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Expanse #5 Game done changed.


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22 hours ago, briantw said:

From episode nine:

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"Where did Timmy find you?"

"Serving a life sentence for multiple homicides."

:lol:

 

I also liked

Spoiler

"She just killed them with her bare hands!"

"Remind me to be nicer to her..."

 

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Eh, I'm getting bored this season. I agree that there is too much tell and not show with the destruction of earth. I appreciate that people think the show is not spoon-feeding us and insulting our intelligence, but I also didn't get that this was abnormal weather and maybe I just wasn't paying enough attention to Baltimore to see how devastated it was. Maybe insult my intelligence a little more, thanks.

I read the books and if I remember, this is where I started losing interest, so maybe this story is just not for me. Overall I've been enjoying the series more than the books and I hoped this would continue. I do remember being really riveted by the destruction of Earth in the books, but they really sucked the life out of it on the screen - for me at least.

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6 hours ago, john said:

I get that’s why she’s doing it but it still seems out of order both for a girlfriend and an XO and displays a total lack of trust. Although I suppose that is its own kind of bravery if she’s prepared to risk those relationships for the sake of the others.

You have to remember the crew is a polyamourus marriage, so she’s not just Drummer’s girlfriend 

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9 hours ago, divica said:

You are mixing what is actualy shown with what is told in passing. For example, you say it is shown that baltimore is flooded and that this is happening to coastal cities.

That's not what I said, in fact.

We're shown Baltimore flooded by the destruction of the tidal wall, and we're shown the tsunamis caused by the impacts, and we know that the coastal cities like New York have similar coastal walls, and we infer the rest. Just as we can infer from what we're shown (and what we know about weather systems and natural disasters and so on) that the winter is unnatural and widespread.

Nobody sits in a control room with maps showing the flooded cities and talks about how the cities are flooded, but that would be a different kind of story, the one you appear to want the series to have told rather than the one they chose to. One where Amos (for whatever reason) gets involved with dealing with these problems on a global level. He hasn't really got the skills or the motivation to do so, so basically, you seem to want a different character to go with that different story. Which is fine, we've all judged stories in comparison to the one we wanted to see instead of the one that's on screen, but as a critique it literally doesn't engage with the material, so that's not ideal.

The story we do get does show that this is a global problem - you just have to pay attention and draw some reasonable inferences.

4 hours ago, Gertrude said:

Eh, I'm getting bored this season. I agree that there is too much tell and not show with the destruction of earth.

Surely this is the opposite of divica's complaint? Unless it's someone else you're agreeing with?

7 hours ago, john said:

And what is up with Drummer’s girlfriend treating her with such disrespect, literally taking her gun as if she’s an animal that can’t control herself then not divulging crucial information, to the captain none the less. I’m not sure what actual relationship they have but she needs to get dumped.

It's a polyamorous relationship amongst the whole crew.

Oksana loves Drummer, but she also loves the rest of the crew and is worried that Drummer might choose loyalty to Naomi over loyalty to the crew.

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1 hour ago, Maltaran said:

You have to remember the crew is a polyamourus marriage, so she’s not just Drummer’s girlfriend 

Ah, I see. You’re right, I didn’t realise/remember that.

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I do agree they could have done more to be clear about what's going on with Earth, what with having a character on the ground there. You would think that at least one of the meetings on Luna would be discussing how fucked the homeworld is and what they plan to do to try and unfuck it and save people even just having one of the bloodthirsty cabinet members talking about how the entire east cost is underwater or something as part of their justification to murder Belter civilians, or they could have had Avasarala talk about it in her diatribe against them when she talks about how she also wants vengeance - maybe her conclusion should have been that instead of spending all their resources destroying the Belt they should be trying to save Earth (it's underwater, the environment is collapsing etc.). And if we're gonna have 5 episodes of Amos and Clarissa walking around there was probably room for a few more shots or discussions about the ecological collapse or flooding or whatever.

And while I have been enjoying the season a lot I also don't think people are wrong about the pacing - the first few episodes were filled with action and plot progress - the attack on Fred Johnson, the theft of the protomolecule, the asteroid strikes on Earth, Bobbie spying and the reveal that a faction of the Martian military has been backing Marcos, Naomi's kidnapping and then... I'm not saying I know what I'd remove or change - there have been a lot of individually excellent scenes with great character moments and good writing and acting, but it's kinda undeniable that the show's slowed to a crawl. As others have mentioned the Bobbie/Alex stuff has pretty much fallen entirely out of the show and no one is thinking or talking about the implications of what they revealed, Holden, Bull, and Monica are just slowly making their way through space and I think that's really telling, because space is big and all but in previous seasons these lengthy space journeys might take one episode tops or just be cut entirely but here they've been dragged out half the season.

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14 hours ago, Starkess said:

I also liked

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"She just killed them with her bare hands!"

"Remind me to be nicer to her..."

 

Honestly I've really loved these little gems throughout this season and they've largely been with Amos and Clarissa. I think the only scene that fell flat with them for me was the weird shaky cam attack.

Also this show does sometimes make me feel unintelligent and remind me I paid no attention during science/physics at school. Should I know what Naomi was planning at the end? 

I thought the stuff with Amos and Clarissa was great, not just for the action parts but also the character growth with Amos. He's still an arse at times but he isn't so cold and detached. I liked it. 

Avasarala, as always I loved her and just wish we got to see more.

Holden Bobbie and Alex, I agree they have just been extras this season but I'll be honest, I didn't miss them at all, except Bobbie, and she has still managed to get some great scenes anyway. Holden and Alex I haven't found myself thinking "What's up with them?" so it's fine by me

Whatever Naomi was planning, I loved this episode and can't wait for the finale.

 

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24 minutes ago, HelenaExMachina said:

Also this show does sometimes make me feel unintelligent and remind me I paid no attention during science/physics at school. Should I know what Naomi was planning at the end? 

I don't think so. There are a lot of options (especially if you've read the books) and a bunch of banging on the hull sounds isn't exactly what you'd call conclusive to anything. 

24 minutes ago, HelenaExMachina said:

Holden Bobbie and Alex, I agree they have just been extras this season but I'll be honest, I didn't miss them at all, except Bobbie, and she has still managed to get some great scenes anyway. Holden and Alex I haven't found myself thinking "What's up with them?" so it's fine by me

 

The main struggle they've had in the back half of the season is that unlike during the attack everyone isn't experiencing the actual events with action at the same time, but they're still trying to film it like everyone's experiencing things at the same time. As a result, Amos/Clarissa have a lot to do, Naomi has a lot to do, and Holden/Bobbie are kind of waiting to get to their point. 

I agree that the last two episodes felt kind of repetitious for a lot of the people. Drummer is getting more mad, Naomi is going 'omg I'm hosed WAIT I'm not quite hosed', and Amos is the only one who is really moving the story forward all that much in terms of action. I would have liked some differences in things tbh; 

Spoiler

I probably would have reversed the order of Amos' escape and Naomi's rescue such that Naomi gets rescued in this ep and Amos gets off world early next ep so that Alex/Bobbie/Holden had something more to do a bit earlier. As it stands we're going to get them doing a LOT next ep.

 

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I thought I remembered some people having similar complaints regarding the depiction of the destruction of earth in the books and went back to the book thread and sure enough - there was. I guess its an approach that either works for you or it really doesnt.

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9 hours ago, mormont said:

Surely this is the opposite of divica's complaint? Unless it's someone else you're agreeing with?

Let me clarify - I think the heart of divica's complaint is valid. They are not making it clear enough how screwed Earth is. Yes, they are telling some of it (Baltimore flooded) with a little visual back-up. They show other things (cold winter at the lake) without telling us how that is abnormal. The abandoned bodies at the nursing home are ominous, but it was hardly shocking and not really indicative of a systemic problem. it does back up Clarissa's dialog about mass graves in Baltimore, but I don't remember seeing that.

I don't need to see mass destruction on screen, but I would have appreciated a bit more than hints that it was worse than a bad storm with the power out.

edit to respond to above post: Well, I did say the show/books just might not be for me :p

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3 hours ago, Gertrude said:

I don't need to see mass destruction on screen, but I would have appreciated a bit more than hints that it was worse than a bad storm with the power out.

So, I’ve been loving this season, but I too was not aware things were that bad. But then I haven’t read the books, so it didn’t occur to me it was a shortcoming. Is it possible in the show version it’s just ... not that bad? I saw this as a personal story about Amos’s home town, that the north east coast saw a lot of deaths and fallout, flooding and what not, but that the continents furthest from asteroid hits were OKish? And yes, Avasarala and co have only talked about vengeance, it seems like it would’ve have been easy for someone to give a quick update about Earth and what the exact status is.

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I think that in the show, no one knows how bad it is yet. Amos' experiences are typical of the people and Erich's reaction is typical - IE, they think that relief is coming, or that it'll get fixed eventually, but this is how bad it is everywhere and they haven't gotten to the actual biosphere collapse yet which is going to happen. Amos is seeing how things are going to complete shit, but most everyone else thinks that it's just a blip. Including people like Avasarala. 

Because people just don't know right now what the status is. They're confused about the megatonnage for a variety of reasons, they don't know how it's affected things yet, etc. 

Another way - if you've seen Chernobyl, think about how people minimized how bad it was, and even after fixing some of the most immediate problems were still not thinking about the long term pain. Right now they're in the immediate mode, but they simply don't know how bad it's going to be. 

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It's not just a question of size but of impact velocity - an asteroid from within the solar system can't have an impact velocity as high as one that's been deliberately accelerated for use as a weapon.

3 of the one that we saw break up is unlikely to be a planet killing event, but we don't know the sizes of the rocks that actually hit. The estimated blast yield of rocks that size is not consistent with the hits we've been shown or the distance of seismic activity from the impact site for the US rock.

I continue to think the rock impacts were considerably worse than the estimate as what we're being shown is consistent with the book impact and a mass extinction event with major biosphere disruption. 

The weather when Amos is in Baltimore is not remotely like the weather when they come out of the prison, and for locations meant to be around the Chesapeake they were filming in Canadian winter and I think a lot of it was north enough to be considered tundra. 

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The oddest part about the last episode for me was the cabinet meeting.  For some reason the acting Prime Minister guy started reminding me of Cuellar, and once my brain made that leap, Admiral Delgado started reminding me of RaceBannon.  My sanity may be washing away.  In my defense, if you had to cast BWBers in those roles, you could do much worse.

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On 1/27/2021 at 1:46 PM, Werthead said:

Ty explained what happened on Twitter.

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The shuttle is supposed to launch on atmospheric thrusters but Eric, not being conversant with space flight, simply blasted the main drive onto maximum immediately, which was massive overkill.

 

We have to go to Twitter to have stuff from the shows explained. It's a true multi media experience. Cool. 

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3 hours ago, Isis said:

We have to go to Twitter to have stuff from the shows explained. It's a true multi media experience. Cool. 

The show itself did show the guy (who clearly doesn't know anything about space flight) slamming his hand down on the controls on maximum power rather than the actual pilot doing the takeoff, so I think there was some inference what was going on. Maybe it could have been clearer.

It does make me think how incredibly hard it is to do even moderately hard science fiction on screen without basically pausing the action every five minutes and having Professor Brian Cox come on and give a two-minute lecture on what just happened and why it happened. Ty's Twitter feed does seem to consist almost entirely of him having to explain that no, people don't turn into icicles within seconds of being exposed to vacuum and why "people are sometimes in gravity and sometimes not."

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