
Jeff Bezos announces Amazon is picking up 'The Expanse' - danso
https://www.engadget.com/2018/05/26/the-expanse-amazon/
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IkmoIkmo
Great news! I'm absolutely loving the third season, despite not really being a
fan of the protomolecule concept. I know the series revolves around it. It's a
bit like the white walkers in game of thrones. You go from the super
interesting political intrigue about socioeconomic imbalances, oppression,
imperialism and geopolitical relations in the solar system / Westeros, to
fantasy/magic/sci-fi-bs of glowing supernatural creatures. Absolutely hate
that personally, but I like both shows nonetheless and the Expanse has
something special. Can't wait for new episodes!

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tjallingt
I agree so much. The first season was amazing with the split story line
between the main crew and Miller on Ceres but it all went downhill when the
proto-molecule was introduced and suddenly there were massive shootouts (with
characters who admitted only episodes earlier to never having killed/fired a
gun)

I really love the political aspects and cultural differences between the
various factions though.

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wavefunction
Isn't announcing you've never fired a gun in a fictional work an example of
Chekov's Gun? By announcing it the narrative is setting up the "dramatic
tension" ahead of when the character is confronted by a situation potentially
requiring firing a gun or killing someone.

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roryisok
That's kind of ironic. Although macgyver said he hated guns and managed to
never fire them

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stephenr
Didn’t he build a shit ton of bombs to “solve” various problems though?

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roryisok
I never said he was a pacifist, he just doesn't fire guns

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013a
The thing that made me really enjoy The Expanse is how they're constantly
thinking about the physics of light speed, inertia, and acceleration, and
tying that back into the plot. It makes everything feel so much more real,
even if they don't always get it perfect. One example is how the ships always
flip and burn retrograde during approaches to their destination; compare that
to most any other modern sci-fi, where ships just "magically" stop with
"technology".

~~~
izacus
There's also so many awesome details. How the crew still wears uniforms with
"Tachi" logo. How Alex consistently wears MCRN uniform and Naomi doesn't. How
different Mars and Earth ships look inside. How they actually think about
debris, richochets and loss of gravity in case of combat. So much drama is
driven by physical constraints that are just waved away in other shows and
that makes is awesome to watch.

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neals
Must be nice. When you like a TV series, but it gets canceled, to be able to
buy the whole thing.

~~~
mgiannopoulos
Do we know Bezos likes the show? The headline is strange, there is zero
mention in the article that he had any actual input into the decision.

~~~
kethinov
Bezos is known to be a fan of the franchise. The text of the first book was
actually shown in one of his Kindle demos some years back. There has been a
consensus within The Expanse community for a couple weeks now that Bezos was
personally invested in getting the show renewed and was working to make it
happen.

~~~
mgiannopoulos
Thanks to both for the answers. Who said billions can’t make you happy? :)

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neverminder
Excellent news. If any show deserves to survive it's Expanse. Today with
SpaceX pushing us towards Mars it feels like we're living in pre-history of
Expanse which is based on the most realistic SciFi I've seen yet. We need
this.

~~~
sho
> based on the most realistic SciFi I've seen yet

Big fan of the series but hard sci-fi it is definitely not! True, the humans
don't break the laws of physics, but Eros certainly does, and if season 3
tracks the books then that gets turned up to 11...

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TeMPOraL
Well, there must be some fiction in sci-fi as well :). A small amount of magic
is usually allowed. If you ignore the protomolecule, the rest is quite hard.

~~~
CydeWeys
Not the gravity assist slingshot trajectory.

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ygra
That was acknowledged by the showrunner and was down to poor planning between
shooting and CGI work: [http://www.danielabraham.com/2017/04/04/guest-post-
losing-sc...](http://www.danielabraham.com/2017/04/04/guest-post-losing-
science-drama-finding-drama-science/)

There has been a shot with a screen showing the Nauvoo's trajectory to Eros
which was quite ridiculous too, though.

~~~
CydeWeys
Interesting, thanks for the link.

I know it seems dumb but the preposterousness of that scene ruined the episode
for me. I've played too much KSP :D

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sho
While I'm always happy to see good scifi being promoted and well-funded, as a
huge fan of the books.. I could not get into the TV series at all. It feels
like 90% of it is missing, and what remains just doesn't convince. I heard it
has quite a decent budget but whatever it was, it wasn't even close to enough.

It's quite possible that this kind of expansive (sorry) space opera can never
be fully realised on a small screen, or on any screen. The limitation of the
format are just too restrictive. Kudos to them for trying but for any fans -
take my word for it and read the books. You won't regret it.

~~~
Cyph0n
I believe that you are in the minority. Judging by the amount of activity by
book readers on Reddit, the show has been faithful enough. I've read the first
5 books and I felt that the show has been great so far.

~~~
Krasnol
I wouldn't judge by the activity on Reddit. Not liking the Expanse there only
leads to downvotes. I'm pretty sure there are many who won't criticize it just
like there is a group who just jumped on the hype train you can't miss.

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eps
I would trade 10 new seasons of The Expanse for a couple of more episodes of
Firefly. Just saying.

~~~
wj
Dark Matter was a bit more of my cup of coffee than The Expanse. Like in
Firefly it is a small rebel crew on a ship exploring the universe.

Still glad the Expanse was picked up.

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christophilus
Man. I really wish Netflix or someone would pick Dark Matter back up. Loved
that show.

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no1youknowz
This is amazing news. When Syfy cancelled StarGate Universe, I stopped
watching their shows.

Dark matter came out and I got into that and quelle surprise. It gets
cancelled to.

Sigh, then started watching Expanse and loving it. Gets cancelled.

This is me:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKgPY1adc0A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKgPY1adc0A)

Suffice to say, I'm ditching Syfy for good now. I hope Netflix or Amazon just
buys them out at this point. Nothing of value would have been lost. Except for
the time viewers put into watching their shows!

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scanr
This is great news. I thoroughly enjoy The Expanse.

That the internet has given fans the power to affect studio decisions is quite
a useful feature.

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Rapzid
I wonder how much Amazon made on season 3 sales already? Is SyFy going to even
survive? A lot of great science fiction shows come to mind; none of them on
SyFy..

I'm sorta happy they picked it up and not Netflix; I find the quality of
Amazon's streams to be higher on average. Netflix squeezes the bitrate too
much even on their flagship titles like Altered Carbon resulting in banding an
artifacting in dark scenes. Space is pretty dark.

~~~
Terretta
By contrast, Netflix’s 4K HDR of Altered Carbon (on TV with full array local
dimming) was the highest quality stream I’ve seen. Some of Amazon’s Electric
Dreams episodes come close. When I compare the same 4K Dolby Vision or HDR
show between Amazon and Netflix played on the TV itself, I’d argue Netflix
often has the edge.

But the show being in HDR or DV, using extra bits for shadows, and kicking in
the TV’s HDR blacks, makes more difference to banding than the distribution.

Not coincidentally, anticipating Altered Carbon and this winter’s updates for
Dolby Vision across the industry prompted my TV upgrade. Having been in the
streaming video business from 1998, it felt like a milestone to have a TV
quality purchase driven by an online show.

~~~
riku_iki
> on TV with full array local dimming

OLED would add even larger jump.

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mark_l_watson
Really great news. Show was visually great, good tight story, just enough
background the characters.

I bought the seasons wholesale on Google Play so I could watch conveniently. I
wonder if I will need to temporarily get Amazon Prime.

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zeristor
So outside of the US Expanse is on Netflix. Does this mean it’s going to move
to Amazon prime at some point?

I assume the third series will get to Netflix eventually. Will the fourth
onwards not?

~~~
akhatri_aus
Looks like Netflix decided "Lost in space" would be their Sci Fi genre
champion and that's it. It's likely with Amazon that Netflix would lose the
previous seasons too as SciFy had some rights issue with non-
cable/streaming/digital distribution and Amazon is likely to take these rights
up.

~~~
foob
It's actually been reported that Netflix is significantly ramping up their
production of sci-fi television shows [1]. 29% of their upcoming shows fall
into the sci-fi category. Here's a quote from that article with some more
context.

 _Responding to new data that shows science fiction and related programming
powered the biggest viewer share of its genre content in the first quarter of
2018, Netflix is getting ready to aim even more of its seemingly limitless
resources toward outer space, committing more money to more new sci-fi
projects in a bid to give its still-expanding subscriber base more of what
they already love._

[1] - [http://www.syfy.com/syfywire/report-netflix-is-about-to-
make...](http://www.syfy.com/syfywire/report-netflix-is-about-to-make-its-
biggest-bet-yet-on-science-fiction)

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hanoz
I started watching this last week and thought it looked great, but the
audibility of the dialogue was absolutely appalling, I was missing half the
conversation if I didn't have volume uncomfortably loud, it really spoilt it.
How can you spend so much money on a production and make such a basic error?

~~~
mortehu
This type of complaint nearly always means you're listening to a surround
track on a stereo system, without proper "downmixing". This means you're
missing the center channel, and instead only hear the front left and front
right channels. In surround sound, dialogue mostly goes to the center channel.
If you didn't get the video from a good source, the problem could be baked
into the video itself.

~~~
hinkley
I have had this problem with multiple commercial streaming sites on two
different TVs from two different manufacturers. I’m a little dismayed they
haven’t worked this out yet. Not everyone wants to string speakers. “Left” and
“right” don’t mean much in some rooms.

~~~
izacus
In that case you need an AVR that will remix it properly.

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imagetic
That is good news. I was planning on cancelling my Prime membership at the end
of this yearly subscription. But the Expanse officially justifies it.

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TangoTrotFox
Glad to hear this. Wish this had been an option for Stargate Universe as well.
SyFy seems determined to cancel every gem they get their hands on. Even Star
Trek had a [substantial] 'gestation period.'

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evibeefi
I wished there was SciFi without this magic stuff (I’m talking about the
protomolecule). Because other than that I loved the show because I had the
feeling it was a realistic view of our potential future.

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stephenr
TIL: alien life forms = magic.

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evibeefi
No. Magic = not possible with our current understanding of physics

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jbb67
It doesn't seem possible to read this without giving them permission to track
and monitor me so no thank you

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robert_foss
The is brilliant news!

The Expanse is the best old-school SciFi show on air now.

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jlv2
Bezos: "I am that guy"

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sddfd
Great, looking forward!

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tomrod
Good choice!

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bwb
yay!!!!

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mhandley
Engadget's GDPR consent to track seems really odd. They say they need to track
you to provide service. If you don't click OK, and select "Manage Options" you
eventually get to select the ad providers you let them share data with. You
leave none selected, click through "Done" and you get the actual content page.
Yet ublock origin is saying it blocked 14 domains on this page. So, are they
giving me an option, and then ignoring my selection?

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bhaavan
I am not sure if they are in violation, if they track but do not use the data.
As I understand it, the manage option is the permission to use the tracked
data.

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hessenwolf
Data collection is also part of the regulations; only collecting the data they
need. Tracking data they do not even use seems to me to be a clear violation.

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nkkollaw
I couldn't/didn't want to pass the privacy popup.

Are we really at the point where if one does't agree to all kinds of nasty ad
crap he can't access a webpage..?

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dmurray
Before this you were getting the same nasty ad crap, they just didn't warn you
about it.

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nkkollaw
Not really.

I have an ad blocker--AdGuard, paid but blocks ads in apps as well--so I'd
just see the site with no ads. Now I have to be bothered with notices.

But anyway--everyone is different. I only keep viewing websites that provide a
good experience to me, if they show popups and similar crap I just go back to
Google immediately.

If they care about my visit and visits of people that do the same I do,
they'll try to provide a better experience. Otherwise they won't.

It's all fine with me.

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mordant
The Expanse is a garbage TV series which totally and completely diverges from
the novels - for no good reason, since it's a miniseries, with plenty of time
to do justice to the books.

It's depressing how many people here either haven't read the books or somehow
think this dreck is superior to the books.

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guilhas
Read the 3rd book after season 2. Really recommend it to everyone. It had
everything, sci-fi, action, drama, special effects, mystery...

Curious how this will workout on tv, although I will keep reading the books.

