From what I hear, the last hope is for Amazon to pick it up. Netflix apparently is not interested. If this show gets cancelled, this will be a huge blow to both sci-fi on TV, and efforts to keep people interested in realistic space exploration.
EDIT: Thanks for the recommendations! I'm saving this subthread to favourites and will start with one of the books you mention as soon as possible.
This makes me wonder if perhaps a deal with Amazon has already quietly been done? It would be a great shame if the Expanse got cancelled. I think it's genuinely the best sci-fi show around right now.
That's how I came across the show, after initially ignoring those placements for a few months because I didn't know how good it was and I wasn't in the mood for e.g. another "monsters" sci fi show (something I'd come to associate the SyFy channel with).
So, I watched season 1. Not too long after, season 2 launched. Amazon Video U.S. (integrated into the Prime video pages, or vise versa) had a "purchase" option for "day after broadcast" access. I purchased it and watched it. I don't remember how heavily it was promoted on the Amazon pages; I think there was at least some promotion.
Some time later, I revisited, wondering about that status of season 3. It turned out that U.S. Prime had picked up season 2. I was surprised as I'd seen absolutely zero promotion to that effect. Maybe because I'd already purchased season 2, but I'm far from certain about this.
Season 3 is now underway. And you can purchase "day after broadcast" access to it on U.S. Prime. Despite having watched both season 1 and 2, and actually paying Amazon for season 2, I've seen not one instance of promotion or listing of season 3, on U.S. Prime/Video web pages. Not one promotional email from them. Nada.
I was rather surprised at this. Amazon endlessly nags me to purchase things I'm not interested in (as well as a few that might interest me). And yet they make zero effort to upsell me on something I've already purchased?
Draw your own conclusion. To me, it seems as if they are for some reason actually actively hostile towards the show, now.
It is a shame... Expanse was very high quality sci-fi show.
Out of curiosity, are you basing this on anything or is it just your feeling?
Name one other thing recently on air that's realistic about space while also being interesting to general audience.
Closest thing that comes to mind would be NatGeo's Mars series, but that's half documentary, half speculative concept art, and definitely very niche. Beyond that, there's nothing. Before that, we had the trio of Gravity, Interstellar and The Martian, the former two being sorta-hardish if you squint hard enough. And before we had 2001: A Space Odyssey, and that's it.
It's difficult to make a space show that's both true to physics and fun/engaging at the same time. Most authors don't bother with "true to physics" part. The Expanse succeeded at both, because an excellent team took great source-material and expanded on it, instead of butchering it like usually happens. The result was a show that was interesting to non-space geeks, that still gave accurate picture of how space works. If someone asked you, "I wonder why they're doing X", or "I wonder why they didn't do Y", your answer would likely contain some explanation of real-world physics. This is how you give regular people intuition about concepts they're not encountering daily.
So yeah, losing the only show about near-future space exploration that's both engaging and highly realistic - I think it's a bad day for both science outreach and science fiction.
The TV Series started off excellently, and I think they've cast some excellent actors. Unfortunately, some of them just grate on my nerves. I'm just not convinced by Steven Strait's performance - the character he plays (Holden) is supposed to be a shortsighted idiot a lot, but Strait comes across as more of an emo kid.
The changes in the storyline, while I can understand some changes needed to be made due to the different medium, the whole current storyline in the season is just confused and the motivations of most of the players are unconvincing at best.
With the book series, I think I'm one or two full books behind, because I just lost interest. The Philipe+Father storyline could've been interesting, but instead it was boring.
Instead of focussing on a few main aspects, it's fragmented into dozens of storylines about all sorts of inconsequential and otherwise unimportant characters, and I feel like I need to carry a reference guide with each character's backstory to-date on me to be able to follow everything.
While I'll be sad to see the TV Series die, this will be mainly be because I doubt I'll see Shohreh Aghdashloo or Wes Chatham play roles quite like those again.
I gave up after book 5 (I think) but I only really enjoyed books 1 and 2 (and parts of book 3) and couldn't face another few hundred pages of "will anything interesting actually happen any time soon?".
The characterisation got dry very rapidly (almost all of the characters are unsympathetic and boring) but that wasn't so much of a problem in the first couple of books because plot and world building drove them much more. By book 3, the world building was pretty much done and the plot seemed to become much more formulaic and the "big picture" development just got frozen it seemed. The series turned into something different which I didn't want to read.
I tried watching the TV series but gave up much earlier as I didn't think it translated properly - in TV characterisation is much more important because it's what drives shows so the flaws showed much earlier. It didn't help that the acting was pretty bad too (who knows whether because of actors or script - probably both).
VFX is not enough. At least not for TV.
But not really everything applies. BSG - which I absolutely love - wasn't based on a series of good books, wasn't hard sci-fi, and didn't have a VFX team doing their best to stick to real physics.
And even more so I recommend the books.
The acting of several lead actors is really bad. Avasarala (the "undersecretary"), Bobbie (the "marine"), Jim Holden - they all portray characters in a way that is utterly unconvincing. Every scene with Avasarala is a scene that can't end quick enough. She looks like a bad impostor. Bobbie is miscast so severely it's on par with the "bitchy teenager" Anakin from Ep2 and Ep3. Holden's facial expression for determination is that of a man about to cry. In fact, he looks like his dog just died in most of the scenes.
The story and the universe is excellent, the rest of the cast is really good, but it's not enough to balance it all out.
Hahahaha, this is too true. Bobbie is also terrible. But Avasarala I thought was really well cast.
But in general it felt like we got straight-to-dvd type D-level actors (think about crappy movies like The Human Race) in a B+ level setting (writing, CGI, set design etc). I was really confused at first as to whether this was a serious series with a relatively big budget for science fiction, or something that evolved out of a college film project.
Never really knew what to think. Like, I enjoyed Miller as a character. But I also cringe everytime I see his fedora. It feels like they do a lot of the hard things right, but somehow go out of their way to mess up some of the easy things.
I like The Expanse and I will miss it.
I've been meaning to write my own scifi books to be turned into movies.
The Expanse was no Star Trek or Star Wars but it had a realistic feel to it.
That IMO makes Amazon the more likely party to purchase the US rights that Syfy had.
Netflix introduced streaming in 2007, and started content production in 2012.
Something like Jericho or Firefly being cancelled today is much more likely to get picked up.
Hell, spam Bezos himself. They're cancelling the show that literally explores the world Bezos wants to create.
That seems really high to then cancel the show?
I'm guessing the problem is it is highly loved by a small group of individuals? But given Sci-Fi in general is a wide enough demographic for many other shows - it seems strange this is not drawing in the ratings?
But I'm trying to be objective and note the lack of correlation between a shows percevied quality and how that does/not translate into ratings.
I really like the show. It is quite dense.
Syfy specializes in lcd barely-watchable crap. They get nervous when purchasing shows outside their specialty.
Nowadays everyone wants to grab your full attention so they produce serials. When you're finally hooked on the story thanks to the neverending thread mill of cliff hangers and further unresolved mysteries they drop the show and leave you hanging. Because numbers ain't right, they show the audience the middle finger. The audience is upset, but not enough to recognize a vicious cycle that hurt them previously many times.
That's one of the reasons I don't intend to watch the new Star Trek serial. Or will watch a serial after it is naturally finished.
Some shows demonstrated that you can balance long-term plot arcs with the self-contained episode format really well, and I wish more shows would do that. One that comes immediately to mind is Stargate.
Its then a coin flip for whether its self contained or has a link to the broader conspiracy arc.
I found that satisying as a kid. I wanted more of the big arc but it almost certainly wouldn't have worked if it was the central theme of every show.
If you want a happy ending, that depends, of course, on where you stop your story. - Orson Welles
You're not missing anything for it is a steaming pile of horse manure. Even Enterprise wasn't as bad.
Crisjen Avarasala is pretty much the only interesting main character in the show.
I've been skipping every Holden/Nagata scene for the entirety of this season, it's pure filler and so utterly tedious to watch, excluding it entirely would have caused no damage. If it is supposed to help explain the crew's motive, well, it doesn't help with that at all. I'd have thrown myself out an airlock in preference to remaining aboard with such utterly wooden personalities
Would love to see a lower budget breakout series of Avasarala just doing her ninja politics stuff -- she is the main reason I kept watching at all. But perhaps that is just the corner of me that misses Babylon 5 :)
> Would love to see a lower budget breakout series of Avasarala just doing her ninja politics stuff -- she is the main reason I kept watching at all. But perhaps that is just the corner of me that misses Babylon 5 :)
Me too. Avasarala carries this show by herself. And I miss Babylon 5 too. I wish someone would remaster and re-release it.
The Expanse is the best sci-fi series on TV by far at the moment, especially due to it having a good plot, a sweary UN woman, and mostly obeys the laws of physics.
The Siffy channel is rubbish anyway. Netfix has more sci-fi to watch.
(Spoilers) I especially like how all the implications of the few base assertions are being explored: renting bodies to visit with dead relatives, class separation, immortality and untouchable lawlessness for the rich, on and on. Just well done.
I also enjoy The Expanse.
Most important aspect, which is not discussed by the Hollywood reporter:
The cancellation decision by Syfy is said to be linked to the nature of its agreement for the series, which only gives the cable network first-run linear rights in the U.S. That puts an extraordinary amount of emphasis on live, linear viewing, which is inherently challenging for sci-fi/genre series that tend to draw the lion’s share of their audiences from digital/streaming
[0] http://deadline.com/2018/05/the-expanse-canceled-syfy-after-...
> "... given the commercial and critical success of the show, we fully plan to pursue other opportunities for this terrific and original IP ..." (emphasis mine)
so to my uninformed sensibilities SyFy dropping the show seems more like a distribution hickup than an existential threat. At least I hope that's the case.
Infuriating shame.
Meaning most of my friends who have Netflix ended up pirating it.
I waited until season 2 showed up on netflix last year, but if it's being cancelled anyway I don't see much point in waiting this year.
50% because the distribution licensing for this show places it in a vortex at the center of traditional cable, Netflix, and Amazon. Making it an interesting case to read tea leaves and discuss the future of programming between those platforms.
The current info from people involved seems to be that Netflix is most likely out as a candidate, but Amazon still might pick it up.
(All of that sourced from /r/TheExpanse, which I read regularly.)
I have not read the rest of the series, but there is a risk of change of tone of the series from close to realistic to more fantasy space opera setting.
However, IMHO the tone changes. But not from realistic to fantasy but from black noir to western to horror to military style story telling.
I don't quite get why they had to sign such weird contracts to begin with.
If by that you mean cable TV, apparently Amazon wouldn't pay for the full cost of the show (or even enough with Netflix buying non-Us streaming rights), so it wasn't for SyFy being will to pay (apparently, too much, ultimately) for the rights to distribute it via an obsolete method, it wouldn't have been produced at all.
> SyFy can't distribute the series through the Internet directly to viewers for some weird reason
“Amazon has purchased the exclusive rights to do that (in the US, Netflix elsewhere)” is not a particularly weird reason.
The problem here isn't obsolete distribution mechanisms, it's that the sum total people are willing to pay for it is less than the people that make it are willing to accept to keep making it.
> The Expanse, based on a series of popular novels by a duo of authors who write under the pen name James S.A. Corey, was critically acclaimed and beloved by fans, but it was expensive to produce, it delivered poor on-air ratings, and critically, Syfy had only first-run linear rights. In other words, the network did not have the OTT (over-the-top: streaming and other digital distribution as opposed to broadcast air) rights. For a show like The Expanse, OTT viewing is key for long-term revenue. The show was only made available on cable television or by purchasing episodes or season passes on digital storefronts like iTunes and Amazon.
> is not a particularly weird reason.
I'd say it is. Exclusivity harms creators and users too, who can't access the result in stores and ways that are convenient to them. In the ideal world, Alcon Entertainment would make the series and sell it in every Internet store, including their own DRM-free option :)
> that the sum total people are willing to pay for it is less than the people that make it are willing to accept to keep making it.
No, people are willing to pay enough, but distributors should stop hampering competition with exclusivity restrictions. No exclusivity means wider reach, which means more profit for creators to do their work.
Worth noting the producers are trying to find someone else to pick up the show [0]
EDIT: There's quite the effort on the show's subreddit to rally fans to ping major players like Netflix (who've pulled out apparently) and Amazon Studios [1]. Join the fight :)
[0] https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2018/05/syfy-has-canceled-the...
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/TheExpanse/comments/8iq1a0/renewal_...
I'm a huge fan of both The Expanse and The Magicians, but if the above quote is true I can see where they're coming from. The Magicians is a far more accessible show than The Expanse, and if I have to decide where to stick marketing dollars I'm going to go with the show with the larger audience.
Also, although I love The Expanse, it is not nearly as compelling as BSG or Firefly. When BSG came out 14 years ago it was really a singular experience in terms of cable TV. I would say something like Westworld follows more in the footsteps of BSG than The Expanse. And Firefly tapped into the same energy as Guardians of the Galaxy but 15 years too early.
Overall, very sad but not surprised. At least the TV show got me reading the books...
Many people on sites like this probably don’t appreciate the very limited ability and desire for most people to get into shows that effectively require serial viewing, careful watching, and even reading subreddits etc. to fully grok everything going on.
I like this sort of show in principle and I’ll still get back from my current trip to having to get back into who everyone is and what’s going on assuming I bother with the series now canceled.
Agree about BSG and I also like Westworld even with the issues I have. Firefly was a fun romp with appealing characters. I never found it especially good SF though.
Most of all though, I'd love an Avasarala spinoff.
I have no idea what all that means. Could someone please translate?
