The Expanse (2015) Review
A blast from the past.
I'm ashamed to say I never heard about this show until recently but glad I got to binge-watch the entire 6 seasons in 2 weeks. As a lover of everything sci-fi and futuristic, I'm so pleased with myself.
The Premise
The Expanse is a sci-fi built around the assumption that humans spread to other planets and built entire worlds for themselves on these planets. So we have humans on Earth known as Earthers, on Mars known as Martians and on the Belt known as Belters. There are also humans on the moon, referred to as Luna, who are a part of Earth.
Based on the story, humans on these different rocks had adapted to their environment, making them have certain genetic differences. The lack of sunlight and access to certain environmental factors and basic amenities made Belters skinnier and seemingly less healthy.
Martians built a proper society for themselves. They had adequate weapons and were close to Earth in resources but they still lived in domes due to their inability to survive naturally on Mars.
Earthers were more or less the enemy. They were considered fat and ungrateful due to the abundance of blessings they had available to them. From natural soil to grow crops to an environment that made it easy to survive and thrive.
The Plot
The show starts slow in the first season as they set the players, the story and the stage. Some might even call it a very boring start but everything that happened in the first season created a premise for the 5 seasons that followed.
The story began with a massive ship called the Catabury which had the responsibility of transporting resources between Earth, the Belt and Mars. It was considered a symbol of peace between those 3 regions as citizens of all regions were permitted to work and thrive on the ship.
While on the ship, there was a distress signal that the captain suggested they ignore but was eventually reported by a member of the ship who would eventually become the main character of the entire show, James Holden.
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To check out the signal, James alongside Naomi Nagata, Alex Burton, Amus Magnus and another guy was selected to man a small ship to check out the distress signal. The ship was found nothing, however, a stealth ship nuked the Canterbury and only 5 of them were left as survivors from the ship.
Moving on, they were later found by a Marsian ship and out of fear that they were about to become captives of the ship that had just nuked the Canterbury, James sent a wide band message informing everyone of what had just transpired.
While on the Martian ship, the same stealth ship that attacked the Canterbury appeared and just before the ship was taken out, James and his crew got on a smaller ship and fled, haven lost one member of their team (the guy whose name I couldn't recall)
They renamed that ship the Rocinante and that was how the stage was set. The Rocinante became a home and tool used to save Earth, Mars and the Belt in countless battles and was manned by 2 Earthers, a Martian and a Belter.
The next aspect of the show was their battle against the proto molecule which at first I thought was like a fungus infection but turned out to be an entity with a mind of its own which was created by another entity that could destroy galaxies.
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The entity eventually made itself known through the appearance of a Ring. The Ring was a weapon and also a gateway to other planets whose inhabitants had been destroyed by a similar Ring. It was a powerful weapon which reacted to motion.
It considered anything approaching it with intense speed as a weapon, slowed it down and would eventually wipe out everyone within its reach.
Up until the end of the show, there still existed a lot of questions about the numerous abilities of the Ring. So many of these questions were left unanswered as the show ended somewhat abruptly.
Conclusion
I never thought I would love the show half as much as I did. In the beginning, I was quite reluctant to continue after the first season, I got a hunch that there would be scary zombie-like creatures, but I was wrong.
Everything about this show was amazing. I got to learn passively about how unforgiving and deadly space could be and how advanced humanity has to get before we'll be able to fully harness the capabilities of outer space.
I also got to understand that the more we know about outer space, the more we realise that we don't know. It's an incredible realisation that helps us understand just how small we are in the midst of it all.
I highly recommend this show if you haven't already seen it.