The Expanse - Season 3 (2018)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2018
	Creators: Mark Fergus, Hawk Ostby
	Actors: Steven Strait, Cas Anvar, Dominique Tipper, Wes Chatham, Shohreh Aghdashloo (X-men: The Last Stand, Star Trek Beyond, 24 TV-series)
	Country: USA
	Genre: SF
	Conditions of visioning: August 2020, VOD, 32" TV screen
Synopsis: As the war between Earth and Mars ignites across the solar system, the terrifying next phase in the evolution of the protomolecule threatens the very existence of humanity. Caught in the middle, the Rocinante crew struggles to deal with tensions amongst themselves.
Review: Read my review of the first season of this series to learn why I liked it. In a nutshell it is for the realistic Solar System Exploration Science Fiction, in addition to some relatable characters and a suspenseful investigation. The quality went down in the second season, but it was still addictive. I was very tempted to watch them both again before continuing to be fully immersed, but I preferred using my time watching the new episodes. The complains I had were about handling of time periods and the effects of gravity, and they keep increasingly annoying me in the third season, taking me out of the action sometimes. An addition is how they handle ships motion in vacuum. Another annoying detail is how they make the UN Undersecretary Chrisjen Avasarala swear with the F word for no reason. It doesn't fit her character to do it so often and I don't remember it from the previous seasons. The series still looks very good but I noticed a trend of having more and more one-on-one discussions in an alleyway or in a reduced set, showing a tendency to reduce the cost of using large sets or the full cast at the same time. That's OK, it is what series do, it just looks slightly more like a soap opera sometimes. Apart from those criticisms, I liked the third season. It keeps on expanding (ahah) the Universe we learned about, while focusing on the adventures of the characters we like. Like in the previous seasons, it is a bit hard to swallow that they keep on being at the center of everything that happens, but it is less disturbing in this season because they are integral part of what happens and they have their own objectives. What kept me addicted to the series in this season are the lovable characters and how naturally they are played (I miss Miller though). I can't help but comparing Dominique Tipper playing Naomi Nagata with Sonequa Martin-Green in Star Trek: Discovery and the latter is no match. I also love the Science Fiction story in this season which, as I wrote, expands the Universe and ramp up the stakes to come to a nice conclusion I find. This story reminded me of the excellent novel Forever War by Joe Haldeman and the graphic novel Universal War by Denis Bajram, which I both highly recommend. Now that I think of it, the space crew, now more like a family, reminds me of that other TV-series Firefly by Joss Whedon. Another element they have in common is that they were cancelled early in spite of having a strong fan base. Those fans fought hard (via petitions etc...) to get the show brought back, which led to the movie Serenity in one case and to the transfer of the series from Syfy to Amazon for The Expanse, which was indeed cancelled after this third season. We will see in the fourth season how this turned out.
Rating: 6 /10