
Only You Can Stop the Expanse from Becoming the Next Canceled Sci-Fi Classic - rbanffy
https://www.wired.com/2017/03/geeks-guide-the-expanse-2/?mbid=social_fb
======
grue007
I _love_ the books, devour them as soon as they come out, and I think the show
has done a fine job adapting the story.

I'm happy that the show has survived the weakest part of the book series -
Detective Miller - and gotten past the admitted cribbing from Firefly without
looking derivative. The show has truly gotten stronger from every episode.

One change I would make is to subtitle the Belter dialogue. It's such a fun
part of the books which in translation to an audio track ends up getting lost
as a word-mash.

HOWEVER! As far as whether the show will survive: The show either needs more
cash, or to allocate that cash in a more narrow, strategic, and modest way. It
suffers the problem endemic to all under-budgeted TV sci-fi: the low budget
always visibly bleeds in at the edges. "Yeah, that actor's really not the best
fit for that part, and we could have made the plot easier to grasp with an
additional scene, but with the money we save, we can afford some CGI for the
rail gun!" Maybe it's just me, but I would rather watch an excellently
executed sci-fi drama on an obviously artificial Dogville-like set than watch
an "OK" space opera that has a nominally realistic looking space-ship brig
which I won't remember anyway.

(Not to diss The Expanse's actors! - the majority are quite good, subtle, and
growing on me with each episode.)

Action and special effects together are the number one self-defeating conceit
of all sci-fi, especially television sci-fi. In order to please the action-
craving audience (I guess?), they starve the heart and soul of the show:
focusing on characters. What I love about Star Trek: TNG, one of my favorite
shows of all time, is that in the Riker's Beard Era, it focused on the truth
and depth of the characters through and through. That focus allows the
audience to overlook the latent camp of the setting, and forgive the sometimes
poor execution. As a result, TNG is still watchable today.

Special effects age. Characters are immortal.

~~~
misnome
Funny - I felt that Miller was the most interesting part of the first season.
Mostly everybody else seemed to just be 2D cliche templates (Amos continues to
fulfil the 'Space Gorilla' cliche so hard it hurts), and I consider most of
the acting for the main characters rather forgettable. At least Miller had a
narrative and a motivation, rather than just being tumbled round by whatever
was happening at the time.

I started reading the books and it seems like a lot of subtleties got thrown
out - there's an awful lot of "Drama" injected into the series by having the
characters make stupid decisions/hiding irrelevant information just so that it
can be 'discovered' or reversed later,

I also get the feeling that they stopped bothering to remember the setting was
mostly supposed to be "Hard" Scifi, outside of specific references to the
books, but that's a pretty specific complaint.

~~~
humanrebar
I don't know. I would watch Shohreh Aghdashloo read the phone book. She's a
very compelling actress.

~~~
misnome
She is - but not somebody I'd classify as a main character, especially this
second season. She's turned up, what, twice?

~~~
lowmagnet
Right? And she's not in the plot of the first book AT ALL so all of her
characterization is completely irrelevant until Ganymede.

------
robryan
It is strange that the Netflix deal has them waiting until all of season 2 has
been aired.

So lots of people internationally who would watch it on Netflix will be
pirating it.

~~~
Mayzie
> So lots of people internationally who would watch it on Netflix will be
> pirating it.

Unfortunately that's what I have to resort to at the moment. I'm in Australia,
and The Expanse is a marvellous series. I watched the first episode of the
first series on Netflix when I couldn't find anything else to watch - I then
binge-watched the entire first series at that point.

Now that the second series is out, I am back to good ol' pirating each episode
as they air in the United States, as there is no other way to obtain it. And
because of this, Netflix will unfortunately miss out on me binge watching the
second series on their platform and won't get the viewership / statistics for
it because I would've already seen it.

Why can they not do what they're doing for The Last Kingdom, another show I
discovered on Netflix and subsequently love, and air the episodes in a weekly
fashion as soon as they air in the producers domestic market?

Oh well, their loss. And likely ours when the series will inevitably get
cancelled due to "lack of viewership" :-(

------
vidanay
Love the show. And I DO pay for it....with my Dish Network subscription that
includes SyFy channel. Asking people to pay for it twice is a little
ridiculous.

~~~
wrsh07
The real trouble is that metrics​like this suck. They don't really have
feedback on who is watching. They could monitor chatter on social media
(someone must do that, right?) But they don't have much to help predict
whether the show is an instant classic or not

The article even mentions that studios give no indication for what they're
looking at to see if the show is successful, ie we don't even know if buying
it on iTunes or Amazon or Google will make a difference

~~~
codingdave
The metrics may suck, But finances are tied to it. So it doesn't matter if the
ratings are accurate or not, when the funding derives from them. It is a
measurement problem. Fix it, and then you can have further discussions. Until
then, you can talk about quality and classics until you are blue in the face,
but that isn't what drives the funding.

That is why people are talking about paying for it directly as an alternative
-- because what needs to change is the funding model.

------
Jare
I don't think the kind of stuff that would make the show more popular (forced
relationships, character angst, etc) is the kind of stuff I want to see it in.
So, personally, I'd rather they stick to their guns and deliver the best 3
seasons of sci-fi TV ever, filled with military, politics, physics, and
characters that are fumbling their way in a universe much bigger than them.

~~~
flukus
> I don't think the kind of stuff that would make the show more popular
> (forced relationships, character angst, etc) is the kind of stuff I want to
> see it in.

This is what ruined halt and catch fire for me, way too much sex and personal
dram forced in. Does it ever help them get the demographic they're chasing? If
people wanted light erotic I can imagine some better backdrops than the
creation of the 486.

~~~
wj
Off topic but Halt and Catch Fire season three was my favorite yet. There is
some drama that the characters mostly bring on themselves (Can and Joe) but
after watching some episodes of the show Suits (Scandal has the same issue)
the drama in Halt and Catch Fire is barely noticeable.

------
tgb
I've been interested in this show for a while, but don't have any TV. Looked
at it on Google Play [1] and some of the episodes say "season only" where the
price goes. What does that mean? I have to buy the full season to see them?
Why on earth would they do that? I'd really like a way to pay $2 for each of
the first episodes and then to shell out the remaining price for the whole
season if I like it.

[1]
[https://play.google.com/store/tv/show/The_Expanse?id=qSBdK4f...](https://play.google.com/store/tv/show/The_Expanse?id=qSBdK4fbIYc&cdid=tvseason-
ypOyuMxuuAGqjDLaC9vsXg)

~~~
bradleypowers
The "Season Only" Episodes are, in this case, behind the scenes type things.
You can buy 1 by 1 without issue, I've been doing the same. The other nice
thing (I think it's new) is that Google Play will deduct the price of episodes
you've purchased individually from the season price if you do decide you want
the whole thing later.

~~~
tgb
Fantastic, thanks!

------
smacktoward
I was very interested in this show, and gave Season 1 a try via Amazon
streaming. Unfortunately I found it to be too dry and plodding to sustain my
interest. The characters were underwritten, and the storylines the show wanted
to put front and center were its least engaging, which is just fatal.

Maybe it got better in Season 2, I dunno; I wasn't interested enough to find
out. And I haven't read the books, so I can't say if the problems stemmed from
the adaptation or from the source material. But I'm the kind of person who
_should_ be in the core audience for a show like this, so it doesn't surprise
me to hear it's having ratings problems.

~~~
Para2016
What scifi TV shows do you watch? Sometimes I see people provide an opinion on
a show - but I have no idea if we share the same tastes. It's hard to
determine who to listen to if I have no idea what the rater actually enjoys.

------
wnevets
Didn't it already get renewed for another season, whats the point of this
article?

~~~
ericcholis
Yes, the third season. Speculation is that the current ratings are diving,
thus the fourth season is unlikely.

------
johan_larson
Have we had a fan-funded TV show yet? I know boardgames sometimes get crowd-
funded on Kickstarter or similar sites. Video games, too.

~~~
dagw
[https://www.kickstarter.com/discover/categories/film%20&%20v...](https://www.kickstarter.com/discover/categories/film%20&%20video?sort=most_funded)

------
RodericDay
The first season was absolutely stellar. I thought it was actually shaping up
to be better than BSG and others.

And then, S2 started off bad, and midway through, completely jumped the shark.
Without going into spoilers, they contrive a really, really awful bit of
"romance", and place it squat in the middle of everything. Really too bad.

------
xupybd
Well the only way I can watch is via Netflix. I'm region locked out. I'd
happily buy a box set, but I can't find it for sale in NZ. I can't buy over
Amazon or Itunes, because I'm in NZ. Netflix will let me watch season 1 and
that's it.

So maybe more would watch this show if they could?

~~~
Taniwha
In NZ it's on Sky as part of the basic package - season 2 is playing now as
it's released in the US

------
mark_l_watson
I have bought seasons 1 and 2 on Google Play TV, and I have really enjoyed it
so far. I bought season 1 because a friend I met at Google's son, who I met
once, did the Belter language for the show. I will buy season 3 if it is
released.

~~~
peatmoss
Season 3 is supposedly confirmed. It's Season 4 that's in question.

------
dreamcompiler
Every episode of this series is one of the best sci-fi movies I've ever seen.
If they expanded (P.I.) every episode to 120 minutes I'd pay $20 each to go
watch them in theaters.

------
transfire
Why America can't have good TV -- the whole system is designed around
maximizing viewers, but by definition they mostly consist of lower "casts".

But hey. No worries. More Sharknado is on the way!

