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Hello I just watched this show. It is extremely well done, from the plotting, the pacing, and much of the acting. Well, Holden is a pretty weak lead, but Miller is great, as are many of the side characters (Amos, Naomi, Dawes, all the Martians (esp. Lopez), Indian Lady, fat Adam Jensen, Julie, Julie's evil dad). The special effects are quite convincing, though I really wish that when scenes transitioned from within-ship to outside-ship, the ship was kept in the same vertical orientation so the direction of the g-force remained the same. A story aspect that I didn't really like was the mysterious 4th faction that was trying to get everyone to kill one another. Like I can buy that someone can hide a space station somewhere and funnel in refined metals and stealth materials and advanced schematics, but who are they? What motivates them to fight and die? Because corporate troops and mercenaries are cowards, they have no motivation to fight and die against highly armed and moraled Martians. Because while the attack on the Donnagher was well planned and executed, they must have gone in with the expectation of losses (especially the boarders). Also, did the conspirator's troops have some kind of advanced biomods to rapidly seal gunshot wounds? Because the way the scene was framed, with the subsequent recovery of Havelock in the street, made me think that Havelock was a member of the conspiracy and had a similar biomod.
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Sep 6, 2016 07:25
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| # ¿ May 17, 2024 21:29 |
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Something they completely failed to address: the Roci nuked the Anubis, that would have shown up on the sensors.
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Sep 7, 2016 05:02
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Considering the processing and pattern-recognition powers of Expanse-era computers, it should be trivial to track every single drive signature across the entire system and cross-reference them against transponders and registered flight paths. And flagging them if they behave suspiciously (like turn off their freaking transponders). Setting up such a panopticon should be due diligence for any Earth (considering the planet-killing potential of just a single ship). But that itself would preclude the plot of the entire series, as there would be no way for the Anubis to hide after nuking the Cant.
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Sep 7, 2016 05:49
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Considering we can get some information on the orbital mechanics of planets in other star systems, it really isn't a problem to see ship drives within Sol system. Any deficiencies can be solved by scaling up: more sensor stations, more sensors, more processing power. And while there are alot of ships, there aren't that many, and unlike humans, ships move predictably. So let's just say the earth government had a system like this going for a while, but due to bureaucratic infighting and cost overruns and neglect, as everyone's settled into a comfy status quo.
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Sep 7, 2016 07:50
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they're not hiding they're just ekeing out existence in irradiated wastelands after a sewer inspector got too drunk and got to the button
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Sep 8, 2016 04:51
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The expert systems are pretty drat advanced, Miller's last-gen smartphone can disguise his voice to phreak into the AI of Mao's apartment. Just no Artificial General Intelligences have been developed. And if anything, the Martian development of stealth tech would spur the development of sensors to track all drives, because then you'd have data points that would say: signature X fired on a vector that would take it close to Earth, signature has disappeared, est. time of arrival is Y days, dispatch ship Z to intercept and force it to reignite drives. Like how many data points will there be? A few dozen thousand? A few hundred thousand? It all sounds like a bit of a plot hole in the setting, which is a shame because alot of it seems well thought out. But of course, you can't really tell a story when all the players have near perfect information, which is a concession to the fact that it is a piece of fiction.
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Sep 8, 2016 07:45
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We've yet to really monetize space, which is necessary for its colonization. The sat network is valuable, but it is ultimately a means to augment the ground-based economy. In order to really colonize space, it needs to provide something unavailable earthside. Not the moon, it's too carbon poor to support a proper biosphere, and He3 concentrations are still too low to be economically viable. Heavy metals are a good option, most of the Earth's heavy elements have sunk to the planet's core, completely out of reach, while the remnants of the dwarf planet that was shattered into the asteroid belt have all their juicy golds and palladiums and platinums exposed, waiting for some enterprising soul to ship it to market. Orbital manufacturing plants may be another good option, you can vary the g's on an object as it is produced, which could be of value. I have a suspicion that getting over the initial hump to colonize space is the real hurdle. Right now, it is not economically viable to get into space, and Earth remains the centre of the human world. But, once we have successfully colonized the solar system, the sheer amount of resources outside of gravity wells will make Earth an economic backwater. The tricky part is getting from A to B, there is not yet any economic incentive to take the first few steps.
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Dec 23, 2016 10:53
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It's worth noting that the mineral value of an asteroid is not the surface area, but the quality and quantity of mineral resources. Most heavy metals on Earth sunk into the core as the Earth cooled, completely inaccessible to mankind. What little remains as tiny veins along the surface, and have reacted with other elements in this oxidizing environment. But the asteroid belt is made up of the remnants of a terrestrial planet cracked to pieces, so all you gotta do is find a chunk of the nice valuable heavy metals and drag it to the market. And its not the other asteroids made up of lighter elements are worthless, you can do alot of poo poo with carbon, silicon, hydrates, calcium, lithium, potassium, suphur. Why, you could even build a biosphere with that stuff!
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Dec 30, 2016 13:15
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Finished reading Leviathan/Caliban over a long flight, the books really do read like an elaborate RPG session, and where the characters of significance are dynamic and keep rolling speech checks so the story can move in the "correct" direction.
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Jan 4, 2017 05:51
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Also I finally got the significance of the term "protomolecule". It doesn't mean anything. It's just the megacorps who discovered it named it after themselves, as if they can control it.
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Jan 4, 2017 05:55
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Having read book 2, I agree most of it can be cut out, especially the conspiracy subplot which is already bought forward into season 1 with Ava. Also, I was joking earlier today with one of my colleagues, one of the authors read a Wikipedia article on T cell immune deficiencies and decided to cram it into the book 2. It's cool that my field sort of got a shoutout.
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Jan 6, 2017 13:46
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also if you want a story about the meaninglessness and helplessness of humanity in the face of greater forces in the universe read cixin liu 3 body trilogy, esp the last story your not stopping the aliens with a freaking air-gap
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Jan 6, 2017 16:29
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I didn't really notice the rpgish elements of the characters in leviathan, but that was because I saw the tv show first. I did see the rpg boundaries that of the characters in caliban especially with the main quest, which basically fired off with a giant glowing quest marker.
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Jan 28, 2017 09:00
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there was also a scene where miller was chatting about the implants found within someone's corpse, its mostly variations on mass market stuff, so presumably a trained agent would have all these capabilities as well the ceres scenes went hard on the cyberpunk and i loved it
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Jan 29, 2017 01:04
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on the note of cool cyberpunk futures, i really liked the difference in tone between ceres and eros stations ceres was bustling and hyperneon and had rad thumping music in the background, while eros was just gloomy as hell. 2/10 would not be transformed into a flesh blob
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Jan 29, 2017 03:52
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pouring out a mushroom beer and some nootropics for my man lopez man i really liked how they sold the interrogation. the dude just took a pill, and he could see a matrix of every little tic and spasm in the captive's face. that made him infinitely scarier than if he was just a torturer, and all the more tragic that he sold his life for the cant crew
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Jan 29, 2017 13:01
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| # ¿ May 17, 2024 21:29 |
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theres like a 100% chance that the writers tailored kenzo specifically for elias and the funniest thing is that elias looks like a total schlub unlike adam jensen, doesnt have the muscle augs or the arm blades, just spamming the social aug until it rolls right
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Jan 29, 2017 15:56
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