm someone inside the circle then he will make it his dying breaths work to kill you.

1697

Yep, exactly. Bautista had the body but that’s probably contraindicated vs. the menace. A big guy is always menacing, a smaller guy with a death stare is REALLY menacing. Screen Amos had that thing where bad guys have to think, “Shit, if this goes off, we aren’t getting beat up, they’re just worrying about how to dispose of the bodies.”

1698

My initial impression was that they were all too young, but they all eventually won me over, even Holden.

1699

I subscribed to Prime Video five months ago specifically with the intent of watching the last two seasons of The Expanse, but in several attempts just couldn’t get into season 5. Finally over the Easter weekend I thought of checking a few of the earlier episodes to see if the show maybe just wasn’t as good as I remembered.

That plan didn’t work; from the first few minutes of S1E1, I was totally bought in to the story and there was no way I was skipping a minute from it until the end of S3E13. Everything about those first three seasons just works.

With momentum from that binge, I tackled S5 again and made it through. It’s not very good in comparison. The “let’s split up, we’ll cover more ground that way” structure is just demoralizing due to losing basically all the crew interactions, and with the need to spread each of the separate storylines over basically the whole season before bringing it all together at the end, they end up awfully thin and repetitive. In particular, I can’t imagine that anyone was happy with the Naomi storyline.

And then season 6 is a straight up dumpster fire. Clearly they didn’t have the budget to actually tell the whole story, so they made a disconnected highlight reel of big moments but left out all the connective tissue that’s needed for the story to flow in a coherent manner, for all the factions to feel real, or for the setting to appear like a real world inhabited by real people.

But given that budget reality, how can you possibly justify wasting so much of the season on the CGI alien dogs? Or give so much screen time to Filip and Marco, rather than the characters the viewers actually liked? Neither of those went anywhere. Hell, if this is how the Inaros arc was planned to play out, I’m even more annoyed by how S5 revolved around the family drama.

1700

Now that I’ve finished reading all the books, I still don’t understand why they did the Laconia stuff in Season 6. It’s totally unimportant to the story of Season 6, and with no chance of ever getting a filmed version of books 7-9, it was just a waste of airtime and production budget IMO.

That Laconia story - covered in the “Strange Dogs” novella which takes place between books 6 and 7, is extremely important to the subsequent books, but completely pointless to the TV show.

1701

Well no not quite. The assumption has always been (and still is) that a book 7-9 production could happen down the road. But it’s always been said that it wouldn’t happen immediately.

— Alan

1702

Still makes no sense to me. If there are years in-between, you’d want to kick it off with the Laconia stuff instead of hoping your previous viewers would remember the details. As is, it was a waste of air time in S6. A co-worker and I were just talking about this yesterday, I finally got around to the books, grabbed the first six from the local library.

1703

Yeah the Laconia stuff is so disconnected from the show that if they ever want to include it, they should kick it off in season 7, not tease it in season 6.

1704

Sounds like they just wanted to do the Strange Dogs story because it runs concurrently with the events of Season/Book 6. To have the story take place in the timeframe of Book 7 or a potential Season 7 would make no sense, because there’s a huge difference (and timejump) bewteen the two. And they wanted to have those Laconia elements to anticipate something down the road, but I agree that it could be a long time (if ever) we wind up seeing it.

I dunno, it’s a fun and interesting side story, and I suppose is an interesting diversion from the main story while educating the viewer a bit more about what else is going on in the background here.

— Alan