The Expanse #2: Caliban's Thread - [spoilers for book only up to latest tv show episode]

[Happy Ent]

3 hours ago, boojam said:

They do little back ground things about low g that frankly I had to be told what to look for.

Those things are great. (They are also expensive, and I understand that we only get very few of them.)

To phrase my complaint differently: I don’t understand why they don’t do the things right that would be just as expensive or even cheaper.

Such as sticking the Roci nose-first onto Tycho station rather than on its belly (same CGI cost, just turn the bloody ship 90 degrees). Or having clearly stacked, cramped space ship interiors (cheaper design, even!). Or having the characters point to computerised maps that actually make sense in order to tell the audience what is going on where (cheap) instead of fake holographic nonsense that clearly even the in-universe characters are bored with (expensive). The cost of showing a CGI space ship breaking toward Ganymede is the same as showing it accelerating toward it, so why not get it right? The cost of having a docking spaceship rotate in such a way that it doesn’t slag the space station is the same. It’s either lazy, or (to me) clearly demonstrates that somewhere in the production chain there is a critical number of people who don’t care about the universe, or that there are no mechanisms for the few geeks who care to flag obvious mistakes. That is a problem, because setting is important in SF.

And note that SF fans love this stuff. (I know I do.) There are very few scenes more memorable or iconic that the docking scene in 2001. Or the vacuum scenes. Filming stuff like that is dirt cheap today. And the Expanse is the perfect universe for that kind of detail. So why not use it? Here’s a chance to make SF as awesome as 2001 (awesome because the universe is low tech), and for TV. Instead, we get lazy, more expensive stuff that forces me to turn off my brain.

I don’t get it dramatically, I don’t get it physically, I don’t get it economically.

(Don’t get me started on Belter culture. Book Belters are awesome. Show Belters are brats.)

[Spockydog]

Why do the spaceships have to cramped? If you build your ship in space, presumably you can make it as spacious as you like.

 

[Happy Ent]

1 hour ago, Spockydog said:

Why do the spaceships have to cramped? If you build your ship in space, presumably you can make it as spacious as you like.

We’re told they are. But the main reason would be environmental controls. (Filling a tin can with breathable air and pleasant temperature. A particularly bad idea for a war ship.)

[boojam]

1 hour ago, Happy Ent said:

Those things are great. (They are also expensive, and I understand that we only get very few of them.)

To phrase my complaint differently: I don’t understand why they don’t do the things right that would be just as expensive or even cheaper.
 .)

I am old enough to have sat through, in a theater, Plan Nine from Outer Space, Queen of Outer Space, Fire Maidens from Outer Space ..... and many many more that only members of the steel eyeball school of movie going could survive.

You are right but to me this stuff is a god send.

[Dr. Pepper]

A cramped spaceship might be cheaper to design and might be more realistic, but one would assume they are not easy to film in.  

I find it plenty cramped looking.  I think I might have even written somewhere in this thread or the one before that it made me feel so claustrophobic to watch this show, that they succeeded in making me feel how confined and contained they are, how tiny and insignificant.  I think that matters more than trying to configure massive camera and sound equipment around a teen tiny set.  

I get the sense you really like this show, but that it makes you angry to like it.

[Happy Ent]

S2E4

1:30. Great interior shots of the abandoned Toth station stealth ship, with a camera drone that uses thrusters to manoeuvre in 0 G. Lovely, lovely, lovely. 

5:33 Miller’s holographic actually shows something useful and informative. Even the orbits ar e correct. Well done! )

15–16:xx Pure porn. The Nauvoo is reoriented and moved away from Tycho station before firing up. Lovely. I’d still like them to be at a safer distance, but OK. On the other hand, the interior shots in the Guy make no sense (no visible trust gravity when the Epstein starts). The big screen in the command center in the Tycho is weird; it looks as if the planets are all lined up all the time. What is the use of such a map? Looks cool, so I’ll let it pass.

19:00 Ships breaking towards their goal. All I ever asked for. Beautiful!

20:00 Belters helping each other with gear. Great.

22 Miller’s space walk to Eros. Perfect. My only complaint was that Miller was too fast and should have started to thrust away from the station sooner, and that’s exactly what he gets scolded for. 

23 Zoom towards Nauvoo. Very nice. (Could have done without the sound, but http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SpaceIsNoisy )

25 Miller is moving things around. (Bombs.) They seem to be heavy, but where does gravity point? I can’t remember if Eros had spin gravity (I thought it just had its own microgravity, which is why Miller was able to lug a nuke around), but surely it’s not pointing at a tangent to the rotation? I don’t think this scene makes any sense, and could have for the same money by not making the walkway perpendicular. (I’m happy to be corrected on this.) 

31 Roci is manoeuvring wildly around Eros while Amos and Holden freely walk about inside. Strong demerit.

38. Belter kid leaves the station. Down is clearly walkway down (making the audible magnet boots superfluous, confirmed by the direction in which the bomb is heavy) yet when Belter kid lets go, he get’s flung diagonally away from Eros? And we’re hearing, but not seeing, thrusters. I don’t understand what we’re seeing here. Any help appreciated.

41: Another great zoom (this time away from the approaching Nauvoo, ending at Eros). I’m very happy.

42: Eros changes course. The Nauvoo is way too close, but this time I’ll allow visual necessity to override logic. This particular scene is better this way, even though Miller would never survive it. I note happily that Miller experiences no sideways momentum during the shift (because of Protomolecule magic). But imagine how much more powerful that detail would be if we had established earlier that people inside spaceships get violently shaken about when the ship changes course! This is what I mean by missed opportunities. The protomolecule does Star Trek-like magic in this very scene, but in the TV Show, that magic is unremarkable because apparently human ships have had that magic all the time.

—

Great episode! Good SF details, way more carefully done than anything else so far.

 Highlight was the Nauvoo launch. The only weird stuff was the walkway on Eros, which had three different opinions simultaneously about where gravity was pointing. 

Also, some competent dramatic choices. However, I missed Eros’ swearing, and don’t understand why that was taken out.

 

[Happy Ent]

1 hour ago, Dr. Pepper said:

I get the sense you really like this show, but that it makes you angry to like it.

I don’t know. I like the books very much, and enjoy them come to life.

But I don’t like TV drama much, because it makes its characters behave soooo stupid. The Earth politics? Stupid. The blustering way Fred Johnson behaves? Stupid. Or the Ceres cops in Season 1? Stupid. It pains me to see supposed adults behave stupidly just because TV show producers think they need to escalate tension to build character. For somebody like me, it just builds stupid characters. I know humans. I know humans in positions of power. I know humans under stress. Nobody behaves like we see on TV. I find it unwatchable I’ll go so far as to say that wrong humans annoy me more than wrong space physics. This is a general complaint of most of dramatised fiction, of course. It’s a medium by stupid people for, I’m sorry, stupid people. So I generally keep my mouth shut, because this particular suspension of disbelief seems to be part of the genre. It’s not meant for me.

I can’t watch Game of Thrones for the same reason. It’s an embarrassment.

So for Expanse, I now fast-forward through the “politics” scenes or watch with half an eye. (Mind you, I love politics, I love observing intelligent people have verbal battles to establish dominance hierarchies. But that’s not what I get on TV.) Sometimes, there’s good drama; which TV is a great medium for. Human heart in conflict with itself.

I’m here only for the space ships.

[Relic]

1 hour ago, Happy Ent said:

 It’s a medium by stupid people for, I’m sorry, stupid people

Haha, well, in many ways you aren't wrong. And yet, you're SO wrong.  

[boojam]

4 hours ago, Happy Ent said:

 

  http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SpaceIsNoisy

 

 

Kind of cute. 

They missed Apollo 13 , tho there it was a bit sloppy ... when the POV was outside one supposedly is hearing sounds from the crew POV inside, but  it is edited so that there is confusion.

[karaddin]

WWTR - Don't want to prompt HE and have him notice because of my question Its a realism point in favour of the show on the same subject as its been pinged for in other cases in the last couple of pages of this thread.

HE - OK the zooming shots I was thinking of were in ep4, so perhaps they hadn't really used that before and that particular complaint bugged me so much because I was those couple of episodes ahead and knew that did do it. On the whole I think there is plenty of evidence they are trying, but the realities of TV (both budgetary and the audience) are working against them. The amount they get right is still more than anything else and enough for me, but it clearly breaks your suspension of disbelief.

I will add that something I picked up from the podcast (where Drummer = Sam amalgamation was confirmed) is that the protomolecule is warping reality more than I expected. I don't think it explains things like Holden walking around the Roci while its chasing the ship around Eros (which was one of the things that bugged me a little as well - I just had to go with 'the acceleration is actually much less than would make the ship move like that, but TV constraints'), but there may be some other things that look off initially but are explained by it later.

[SpaceChampion]

45 minutes ago, karaddin said:

I will add that something I picked up from the podcast ... is that the protomolecule is warping reality more than I expected.

Yeah, that was a surprise to me.  I thought it odd they'd reveal that in a podcast.  I didn't mention it here because I thought maybe it would be revealed more explicitly in show soon, or maybe it was a thing from the books 5 or later.  But the show hints that something is going on

Spoiler

time-wise, connecting Julie Mao and Miller.  It makes Miller's journey seem more like he fell in love rather than it be a delusional obsession or limerance.  Also explains the visions he had of her were actually of her / the protomolecule, and suggests maybe that sparrow wasn't just random the first time he saw it in season one.

 

[Dr. Pepper]

Wait, what?  I'm confused and intrigued. What podcast is this?

[SpaceChampion]

The 4th episode (covering the 5th episode of the show) of The Churn podcast on Blastr / SyFy.  Around 28 minutes into it.

[karaddin]

30 minutes ago, SpaceChampion said:

Yeah, that was a surprise to me.  I thought it odd they'd reveal that in a podcast.  I didn't mention it here because I thought maybe it would be revealed more explicitly in show soon, or maybe it was a thing from the books 5 or later.  But the show hints that something is going on

  Hide contents

time-wise, connecting Julie Mao and Miller.  It makes Miller's journey seem more like he fell in love rather than it be a delusional obsession or limerance.  Also explains the visions he had of her were actually of her / the protomolecule, and suggests maybe that sparrow wasn't just random the first time he saw it in season one.

 

Spoiler

Yeah the turn of phrase they used was that the moment Julie and Miller meet echoes through time, both forwards and backwards. We've seen the backwards moments, but it also implies that there will be more to come.

For Dr Pepper

Spoiler

The specific example I recall is that when we flashback to Julie's story in s01e09 at the moment she dies she sees Miller opening the door - she has no idea who Miller is at that point in time, so unlike him it can't be a delusion. It completely reframes the whole relationship of Miller/Julie as he is genuinely seeing her/forming a connection with her in the times he is 'hallucinating' her. There is another point where he hears her saying 'You belong with me' which is the final line she says to him before he kisses her at the end.

I also like that it doesn't make Dawe's comment of "If Julie could see you now, she would spit in your face" less true because Miller has grown *a lot* by the time he returns to Eros.

 

Overall I've got no idea where the Sparrow could be going, other than that him repeatedly seeing it was more than just chance...it felt like there might be more though. They also revealed that Thomas Jane had a big impact on how Miller was brought to life, and that the last episode with him would have fallen a lot more flat without the changes he insisted on.

 

[SpaceChampion]

The Churn podcast's interview with Thomas Jane is great.  He's actually well read in the genre -- Asimov's Robot books, Neuromancer, Heinlein, LeGuin. etc

[boojam]

9 hours ago, karaddin said:

 

I will add that something I picked up from the podcast (where Drummer = Sam amalgamation was confirmed) is that the protomolecule is warping reality more than I expected. I don't think it explains things like Holden walking around the Roci while its chasing the ship around Eros (which was one of the things that bugged me a little as well - I just had to go with 'the acceleration is actually much less than would make the ship move like that, but TV constraints'), but there may be some other things that look off initially but are explained by it later.

In episode 5 Miller notes that gravity is all wrong on Eros and is told that some kind of super manipulation is going on. Field effect modification of gravitation is an old staple of science fiction so my thought was that the protomolecule , doing Julie's bidding, was doing something to space time.

I thought if Miller could convince Julie to go to Venus , which is not really going home, why not have her just take off for the stars?

This whole idea that the protomolecule can be coaxed into cooperation is intriguing , it could be used as an agent of benevolence rather than malevolence.

Have not read the books so I don't know.

[Wethers]

21 hours ago, boojam said:

I thought if Miller could convince Julie to go to Venus , which is not really going home, why not have her just take off for the stars?

This whole idea that the protomolecule can be coaxed into cooperation is intriguing , it could be used as an agent of benevolence rather than malevolence.

Have not read the books so I don't know.

 

 

Spoiler

At least in the books, I think it's less likely the protomolecule would have accepted the stars as a destination at that stage, whereas Venus was a viable option.  Watch (or read) and find out why - assuming the series goes the same direction as the books on this.  As Julie paraphrased in S2E5, "can't stop the work."

In the books, the protomolecule is neither benevolent or malevolent.  Any benevolence here (to the extent Miller coaxed it) came from it using Julie as a template.  Consciousness trapped within an unconscious system.  The protomolecule was designed to operate using the biomass of Earth's microbes 2 billion years ago and harness their microbial replication systems when it was fired at our solar system.  But Phoebe got trapped into orbit by Saturn's gravity and never hit its target (as Dresden said in S2E2, "Earth was its target").

So instead, 2 billion years later, it got us, a much more complex organism than it was built to expect, with consciousness to boot.  But the protomolecule was designed to be great at improvisation and it uses the tools it has at hand.

 

[Happy Ent]

22 hours ago, boojam said:

This whole idea that the protomolecule can be coaxed into cooperation is intriguing , it could be used as an agent of benevolence rather than malevolence.

By the end of book 2, I think, know exactly what the original protomolecule wanted. Miller’s suggestion is compatible with that goal, so the design acquiesces to his suggestion. Crashing into Venus works (presumably thanks to the biomass already available on Eros), crashing into Earth would have been preferable but isn’t strictly necessary. Going “home” (as in “going to Earth” is not the ultimate goal for the protomolecule, it was just a proximate goal.

I don’t think one can endow the goal with a moral dimension. 

[boojam]

3 hours ago, Wethers said:

 

 

  Reveal hidden contents

At least in the books, I think it's less likely the protomolecule would have accepted the stars as a destination at that stage, whereas Venus was a viable option.  Watch (or read) and find out why - assuming the series goes the same direction as the books on this.  As Julie paraphrased in S2E5, "can't stop the work."

In the books, the protomolecule is neither benevolent or malevolent.  Any benevolence here (to the extent Miller coaxed it) came from it using Julie as a template.  Consciousness trapped within an unconscious system.  The protomolecule was designed to operate using the biomass of Earth's microbes 2 billion years ago and harness their microbial replication systems when it was fired at our solar system.  But Phoebe got trapped into orbit by Saturn's gravity and never hit its target (as Dresden said in S2E2, "Earth was its target").

So instead, 2 billion years later, it got us, a much more complex organism than it was built to expect, with consciousness to boot.  But the protomolecule was designed to be great at improvisation and it uses the tools it has at hand.

 

A very Clarke-ian 'alien', not indistinguishable from magic, just indistinguishable!

I like that.

[Happy Ent]

Protomolecule design specifications (spoilers for all books):

 

The task of the protomolecule is to build a portal and connect the Sol system to “the Expanse”—to give it a name. I mean the 1600 systems connected by the weird portal. This happened 2 billion years ago. The reason to use the Sol system is that it apparently has a planet of the right size and the right distance to its star to support whatever civilisation wanted to inhabit it. (We see that the other planets in the Expanse have similar characteristics.)

In order to work, the protomolecule needs biomass, which Earth had then. So Alien Civilisation sent a building device (much like a robot), probably on a millions-year long journey using standard physics (i.e., without funky dimension portals, much like infected-Eros moves about.) Plan fails, device gets captured.  

From the perspective of the device, it just “wants” to build a portal, so that Earth becomes reachable faster. So when it wakes up again, that’s what it starts building. Eros+Venus provide enough bricks to play with, Julie’s change of plan does not violate its ultimate goal.

Then it sets off and constructs the portal, much like 1599 other devices have already done throughout history. The plan was not to destroy Earth; it was to connect Young Earth to the Expanse (so that the Aliens can live there, or go on holiday, or whatever. Study it, maybe.)

Only glitch is that the Alien civilisation seems to now be extinct, because of an epic war with another civilisation. 

[\spoiler]