The Expanse, Episode One

 

I spoke elsewhere today (in my review of “Childhood’s End”! Go check it out, won’tcha?) about the amazing growth and progress that has been made by the SyFy Channel in their return to actual science fiction over the last couple of years, so I won’t go into the same level of deep background. What I will say is that with last night’s premier of the “Childhood’s End” miniseries followed by S1:E1 of “The Expanse”, they have now fully recaptured what they originally set out to be over 20 years ago: a channel for original science-fiction programming on television. This show looks like it could be the kind of gritty, believable, not so far future science fiction television that we’ve hoped for so long.

We enter this world with the first episode, “Dulcinea”, directed by Terry McDonough (Better Call Saul, Homefront), and adapted by Mark Fergus , and Hawk Ostby (Iron Man, Children of Men), from the novels written by Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck under the pen name James S. A. Corey, with the second episode scheduled to air tonight on SyFy.

It’s 200 years in the future, the 23^rd century as the opening title sequence of the show visually lays out and our world has changed with humanity’s expansion and colonization out into our solar system. This is followed with a crawl of sorts that takes us through the major historical points that have led to where we are in this day. There are three main factions: the Earth or “Earthers”, now controlled under the U.N., Mars (the Dusters) which has become “an independent military power”, and the “Belters”, based on Ceres, nearly slave like miners who live and work in space mining the resources of the asteroid belt for the inner planets who have become dependent on the asteroid belt’s resources, including water (in the form of ice) and precious metals, for their lives, luxuries and well-being. “Air and water are more precious than gold” for those living in space and after decades of tensions the three factions teeter “on the brink of war. All it will take is a single spark”. Is that tense enough for you?

Somewhere in space there’s a young woman (Florence Faivre) floating weightless but trapped, perhaps in a cell, perhaps something else. She is terrified, begging to be let out, and there are the sounds of some kind of conflict going on around her. Her space shivers every time there is weapons fire. We are given the impression that time passes and she is still trapped, the ship is gone quiet and she is thirsty, and hungry, until she finally manages to get out and into what appears to be a ship of some kind. At first she seems to be alone. She finds something, and as she screams we cut to our first introduction to the pseudo capital of the Asteroid belt, the Dwarf Planet Ceres. At one time it held “enough water for a thousand generations” but has been stripped clean down to the rock to supply water to the inner planets of the solar system. Ceres is now a vital Port where nearly everything that is mined from the asteroid belt is brought to be processed and transferred to Earth and Mars. On Ceres, water is rationed and even a breathable air is considered a commodity.

We are then introduced to Joe Miller (Thomas Jane), a Belter born an orphan and raised on Ceres Station. He has overcome adversity to now be a detective or “Badge” with Star Helix Security, the private security arm of the Earth based corporations that run mining and all of the asteroid belt, and the closest thing to a police force on Ceres Station. He has seen and experienced the very worst of humanity and become bitter and cynical. Working for Star Helix, in the eyes of his fellow Belters, makes him a traitor to his people (a “welwala” in the strange Belter Creole, a pidgin language that is a combination of everything from Afrikaans and Chinese, to French and English and I am pretty sure I heard some Hebrew) but he just wants to be able to survive and get along as comfortable as possible in the horror that is his life. He takes bribes and bends the rules to serve his purpose yet still has a sense of justice.

He has a green new partner, Detective Cobb (Michael Murray), fresh off the ship from Earth, that has been assigned under him and we are introduced to life on Ceres as he is taken around and shown the station. They catch an apparent self-defense homicide by a prostitute and the rookie has to get an explanation on some of the conditions and changes that living in space has wrought upon human anatomy. Ceres only has 1/3 the gravity or Earth, and second and third generation Belters have started to get very tall and lean because they grow up in low to zero gravity. Their muscles and bones do not develop correctly, and they could never survive on Earth even if they wanted too.

When Miller’s taken aside by his supervisor and given an “off–the–books” assignment to find a missing girl, Julie Mao, the missing heiress of a ridiculously wealthy family that is part of the corporations that run the belt; we’re shown the picture of the girl we saw trapped during the opening sequence.

Next we go to The Canterbury, an “Ice Trawler” (and a beat up old wreck of a ship at that), crewed with hundreds of miners, in the process of mining ice from the rings of Saturn. We get a firsthand look at how dangerous their work is and are introduced to our next group of characters. Jim Holden (Steven Strait) is the second officer, a self proclaimed slacker originally from Montana and sleeping with the pretty navigator Nygaard (Kristen Hager) (in one of the hottest zero-gravity love scenes you’re likely to ever see). He gets promoted to XO after the previous one (Better Call Saul’s Jonathan Banks ) loses his mind.

The Canterbury is making the return to Ceres Station when they receive a strange distress signal from a ship, the one we saw in the opening sequence, and because they are the closest ship within millions of miles they are legally obligated to check it out. The only problem is that if they do that they won’t make they’re scheduled arrival at Ceres, which means they’ll lose their guaranteed berth and their on time bonus. Captain McDowell (Joe Pingue ) decides to purge the logs and keep going for Ceres because, in all likelihood, the ship has been put out there as “Pirate Bait” and he doesn’t want to piss off his crew. Holden, however, gets a case of conscience when he listens back to the distress signal and finds an underlying signal with a woman begging for help. The Canterbury is forced to turn back and head to that ship after Holden anonymously relays their receipt of the signal back to their HQ.

As we approach the end of the first episode, they are able to get the Canterbury within 50,000 Klicks (Kilometers) of the ship in distress, a freighter, and Holden takes a small crew on one of Canterburys “Life Boats”, selecting Chief Engineer Naomi Nagata (Dominique Tipper), Pilot Alex Kamal (Cas Anvar), Mechanic Amos Burton (Wes Chatham) and Med-Tech Shed Garvey (Paulo Costanzo) to go check out the freighter. This is where we get our first big plot twist of the series.

In the middle of all that we get to see Earth for the first time and meet Chrisjen Avasarala (Shohreh Aghdashloo), the Deputy Under Secretary of the United Nations. She is shown as an affectionate and loving wife and grandmother, but when she is called away on business we get to see some of how she became such a high-ranking official in the world government.

This is where I will leave my synopsis as I do not want to ruin any of the fun little turns of the story. What I will say is that this show has the potential to be completely addictive. It is dark, greedy, and has a feeling of authenticity to it that is rarely seen in science fiction films, almost documentary like.

It is also deeply entertaining and feels like the love child of Alien, Blade Runner, Outland, and Silent Running, with elements of 2001: A Space Odyssey, Soylent Green, both versions of Total Recall and even Serenity, so there’s a certain familiarity to the space that it inhabits, but there’s several well done and original plot points here, exploring some of the very real challenges that humanity will likely face as part of the eventual colonization of our own solar system, much less beyond. There’s an intense and almost overwhelming sense of realism and I cannot remember the last time I have ever felt so much gravity in a situation that takes place mostly in zero gravity. Other shows on SyFy, like “Dark Matter” and “Killjoys” have manage to pull off fairly decent low budget science fiction but The Expanse is truly expansive and feels like a big budget movie.

Thomas Jane aside, the casting of almost entirely lesser-known actors (in the US at least) allows for a higher level of suspended belief than you might get with familiar faces or big names. This is the first show on SyFy that I simply have to declare as “must watch television” for anyone that enjoys Science Fiction, a good mystery thriller, a good political thriller, or just a good television drama. The Expanse seems to be able to cover all of these areas, and does it very well. I am eagerly anticipating watching the second episode tonight, and each one after that.

I give The Expanse 5 Ice Trawlers out of 5.