The Expanse (The Series)

[Nessa]

I've been watching the series slowly over the last few weeks. Almost caught up to Season 5 but not there yet. I rather love it as a whole but I've noticed some interesting patterns.

• Virtually nobody is very attractive. There's a few that are kind of... approaching attractive. Camina, the Mao sisters, etc. Probably the best looking is Avasarala and that's an issue. Particularly curious since I noticed a promo shot and a lot of the actors are pretty good looking.... off screen.
• Straight relationships: BAD. Queer relationships: GOOD. I mean come on. Everybody who is straight is either perpetually getting divorced, abandoning their family, murdering their spouse and/or children, or yelling at each other all the time. Daddy issues are rampant with most of the female characters. Meanwhile everybody gay/lesbian is in a calm, loving relationship.
• I kind of hate Holden and Naomi. Not dislike. HATE. It's to the point where I'm mentally tuning out their subplots. (Of the two, Naomi is the worst!! )
• In space, there is no inside voice. ALL SHALL YELL.
• I was REALLY into the setting and story..... until it got to be an alien thing. Can we not insert alien menace into everything!? Too often in scifi they've got a good thing going, then they have to insert ALIEN DOOM. Ugh. I feel like they kind of lost it there. (I know it's based on books so apparently the books lost it too!)
• Mars is awesome. (Or was before the alien gate thing.)

So anybody else watch this? Agree, disagree?

[bjornk]

Don't want to spoil your thread, but I really should get this off my chest, please feel free to ignore it.

I no longer watch (new) movies or TV shows, neither on television nor on the Internet. I think the last one I followed reasonably closely was GoT, up until season 3 or 4. Anyway, about a week ago I came across a trailer for a new HBO sci-fi series called "Raised by Wolves" on Youtube, which apparently aired a few months ago. Ridley Scott's name was attached to it, so I thought it could be "decent". As I don't have HBO, I just watched all the episode summaries made by other people. No offense to the cast & crew, but the show turned out to be just another hot garbage. Don't know who should I blame for it. Despite being a talented filmmaker who loves his blue filters, all of Scott's movies are basically real-life comic-books with shallow characters who literally talk in speech bubbles and as far as I can see this show is no exception. He's also never really been a "deep" guy when it comes to sci-fi, although since his Prometheus garbage, I've been getting the impression that he might even be quite the anti-science, anti-evolution type of a guy. He obviously didn't have any issues with the godawful script of this new show either. Anyway, I'm glad that I'm not wasting my time watching stupid movies and tv shows anymore.

[Alkpaz]

It isn't that bad of a series Bjornk. It isn't Batwoman, or Supergirl levels of "wokeness". It does have some of that, but nothing blatant which would distract from the overall series. It is a good Sci-Fi show, on par with Battlestar Galactica (new). It gets a little strange at parts like Battlestar did, but it makes sense as you go through it; again like Battlestar. I also tend to shy away from modern (2017+) films/series, when they started getting more and more "woke". 

[Nessa]

I actually haven't had a TV for.....  geez over 10 years!? WOW. We've got a projector system that we use to watch mostly old films. Going through the 30s right now and they are surprisingly great even that far back!

And you made a mistake when you brought up Battlestar!

I watched that online about oh... 6 or so years ago. I remember getting pretty far into it but it was full of woke crap even back then. The humans were so monumentally asinine I was mostly siding with the robots. Until they got asinine. I recall quitting when the annoying blond pilot (yeah I know everybody liked her, but I thought she was terrible) somehow returned to life thanks to some divine ... angel thing. I've since read how it ended and what a bunch of crap! I'm glad I didn't finish it!!! I think that show is what really put me off any TV for so long.

 

I have watched one other show, and I may get zonked for what I'm going to say about it. The Mandalorian. I thought it was boring to astoundingly stupid. Just when it maybe started getting interesting, they'd go and ruin it with some nonsense. And no I didn't -cry- when Luke showed up at the end of the last season, I was instead rolling my eyes. (Crying over Luke? REALLY!? ) I'm apparently so over Star Wars I want nothing to do with any part of it. I won't be watching the next season nor do I care about any of the 30+ shows they announced. I'm done.

Back to the Expanse, I'm finally up to the current season. I now soundly LOATHE Naomi to the point I'm mentally skipping her scenes. (SOO UGLY and she's getting worse at acting. Didn't think that was possible!) I've softened up a little on Holdon. He's not so annoying or maybe he hasn't had enough screen time to annoy me yet. In a move that is entirely NOT surprising, of course there is yet another BAD FATHER. Yes, there cannot ever be a decent father figure in modern anything UNLESS... the father is a woman.

 

TLDR: modern stuff is crap.

[Alkpaz]

3 hours ago, Nessa said:

I actually haven't had a TV for.....  geez over 10 years!? WOW. We've got a projector system that we use to watch mostly old films. Going through the 30s right now and they are surprisingly great even that far back!

And you made a mistake when you brought up Battlestar!

I watched that online about oh... 6 or so years ago. I remember getting pretty far into it but it was full of woke crap even back then. The humans were so monumentally asinine I was mostly siding with the robots. Until they got asinine. I recall quitting when the annoying blond pilot (yeah I know everybody liked her, but I thought she was terrible) somehow returned to life thanks to some divine ... angel thing. I've since read how it ended and what a bunch of crap! I'm glad I didn't finish it!!! I think that show is what really put me off any TV for so long.

Well, in comparison to what it is like now.. Battlestar is mild. You could say the same for Star Trek TNG, if you want to pick apart the woke-ish bits. If you watch any documentary [example PBS Doc]/series/movies you will be flooded with terms like "Privilege", "Patriarchy", an Indian that says if the cops see someone that looks like him, he would be dead, (The Magicians Season 2), Trump is bad mentions (The Good Fight [Season 1], Grey's Anatomy [Season 13], etc). PBS with their documentaries talk about how systemic racism started in 1619 and progressed from there, all the while talking about historical figures being slave owners and rabid racists. (Literally, they use the term "racist" and "systemic") It used to be more subtle, now it is blatant. There is a difference, so much so, it could just evaporate the moderate leaning populists. 

[Nessa]

9 hours ago, Alkpaz said:

Well, in comparison to what it is like now.. Battlestar is mild.

I agree. It was woke but nothing like the Expanse or even that horrible Witcher series. What really turned me off from BG was the story. It started great, but certainly didn't end up there. Too much weird metaphysical nonsense. I probably would have been throwing my own monitor out the window if I'd watched it to the end. Let's just drop all our knowledge and live like cave men? WHAT!?

9 hours ago, Alkpaz said:

PBS with their documentaries talk about how systemic racism started in 1619 and progressed from there, all the while talking about historical figures being slave owners and rabid racists. (Literally, they use the term "racist" and "systemic") It used to be more subtle, now it is blatant. There is a difference, so much so, it could just evaporate the moderate leaning populists. 

Now there's something I haven't seen in eons. PBS! That still exists!? I remember them being ridiculous all the way back at university. I can only imagine how monotonous they are now!!

In fact I have a story about that. There was a science show on PBS and they happened to do a spot on the discovery made by one of the professors at my university. He showed it in class as an example of how stupid the media is. Apparently the people on the "science" show were so stupid they completely screwed up even the most basic aspect of his discovery. Imagine what they get wrong now!!!

[bjornk]

In regards to what I wrote in my earlier post above about Ridley Scott, apparently my impression of him was spot on. He is a highly commercial filmmaker who's in the business just for the money. He's got nothing important to say about anything and he obviously doesn't give a shit about the accuracy or the plausibility of the stories his films tell, mainly because that is way beyond his talent and pay grade. Also, the way he brags about Carl Sagan tells me that this guy is an ass with a huge ego, which, by the way, is something that can be easily read just by looking at his face.

https://www2.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/news-bfi/interviews/ridley-scott-alien-covenant-michael-fassbender