nebkelly t1_j1jxlp8 wrote on December 24, 2022 at 11:28 PM

Reply to comment by xevizero in Excited to start "The Expanse" and hit play without checking the episode. by icedrift

I wouldn't call it great. More like a Starz type level like Spartacus or Black Sails. Imo no, it doesn't really go anywhere.

If you can limit your expectations and put up with some bad plot and writing you can have a lot of fun with it.

xevizero t1_j1jxwwv wrote on December 24, 2022 at 11:30 PM

Other people here seemed to be much more into it. What would be your grievances, if you can say without spoiling the specific?

nebkelly t1_j1jzd4z wrote on December 24, 2022 at 11:42 PM

It is very corny at times, the casting was very different to the books, some of the main actors are not great. While the overall plot is cool (Earth v Mars v Belters), what actually happens each season is fairly silly and disjointed.

An example of a much better modern SF show is For All Mankind and... that show is maybe a 7 or an 8/10 compared to The Wire or whatever TV benchmark you want to use.

Unfortunately there is not a huge amount of spaceflight SF so people lap up what content we can get.

Edit - strongly ecommend reading the series before watching, or even just the first book.

Traece t1_j1mcbpo wrote on December 25, 2022 at 4:04 PM

Wow. I never thought I'd see For All Mankind compared to The Wire but here we are.

I don't mean that in a good way, FAM had a good first season and then committed one of the biggest trainwrecks into a B-tier soap opera I've ever seen. It's genuinely so bad I wouldn't even recommend someone watch the first season for fear that a person might suffer the fate of watching the other two. That's not something I'd want to inflict on anybody.

If you had compared The Expanse to The Wire, I'd say you might be overreaching a little, but only a little bit.

nebkelly t1_j1ovkbo wrote on December 26, 2022 at 4:52 AM

I didn't compare them favourably. I referenced The Wire as a benchmark neither of them come close to.

Traece t1_j1oxgy6 wrote on December 26, 2022 at 5:12 AM

>An example of a much better modern SF show is For All Mankind and... that show is maybe a 7 or an 8/10 compared to The Wire or whatever TV benchmark you want to use.

I don't see any universe in which this is neither a favorable comparison, nor a close one. Being 7 or 8/10 compared to The Wire is a high accolade by any metric, and quite close on a scale of 10. You even went so far as to say FAM is "a much better modern SF show."