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


SpaceChampion

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It did look off, like he was really tired and hadn't slept in days.  I took it as Holden being frazzled because he doesn't deal well with ambiguous political bullshit, and he just needs to be pointed at a righteous cause he'd be more comfortable with.  Like helping Prax.

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I do confess I find Steven Strait to be fairly weak as far as the casting goes. He doesn't have much of BookHolden's humor or warmth, and I don't get the feeling of people genuinely desiring to follow him because he is genuinely righteous. 

Part of that is that he's going into his "I'm Miller" stage, but part of it is that he's just not as compelling. Plus he shares the stage with scene stealers like Wes Chatham and Cas Anwar, and both of them are absolutely murdering their parts. Particularly Amos, who has gotten both more psycho and more amusing this season in a great way. 

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Can we just get a entire episode of Amos and Alex being buds? Seriously, those two are one of the best parts of an already amazingly good show. Loved this week's episode, everything about it was really good. Loved the arrogance of the UN during the peace talks with Mars, and how that was counter balanced with how shitty Bobby's superiors were towards her, what with basically forcing her to throw Travis under the bus, and just generally being entirely unsympathetic to the trauma she just went through. The stuff with Holden and the gang was interesting, but I agree that the actor playing Holden is kind of the weak link in this show, which is a shame since he is the lead.

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Shohreh continues to absolutely kill this role, and her going from calmly asking questions to "Wherever the hell I want to go" in a blink of an eye is my favorite Avasarala moment yet.

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Something about the filming, editing, and color scheme of the show really hits all the right points to make me feel the claustrophobia of being in space.  And because they do so well with that, it really served to make me feel the disorientation and even terror one might experience when they see and feel the open sky for the first time.  

This show hits all the right notes.  

 

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On 3/22/2017 at 4:38 AM, Kalbear said:

I do confess I find Steven Strait to be fairly weak as far as the casting goes. He doesn't have much of BookHolden's humor or warmth, and I don't get the feeling of people genuinely desiring to follow him because he is genuinely righteous. 

Part of that is that he's going into his "I'm Miller" stage, but part of it is that he's just not as compelling. Plus he shares the stage with scene stealers like Wes Chatham and Cas Anwar, and both of them are absolutely murdering their parts. Particularly Amos, who has gotten both more psycho and more amusing this season in a great way. 

Hmmm, yes... There is simply nothing about him that I find compelling as in Amos or Alex, not to mention Chrisjen, which is by far, my favorite character. Perhaps it is the writing or simply my taste, but he is not my favorite.

7 hours ago, Kalbear said:

Shohreh continues to absolutely kill this role, and her going from calmly asking questions to "Wherever the hell I want to go" in a blink of an eye is my favorite Avasarala moment yet.

Yes, yes and yes. I am so sorry that the writing of that scene made the scene look rushed. But she killed it. She nails this role and every time she is on screen, you expect something amazing to happen. 

A bit slow episode, but I hope it leads into a good finale. This season was amazing.

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1 hour ago, Starkess said:

I agree that Holden is just a dud amongst an otherwise excellent cast.

I think that's unfair to Steven Strait though, because in the book threads, most people also feel that Holden is a dud compared to most of the characters.

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1 hour ago, RedEyedGhost said:

I think that's unfair to Steven Strait though, because in the book threads, most people also feel that Holden is a dud compared to most of the characters.

Very different dud reasoning though. In the books, his problem is his idealism and lack of strategic thinking along with his total lack of compromise most of the time. He's mostly just kind of dull in the books because there's not as much to him.

In the show, the problem is that we don't even get that rampant ideology and idealism that makes Amos want to follow him, nor do we get any of his genuine warmth and humanity. We get a lot of glowering. This was better in the first season - his absurd happy look at the coffee stash, for example - and has not been there nearly as much this season, where it's been mostly him angry all the time. I think a lot of that has to do with what they've had to cut and switch around to fit the more breakneck plot line - in the books, it's over a year between Eros and Ganymede, and we see the crew a bit more comfortable in their role as Tycho's security detail. We don't get that here, so we get a very  raw, angry Holden who is still reeling from Miller's death and Eros almost blowing everything up. 

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1 hour ago, Triskan said:

I have to amend my comment upthread just to clarify that it was in an episode two previous rather than the one that had just aired that I didn't like the Straight performance.  

The Avasarala scene embedded above was indeed awesome.  She is so perfect for this role.  Great casting.  

Can any of you guys refresh my memory on Prax?  I have just read the series through book 4 once (still going to get to the next ones for sure).  Did the Prax character get introduced this early like start of book 2?

Spoiler

Yeah, his daughter is one of the kids that is kidnapped at the start of book 2. It has something to do with her medical condition, I think. The Mao-Kwik folks are using the proto-molecule on kids to create monsters as part of their little experiment. Prax is introduced almost right away in Book 2, but you meet his daughter first. The imploding military situation on Ganymede forces Prax out of his little bio-dome and when he goes to pick up his daughter from pre-school, he finds out that her "mother" already came by and picked her up.

 

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Prax is a great POV in book 2. He has a completely different perspective than the “space natives” of the Roci, constantly noticing things on behalf of the reader. Long internal monologues about the fragility of the ecosystem on Ganymede. Musings about the thrusters on Tycho Station’s waldos that compensate for their movement (which would otherwise move the Station around!). His POV, more than the others, adds a lot of atmosphere to the absurdity of living in space – the constant peril everything is in, the interdependencies of various complex systems. He’s a docile Darwinian surrounded by naive engineers and mindless murderers. 

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