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 ingtaer wrote:

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
So, I have a question, about belters mostly.
One thing i kinda see is that it seems with the new planets, with tons supporting life and resources, does it seem like to anyone else like belters might become, Extinct?
Like, the only reason they lived out there on those planetoids and stations because that was the only options for them to get resources, but with much more planets now only a few days away, it seems like that will no longer be needed.
And with is being incredibly hard for a belter to live on a planet, even with drugs, it seems like some will be forced to still live on stations or ships.
It seems like belters know this and are incredibly scared of their "Culture" and shared hardship going away.
IDK, just kinda what i thought.

That is the major theme for the book that this series is based on.

I haven't read the books. However...it feels like a misstep to me that the Belters largely seem completely unlikeable most of the time. Am I alone on this?

I get their situation, I really do. It's desperate. But I think we've seen desperate people doing desperate things being portrayed in a more sympathetic light in other works. I feel like the show too often portrays the Belters as impossibly hardheaded backstabbing gutterscum driven mainly by emotion and adrenaline. Even this season's storyline



I feel like they'd be more interesting as a third player if they weren't written to be so obviously prone to self-destruction. Maybe that IS the point, but then I'm not sure what the show is trying to say about oppressed people. Again, maybe it's just me.

I have no idea if this is how they're being portrayed in the books but I'm definitely getting a pre-WW2 Japanese feel to the belters this season with the whole devastating first strike on a larger sleeping giant power that may result in their ultimate devastating defeat. The lines by Kamina (sp?) remind me of what supposedly Yamamoto said about Pearl Harbor as well as the similarities between them being dependant on Earth for soil/food similar to how Japan was to the western powers for elements of modern industry like oil and rubber.

StraightSilver wrote:
Definitely my favourite season so far, and that's saying something because they have all been solid (even if the first season, originally, was confusing to start) .

I think the pacing this season is better, and there is some great character development going on.

Which makes is such a shame that there might only be 1 more season left after this one. :(

Its a great show - I would rather that they had one more great season and then stopped - although spin offs, prequals or sequals would also be nice.

I just started watching this the last few weeks (got Amazon Prime over Christmas) and am enjoying it quite a bit. I’ve read the books up to 7, with 8 sitting waiting for me to start. The series does tend to slack off the quality in the last couple, but still worth reading.

Only a couple nit-picks. Belters should be taller then everyone else, and there should be more 0-G stuff. But I get that they are stuck with earther actors, and the floating effects probably get pricy, so we see a lot of clomping around in mag boots. Which I understand.

Exactly. The Expanse is incredible because it has remained as a coherent vision throughout the entire series so far.

 warboss wrote:
I have no idea if this is how they're being portrayed in the books but I'm definitely getting a pre-WW2 Japanese feel to the belters this season with the whole devastating first strike on a larger sleeping giant power that may result in their ultimate devastating defeat. The lines by Kamina (sp?) remind me of what supposedly Yamamoto said about Pearl Harbor as well as the similarities between them being dependant on Earth for soil/food similar to how Japan was to the western powers for elements of modern industry like oil and rubber.

Camina Drummer.

Before the ring gates opened, the inner planets were as dependent on belter shipping as the belt was on the inners. Even Ganymede couldn't feed ALL of the belt AND the inners.
The "world" of the expanse is just as fractious as our own - humanity - while it has let go of some of the older tribalistic BS, has just moved up to a bigger tribal system.

That was a hell of a stunt she pulled. Well done.

 AduroT wrote:
That was a hell of a stunt she pulled. Well done.

I'm just not sure how "possible" it would be - I know it's not real but The Expanse has been very good at keeping all the "science" bits of its science fiction pretty spot on. I just think there were way too many variables that would have made that extremely unlikely to succeed, not to mention straight up freezing to death, but then again it didn't look like it went off 100% without consequences.....

Still awesome though.

StraightSilver wrote:

 AduroT wrote:
That was a hell of a stunt she pulled. Well done.

I'm just not sure how "possible" it would be - I know it's not real but The Expanse has been very good at keeping all the "science" bits of its science fiction pretty spot on. I just think there were way too many variables that would have made that extremely unlikely to succeed, not to mention straight up freezing to death, but then again it didn't look like it went off 100% without consequences.....

Still awesome though.

My understanding is you don’t actually freeze to death in space. You’re in a vacuum, there’s nothing to sap the heat. You’ll eventually freeze, but it takes a relatively long time. It also looked like she properly exhaled to release the air pressure trying to escape your lungs. The part I think they got wrong is it really messes with your eyes if they’re open, the exposed moisture would vaporize and boil off the surface due to lack of air pressure. Also just remaining conscious for very long given you’re not holding your breath. No idea what she injected herself with to help her.

It would burst the delicate blood vessels in your eyes and they did show that though you probably would have to specifically be looking for that to notice. Even relatively small changes in pressure like prolonged coughing or vomiting can do that. As for the injection, it's likely what they gave the reporter they rescued from the leaking container a couple episodes back... Superoxygenated blood equivalent.

Oh, yeah, that would be a quite handy injection since the lack of O2 is gonna be the thing that kills ya first. And I did notice her eyes go red.

Hmm not my fav epsiode and I thought we had finally got rid of Naomi - oh well.

 warboss wrote:
I have no idea if this is how they're being portrayed in the books but I'm definitely getting a pre-WW2 Japanese feel to the belters this season with the whole devastating first strike on a larger sleeping giant power that may result in their ultimate devastating defeat. The lines by Kamina (sp?) remind me of what supposedly Yamamoto said about Pearl Harbor as well as the similarities between them being dependant on Earth for soil/food similar to how Japan was to the western powers for elements of modern industry like oil and rubber.

Pretty much, I'm on the second to last of the most recent so things may have changed. But when Marcos made his speech, he speaked of the tactical brilliance of sending stealth asteroids and having the protomolecule. He doesn't realize his tactical brilliance was a once in a war sort of deal, he isn't going to pull it off ever again, and if he loses the protomolecule, his one bargaining chip is gone, and with that, mars and Earth can bring down the hammer so hard on them.
They are essentially yokels with space ships, they are not going to out fight those two

 gorgon wrote:

I feel like they'd be more interesting as a third player if they weren't written to be so obviously prone to self-destruction. Maybe that IS the point, but then I'm not sure what the show is trying to say about oppressed people. Again, maybe it's just me.

Not just you. It's impossible to sympathize with the belt ers by this point. I'm hoping they spend a bit more time developing Drummer into a more stable alternate leader, leading to a fracture amongst the belters as a fraction, and an eventual showdown between her and Marco.

NASA actually "accidentally" exposed one of their scientists to vacuum for a full minute once (and did it to quite a few animals, prior to this, too).

Studies have been done on the survivability of the hairless ape in vacuum.
The injector was "hyper-oxygenated blood" or something, according to the writers.
Yes, Naomi did exhale before leaping out. Cyn followed her because he thought she was trying to kill herself again.

My issue is Cyn looked like he died way quicker. Not sure if it was a lack of exhale or just appearances or what happened to him.

 insaniak wrote:

 gorgon wrote:

I feel like they'd be more interesting as a third player if they weren't written to be so obviously prone to self-destruction. Maybe that IS the point, but then I'm not sure what the show is trying to say about oppressed people. Again, maybe it's just me.

Not just you. It's impossible to sympathize with the belt ers by this point. I'm hoping they spend a bit more time developing Drummer into a more stable alternate leader, leading to a fracture amongst the belters as a fraction, and an eventual showdown between her and Marco.

They really have an "oh poor us" attitude. As what shown before, belters who cannot leave space, can still work on the colonies, working in space.
But as that one big bald belter said, "and their children won't be belters anymore" and that is what they are afraid of, loosing their shared struggle

Both Mars and much of the artifical habitats in the Belt have been rendered pointless by the Ring - hence the new alliance.

where exactly is the proto molecule at the moment - with all the focus on Naomi whining I lost track of where extactly it is.

 Mr Morden wrote:
Both Mars and much of the artifical habitats in the Belt have been rendered pointless by the Ring - hence the new alliance.

where exactly is the proto molecule at the moment - with all the focus on Naomi whining I lost track of where extactly it is.

The protomolecule was supposed to be on the ship the Roci was tracking. I think we can assume that likely isn't the case after the last episode and it was probably handed off somewhere before the Roci found them.

As for the Belters, I think the show hasn't been quite as effective as the books at building them up as the oppressed working class to the extent we can sympathise with their plight (before the mass murdering terrorist attack, of course). I think the pacing and focus of this season has not really allowed quite enough nuance from the Belters either, barring the short discussion on Drummer's ship so we're only really seeing the hardliner's attitudes rather than the common man's. There was an interesting passing comment when Drummer spoke to Marcos about where the food would come from and the agri-domes on Ganymede being able to feed the Belt within a decade - seemed like Marcos was carefully not discussing any of the basic logistics of having a free Belt at war with Earth. That, along with the obvious problem of your still-tiny navy being no match for the superpower you just provoked, does go some way to show that the Free Navy are not necessarily going to be speaking for all Belters. I doubt we'll dive too much into that side of things in the remaining episodes though.

It blew up? To the best of our knowledge it was on the ship that Holden was hunting and attacked. That ship was headed to meet the Belter fleet but didn’t get there before Holden found and caught up with it. Holden wanted to board and retrieve the molecule, thus they shot out the ship’s engine. It then proceeded to refuse to turn off its reactor and exploded. I expect either they managed to get it off the ship first somehow, or we’ll get the usual freaky molecule shenanigans where it starts to do weird stuff with the wreckage.

The protomolecule was supposed to be on the ship the Roci was tracking. I think we can assume that likely isn't the case after the last episode and it was probably handed off somewhere before the Roci found them.

Thats what I thought and I thought Marco had some plan with various ships but the episode was a bit disjointed for my taste and where exactly everyone was - usually they are pretty good about this so you have a sense of the narrative positioning of the vessels/fleets.

get the usual freaky molecule shenanigans where it starts to do weird stuff with the wreckage.

Maybe - I am not sure a reactor explosion will destroy it but maybe it would....

 AduroT wrote:
It blew up? To the best of our knowledge it was on the ship that Holden was hunting and attacked. That ship was headed to meet the Belter fleet but didn’t get there before Holden found and caught up with it. Holden wanted to board and retrieve the molecule, thus they shot out the ship’s engine. It then proceeded to refuse to turn off its reactor and exploded. I expect either they managed to get it off the ship first somehow, or we’ll get the usual freaky molecule shenanigans where it starts to do weird stuff with the wreckage.

Probably the former. Marcos said "they know what to do" while showing some sort of on screen graphic of a few ships approaching the ring gate including one marked in red. I'm guessing they had a small ship stored inside like the one Bobby and Alex are using that stealth budded off once they realized they were being followed.

Slipspace wrote:
I doubt we'll dive too much into that side of things in the remaining episodes though.

Keep in mind, the entirety of S5 and S6 are focused on the Free Navy Conflict. This isnt going to be resolved in four episodes.

 warboss wrote:

 AduroT wrote:
It blew up? To the best of our knowledge it was on the ship that Holden was hunting and attacked. That ship was headed to meet the Belter fleet but didn’t get there before Holden found and caught up with it. Holden wanted to board and retrieve the molecule, thus they shot out the ship’s engine. It then proceeded to refuse to turn off its reactor and exploded. I expect either they managed to get it off the ship first somehow, or we’ll get the usual freaky molecule shenanigans where it starts to do weird stuff with the wreckage.

Probably the former. Marcos said "they know what to do" while showing some sort of on screen graphic of a few ships approaching the ring gate including one marked in red. I'm guessing they had a small ship stored inside like the one Bobby and Alex are using that stealth budded off once they realized they were being followed.

I thought at first the ship was just a lure given the large number of torps they had on board.

It's possible the ship was entirely misdirection from the start, and it's still on Tycho station...

 insaniak wrote:
It's possible the ship was entirely misdirection from the start, and it's still on Tycho station...

Very possible, yes. They were setting up something more on Tycho before the Roci left with all the Tycho-based cast members aboard so it wouldn't surprise me if we went back there at some point. That would be as good a reason as any. From a strategic point of view Marcos probably needs to prove he still has the protomolecule (assuming he does). If Holden contacts Aversarala to say it's been destroyed he would lose one of his major pieces of leverage.

I'm hoping they don't make Holden stupid enough to think it's been destroyed, because that would be a little train-wrecky.

 insaniak wrote:
It's possible the ship was entirely misdirection from the start, and it's still on Tycho station...

Marcos planned on blowing Tycho up remember, with the Roci.
I think that also shows how much Marcos is obsessed with spectacles rather than actual war.

Fair point. So more likely passed off to another ship in transit, or copied Naomi's 'load it in a torpedo and hide it somewhere' trick.

Having read the books (up until Persepolis rising anyway - there's still more to come) - the protomolecule IS off the station.