I love this show. And hopefully the already-greenlit second season will give the audience time to find it. One of the more maddening things about the Firefly debacle was that there were quite a few science fiction fans who wouldn’t give it a chance at first, due to one silly reason or another (“Horses and cows in a science fiction show? Space cowboys? That’s just stupid.”). Then by the time they realized what a treasure it was, it was too late.
It helps that Syfy is using competent marketing people and isn’t airing the episodes in a random order.
I watched the first 5 online and enjoyed it, but no cable provider so I can’t watch the remainder - anyone have any idea if it will eventually make its way to Hulu?
It actually was introduced in the very first episode. Julie Mao escapes the locker, makes her way to the engineering area, and sees all the human-goo all over the reactor. If I recall correctly that is how that episode ended with her screaming in horror at what looked like members of the crew mutated into a mass covering the reactor.
So I’m still loving this show. In my zeal, I bought the book Leviathan Awakes and promised myself I’d only read up until the point in the broadcast show each week.
I’m a no-good lying liar who lies to himself. I binge-read the book this weekend. I’m impressed with how well the show has nailed the settings, characters (with minor exceptions), and plot of the book so far.
MeanJoe
It’s on Hulu… If you have a cable subscription with the syfy channel :rolleyes:.
After watching the first few episodes for free I was sufficiently impressed that I bought the season on Amazon instant video for something like $20.
Just finished watching the season finale. Spoilers and comparisons to the book within…
[spoiler]Overall impression of the series remains very high. I thought the finale did a very good job of bringing together the pieces of the story from the previous 5 episodes and still has left a fair amount in questions for Season 2.
They somewhat played down the scale of the actions on Eros. From the book, if I recall correctly, we’re talking about 1.5M people who were on Eros and all sacrificed for “the experiment” with the protomolecule. On the show, Miller makes an off-hand comment that its around 100K. Still horrible, but a big difference in scale. That scale also had a big impact in the drama that unfolds with Holden and Miller trying to escape Eros which is now populated with 1.5M infected and aggressive people.
The book definitely presented the nature of the changes by the protomolecule much better than the show did. In the book it is down right gruesome and horrific. The show really softened that part up and I guess it is understandable considering budget constraints and tone of the show. The book does a very good job combining a pseudo-hard syfy story with elements of horror. The show is clearly staying more on the pseudo-hard syfy and not really playing too much into the horror. There is a protomolecule, it does bad stuff for some reason, don’t get infected accidentally.
The portions of the story focused on Miller and Holden trying to get back to the ship were also less dramatic than in the book, particularly what I alluded to earlier with the number of infected but also in their physical condition upon arrival at the docks. They tried to cover it in the end when Amos commented that the med unit keeps trying to switch them to hospice care that they were pretty much dead men. But physically the actors didn’t seem as “walking dead” as there were in the book.
Amos is a bad mo-fo. 
[/spoiler]
I read the first book in the series and compared to the book, I felt like I loved the TV Amos so much more. OTOH, I didn’t care as much for the TV Holden as the book Holden.
I loved season 1, and looking forward to many season more.
I’m going to pick up the first book the next time I have the time to read a novel. It is funny how many times I saw the series in the book stores and thought, that looks interesting but didn’t get it.
HA! I do agree that I like TV Amos better. They’re both stone cold but the TV Amos just seems more… nice about it. Not sure about Holden. They’ve played down a bit of his “SHARE THE INFORMATION THE PEOPLE DESERVE TO KNOW EVERYTHING ALL THE TIME” views on the TV show and I found that part of his personality annoying in the book. Probably because I don’t agree with it in reality. LOL
MeanJoe
That’s true, but once they stripped that part away, there wasn’t much left.
Was there a significance to all the leaky pipes and water dripping all over Eros that I missed? :dubious: Water’s supposed be an extremely precious resource in the Belt, but the entire station is covered in puddles?
Yeah, I agree. Book Amos was fine; it’s just that TV Amos perfectly captures everything great and terrifying about the character, so chummy and threatening at the same time.
Holden, man. I’ve really tried to like him, but he’s such a smirky bro, and he’s not a very good actor. I keep thinking of who could play him better. Someone a little older, someone with some lines in his forehead. This guy is just too young to convince me as Holden.
So, now that the season is over, how was it received in the US?
I know it’s been renewed for a second season, but is there a buzz about it like there was in BSG?
I’ve seen it already, and was blown away by it, but it hasn’t aired yet in Ireland or the UK.
I don’t think it has even a tiny fraction of the buzz that BSG had. I think it was touched on earlier in this thread but I give SyFy credit, they are really trying to change their content to quality shows like The Expanse. Sadly they have a long, long history of low-budget crappy SyFy produced garbage so I don’t think many of the new shows on SyFy that have actually raised the bar are getting that much traction. I’m glad The Expanse has already gotten the green light for a 2nd season and I hope that’ll give time for this show to get more visibility and attention and build a bigger audience.
In my opinion, no nothing significant beyond staging to create a mood/set for Eros. In the show it is portrayed as fairly small and neglected little station out in space with 100K mostly forgotten people. This is a departure from the book (see my previous spoilered comments). So I think much of that was to simply make the setting seem old, poorly maintained, etc. Of course after the plan begins to be executed for “the experiment” there is further damage being done throughout Eros which is impacting the environmental controls and systems and creating leaks and breakdowns too.
I enjoyed the whole season, although I’m not as over-the-moon about it as some people seem to be. I can’t think of another show at all like it… Firefly was clearly space fantasy, BSG was political and theological allegory disguised as SF, Star Trek was famously wagon train to the stars.
Spoilers comparing to book (possibly spoiling future books in the series):
At this point, Miller should have died, right? Maybe in the show it will be Julie showing up as a “ghost” to Miller, rather than Miller showing up as a ghost to Holden?
No, the show stopped before the events in the book where Miller goes back and ends up riding Eros down into Venus. If I recall the timeline correctly, Holden and crew escape (season 1 ending), Fred Johnson/OPA launch a plan to destroy Eros to prevent the spread of the Protomolecule, Miller returns to Eros as a part of that plan and eventually discovers Julie Mao and rides Eros all the way down into Venus. So I think they’ve got a fair amount of good stuff to cover in Season 2 and still only be partially into the 2nd book’s plot lines by the seasone finale. I think it would be really hard to get through the outstanding story from book 1 and all of book 2 to get to Miller showing up as the finale of season 2.
Watched the 2 part finale over the weekend – very well done, and really looking forward to the next season. I think it’s very possible they won’t kill Miller off at all, assuming Jane wants to stick around – real Miller could do pretty much the same thing as ghost Miller in later stories, and just be part of the crew. But we’ll see.
Mind you, if they want to arrive at a planet or moon and go into orbit rather than shoot past, they have to decelerate at the same rate. Accelerate for one half of the trip, decelerate for the second half. They have to perform a “skew-flip” maneuver at the midpoint of their journey.