I Hope The Expanse Returns

2024-02-13 1:25 PM

#tv #series #the expanse #fiction #sci fi #space #entertainment

I just finished watching the final series of The Expanse on Amazon Prime last night and I'm really hoping they continue the story. If you're not familiar with the series, it is a TV adaptation of a series of novels of the same name written by James S. A. Corey (Daniel Abram and Ty Frank). It's set a couple hundred years into the future and centers on the tensions between the people of Earth, Mars, and essentially an underclass living in the asteroid belt and outer planets who rely on the inner planets to survive. I've read and listened to the books a number of times because they're just that good as a return-to book when I need something familiar.

The TV series started on Syfy and was then dropped after three seasons. Amazon Prime picked it up and ran three more seasons before ending at the end of book 6, Babylon's Ashes. The TV series departs from the books in several areas, but more out of necessity than creative choices. For instance, the novels are very realistic in how how big space is, so there are several parts of books where the crew is in transit for months. You can't do that on TV. There are some changes in characters and their roles, but that's more because the books feature dozens of people. Each book in the novel series introduces secondary characters that go along with the main crew. You can't keep introducing new faces in a TV series.

That said, the TV series does a great job of adapting the huge universe created by the books. Without giving much away, there is a large gap of time between books six and seven in the novels that would make an adaptation difficult - Screnrant has a good breakdown of some of the challenges. The frustrating part is that season six left of with just enough hanging fruit that it could be started up again if the conditions were right.

If you've not seen the show, I would recommend reading the books first. I'm not a "the book is always better" kind of person but the depth of story in the books helps you appreciate how the show was made. The showrunners did a good job of telling a coherent, captivating, and human story in a very large, very complicated universe.