Expanse #5 Game done changed.

[Kalbear]

@DaveSumm, we typically mark as spoilers for the 'most recent' ep until the weekend, and then all bets are off. 

Book spoilers are either supposed to be marked as such or left out. 

On Sauveterre's motivations (the Martian teacher), you're not supposed to quite understand all of it yet, but the show has given you all the data you need. This is all show stuff, but I'm spoilering it just in case you want to figure it out on your own:

• Spoiler

   

  • Sauveterre mentions how the 'dream of Mars' should outlast Mars itself
  • His aide is very interested in how the protomolecule wakes up the machinery on the various planets
  • The martian breakaway group was implied to have sold ships and allied with the Free Navy for the protomolecule that's left
  • The martian breakaway group had Cortazar, the sole surviving expert on protomolecule machinery and systems, on the new planet of Laconia reporting to Sauveterre
  • The last scene in the credits has the orbital machinery turning 'on' like the machinery on Ilus did

   

   

[Corvinus85]

28 minutes ago, DaveSumm said:

Could we please pretty please mention if the spoilers are book spoilers ... or can we just call this a spoiler thread up to the latest episode, so by default all spoilers are book spoilers? Or something.

Most of that episode was really great, the Naomi rescue was one of the best scenes the show has done. The initial battle looked cool, although tbh I had no idea who was shooting at who. It just all looked cool. I kinda followed the ending, up until the weird transit bit? What was that? And I don’t really follow the Martian teacher guy’s motivations at all. 

Kalbear just answered most of your questions, I'll answer the bolded without book spoilers

Spoiler

Go back to Ep 1 of this season when Holden gives Fred a quick PowerPoint about Elvi's research into the mysterious orb from Ilus.

 

[Corvinus85]

1 hour ago, KalbearAnon said:

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Close. Here's what happens as far as I know

• Drummer blew up the drive on DeWalt, taking it out of the fight entirely
• Fires at the Koto, which allows the Roci to rail it
• Josep is on the Mowteng and fires on the Serrio Mal, which allows the Roci to rail it

 

Spoiler

So when Josep and Oksana felt the hit, it was really just the shockwave from the DeWalt? They must have been closer together than the other ships, but there was also some dialogue on the radio that made me think it was their ship that got hit.

 

[Kalbear]

3 minutes ago, Corvinus85 said:

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So when Josep and Oksana felt the hit, it was really just the shockwave from the DeWalt? They must have been closer together than the other ships, but there was also some dialogue on the radio that made me think it was their ship that got hit.

 

I could be entirely wrong - I've not rewatched it.

[HexMachina]

58 minutes ago, Werthead said:

Ah, apparently:

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They edited or painted Anvar out of the party scenes and then tweaked some of Avasarala's dialogue in post, then reshot the hallway reunion and Holden/Naomi scene after COVID precautions (which is why they couldn't reshoot the party scene).

 

That makes sense given Avasarala's speech is suggesting that the crew before her is a cooperation between Earthers, Belters and Martians, which would be accurate if Alex was there. Her speech still works as is, but I think it would have seemed more on point with Alex there

Excellent episode. Dominique Tipper was fantastic

I found myself going into a full panic when she dropped from the ship and was just in...nothing. Such a great performance I really felt that awful sense of panic and despair

They tied off the Alex/Anvar stuff pretty well, all things considered. They made the best of the situation that they could.

Amos only had a couple of small scenes but as ever was perfect

I can't think of a more Amos way of getting Clarissa a space on the Roci. Although i do wonder, does Avasarala know who and where she is?

The ending was great and going back over the spoilers, those of you who read the books have been wondering if non-book readers would pick up on these things. The answer for me, is nope. I know, shocking, I'm usually soo keen at spotting these things   

The visual effects were great too. 

All in all a solid finale and I want the next season already. 

[Kalbear]

Okay, so rewatching:

• Drummer takes fire control on Tynan
• Drummer fires torpedo taking out DeWalt's engines
• Drummer (on Tynan) tells Mowteng to disengage 
• Drummer fires torpedo against Koto
• DeWalt (Josep) shoots at Serrio Mal

I don't know what Mowteng does other than, well, listen to Drummer.

On rewatch it's clear that DeWalt is firing because their engines aren't on any more at all and they're under red lighting from the hit. 

[Werthead]

I would say it's a problem on The Expanse that the ship silhouettes aren't more distinctive. Any ship that isn't the Rocinante or one of the really huge hitters like the Agatha King can be a bit hard to puzzle out in a fight.

[SpaceChampion]

44 minutes ago, KalbearAnon said:

Okay, so rewatching:

• Drummer takes fire control on Tynan
• Drummer fires torpedo taking out DeWalt's engines
• Drummer (on Tynan) tells Mowteng to disengage 
• Drummer fires torpedo against Koto
• DeWalt (Josep) shoots at Serrio Mal

I don't know what Mowteng does other than, well, listen to Drummer.

On rewatch it's clear that DeWalt is firing because their engines aren't on any more at all and they're under red lighting from the hit. 

So, the first three are part of Drummer's fleet, and the other two are Free Navy goon squad, right?  Why take out DeWalt though?  I have no recall who is on which of those ships.

[Poobah]

28 minutes ago, Werthead said:

I would say it's a problem on The Expanse that the ship silhouettes aren't more distinctive. Any ship that isn't the Rocinante or one of the really huge hitters like the Agatha King can be a bit hard to puzzle out in a fight.

Yeah definitely agree, I meant to bring it up but it got lost in the churn. That fight ended up pretty confusing because all the ships looked fairly similar, even the Rocinante, which I mean it's realism because they're all ex-mcrn ships (and many ships tend towards a similar realistic design aesthetic anyway) but doesn't help with battle comprehension. On some of the shots where the ships were getting hit I was actually wondering if it was the Roci getting hit for a minute.

At least the Razorback Screaming Firehawk has a distinct look.

[Kalbear]

28 minutes ago, SpaceChampion said:

So, the first three are part of Drummer's fleet, and the other two are Free Navy goon squad, right?  Why take out DeWalt though?  I have no recall who is on which of those ships.

DeWalt was the ship Oksana was on, who was the most likely to shoot back at the Roci. And yeah, the Koto was another destroyer (similar to the Roci) and the Serrio Mal was the heavy frigate. 

I thought it was easy enough to distinguish the Koto/Serrio Mal from the Roci, but it was near impossible to figure out what the belter ships were like. Hell, I got confused and thought Naomi torpedoed the Razorback instead of the Chetzemoka. 

[briantw]

1 hour ago, Werthead said:

I would say it's a problem on The Expanse that the ship silhouettes aren't more distinctive. Any ship that isn't the Rocinante or one of the really huge hitters like the Agatha King can be a bit hard to puzzle out in a fight.

Yeah, given that the ships largely look alike, they really need to do a better job during battles of vocalizing what the fuck is going on.  It's easy to follow the overall flow of the battle, but the small details are really tough to distinguish in a single viewing.  I couldn't have told you who certain characters were shooting at last night.  Honestly, I don't even know the names of half the ships.

[Corvinus85]

Maybe that's why the episode made it a point to define the Koto and Serrio Mal earlier in the episode. I could distinguish the Koto easily enough, though it's oddly small for a destroyer. But the engine side of the Mal looks a lot like the Roci's that I was confused in some of the close up shots. For the Belter ships, the Tynan is easy enough to distinguish since it's missing its front section. 

I do appreciate there there at least strong distinctions between Earth, Mars and Belter ships.

[Rippounet]

In the book there are four excellent reasons why the Earth fleet doesn't retaliate hard against the Belt:

 

- They don't know how many rocks have been thrown and because they can't detect them easily they need as many ships as possible so that they don't miss a single one (a single rock means millions of casualties). Earth being hit hard is such a trauma that the military wants to prevent more tragedy before considering striking back.
Basically, striking Earth (possibly killing it) was so unthinkable that shock and grief prevail over anger, and all Earthers want to protect the cradle of humanity from any more harm (and quite a few Martians and Belters too).
- They don't know where Mars stands. They don't know whether they can trust the Martian PM or whether he has a firm control of his entire military forces (which he doesn't, of course). That's why the meeting on Luna is so critical, because they need to figure this out: no point in sending the fleet after Inaros if Martian forces are also ready to strike (which they might be after the loss of Deimos).
- Inaros' ships are better than Earth's. Earth's fleet is always described as outdated compared to equivalent Martian ships, and Inaros obtained state of the art Martian ships. Smart people know that they can't strike out blind or they might lose.
- Before his death, Fred Johnson is still technically a (the?) representative of the OPA, a rather trusted figure, an Earther, and Inaros a rogue radical element, so it makes sense to want to coordinate with whatever Belter forces the OPA might provide (not to mention the intel that they might have). Only after his death does Inaros truly become the -temporary- face of the Belt.

Of course, these reasons don't exactly work on the show because of the changes they made. But that's not the book's problem.

[karaddin]

2 hours ago, Werthead said:

I would say it's a problem on The Expanse that the ship silhouettes aren't more distinctive. Any ship that isn't the Rocinante or one of the really huge hitters like the Agatha King can be a bit hard to puzzle out in a fight.

I think it ultimately comes down to we just don't see them for a long enough period of time to get used to them, and the fights are so fast with so much visual confirmation. I went back and rewatched the fights and checked the ship classes online and the Koto is pretty easy to distinguish once you get used to it but the Serrio Mal is still harder, its drive cone is very similar to the Roci which doesn't help

2 hours ago, SpaceChampion said:

So, the first three are part of Drummer's fleet, and the other two are Free Navy goon squad, right?  Why take out DeWalt though?  I have no recall who is on which of those ships.

I thought in addition to what's already been said about Oksana being more likely to fire, it was also one last attempt at plausible deniability to try save Serge and them from Marco afterwards. They couldn't participate in the fight, they'd already been disabled!

58 minutes ago, Corvinus85 said:

Maybe that's why the episode made it a point to define the Koto and Serrio Mal earlier in the episode. I could distinguish the Koto easily enough, though it's oddly small for a destroyer. But the engine side of the Mal looks a lot like the Roci's that I was confused in some of the close up shots. For the Belter ships, the Tynan is easy enough to distinguish since it's missing its front section. 

I do appreciate there there at least strong distinctions between Earth, Mars and Belter ships.

They don't verbally say this but the meta information has the Koto as a "Patrol Destroyer" not a real Destroyer, its not actually a Destroyer class hull. The design is fairly distinctive once you see it a few times but we didn't get that many in the show. Its a Morrigan class which is the same type of ship that was going to board the Roci in the season 1 encounter we got references to from Amos in this finale! The Kittur-Chennama - the one they salvaged and saved people on in S3 - was also the same type. It's got a pretty distinctive, at least in comparison to the frigates, triangle shaped forward section and in earlier season's I think we'd mostly seen it from the angle where the triangle looks like the peak of a house roof as in

https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/expanse/images/f/f7/S01E07ambedkar-34m01s.jpg/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/798?cb=20180921203141

But the Koto was shown from the other side with the flat bottom of the triangle, the large flat section is I think the angle that actually looks distinctive

https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/expanse/images/d/de/S05E10Koto02m34s.jpg/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/1000?cb=20210203031538

[Corvinus85]

1 hour ago, Rippounet said:

In the book there are four excellent reasons why the Earth fleet doesn't retaliate hard against the Belt:

  Hide contents

- They don't know how many rocks have been thrown and because they can't detect them easily they need as many ships as possible so that they don't miss a single one (a single rock means millions of casualties). Earth being hit hard is such a trauma that the military wants to prevent more tragedy before considering striking back.
Basically, striking Earth (possibly killing it) was so unthinkable that shock and grief prevail over anger, and all Earthers want to protect the cradle of humanity from any more harm (and quite a few Martians and Belters too).
- They don't know where Mars stands. They don't know whether they can trust the Martian PM or whether he has a firm control of his entire military forces (which he doesn't, of course). That's why the meeting on Luna is so critical, because they need to figure this out: no point in sending the fleet after Inaros if Martian forces are also ready to strike (which they might be after the loss of Deimos).
- Inaros' ships are better than Earth's. Earth's fleet is always described as outdated compared to equivalent Martian ships, and Inaros obtained state of the art Martian ships. Smart people know that they can't strike out blind or they might lose.
- Before his death, Fred Johnson is still technically a (the?) representative of the OPA, a rather trusted figure, an Earther, and Inaros a rogue radical element, so it makes sense to want to coordinate with whatever Belter forces the OPA might provide (not to mention the intel that they might have). Only after his death does Inaros truly become the -temporary- face of the Belt.

Of course, these reasons don't exactly work on the show because of the changes they made. But that's not the book's problem.

You've read the books now? 

[Sharpes]

Ah I'm so glad it wasn't just me that was confused by the fight at first. I think the battle would have been easier to understand if they listed the names of the ships on the battle screens (we see one from Tynan's perspective and another from the Roci) instead both sides show them as G01-G05. Watching this show on a laptop doesn't make it easy to notice the little details like Roci's screen showing a thin red tracer line right after the Tynan sent a torpedo at the Dewalt hence Bull's reaction regarding the Belters shooting at each other.

Just occurred to me to look at the Xray feature Amazon has. They don't usually list a lot of stuff for most of their shows but in The Expanse they have behind-the-scenes material and still shots for every episode. The bar scene had decals of notable astronauts (they also have one for Maria Sibylla Merian, a German naturalist for some reason?) on the walls, kinda like how Naomi was wearing clothes with 'MCRN Tachi' and parts of the Roci still have parts labelled after the former name. Only thing that is missing from the X-ray feature is ship details or the identity of Belter factions since they are pretty central to the story. For me at least, season 4 introduced a lot of Belter names and factions that only book readers would recognise that would later become central to Marco's plans for the Sol system.

@karaddin Those links don't seem to be working (at least on my end). I remember seeing an image for the Morrigan class on reddit a few months which I've uploaded here (this model still has the MCRN colours on it).

Found a size comparison of most ships of Expanse for reference though the Serrio Mal is not there.

Props to Monica for handling the sudden descent from tailing a ship, surviving the shootout with Zmeya and then going into a potentially suicidal battle well. She was one of the better side character developments this season imo.

[Rippounet]

10 hours ago, Corvinus85 said:

You've read the books now? 

Yup.

[john]

I don’t understand what was happening to the Barkeith at the end. It seemed like something bad, but I don’t really remember what a normal ring transit is supposed to be like.

[Corvinus85]

50 minutes ago, john said:

I don’t understand what was happening to the Barkeith at the end. It seemed like something bad, but I don’t really remember what a normal ring transit is supposed to be like.

In a normal ring transit no one feels a thing, nothing like that happens, outside of Holden experiencing weird moments. Originally there was no communication between anything inside the ring space, and anything outside of it, but they fixed that with comm relays.

[karaddin]

2 hours ago, Sharpes said:

 

@karaddin Those links don't seem to be working (at least on my end). I remember seeing an image for the Morrigan class on reddit a few months which I've uploaded here (this model still has the MCRN colours on it).

Found a size comparison of most ships of Expanse for reference though the Serrio Mal is not there.

Props to Monica for handling the sudden descent from tailing a ship, surviving the shootout with Zmeya and then going into a potentially suicidal battle well. She was one of the better side character developments this season imo.

Weird, they're just images from the Expanse wiki. The image linked at the top of this reddit thread has them all lined up with the same bottom

https://www.reddit.com/r/TheExpanse/comments/amkvoi/custom_expanse_spaceship_size_chart/

I think the Roci is the Corvette class Light Frigate while the Serrio Mal looks like it could match the Phaeton class Frigate. I don't think the Pella matches any of those ship profiles though, its listed as a Light Cruiser but only the heavy cruiser has the 4 thruster arrangement and its nose is far narrower than the Pella's is.