The Expanse - Season 5 (Spoilers!)

[Mabus]

Season 5 of The Expanse just started and the first three episodes were released.
I feel like the opening scene of the first episode wasn't as strong as the previous ones and felt odd: Yes, we get it, Filip is now a full space!Al-Qaeda who is willing to leave his own men to die for a noble cause or more accurately because they lack the capacity to give a fuck. But wasn't just one asteroid what broke into pieces and impacted Venus? Where did the second meteor shower came from? And how was Filip able to arrive near Venus without getting detected by the same detection system that spotted the asteroids, since he didn't coat his ship with stealth paint. And did he placed the science vessel directly in the path of the second meteor shower, cause he didn't plot any course and the second meteor shower destroying the vessel was one hell of a luck.
Despite this, the teaser didn't affect the rest of the episode nor the other two, hhe CGI is excellent (Luna cities, Pallas station, Mars Academy, Tycho station look absolutely great), Amos had a good story, Bobbie is getting herself into dangerous waters, Johnson's new office looks better than the previous one (it feels a lot more comfortable than the penthouse garage Erich has), Drummer is now facing the consequences of her actions after her decision to let Marco live and gets to do something interesting for a change (though being a pirate is a bit odd), Naomi acts dumb again, seriously, you know what a scumbag Marco is you grew up with him, did you really think that he won't turn your son into a fanatic, Baltimore is still a shithole in the future, although at least there are solar panels everywhere.
I do find it amusing that the "Ancient (star)gate builders" were wiped out by literal "wraiths", and that the gate builders technology, most which consists of superweapons, is scattered everywhere ready to be scavenged by megalomaniacs with a God complex, though I doubt the writers watched Stargate when writing the book/TV series.
The asteroid attack is changed from the book, though I feel that it's too early to tell if it's done better or worse in the show.
Overall it's a good start.

[Mabus]

Episode 4 has some really interesting development, and Marco goes full ISIS with that black wavy flag.
Also the Savage Industries robot is a really nice touch.

[Mabus]

I really like where the show is going, but it kind of irritates me how Amazon hasn't done much advertisement. Like come on, Bezos himself is a fan of the show and helped save it. If they can advertise the hell out of The Boys, surely it won't take them much here, right?

[Mabus]

Episode 6 was good, a bit slow, I assume they're saving money for a large CGI space battle.
But what the hell was that scene with Clarissa. Last time she wasn't able to move nowhere near as fast, and the editing showing her move was something out of some shitty no budget horror film. It nearly pulled me out of the episode. I think it might be the weakest part of the entire series.

[Kinky Vorlon]

I agree. That scene was like something out of a shitty jumpscare infested "horror" movie.

I'm enjoying the season so far. Need to get back into the books.

One thing that's bothering me are the actor's ages. Dominique Tapper looks like she's in her mid/early 30s and Filip looks like he's 20. I have a hard time buying they're mother and son.

[Mabus]

"I'll try spinning, that's a good trick" xD

That torpedo spiral was pretty neat, but it was clear if you watch the final torpedo launch that it was meant to be a distraction for the torpedo carrying the protomolecule (all the decoys had orange exhaust, while the last one had a blue exhaust, meaning it had an Epstein drive).

Marco is manipulative as always, pulling the old humiliate and love bomb trick.

Damn, that Naomi space jump. Loved the detail with the water vapor condensation from her mouth and eyes moving (almost) at the same speed with her.

[Mabus]

OK, so no one on the Roci spotted the blue torpedo flying away? That's weird.

Also, I like the new UN leader, but it's clear that he's WAY over his head and that he'll do something stupid.

I was confused about what Naomi was doing, I thought that she was marking the times she went outside and tampered with the fuse boxes, apparently she was actually keeping count on how many times she used the airlock, since there's only so much oxygen in a single large room and I imagine the ship can't recover all the air that's vented.

Drummer is now faced with a tough choice, save Naomi and the Roci or betray Marco and losing one of her crewmen/husband.

So I've seen other people complaining that the season has too much filler, it's not that exciting and all (especially on the official subreddit), and after some thinking I think it has to o with the fact that Marco's attack was ended too quickly, it was stopped half-way through the season, and since the show writers have dialed down the damage to Earth from the books, as well as no one on Earth is doing anything to go on an offensive (military ships with 1000+ crewmen aren't going to help growing hospitals and food), means that the second half of the season snores itself to the finale. I haven't read the books, so I don't know how Marco's stealth asteroid attack resolution was handled there, but if the show it just feels like it was ended too quickly. Season 3 also ended the book 2 resolution half-way through, but that's because the plot from the previous season was stretched into season 3 and with the cancellation, they simply filled the second half of the season with book 3, so at least something important was happening there. I don't know how they could have improved things, but since S4 was foreshadowing the attack as being something of a game-changer, getting it resolved in 5 episodes feels like the writers gave up trying to make the story interesting.

[Madner Kami]

The fallout from the asteroid attack hasn't settled yet. I never read the books thus far, but I feel things are going to reel up from this point. What we see is the immediate aftermath of a world-ending attack. Some things still carry on under their own inertia, giving the impression that it isn't half as bad as it could have been, but it's clear that everything crumbles and nothing will be the same again. Earth is currently reorienting and reorganizing and what comes out of it, will be quite different to what it was before and comparing it to breathing, well, the world just inhaled and is holding the air in for the moment. Once the world begins to exhale, things will blow up and get swept away. That the new UN-president is kind of a bumbling idiot lets me believe, that the way forward for him is to prop himself and public opinion up by ultimatiley lashing out.

As for the damage to Earth itself... What we've seen yet is, how a prison complex was removed from existence. We didn't yet have pictures of what life is like in places that actually mattered. If there is any life left that is...

[Mabus]

Well, the second to last episode wasn't much to talk about, from the preview of the last episode there appears to be some major space battle, so I hope that the last episode will be a massive CGI fest of sorts, so that the season ends on a high note.

The fallout from the asteroid attack hasn't settled yet. I never read the books thus far, but I feel things are going to reel up from this point. What we see is the immediate aftermath of a world-ending attack. Some things still carry on under their own inertia, giving the impression that it isn't half as bad as it could have been, but it's clear that everything crumbles and nothing will be the same again. Earth is currently reorienting and reorganizing and what comes out of it, will be quite different to what it was before and comparing it to breathing, well, the world just inhaled and is holding the air in for the moment. Once the world begins to exhale, things will blow up and get swept away. That the new UN-president is kind of a bumbling idiot lets me believe, that the way forward for him is to prop himself and public opinion up by ultimatiley lashing out.

As for the damage to Earth itself... What we've seen yet is, how a prison complex was removed from existence. We didn't yet have pictures of what life is like in places that actually mattered. If there is any life left that is...

I too haven't read the books, so I don't know when the full image of the catastrophe will be presented. However, on the official Twitter, Corey mentioned that the reason why they didn't show more disaster scenes on Earth and more human casualties, is because "Disaster porn doesn't interest me". "A billion corpses on screen means far less than the name of a single lost loved one".
https://twitter.com/JamesSACorey/status ... 1977325573
I recall the authors stating at one point that they view the series as a way to fix what they consider the weaker parts of the books. I haven't looked at older tweets, but I get the feeling that the authors are dialing back both the asteroid explosions and human casualties, since they felt that wiping out nearly half of the Earth population was too much and that it made the Belters appear too evil.
However, I feel that they've also dialed down most of the story pacing, which makes the season feel like it's crawling to the season finale.

[technobabbler]

The pacing of this season after around episode 4 has been atrociously slow.

The only good thing is Amos' arc---but his arc could've been told in 2 episodes as parts of his journey could've been edited out for brevity---like the side quest to get the motorcycle.

Supposedly only 12 or so episodes until the series is permanently over. No time to waste regardless of which book the showrunners want to end the series.