Saw it last night. It lagged sometimes, and the storytelling was oblique enough that Pepper Mill was getting lost. But I liked it. It’s ambitious. It’s the first time I’ve seen spaceships in a TV series move with correct physics since the 1950s series Men Into Space. (Spaceships don’t swoop or bank. Watch any old footage of the Gemini or Apollo spacecraft maneuvering to get a feel – everything seems, to our atmosphere-based intuition, to be too abrupt and too straight-line, and it looks weird when ships rotate about their center of gravity. But that’s as it should be.)
The political situation seems familiar and believable, and I like that they’re treating gravity sorta right (within the limitations of the budget), and are showing Belters as hindered by gravity.
I watched it last night. I’m…unsure. Some of it was really good, some of it was a bit chaotic. At times it was hard to follow what was going on, though of course this is the set up of the characters part. The physics seemed pretty good, though I’m unsure of why or how, with so much water ice in the solar system and the obvious ability to mine and move it, there seems to be so many issues (on Earth??) with water, but I guess if it sets up the action it’s cool.
I liked the books and the first show wasn’t bad, but the first one is usually pretty good. It had those dreaded words " based on", that could mean something good or it’s another piece of SYFY crap.
This could become a show about who’s screwing who in space, while it moves along at a glacial pace.
Seemed like a lot of punk hairdos, tattoos and guys who need a shave for the 23rd century.
I liked it well enough, but I agree the plot was a bit confusing. Still, it was pretty recognizable as a Blade Runner meets Alien overall idea so it seemed somewhat familiar at the same time.
The cast:
The guy from Hung doing his best Decker imitation.
Mike!!! Who doesn’t love Mike, even if he was only on screen for a few minutes.
Everyone’s favorite Persian women (House of Sand and Fog, 24) playing an Indian woman.
I’ve watched the first four episodes and I’m really liking it so far. It’s definitely the hardest sci-fi that I’ve seen on TV.
No real spoilers below, but in case you like maximum surprise, don’t read on…
At first I thought their handling of gravity was inconsistent, but it’s not–the ships are typically under constant acceleration. If the engines shut down, they lose gravity, and have to turn on their magnetic boots. The floors all seem to have their down vector toward the engine side. Considering the TV-level CG budget, it’s done really well.
Weapons are mainly kinetic. Missiles, gatling guns, railguns. No phasers or anything unrecognizable to us. It’s stuff that makes sense in space.
Air leaks are handled well. It’s not the usual “everything in the ship gets blown out the hole”. The people are clearly trained how to deal with these events.
The main sci-fi “gimme” in this universe is the engines, which can seemingly sustain a reasonable fraction of a gee indefinitely. I’m willing to live with that one; it’s not a warp drive or anything.
I’m pretty sure I’m liking this more than BSG, and I liked BSG (mostly).
I liked the second part enough to keep me interested.
The biggest thing I keep wondering about is how substantial are the differences in physical resilience of Earthers, Martians (Dusters?), and Belters. Can Earthers tolerate stronger G-forces? Are their ships more maneuverable in combat as a result? Does it even matter?
I can’t remember which book it is in, but I recall a scene where Naomi was suffering a high g acceleration much more than the Earthers or Martians aboard.
I realized that now; it’s clearly the case as that beer pouring scene demonstrated. Also I looked it up and apparently the surface gravity is only .03g, that’s less than a fifth of lunar gravity. If .3g is standard for Belter ships and habitats that puts them in basically the same boat as Martians.
I’ve watched episodes 1 and 2 (all 4 are available on the scyfy website). I don’t know. It simply isn’t grabbing me. Is it the lighting? I definitely don’t care for the dialog, although in the second episode it seemed more realistic than in the first. I’ll try to watch episode 3 tonight, but I am not really optimistic.
After watching the first four episodes, I’m solidly onboard. I may wait to watch more until the entire first season is available so I can binge the whole thing.
I’ve watched the first four episodes and I like it a lot so far. The book it’s based on (Leviathan Wakes) is okay, but it is translating well to a TV series. And Corey has written a bunch of books in that series so there is plenty of material to draw from if the series is successful.
Wonder if we’re thinking about the same thing. But yeah, the hard sci aspect to this is immersive, for lack of a better term. From taking into account the effects of different gravity/accelerating reference frames to making combat in space into something you could see actually working.
The part that bothered me a bit was when the soldiers from the attacking vessel in episode 4 all turned into Stormtroopers and suddenly couldn’t hit several, slow moving targets - although maybe they were really far away? That hangar looked massive, but still.
For me it was the rather forced dialog about the research station, middle of trying to get off the ship alive and we have this weird “so tell me about this thing that wont keep me from dying but has relevance to the story overall so it must be told and the writers just decided to phone this one in” bit. nothing to bad really, it was just a touch of forced dialog out of nowhere is all.
Ha, yeah! I was almost expecting the lights to dim and a spotlight to shine on the Mars guy.
“I shall telleth thee this tale of woe”.
Am I wrong in thinking the Belter’s building the generational ship for the Mormons (I liked this bit) have something to do with the ship that took out the Canterbury? I have to rewatch, but I think he said he wated to see what was happening to the Donnager, which had been jammed, so I’m guessing no one should have any suspicion as to what was transpiring there, right?
Yes, I think there definitely was some connection implied, but it seems strange that the Belters could have those resources without backing of, apparently, either Earth or Mars. But of course I suppose that’s kinda the central mystery of the show…
Anyway, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the first four episodes. If the series keeps up the quality, I think I might have found a new sci-fi favourite.