Good point on Koreans, Japanese, Chinese there. In fact, there's standing meme within Korean internet community about "How much difficult and hard It is to tell a difference between Arabs and Europeans on photos".
As a Japanese guy I can tell apart Korean, Japanese and Chinese. But I can't tell apart different Europeans and Africans. Or South Americans. German or British? Look same. Ghana or Nigeria? Look same. Brazilian or Mexican? Look same.
I think that the biggest, most important political message of the Expanse is that one's political opponents are still people. Right from the first book we see how the three different factions stereotype and dehumanize one another, but the actual characters from those factions consistently defy their stereotypes. Moreover, all three sides think that the other two have bad intentions, but in most cases they are not actually correct. The Martians see the Earthers as lazy slobs living on the government's dollar, but in reality the problem is primarily that there aren't enough jobs available to them, and the Martians who take the time to actually get to know Earthers on a personal level come to see that the stereotype was untrue. The Earthers see Martians as warmongers, but the Martians simply want to defend their home, and they too come to realize that the Martians are not so different when they take the time to get to know them. Both of the inner planets see the Belt as criminals and terrorists, but we're shown that, while there are plenty of both in the Belt, they do not represent the true soul of the Outer Planets. The Belters see the Inner Planets as the cause of all their problems, but the Free Navy's actions demonstrate that the Belt is no less evil than they are; human nature is the same everywhere. And because we all share human nature in common, we ought to treat each other as humans. In this day and age, where everyone always assumes that the guy who disagrees with him is only doing so because he is evil, that's a very important message. Democrats think all Republicans are racist, sexist regressives. Republicans think all Democrats are lazy, freedom-hating authoritarians. Americans think that the Middle East is all terrorists, and many in the Middle East think America is the root of all evil. The message of the Expanse is that the truth is more multifaceted than that. Yes, there are racist Republicans. Yes, there are authoritarian Democrats. Yes, there are Middle Eastern terrorists. But all of us are humans, we are not as different as we think, and the labels we place on each other do not do justice to each other. A label is only two-dimensional, and humans are three-dimensional creatures.
I think the character concept for Holden was “what if we had a paladin in the crew” and went from there. He’s very principles over consequences at times.
Well, you know how Star Trek is set a couple hundred years after things completely went to shit and there were devastating wars? I feel like The Expanse takes place during that sort of pre-utopian cataclysm.
I think the Expanse's politics are right on, and it's the humanity of the folks involved in all of it that will give it its staying power. It's such a true take on what people are like, how they react to adversity and how they segment into factions at the drop of a hat that will make it last. It's so well written, and the world is so fleshed out and the science is so strong, I think it will last or at least, not disappear into obscurity.
It's basically a hard sci-fi take on Star Wars, and I think we can all agree that the cultural relevance of Star Wars isn't going anywhere anytime soon. The Expanse will likely enjoy similiar staying power, even if it's kind of destined to stay in Star Wars' shadow.
"What I'm saying is that, by replacing our current racial divides with the new completely arbitrary ones..." - I think you'll find that our current (and past) racial divides are/were also completely arbitrary.
@@swammy6930 That is a american problem. In europe the Irish, would be seen as just Irish. It is pretty weird how the irish were singled out at that time. Maybe the enternal anglo inside americans was seething at the thought of irish for once getting a fair treatment.
@@BERKAYWOOD actually, they werent in europe either. in britain, there were signs saying "no blacks, no dogs, no irish" despite segregation not being institutionalised. being irish was no asset in england. amongst europeans, slavic and jewish people were not considered white until recently (as in post-WWII recent). Even now, that could be the case. We go back further, a "White" identity amongst european didn't exist, it would always be "people from x region are white" "everyone else barbarians and inferior races". During the colonialism of ireland they were considered to be a lesser subspecies and dehumanised (again, by britain so maybe i cant speak for the entirety of europe). this is to say europeans like to imagine they're very different from americans but this arbitrary race game has been played for much longer than america has existed as a country
You can read politics from every piece of media. Doesn't mean it was put there. It is like you create char in C++ and can cout it. But you can get trash characters. Weird analogy thou.
@@principleshipcoleoid8095 the black and red colors symbolize anarcho communism,the depressed girl represents the average worker,depressed with the fact they have to work for a oil company thats destroying the planet just so she can eat,later she encounters a rainbow cloud,the color of oil,her head is clear,we have to revolt,then she stabs the oil industry,but the bourgeoisie was to strong,they took over her mind and thats why the rest of the video is just nonsense and i dont need to explain the rest
@@Sonji_S no. The rest is most important part. Like she attacked something weird. In human form she only fought back thou. But creature was smiling.... even agreed to be attacked.... So your oil company interpretation is nonsense. If only someone translated this sing thou.
What makes the Expanse great in my opinion is, that there is no great philosophical idea behind their political system. This "let's reform stuff, but keep it moderate" is exactly what is happening in our world, and for me many political decisions in the Expanse feel so real because of that. It's just a bunch of politicans and different factions who make stupid decisions based on their understanding which eventually screw people over, but the world(s) go on just like ours.
@@METALFREAK03 But Brexit that has essentially dominated UK politics is massively radical disruption of the status quo by a movement that did it for no other reason the being knee-jerk ism politics. In fact it's the Labour Party's lack of a coherent position on Brexit that doomed them to failure. Their policies are largely popular in the general public but what mattered to those that voted wasn't policy, knee jerk or not, it was Brexit.
recently it's certainly a tug of war on some levels but seriously .. look at the last 20,50,100, even 200 years and say things are shifting to the right. People really have no self awareness
Yeah, this. The Expanse is great (among many other things) because it deconstructs modern neoliberalism and the idea that things like technology and a UBI will magically make everything good. Jules Pierre Mao is basically Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk in space. (Ironic if you consider Amazon bought the rights to The Expanse...) The visionary billionaire turns out to be the biggest evil of all, Earth with its "UBI utopia" turns out to be an absolute shithole in which more than half of the population lives miserably. The entire setting is basically a big fuck you to the Reddit type enlightened neoliberal centrist who worships Elon Musk and thinks that technology / spacefaring in itself will solve all of our problems. The Expanse is exactly what would happen in real life once spacefaring becomes commonplace.
Love your analysis of the show/books. Personally, what appealed to me so much about the Expanse (that Dune and Foundation didn't have) is how *not weird* it is. Something as "out there" as Dune is nonsensical to me. I get the broad themes, but none of is remotely relatable so it evokes no emotion in me. If the Expanse ultimately has staying power, I think the message is the counterpoint to Gene Roddenberry's vision of Star Trek. Roddenberry believed that humanity would evolve out of its pettiness, and bring peace and civilization to the galaxy. The Expanse teaches us that no matter how far our technology takes us, no matter how far we go, humanity itself doesn't change. There will always be a struggle between the haves and the have nots, predators and prey, and hopefully good people on all sides, willing to adapt and to work together to try to fix things. To me, that message is timeless, hopeful, and more realistic than Roddenberry's vision of the future. Something else the Expanse may be remembered for, is if we're ever able to travel off Earth (something I'm very doubtful of), this show may be the one that humanity looks back on as reasonable close to reality.
This. The Expanse is just our current society extrapolated to colonized Solar system, which why it's very easy to identify with the characters - they are familiar to us. We'll still be shitty to each other even when some of us are on Mars and some on Earth. There will still be racism, just the targets will change. We'll still find ways to divide ourselves, because this is how the human mind works.
While reading Dune, I had no great sense of "weirdness" when seeing the depiction of that society. Yes, it was a bit different, but not really anything humans hadn't already lived through here on Earth. But the David Lynch movie was so unrelentingly weird just for the sake of weirdness that I think it has affected the perception and the reality of the entire Dune universe. The tail has been wagging the dog ever since Lynch's vision was unleashed upon the world.
Humanity doesnt change as long as its DNA, politics and culture is the same as now. But a show with a world unified 1984 or We or Brave New World politic system, or with a DNA modified mankind or mind controled by high tech would be very diferent. In fact we are already very diferent of other cultures and of the past. You liked the Expanse because its just current liberal USA in space. Something that I personally find incredibly arrogant and boring, all tv american shows are space gringos. In scify I prefer diferent societys.
I think the series has a combination of strong libertarian and modest democratic socialist sympathies. The former is most-explicitly exposed with the "they-turned-out-to-be-right"-ness of Freehold. The former is my loose estimate of what you get when you split the difference between Holden, Avasarala, and Johnson, the latter of two's respective politics being what I interpret the series as most explicitly valorizing. While all media is political whether intentional or not (sci fi in particular), and The Expanse is more overtly political in some senses than many other works, I do think it lacks intent toward constructing any clear and specific political message, opting rather to refute various political frameworks in one way or other. I think it wants to be more about political situations and pitfalls than any particular ideological choice. As far as the series's longevity, I think the high quality of the tv show is likely to help preserve the books' relevance more effectively than most similar fiction. Without the tv show, the books might well have disappeared into the great sea of sci fi or broader genre fiction (certainly when contrasted with Foundation or Dune or even the Culture series), but a successful and quite good tv show will tend to drive comparatively high popular interest for a long time, I think. Even if The Expanse doesn't offer quite the same kinds of scathing critiques of social sectors the way Asimov and Herbert have done, it's compelling and interesting enough that I think transplant readers who begin as program viewers 30 or 40 years from now will maintain interest enough to keep the series alive. This is, of course, contingent on book 9 being the finale as expected and intended -- if the series somehow lives on in further writing, then it may do even better popularly in the long run, since there may be opportunities to dig into new ideas, and potentially some later soft-introductory book if a further story is told beginning with some kind of book 10.
Agreed. Mega-corporations are not portrayed all that favourably. Which makes it somewhat odd to me that Jeff Bezos is apparently a big fan, and part of the reason why Amazon picked it up after SyFy cancelled it 🤷🏻♂️
I appreciate what you’re doing here and I do like the fact you’re trying to give this a comprehensive analysis however at four minutes and 56 seconds in you stated that James Holden from earth is middle class clearly you forgot the fact that earth is a completely over populated planet. This means that having a huge ranch equals wealthy . His parents are accused of having him as a tax break. he is by far upper class in this future earth. Just wanted to get that point across for what’s it’s worth :-)
The message of moderation is one of the best parts of the series and should be commended, but sadly is not talked about enough. Though I do agree with you that it will probably mean The Expanse will be forgotten, as history rarely remembers moderates. As for Holdens "let-it-go" attitude towards any information he gets, I always thought the authors were trying to say that telling the truth is always best, no matter the outcome. And in our world, that's pretty radical. But I could be biased there.
SmilingNight his, ppl will do good once they have the right information- I’m glad at least in the books him in Fred learned from each other- but he was still himself. When it comes to Duarte- he was still experimenting with things he didn’t know about- he wanted to be a god..
As mentioned in the video, Holden's leaks trigger violence. I think the authors thougt politics and ethics are important for a good story, but they didn't want to say which politics or ethics are the good ones. I appreciate that the series is not a political manifest, but rather good Entertainment.
Humanity is screwed, constantly repeats the same mistakes and never learns from it...it is what it is. What I like so much about this series/books is that they show u this, and it really hits u.
looking at the expanse I think it could be a commentary on both colonialism and Independence movements. both have cause some bad things to happen through out history. like for example the Independence movement of Mars from earth could be compared to colonial america and the British, again the mindsets can also be compared with the martian desire to terraform the red planet to the manifest destiny of old america or Earth's grip over the solar system comparable to the British mindset of it colonies back then. as for the belt, it could be compared to many third world countries given there recourse rich but mostly undeveloped and fragmented nature. it also helps to paint the mindsets of stereotypes of the universe, earth the old blooded wealthy old word that keeps it richest for the elite, mars the new world that cares little other than it self and see's it self above others and the belt, a power given time but is too fragmented thanks to beliefs and too under developed to fight the others without resorting to tactics that are small in scale. that said good video can't wait for the next
It's actually said in the lore that early Martian secessionists literally compared their struggle to that of 1700's America. So, the writers aren't exactly being very subtle with that comparison.
Good video. Interesting and made me think more about the message of the slshow and books, but my crystal ball says they're in the 1% but we'll just have to see. Not too many shows get cancelled and revived with an even bigger budget these days.
I´ve only heard of the Expanse since a professor told me Augustin Gamarra and my country are mentioned in it, being probably one of the few sci fi works that acknowledges Peru. yeeeee
The problem is that the timeless 1% of science fiction franchises that values moderation has already existed since the 60's. Star Trek. And while it started dragging with Voyager and Enterprise, and just completely entered reboot hell thereafter, the original series, The Next Generation, and Deep Space Nine form a powerful core that has barely lost any relevance over the years. Sure, they might feel a little dated when you hit the poorer episodes, but when you watch the good stuff you start to realize everyone else has just kind of been playing catch-up. Quite simply put, of all the science fiction series I've known, this has been the most... human.
If you want a more crazy, interesting, and more timeless space opera, try out the Commonwealth Saga, or the Revelation Space series (the main trilogy but also especially The Prefect), or The Remembrance of Earth's Past Trilogy. Each had some weird or at least different philosophical ideas.
i hear you wanting it too be deeper than it is. i never read the books only watched the show and thought about a way to defend it, because it's my favorite scify show at the moment and by a long shot. maybe thats just it. it is the best right now and my brain doesn't want to accept that the best scify right now is just decent. for me a big plus is the technical stuff and quality of the show. they really put some work into it, to make it a believable but also interesting world.
well, looking at the books, one (myself included) could argue that they're a strong theme of political moderation, open debate and compromised policy, something which whilst unsatisfying for storytelling, could be argued to be the best way to solve all problems, and necessary for a rather polarised world. For example, following book 6, the ring hub system is regulated by a trade union, that sort of acts like a space UN (not completely, it's primary role is regulating trade and the ring space, however in book 6 the question of it's role as a more advanced space UN is touched upon). It's not perfect, and reform is needed, however it was the result of compromise, debate and moderation between all the factions of the expanse, and has worked fairly well as a result. This is contrasted with the early colonial powers of Earth and Mars, and the later totalitarian power of Laconia.
We are already seeing more "extreme" ideologies prosper anyways so it could become a classic in terms of a reminder of the "old world's promise can perpetuate themselves forever" rather than "werid/extreme ideology for the sake of weridness or extremism"
And your food, your happiness, your fancy piece of tech you commented this from, your life, your family, your friends, if it’s anything like us Indians dealt with when the Europeans showed up, your culture, your language, your religion, all vestiges of what made you you, really.
I find it funny that for all his cool ideas Duarte is revealed to be just a regular milktoast fascist, just with the aliens as the scapegoat instead of other races.
Authoritarian and terminally stupid but not fascism. Remember fascism is national socialism and there is nothing about them taking over or controlling industry. Also keep in mind that he gave very specific orders against any sort of reprisal against anyone not proven to have committed crimes which is something the nazi part can never claim.
@@olstar18 fascists and national socialists are quite different, moreover, when Nazis say they are socialist they just lie. Nazis deliberately privatised most of German economy, and glorified private buisneses in their propaganda.
@Cian McCabe That would be nice if it was. To bad it isn't. Go look up what the full name of the nazi party translates to. Fascism is national socialism. Thats where the word nazi comes from.
Elizabeth Barlow It’s a fact that the NAZI’s did massive privatizations of the economy. The only area they nationalized was the radio and TV stations. Every other industry from railroads, cars, etc... were subject to massive waves of privatizations. In fact the rate of profit for private businesses under the Nazi’s increased 3x. Arguing that the “socialist” in national socialist = being actual socialists is hilarious. I guess you also think that North Korea is a democracy because they call themselves that, or that all republicans in the US love Saddam Hussein because they share the same word as his “republican guard”. The Nazi’s were welcomed by liberal capitalists states because they supported capitalism... that’s why the 1936 olympics happened there... the USSR never had that huh? The Nazi’s were so capitalists that surviving Nazi Generals and advisors said that the Closest contemporary politician with economic ideas similar to hitler was Ronald Reagan. Sorry, facts don’t care about your feelings.
I think that precisely what makes the expanse great is the fact that it feels incredibly grounded and close to reality while still keeping that adventurous space opera feel. It deconstructs a lot of tropes about space or physics, the hard Sci fi part of things, but it also does (or at least tries to do) the same with the social or soft science, aspect of things, in a way that I find similar to the classic cyberpunk genre novels: Tech won't save us, space flight won't save us, we will keep making mistakes and under this context, the utopia requieres more than just faith advanced technology and progress. In conclusion, The Expanse, in a great measure thanks to the TV show, is probably the most popular example of what some people already call "New Space Opera": More grounded, less blindly optimistic, with more influence of subgenres like hard Sci fi and cyberpunk, but keeping the exciting space adventure feel to it
Even centuries ago, with less people, we were killing each other because there were limited resources and too many people. Man will always find reasons to kill each other.
True, but you also have to acknowledge that they didn't have modern technology like today, where we can generate electricity, mine fuel for said electricity, have modern medicine to fight diseases, and a hell of a lot of other things that makes the modern standard of living much better than it was 100 or even as early as 50- years ago. Just some food for thought.
Holden's politics are meant to be grappled with. He represents a particular type of conservative that needs to be won over to create real and lasting changes. We are meant to be sympathetic to his humanity so that we can see him in ourselves and shed the aspects which keep holden from fully being the embodiment of justice in the universe. My hope would also be that he humanizes this kind of conservative for some. It's a bit underappreciated in the books, but the implication of an earth where everyone can't be employed is that it needs the ability to provide for all these people. The martians and belters blame basic for their exploitation, but is it really possible for earth to exist as the home for humanity without it? Holden may not be perfect, and real systemic changes are necessary, but one thing holden does is point out that we are all exploited humans, that the real enemy is the earther oligarchs. The problem is he has the privilege of only being as much in the fight against those oligarchs as he wants to be.
The Expanse is the best Hard Scfi in the world. The Trek for this generation!!! That being said it touches on many genres! Politics being one of them!!! This video was refreshing, interesting and insightful...))) Excellent job!!! More videos please!!! I tend to see it like the time of mercantilism!!!
Who ever complains about someone else putting politics into The Expanse has completely missed a major part of the show lol. So much of the show IS Politics.
I feel like The Expanse has a lot of value as a story about how to be a good and hopeful person in an awful world. Holden's journey is one where his naive and childish worldview drives him to do what he feels is right, which is usually stupid things that get people hurt, which challenges and tempers his way of looking at things. Simultaneously, the series condemns the completely cynical and detached attitudes of characters like Miller, who only really comes alive when he finds someone to care about. It's about finding that balance between becoming a doomer, and having a view of the world that skews close enough to reality that you can actually improve things.
Completely agree. The thing I love about the Expanse is how it rejects the bombastic, paradigm-shifting rebellions, etc of more operatic sci fi and takes the reality of making actual change as seriously as it takes the science. Change is effing hard, and the 'incremental change' approach isn't necessarily a milk-toast inability to dream bigger so much as a humble determination to just do your part and move the needle as much as you can in your corner of the world (or solar system), and trust/hope that others are doing the same. It's rejecting the Great Man theory of history and showing how history is made by the aggregate actions of everyone, big and small. I LOVE this series so freaking much because it acknowledges the often shitty nature of reality without giving into cynicism or nihilism. Instead it looks that shittyness in the eye and resolves that it is possible and essential to still try and do some good in all that awful anyways.
Holden always struck me as more a knight errant type. Amos (the best character) is being interviewed in one book, says Holden always tries to do the" right thing" and that is why he follows him. Emphasis on tries.
It's definitely a product of its time. We have seen massive changes in the last 100 years. "what if today but spaceships" is interesting but as you said, not as thought provoking as the foundation or even some pulpier Sci fi. That said at least they acknowledge structural inequality as bad, even if they don't handle it the best way that's better than a lot of stuff.
Nice video, don't really see many on The Expanse that talk about it's politics. Personally, think The Expanse could have been more interesting if it asked why some see transforming Mars as more feasible then working to rid humanity of poverty. Or why Earth has so much automation to where jobs are hard-to-come-by and yet Capitalism is able to work with more of it's consumers living as serfs with little money. Heck, they could ask why do they need more colonies (Pre-Asteroid strike) when Humans have a whole solar system to use. Better yet kept it in Sol to make the setting more unique and to show us that the universe is well, expansive. ;)
The Mars thing is an old european religious idea: Travel far away fleeing the evils of the old world and create a new better land. Just for end repeating the same evil and repeat the cycle again. For that reason is irraional, becuase its religious.
The most educated and enterprising of Earth's population went to the Martian colony and then their grandchildren rebelled and won their independence. The Martians don't give two shits about anyone except Martians and the dream of a green Mars.
@@Kefkaownsall With cheap power and construction making greenhouses and vertical farms widespread Earth could support way more than 30 billion people. The ultimate limiting factor for a high tech society trying to fit as many people as possible on a planet isn't actually running out of space, you can make things quite compact if your willing to build up or dig down, the limit how much waste heat the planet can shed, cause after a certain point all the energy from all those farms and other industrial activities wind up as heat. The limit is around several trillion people, which is a lot, but if they all lived in cities as dense as new York and their farms were underground that would still leave half of the land surface area of the planet free for things like parks and nature preserves. ua-cam.com/video/XAJeYe-abUA/v-deo.html So yeah, 30 billion people is not feasible with modern day tech. But with the cheap fusion, construction robots, and synthetic food that the Expanse setting has, 30 billion would be more than doable.
I admit to the majority of your theses, but Jim/James Holden is in no term patriotic/nationalist. He has no relation to his homeworld. He has a strong relation to underprivileged life and life in general. He changes his thougts often, sometimes he is emotional then pragmatic, but it has always to be as he wants it to be.
Three gigantic asteroids. One hits North Africa, one hits the Atlantic, one hits somewhere in the Carolinas. Erich points out to Timmy that Bethlehem when he and Peaches arrrive in Baltimore (A.K.A. names so as not to spoil Season 5 for show watchers).
Human race aim to live on Mars. James: We have space ships now so we can be horribly to one another in space. Me: I don't think the Mars thing is a good idea.
Don’t really have any feedback about The Expanse, but thanks for ending the video by pointing out that the “weird” tends to have staying power. Makes me worry less about what I’m writing.
Trust me, making the book actually good is going to do help give it staying power than just being "weird." There is plenty of weird fiction out there, most of it is shit. So, just don't make the book awful, and you'll be okay.
Honestly I agree; this premise is incredibly well poised to take a hard left-wing stand but just lacks the conviction to do it. Its just unfortunate that those who fund this media have a vested interest in not taking a political stance, especially one that earnestly criticizes the system that gives them their undue wealth.
So, the Expanse should advocate hardline left-wing politics? Forgive me if I'm misunderstanding, but that sounds like an incredibly stupid idea. I don't know about you, but I'm not that big a fan of when a piece of media is over-politicised, especially with radical politics. And don't give me the bullshit the the Expanse was already political, I know that, but in case you haven't noticed, over the last couple of years, super political media, especially the far-left stuff like the new Marvel and Star Wars movies/comics, among other things, have been complete pieces of horseshit, primarily because the people who made that stuff sacrificed thoughtful storytelling to inject their woke far-left politics into it. So, I'm very thankful the Expanse didn't go down this dark path, and chose a more nuanced message instead. But hey, maybe I'm just a racist, sexist regressive who only likes right-wing propaganda that promotes Nazism, am I right?
@@occam7382 the star wars franchise was literally 4/6ths anti-fascist propaganda and Marvel literally has several entire subfranchises dedicated to (VERY woke at their creation) anti discrimination messages. Corpos are major enemies in both franchises and Marvel's Captain America is routinely used to show direct problems with America at time of publication almost exclusively from a leftist perspective. "New?" Yeah. Okay.
Marvel? Far left? WTF? The moment you use "woke far left" to explain modern media owned by a megacorporation that onky desires profit, I stopped taking you seriously. The Expanse is further left than either the MCU or Disney's mediocre Star Wars.
Hi: Avid reader of the books...the writer said: “The books aren’t about pointing out any particular political system works. It’s that if we don’t listen to each other and realize that maybe people we don’t entirely agree with aren’t our enemies, we won’t need aliens to kill us. We will kill ourselves.” I definitely think there’s a strong admission of “Social programs are good” is there but I think it’s there in every Sci-fi that has an actual message (See the video game Leviathan Wakes inspired, Mass Effect, and it’s message of how consolidation of power causes war and despair). I don’t think it says “This is what we need”, I think there’s a clear “This is what is broken in our society”. Holden is a “Performative American social commentary” according to the author. I could be wrong.
Honestly, I feel like the Expanse's moderate/neutral political stance is what makes it memorable and not what makes it uninteresting. The show dissociates from the "These guys/ideas bad, Those guys/ideas good" trope that most sci-fi works fall victim to nowadays. The point in the Expanse is that there are no good or bad guys. Everyone is in a gray area; everyone has blood on their hands; UN officials conspired with Jules Pierre Mao to develop a weapon that resulted in the murder of 100,000 innocents on Eros. The MCR murdered their own soldiers to test their own superweapon. The OPA committed genocide against Earth. Heck, even goody-two-shoes James Holden murdered a ship full of humanitarians at Eros. The closest thing we get to a traditional "villain" is Protogen, and even they had a pretty good cause, the protomolecule did end up changing humanity forever. The show forces us to accept that everything isn't in black and white; it teaches us the ambiguity of good and evil if there even is such thing as good or evil. One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter, and everyone thinks they're a hero in their own story; the Expanse's universe is the most human compared to most franchises. It's not dystopian but not utopian either; it's realistic, as in I could totally imagine humanity treating each other the way we do as portrayed in the Expanse because it's all already happened before: think the US, British Empire, and Africa in the 19th century.
You are wrong, the Expanse clearly promotes certain ideas: Good: Feminism, multirracialism, english language, USA political system, work based relations. Bad: Faith, patriarchy, fecundity, cultural diversity, family based relations.
Hey James, what do you think about the role of Ground warfare in science fiction where Space travel is common? As someone who enjoys thinking about that type of warfare in world building, I have to say that ground warfare would seem to be kind of obsolete in age of space fleets and the amount of highly destructive weapons like asteroids. Do you think ground armies and ground campaigns would serve any role other than being highly specialized and circumstantial?
You aren't asking me but I imagine, depending on the nature of the attacker, that they want the infrastructure and population of the planet. That means not leveling everything on it, otherwise they have to pay to rebuild and repopulate it all out of pocket. This would necessitate the relatively less destructive application of boots on the ground. This changes if the Invaders are just looking to commit some good old genocide but even then it might still require a ground invasion if they want the resources of the planet without making it unlivable through an asteroid collision that caused the sun to be blocked by dust for the next couple decades.
@@zavientey7289 The problem is that if youre not willing to use super destructive weaponry like nukes, invading a planet like say a futuristic Earth with billions of people, would be a nightmare. The planet could resist perpetually and I'd imagine unless you had teleportation, transporting the amount of troops, support personnel, tanks, aircraft/spacecraft, vehicles ammunition food etc would also be insane. Any invading force would be basically forced to make large parts of Earth unlivable for the time being.
@@lastword8783 okay but even if you nuke all major military targets from orbit, you still need to get boots on the ground to finish up the whole thing. your goal isnt to kill everyone, but to make the enemy surrender. And i think the original meaning of decimation applies here, kill 10% of the enemy, and the rest will probably surrender (which would be billions of people, in total terms)
@@VoidplayLP Military targets aren't in a vacuum. A lot of them are near population centers. The enemy isn't going to just not station troops in Los Angeles or Moscow. You'd need to nuke the major cities of USA, Russia and China and India. Lets say your invasion force is like a million (not counting all the support personnel, fleet personnel) that is a huge manpower deficit vs the defenders. You'd be fighting there for decades and the enemy can nuke your ground forces. In my opinion, i think ground forces would be largely obsolete because a culture of war would emerge where worlds just don't bother resisting once the planetary fleet and defenses are defeated. Those that do not surrender are bombed into surrendering the same way Japan was.
The Expanse is a realistic future if we ever figure out space travel. We basically watch Holden go from a guy running away from responsibility to a leading missions
I was just put on to the SyFy/Amazon TV show by a friend. I've only seen S1E1 so far, and apart from amazing visuals and a cool respect for Newtonian physics in space maneuvers, as exciting or rich TV, I was surprised to find this episode a full-on noisy bore. When does it get good (as in, characters, dialogue, and dramatic storytelling you can actually care about)? For taste calibration, I really enjoyed "Firefly", "Dark Matter", and "Altered Carbon S1" in recent years. Am I insane for my prejudice against this show based on the pilot? Will later episodes depart from the storytelling style used in the pilot (exposition-heavy, throw all the spaghetti against the wall and see what sticks, rather than drill down and examine one plot idea at a time)?
I cant say you, I loved it from the very beginning. Until you arrive until chapter 15, wich is the true end of season 1, you wont get an entire picture of the book, and I dont know if you can stand until that.
I mostly agree with your points about the series but you assume it was the intention of the authors to create a timeless political message, sometimes it can be just a great space opera. Even so, Star Wars is in the 1% in your system I assume (staying power) but has a milk-toast political message.
Carl Sagan's Cosmos had a segment about ancient thinkers, in many ways they were prodigious thinkers, intellectual giants who constructed the foundation of modern science with no preexisting knowledge than what they could observe themselves and the most rudimentary of tools. But in other ways they had ideologies that would make modern man recoil in disgust.
Review Steve Jacksons Sorcery! Choose your own adventure books or even better in my opinion, the games! Theyre fucking amazing and can be played on your phone if you dont want to buy them on steam. Part 2 and 3 are so good.
I LOVE the Expanse, specifically because of the high detailed politics. In my opinion, they did a very good job of 'expanding' civilization in a believable way.
Just want to point out for the record that I'm not a monarchist. Democracy is a great form of government for the average person who wants to live freely. But it can only work well with either an educated population and or a large class of people with monetary investment in the system. Without a healthy middle class a democracy will quickly fall into authoritarianism and civil war.
I honestly cant think of a reason for anyone to support monarchy anymore. Rome proved adopted sons were far superior to born ones so if youre going to go authoritarian, dictators who choose sucessors is the only way to go. Unless you go full ancap, which is basically so libertarian it becomes authoritarian.
"large class of people with monetary investment in the system. Without a healthy middle class a democracy will quickly fall into authoritarianism and civil war." Ex-actly. I've not seen the show, I'm reading reviews to decide whether to buy it to watch. But from what I've seen written about it Earth represents socialism in this show and that piques my interest seeing the left's movement taking place in the US at the moment. Try to kill the middle class in order to introduce socialism and governmental dictatorship.
@@whatwhat7119 Those roman emperors werent dictators, dictators were abolished by Caesar. They were simply monarchs that adopted their sucessors. Parlamentary monarchies are currently more succesful than republics on average.
Two things you might edit:1. No, not ALL art is political in some way. This gross generalization of ALL artwork is a really bad lead into the more interesting analysis of the Series in the video. 2. You really should slap a huge spoiler warning up when you start to progress beyond Ciabola Burn. A lot of new fans haven't even gotten past Abbadon's Gate and are reading along with the show.
Do you know the book we are legion from dennis e taylor i thin his bob trilogy is great Anazher auther i like to read is cixin lius Remembrance of Earth's Past
Most frustrating thing for me in real life is, not only do we not have 1 goal as a species/planet, but we aren't even unified in our countries. America is as far divided as ever and its disappointing that we could never have the sense of unity and purpose that Mars has. At least not in our lifetime
7:00 to be fair real woke, not the half assed buzz world that it has become, is defined by being aware of injustices in society. Wanting or willing to change that injustice in not required.
It's a little strange to me that that coffeemaker can withstand multi-hour 5g burns and short 15g+ bursts but Holden can just smash it into pieces at 0.3g of simulated gravity.
We had 5-g coffee makers in US Air Force RC-135 aircraft (that was a logistics kerfluffle in one contract), and those could yet be similarly destroyed.
its pretty simple. mars = murica (its in one of the books), earth+luna is socialist (not communist), the belt (and eventually freehold) is libertarian, laconia is fascist.
Also things like most of the Middle East is in Asia so someone from Saudi Arabia is technically Asian. People also tend to forget Egypt and most of the rest of the Northern African nations are in Africa. (a part of Egypt is also in Asia making it one of the few countries in two continents) And Arabs. I have seen very dark and very white Arabs. People tend to treat the Middle East as almost a separate continent instead of being spread out across two - Asia and Africa. Race is weird and makes no sense especially where Arabs are concerned
Volume gah... just because you can edit with your volume output at max, doesn't mean you should. turn down your master vol before you blow out everyones speakers / eardrums
In The Expanse, humanity has not yet overcome the capitalist model of production. Real Socialism or Communism itself we can see the closest thing to it in Star Trek. There is nothing Socialism or Communism about The Expanse.
I'm a fan of SF but I never got into this series. The first book annoyed me with a strawman feminist at the begining and even forcing myself to read the first book didn't help since the only reason I was reading it was because of the hard SF aspects of the setting, hard sf aspects that were done away with completely in the second book.
I read the first book and I didn't like it, but I don't know who the strawman feminist is. I can only remember 2 major female characters. One was just love interest and the other was literally a figment of imagination
@@indigo714 The head of the UN. The very first time she's introduced she has a comment about how a bunch of generals whose job it is to brief her and be prepared for war are stereotypical war mongering testosterone filled something or other. And the worse part - for me - was that I really liked the actress they got to play her, but her dialogue just killed the character and the momentum of the book, the abandoning of hard SF killed the series.
1 minute in and you have no understanding of any of it. The earth has billions on basic, because of its existence (as alluded to all the time by Martians). Mars is hell, basically pioneer country with everyone pulled into a single goal, which is essentially an authoritarian militaristic state ala starship troopers. It is not better than earth by a million years - again referenced all the time.
The majority of people who comment on politicization are in fact inarticulate. While i concede that you likely deal with the spectrum of them, the point i remember them trying to make was similar to "what shall we ask of writers" but lacking the ability to make it coherent. along with the ignorance the internet is known for. Namely that they that they do not what thinly veiled propaganda. While its also possible they recoil at the iconoclasm that political interpretation of works can also lead to. Having watched people attempt to deface the statue of sir richard peel for having dared to have tried to create a model for the police that wasn't awful aving been confused for his father. And with Gandhi, churchill (ironically) lord admiral Nelson actually. Of course there comes the stigma with say with starship troopers and others and in what seems to be an increasingly radicalized climate they want to avoid the label of facist/commie fir enjoying a work. Many of them seem to be centrists or the desperately nonpolitical that want to enjoy their grills in peace. And honestly i cannot blame them. Thats unrelated to the video which is good though. Just my thoughts on the matter.
holy fn click bait eh lol. I disagree mostly, it is milk toast but that doesn't mean it cant be great. We live in a world where typical is radical and its not always going to be that way. This show is going to say a lot about the world we lived 20 years from now. At least I think so.
I assume you are going off the books cuz free navy was introduced just thir season. While the video is interesting, i will stop half way, cuz I don't wanna spoil myself.
I really like the Expanse, but I feel it lost something with the Ring Gates, other worlds to settle and even the general alien protomolecule $#!T. The grittiness and realism got diluted and an opportunity was missed to show humanity as claustrophobic and backed into a corner with resources and population even with the solar system colonized. It turned into a more traditional space opera when it started out as a somewhat terrifying concept of we have finally conquered space and we’re still f#@ked.
0:31 this loop is exactly why the first 3 seasons are fantastically overrated, the 4th is nice but comeon they could have spent that time talking up Dark matter
Thank you for this comment! I /loved/ "Dark Matter". I regard it as "brilliant, but cancelled." Having just now finished the pilot episode of "The Expanse", I wondered if it was just me, or if this show was actually shite compared with the low-budget storytelling goodness that was Dark Matter. (or is the "Dark Matter" you're talking about a concept within The Expanse in a later season?...)
the show's not bad it's just that it spends way, way too long getting to things, the detective was good and played by an actor i like but it's not Game of Thrones in space
Holden smashing up that coffee machine will forever be a mood.
Utrix _ coffee machine mood
Good point on Koreans, Japanese, Chinese there. In fact, there's standing meme within Korean internet community about "How much difficult and hard It is to tell a difference between Arabs and Europeans on photos".
Japanese chines and Asians all look the same and Arabs are brown
@@gloriesnormaldude7513 Dude one of my neighbors is Arab and he looks as white as my boss who is white.
@@gloriesnormaldude7513 Americans british canadians all look the same too lol
@Cian McCabe Yeah, I know a Japanese guy who's also light skinned and it's sad to see that people think there is any difference in ethnic groups.
As a Japanese guy I can tell apart Korean, Japanese and Chinese. But I can't tell apart different Europeans and Africans. Or South Americans.
German or British? Look same.
Ghana or Nigeria? Look same.
Brazilian or Mexican? Look same.
This is the introduction song.
It's not very good.
But it's not too long.
I tried to count the amount of times he smashed that coffee machine, but yeah.... i couldnt.
74.35 times.
@@JamesTullos I feel like you just pulled that number out of your ass
@@whosecho5156 no no he's right i did the math
The Expanse's staying power is also in bringing back somewhat harder science into popular fiction.
I think that the biggest, most important political message of the Expanse is that one's political opponents are still people. Right from the first book we see how the three different factions stereotype and dehumanize one another, but the actual characters from those factions consistently defy their stereotypes. Moreover, all three sides think that the other two have bad intentions, but in most cases they are not actually correct. The Martians see the Earthers as lazy slobs living on the government's dollar, but in reality the problem is primarily that there aren't enough jobs available to them, and the Martians who take the time to actually get to know Earthers on a personal level come to see that the stereotype was untrue. The Earthers see Martians as warmongers, but the Martians simply want to defend their home, and they too come to realize that the Martians are not so different when they take the time to get to know them. Both of the inner planets see the Belt as criminals and terrorists, but we're shown that, while there are plenty of both in the Belt, they do not represent the true soul of the Outer Planets. The Belters see the Inner Planets as the cause of all their problems, but the Free Navy's actions demonstrate that the Belt is no less evil than they are; human nature is the same everywhere. And because we all share human nature in common, we ought to treat each other as humans.
In this day and age, where everyone always assumes that the guy who disagrees with him is only doing so because he is evil, that's a very important message. Democrats think all Republicans are racist, sexist regressives. Republicans think all Democrats are lazy, freedom-hating authoritarians. Americans think that the Middle East is all terrorists, and many in the Middle East think America is the root of all evil. The message of the Expanse is that the truth is more multifaceted than that. Yes, there are racist Republicans. Yes, there are authoritarian Democrats. Yes, there are Middle Eastern terrorists. But all of us are humans, we are not as different as we think, and the labels we place on each other do not do justice to each other. A label is only two-dimensional, and humans are three-dimensional creatures.
I love this take, since it pretty much explains the current political climate, even if not the authors intention to sell that idea.
You forgot Gynocentrism of humanity.
To be fair, It wasn't mentioned in The Expance.
"We're all humans!" is possibly the biggest most meaningless circlejerk statement you could make.
👏.
萧圣雨 What? Why?
I think the character concept for Holden was “what if we had a paladin in the crew” and went from there. He’s very principles over consequences at times.
The original concept for the expanse was for a MMO. Holden is literally a pure good video game protagonist but in a world were this dosnt make sense
@@thekillerseat and concept for mmo developed from their dnd campaign
Well, you know how Star Trek is set a couple hundred years after things completely went to shit and there were devastating wars? I feel like The Expanse takes place during that sort of pre-utopian cataclysm.
I think the Expanse's politics are right on, and it's the humanity of the folks involved in all of it that will give it its staying power. It's such a true take on what people are like, how they react to adversity and how they segment into factions at the drop of a hat that will make it last. It's so well written, and the world is so fleshed out and the science is so strong, I think it will last or at least, not disappear into obscurity.
It's basically a hard sci-fi take on Star Wars, and I think we can all agree that the cultural relevance of Star Wars isn't going anywhere anytime soon. The Expanse will likely enjoy similiar staying power, even if it's kind of destined to stay in Star Wars' shadow.
"What I'm saying is that, by replacing our current racial divides with the new completely arbitrary ones..." - I think you'll find that our current (and past) racial divides are/were also completely arbitrary.
Thats what he said
They werent arbitrary.
Language, culture and body diferences were very significative and still are for people in warlike mood.
@@adamnesico irish people not being considered white is definitely very arbitrary
@@swammy6930 That is a american problem. In europe the Irish, would be seen as just Irish. It is pretty weird how the irish were singled out at that time. Maybe the enternal anglo inside americans was seething at the thought of irish for once getting a fair treatment.
@@BERKAYWOOD actually, they werent in europe either. in britain, there were signs saying "no blacks, no dogs, no irish" despite segregation not being institutionalised. being irish was no asset in england. amongst europeans, slavic and jewish people were not considered white until recently (as in post-WWII recent). Even now, that could be the case. We go back further, a "White" identity amongst european didn't exist, it would always be "people from x region are white" "everyone else barbarians and inferior races". During the colonialism of ireland they were considered to be a lesser subspecies and dehumanised (again, by britain so maybe i cant speak for the entirety of europe). this is to say europeans like to imagine they're very different from americans but this arbitrary race game has been played for much longer than america has existed as a country
"every piece of media is political" SU-SU-SU-SUPER MARIO BROTHER 2 BABYYY
Monarchism and revolution
You can read politics from every piece of media. Doesn't mean it was put there.
It is like you create char in C++ and can cout it. But you can get trash characters. Weird analogy thou.
Let's play a game. I post link, you politically analise it.
ua-cam.com/video/4tne2YXD87U/v-deo.html
@@principleshipcoleoid8095 the black and red colors symbolize anarcho communism,the depressed girl represents the average worker,depressed with the fact they have to work for a oil company thats destroying the planet just so she can eat,later she encounters a rainbow cloud,the color of oil,her head is clear,we have to revolt,then she stabs the oil industry,but the bourgeoisie was to strong,they took over her mind and thats why the rest of the video is just nonsense and i dont need to explain the rest
@@Sonji_S no. The rest is most important part. Like she attacked something weird.
In human form she only fought back thou.
But creature was smiling.... even agreed to be attacked....
So your oil company interpretation is nonsense.
If only someone translated this sing thou.
What makes the Expanse great in my opinion is, that there is no great philosophical idea behind their political system. This "let's reform stuff, but keep it moderate" is exactly what is happening in our world, and for me many political decisions in the Expanse feel so real because of that. It's just a bunch of politicans and different factions who make stupid decisions based on their understanding which eventually screw people over, but the world(s) go on just like ours.
@@METALFREAK03 But Brexit that has essentially dominated UK politics is massively radical disruption of the status quo by a movement that did it for no other reason the being knee-jerk ism politics. In fact it's the Labour Party's lack of a coherent position on Brexit that doomed them to failure. Their policies are largely popular in the general public but what mattered to those that voted wasn't policy, knee jerk or not, it was Brexit.
Okay nazi. We'll have another world war to clean your kind.
Xyphis check out enlightened centrism ahahahahAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH
recently it's certainly a tug of war on some levels but seriously .. look at the last 20,50,100, even 200 years and say things are shifting to the right. People really have no self awareness
Yeah, this. The Expanse is great (among many other things) because it deconstructs modern neoliberalism and the idea that things like technology and a UBI will magically make everything good. Jules Pierre Mao is basically Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk in space. (Ironic if you consider Amazon bought the rights to The Expanse...)
The visionary billionaire turns out to be the biggest evil of all, Earth with its "UBI utopia" turns out to be an absolute shithole in which more than half of the population lives miserably.
The entire setting is basically a big fuck you to the Reddit type enlightened neoliberal centrist who worships Elon Musk and thinks that technology / spacefaring in itself will solve all of our problems. The Expanse is exactly what would happen in real life once spacefaring becomes commonplace.
Love your analysis of the show/books. Personally, what appealed to me so much about the Expanse (that Dune and Foundation didn't have) is how *not weird* it is. Something as "out there" as Dune is nonsensical to me. I get the broad themes, but none of is remotely relatable so it evokes no emotion in me.
If the Expanse ultimately has staying power, I think the message is the counterpoint to Gene Roddenberry's vision of Star Trek. Roddenberry believed that humanity would evolve out of its pettiness, and bring peace and civilization to the galaxy. The Expanse teaches us that no matter how far our technology takes us, no matter how far we go, humanity itself doesn't change. There will always be a struggle between the haves and the have nots, predators and prey, and hopefully good people on all sides, willing to adapt and to work together to try to fix things. To me, that message is timeless, hopeful, and more realistic than Roddenberry's vision of the future.
Something else the Expanse may be remembered for, is if we're ever able to travel off Earth (something I'm very doubtful of), this show may be the one that humanity looks back on as reasonable close to reality.
This.
The Expanse is just our current society extrapolated to colonized Solar system, which why it's very easy to identify with the characters - they are familiar to us. We'll still be shitty to each other even when some of us are on Mars and some on Earth. There will still be racism, just the targets will change. We'll still find ways to divide ourselves, because this is how the human mind works.
While reading Dune, I had no great sense of "weirdness" when seeing the depiction of that society. Yes, it was a bit different, but not really anything humans hadn't already lived through here on Earth. But the David Lynch movie was so unrelentingly weird just for the sake of weirdness that I think it has affected the perception and the reality of the entire Dune universe. The tail has been wagging the dog ever since Lynch's vision was unleashed upon the world.
@@shurik121 There isnt any racism in the Expanse, noone cares wich race is anyone, racism has been replaced with nationalism.
Humanity doesnt change as long as its DNA, politics and culture is the same as now.
But a show with a world unified 1984 or We or Brave New World politic system, or with a DNA modified mankind or mind controled by high tech would be very diferent.
In fact we are already very diferent of other cultures and of the past.
You liked the Expanse because its just current liberal USA in space.
Something that I personally find incredibly arrogant and boring, all tv american shows are space gringos.
In scify I prefer diferent societys.
I think the series has a combination of strong libertarian and modest democratic socialist sympathies. The former is most-explicitly exposed with the "they-turned-out-to-be-right"-ness of Freehold. The former is my loose estimate of what you get when you split the difference between Holden, Avasarala, and Johnson, the latter of two's respective politics being what I interpret the series as most explicitly valorizing. While all media is political whether intentional or not (sci fi in particular), and The Expanse is more overtly political in some senses than many other works, I do think it lacks intent toward constructing any clear and specific political message, opting rather to refute various political frameworks in one way or other. I think it wants to be more about political situations and pitfalls than any particular ideological choice.
As far as the series's longevity, I think the high quality of the tv show is likely to help preserve the books' relevance more effectively than most similar fiction. Without the tv show, the books might well have disappeared into the great sea of sci fi or broader genre fiction (certainly when contrasted with Foundation or Dune or even the Culture series), but a successful and quite good tv show will tend to drive comparatively high popular interest for a long time, I think. Even if The Expanse doesn't offer quite the same kinds of scathing critiques of social sectors the way Asimov and Herbert have done, it's compelling and interesting enough that I think transplant readers who begin as program viewers 30 or 40 years from now will maintain interest enough to keep the series alive. This is, of course, contingent on book 9 being the finale as expected and intended -- if the series somehow lives on in further writing, then it may do even better popularly in the long run, since there may be opportunities to dig into new ideas, and potentially some later soft-introductory book if a further story is told beginning with some kind of book 10.
He really hates that coffee machine.
I see The Expanse as a really entertaining argument against the privatization of space exploration :)
Agreed. Mega-corporations are not portrayed all that favourably. Which makes it somewhat odd to me that Jeff Bezos is apparently a big fan, and part of the reason why Amazon picked it up after SyFy cancelled it 🤷🏻♂️
Better than space travel being government controlled
@@timweber1695 However we choose for space exploration to be controlled it needs to be democratic
How about it not be controlled?
@Rechordian I'm not so sure. Have it patrolled and secure, but not controlled
I appreciate what you’re doing here and I do like the fact you’re trying to give this a comprehensive analysis
however at four minutes and 56 seconds in you stated that James Holden from earth is middle class
clearly you forgot the fact that earth is a completely over populated planet. This means that having a huge ranch equals wealthy . His parents are accused of having him as a tax break. he is by far upper class in this future earth.
Just wanted to get that point across for what’s it’s worth :-)
Upper class but not aristocracy like mao or cristjin
Geoff Tillman agreed
I think he’s still middle class, just that the meaning of middle class has changed a lot. Socially, he’s still middle class.
The message of moderation is one of the best parts of the series and should be commended, but sadly is not talked about enough. Though I do agree with you that it will probably mean The Expanse will be forgotten, as history rarely remembers moderates.
As for Holdens "let-it-go" attitude towards any information he gets, I always thought the authors were trying to say that telling the truth is always best, no matter the outcome. And in our world, that's pretty radical. But I could be biased there.
SmilingNight his, ppl will do good once they have the right information- I’m glad at least in the books him in Fred learned from each other- but he was still himself. When it comes to Duarte- he was still experimenting with things he didn’t know about- he wanted to be a god..
As mentioned in the video, Holden's leaks trigger violence. I think the authors thougt politics and ethics are important for a good story, but they didn't want to say which politics or ethics are the good ones.
I appreciate that the series is not a political manifest, but rather good Entertainment.
Humanity is screwed, constantly repeats the same mistakes and never learns from it...it is what it is. What I like so much about this series/books is that they show u this, and it really hits u.
Ok doomer
@@doomguy1167 Your name makes this comment amazing
looking at the expanse I think it could be a commentary on both colonialism and Independence movements. both have cause some bad things to happen through out history. like for example the Independence movement of Mars from earth could be compared to colonial america and the British, again the mindsets can also be compared with the martian desire to terraform the red planet to the manifest destiny of old america or Earth's grip over the solar system comparable to the British mindset of it colonies back then.
as for the belt, it could be compared to many third world countries given there recourse rich but mostly undeveloped and fragmented nature. it also helps to paint the mindsets of stereotypes of the universe, earth the old blooded wealthy old word that keeps it richest for the elite, mars the new world that cares little other than it self and see's it self above others and the belt, a power given time but is too fragmented thanks to beliefs and too under developed to fight the others without resorting to tactics that are small in scale.
that said good video can't wait for the next
It's actually said in the lore that early Martian secessionists literally compared their struggle to that of 1700's America. So, the writers aren't exactly being very subtle with that comparison.
Highly disappointed communism did not appear in this video despite the thumbnail
It was clickbait. It's always clickbait with these guys.
Good video. Interesting and made me think more about the message of the slshow and books, but my crystal ball says they're in the 1% but we'll just have to see. Not too many shows get cancelled and revived with an even bigger budget these days.
I´ve only heard of the Expanse since a professor told me Augustin Gamarra and my country are mentioned in it, being probably one of the few sci fi works that acknowledges Peru. yeeeee
The problem is that the timeless 1% of science fiction franchises that values moderation has already existed since the 60's. Star Trek. And while it started dragging with Voyager and Enterprise, and just completely entered reboot hell thereafter, the original series, The Next Generation, and Deep Space Nine form a powerful core that has barely lost any relevance over the years. Sure, they might feel a little dated when you hit the poorer episodes, but when you watch the good stuff you start to realize everyone else has just kind of been playing catch-up. Quite simply put, of all the science fiction series I've known, this has been the most... human.
You call StarTrek moderation? Is completelly socialist.
The belters remind me more of the plight of Palestinians than blacks, particularly season 4.
If you want a more crazy, interesting, and more timeless space opera, try out the Commonwealth Saga, or the Revelation Space series (the main trilogy but also especially The Prefect), or The Remembrance of Earth's Past Trilogy. Each had some weird or at least different philosophical ideas.
i hear you wanting it too be deeper than it is. i never read the books only watched the show and thought about a way to defend it, because it's my favorite scify show at the moment and by a long shot. maybe thats just it. it is the best right now and my brain doesn't want to accept that the best scify right now is just decent. for me a big plus is the technical stuff and quality of the show. they really put some work into it, to make it a believable but also interesting world.
well, looking at the books, one (myself included) could argue that they're a strong theme of political moderation, open debate and compromised policy, something which whilst unsatisfying for storytelling, could be argued to be the best way to solve all problems, and necessary for a rather polarised world. For example, following book 6, the ring hub system is regulated by a trade union, that sort of acts like a space UN (not completely, it's primary role is regulating trade and the ring space, however in book 6 the question of it's role as a more advanced space UN is touched upon). It's not perfect, and reform is needed, however it was the result of compromise, debate and moderation between all the factions of the expanse, and has worked fairly well as a result. This is contrasted with the early colonial powers of Earth and Mars, and the later totalitarian power of Laconia.
This is a very interesting take and I'll have to digest it more to see what I think...
We are already seeing more "extreme" ideologies prosper anyways so it could become a classic in terms of a reminder of the "old world's promise can perpetuate themselves forever" rather than "werid/extreme ideology for the sake of weridness or extremism"
jreg
WE HAVE NOTHING TO LOOSE BUT OUR CHAINS !
And your life.
And your food, your happiness, your fancy piece of tech you commented this from, your life, your family, your friends, if it’s anything like us Indians dealt with when the Europeans showed up, your culture, your language, your religion, all vestiges of what made you you, really.
@@AtaMarKat But those are the very chains we will be set free from !
Raven Knight How pitiful a life you must lead, that such wondrous things are chains to you.
@@AtaMarKat bEtTEr tO liVe FrEe thAn To LiVe In COmforT
Why did I watch 18 minutes of a guy smashing an expresso machine?
The one thing you’re not accounting for is the world of the expanse which I think is better than other sci fi series.
I find it funny that for all his cool ideas Duarte is revealed to be just a regular milktoast fascist, just with the aliens as the scapegoat instead of other races.
Authoritarian and terminally stupid but not fascism. Remember fascism is national socialism and there is nothing about them taking over or controlling industry. Also keep in mind that he gave very specific orders against any sort of reprisal against anyone not proven to have committed crimes which is something the nazi part can never claim.
@@olstar18 fascists and national socialists are quite different, moreover, when Nazis say they are socialist they just lie. Nazis deliberately privatised most of German economy, and glorified private buisneses in their propaganda.
@@Horesmi Every time I post to refute your statement it gets deleted for some reason.
@Cian McCabe That would be nice if it was. To bad it isn't. Go look up what the full name of the nazi party translates to. Fascism is national socialism. Thats where the word nazi comes from.
Elizabeth Barlow It’s a fact that the NAZI’s did massive privatizations of the economy. The only area they nationalized was the radio and TV stations. Every other industry from railroads, cars, etc... were subject to massive waves of privatizations. In fact the rate of profit for private businesses under the Nazi’s increased 3x.
Arguing that the “socialist” in national socialist = being actual socialists is hilarious.
I guess you also think that North Korea is a democracy because they call themselves that, or that all republicans in the US love Saddam Hussein because they share the same word as his “republican guard”.
The Nazi’s were welcomed by liberal capitalists states because they supported capitalism... that’s why the 1936 olympics happened there... the USSR never had that huh?
The Nazi’s were so capitalists that surviving Nazi Generals and advisors said that the Closest contemporary politician with economic ideas similar to hitler was Ronald Reagan.
Sorry, facts don’t care about your feelings.
I think that precisely what makes the expanse great is the fact that it feels incredibly grounded and close to reality while still keeping that adventurous space opera feel. It deconstructs a lot of tropes about space or physics, the hard Sci fi part of things, but it also does (or at least tries to do) the same with the social or soft science, aspect of things, in a way that I find similar to the classic cyberpunk genre novels: Tech won't save us, space flight won't save us, we will keep making mistakes and under this context, the utopia requieres more than just faith advanced technology and progress.
In conclusion, The Expanse, in a great measure thanks to the TV show, is probably the most popular example of what some people already call "New Space Opera": More grounded, less blindly optimistic, with more influence of subgenres like hard Sci fi and cyberpunk, but keeping the exciting space adventure feel to it
Even centuries ago, with less people, we were killing each other because there were limited resources and too many people. Man will always find reasons to kill each other.
True, but you also have to acknowledge that they didn't have modern technology like today, where we can generate electricity, mine fuel for said electricity, have modern medicine to fight diseases, and a hell of a lot of other things that makes the modern standard of living much better than it was 100 or even as early as 50- years ago. Just some food for thought.
Holden's politics are meant to be grappled with. He represents a particular type of conservative that needs to be won over to create real and lasting changes. We are meant to be sympathetic to his humanity so that we can see him in ourselves and shed the aspects which keep holden from fully being the embodiment of justice in the universe.
My hope would also be that he humanizes this kind of conservative for some. It's a bit underappreciated in the books, but the implication of an earth where everyone can't be employed is that it needs the ability to provide for all these people. The martians and belters blame basic for their exploitation, but is it really possible for earth to exist as the home for humanity without it? Holden may not be perfect, and real systemic changes are necessary, but one thing holden does is point out that we are all exploited humans, that the real enemy is the earther oligarchs.
The problem is he has the privilege of only being as much in the fight against those oligarchs as he wants to be.
The Expanse is the best Hard Scfi in the world. The Trek for this generation!!!
That being said it touches on many genres! Politics being one of them!!!
This video was refreshing, interesting and insightful...)))
Excellent job!!! More videos please!!! I tend to see it like the time of mercantilism!!!
Holden at first just wanted to get revenge for his girl and his his crew.... then sht just unwound after that.
Slowly progressing until we're slightly ahead!
Who ever complains about someone else putting politics into The Expanse has completely missed a major part of the show lol. So much of the show IS Politics.
I feel like The Expanse has a lot of value as a story about how to be a good and hopeful person in an awful world. Holden's journey is one where his naive and childish worldview drives him to do what he feels is right, which is usually stupid things that get people hurt, which challenges and tempers his way of looking at things. Simultaneously, the series condemns the completely cynical and detached attitudes of characters like Miller, who only really comes alive when he finds someone to care about. It's about finding that balance between becoming a doomer, and having a view of the world that skews close enough to reality that you can actually improve things.
Completely agree. The thing I love about the Expanse is how it rejects the bombastic, paradigm-shifting rebellions, etc of more operatic sci fi and takes the reality of making actual change as seriously as it takes the science. Change is effing hard, and the 'incremental change' approach isn't necessarily a milk-toast inability to dream bigger so much as a humble determination to just do your part and move the needle as much as you can in your corner of the world (or solar system), and trust/hope that others are doing the same. It's rejecting the Great Man theory of history and showing how history is made by the aggregate actions of everyone, big and small. I LOVE this series so freaking much because it acknowledges the often shitty nature of reality without giving into cynicism or nihilism. Instead it looks that shittyness in the eye and resolves that it is possible and essential to still try and do some good in all that awful anyways.
Holden always struck me as more a knight errant type. Amos (the best character) is being interviewed in one book, says Holden always tries to do the" right thing" and that is why he follows him. Emphasis on tries.
The Knight and Canterbury are called that for that reason.
It's definitely a product of its time. We have seen massive changes in the last 100 years. "what if today but spaceships" is interesting but as you said, not as thought provoking as the foundation or even some pulpier Sci fi.
That said at least they acknowledge structural inequality as bad, even if they don't handle it the best way that's better than a lot of stuff.
that's a weak ass coffe machine
One of your more solid videos, an improvement after watching some of your top ten videos were you come across as pretty vague.
Nice video, don't really see many on The Expanse that talk about it's politics.
Personally, think The Expanse could have been more interesting if it asked why some see transforming Mars as more feasible then working to rid humanity of poverty.
Or why Earth has so much automation to where jobs are hard-to-come-by and yet Capitalism is able to work with more of it's consumers living as serfs with little money.
Heck, they could ask why do they need more colonies (Pre-Asteroid strike) when Humans have a whole solar system to use. Better yet kept it in Sol to make the setting
more unique and to show us that the universe is well, expansive. ;)
I think with earth it was writing themselves into a corner since to imply the earth can sustain 30 bil is impossible
The Mars thing is an old european religious idea:
Travel far away fleeing the evils of the old world and create a new better land.
Just for end repeating the same evil and repeat the cycle again.
For that reason is irraional, becuase its religious.
@@Kefkaownsall Having 30 bil in a godless Earth for me seems impossible.
The most educated and enterprising of Earth's population went to the Martian colony and then their grandchildren rebelled and won their independence. The Martians don't give two shits about anyone except Martians and the dream of a green Mars.
@@Kefkaownsall With cheap power and construction making greenhouses and vertical farms widespread Earth could support way more than 30 billion people. The ultimate limiting factor for a high tech society trying to fit as many people as possible on a planet isn't actually running out of space, you can make things quite compact if your willing to build up or dig down, the limit how much waste heat the planet can shed, cause after a certain point all the energy from all those farms and other industrial activities wind up as heat. The limit is around several trillion people, which is a lot, but if they all lived in cities as dense as new York and their farms were underground that would still leave half of the land surface area of the planet free for things like parks and nature preserves. ua-cam.com/video/XAJeYe-abUA/v-deo.html
So yeah, 30 billion people is not feasible with modern day tech. But with the cheap fusion, construction robots, and synthetic food that the Expanse setting has, 30 billion would be more than doable.
I admit to the majority of your theses, but Jim/James Holden is in no term patriotic/nationalist.
He has no relation to his homeworld. He has a strong relation to underprivileged life and life in general.
He changes his thougts often, sometimes he is emotional then pragmatic, but it has always to be as he wants it to be.
Three gigantic asteroids. One hits North Africa, one hits the Atlantic, one hits somewhere in the Carolinas. Erich points out to Timmy that Bethlehem when he and Peaches arrrive in Baltimore (A.K.A. names so as not to spoil Season 5 for show watchers).
Human race aim to live on Mars.
James: We have space ships now so we can be horribly to one another in space.
Me: I don't think the Mars thing is a good idea.
Don’t really have any feedback about The Expanse, but thanks for ending the video by pointing out that the “weird” tends to have staying power.
Makes me worry less about what I’m writing.
Trust me, making the book actually good is going to do help give it staying power than just being "weird." There is plenty of weird fiction out there, most of it is shit. So, just don't make the book awful, and you'll be okay.
Im sad i cant watch this cuz book spoilers. Its good and i apparently can watch Holden smashing the coffee machine for 18 minutes 😆 subbed
The true message in the show is that we try to have multiple dads and one mother
Honestly I agree; this premise is incredibly well poised to take a hard left-wing stand but just lacks the conviction to do it. Its just unfortunate that those who fund this media have a vested interest in not taking a political stance, especially one that earnestly criticizes the system that gives them their undue wealth.
*Cough* Amazon *Cough*
So, the Expanse should advocate hardline left-wing politics? Forgive me if I'm misunderstanding, but that sounds like an incredibly stupid idea. I don't know about you, but I'm not that big a fan of when a piece of media is over-politicised, especially with radical politics. And don't give me the bullshit the the Expanse was already political, I know that, but in case you haven't noticed, over the last couple of years, super political media, especially the far-left stuff like the new Marvel and Star Wars movies/comics, among other things, have been complete pieces of horseshit, primarily because the people who made that stuff sacrificed thoughtful storytelling to inject their woke far-left politics into it. So, I'm very thankful the Expanse didn't go down this dark path, and chose a more nuanced message instead. But hey, maybe I'm just a racist, sexist regressive who only likes right-wing propaganda that promotes Nazism, am I right?
@@occam7382 You're extremely dumb if you think Marvel is far left.
@@occam7382 the star wars franchise was literally 4/6ths anti-fascist propaganda and Marvel literally has several entire subfranchises dedicated to (VERY woke at their creation) anti discrimination messages. Corpos are major enemies in both franchises and Marvel's Captain America is routinely used to show direct problems with America at time of publication almost exclusively from a leftist perspective. "New?" Yeah. Okay.
Marvel? Far left? WTF?
The moment you use "woke far left" to explain modern media owned by a megacorporation that onky desires profit, I stopped taking you seriously.
The Expanse is further left than either the MCU or Disney's mediocre Star Wars.
Immortality is overrated. ;)
I love how much you pop in fan discussion of the series
Hi:
Avid reader of the books...the writer said:
“The books aren’t about pointing out any particular political system works. It’s that if we don’t listen to each other and realize that maybe people we don’t entirely agree with aren’t our enemies, we won’t need aliens to kill us. We will kill ourselves.”
I definitely think there’s a strong admission of “Social programs are good” is there but I think it’s there in every Sci-fi that has an actual message (See the video game Leviathan Wakes inspired, Mass Effect, and it’s message of how consolidation of power causes war and despair).
I don’t think it says “This is what we need”, I think there’s a clear “This is what is broken in our society”.
Holden is a “Performative American social commentary” according to the author.
I could be wrong.
I agree. Message is bit weak. We need show to get some more crazy idea running;p
Would have liked a plot spoiler warning.
Honestly, I feel like the Expanse's moderate/neutral political stance is what makes it memorable and not what makes it uninteresting. The show dissociates from the "These guys/ideas bad, Those guys/ideas good" trope that most sci-fi works fall victim to nowadays. The point in the Expanse is that there are no good or bad guys. Everyone is in a gray area; everyone has blood on their hands; UN officials conspired with Jules Pierre Mao to develop a weapon that resulted in the murder of 100,000 innocents on Eros. The MCR murdered their own soldiers to test their own superweapon. The OPA committed genocide against Earth. Heck, even goody-two-shoes James Holden murdered a ship full of humanitarians at Eros. The closest thing we get to a traditional "villain" is Protogen, and even they had a pretty good cause, the protomolecule did end up changing humanity forever.
The show forces us to accept that everything isn't in black and white; it teaches us the ambiguity of good and evil if there even is such thing as good or evil. One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter, and everyone thinks they're a hero in their own story; the Expanse's universe is the most human compared to most franchises. It's not dystopian but not utopian either; it's realistic, as in I could totally imagine humanity treating each other the way we do as portrayed in the Expanse because it's all already happened before: think the US, British Empire, and Africa in the 19th century.
You are wrong, the Expanse clearly promotes certain ideas:
Good: Feminism, multirracialism, english language, USA political system, work based relations.
Bad: Faith, patriarchy, fecundity, cultural diversity, family based relations.
James Holdan? You mean Holden Caulfield from "Catcher in the Rye."
Duarte sounds like a cross between Kim Jung Un and the philipino leader
Hey James, what do you think about the role of Ground warfare in science fiction where Space travel is common? As someone who enjoys thinking about that type of warfare in world building, I have to say that ground warfare would seem to be kind of obsolete in age of space fleets and the amount of highly destructive weapons like asteroids. Do you think ground armies and ground campaigns would serve any role other than being highly specialized and circumstantial?
You aren't asking me but I imagine, depending on the nature of the attacker, that they want the infrastructure and population of the planet. That means not leveling everything on it, otherwise they have to pay to rebuild and repopulate it all out of pocket. This would necessitate the relatively less destructive application of boots on the ground. This changes if the Invaders are just looking to commit some good old genocide but even then it might still require a ground invasion if they want the resources of the planet without making it unlivable through an asteroid collision that caused the sun to be blocked by dust for the next couple decades.
@@zavientey7289 The problem is that if youre not willing to use super destructive weaponry like nukes, invading a planet like say a futuristic Earth with billions of people, would be a nightmare. The planet could resist perpetually and I'd imagine unless you had teleportation, transporting the amount of troops, support personnel, tanks, aircraft/spacecraft, vehicles ammunition food etc would also be insane. Any invading force would be basically forced to make large parts of Earth unlivable for the time being.
@@lastword8783 okay but even if you nuke all major military targets from orbit, you still need to get boots on the ground to finish up the whole thing. your goal isnt to kill everyone, but to make the enemy surrender. And i think the original meaning of decimation applies here, kill 10% of the enemy, and the rest will probably surrender (which would be billions of people, in total terms)
@@VoidplayLP Military targets aren't in a vacuum. A lot of them are near population centers. The enemy isn't going to just not station troops in Los Angeles or Moscow. You'd need to nuke the major cities of USA, Russia and China and India. Lets say your invasion force is like a million (not counting all the support personnel, fleet personnel) that is a huge manpower deficit vs the defenders. You'd be fighting there for decades and the enemy can nuke your ground forces. In my opinion, i think ground forces would be largely obsolete because a culture of war would emerge where worlds just don't bother resisting once the planetary fleet and defenses are defeated. Those that do not surrender are bombed into surrendering the same way Japan was.
@@lastword8783, well, Japan really surrendered because the Soviets invaded Manchuria, not the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, but whatever.
The Expanse is a realistic future if we ever figure out space travel. We basically watch Holden go from a guy running away from responsibility to a leading missions
Wait was there no spoilers in this? I thought this was only about the TV show and then was hit with hard spoiler from the books. Feelsbadman.
Last Word there was a spoiler warning 1:06
Alex409 no idea how i missed it. Thanks
@@alex30425 Yeah I missed that too and there was pretty big spoiler in that video... Well, not huge problem.
I was just put on to the SyFy/Amazon TV show by a friend. I've only seen S1E1 so far, and apart from amazing visuals and a cool respect for Newtonian physics in space maneuvers, as exciting or rich TV, I was surprised to find this episode a full-on noisy bore. When does it get good (as in, characters, dialogue, and dramatic storytelling you can actually care about)?
For taste calibration, I really enjoyed "Firefly", "Dark Matter", and "Altered Carbon S1" in recent years. Am I insane for my prejudice against this show based on the pilot? Will later episodes depart from the storytelling style used in the pilot (exposition-heavy, throw all the spaghetti against the wall and see what sticks, rather than drill down and examine one plot idea at a time)?
Yeah the first 3ish episodes are very exposition heavy, it picks up after that.
It starts slow but gets better.
Trust me, once you get past the first few episodes, shit really gets real.
I cant say you, I loved it from the very beginning.
Until you arrive until chapter 15, wich is the true end of season 1, you wont get an entire picture of the book, and I dont know if you can stand until that.
Respect for James Fucking Holden wrecking the status quo wherever he goes.
I mostly agree with your points about the series but you assume it was the intention of the authors to create a timeless political message, sometimes it can be just a great space opera. Even so, Star Wars is in the 1% in your system I assume (staying power) but has a milk-toast political message.
Holden's political views have two cornerstones: coffee and family. Family in the Dominic Toretto sense of the world, but mostly coffee.
Plato was kind of a proto fascist arguing not only anti democratic ideals but racial superiority.
Carl Sagan's Cosmos had a segment about ancient thinkers, in many ways they were prodigious thinkers, intellectual giants who constructed the foundation of modern science with no preexisting knowledge than what they could observe themselves and the most rudimentary of tools. But in other ways they had ideologies that would make modern man recoil in disgust.
@@ausaskar The modern man is overrated.
No fascist, just a fan of the chaste system.
Review Steve Jacksons Sorcery! Choose your own adventure books or even better in my opinion, the games! Theyre fucking amazing and can be played on your phone if you dont want to buy them on steam. Part 2 and 3 are so good.
Holden smash!
I LOVE the Expanse, specifically because of the high detailed politics. In my opinion, they did a very good job of 'expanding' civilization in a believable way.
Just want to point out for the record that I'm not a monarchist. Democracy is a great form of government for the average person who wants to live freely. But it can only work well with either an educated population and or a large class of people with monetary investment in the system. Without a healthy middle class a democracy will quickly fall into authoritarianism and civil war.
I honestly cant think of a reason for anyone to support monarchy anymore. Rome proved adopted sons were far superior to born ones so if youre going to go authoritarian, dictators who choose sucessors is the only way to go. Unless you go full ancap, which is basically so libertarian it becomes authoritarian.
@@whatwhat7119 True, most monarchists are weirdos, I had to post the comment because I posted how fragile Democratic societies are
"large class of people with monetary investment in the system. Without a healthy middle class a democracy will quickly fall into authoritarianism and civil war."
Ex-actly. I've not seen the show, I'm reading reviews to decide whether to buy it to watch. But from what I've seen written about it Earth represents socialism in this show and that piques my interest seeing the left's movement taking place in the US at the moment. Try to kill the middle class in order to introduce socialism and governmental dictatorship.
@@whatwhat7119 Those roman emperors werent dictators, dictators were abolished by Caesar.
They were simply monarchs that adopted their sucessors.
Parlamentary monarchies are currently more succesful than republics on average.
Two things you might edit:1. No, not ALL art is political in some way. This gross generalization of ALL artwork is a really bad lead into the more interesting analysis of the Series in the video. 2. You really should slap a huge spoiler warning up when you start to progress beyond Ciabola Burn. A lot of new fans haven't even gotten past Abbadon's Gate and are reading along with the show.
The Expanse is one of the most explicitly political shows there is.
take that nescafe !
Do you know the book we are legion from dennis e taylor i thin his bob trilogy is great
Anazher auther i like to read is cixin lius Remembrance of Earth's Past
stop injecting poletics into my spaceship show
Your spaceship show is a lot about politics.
@@adamnesico stop injecting spaceships into my politics show
htf did i get so many likes? my comment was ironic. what is wrong with you people?
hahaha i love the opening : ) i laughed so hard
Most frustrating thing for me in real life is, not only do we not have 1 goal as a species/planet, but we aren't even unified in our countries. America is as far divided as ever and its disappointing that we could never have the sense of unity and purpose that Mars has. At least not in our lifetime
Unification drives to stagnation and comformity.
Tech and art advances comes from division and competition.
Wait, which seasons/books are you referring? I've watched the four seasons so far, but there seems to be bits from later books.
A big ol' spoiler warning would've been appreciated mate - I've only got as far as Cibola Burn¬
7:00 to be fair real woke, not the half assed buzz world that it has become, is defined by being aware of injustices in society. Wanting or willing to change that injustice in not required.
@@johnrex7108 seems accurate
@@johnrex7108, couldn't have put it better myself.
This is quite avant garde.
It's a little strange to me that that coffeemaker can withstand multi-hour 5g burns and short 15g+ bursts but Holden can just smash it into pieces at 0.3g of simulated gravity.
We had 5-g coffee makers in US Air Force RC-135 aircraft (that was a logistics kerfluffle in one contract), and those could yet be similarly destroyed.
okay the smashing is stressing me out now
Love what they did to the Nauvoo.
Now i am not some anarchist hipster, but i just gotta say this: Winston did noting wrong!! Team Laconia anyone?
Nope sorry. That's not gonna have any support any time soon.
its pretty simple. mars = murica (its in one of the books), earth+luna is socialist (not communist), the belt (and eventually freehold) is libertarian, laconia is fascist.
Also things like most of the Middle East is in Asia so someone from Saudi Arabia is technically Asian. People also tend to forget Egypt and most of the rest of the Northern African nations are in Africa. (a part of Egypt is also in Asia making it one of the few countries in two continents) And Arabs. I have seen very dark and very white Arabs. People tend to treat the Middle East as almost a separate continent instead of being spread out across two - Asia and Africa. Race is weird and makes no sense especially where Arabs are concerned
For me race have sense, just arabs arent one race, but one culture.
Volume gah... just because you can edit with your volume output at max, doesn't mean you should. turn down your master vol before you blow out everyones speakers / eardrums
In The Expanse, humanity has not yet overcome the capitalist model of production. Real Socialism or Communism itself we can see the closest thing to it in Star Trek. There is nothing Socialism or Communism about The Expanse.
I'm a fan of SF but I never got into this series. The first book annoyed me with a strawman feminist at the begining and even forcing myself to read the first book didn't help since the only reason I was reading it was because of the hard SF aspects of the setting, hard sf aspects that were done away with completely in the second book.
"Strawman feminist" ? Who? Julie? How was she a strawman?
@@maia_gaia I was wondering about that as well.
I read the first book and I didn't like it, but I don't know who the strawman feminist is. I can only remember 2 major female characters. One was just love interest and the other was literally a figment of imagination
@@indigo714 The head of the UN. The very first time she's introduced she has a comment about how a bunch of generals whose job it is to brief her and be prepared for war are stereotypical war mongering testosterone filled something or other.
And the worse part - for me - was that I really liked the actress they got to play her, but her dialogue just killed the character and the momentum of the book, the abandoning of hard SF killed the series.
@@AlucardNoir Are you talking about Chrisjen Avasarala?
Honestly it feels like the Expanse doesn't really have any political ideas
You didnt watched it well.
1 minute in and you have no understanding of any of it. The earth has billions on basic, because of its existence (as alluded to all the time by Martians). Mars is hell, basically pioneer country with everyone pulled into a single goal, which is essentially an authoritarian militaristic state ala starship troopers. It is not better than earth by a million years - again referenced all the time.
The majority of people who comment on politicization are in fact inarticulate. While i concede that you likely deal with the spectrum of them, the point i remember them trying to make was similar to "what shall we ask of writers" but lacking the ability to make it coherent. along with the ignorance the internet is known for.
Namely that they that they do not what thinly veiled propaganda. While its also possible they recoil at the iconoclasm that political interpretation of works can also lead to. Having watched people attempt to deface the statue of sir richard peel for having dared to have tried to create a model for the police that wasn't awful aving been confused for his father. And with Gandhi, churchill (ironically) lord admiral Nelson actually. Of course there comes the stigma with say with starship troopers and others and in what seems to be an increasingly radicalized climate they want to avoid the label of facist/commie fir enjoying a work.
Many of them seem to be centrists or the desperately nonpolitical that want to enjoy their grills in peace.
And honestly i cannot blame them.
Thats unrelated to the video which is good though. Just my thoughts on the matter.
holy fn click bait eh lol. I disagree mostly, it is milk toast but that doesn't mean it cant be great. We live in a world where typical is radical and its not always going to be that way. This show is going to say a lot about the world we lived 20 years from now. At least I think so.
Does anyone actually try to argue the expanse isn't political? Did they miss the literal politics shown in the show?
I assume you are going off the books cuz free navy was introduced just thir season. While the video is interesting, i will stop half way, cuz I don't wanna spoil myself.
I really like the Expanse, but I feel it lost something with the Ring Gates, other worlds to settle and even the general alien protomolecule $#!T. The grittiness and realism got diluted and an opportunity was missed to show humanity as claustrophobic and backed into a corner with resources and population even with the solar system colonized. It turned into a more traditional space opera when it started out as a somewhat terrifying concept of we have finally conquered space and we’re still f#@ked.
0:31 this loop is exactly why the first 3 seasons are fantastically overrated, the 4th is nice but comeon they could have spent that time talking up Dark matter
Satan Lover13 I would have loved a next Dark Matter... the Black Ships!!! But Continuing the Expanse was Great
Let's hope Stargate gets a mentally stable showrunner and not whatever went wrong with discovery
Thank you for this comment! I /loved/ "Dark Matter". I regard it as "brilliant, but cancelled." Having just now finished the pilot episode of "The Expanse", I wondered if it was just me, or if this show was actually shite compared with the low-budget storytelling goodness that was Dark Matter.
(or is the "Dark Matter" you're talking about a concept within The Expanse in a later season?...)
dude samurai emperor n space man :)
the show's not bad it's just that it spends way, way too long getting to things, the detective was good and played by an actor i like but it's not Game of Thrones in space