I haven’t been able to find anything, but is there a firm launch date for season 4?
An unnecessary bump to say I just finished the 8th book (Tiamat’s Wrath), and I thought it was one of the best yet. IMO, the series hit a low spot with Nemesis Games, but it has been steadily climbing since.
And they’re still saying end of 2019 for season 4. Can’t wait!
Yeah, she’s described as basically being some kind of hot looking female version of Dwayne Johnson. As in, 6’6", 220 lbs, fit and muscular, as well as pretty.
I suspect Frankie Adams is about as good as they were likely to do as far as casting is concerned- she’s a 5’11" Samoan boxer/actress.
And I agree with Mean Joe. They did a poor job of conveying the sense (through Holden) that as powerful as the protomolecule is, there was a race that created it and the gates. And that there’s something ELSE out there that was wrecking them wholesale- enough so that they started wasting entire star systems to try and defeat/stop it. And that they failed.
That’s kind of the underlying simmering fear that underlies the next stage of the overall story, and they haven’t done much of a job of setting that up. Maybe the plan is to set it up as they expound on Cibola Burn’s storyline.
I have fears that they’ll fuck Cibola Burn up though, since it takes place almost exclusively on Ilus/New Terra and is very Holden-centric, and the showrunners will feel like they have to introduce a lot of spaceflight stuff and ensemble cast stuff to keep people interested, and probably end up changing the storyline for the worse to accomodate it.
Thank you! :-D. I think you bring up a good point, with Cibola Burns the story becomes very self-contained to Holden and Ilus/New Terra. For me I disliked that divergence from the broader story and involvement of the crew that had been told so far. I mean, I get in context of the broader story you’re going to have these conflicts with settlement of these worlds but this just was too focused on the events on-planet so to speak and that is what this story is about but… I dunno, I just didn’t like it as much.
I have faith they will expand the story beyond Ilus and Holden by pulling in content from later books or the novellas. Remember, Avasarala was in season 1 despite not being a character in the first book at all. The showrunner said “The book Cibola takes place entirely on Ilus… We are going to tell that story in Season 4, sure, but we’re not leaving Earth and Mars and the Belt behind.”
That said, Cibola Burn wasn’t my favorite book, so I do share some of your concern.
I’m pretty sure they’ll start investigating the ships vanishing while passing through the ring gates and the parts of the Martian fleet also mysteriously vanishing while the Roci is in the Ilus system.
My bet is that Bobbie will be looking into that stuff, on the orders of Chrisjen & Fred. They’ll probably also start foreshadowing the Free Navy and maybe even Laconia stuff.
Book spoilers galore, do not look if you haven’t read them.
We probably should spin off a book thread…
December 13th. (A Friday, FWIW.)
The scene of the Roci descending through the atmosphere and touching down looks fantastic.
And in his brief appearances, Burn Gorman as Murtry is more than sufficiently bad-ass. If he has a decent amount of screen time, I’m a little less worried about the Ilus story line being boring.
If you manage to not think about all the things that would be burned away or torn loose on a real craft that looks like that, maybe?
I manage it just fine. I like hard sci fi, but I’m always willing to sacrifice scientific realism for the sake of the story or a good visual.
Everything about this show is so well crafted, the characters are compelling, the dialog is witty and interesting, and the visuals are damn near orgasmic.
I haven’t read the books so I would appreciate it if someone could answer a few questions:
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Does Bobbie Draper ever become a permanent part of the Rocci crew? At the end of last season she was strapping in next to Alex and she is such an awesome character I would love to see her get a lot more screen time.
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In the books, is Holden as wooden as Steven Strait portrays him on screen or is Steven just a bad actor?
Sort of, IIRC. Not really “permanent” – more like reoccuring, I’d say.
I think Strait has improved, but book Holden is still kind of a do-gooder, which is a hard kind of character to make compelling, IMO. But Strait is still probably the weakest of the main actors.
We don’t know what materials they’re made of, or how strongly they’re bolted on.
Also, because it’s a powered descent, it’s moving much slower than, say, a Space Shuttle did when landing. Modern spacecraft hit the atmosphere at orbital speeds, which is why they come in so hot; the Roci probably decelerated to much slower than than before it reached the planet.
I also have to add that it’s really weird seeing those characters outside, in daylight.
Obviously handwavium.
You don’t think we’ll have stronger materials 300 years in the future? We have stronger materials now than we had 300 years in the past.
Yeah, this is the main factor. Once you allow the Unobtanium Drive that is the “Epstein Drive” in the show, there’s lots of things you can do that current spacecraft simply can’t.
After all, the only reason current spacecraft have to move at “orbital speeds” is that this is the only way we currently have to avoid plummeting to the surface under the influence of gravity. But with drives that can routinely accelerate at 3-10 Gs for days, weeks, or even months at a time, even if they’re rat-ass rock-hoppers, hovering over a planet at 1 G is easy. The only limit would be fuel, and the fuel limits are exactly what the Epstein Drive was supposed to overcome.
I think (as with most of the great technological leaps that we have had in the past couple of centuries) we are much closer to the ending than to the beginning. And no, I do not think we will ever reach the stage where heat shielding and aerodynamics are no longer a factor in entry vehicle design.