Top 5 Reasons You Should Be Watching ‘The Expanse’

A great story and slick production cannot save a show if the viewer can’t get invested in the characters. Thankfully, this is not the case with The Expanse, as the show is loaded with characters that you will both cheer and loathe. Aboard the ship, The Rocinante (or the ‘Roci’) is the main cast/crew that drives the show. James Holden (Steven Strait), Naomi Nagata (Dominique Tipper), Alex Kemal (Cas Anvar), and Amos Burton (Wes Chatham) are given real lives, make real mistakes and are real heroes time and time again. Opposites in many ways, they bond together over the first four seasons, making a nice family unit and the Roci more like a home than a ship.

There are some great supporting characters, such as Joe Miller (Thomas Jane) and Bobbie Draper (Frankie Adams), but nothing will prepare you for the character of Chrisjen Avasarala (Shohreh Aghdashloo). Avasarala is actually part of the main cast, just not on the crew of the Roci. One of the strongest female characters you will ever see on TV, Avasarala is fearless, born into the political arena and willing to as far down the rabbit hole as possible to save not only those she loves but Earth as well.

Normally, when you see things like interstellar class warfare, a missing person case, and political intrigue all together in the same sci-fi show, warning bells of impending boredom go off. However, based on the novels by James S.A. Corey (in fact, Corey is a shared pseudonym for authors Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck), there is a deep, complicated story here, a vast universe if you will, that has been translated brilliantly onto the small screen. A simple missing person case takes the story, and our characters, into complex and incredibly well-written scenarios, weaving together easily so the viewer does not get left behind.

The politics run deep in The Expanse at certain points yet, like the reboot of Battlestar Galactica before it, which juggled both politics and religion very well, and uses the wonderful characters and huge story to actually make this interesting. The ramifications of certain decisions are felt both immediately and in later episodes, even seasons, and factions at each other’s throats, like the Martians, Belters, and Earth, in turn, become much more interesting.

You may have heard sci-fi fans describe shows as hard or soft. Soft sci-fi often is just that, touching on but not diving too deep into things, while at the same time, not too concerned with whether the science they are depicting is really accurate or not. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but depending on the show using it, can turn into a mess in a hurry.

Hard sci-fi is usually more concerned with hard facts and sciences, such as biology, chemistry, and physics, just to name a few. The Expanse is definitely hard sci-fi as it tries really hard to depict the science in our universe in a realistic manner. It does a good job in accurately depicting gravity (for the most part), there are communication delays based on the distance between the different parties, and ships move in realistic directions and plausible speeds. All of this is done very seamlessly, so it is part of the story and doesn’t become the story (unless a certain crisis or calamity warrants such attention).

No matter how good the story is, or how interesting the cast is, great sci-fi needs to incorporate some action, and not just any action. While TV has come a long way, it is still limited in terms of budget and scale, but The Expanse has managed to push the boundaries to the point where the space battles are as solid as they come. The Rocinante, home to the main crew of the show, has become a magnet for not only space fights of all kinds but hand to hand combat as well. Some of the one-on-one fight scenes on the show are top-notch, down and dirty and captivating to watch.

While the human element is the real story of The Expanse, there are some aliens here, and when they do make an appearance, they are pretty impressive and include not just biological aliens, but a robotic threat as well (seen mostly in season four). The Expanse manages to bring these elements out at the right time, so there is no cry for aliens and special effects and instead, just reveling in the joy of how these things weave into the story in a very well thought out manner.

It goes without saying that no matter what genre you are watching, the emotional attachment the viewer has, and the emotion shown by the characters on screen, play a huge part in the success or failure of a film or television show. The characters on The Expanse were built slowly, with backstories that all had an element of sorrow or pain, helping shape the person and creating empathy from the viewer. The show is sometimes referred to as a space opera and with good reason. It plays out like a huge, sprawling opera, with many movements and moving parts, sucking the fans in by bridging connections to the characters through pure emotion.

To be fair, emotion is rampant through The Expanse, driven by one of the most powerful of emotions, that being fear. Everyone is afraid, from the Roci crew, the politicians, the Martians, the Belters… everyone. They are afraid of each other, for each other and what lies ahead. The threat from within and without play heavy on the characters, especially the Roci crew, who were already dealing with their own inner demons and fears before they ended up finding one another. It is fascinating to watch the struggle with fear, some who find a way to conquer it and others who let it destroy them.

The Expanse can be seen on Amazon Prime and season five is set to premiere sometime late in 2020.

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