‘The Expanse’: Excellent Hard Sci-Fi on SyFy

The new SyFy series The Expanse may just be the show I’ve been waiting for most of my life.

It’s not that it has good acting, great writing, a fascinating background universe or even outstanding special effects — it has all of those. No, it is hard science fiction that doesn’t take the easy route out of how to handle things like zero gravity and the fact that life in space is generally incredibly hard.

Based on the books by James S. A. Corey, which is a pen name for authors Ty Franck and Daniel Abraham, the series takes place in the 23rd century. At that time Earth has a united government under the United Nations, and has colonized the Moon, Mars and the Asteroid Belt. Mars has become an independent, militaristic state and the Belt is sort of a Wild West with a central government — such as it can be called — based on the planetoid Ceres. The Belt is the source of most of the resources needed by Earth and Mars, and the struggle for control of those resources (much of which is ice for water and air — two very rare things outside of Earth) has led the three regions to the brink of war.

I won’t go into much of the plot, even the little I have seen from the first episode (I haven’t read the books) except to say that the circumstances of missing rich Earther heiress Julie Mao (played by Florence Faivre) connects the stories of the main characters. Those are Belt-dwelling former Earther Holden (called Jim Holden in the books and played by Steven Strait, maybe best known for The Covenant), now an ice mining ship’s officer; Ceres cop Detective Miller (called Josephus Miller in the books and played by the show’s biggest name, Thomas Jane); and highly placed UN official Chrisjen Avasarala (played by Shohreh Aghdashloo, probably best known as Dr. Rao from X-Men: Last Stand).

What I will say about The Expanse is that it combines the best interplanetary political intrigue of the original Total Recall without any of the camp, the deep-space special effects of the later Battlestar Galactica series, the work-a-day depiction of hard-working grunts in space of the original Alien, and the best-guess accurate depiction of space travel found in few movies and fewer TV shows.

Which leads me to my particular obsession — scientific accuracy, or at least, science fiction logic. I get that it is tough for most shows to deal with the production challenges of zero G or microgravity, so the easy and common solution is “artificial gravity.” One huge problem with the idea of artificial gravity is that it creates an enormous logic hole — if you are advanced enough to be manipulating gravity at such a fine level as to make specific decks on a ship have a particular gravitational pull, you have no need for any kind of rocket or other form of drive to get through space. Manipulating gravity can do it.

The Expanse has no such super-science macguffin to make things easy, and it doesn’t skimp on the scenes set in zero G. I assume they must be using wire rigs, but there is one scene with Julie Mao floating in a room on a ship, and her hair is floating all around her. That can’t be done by wire — at best the hair would hang in the direction of gravity. Maybe the SFX team put a green bald cap on the actress and made the hair CGI — if they did they nailed it.

Oh, and there’s zero G sex.

Microgravity has taken its toll on people living in the Belt, attenuating limbs and causing muscle and bone density loss — and the casting staff of the show went out and found actors to fit that description. The writers of the show (and presumably the books) also mention but don’t dwell on some of the technologies used to alleviate that problem, explaining why you have people that aren’t super-skinny and tall.

But Rodney, you ask, all that super nerd science stuff is cool and all, but is the show any good? Well, you, glad you asked. The characters are very complex — Holden (the horsey in the image to the left) is a complacent officer that doesn’t want things to mess up his life, Miller is a crooked cop in a world where it is almost impossible not to be, and Avasarala is a doting grandmother one minute and condoning torture the next. The acting is solid, from the leads and the secondary characters. The pacing is exciting, the dialogue is believable even when tech jargon is used, and as I mentioned the special effects are outstanding.

I will be adding The Expanse to my DVR list when it debuts on a two-night premiere Monday, Dec. 14, on SyFy. If you are a fan of any kind of science fiction, hard or not, I suggest you make it a must-watch show as well. And if you don’t want to wait, Syfy has the first episode available on its website and on YouTube.