The first season of The Expanse is a mixed bag. At its best, it’s a thrilling series that captures the feeling of playing Elite: Dangerous. At its worst, it’s clunky sci-fi sludge.
*Minor spoilers for the first season below*
The Expanse in its first season has three main components. Following the fight for survival for the crew of the ice freighter Canterbury, the political escapades of UN Undersecretary Chrisjen Avasarala, and the investigation conducted by Detective Miller. If there’s anything to watch the show for, it’s the main plot thread. The mystery that’s crafted felt organic, compelling, and leaving just enough intrigue for future episodes. The excellent main narrative that’s spun kept me watching through the show’s rougher patches. The Expanse also hosts an incredible world with amazing use of sci-fi, and for the most part, accurate depiction of a space faring humanity in our solar system. The planets in the 2300s and the humans inhabiting them is incredibly interesting, and it’s a pleasure to visit new locations whenever they arise due to the excellent scenic design on most of the settings. The visual effects in this show are also incredible for a TV budget. With constant shots of ships flying around and space stations and futuristic cities, it never dips in quality to a detrimental point. The space combat feels exhilarating, the strategy, tactics and the fact that they are in a realistic space environment really bring you in and keep you engaged. The world that the main plot takes you through is well done, and there’s always a little more to find out. The exposition to keep you updated on the ongoing mystery is well placed in dialogue, with characters iterating just enough information to make you feel like you’re in the loop, but not so much that you feel like you’re being beaten over the head with information.
This level of articulation and excellent worldbuilding is not consistent though, as it took me until the penultimate episode to learn the name of one of the main three factions. As inconsistent as it may be, I’m glad the show doesn’t treat the audience like a fool. The same does not go for character exposition, though. Characters in this show are not subtle, at all. A lot of the time the show can’t think of a subtle, interesting way to have the characters move forward, so characters will get mad at each other and sometimes pull guns in a standoff with either no consequence for their actions, or it resolves into a predictable outcome. This makes the conflict between the characters feel really jarring and unnatural. The dialogue is strange at times, with characters expressing little to no urgency for the situation at hand, despite it being very clearly lethal most of the time. Some scenes also lack spatial continuity. For example, there will be a few lines about not being able to make noise because there are people nearby that could kill them, so not even a faint cough should be made for fear of being found and killed. Except that just a few lines after that, the characters will be yelling at each other for a random conflict that doesn’t need to be there, and nothing will come of it. They won’t be found, and their argument goes nowhere. Characters get mad at each other for no reason several times an episode, and it gets old very quickly. Character arcs also lack consistency, with radical changes happening that never really affect the status quo. Holden has been shooting people for several episodes, and then suddenly has the horrible shock and “oh my god I just killed someone” moment towards the end of the season. That being said, the show does a good job of showing everyone’s checkered past, and how everyone has blood on their hands, even if it’s just a little bit. Which, once again the show fights itself on with inconsistency. For every great moment that shows depth there are several shots at unnecessarily weird angles that prevent you from seeing the actors doing their job of emoting and being compelling. It needlessly takes away from the moment the characters are having, and the show ends up giving itself an uphill battle in selling that the crew of the Canterbury have known each other for years. On the other hand, there are scenes where characters have just met minutes before, and are somehow having these incredibly emotional and intense conversations with people, which the main characters (some of which have known each other for years) don’t even have. This results in any romantic threads or deeply personal things happening to the main characters feel unearned. Although it somehow didn’t bother me that much due to the isolating nature of the sets and lighting showing you that these are all people floating around in tin cans in the middle of nothing.
The show isn’t afraid to kill characters, either, which felt nice. Most of the time, when characters died it felt natural due to the continued lethal threat that main characters face and the situation they’re in, rather than a trope. Which brings me to the detective storyline. The cop stuff is really tone deaf at times and doesn’t jive with the rest of the show. Most of the time it feels like a poorly executed class allegory, and if the overarching narrative that Detective Miller was pulling the thread on wasn’t so interesting, it would have felt like sandpaper. It can feel really cringey and has the worst case of characters getting mad just because the show needs the character to do something and doesn’t know where to take it. Luckily, the source material of the books keeps things moving and on track, but the pacing of the show is not always up to par. The dialogue will be cut off at strange times, especially in earlier episodes, and the scene will jarringly change to the other side of the solar system before it feels like the characters from the previous scene really finished their sentence. A lot of the time the cuts feel abrupt and misplaced, and they can really take away from the point of the scene. Because of this, the ending of the season didn’t really feel like a full conclusion so much as it felt like the break for any other episode. This wasn’t the worst for me, since I had the luxury of moving right on to the second season the following day (which makes several improvements).
The Expanse is a series with a solid foundation, although its first season does leave some to be desired. The best button I can put on this is that when I was sitting through the credit roll of the season finale, I saw the SYFY logo. I audibly said aloud “Now that makes sense.” since I had forgotten that The Expanse was originally a SYFY show before Amazon picked it up. It is a good show stuck in the trappings of network television, which I am glad it outgrew.
Although I would like to say, as a final thought, that I adore the idea of space Mormons following their absurd religion to find the garden of eden in Jackson County, Andromeda.
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