Google is an amazing resource. For example, searching “define adaptation” quickly yields: a change or the process of change by which an organism or species becomes better suited to its environment. Also, a film about a confused L.A. screenwriter overwhelmed by feelings of inadequacy, sexual frustration, self-loathing, and the screenwriting ambitions of his freeloading twin brother Donald.
God damn it, Donald.
Spike Jonze and Charlie Kaufman knew something when they made Adaptation (2002), because the adaptation of James S.A. Corey’s Expanse novels into The Expanse television series from Syfy is fraught with expectation. And, of course, with expectation comes the fear of failure, inadequacy if you will, and, perhaps, sexual frustration. Nothing hurts the libido more than nerves, after all.
This challenge has always been one that filmmakers were willing to take on, even more so in recent years, and all without a little blue pill. It has been a huge success, with examples like Game of Thrones, True Blood, The Martian, The Man in High Castle, and comic books galore. Hollywood is increasingly aware that it’s easier to generate interest in a project with a built-in audience. Why develop Firefly when there’s a perfectly good set of characters and stories already adored by thousands of loyal readers? Contrary to popular belief, Hollywood isn’t stupid, and so, we get adaptations.
Risks exist, in that an adaptation must conquer not only the standard mountains of filmmaking (i.e. not sucking), but it must also bear the often burdensome weight of canon. This omnipresent threat from those same thousands of fans, waiting for reassurance that this new property will not betray the thing they love so much, cannot be ignored. So it is both of these aspects that this review of The Expanse‘s pilot episode must examine—taking a twofold approach, once for quality and twice for faithfulness. Boy, this sounds disturbingly like horse breeding.
To set the stage, for those unfamiliar with the book series, or merely curious about how the show handles the milieu, The Expanse begins at a critical juncture in human history. Humanity has moved beyond Earth to inhabit the entire solar system. There are two primary colonies—Mars and Ceres Station—which have become independent powers in their own right relative to Earth and her interests. Ceres Station, home to the Belters (a group of humans raised in low-gravity environments), is a powder keg of dissatisfaction. Earth and Mars have been exploiting their labor, and they may not take it for much longer.
This stage setting is the first mountain The Expanse will have to climb for a viewership unfamiliar with the source material. The paragraph above is essentially offered in the text-based opening, which provides insufficient texture to the conflict in which Corey’s characters find themselves. Early on, the show gives viewers a hint about how they might handle this moving forward with an appearance from Chrisjen Avasarala (Shohreh Aghdashloo), a character who is not even mentioned in Leviathan Wakes, the first installment in the Expanse novels. How these additions are handled is sure to be one of the running subplots for long-time fans of the books.
The story begins with Julie Mao (Florence Faivre), trapped in a storage locker aboard a disabled ship. For readers, this is immediately a good sign as the next few minutes follow Leviathan Wakes, the first of Corey’s novels, nearly scene for scene. It captures the creeping dread of what being alone on an unmoored space vessel might be like. From this point forward, again like the books, the show is presented primarily from two points of view—Joe Miller and Jim Holden: the former a hard-nosed detective on Ceres Station, the latter a self-righteous merchant ship’s officer.
Throughout the pilot, Detective Miller (Thomas Jane) and his partner, Dimitri Havelock (Jay Hernandez), are shown going about their business of criminal investigation, coupled with a fair amount of bribe-accepting for good measure. Miller’s personality is strongly established around a concept of justice, albeit one that plays fast and loose with the actual law, and a taste of chauvinism and alcohol abuse. Miller operates both inside and outside the system, which is why his boss assigns him an off-the-books missing person’s case for one Julie Mao. Jane portrays these characteristics uncomfortably well, quickly establishing himself as the star of the show.
Meanwhile, out among the stars is Jim Holden (Steven Strait), soon to be Executive Officer of the Canterbury, an ice-hauling rust bucket delivering water to the Belt. When the Cant picks up a distress signal for a crippled ship, they are compelled to offer it succor. Although many aboard the Cant would just as soon leave the damaged hull to its own devices, Holden can’t let sleeping dogs lie and reports it. Where Miller is a by-any-means-necessary kind of character, it’s quite clear that Holden is not—the means matter very much. Where Jane immediately stands out as Detective Miller, Strait tends to fade more into the background. One of the show’s biggest challenges will be finding a way for Strait and his performance to pop more, and to up the interest level on Holden, who too often comes across as a two-dimensional goody-two-shoes in the novels.
That said, the characterizations are extremely faithful to the source material, while still managing to establish an interesting narrative baseline and juxtaposition between the show’s primary characters. The rest of the cast, including Alex, Amos, and Naomi—Holden’s crew—are immediately given depth in just a few brief moments. For Alex, it’s the picture of his wife and kid. For Naomi, it’s her tattoos and disgust for Holden. For Amos, it’s his ruggedness and big muscles. There is recognition of history with each of them that will demand further exploration.
As noted, there are several small instances where the show has taken a different direction than the novels, like giving Alex a family. In every instance these small adjustments have paid huge dividends, including a clever scene between the Canterbury’s XO and Holden. The scene manages to capture the fear of the vast blackness beyond the walls of the ship, and leads to Holden’s ascension as second-in-command. This deft interplay provides not only this rich emotional soil to till, but also gives us an extra peek into Holden’s character that simply could not be demonstrated elsewise, sans Corey’s prose.
The Expanse does fall down in places, though, primarily with its dialogue. The ambient noise in the background, which does lend something to the overall tone, can often make the banter difficult to pick up. Additionally, Belter characters communicate in a patois that, while perfectly understandable in print, is nigh incomprehensible on screen. There’s cause to celebrate Syfy for embracing this tremendously unique facet of Corey’s creation, but without subtitles it may be a bridge too far for those who simply want to know what’s being said.
The show also employs bold and unique cinematography, rotating and zooming and panning in an almost nauseating way. These shots can be jarring and difficult to comprehend in two-dimensional viewing, but the barf-inducing camera tricks also manage to create a truly immersive experience. Combined with brilliant sets that engender a claustrophobic tightening effect on the narrative, The Expanse becomes almost a crucible of discomfort. If there is one thing the show should be applauded for, it is this. These aren’t the wide, comfortable hallways of Star Trek: The Next Generation or even Stargate: Universe. These space stations and ships are tiny tin cans carrying carbon-based sardines across the black, bleakness of space, where survival is unlikely even when death is rare. It is unusual for television to be that transportive, and it is an accomplishment that The Expanse should be able to crow about for years to come.
James S.A. Corey knows he has a hit. The New York Times Best Seller list told him that two years ago. The new question is whether or not Syfy can say the same with The Expanse. Based on the pilot, it seems very much like they might—although the show will have some growing pains communicating the depth of the Corey’s narrative, it appears to be in good hands. There’s no doubt that viewers will be clamoring for episode 2, which airs tonight at 10 p.m. EST on Syfy.
This post originally appeared on Tor.com on November 11, 2015.
Justin Landon used to run Staffer’s Book Review. Now he kinda blogs at justlandon.com. Find him on Twitter for meanderings on science fiction and fantasy, and to argue with him about whatever you just read.
I wish I were more excited about this. Seeing a genuine hard-SF space show on TV is remarkable. I like the realistic approach to space and ships and physics, and there are some nifty touches like the bird on Ceres flapping its wings so infrequently — although there are other annoying concessions to being filmed on Earth, like the silly trope of people using magnetic boots to walk around (which is enormously less efficient than just floating, and would be bad because the magnetic fields would interfere with electronics and communications, and probably wouldn’t work anyway because much spaceship construction uses aluminum). And for once we get an explosion in space that doesn’t look like a fiery liquid-fuel explosion in an atmosphere — although they still cheated by making the nuclear blast endure far longer than it really would in vacuum. Without an atmosphere to heat to incandescence, the flash would be over in a split second.
The setting reminds me a lot of my own novel Only Superhuman (which Tor published in 2012) — the focus on an Asteroid Belt culture centered around Ceres, with Earth and Luna combined under the UN or equivalent and Mars as a separate sovereign nation, with tensions among the various powers (although I was interested in different kinds of tension than military ones, and I had multiple competing subcultures within the Belt as well). I haven’t read the books, but I wanted to like this.
But I’m afraid I haven’t found it very engaging so far. Too much of it is stuff we’ve seen many times before — a society on the brink of war, ruthless corporations and wage slaves, corrupt cops, your typical dystopian stuff. The worldbuilding is very original for television, but everything else feels very familiar. There are virtually no sympathetic characters; the only decent thing anyone did was Holden undeleting the distress call, and that was something he did reluctantly. So far, they haven’t given me much reason to care about any of these characters. I also feel the casting did a poorer job with ethnic diversity than something like, say, the recent Minority Report series. I’ll probably give it another chance, but so far I’m only interested in the environment, not any of the people who occupy it.
it was certainly beautiful, even those disorienting slow spirals you mention. and that patois is impossible to follow. it seemed to be based on afrikaaner – my wild guess. the opening scene was beautifully done, but the distress call scene on the cant struck me as a reenactment of the same scene in alien. if they keep this back to back with childhood’s end, it will be much easier for me to remember to watch it. definitely interested for now. (…why did that guy’s arm snap off?)
@2/sofrina: The guy lost his arm because the chunk of ice they were maneuvering shattered and one of the shards crushed his arm against the hull.
Thanks for reminding me, though, since that was one part I liked — the fact that the character would rather have a prosthetic arm than a regrown organic one. Granted, his reasons were more political than anything else, but I like the idea of people in the future seeing mechanical limbs as preferable to flesh. I have a minor character in Only Superhuman, Jackknife, who lost his legs as a child and found it so useful to have interchangeable bionic lower limbs that he had his forearms voluntarily replaced with synthetics.
After all, we’re already at the point where some kinds of artificial limb, joint, or organ replacements can be better than the originals. When that becomes commonplace, when people who would formerly have been disabled end up more able than normal, maybe bionic replacements or upgrades will come to be seen as a desirable luxury and maybe eventually a universal right. Some upgrades may become as routine as getting braces or glasses is today.
I liked it very very much. As for these two sort-of-complaints from the review:
“One of the show’s biggest challenges will be finding a way for Strait and his performance to pop more, and to up the interest level on Holden”: Without spoiling things for people who haven’t seen this episode yet, I’ll just say that I think they made a deliberate decision to make the other characters on the Canterbury more interesting than Holden, exactly because he’s going to take a larger role on the show and they wanted the way in which he does so to be surprising. The writing and directing made me want to see more of the captain, the XO, and the navigator; I saw Holden mostly in terms of how those three might affect his development later on. And that made the ending of the episode really startling and effective for me.
“Belter characters communicate in a patois that, while perfectly understandable in print, is nigh incomprehensible on screen”: The scenes where they’re speaking a full-on creole aren’t “nigh incomprehensible”, they’re totally incomprehensible. That’s not an oversight, it’s a decision to shut us out of those characters’ POV, at least for now – witness how the scene of Miller interviewing the sex worker is shot, where almost none of the lines are in English so we focus on 1. Miller’s compassionate manner toward the woman and 2. his partner feeling ignorant and useless yet again. As for the occasional bits of Belter slang thrown into English dialogue, YMMV but I had no trouble following the gist of the lines; we’re not meant to know what those particular words mean, they’re just there for flavor.
@2 “the distress call scene on the cant struck me as a reenactment of the same scene in alien” – Pretty sure that’s intentional and is another example of playing with genre expectations. We’ve seen the deserted ship with a weird scary thing on it, we know that if they answer the distress call then the people in the landing party will end up eaten or infected or whatever. And then a whole different problem happens.
By the way, the sound design of the bridge noises on the ships is a bit distracting. There’s this recurring trilling sound that’s maybe meant to be some kind of sonar-ping equivalent, but it sounds like there’s a tribble on the bridge. Or a pigeon.
Yeah… no.
‘James SA Corey’ is the pseudonym for the collaboration of two writers, Daniel Abraham, and Ty Franck.
CLB @1
“a society on the brink of war, ruthless corporations and wage slaves, corrupt cops, your typical dystopian stuff.”
But the best SF is often a commentary on current society.
“the casting did a poorer job with ethnic diversity than something like, say, the recent Minority Report series.”
So it stays true to the novel, then. ;-)
@@@@@7. Petar B I do not understand the purpose of that comment. Do you just want to demonstrate that you have some cool insider knowledge or is there some suggested course of action in there?
@8/wiredog: I’m just speaking of my own preferences. I’m generally not that interested in war stories or corrupt-cop stories.
After seeing episode 2, I’m concerned that the producers aren’t trying as hard to maintain physical plausibility as they seemed to be in the first episode. The scene where the airlock was vented to space and the atmosphere was just slowly leaking out as a gentle breeze for about a minute, rather than explosively venting in a split second, was poorly handled (the only screen production I’ve ever seen that got that right was The Martian), and there was that part where everyone was lying on the floor in their spacesuits even though the ship wasn’t under thrust (because they’d just been outside doing repairs, so it couldn’t have been). And while I applaud the occasional CGI shot to suggest the low gravity on Ceres (like the bit where Thomas Jane poured his whiskey or whatever into the glass at an angle, although that seems to suggest a Coriolis effect rather than low gravity), it clashes with all the earlier shots of water falling from shower heads and spilling out of barrels at a normal rate. My problem is that I’m just too aware of gravity. I’ll never be satisfied with the portrayal of low or zero gravity in film until we actually start filming movies in space and on other planets. (Which, by the way, was the premise of my first, unsold spec novel way back when.)
People are complaining about Holden, but I don’t mind him… he’s a little flat, and not at all what I pictured (younger, for one), but I can see him growing into the role.
Amos, though? Generic tough-looking-but-attractive actor with virtually no personality, when in the books he’s one of the more colorful ones. I expected someone a lot more gruff, at least, someone who carries himself differently than everyone else, instead of a guy who looks bored to be there. Alex makes a better Amos than Amos (he makes an even better Alex still, but just by way of example.
CLB – check out the books, you’ll be much more pleased with them!
Ok, I’ve watched the first four, I’m not sure I like the extra tensions added – ppl are stupider on tv! Also I liked how the characters were a bit more noble in the books compared to this.
I’m loving the Avasarala stuff the most, maybe because it is ‘changing’ the books least, and because it adds the contrast of the 1% in this world.
As for world construction – I adore the Belter patois, although I’m disappointed that the majority of Belters are not made more physically distinguishable from Earthers or Martians. It’s a cost thing, probs, but it is unfortunate.