The Expanse - Season 1 (2015)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2015
	Creators: Mark Fergus, Hawk Ostby
	Actors: Steven Strait, Cas Anvar, Dominique Tipper, Jared Harris (Lincoln, Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows), Shohreh Aghdashloo (X-men: The Last Stand, Star Trek Beyond, 24 TV-series), Thomas Jane (Deep Blue Sea)
	Country: USA
	Genre: SF
	Conditions of visioning: March 2017, VOD, 10" tablet screen & 32" TV.
Synopsis: In a Future Solar System where Earth control mines in the asteroid belt, almost at war with the independent military power on Mars, detective Joe Miller (Jane) is hired to find a missing woman while U.N.'s Chrisjen Avasarala (Aghdashloo) questions a terrorist and in the belt an ice trawler receive a distress signal.
Review: Even after reading the plot, I was not expecting much from this Netflix-exclusive TV-series, following the relative disappointment of Ascension. Especially as it is also shown on Syfy (as tells the poster), I was expecting cheap special effects and bad actors, so I was pleasantly surprised by this serious SF (Anticipation) story, taking place in a futuristic Universe to which we can relate 300 years in the Future, when the colonization of the Solar System is well established. The Worlds depicted are quite down-to-"Earth", i.e. business is running the system, people have to find jobs, survive... and interestingly it is not the rich classes or scientists that traveled, but more modest or even poor people trying to escape the persecutions of the mother Earth. In that sense it is well inspired by the colonization of the Americas. I found the same analogy when I started to wonder why would the martian colony become independent while its inhabitants are descendants from Earth? Well it turns out that in such melting pot, after a few hard-working generations, the people born there do not know anything else that the land where they were born and question why that should be accountable to a far-away world! Exactly as happened in the Americas. Back to the looks of the series, it is extremely rich with details in all corner of the screens: drones, ships, plenty of people, interiors and landscapes. Digital SFX look very good too so the series must not have been cheap. In fact I regret I couldn't watch it on a Home Cinema. Each world and group of people have well-identified characters, and it was funny to see how the dark neighborhoods of the Ceres asteroid station resemble the Venusville of Total Recall. I wrote earlier that we can relate to the Universe and this is partly thanks to a technology that looks like a realistic extension of our own: there is no magic in the ships or living conditions, which makes this series the most realistic SF Space series since Battlestar Galactica. I have however to criticize the effect of gravity which is often badly reproduced (see how people walk on Ceres!) excepts for scenes in zero-G or using the trick of magnetic shoes. We also relate to the Universe thanks to humane flawed characters to which we get attached. I took a lot of pleasure binge-watching the season's investigation in three days, so that I was even more let down by the last episode. I thought all along that The Expanse was a mini-series i.e. ending after a given number of episodes, while in fact it has been re-conducted for at least one season. I don't know if that influenced the writing of the last episode but I found it extremely slow and disappointing in terms of revelations especially with a title like Leviathan Wakes! It is probably the weakest of the season and fells like a simple To Be Continued. The second season is being aired on TV and probably soon on Netflix.
Rating: 7 /10