# The Expanse; season 3 (open spoilers) **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [April 11, 2018, 10:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-expanse-season-3-open-spoilers/812247 "2018-04-11T22:07:09Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![MeanJoe](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/meanjoe/32/5693_2.png) [@MeanJoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MeanJoe)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2018, 3:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-expanse-season-3-open-spoilers/812247/21 "2018-05-03T15:26:03Z")
I got caught up on the first 3 episodes I had on DVR this week. I’m so glad this show is back. I don’t know how “bold” of a statement this is but in the modern era this is the best sci-fi show I’ve ever seen. I was a big fan of BSG, accepted that there were those filler episodes, and even though I didn’t care for the direction the overall story took it still was an excellent show. The Expanse (in my opinion) just blows it away… so far. Some comments on first 3 episodes: [ul] [li]I’ve never found Bobbi to be that sexy. I mean, as an actress she is very attractive but in this role she hasn’t really quite tickled the fancy. Until I saw her in her power armor. Perhaps that says more about me than anything.[/li][li]The Razorback was not what I had in mind from reading the books but now that I saw it on t.v., it really could not have been better. In my mind from the books, I imagined a MUCH more narrow ship and a far more cramped interior. I realize now that my mental picture really wasn’t logical but the show really nailed a “racing ship” perfectly.[/li][li]I wish Avasarala was my grandmother. Not my mother though, I’d probably be completely damaged emotionally. But she would be a kick-ass grandmother to have in your life. She continues to be my favorite on this show.[/li][li]I don’t disagree with some of the questions about the rail gun/time/distance arguments in this thread. To be honest, my interpretation of the scene was these were stealth weapon platforms that Mars had managed to position to a close proximity to Earth. It wasn’t that they were out near Mars. Maybe I mis-understood but it is just such a minor quibble to me that I’m not really concerned. [/li][/ul] ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2018, 3:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-expanse-season-3-open-spoilers/812247/22 "2018-05-03T15:36:14Z")
> [@MeanJoe](#): > > [ul] > [li]I don’t disagree with some of the questions about the rail gun/time/distance arguments in this thread. To be honest, my interpretation of the scene was these were stealth weapon platforms that Mars had managed to position to a close proximity to Earth. It wasn’t that they were out near Mars. Maybe I mis-understood but it is just such a minor quibble to me that I’m not really concerned.[/li][/ul] Except that the hologram speaks for itself. (Well, I don’t think it _actually_ speaks, but you can look at it and see that the ships are positioned at different points of Mars’ orbital radius for some reason.) ---
**Author:** ![Mahaloth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mahaloth/32/1079_2.png) [@Mahaloth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mahaloth)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2018, 5:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-expanse-season-3-open-spoilers/812247/23 "2018-05-03T17:30:31Z")
> [@MeanJoe](#): > > I got caught up on the first 3 episodes I had on DVR this week. I’m so glad this show is back. I don’t know how “bold” of a statement this is but in the modern era this is the best sci-fi show I’ve ever seen. I was a big fan of BSG, accepted that there were those filler episodes, and even though I didn’t care for the direction the overall story took it still was an excellent show. The Expanse (in my opinion) just blows it away… so far. Some comments on first 3 episodes: No! BSG is better by a lot. Love the Expanse, but I am in the “BSG is the best show of all time” group. I even like the final episode of BSG. An almost perfect-in-all-ways show, for me. Expanse is great, but not up to that level. ---
**Author:** ![k9bfriender](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/k9bfriender/32/3283_2.png) [@k9bfriender](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/k9bfriender)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2018, 6:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-expanse-season-3-open-spoilers/812247/24 "2018-05-03T18:10:18Z")
> [@Horatius](#): > > And tonight’s episode just made it all the more obvious, with that railgun attack on the Martian’s weapons platforms. The display made it clear that the platforms were significant distances from Earth (Earth’s orbit around the Sun was clear on the display), but the railgun rounds took only a few seconds to reach their targets, and the Martian missile wasn’t all that much slower. Considering that light takes 8 minutes to travel from the Sun to Earth, these weapons were moving faster than light. > > Good for Drama, bad for Physics, I guess. Yeah, that bothered me too, and I tried doing a mental “edit” after the shots were away, pretending there was a time jump, but there wasn’t. The fact that they had real time communication with the rail guns, that had to have been at least more than a few light seconds, and probably several minutes, away was a bit “off” as well. It’s a small nitpick, and the Expanse hasn’t had too many of them (the Jupiter Moons tour in the last season being a big one), but it does pull me out of it for a moment when I see the laws of physics broken that badly. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2018, 8:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-expanse-season-3-open-spoilers/812247/25 "2018-05-03T20:50:16Z")
Remember: what we’re seeing is a representation/adaptation of the true events of the Great Solar System War as it really happened out there in the multiverse; in reality, I’m sure that there was a whole lot more waiting around and picking noses in the war room than in episode 3 of season 3, but the representation accelerated it for dramatic purposes. They still probably could have done it with cuts and shots of impatient bureaucrats, but oh well. I find canon and fiction inconsistencies a lot easier to handle if I pretend that every story really happened somewhere out there in the multiverse, and Earth writers and producers are just doing their best to adapt it, sometimes making mistakes. Even for big literary series like GRRM’s – the story of ASOIAF came to him through the magic of the multiverse seeping into the minds of writers, but sometimes he bungles the adaptation of what really happened on the page. It makes it easy to fanwank/retcon in my head that everything actually makes sense, it was just a budget/writing/directing mistake. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2018, 9:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-expanse-season-3-open-spoilers/812247/26 "2018-05-03T21:02:25Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#): > > Remember: what we’re seeing is a representation/adaptation of the true events of the Great Solar System War as it really happened out there in the multiverse; in reality, I’m sure that there was a whole lot more waiting around and picking noses in the war room than in episode 3 of season 3, but the representation accelerated it for dramatic purposes. They still probably could have done it with cuts and shots of impatient bureaucrats, but oh well. Just for gits and shiggles, plugging in the [3 km/s speed](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railgun) for modern test rail guns (which is 1/100,000th the speed of light) plugging in the numbers from my earlier post (traveling at 28x the speed of light for 45 seconds) those rounds would take almost exactly 4 years to reach the target. ---
**Author:** ![k9bfriender](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/k9bfriender/32/3283_2.png) [@k9bfriender](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/k9bfriender)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2018, 9:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-expanse-season-3-open-spoilers/812247/27 "2018-05-03T21:21:50Z")
> [@Darren\_Garrison](#): > > Just for gits and shiggles, plugging in the [3 km/s speed](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railgun) for modern test rail guns (which is 1/100,000th the speed of light) plugging in the numbers from my earlier post (traveling at 28x the speed of light for 45 seconds) those rounds would take almost exactly 4 years to reach the target. I would think that they would have at least a magnitude increase on that, maybe two. It would not be all that surprising if they could reach reasonable fractions of the speed of light. But, yeah, 28x is a bit much. ---
**Author:** ![MeanJoe](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/meanjoe/32/5693_2.png) [@MeanJoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MeanJoe)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2018, 12:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-expanse-season-3-open-spoilers/812247/28 "2018-05-04T00:32:09Z")
> [@Darren\_Garrison](#): > > Except that the hologram speaks for itself. (Well, I don’t think it _actually_ speaks, but you can look at it and see that the ships are positioned at different points of Mars’ orbital radius for some reason.) I need to watch the earlier scenes again. I thought the dialog explained the platforms and their locations which had through stealth tech managed to position themselves close to Earth. Again, I may likely not remember that correctly. At the end of the day, it’s not even a hill I want to die upon. It’s just not that important to me but I get the questions about it. ---
**Author:** ![Horatius](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/horatius/32/3572_2.png) [@Horatius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horatius)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2018, 1:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-expanse-season-3-open-spoilers/812247/29 "2018-05-04T01:08:38Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#): > > Remember: what we’re seeing is a representation/adaptation of the true events of the Great Solar System War as it really happened out there in the multiverse; in reality, I’m sure that there was a whole lot more waiting around and picking noses in the war room than in episode 3 of season 3, but the representation accelerated it for dramatic purposes. They still probably could have done it with cuts and shots of impatient bureaucrats, but oh well. Yeah, it’s just one of those things that we have to accept when it comes to TV vs. books. In the books, it’s a major plot point that travel takes time; day, weeks or even months to get where you’re going. Meanwhile, communications are at light speed. It’s like the late 1800s on Earth, with telegraphs making communication almost immediate, but you were still stuck with sail or steam ships to get anywhere. You could know that there was problem, and send someone out to try to fix it, but in the meantime, events on the ground kept evolving, and by the time you get there, you might be facing a completely different problem. That works in a book, but in a TV show, I suspect most watchers would get bored and/or confused by the whole issue. ---
**Author:** ![Hypno-Toad](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b2d939/32.png) [@Hypno-Toad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hypno-Toad)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2018, 12:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-expanse-season-3-open-spoilers/812247/30 "2018-05-07T00:42:56Z")
Just got caught up through Ep 4. Holy shit what that kid did to his nurse. Surprised they showed it as graphically as they did. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2018, 4:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-expanse-season-3-open-spoilers/812247/31 "2018-05-07T04:32:20Z")
The way the protomolecule group intelligence and interactions with humans is giving me a very Ender’s Game vibe. ---
**Author:** ![Isamu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/7c8e57/32.png) [@Isamu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Isamu)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2018, 4:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-expanse-season-3-open-spoilers/812247/32 "2018-05-07T04:47:24Z")
> [@Darren\_Garrison](#): > > Nope, there is no saving it. [Here](https://imgur.com/a/qV72bKU) is the hologram. Earth’s orbit is the blue circle, Mars’ orbit is the red circle, the ship positions are the dotted circles. I just looked at the scene, and all ships were hit at around the same time (no matter how far away they were) around 45 seconds after the railgun launches. So for the furtherest target (which was on the opposite of Mars’ orbit from Earth) the railgun rounds were traveling at approximately 28 times the speed of light. Thanks. Interesting. That map does, in fact, have non-realistic relative sizes and relative distances. ---
**Author:** ![k9bfriender](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/k9bfriender/32/3283_2.png) [@k9bfriender](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/k9bfriender)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2018, 4:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-expanse-season-3-open-spoilers/812247/33 "2018-05-08T16:40:34Z")
> [@Isamu](#): > > Thanks. Interesting. That map does, in fact, have non-realistic relative sizes and relative distances. It still put the guns and targets on different sides of the sun. No matter the scale, that’s a good distance. I do forget, I was assuming they don’t have FTL communications, but is that something that has come up? ---
**Author:** ![ryan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/a8b319/32.png) [@ryan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ryan)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2018, 8:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-expanse-season-3-open-spoilers/812247/34 "2018-05-09T08:27:16Z")
Yeah, there’s no FTL commo. They had to deal with light-speed delay a couple times. When the martians faced off with a UN ship heading for Phoebe and ended up firing on and destroying the moon. UN command had to trust the local commander due to com delay. Also when Avasarala was saying goodbye to her husband and there was a 2 second delay due to the distance between Earth and Luna. ---
**Author:** ![by-tor](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/by-tor/32/266_2.png) [@by-tor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/by-tor)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2018, 10:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-expanse-season-3-open-spoilers/812247/35 "2018-05-10T22:32:25Z")
I really don’t get Naomi’s reasoning. She had a kid, therefore she gives an uncontrollable, world killing, alien weapon to a militant organization. Maybe I need to watch it again. I get that she thinks that it will just be used for political leverage but how can she be that naive? I really don’t care what Naomi’s reasoning is. She has made the problem worse. She sucks and I hate her. ---
**Author:** ![alphaboi867](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alphaboi867/32/3898_2.png) [@alphaboi867](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/alphaboi867)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2018, 12:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-expanse-season-3-open-spoilers/812247/36 "2018-05-11T00:39:07Z")
I like the mutiny/counter-mutiny scenes. It was like a black comedy of errors. ---
**Author:** ![Mahaloth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mahaloth/32/1079_2.png) [@Mahaloth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mahaloth)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2018, 11:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-expanse-season-3-open-spoilers/812247/37 "2018-05-11T11:30:34Z")
It’s canceled. ☹ ---
**Author:** ![ISiddiqui](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/97f17d/32.png) [@ISiddiqui](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ISiddiqui)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2018, 2:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-expanse-season-3-open-spoilers/812247/38 "2018-05-11T14:20:11Z")
Well shit. But it does seem they are shopping it around to other outlets: > **[The Expanse’s third season will be its last on the Syfy channel](https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/11/17343638/the-expanse-third-last-season-syfy)** > > The show is being shopped to other networks The ratings were pretty poor and the sets looked fairly costly. And apparently SyFy didn’t have streaming rights for it. I think it’s currently streaming on Amazon Prime? So maybe approach them first on it? ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2018, 3:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-expanse-season-3-open-spoilers/812247/39 "2018-05-13T03:49:35Z")
Aaaaaaand… canceled. ETA: oops, late with the scoop. ---
**Author:** ![Whack-a-Mole](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/whack-a-mole/32/141_2.png) [@Whack-a-Mole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Whack-a-Mole)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2018, 4:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-expanse-season-3-open-spoilers/812247/40 "2018-05-13T04:05:25Z")
> [@ISiddiqui](#): > > Well shit. But it does seem they are shopping it around to other outlets: > > [The Expanse’s third season will be its last on the Syfy channel - The Verge](https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/11/17343638/the-expanse-third-last-season-syfy) > > The ratings were pretty poor and the sets looked fairly costly. And apparently SyFy didn’t have streaming rights for it. I think it’s currently streaming on Amazon Prime? So maybe approach them first on it? Well that sucks. I admit it is a bit hard to get into at the beginning but it definitely grows on you. The more realistic physics of space travel also takes a bit of getting used to rather than the Star Wars/Star Trek model but it ultimately adds a lot of tension to space battled (e.g. loose shit in the ship can become lethal during extreme maneuvers). The protomolecule is an interesting foe too. It’s a really good show with interesting characters and story and I will miss it. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-expanse-season-3-open-spoilers/812247.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-expanse-season-3-open-spoilers/812247.md?page=3)