SPACE SAGA

Hu­mans are in a hurry to leave the solar sys­tem and colonise new hab­it­able plan­ets through the in­ter­stel­lar ring that has brought them in con­tact with an alien in­tel­li­gence thought to have dis­ap­peared. If you don’t like sci­ence fic­tion, you won’t want to watch The Ex­panse, but if you’re a fan, you can catch up now that Ama­zon Prime Video has just re­leased the first episodes of the fifth sea­son. The se­ries is based on the books by James SA Corey, a pseu­do­nym used by Amer­i­can writ­ers Daniel Abra­ham and Ty Franck. In 2014, they won the Locus Prize for Best Sci­ence Fic­tion Novel for their third book in this space saga, Abad­don’s Gate, which con­tains the plot for the third sea­son of the se­ries. The nov­els have been hugely suc­cess­ful and re­ceived in­ter­na­tional recog­ni­tion, a suc­cess that has also moved to the screen, al­beit with some ups and downs.

The be­gin­ning of the story takes us to a fu­ture in which the solar sys­tem has been com­pletely colonised and there are in­tense po­lit­i­cal machi­na­tions. On the one hand, there are the two inner plan­ets, Earth and Mars, which are ri­vals. Earth is over­pop­u­lated and cit­i­zens are used to sur­viv­ing on a vital sub­sidy of­fered to every­one by the high­est gov­ern­ing body, the United Na­tions. Their great fear is that Mars will in­vade them. Mar­t­ian so­ci­ety, on the other hand, is highly mil­i­tarised and is work­ing on ter­raform­ing the planet, while it main­tains a fierce re­sent­ment to­wards Earth­lings for the strug­gles prior to their in­de­pen­dence from Earth. How­ever, the two pow­ers need the re­sources come from the as­ter­oid belt, where the so-called Bel­ters have de­vel­oped their own very com­bat­ive cul­ture, as they are used to doing hard work and sur­viv­ing in an ex­tremely hos­tile en­vi­ron­ment, where pure air and water are a lux­ury.

The in­hab­i­tants of the Belt are wary of both Mar­tians and Earth­lings and feel mis­treated by them. On Ceres, a dwarf planet in the Belt, po­lice of­fi­cer Joe Miller (Thomas Jane) is tasked with search­ing for a miss­ing girl, Julie Mao, who turns out to be the re­bel­lious daugh­ter of an Earth ty­coon. At the same time, also in the Belt, the crew of a ship car­ry­ing ice re­ceives a cry for help from an­other ship. When the team led by Of­fi­cer Jim Holden (Steven Strait) de­cides to help her, a se­ries of events is un­leashed that en­dan­gers peace in the solar sys­tem and threat­ens the fu­ture of hu­man­ity. Holden and Miller, to­gether with the crew of the ship Roci­nante, end up work­ing to­gether to try and re­solve the cri­sis, which is merely a pre­lude to much more se­ri­ous prob­lems, be­cause an ex­tra­or­di­nary alien power lies be­hind all of this.

The se­ries does not stand out for its spe­cial ef­fects but the de­tails and com­plex­ity of the plot draw view­ers in. This is helped by the pres­ence of sup­port­ing ac­tors of the stature of Jared Har­ris and David Strathairn, and the fact that de­spite being sci­ence fic­tion, it also works as a geopo­lit­i­cal thriller. Yet, the se­ries was about to be can­celled after the third sea­son, but pres­sure from fans – who col­lected more than 100,000 sig­na­tures, in­clud­ing that of Game of Thrones cre­ator, George R. R. Mar­tin – led Ama­zon to con­tinue the pro­ject, which will have a sixth, and final, sea­son.

TV Se­ries