I’ll be taking longer.
Having seen just the first ep I am not always so sure on what is going on, especially during the battle scenes.
That’s my one complaint with E1. In previous seasons, I remember being able to follow who was shooting at who pretty easily. But particularly in the opening segment…
[spoiler]…it seemed unnecessarily difficult. I only figured out that there were four ships trying to run the gate because they said so later in the UNN meeting. In the moment, I couldn’t tell which ones were running it and which were chasing them. Then someone shot at them - maybe UNN, maybe OPA? Or the OPA was trying to block the UNN? And I guess three of the runners were hit?
I eventually figured out enough to follow everything, but it detracted from my appreciation in the moment of what should have been a cool scene.[/spoiler]
Watched episode one.
I’m pleased I’ve convinced my 70 inch TV to talk to the internet again, because seeing this is something that ideally should be seen large. On the other hand, I haven’t got the closed captioning to work on that TV yet so I’m having some trouble following the dialog.
That said - I found the first episode very entertaining. I, too, found some of the battle scenes a little confusing, but then I get the impression that the situation is actually both volatile and a little confused.
Not going to say more due to spoiler rule and being only one episode in at this point.
Thank you, by the way. After my TV-slate clears a bit, I’ll watch the big recap and jump right into S4.
I am catching up on Watchmen, finishing a run of Leftovers(seen it before), and trying to enjoy Castle Rock S1(trying, but not finding it all that great).
Done!
Rating and commentary inside:[spoiler]I give the first 9.75 shows of the season a 6.5/10. Too many stupid people doing stupid things at stupid times; a lot of this season was like a really long, drawn-out “B” horror movie.
I did love the cliffhanger tho! That alone raises the entire season to a 7/10.
Gotta feel kinda sorry for SecGen Gao, eh… helluva way to start your boldly hopeful new term in office. :p[/spoiler]
ETA: You’re welcome, Mahaloth; I found it helpful- once I was able to admit I was reluctant to sit thru 10 or 20 (or even 30) hours of old shows again to catch up. 
I find it intersting how prop departments struggle to make science fiction cell phones look futuristic now that the real world versions are straight out of science fiction. The glowy lucite slabs on The Expanse are among the most stupid ones I’ve seen.
Maybe, but remember that they have to be relatable to people watching the show today. I can imagine the difficulties in trying to present implanted neural interfaces (or something else more realistic than present-day phones with see-thru bodies) convincingly and relatably to a viewing public today.
How relatable is a transparent phone? Is there anyone who wants a phone where everything you see on-screen is blending with everything behind the phone and everyone else can always see everything on your phone? Nobody would want or like that. Transparent phones (and giant transparent displays, such as on CSI shows) exist only so that both the actor’s faces and the on-screen information can be seen at once–as a real product, transparent phones would be a market flop.
As for “more realistic”, future phones will very probably look pretty much like the smallest-bezeled phones of today, probably most of them foldable. We are near the optimum right now. That’s the problem–future phones will just be phones. You don’t see people in future shows using pens with flashing lights and a spinning miniature satellite dish spinning on top, they just use pens. What they are doing with phones is the same.
What a silly notion. People with implants who are always connected to the internet won’t need handheld external devices to communicate with people. A phone that looks different than our present day phones but functions much the same is easily relatable to viewers; not so much for an unseen implant than allows non-externally audible nearly-instantaneous communication. Being relatable is, in this case, good storytelling.
Argh, I really hate the format of dropping entire seasons of new shows at once. I discovered and watched the first 3 seasons recently and want to participate in the discussions of season 4, but I don’t want to participate in the thread until I’ve watched the whole season, and I don’t want to burn through the whole season in a day or two to get there, so by the time I finish watching the season the discussion will be dying down. It’ll also probably be more chaotic, less focused, and involve a lot more spoiler boxes since people will be talking about different episodes at different points of their viewing experiences. Also probably much less posts overall than previous seasons, because when people watch stuff one episode at a time and then have time between, they tend to discuss/speculate/anticipate/etc more, whereas now most people just move right on to the next episode.
I’m part way through episode 4 at this point.
I’m not enjoying the Bobby story line so far, it just seems to detract from the main story. Shame as Bobby was a character I liked very much. First 3 episodes moved very nicely, not something the Expanse has always been good about.
Is it a really bad idea just to watch the recaps and start with season 4? I know it’s not ideal to do that .
It isn’t a silly notion, it is a profoundly stupid design for a phone that nobody would ever want to actually use, therefore, not “relatable.” The silly notion is to make something perfectly functional into something much less user-friendly and ergonomic and practical just to look faux-“futurey.” And to hell with implants–we will get implants the same time we get food pills and flying cars–the 7th of Never.
I think we’ll come to a place where what we call a “phone” (or “cell” or “mobile”) stabilizes so that there will be less “dating” of a story by the details of the phones and also less urge to make it look futuristic.
Think of pens: granted they evolved from quills to metal nibs to the current disposable ballpoints of today, but for centuries there was a certain stability in design, all of them liner objects dispensing ink on one end. Also consider pencils - the details changed, but the concept of “inner core of stuff that makes a mark, outer shell of stuff to protect” has continued for centuries. They’re both examples of a stabilized design.
Likewise, some types of modern tech will do the same. The details will change, but I think phones are going to oscillate around certain size range going forward, and I also agree they will not become transparent. Frankly, people tromping around a new planet would need rugged devices with protective cases, not fragile little objects.
I binge watched season 4. I thought is was pretty bad, especially compared to the other seasons. But I thought the books were pretty weak at that point in the timeline too. The books after that are better in my opinion, with this latest book being much better. Hopefully the show will pick up too.
I definitely did not care about or connect to any of the secondary characters and the plot lines of the main characters were fairly boring and mostly unimportant. Other than a few action scenes and some gorgeous CGI, season 4 was a snooze-fest.
I hope season 5 will be better.
I came to a screeching halt in the episode where
Bobbie and her nephew run afoul of drug makers/dealers
I’m not entirely sure why - I can’t say it’s implausible in a show with (relatively) rapid interplanetary travel, “jump gates” to other systems, the whole protomolecule thing as it’s a very human vice and we’ve even seen it before in the series. Maybe because it involved her barging in and making a situation very much worse than it was, or that I don’t to see her involved in something illegal. Really she should have…
… taken the job offered by the UN Secretary General
The Mars plot seems like superfluous stuff wedged in because it was superfluous stuff wedged in. Bobbie and Mars (and the Belter politics) weren’t part of the novel this season was based on. (Pretty good article about that.)
In the previous seasons they’ve incorporated the novellas along with the main books, so it makes sense they’d include Gods of Risk (the Bobbie tangent) in this one. Unfortunately, I think that’s the one novella that doesn’t add anything to the overall story.
Just finished the season, and I thought it was great. I love Bobbie but I didn’t love her storyline – especially making the drug-dealing (and child-kidnapping!) thugs into “good guys” (or close). Even though it wouldn’t have matched the books (and I love the books), Bobbie should have just become a member of the Roci crew. She would have easily fit into various storylines – maybe she stays in orbit and has to single-handedly fight-off the corporate security goons still in orbit when they betray the Roci. Or maybe she’s on the planet and has to break Amos out of the holding cell or whatever.
I think it does. I haven’t finished the new season yet, but we’ve seen Drummer and Ashford talking about how “This isn’t the Mars we knew”. This is showing that the ideal of Mars is fracturing. What was once the epitome of law and order, and working together to build a better future is now starting to look like everyone for themselves, grab what you can before it all falls apart.
This will eventually lead to (Future book spoilers):
…the whole Laconia/Duarte thing. The collapse of Martian civil society as we knew it is what made it possible for Duarte to stroll off with a significant portion of the Martian military, but also drove home to those people why discipline is so overwhelmingly important. They’re a bit of a contradiction: they’re the part of Mars that still believes in the Martian law and order ethos, even though they’re the biggest group of pirates in history.