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akulanization posted:I'm not sure what's going on in the background that the MCRN would risk a ship that must have been very time consuming and expensive to build on duties that a ship or two a fraction of the size, cost, and crew complement could do. What's the risk? The Donnager is the most capable ship in the system.
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Feb 17, 2016 02:11
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NmareBfly posted:What's the risk? The Donnager is the most capable ship in the system. Not to mention that Phoebe station was one of their research stations and was probably dealing with some pretty classified poo poo. They were on their way back from there when the whole Cant blowing up situation went down. The stealth ships probably waited until the Donnager was in the vicinity to blow up the Cant so they'd be the ones to respond. Their whole reason for attacking the Donnager was to start up a war to keep their Eros plans from being noticed after all.
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Feb 17, 2016 02:18
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So with only having seen the first season, is Mars a fascist state? We only encounter Martian military but the disgraced ambassador "admired the dedication" of the Martians and the one Donnager officer mentioned to the Roci crew that they have "no idea what it means to strive as a people towards one goal." The Martians are repeatedly described as militaristic to the point of overcompensation. And it seems like the population has made some kind of acquiescence to the authorities in order to make life possible on Mars.
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Feb 17, 2016 04:38
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akulanization posted:
Do you remember when the long-decommissioned, militarily-useless Iowa-class battleships were resurrected by the US, which spent ridiculous sums of money sticking a few missiles on them and sending them to sea despite the fact that everything they could do could be done by ships that were only a fraction of the size, cost, and crew complement? Thwomp posted:So with only having seen the first season, is Mars a fascist state? It's actually more socialist than fascist, there's a spirit of common cause amongst the populace, they're brave settlers carving out a new frontier and terraforming a second earth. There's a moral sense of unity amongst the populace, and the military might is because they knew that as they become self-sufficient and started turning things around, an increasingly-desperate Earth would start looking at them as another resource to be exploited to stave off collapse, so they'd better be strong enough to stand up for themselves; kinda similar to Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars books in that conflict. Phanatic fucked around with this message at 05:00 on Feb 17, 2016 |
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Feb 17, 2016 04:56
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DrPlump posted:How come the battleships don't deploy small fighter ships like in battlestar galactica? During the fighting most of the marines are just sitting around. Instead they could enter the fight flying their own battle pinnace.
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Feb 17, 2016 16:34
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AFAIK fighter ships don't make sense in 'hard' scifi where dogfighty flight patterns would require significant G-forces and wasted delta-V. Also where battles are typically determined by missile-vs-missile/missile-vs-PDC engagements, well before the capital ships are within "fighter range". Actual CQB is rare.
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Feb 17, 2016 20:43
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Manned fighters can't accelerate at 20G, and it's considered somewhat rude to put nuclear bombs in them.
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Feb 17, 2016 20:51
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DrPlump posted:How come the battleships don't deploy small fighter ships like in battlestar galactica? During the fighting most of the marines are just sitting around. Instead they could enter the fight flying their own battle pinnace. Longbaugh01 posted:Well first, the capital ships aren't as big as you think they are. Especially when it comes to empty internal space. That's not strictly true, at least in the book version. The corvette that Holden and crew left in just happened to be the one that was online for daily emergency duty/CAP and I think it was referred to as a bomber tho I'd have to go re-read to be sure. It was said that that there were multiple other ships in the hangar bay, they were just all "cold" and not ready for flight quickly.
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Feb 17, 2016 23:32
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Space fighters are basically just terrible in a universe with realistic physics. The only thing that keeps a big ship safe from thousand-kilometer-away torpedo strikes is the point defense weapons, and fighters are way too light to carry much ammo for one of those. Any weapon you mount on a fighter isn't going to have the range or power to actually reach out and touch an enemy ship, making them doubly useless. Also, they don't have dick for fuel. This isn't book-reader spoiler talk, btw. Books don't even mention fighters because no one would be stupid enough to build one. Giant SF nerds have been thinking about this poo poo for over half a century, and there are tons of articles and posts and videos by hardened autists about how they'll never work. Space fighters are cool and I love the poo poo out of 'em but they're one of the first things to go when you're building a baseline physics space navy.
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Feb 18, 2016 00:22
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The Roci is kinda a space fighter.
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Feb 18, 2016 00:23
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Even the ultra fast, expensive racing ship that Julie Mao had takes five seconds to spin 360 degrees. acumen fucked around with this message at 00:54 on Feb 18, 2016 |
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Feb 18, 2016 00:51
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acumen posted:Even the ultra fast, expensive racing ship that Julie Mao had takes five seconds to spin 360 degrees. Well, in fairness, so does the F-35.
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Feb 18, 2016 01:05
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akulanization posted:
The UNN sent the battleship Nathaniel Hale to tycho station. Your gonna need some marines to be a threat to a station when both sides know your not gonna blow it up. As for why battleships not patrol ships carrying marines, I think it has more to do with loiter time. A big ship like a battleship will have space for life support and provisions to carry around a big enough marine contingent for threaten a station. Moreover, since it takes days-weeks to get to your destination, bigger ships will have provisions for longer deployments and patrols that will see them more often in range of the hot spot.
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Feb 18, 2016 02:33
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Capital ships carry marines because they also hold smaller ships; little torpedo boats like the Roci don't have to fly around with sailors and marines crammed into a can for weeks on end. If you want it to go check smugglers for a while, then pick up a squad and let them go stamp on belters for a few days. As for how many they carry, that's probably a comparative force thing. Literally the only ground force capable of resisting MCRN marines is UN marines. So you'd better have brought more with you. mossyfisk fucked around with this message at 04:48 on Feb 18, 2016 |
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Feb 18, 2016 04:45
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Noctone posted:What's wrong with getting ahead of the show? Besides, it's probably going to be 5-10 years before the show catches up with the books (if it even lasts long enough to get there). At the current rate of half a book per year, the show will never catch up with the books until the book series ends.
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Feb 20, 2016 17:06
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Just finished reading Leviathan Wakes, this doesn't spoil anything: IDK where you some of you guys got the idea Holden was a kinda dumpy middle-aged-ish guy in the books, he's clearly described as being thought of as "pretty" and/or good-looking by one female character directly and plenty of others indirectly. Plus, his history would put him in his late 20s/early 30s. Not really spoiling anything but just to be safe a few years in the Navy and then I think it was 5 on the Canterbury? It's quite interesting to see the differences between the two so far but IMO that sort of discussion is best left for TBB, where there isn't an Expanse thread as far as I can tell. I sure as hell ain't making one (or reading one) until I finish the rest of the books though. If anyone's on the fence about reading them, I can say Leviathan Wakes is a great page-turner; the prose won't set your world on fire, but at the same time its competently done, the plot moves quickly, and the characters are interesting and likeable. It is a bit of a bummer taking some of the surprise out of what will happen next season, but given how long that'll be I figured I might as well go all-in. The waiting lists at the two libraries I'm a member of are encouraging about the interest in the series, at least  Azhais posted:That's not strictly true, at least in the book version. The corvette that Holden and crew left in just happened to be the one that was online for daily emergency duty/CAP and I think it was referred to as a bomber tho I'd have to go re-read to be sure. It was said that that there were multiple other ships in the hangar bay, they were just all "cold" and not ready for flight quickly. Yeah, it was mentioned to be a bomber once on the Donager not long after it was introduced, don't think it was ever specifically called that again. The Marine gear on it makes me think it might have been used as a boarding craft: the Donnie could launch it from a safe distance and not risk its entire crew if the ship they were boarding decided to self-destruct. I wouldn't overthink its tactical application vis-a-vis the MCRN too much though, I think it existed in its current state because that was what the authors wanted the protagonists to have later in the story. Not that the authors are really clumsy about that sort of thing, but they outright said in the interview at the back of my Kindle version that while they try to make everything as superficially plausible as they can, they don't pull their hair out trying to make everything airtight. Pompous Rhombus fucked around with this message at 13:30 on Feb 23, 2016 |
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Feb 23, 2016 13:15
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Evernoob posted:I'm also quite sad Europa isn't mentioned anywhere, as that moon is supposed to be the most likely candidate to live on (if we can ever reach it). Europa is inhabited. These are all the inhabited places that I remember from the books, I'm spoilering it in case anyone really does not want to know anything: Earth, Luna, Mars, Ceres, Eros, Pallas, various other asteroids, Ganymede, Europa, Io, Callisto, Titania, Titan, other unspecified Saturn moons, and an assortment of space stations like Tycho
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Feb 23, 2016 13:49
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Alright, someone is going to have to explain the appeal of this show to me. I see there's a passion for it and I just don't get it. Is it just the dearth of sci-fi in popular media that's got everyone hyped? I thought maybe the books get really good past the show, but apparently TV-only peeps are loving it too? The show is fine. It's okay. It's watchable. There's some nice set design and some interesting story elements. I watched the whole thing, and I didn't regret it. But I found it deeply unsatisfying. There's a CW-esque level of dumb cheese in the dialogue sometimes that holds it back from Breaking Bad or (early) Game of Thrones quality levels. The show-don't-tell approach holds them back when they muddle their own story beats. When that Martian guy pops an unremarked focus pill to read their expressions - I was left wondering if he was doing some psychic or hypnotic voodoo because instead of just grilling them, he kept making suggestions like he was trying to convince them. That would've worked without the pills, or the pills would've worked without him being suggestive. Nitpicky, I'm sure - it didn't ruin the show for me, but it's one of those little unsatisfying things that's just off-kilter and holds the show back from its potential. Speaking of unsatisfying, the big shootout at the end of episode 8. They build some great Tarantino-esque tension there...and then hold on it just a little too long. I mean, sure, let's edit in ANOTHER shot of Amos and/or Adam Jensen looking nervous, why not? Like the first six didn't get the point across. And when the tension finally breaks and gunfire ensues, it's a confusing mess. I don't even know who shot the hotel clerk. Or the one woman who I don't know if she was part of the black ops team or not? And it caps off with some very standard TV awkwardness: a magically bulletproof couch and when Miller comes in at just the right time to save the day...he also knows exactly who to shoot and that it's okay to do so...For some reason. Despite looking forward to the conversion of those storylines, I found it just as deeply unsatisfying as the shootout. The lack of information exchanged by them when the viewers know everything is a bit frustrating. The viewers even know who those guys in the shootout were while neither Holden nor Miller do, but BECAUSE the audience know they kind of immediately drop it. I mean the show essentially opens with an entirely pointless three minutes. There is a woman in a room in space. Time passes. She leaves the room. There is a corpse. She sees something. She screams. There is no context for this. There is nothing to care about. Not enough clues to follow. They could've cut all of that, started on Ceres and had this in the episode 9 flashback. OR actually open the show on what led her being put into that room. (Hell, the book mentions a low-G jiu jitsu fight which sounds entertaining and ridiculous) You can set up that the ship is being boarded without giving all the answers, set up just how much time is passing, etc. And the finale was yet another unsatisfying chunk that didn't feel much like a finale. No questions were really answered. The "protomolecule" turns corpses into glowing lights that replicate humans I guess and also a big claw thing that disappointingly snatches Adam Jensen and his weird voice right out of the show? Just as with the intro, there's zero context for this, zero explanation, nothing to take away from it. That stuff won't matter until it comes up again. It all just feels like empty foreshadowing. A nice cliffhanger for an episode, but a real sucky one for a first season. VagueRant fucked around with this message at 15:00 on Feb 23, 2016 |
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Feb 23, 2016 14:57
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Jesus, thanks for showing me why I really should unsubscribe to TV Show threads between seasons.
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Feb 23, 2016 15:03
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Pompous Rhombus posted:Just finished reading Leviathan Wakes, this doesn't spoil anything: IDK where you some of you guys got the idea Holden was a kinda dumpy middle-aged-ish guy in the books, he's clearly described as being thought of as "pretty" and/or good-looking by one female character directly and plenty of others indirectly. Miller, not Holden. Book-Miller is more of of a washed up hack than show-Miller.
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Feb 23, 2016 15:06
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Oh, I also thought Miller's cartoonish bodycount and improbable Walking Dead style headshots in the finale (seriously, if you were coughing out your organs, your aim would probably shake a little, right?) really took away from the reality and weight of the drama. As did the whole "they're gang members and they're unknowningly working for the evil guys so it's totally cool to kill them by the dozen" thing. The scene where they kill the slightly humanised guy in the Pachinko parlour in an ugly, brutal way was better. That felt earned. (Edit: oh and when he shot that first guy in the chest in ep 9 and Holden had to cover his mouth to stop him screaming. Such a sharp contrast to the trashy scene where they steal the uniforms.) flosofl posted:Jesus, thanks for showing me why I really should unsubscribe to TV Show threads between seasons. What is wrong with you?
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Feb 23, 2016 15:31
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VagueRant posted:
You didn't like the show. We get it. You don't need to go on to a prolonged rant in some attempt to justify your opinion. Then again, your name is VagueRant.
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Feb 23, 2016 15:54
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VagueRant posted:I mean the show essentially opens with an entirely pointless three minutes. There is a woman in a room in space. Time passes. She leaves the room. There is a corpse. She sees something. She screams. There is no context for this. There is nothing to care about. Not enough clues to follow. They could've cut all of that, started on Ceres and had this in the episode 9 flashback. OR actually open the show on what led her being put into that room. (Hell, the book mentions a low-G jiu jitsu fight which sounds entertaining and ridiculous) You can set up that the ship is being boarded without giving all the answers, set up just how much time is passing, etc. Within five minutes of the show's opening, Miller gets a contract to look for the woman (we know it's her because he gets a picture, we learn she's called Julie Mao), and the Canturbury gets a distress call from the Scopuli. The opening sets up a mystery.
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Feb 23, 2016 16:00
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tooterfish posted:It's only pointless if you're not paying attention, there are plenty of clues to follow.
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Feb 23, 2016 16:07
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Forget the plot anyway. There's another compelling reason this show is loving amazing, and anyone who loves sci-fi should want to see it do well. It's this: 
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Feb 23, 2016 16:18
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Man rear end?
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Feb 23, 2016 16:41
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Yes, that man rear end. As a straight guy, I just don't get the opportunity to watch as much gay porn as I'd like, so I've got to take what I can get elsewhere.
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Feb 23, 2016 16:49
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I do agree that this show feels like it's operating at a pretty consistent and disappointing 70% of what it could be. It's really, determinedly solid, it checks a lot of boxes, here's some hard SF flavor, here's some politics, here's some hard-boiled spice...but it's just not quite clicking into something great. It doesn't have Breaking Bad's visual flair, The Wire's naturalism, BSG's desperation and trauma, Game of Thrones' intimate connection between the personal and the political. I don't know if that's a result of the very methodical pacing, conservative direction, or the source material. The books don't really start developing characters and playing hardball until the fifth installment. But this show keeps soft-playing its big moments in a weird way. Take Avasarala's story. The shot of Avasarala walking through the snow: awesome. Do that more. You're using a visual medium to depict the character's power and isolation! Avasarala's subplot with the guy who wants to retire on Mars? Not so good. I can remember what happens in the storyline, but it doesn't pop. I know I felt bad for him. I know Avasarala hosed him over, and felt bad about it. I know he was assassinated and it was passed off as suicide. But I don't remember him as a person, and I can't associate him with powerful images. Avasarala interrogating the Belter undergoing gravity torture - awesome: depicts the Belter as an alien figure stranded in a hostile environment. Miller's investigation is another case of methodical, mechanical scripting. It's easy to track the assemblage of information that leads Miller to the Anubis. It's easy to see that he's obsessed with Julie Mao and that his obsession offers him a moral escape from the frustration of his day-to-day job. But I don't think this information forms a sustained, compelling arc of rising tension over the season. Miller's got four episodes of material stretched out. Eros Station is the worst fumble so far. You have the better part of an episode's runtime to walk the characters through hell on a radiation-cooked, bioweapon-infested atrocity. What do we get? (The pachinko parlor was awesome and memorable, so I'll forgive it). Generic science fictional Tunnel Action and a decent shootout, but nothing even as intense as the book: the direction and editing doesn't support a sense of pace, we can't feel cells disintegrating as the characters struggle through firefights between drugged-up mercenaries and something nightmarish as thousands of people are devoured by Gigeresque biohorror all around them. It's a good show. It's better than fine. I just wish it would do a little more. Over and over it feels like it settles for good enough instead of great. I'll happily keep watching, but I'm watching in the hope that it'll all really gel and ignite soon. e: BSG's first proper episode, '33', is a great showcase of what the show wants to be. We open with tension, ticking clocks, exhaustion, and hallucination. Characters bicker and flirt. The cinematography is raw, desaturated, and documentary-style. The episode develops into two interlaced plot threads: Gaius Baltar Must Pray, and We Need To Blow Up A Civilian Ship. Each story feeds into the other, with Gaius desperately trying to conceal evidence of his own malfeasance while the President and the Admiral confront an awful moral quandary and the pilot characters grapple with the need to execute tough orders under stress. Everything works together: cinematography, direction, CGI/VFX, the naturalistic acting, the script, the implementation of the big themes of 'tough decisions' and 'faith'. It's a microcosm of the whole show. I don't think The Expanse has managed to marshal all its themes into one showcase yet. General Battuta fucked around with this message at 17:35 on Feb 23, 2016 |
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Feb 23, 2016 17:30
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VagueRant posted:Alright, someone is going to have to explain the appeal of this show to me. I see there's a passion for it and I just don't get it. Is it just the dearth of sci-fi in popular media that's got everyone hyped? I thought maybe the books get really good past the show, but apparently TV-only peeps are loving it too? VagueRant posted:Oh, I also thought Miller's cartoonish bodycount and improbable Walking Dead style headshots in the finale (seriously, if you were coughing out your organs, your aim would probably shake a little, right?) really took away from the reality and weight of the drama. As did the whole "they're gang members and they're unknowningly working for the evil guys so it's totally cool to kill them by the dozen" thing. Holy poo poo what is wrong with you? Look at those loving posts. Just had some goon do the same exact stupid bullshit in a games thread. Why do people do this? Come into a thread specifically for fans of a thing, post a giant gently caress-off wall of  about how thing is terrible and you hate it, which OBVIOUSLY isn't going to be well received, then when everybody tells you you're wrong because reasons, you stick around and act like you actually care about it and want to discuss the details.Should have skipped the huge wall post telling us all we're dummies for watching the show and liking it, and maybe then we'd give a flying gently caress about your concerns about the weight of the drama. gently caress off.
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Feb 23, 2016 17:42
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He didn't say it was terrible and he hated it, please do not accelerate the hyperbole centrifuge
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Feb 23, 2016 17:54
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General Battuta posted:He didn't say it was terrible and he hated it, please do not accelerate the hyperbole centrifuge Eh, saying its "watchable" and demanding people explain the appeal is pretty much the same thing.
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Feb 23, 2016 18:09
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Personally I'm ok with this guy on the forums not liking this show which I thought was great.
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Feb 23, 2016 18:34
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If the show makes it that far, I think I want Harry Lennix to play Bull. I'm wrapping up Abaddon's Gate, and I haven't been able to picture him as anyone else.
OpaqueEcho fucked around with this message at 19:39 on Feb 23, 2016 |
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Feb 23, 2016 19:02
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tooterfish posted:It's only pointless if you're not paying attention, there are plenty of clues to follow. The woman has "Julie" stitched onto her jumpsuit. She gets surprised by an empty space suit bearing the label "Scopuli". Again, the best solution would have been to give SOME context, to show us Julie's immediate predicament (which the book manages) so that the viewer can get even the slightest bit invested in the scene and character. tooterfish posted:Forget the plot anyway. There's another compelling reason this show is loving amazing, and anyone who loves sci-fi should want to see it do well. Someone I spoke to pointed out that you don't see much sci-fi where humans have colonised planets but haven't yet left the solar system. So the show/book hits a pretty fresh middle ground there. Related to that, someone else told me they liked the pilot for "worldbuilding", which is not a part of fiction I've ever found exciting. Just different strokes, I suppose. General Battuta posted:this show feels like it's operating at a pretty consistent and disappointing 70% of what it could be. I never gave Battlestar a look. Always put off by talk of the ending. I'm clearly not much of a sci-fi guy, but it's worth a go? I do like military settings and people on the forum seem super into it. Zaphod42 posted:Eh, saying its "watchable" and demanding people explain the appeal is pretty much the same thing. Also: Zaphod42 posted:Come into a thread specifically for fans of a thing emanresu tnuocca posted:Personally I'm ok with this guy on the forums not liking this show which I thought was great.
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Feb 23, 2016 20:10
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Holy poo poo people, I like the show a lot too, but freaking out over someone voicing their criticisms of it is really loving stupid.
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Feb 23, 2016 20:34
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VagueRant posted:I never gave Battlestar a look. Always put off by talk of the ending. I'm clearly not much of a sci-fi guy, but it's worth a go? I do like military settings and people on the forum seem super into it. I would suggest you give Battlestar, say, two or three episodes to get its hooks in. By all accounts, they tried really hard (at first) to nail the military bits as well as they could given the source material. BSG is why a lot of lay folks know what "Actual" means, for instance (e. g. talking to "Galactica" as opposed to talking to "Galactica Actual"). It's certainly not a show for everyone, but I liked it. The same applies for me to The Expanse: it's certainly not a show for everyone, but I liked it.
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Feb 23, 2016 20:45
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VagueRant posted:I never gave Battlestar a look. Always put off by talk of the ending. I'm clearly not much of a sci-fi guy, but it's worth a go? I do like military settings and people on the forum seem super into it. The show's driven much more by the characters than by the plot. If watching people figure out how to deal with each other and generally scrape by after the end of the world sounds good to you, and if you don't care much about a complete lack of payoff at the end, plot-wise, then I'd say give it a shot.
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Feb 23, 2016 20:51
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I felt that BSG fell off in quality near the end, but you should absolutely only need 1 episode to tell if the show is for you or not. The first episode (other than the miniseries), '33' is pretty loving incredible.
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Feb 23, 2016 20:53
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BSG is worth it for the excellent direction and use of music. Watch '33', if you enjoy it go back and watch the miniseries and proceed forward from there. The show's never consistently good after Season 2 but some of its very best episodes happen in 3 and 4.
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Feb 23, 2016 20:53
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BSG is worth checking out for sure. The threads back on the day here were massive and full of fun liveposting. The first two seasons on the whole were fantastic and the early part of Season 3 was amazing. Go into it knowing that the ending was controversial and a lot of folks found it unsatisfactory but it isn't universally reviled either. The other big problem was Syfy split the later seasons in two parts and S3 and 4 had some substantial pacing issues as a result when watching it at the time it aired. Watch seasons 1 and 2 for sure and the first part of S3. If at some point you want to stop then nobody would fault you but it's also a 4 season show total and you aren't signing up for hundreds of episodes either.
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