The books aren’t done yet, but we haven’t learned the answers to those questions so far.
I realized last night that I want an Expanse spinoff which is just Peaches and Bobbie flying around in the Screaming Firehawk and kicking all sorts of ass.
I would watch that.
Speaking of the Screaming Firehawk - I was wondering why they changed the Razorback’s name this season (it wasn’t changed in the books). Turns out it was done in fan service.
Back in season 1 when the crew took ownership of the Tachi, they were trying to think of a new name for it. Alex suggested the Flaming Alamo or Screaming Firehawk, and everyone else rolled their eyes. Holden suggested the Rocinante, which stuck.
When Syfy cancelled the series after season 3, a vocal group of fans started begging for its return, and some of the cast members engaged with them on Twitter and started referring to them as the Screaming Firehawks. So the Razorback was given the name as a nod to the fans.
This is consistent with earlier practice. There’s been a few times where they needed a bigger crew compliment, and so hired or borrowed people. The difference is that the core group of four all had ownership stakes (reference the “Legitimate Salvage” title plaque we saw at the end), and so had permanent places on the ship, even if they had reasons to take off for a few months on other jobs.
The hired hands were just that - they do the job, and then they get paid.
Boy oh BOY, does that phrase still ring familiar to these ears (or is it eyes?).
Shiny
The last moments of the final episode gave a hint about that–in the next books, there is a problem that ships passing through gates occasionally don’t come out again–they are “eaten” by something. (But it can’t be that particular ship getting eaten, because the bad guys on it are the focus of the next two books.) There are other scary god-scale things that happen a couple or three times in those books but I won’t detail them.
The killers appear to be the sort of distant, truly alien, incredibly powerful ancient aliens that barely even notice that mere mortals like humans and the builders exist until they become annoying and they casually swat them like insects. Apparently the use of wormholes annoys whatever lives in subspace. There should be a named trope for that (because it is is pretty common, dating back to the flood in Gilgamesh) but I can’t google it up.
Thank you.
Ever since the end of S2 I had been waiting for that mystery to be further developed and S3’s movement there was completely unsatisfying.
One of the effects of encounters with the aliens is seeing things apparently the same way they see them, perceiving every single atom of matter individually–something impossible to express on a TV/movie adaptation, but those last moments of the latest episode were an attempt at. Here is a description from book 8, Tiamat’s Wraith:
Summary
The universe exploded.
If it had been a sound, it would have been deafening. Elvi put her hands over her ears just the same. A reflex. An approximation. Jen was screaming. Elvi tried to sink to the deck, but only managed to pull her legs up so that she was floating in a fetal position. The curve of the handhold before her was ornate and beautiful. The smudge of darkness where the oil from the crew’s skin hadn’t been cleaned away was like a map of a vast coastline, fractal and complex. She was aware of Fayez beside her, of the waves of pressure passing between them, touching, and reflecting away as they both screamed. The air was a fog of atoms. Sagale was a cloud of atoms. She was a cloud.
You’ve been here, she thought. You’ve been here before. Don’t get distracted by it. Don’t lose yourself.
The cloud that was her hand, vibrations in emptiness, slipped through the void and clatter to the cloud that was the handhold. Fields of energy between her atoms and the bulkhead’s atoms turned into a dance of pressure, and the surge sent lightning up her arm, so complicated it was hard to keep track of. She was aware that she felt it, but there was so much happening it was hard to keep the sensation in mind.Elvi found that she could see right through the suddenly vaporous ship, and right through the other ship clouds around it. Medina was a vast but wispy thunderhead at the center of them all.
Something was moving through the clouds, dark and sinuous as a dancer slipping between raindrops. And then another. And then more. They were everywhere, sliding through the gas and liquid and solid, scattering the clouds with their passage. They were solid. Real in a way the clouds of matter were not. They were more real than anything she’d ever seen. Tendrils of darkness that had never known light. That could never know light. You’ve seen this absence of light before. A darkness like the eye of an angry god . . . You said that to someone.
One darted and swirled, off to her left if left meant anything now. It furled like a question mark, and the pattern of atoms and vibrations swirled around it and into it. The beauty of it, the grace, were hard to look away from. Clouds mixed and swirled together in its wake, colors so pure they were only colors. It took effort to recognize they were blood. She’d been here before. It had been overwhelming the first time. It was overwhelming again now, but at least she knew what it was. That made holding her mind together possible. At least for a moment.You’re doing great, kid. You’re doing great. You can do this. Just a little more. But do it now . . .
She tried to remember what her throat was. Tried to imagine that the dots of matter and emptiness had said words before. That they still could. They were her body, the air she breathed. She tried to make it all work together long enough to scream.Emergency evacuation. Major Okoye authorization delta-eight. A tendril of darkness darted toward her . . .
. . . and dropped away. All of them slid away, falling like black snowflakes through the cloud of vibrations that was the deck. Everything swirled, one form folding into another. If she unfocused her eyes, she could just recognize them. Jen’s body, rolling as maneuvering thrusters made the deck into a hillside. Someone’s arm from fingers to elbow, and even a few centimeters of flesh beyond. The glow of the main display, too much itself to hold any meaning beyond the simple elegance of photons caught in air. She was aware of her own pain like it was the sound of a distant waterfall. She fell through it and into something like sleep.And a blink later, she was back. Thrust that could have been a third of a g or five gs pulled her down. When she forced herself to sit up, blood glued her cheek to the deck. The air stank, but with too many different volatiles to make sense of. Alarms were sounding, echoing off each other in a meaningless cacophony. Everything had gone wrong at once. She hauled herself up to standing.
The bridge was a thing from a nightmare. Swaths of the bulkheads, decks, equipment were gone. Like an artist had come in with an eraser and taken away bits of it at random. And the others too.
Sagale was still at his post, a long loop of his head and right shoulder simply vanished. Jen lay in a still pile where the deck met the wall, covered in blood that might have been her own. Travon’s arm lay beside his station, but where his crash couch had been, there was a soft-edged hole down to the next deck and the one below that. It was like seeing a coral reef made from her ship and her friends and—
Thanks for that.
Books apparently worth reading…
A bit of a meta question about the books - I understand they are written by two authors working together? During the intro credits for the last episode, my wife and I were talking about that. How exactly does that work, have they said? Do they write for different characters, or alternate chapters, or one is the main author and the other a very involved collaborator?
I’ve dabbled with some writing and I don’t think I could give up that much control over the world I’m building, haha. But I definitely see the appeal of having two brains working on the story.
You should read the Thieves World series. Top fantasy authors got together and made a common world and each had a character that inhabited it. You could use other people’s characters as side players but not kill them IIRC. Never understood why it hasn’t been made into a series, it would be epic!
I just pulled my old hardcover Sanctuary off the shelf last week to add it to my read pile. Some of the stories from the first few TW books are among the most vividly written fantasy stories I’ve ever read.
I haven’t read them in eons, tbh. May be time to dust them off…
Just finished episode 10 and a great season
I was not sure at the beginning with the whole crew scattered to the four winds and all that , but really enjoyed it. Last season left me a bit flat but looking forward to the next one and see where they go with the martian extremists.
Now what to watch for the next year as my exercise show?
I wish they had just gotten another actor to play Alex - the four main characters who own the Roci are the heart and soul of everything that happens in this universe. I can’t see Bull or Clarissa filling Alex’s shoes.
I dunno, I’m OK with it. Holden, Amos, and Naomi are characters. Alex is more of a mood - his presence among the four is necessary as an easy-going foil to balance the rest, but as a character he isn’t as important. The particulars of his backstory don’t drive any plot in the same way as the other three. As long as you bring in someone to fill that role, the person itself doesn’t matter as much.
I would absolutely watch a spin-off centered around any one of Naomi, Amos, Bobbie, and probably even Clarissa. I’d have little interest in a spin-off centered around Alex.
I gotta admit that it was kinda nice having a hotshot pilot who wasn’t also an extroverted asshole. Wash was a long time ago, now.
Now that’s the cross-over we all need. I’ll join the campaign to bring back Wash to fly the Rocinante.
I think Bull was drinking out of Alexs mug in one of his last scenes so I guess he is staying. I think the character is right be regularly reminding Holden that he is full of shit and set up some internal team friction of a healthy sort of way.