Expanse #5 Game done changed.

[Corvinus85]

7 minutes ago, divica said:

No. But acording to what everyone says in the books it is pretty clear that what amos is facing is a global problem. The shows fails miserably in that regard by having the worl government never discussing the planet's situation.

in regards to naomi it is more a problem of pacing and focus that the story. 

OK, well my post was mainly to point out how the book is being perceived versus how the season 5, though I'm not sure how many of the book readers think the season was bad.

I do agree that the season was lopsided in terms of the focus on the major characters. I personally found all the Naomi to be very good, and it largely followed the book, but it was done at the expense of other characters. Alex and Bobbie should have gotten more to do, which they do in the book. Amos still goes to Earth, and still journeys through the devastation with Clarissa, which I thought the show covered well. But the global consequences are covered in the book more through Avasarala's eyes, which the show didn't quite do. 

But I think that I'm not completely wrong when saying that book fans love this book because of how much time was given to each of the Roci characters, with their own POVs, which helped paint the larger picture of the main events. Since up until that point, it was all through Holden's eyes. And it has a more somber ending than its predecessors. But in the show world, it seemed like all the characters were already shining strongly, so their personal, and consequently uneven journeys maybe don't have the same impact.

[Poobah]

I don't think the criticisms of season 5 are unfounded, even though I enjoyed it thoroughly and thought that Dominique Tipper was fantastic in the Naomi segment, the whole thing did feel disjointed and badly paced. I haven't gotten to book 5 just yet but even just from the show I can think of ways they could have tied what they showed together better. And yeah the issues with earth's habitability discussed in this thread are pretty glaring in their absence, subtle hints aside - Avasarala should and could easily have used the state of the Earth when she's taking the war council to task and proving once again that she's the only responsible adult in the room of earth politics, for instance to make it clear to the audience how serious everything is and give context to as well as tie Amos's sidequest together with the rest of the plot.

[HexMachina]

Does it really need to be spelled out explicitly that what Amos is facing is a worldwide thing?? I mean the audience isn't stupid, its pretty obvious. 

Eta: Not aimed at the post above, which I largely agree with, directed to divica on the last page.

Also I hate the criticism of anything as "filler". Its become a lazy criticism that boils down to "I didn't enjoy this plotline."

[felice]

2 hours ago, HelenaExMachina said:

Does it really need to be spelled out explicitly that what Amos is facing is a worldwide thing??

Yes. He appeared to be very close to an impact site, and there were only three impacts described as being only a few hundred kilotons (ie equivalent to pretty small nukes). The show should definitely have made it clearer that the effects weren't just local, and the initial media claims about the blast size were wildly inaccurate.

[mormont]

I read the books before watching so I always had the context, I guess. But Amos travels a substantial distance through multiple locations, many quite some way from the impact site. We get multiple scenes, spread over a wide geographical area, showing how things have gone to shit. The destruction of the jail. The care home with the abandoned bodies. The isolationist guy. The destruction of Baltimore. The anarchy on the island. And if all of these are on the Eastern US seaboard, it's still pretty plain that there's no help coming from the rest of the world. I see a lot of people who wanted this all to be more explicit, so clearly it didn't work for you, but for me I think any more would have been heavy-handed and lost the focus on the characters.

[karaddin]

And Ty at least had said they didn't want it to be disaster porn. That doesn't preclude having a comment in the scenes on Luna, but it does rule out having too much lingering in the destruction.

For me the scene where Avasarala added Arjun's name to the memorial did a lot of heavy lifting. That list was absolutely colossal and that's just the confirmed dead/missing personally known by people on Luna with a close enough attachment to be mourning them in that way. That implies a hell of a lot more.

[divica]

1 hour ago, mormont said:

I read the books before watching so I always had the context, I guess. But Amos travels a substantial distance through multiple locations, many quite some way from the impact site. We get multiple scenes, spread over a wide geographical area, showing how things have gone to shit. The destruction of the jail. The care home with the abandoned bodies. The isolationist guy. The destruction of Baltimore. The anarchy on the island. And if all of these are on the Eastern US seaboard, it's still pretty plain that there's no help coming from the rest of the world. I see a lot of people who wanted this all to be more explicit, so clearly it didn't work for you, but for me I think any more would have been heavy-handed and lost the focus on the characters.

We have no idea of how far amos travels. And they could have done a lot of things so tell the audience the full world has gone to shit without having amos going to more places. Like having a scene with a tv showing the news, the government in luna discussing the situation and saying how bad things are, some of the people amos finds could be better informed and say what was going on on a greater scale...

However we haven't seen one scene of the government discussing how to send some relief to earth or asking amos how things are down there. Their only concern is war. How are we suppused to believe that what amos is seeing is a global thing or a huge crisis?

[divica]

33 minutes ago, karaddin said:

And Ty at least had said they didn't want it to be disaster porn. That doesn't preclude having a comment in the scenes on Luna, but it does rule out having too much lingering in the destruction.

For me the scene where Avasarala added Arjun's name to the memorial did a lot of heavy lifting. That list was absolutely colossal and that's just the confirmed dead/missing personally known by people on Luna with a close enough attachment to be mourning them in that way. That implies a hell of a lot more.

If a single city was destroyed we are talking about milions of dead. That is a huge amount of names and grief and in no way implies a global problem

[karaddin]

7 minutes ago, divica said:

If a single city was destroyed we are talking about milions of dead. That is a huge amount of names and grief and in no way implies a global problem

With a close personal connection to someone within the Luna government facility? I didn't take it that way

[mormont]

21 minutes ago, divica said:

We have no idea of how far amos travels.

We actually have a pretty good picture of that. He starts in Chesapeake, at the prison, from there he and Clarissa journey on foot to Baltimore, and from there they travel to Winnepesaukee in New Hampshire.

[divica]

1 minute ago, mormont said:

We actually have a pretty good picture of that. He starts in Chesapeake, at the prison, from there he and Clarissa journey on foot to Baltimore, and from there they travel to Winnepesaukee in New Hampshire.

As an european I have no idea about the distance between those places.

And I think millions of people agree with me...

[Week]

1 hour ago, divica said:

As an european I have no idea about the distance between those places.

And I think millions of people agree with me...

Maps.google.com 

[mcbigski]

Also, there's out of season snow in a temperate region and Clarissa mistakes the sun for the moon due to all the dust in the atmosphere.  Plus everyone who can is like fuck this Earth shit the conditions are nicer on that airless rock up there.

[DaveSumm]

I think all the things everyone points out would point to the Earth being fucked, but a scene with the government discussing it wouldn’t just clarify that: its absence actively points the other way. The fact that nobody is busy dealing with the crisis leads the viewer to think that, despite what we’re seeing with Amos, perhaps everyone else is largely getting on with life and maybe it’s restricted to north east America.

[Corvinus85]

Surely it can easily be concluded that the devastation on the eastern American coast is also at least in western Africa and wherever in south-east Asia the third rock hit. The first one that struck just off the western African coast destroyed the city of Dakar, and greatly crippled the power infrastructure in much of the continent, leaving millions without electricity. 

And let me remind you that this is not today's Earth, it's an overpopulated Earth where climate change has already affected the planet severely. One of the best images is of Earth when they stop the fourth rock. It shows a clear image of North America, and you can see that there is no Florida, the Gulf of Mexico is further inland, and other parts of the coastline don't look like today. All the major cities require sea walls to keep the water at bay. Now you add earthquakes and tsunamis.

I think we can safely assume that, just as today, the majority of people still leave close to coastlines. And many have barely any resources to take care of themselves.

This is a disaster that's going to unfold over a greater period of time. I'm not sure how much time really passed between the rocks and the end of the season. We can estimate based on Amos's journey, so maybe a couple of weeks at best. Really not enough time to assess all the damage. The haphazardly assembled provisional government could just be in the denial phase. We're fine, everything's fine, we'll get through it, let's get that bastard Inaros, everything is fine!

[Rippounet]

Count me in the "the show doesn't really establish the devastation" camp.

Sure, you see North America through Amos' eyes... And you can deduce a lot from that. Except that's the thing: it has to come from deduction. And if you haven't read the books, you don't have that many reasons to assume things are much worse than you are shown.
Yeah, countless millions will die of cold and hunger, and that's suggested on the show. Problem is, it's only suggested, not said. What is said is that millions have been killed and millions may die, but that's still very vague, and there are many reasons to think it's not that bad because, as others have said here, you don't see the politicians discussing relief efforts or discussing projections of future casualties. What you do see is trees and buildings still standing, people alive, and the top brass intent on revenge. And even said revenge is not that bad on some level (we're still talking millions, not really more).

The books talk of the whole thing in very different terms:

It's said several times that Earth is "dying" and that it has been "killed." And it's quickly clear that

billions will die.

[felice]

12 hours ago, mormont said:

I read the books before watching so I always had the context, I guess. But Amos travels a substantial distance through multiple locations, many quite some way from the impact site. We get multiple scenes, spread over a wide geographical area, showing how things have gone to shit. The destruction of the jail. The care home with the abandoned bodies. The isolationist guy. The destruction of Baltimore. The anarchy on the island. And if all of these are on the Eastern US seaboard, it's still pretty plain that there's no help coming from the rest of the world.

He travels on foot for a few days, which doesn't suggest a very substantial distance to me. And I thought they were intentionally avoiding the relief efforts on account of Clarissa being an escaped convict. The situation on the island, an undamaged neighbourhood for the ultrawealthy, did suggest the real scale of the problem, but it felt weird after all the Avasarala scenes failing to address how bad it was on Earth.

[mormont]

Again, we know exactly how far Amos and Clarissa traveled, the show puts the locations on screen and everything. If you're not familiar enough with the US East coast to get a good impression of how far it is between those locations, that's a shame, but I genuinely can't see where it's a failing on the show's part. The point is that there's no doubt that the entire US East coast is wrecked.

I personally think it would be a very weird and unsupported conclusion to imagine that the rest of the world isn't devastated as well, particularly given the other impacts and the fact that even a single strike would produce catastrophic consequences in the weather system, but OK, YMMV. I think it's very much in line with the ethos of the show to assume that viewers understand enough about these things to extrapolate, but if you felt the need to have an infodump scene with Avasarala being briefed on the extent of the damage, that's a preference, I guess.

[john]

Do we know for a fact that the tv series intends to follow the plot of the book and have the earth utterly devastated? Because this could be a lot of arguing over nothing.

Personally, I haven’t read the book and I assumed from what it showed you that the earth was at apocalyptic stage, mainly because everybody who could fucked off to the moon.

[mcbigski]

1 hour ago, john said:

Do we know for a fact that the tv series intends to follow the plot of the book and have the earth utterly devastated? Because this could be a lot of arguing over nothing.

Personally, I haven’t read the book and I assumed from what it showed you that the earth was at apocalyptic stage, mainly because everybody who could fucked off to the moon.

I thought the quote from Marco to Drummer about being thin years or whatever, at first, was calling back the book.

That being said what the show does is probably up in the air since theyre going from 9 to 6 seasons but really?