The Expanse - Season 4 (2019)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2019
	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: An apparent peace is reached in the Solar System, while it is now time to colonize new worlds. Belters are on the forefront and the UN sends a ship to check what they found.
Review: When Syfy cancelled the series after its third season, fans pressure was so high that Amazon decided to buy the rights and continue the series, and I was glad to hear that because I love the first seasons. The result is unfortunately disappointing, although it managed to keep most of the same characters (and actors) and develop a story following the events of the previous season. The small annoyances from the previous season are still present, in particular how ships travel in vacuum: they are continuously in full burn and apparently stop moving when the motor stops. This doesn't make any sense and is in contraction with the understanding the authors have in other scenes of having to turn 180 degrees and use the reactor to decelerate. Also some easy shortcuts are taken by the same authors; physics fails when it pleases them, and the planet Mars is conveniently on the path between Earth and Uranus. For a series praised for its realism, this is a let-down. Anyway, those are details but what disappointed me most is the story. After a Solar System-wide conflict, a threat against the whole of Humanity and an opening to hundreds of new possibilities, we now settle for the exploration of a single world. And as the story didn't manage to put all the characters in contact, we follow three storylines that almost never connect, in particular the one of Bobby on Mars is totally disconnected and the one around Mao's daughter is too obviously trying to keep a connection to him. I would hate for the series to continue this way (one season, one world), so I rather take it as a steering towards future events, a transition season which introduced new characters and a larger Universe, necessary after the neat conclusion of the previous season which wrapped-up pretty well the three first ones. Indeed in this season we get a glimpse of future possible turmoil in the political landscape, as well as an opening to a larger Universe. Let's see how the season 5 goes. Its postponed release date is not yet announced.
Rating: 4 /10