Posts Tagged ‘space opera’

John Mayberry

I am excited about this post, a first guest post for allscifiallthetime.com, written by a PhD and a math nerd at that…

It is my pleasure to introduce fellow SciFi fan, Dr. John Mayberry, an Associate Professor of Mathematics at the University of the Pacific in Stockton, CA. Dr. Mayberry teaches a wide range of courses in applied math and statistics. He first became interested in science fiction and fantasy after reading Susan Cooper’s the Dark is Rising in fifth grade and found it such a welcome and imaginative escape from the real world that he has been hooked on the genre ever since. He is married with three kids and has enjoyed sharing this love with them through bedtime stories and weekend movie nights.

Here is Dr. Mayberry’s review of THE EXPANSE:

The Expanse made the news last year after its cancellation on the SyFy channel led to massive protests and rallies from fans who wanted more. Their pleas were so convincing that Amazon picked up the show, released it on Prime, and started work on Season 4. Comparisons between the Expanse and Firefly, one of my personal all-time favorite space operas, coupled with its newfound accessibility to us non-cable folks encouraged me to give it a shot. I was not disappointed. In fact, after watching all three currently available seasons in just a few weeks (no small feat for a parent of three little ones), I believe that The Expanse has surpassed Firefly and even (dare I say it?) Battlestar Galactica in the pantheon of epic SyFy channel originals.

The Expanse takes place three hundred years from now in a future where humankind has populated the far reaches of our solar system, thanks to a series of technological breakthroughs in “high-g” space travel. The United Nations controls Earth and “Luna” while Mars is under the governance of an independent military coalition. The outer reaches of the system (referred to as “the Belt”) consists of a series of asteroids and space stations operating on artificial spin gravity. The Earth and Mars depend on the Belt for resources while “Belters” are treated as second-class citizens by the “inners”. Season 1 centers around three distinct storylines that respectively follow a cop in one of the largest belt stations, the crew of a deep space ice freighter, and a high-ranking Earth diplomat as they independently discover evidence of an unfathomable plot to destroy the solar system’s fragile peace. It turns out to run so much deeper than any of them could have possibly imagined.

The show accelerates you into a “high-g burn” from the start of episode one and never really lays off the juice thereafter. BSG, for all its glorious moments, suffered from some pretty lame episodes and character inconsistencies (like Lee’s sudden “you never let me fulfill my dream of being a lawyer, dad” moment), but no episode of The Expanse is wasted on such side plots and trivialities. Everything builds towards major epiphanies that aren’t dragged out indefinitely (like in Lost), but instead brought to fruition within the scope of seasons or even half seasons and then turn into bigger questions and realizations which keep you coming back for more. In fact, at the end of Season 3, my wife and I felt like the whole first three seasons, for all they accomplished, played like a prologue leading up to an even greater space adventure in the seasons to follow.

Underlying the compelling storyline is a charismatic and well-cast group of actors whose chemistry on screen is reminiscent of the Firefly cast at times. The Tarantino-esque convergent storylines woven throughout the show merge in extremely satisfying fashion throughout the series. New characters are introduced with purpose and have important roles to play in driving the overarching plot towards its objectives. Even for sci-fi skeptics (like my wife), the characters and political backdrop of the Earth-Mars-Belter coalition will draw you in and force you to imagine what the future could be like…and whether it is the future we want to build towards or not.