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The Expanse Season 6 |OT| Remember the Cant
- Thread starter Spectromixer
- Start date
- News Entertainment OT
Will be very sad to see this go although I think future watches might well emphasise seasons 1-3.
Nice to think it will get an ending albeit a little prematurely.
Nice to think it will get an ending albeit a little prematurely.
Best Sci-fi in a loooong time. Excited for it, but sad also to see it go.
Foundation will be my replacement I guess... hope?
Foundation will be my replacement I guess... hope?
That last line in the synopsis and how much ground they'll need to cover just on the Inaros plotline really feels like the stage is set for more if there's interest in the industry to tackle it. Just feels like this area will be more difficult to effectively condense and cut through than say Cibola Burns for Season 4. Especially in a shorter order of six episodes.
I really hope Jared Harris got to return for this final season, though between scheduling and the pandemic I find it unlikely.
Sort of disappointing but if they covered what they wanted to cover I guess that's okay. I wonder if they had fewer resources to work with or if they put what would've been a 10 episode season's budget into six episodes.
Seriously? The final season and Bobbie again will be off doing her own thing instead being part of the Roci crew?
Totally Amazon not wanting to give more money probably.
6 episodes suck, hope it is not terribly paced like GoT season 8.
It's a nice thought but effectively they are ending it early despite the favour of Bezos; I really can't think where else they could go and maintain the same production standards.
Could have been Apple but they have Foundation now.
6 episodes could work well enough if they're lengthy.
Probably best to wait and see what her "secret mission" turns out to be.
I think there's probably several reasons why this is the final season, and probably one of them is that they didn't feel like they could retain the cast that they needed to finish the story of the TV show in the same way as the books. Doing nine seasons would probably mean keeping the cast until 2025 and I think they've already been very lucky to be able to keep the actors for as long as they have.
The show has followed the books relatively closely, with some (mostly positive or reasonable) changes to adapt to TV, so it would be possible to continue adapting from the books, with the caveats that they'd need to keep the cast around for much longer, and (somewhat major spoiler for the books) book 7 has a large time-jump from book 6 that can't really be shortened in any elegant way.
Outside of films, which would be difficult to pull off aside for Book 8, HBO is the only other one that comes to mind. They have a Dune show in the works, so there's interest in the genre spinning up there. If that goes well, maybe they'll want to pick up The Expanse down the line. Or Amazon will approach again when the time is right, with Wheel of Time and Lord of the Rings having their impact on handling production and genre show reception.
This was always going to be somewhat of a stop-gap considering the major shift creating a natural end point, but I'm curious to see how they strike that balance of both committing to an ending while also trying to leave that particular door open.
Has HBO ever picked up another network/streamers show? I just can't see it happening. Still, glad to see proper sci-fi getting love these days even if this show has never really been for me. Hopefully the final season delivers for the fans
Young Justice comes to mind, but that barely counts since it's within the DC/WB umbrella after Turner dropped it. Not sure if there's anything else. HBO Max is still young with a different form of competition than the cable network had to deal with, so they may make moves that didn't fit with the old model of business.
I kind of disagree that they couldn't elegantly shorten it. The time skip mostly serves to give time to build some ships and for the colonies to get larger, but there's not really anything in there where if you just said it's been 5-10 years instead of 30+, people would find it unbelievable.
Except that the trade union has built massive void cities that might be kinda unrealistic for just 10 years. And Duarte's daughter is born on Laconia and is 16 or 17 years old.
very strange to be 6 episodes. especially given the huge reveals at the end of season 5. I mean I still don't quite understand introducing some of the stuff right at the end of season 5.
This final season aside (since we're not quite sure how far they'll go), if I want to finish the entire story (through the end of the books), what book should I start with? I'd prefer not to re-read ground the TV show has already covered unless it diverges quite a bit from what we got on the show.
I think there's three main reasons why shortening the time gap wouldn't be elegant.
Firstly, Laconia has to become a major power. It has to massively advance its understanding of the protomolecule enough to allow it to design and build ships that individually are powerful enough to be an effective threat to the combined strength of the entire rest of humanity. It has to simultaneously build a fascist authoritarian society, with a large portion of its population having grown up within that society. Neither of those is really believable in the short term.
Secondly, the rest of the human-held galaxy has to advance as well. Big cities in space, planets colonised, Earth fixed (not as big a problem in the show as it was in the books, but still a problem), and the beginnings of a burgeoning interstellar society. I think even the timeline of the books is slightly stretching suspense of disbelief with that one - squishing the time down even further is something that I think much of the audience wouldn't buy.
Thirdly, and I think most importantly, the sixth book effectively "solves" the Earth/Mars/Belt conflict and the time jump and begins the process of healing those wounds. The time jump simultaneously allows for a believable amount of time for that healing process while also showing that the solution from the end of the book worked (at least in the medium term). A shortened timeframe would make it seem more like a stopgap.
Firstly, Laconia has to become a major power. It has to massively advance its understanding of the protomolecule enough to allow it to design and build ships that individually are powerful enough to be an effective threat to the combined strength of the entire rest of humanity. It has to simultaneously build a fascist authoritarian society, with a large portion of its population having grown up within that society. Neither of those is really believable in the short term.
Secondly, the rest of the human-held galaxy has to advance as well. Big cities in space, planets colonised, Earth fixed (not as big a problem in the show as it was in the books, but still a problem), and the beginnings of a burgeoning interstellar society. I think even the timeline of the books is slightly stretching suspense of disbelief with that one - squishing the time down even further is something that I think much of the audience wouldn't buy.
Thirdly, and I think most importantly, the sixth book effectively "solves" the Earth/Mars/Belt conflict and the time jump and begins the process of healing those wounds. The time jump simultaneously allows for a believable amount of time for that healing process while also showing that the solution from the end of the book worked (at least in the medium term). A shortened timeframe would make it seem more like a stopgap.
You can probably start with Babylon's Ashes. There's bits in it used in S5, but it's less of a retread than if you start with Nemesis Games that S5 entirely covers. Nemesis Games could be a good starting point to acclimate to the book characters and versions of events while starting the Inaros plotline, but you'll probably be fine if you skip it.
I'd probably say start with Nemesis Games. That largely rethreads season 5 (with some notable differences that could compound later) but covering the book version of a season you've seen already should help you get accustomed to the differences between the show and the books. The main one is Drummer - book Drummer doesn't exist until book 5, and the TV show Drummer is an amalgamation of several different characters plus her own new character and it is a writing and acting miracle that she's ended up as one of the best character in sci-fi television.
If Nemesis Games starts feeling too familiar then you can move on through the rest of the series.
The earlier books are close enough to the earlier seasons that there probably isn't any benefit in reading them. You can always go back to them later.
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I believe 6 episodes was enough to tell Babylon's Ashes story, which I believe to be relative weak compared to the other books. Loved the glimpses at Laconia. They probably live it very open to returning to the series in the future.
So I read the first couple books and watched season one and two but don't remember much, some of those spoilers have me curious. Could you answer a question?
is society beginning to Branch out and colonize like that because of the alien virus? I always wondered if it would ever lead to anything of relevance or was just used to move the plot along. Like did they discover near light speed travel? Better ways to colonize space and hostile planets? What is the virus? Do we know now?
You've just read a boat load of spoilers, and now you want more? Watch the rest of the show, it's great!
He would have to reveal way more spoilers just to even begin answering your questions lol
At least get to the end of the first half of Season 3 and then you'll have a better understanding of things.
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That's sort of the crux of everything, so really big spoilers, and like others have said, you really should just read/watch, but if you really want the full spoiler breakdown of the whole series, the short answer to your questions is:
Yes, it's relevant, yes, we know roughly what is is, and yes, it opens up a way to get to other planets
The long answer with the details, if you just want the full plot, is:
The virus is basically an alien highway construction system. They would identify habitable planets, fling an object seeded with the molecule at it, and the molecule would then highjack organic life on the planet it hits to build a portal to a hub dimension where all of this species' portals connect, allowing quick travel to any system where the molecule has built a portal. The one flung at Earth, however, got caught in Saturn's gravity 2 billion years ago, and never completed its purpose. Humans discovering it and experimenting on it unleashed it so that it began its work now, and all the zombie stuff you saw was just the unintended side effects of a thing designed to highjack primitive life in the primordial soup hijacking advanced life instead. But it still works and builds the portal.
However, it's been two billion years, and the species that designed it has been wiped out by some mysterious force, so humans now have access to this abandoned network connecting 1300 habitable worlds, and begin colonizing them.
This destabilizes the home system, because the Martians realize their whole effort to terraform Mars is moot in a world with 1300 habitable planets where the air is free, and the Belters realize that their whole way of life is done in a world where no one needs to mine asteroids anymore because there's way safer mining to be done on planet surfaces. And since they cannot physically live in high gravity after growing up in space, this basically means extinction. So the later seasons are about that colonization wave plus the lashing out of Mars and the Belt as they realize that colonization has doomed them. There are also plots about the extinction of the original species, and the threat whatever killed them may still pose, but that mostly falls in later material the show won't be adapting.
However, it's been two billion years, and the species that designed it has been wiped out by some mysterious force, so humans now have access to this abandoned network connecting 1300 habitable worlds, and begin colonizing them.
This destabilizes the home system, because the Martians realize their whole effort to terraform Mars is moot in a world with 1300 habitable planets where the air is free, and the Belters realize that their whole way of life is done in a world where no one needs to mine asteroids anymore because there's way safer mining to be done on planet surfaces. And since they cannot physically live in high gravity after growing up in space, this basically means extinction. So the later seasons are about that colonization wave plus the lashing out of Mars and the Belt as they realize that colonization has doomed them. There are also plots about the extinction of the original species, and the threat whatever killed them may still pose, but that mostly falls in later material the show won't be adapting.
Haha ugh. Okay I'll watch it and skip reading these spoilers. I really didn't feel the show but I am a huge sucker for sci-fi so maybe I'll finally "get" it like everyone else does. To this day I'm really really surprised it never clicked with me considering I devour even the cheesiest sci-fi media
Six episodes is fine for "Babylon's Ashes."
They're clearly continuing to set things up for books 7 through 9. Shrimpteresting.
They're clearly continuing to set things up for books 7 through 9. Shrimpteresting.
I will say my personal opinion is that the first season/book are the weakest of the bunch. They follow the weakest characters of the bunch, the politics of the solar system haven't really congealed into anything interesting yet, and the initial sci-fi mystery seems like it's going in a kind of boring direction until you get the full reveal of what's going on. It gets much better as it goes.
Don't forget, last book releases in November as well! Really excited to see the conclusion both series, even if the show ends up being a bit shorter.
If books seven through nine do end up getting adapted, I really hope to see things pulled from the short stories. Vital Abyss and Strange Dogs are the more plot important ones, but I'd personally love to see Auberon as well since I'm a sucker for sci-fi society stuff.
If books seven through nine do end up getting adapted, I really hope to see things pulled from the short stories. Vital Abyss and Strange Dogs are the more plot important ones, but I'd personally love to see Auberon as well since I'm a sucker for sci-fi society stuff.
I swear they did more with what little they had in the early seasons. The Bezoz years just made everything bright, shiny and sterile and with none of the atmosphere.
The Amazon seasons definitely look higher-budget to me, personally.