Yora watches and reviews The Expanse

[Rakaydos]

S1E9: Critical Mass

Chrisjen went to the home of the ambassador and stole three pencils from his office. On the flight back to New York, she checks the pencils and one of them has indeed hidden data stored in the graphite. Which are plans for prototype fusion cores for gunships.

S1E10: Leviathan Wakes
On Earth, Chrisjen is meeting with her boss and the admiral again. Her boss got information that the fusion cores were build on Earth, but had all been delivered to Tycho Station where Johnson is in charge. Intelligence was already investigating about the fusion cores for several weeks, which somehow seems to disturb Chrisjen, but she doesn't say why.

Because she'd just checked the classified system for those drive cores last episode- they were NOT being investigated when Mr. Ambassader died. This is a coverup, which makes the death of her friend a coverup, and her boss is involved.

[Yora]

Okay, that assumes that she would have clearance to access current investigation files. Her actual position has not been explained yet (Deputy Under-secretary says nothing!), but from what she has been doing so far, it would seem very likely that that she should have access to that.

[Rakaydos]

"How is it that you are the third most powerful person on earth, yet are accountable to noone?" (episode 2 or 3, i think)

[factotum]

Yeah, I think the chain of command of the UN (who run Earth) is Secretary-General, Under-Secretary, Deputy Under-Secretary, so Chrisjen is pretty high up. Doesn't mean she knows everything her boss is up to, of course.

Kind of weird this is the end of season 1, because the story continues pretty much straight from here at the start of season 2--makes you wonder why they even bothered with the season break! It's not even left on a cliffhanger or anything like that, because we know the Rocinante crew have escaped Eros.

[Yora]

Season 1 Summary

This was really fun so far.

I am not going to do my typical lineup of good and okay episodes because there were only two episodes I thought were not so good and I really liked most of the later ones, and there seems to be common consensus that it only gets so much better from here on, both by expressed opinions and ratings. I might be putting by expectations too high with that, but why rate the episodes when basically everything will get a rating of good.

But still, I will do this:

Best Episode: E4: CQB, which has already become my second favorite space battle on TV, after Severed Dreams on Babylon 5.
Worst Episode: E5: Back to the Butcher because not really much happened.

Some clarifications about the first episodes about things I got wrong:
The corpse in the brothel wasn't a prostitute but a customer who got assassinated by some gang members while they had him, literally, with his pants down. This scene is exploitation storytelling by starting with murdered prostitutes, but serves more to show that Miller is trying to be genuinely nice to the prostitute who just had probably the worst day at work ever. Removes one minus point and adds one plus point, which shifts the balance considerable and changes the perspective from which I see the other scenes that I thought to be somewhat questionable.
In the second episode I complained that Holden's wrench flew away while outside the shuttle while the engines were off. They actually said that a swarm of debris was flying past them and apparently one piece hit the wrench and kicked it from his hand. That was to show how hard those debris particles hit.

As I mentioned before, I actually like the overall structure of starting with 7 episodes that are pretty normal before shifting gears for the last 3. While I think the first episodes were treading a lot of water and could have used more content in the space that they were given, putting the escalation into episode 9 was a good pick. At this point we know enough about the steady state world to both understand why the new developments are unusual, and to care that the world gets messed up. You could have condensed the first eight episodes down to three, but then the stuff on Eros probably wouldn't have felt as meaningful. Had you waited for episode 21 to make the big mess instead of episode 9, many people might have been unhappy that the world they started to settle in gets taken away already.
I think starting with 10 episodes probably also helped with financing. A single demo pilot can be a very risky way to judge the overall quality and potential of the final product. Also, shows learn a huge lot during the first season, which greatly affects the writing, acting, and production of the following episodes, after everyone had some time to see how the product looks after having worked on it for a while. It seems safer than having to decide right from the start if you want to have 25 episodes made or 0.
As I said in episode 2 already, the first episode feels odd in hindsight. Everyone is just way more unfriendly and antagonistic, which I assume they noticed right after the first episode was done and they had a look at the final product.
That all being said, there wasn't enough content to actually fill out six of the first seven episodes. And that's what made S1E4: CQB stand out so much from them. In particular I think the flashbacks and short side stories should not have been included at all. Johnson destroying Anderson Station and the Martians bullying the ice miners was not part of the story. I believe the whole purpose of the ice miners was that the older one got fed up and looking for a fight, which is why the Martians are now looking a bit closer at ships that are getting into their areas. That doesn't even deserve an explanation and certainly not filmed scenes. I also thought that the early episodes are jumping way to frequently between the three storylines. I think I had some words about this offense for some Babylon 5 episodes too. But they seem to have seen the errors of their way here pretty soon and its gone from the later episodes. I hope that this holds.

What really impresses me about the show is the characters.
I like Holden, even though he's a Han Solo wannabe, and I can completely understand if other people think he's annoyingly arrogant. My impression is that he's putting up a show and not quite able to sell it, but underneath is a honestly good guy who really thinks he has to do something when the world is turning into a giant mess. And I really like that his backstory helps to make this personality seem quite believable. Rude character is rude because he had a bad childhood is a cliche, but I feel with Holden it feels much more thought through. He grew up to be the heir of eight anti-establishment eco-activists who had dedicated their lives to recovering the environment That's actually a decent sounding reason for why someone might think he needs to save the world all by himself. But it doesn't end at that, which would have been the lazy option, but his parents also recognized that they were making a mistake and this is not good for him. They are people who understand moderation and he also inherited that from then. It's a very neat and very small package of backstory to explain a character, but here it seems to really work. And he's very easy on the eyes.

I wasn't a fan of Naomi at the start, but she became much more interesting later on when she started to be less guarded about her opinions on things. I'm still not sure where things will be going with her, so I leave it at that for now. But she's already starting to become a lot more rounded out than at the start of the season.

Alex is fun. I like him. Unfortunately he did not have a big role in season 1, but I like him. And I think it's 90% the performance that we get to see. I think Alex has a disproportionate amount of funny moments on the show, but his role is not "the funny guy". He is not a comic relief character (a storytelling concept I really hate). He's also the character who expresses the most that everything that is happening is a really a few numbers too big for him, and that probably makes him relateable to the audience. Which always helps a good deal in making a character sympathetic. (But is not a requirement. Being relateable is not the measure of a good character.)
I'm not quite sure why, but even when he play the character serious, you can always see that he really has fun playing Alex. Maybe that objectively makes his technical acting skill a bit lower, but it still makes the performance very enjoyable to watch.

And Amos. I did call him a redshirt for a while, and I stand with that assessment for the first few episodes. I've never seen his face before, while I very much knew the faces of Holden, Naomi, and Alex, and Miller's hat. And for the start he's often just standing in the background and saying "Okay, Naomi". And when he talks with other people, it's some odd mumbling.
When he gets a bit more time and he gets established as a big bruiser (I think Lopez called him "Knuckles" or "Brute"), I felt for quite some time that the actors face just doesn't fit his body language and speech. He doesn't have a bruiser face. I've read some description of how people think he's in the book, and while they did not nail the visuals completely, the result seems to be just the same odd mismatch the writers were trying to establish.
Amos clearly has some neurological issue. I would assume some kind of empathy impairment. He says things that sound odd and is completely unbothered by violence, and he also does not seem to care what other people think of him. But unlike most similar such characters in fiction, he does not appear to be cruel or some kind of soulless monster. His violent creepy guy dial is not set al the way up to 100%, but just to 40%.

Miller was really great in the early episodes, but I feel he got seriously unhinged later on. In the last episode he also had severe radiation thickness and they were taking heavy doses of drugs to keep them alive, which probably didn't help either.
Like Holden, I think Miller is trying just a little bit too much to be a mean tough guy, but the performance is at a level that makes it believable that this is part of the character's personality. It's alright, no real complain there. I hope teams up with his friend from the Ceres police again. She was always interesting in her scenes despite being completely unremarkable on the surface. I also wonder if the hat will return?

Chrisjen is also great, though at least in the episodes of this season her story takes place completely separate from everyone else. I'm generally a fan of a "closer" form of narration where the audience knows what the heroes know, and what we get with this story is that a lot of things that Holden and Miller are experiencing is given a context by what we see Chrisjen do. I would call that a downsight, but in turn we get this really fantastic performance that I would not want to miss out on.

Technically, the show is done fantastically. The only special effects failure I've seen in the whole season, but unfortunately consistently and all the time, is low- and zero-g environments. I know, having everyone float around for half the show is not practically doable with any kind of realistic budget. That just never was an option. But with a few exceptions, the show just says "magnetic boots" and calls it a day. We get to see the bird flapping lazily in the air and a drink doing a twirly swirl into a cup on Ceres, but that's really all of it. People with Belter bones being dropped into 4 meter high airlocks without breaking a bone might also count. S1E4: CQB had a couple of well done (and presumably complicated and expensive) weightless shots, and those look great.
I just think there could have been more effort to have magnet-boot time look in any way different from Earth-gravity or having the engines on. Teach the actors how to walk differently so that they always have one sole completely on the ground before starting to move the other. Have them lift up really big heavy boxes. Have characters jumping or falling down filmed with a high speed camera and play the movement at 0.7x speed. Put little objects in the background floating around, like pens and such. And maybe have the coffee machine not use mugs. I like that the greens in the kitchen are arranged in circles instead of horizontal shelves, but other than that, the whole kitchen looks like there would be a huge mess if the engines cut out. It doesn't even have a door to keep that mess inside the kitchen. That part I find a bit disappointing.
Other than that, the effects are spectacular for TV. Nothing looks like poor plastic-y CGI. Space ships maybe a little bit, but that could be explained by the paint used on them. Since most of the space scenes seem to be taking place near the belt, the brightness also seems about right. Sunlight in orbit around Earth is actually pretty brutal, but at 2 AU where most of the asteroids hang around, the intensity of sunlight is already down to only one quarter of that. I wonder if we're going to get scenes near the outer planets where the sunlight then seems much dimmer? Out at Neptune, sunlight would be down to almost a thousandth of what it is at Earth. Seeing the sun as a tiny but very bright dot in the distance would also be fun, but as I recall the sun was never seen in this show so far. (Not even from Earth, I think.) Not holding my hopes up on that front, but including this detail would be really cool.

Though I have to say, Ceres felt rather small, with you always seeing the same apartment block where Miller lives, the same street where the riot happens, and the same dock. Yes, Ceres is tiny as far as "planets" go, but that's because planets are really big. For an "asteroid", Ceres is absolutely massive. And Dawes says that there are millions of Belters. Ceres should have a population of a million, or at least several hundreds of thousands. The sets they have look visually very impressive, but they make Ceres as a whole feel very small.
I really noticed this after Eros, which felt even smaller than that. Especially when I noticed the dock where the hired thugs started fighting the mercenaries was the same set as the dock on Ceres just with different lighting. But this really is nitpicking and not a serious complaint. They had their budget and I feel they did a fantastic job of using that money in the most efficient way.

So yeah. I think this is a very impressive start and I've only been hearing how much better the following seasons are.

[Yora]

S2E1: Safe

We start with some Martian looking soldiers on a Mars in a firefight, in which I suspect is either a flashback or a hardcore Martian training exercise.
It is training. But the soldiers are told that training is over and they got to get ready for a mission to Phoebe. So I guess it's also a flashback and the woman we've been seeing the most might be a survivor hiding on Phoebe?

Holden is doing surprisingly well with his radiation treatment and Naomi tells him not to worry as none of the blue stuff got on the Rocinante. But she's coughing and Holden sees blue lights hovering near her head. Holden sees blue stuff on his hand an I am pretty certain this is a dream.
It is a dream.

Okay, hold it right there. Two dramatic fake-outs in the first five minutes and both were painfully predictable. I fancy myself a connoisseur of this type of fiction and feel like big-brain time, but I am not that much of a genius. Last season ended very predictable and this is not a good start. Show got to step up its game in this regard.

Amos is trying to crack open the safe from the Anubis inside an open airlock. So nice to see people taking a potential threat serious. Unlike a certain IT expert of a certain intelligence agency from a certain James Bond movie who plugged the laptop of the IT-savy villain directly into the mainframe that controls all the security in said intelligence agency's headquarters. Heroes don't have to act insanely stupid to have a story. He and Naomi discover that the thing is actually temperature controlled to keep something frozen.

Alex is dealing with the four survivors they had picked up on Eros and one of them is acting quite antagonistic, but is actually really quite shaken by what happened. Alex isn't feeling happy with how things turned out either.

Miller is also back on his feet, but just like Holden he's still hooked up on the meds a lot.
Amos and Naomi discover that the safe contains frozen blue stuff, and apparently a message from the scientist. (Or is that the signal they traced when they were leaving Eros?) They discovered the protomolecule on Phoebe, and in this world Phoebe is as a comet that flew over from another solar system and was captured by Saturn. (I assume when we actually discovered an asteroid from another system passing through our two years ago there would have been some Expanse memes.)
They think they should destroy the blue stuff, but Naomi thinks that it could possibly be used to create a cure for people infected with it. So they decide to simply store it on a small unremarkable asteroid and come back for it later.

On a martian warship, our Martian marine from earlier is entertaining the others by arm wrestling against power armor. The wonders of genetic manipulation and future drugs, I assume. And she wins. And then she has to repair it.
Those marines all look awfully young and are acting like they might all be on a little bit of cocaine or something like that. The team gets called to the briefing room and are informed that the Donnager was investigating Phoebe before it was destroyed. (So not a flashback.)

Chrisjen's boss is talking with Mao what they are supposed to do with Eros now and what will happen when looters start picking around among the corpses. Mao doesn't seem to care and it's not his problem. He's not too bothered by Julie's death either and thinks it's been totally worth it considering what they are trying to achieve.

Holden and Miller are done with their radiation treatment and get implants that will fight off any cancer that will develop in their bodies. Miller goes to get himself a coffee and find Amos hanging around in the kitchen. Amos doesn't waste much time and tells Miller they probably should have a talk right now. He tells him why he killed Sammy very plainly and how it happened, leaving it to Miller what he wants to do about it. Miller sees his point but tries to punch him anyway, but Amos is much better and knocks him to the floor with no effort. Miller gets up and tries again, but this time Amos is done with it and tries to break his neck. Naomi hears the fighting and comes running to stop him. He says he told Miller to stay down, but he didn't want to listen.

Chrisjen got her shuttle blown up just as she about to get on board. Her boss visits her in her office and says he will give her more security, but she assures him that won't be neccessary. Then perhaps she should take a few days off, but she insists to keep working.
They go to a meeting where her boss tries to convince the General Secretary to prepare for war with Mars, while the admiral is absolutely against it and certain that neither Earth nor Mars would have anythig to gain from fighting. The General Secretary asks Chrisjen for her opinion before making his decision, and she supports her boss. (Probably assuming she can't stop it anyway and this will make her seem more loyal to her boss who's already trying to get rid of her.)

Naomi goes to Miller's new quarters to talk with him about Amos. Miller thinks he's not right in the head and Naomi does not deny that. But she is certain that he's not crazy or evil and not a bad person. Miller also keeps behaving somewhat unhinged but he comes around to be nicer to her.

The Martian ship on way to Phoebe detects an Earth ship trying to beat them there. Their orders are to not let Phoebe fall into the hands of the Earthers under any circumstances and so he tells the marines to get battle for fighting.

Naomi and Holden are putting the blue stuff samples into a torpedo and Alex parks it among some nearby ice chunks. Holden is feeling really terrible and Naomi to cheer him up with a bit of a hug. As they go back in and get out of their suits, they suddenly start kissing out a nowhere. And I gave this show praise for characters acting like humans instead of Hollywood puppets.

The war council on Earth gets a message that the Martians are shoting missiles at the Earth ship that is trying to get to Phoebe. Chrisjen tries to remind everyone that this still does not mean they have to have a full out war, but her boss says that with the 20 minutes time delay for communication, any orders they might give will only arrive after the battle is already over. Chrisjen wants an overview of the last reports from other ships, and so far they have seen nothing about other Martian ships making any attacks, so it doesn't look like the Martian are at war right now. Her boss thinks that won't matter because their captain will surely have fired back at the Martians, but Chrisjen thinks that he has restraint and knows what consequences that would have. The General Secretary agrees to not give all ships an order to attack until they know more about what the Martians are doing.
Everyone goes to get a coffee or take a pee while they wait for the next message from the battle to arrive at Earth, and the admiral let's Chrisjen know that he knows she was bluffing about knowing that captain.
The massage arrives and the captain reports that the Martian missiles did not hit them and blew up Phoebe.

Alex calls the others to the kitchen because he made lasagna and thinks they really need to take some time to just hang out and not always talk about only work and fighting. Alex starts telling a story he heard and Miller comes by to get coffee and has the whole story of what really happened. He almost sits down next to Amos and Amos just looks at him and moves the tools from the table before the seat. Miller thinks about it for a moment and sits down continuing the story.

--

So Chrisjen tried to get herself on the good side of her boss by supporting him, even when it looked very likely that he wanted to get rid of her and probably had tried to have her assassinated. It didn't last very long, but at least she was able to keep the confrontation at Phoebe to start the war. Maybe this will buy them another week or two.
But now she has shown her true colors and there's certainly going to be more assassins coming for her now.

Those Martian marines are scary. They look like poorly socialized teenagers with serious roid rage. They probably fight really well, but how are the officers going to control them? Most Klingons I've seen have been way more chill than this bunch.
Which seems strange. Lopez and captain Yao both seemed like very sensible and restrained people, and the lieutenant in charge of the marines makes the same impression. Given that one of the marines beat her power armor in arm wrestling and actually broke it, and Martians would naturally have very weak muscles, I feel pretty certain that they are up to their eyeballs in all kinds of drugs and hormones. Back in S1E4: CQB, Amos tried to taunt a Martian guard about having no balls, and I think steroids are said to lead to potence problems. So that would fit together nicely.
I was considering that this might be a generational thing, with the older people understanding why they had to divert terraforming resources to building their awesome military, but the Marine says this was 50 years ago. Even with Martians living well over a hundred years, I don't see the officers being veterans of a war that happened 50 years ago. And the younger bridge crew on the Donnager also seemed much more collected. Though the younger Martians really do seem greatly upset that the terraforming was delayed for a hundred years because Earth forced them into building a navy. It wouldn't have given them a green Mars now, but they would have had a chance to see it during their lifetime. Which now appears out of the question.
But I am still wondering why a ship heading for Phoebe would deliberately pick up a bunch of kids to fight on this extremely important mission. It wasn't like they were the only ship in the sector and just happened to have some fresh recruits on board. Those were selected from all the troops they had on Mars. One possibility I could imagine is that marines just don't get very old, but given how relatively peaceful things apparently have been previously that would be particularly creepy.

Nice to see Amos' mental state being addressed directly this episode. He really isn't normal. But in regard to Sammy, what really were the options? If Amos had not shot him, then they would have left and Miller and Holden would be dead now. And Sammy was a complete stranger who was threatening to shot his best friend. Miller really doesn't have anything to argue against that.
But Amos being Amos, he literally doesn't seem to be able to hold a grudge. He tried killing Miller just a few hours ago before Naomi stopped him, but does not appear to have any problem with him. Just like when Holden had a gun to his head when he wanted to shot the Martians that were about to board their ship.
What makes Amos interesting is that he appears to be very much aware of other people being hostile to him. It's not like he thinks nothing happened. He knows very well they tried to kill each other before and that the fight could continue any moment now. He carefully observes the people to see if they want another fight or let it rest. It just really doesn't bother him.

Also the show already confirms that the blue stuff is of alien origin. Now I am really flying blind into the Great Black Yonder.

[factotum]

Amos is interesting. To all intents and purposes he's a high-functioning sociopath, who only follows society's wishes as far as is required to not end up dead or in prison. Someone annoys him and there's nobody watching? Kill 'em and be done with it. He understands morals, but doesn't see why they need to apply to him.

It's nice that they include lightspeed delays in the communications here...I recall there being instances in later episodes where they ignore that detail, which annoys me probably more than it should.

Regarding the backstory bits for Johnson et al: they'd be relevant if they told you something about what that person is like, but Johnson very clearly isn't the same person who slaughtered a station full of people a decade or two ago. I guess it does go some way toward showing why he isn't well liked or trusted, though.

[Rakaydos]

in a later episode in this season, Amos explains his views a bit better.

[Yora]

S2E2: Doors and Corners

The Security Council is arguing what to do after the Martians blew up Phoebe. Technically Phoebe was used by Martian and Earther researcher and the Martians have no proof that the station was already destroyed and abandoned when they blew the moon up. That makes it an attack on the UN and they have to retaliate. Chrisjen sends her superior the Undersecretary a message on her phone about a Martian radar station on one of the moons of Mars, that is mostly automated with very little crew. The US then suggests to the council that they should pick it as a target for a retaliation strike. Chrisjen just made herself unpopular with the US for preventing the war, but is now trying to suck up to him by letting him say this is his own idea.
The admiral thinks attacking the Martians right at their doorstep is insane and will only provoke them into starting a war. The General Secretary seems to be favoring this idea and so the admiral quits his post.

The Rocinante arrives at Tycho Station and Miller has trouble getting his boots on in weighlessness. Not being a space traveller, he misses the signal that they are about to get clamped in and start spinning and gets slammed into the floor.
Johnson is "not pleased" that the asteroid he send them to got blown up, they did not bring him the agent he send them to get, and they did not send him any message where they were and what they were doing. He quickly changes his tone when they tell him what happened on Eros. They think the people responsible are hiding and monitoring the situation from an abandoned relay station, but they don't have the manpower or experience to board it themselves. The OPA and Johnson in particular does.

Holden asks Naomi if there will be any problems with Amos about them hooking up together. Naomi says she's pretty sure not. This does not give Holden particularly high confidence.

Johnson is talking with the other OPA high ups/union leaders about getting ten, twenty, fifty good men to board a station. They'll get hazard pay and will get to the top of the list for the most profitable construction jobs in the shipyard. One of them doesn't like Johnson to be the boss and challenges his leadership, and Johnson sees that he has a gun in his belt. So he "shows im the door" and "throws him out".

Alex and Johnson are running simulations for a fight between the Rocinante and a stealth ship, based on the Donnager's sensor records when it was fighting against them. Unfortunately, those ships are more powerful than the Rocinante and the big rail gun gets Alex every time. Holden thinks they will be doing much better once they have a full crew, but he also tells Miller they won't be having any free seats for him while they escort Johnson's boarding team to the secret station. Miller isn't worried, as he thinks he'll just go with the boarding team then.
Miller says he will get his stuff, but Holden says him to leave it, as he wants him back on the Rocinante after the mission.

Chrisjen goes to the old Fleet Admiral to tell him she got him a good new position commanding the forces at Jupiter. He's not impressed and still doesn't really want to talk to her, but she doesn't let go and he wants to know why she's really here. Chrisjen says she needs more information about Johnson, and the admiral was the only one who didn't badmouth him when he quit from the Navy and moved to the Belt. The real story of Anderson station is that Johnson did not ignore the surrender message, but that his superiors were jamming communication without telling him. When he learned about it later, he simply quit and went away, keeping the truth to himself.
She then tells a friend to send a message from her to Johnson because she wants to negotiate behind the back of her bosses.

Johnson's freighter with the boarding team is approaching the station with the Rocinante being towed behind them. The Rocinante crew is all in space suits. They put all the air in the tanks (as there's no sense in losing it when they get hit, and it also helps preventing fires).
Miller is on one of the boarding ships, making a bit of a fool of himself by forgetting to keep a hold of his helmet and having to ask the team leader to get it for him while he's strapped to his seat. One of the guys on the team is the kid he caught stealing water on Ceres, and who was thrown into space when his uncle went to look for a fight with the Martians. Who then announces to everyone that Miller was a cop. But he's actually impressed that Miller has joined them. Miller tells him to stick close to him when they board the station. Great, Miller. Now the kid is basically dead.

Johnson is really not comfortable leading another battle. They drop the Rocinante and Alex makes it tumble towards the station, and the freighter sends out a message that they lost a container and nobody is allowed to snatch it away before they can retrieve it.
When the Rocinante gets close, they power up all systems and a stealth ship appears immediately to intercept them. It aims for the freighter first, but the Rocinante uses it's gun to shot down the missiles. It does get a lot of small caliber holes through the sides, though and the engines get damaged, so Alex takes them into cover on the other side of the station.
Amos gets off his seat to fix the engines, but if Alex has to make any hard moves before Amos is back in a seat, he will be thrown around and smashed against a wall. That obviously doesn't bother him.
The freighter spots an anti-asteroid gun that can easily destroy the boarding ships, so Alex has to come out of hiding to get a shot at it. Amos isn't amused. One of the pods gets destroyed and Amos has to hang on with his hands as Alex can't wait for him to get back up from the engine room. The maneuver suddenly puts them right next to the stealth ship and Alex shreds it with the Rocinante's auto-canons.

The other boarding ship makes it to the station but the team doesn't encounter anyone. Then the kid gets hit in the head by the very first round that is fired. But it turns out to be a paint ball.
What did I say last episode about fake outs?
Miller goes to look at the enemy soldiers the rest of the team just shot, and it turns out that they are only equipped with non-lethal crowd suppression weapons. Miller takes charges of the group and they follow without complaints.
They find a room where there are five people who have their heads hooked up to some machine and move their hands in the air like they are working on a display, but not responding in any way to anything happening around them. Miller unplugs the machine and the people immediately jump up and attack. All but one of them get shot, but the remaining one is subdued.
Miller than finds the scientist from Eros in the control room and takes him prisoner. Neither Miller nor Johnson are interested in his offers of bribes, but Johnson wants to hear what he's babbling about saving humanity. The scientist goes on a rant about the blue stuff being able to turn humanity into super beings that can live in space, and how it's just the most amazing thing ever. He doesn't even care who he's working for and seems more than happy to continue his research for the OPA. If they don't use it to advance humanity, some nebulous enemy will wipe them out. Johnson thinks about it for a moment and tells the guy that he wants to know everything they have discovered so far, but Miller is having none of that and shots him, making it impossible to decrypt his research data.


--

Parts of this episode are great, others not so much.

The space battle part was pretty neat. As with last season, it looked pretty great. But everything on the station seemed really weird. The sets look actually really cheaply done and that machine with the hooked up people looked like random junk yard pieces stuck together. It really all looks like low-budget Doctor Who or some indy production from the 90s. This is the first time The Expanse looked genuinely bad.

That scientist felt like a silly caricature. Were his lines written by the same people who wrote the dialog in the previous season? He seemed like a reasonable guy on Eros, but here he comes across as a full out mad scientist. He admits that they basically have no idea what the blue stuff does, but he's certain that it will give humans god-like powers. That seems really delusional.

Spoiler: The classic anime from the 90s this reminds me off.

Show

This whole project seems like being straight out of Neon Genesis Evangelion.

Miller is mostly fun this episode, but he does not seem to retain anything of what made him interesting and compelling as Detective Chapeau on Ceres. After shooting the scientists dead, he shots him again twice more. I think he was shooting him in the eyes, just in case his files are encrypted with an eye scan instead of a password. But this isn't the kind of show to show that. Which I appreciate. There is way too much torture and gore porn in 2010s TV shows for cheap shocks.

Jonson is getting more interesting, with his main claim to infamy being actually a lie. He also seemed really uncomfortable with leading another assault. At the end I was thinking that he would shoot the scientist himself, even when he said he wanted to get the scientists research data. But it makes perfect sense that Miller wouldn't wait for that. Holden seemed a bit shocked by that, though I don't think he would have much of a problem with it. Maybe he's just not used to see people getting killed yet.

There is good in this episode, but I actually feel that it's leaning towards being not really good overall.

When that guy gets spaced by Johnson, he seems to drop down after he gets pulled through the door. It looks wrong at first sight, but since they are on a rotating space station this is actually correct. What looks like "down" for the people standing on the floor inside the station is actually "out" from the station's center.

I looked up the exact data on Phoebe and it's only 200 km across and about half rock, half ice. Detonating five nuclear bombs at the same time sounds like something that would have the potential to fracture it. Though I doubt the fragments would fall into Saturn any time soon. The main factor for keeping any object in orbit is the speed at which it is orbiting. I don't think even massive nuclear explosions could meaningfully slow down this much rock and ice. I would expect it to take centuries or at least decades for most of the fragments to hit Saturn. But after hitting a research station with nuclear weapons, there won't be anything to salvage anyway.

[factotum]

I thought the reason everything aboard the station looks so gimcrack is because it *is*--it's an old comms relay, not a dedicated science station, so everything is supposed to look a bit thrown together at the last minute. As for the scientist, it's entirely possible he *was* mad when he was babbling at the end there--he'd been rather unceremoniously yanked from some sort of deep VR thing, and the other guys we definitely insane enough to attack armed intruders when they'd had the same thing happen.

[Yora]

S2E3: Static

The Martian marines are getting the news that their radar station back home was destroyed with 17 people killed. Unsurprisingly, they are searching for blood. One of them calls another an Earther for being born on Earth, but the sergeant of the group is not having any such insults in her unit.

Undersecretary is not concerned about the Martians striking back, but Chrisjen is concerned that they could easily destroy a few cities on Earth and the Moon before they can be stopped, and that Martian marines are trained to fight in Earth gravity.

Miller got arrested with the other prisoners from the station, and Holden is really pissed with him. Johnson releases Miller and tells him to get on one of the next ships that leaves from Tycho Station and be gone.

Amos brings Miller his stuff in a bar and tells him Naomi also put in some more of his cancer medication. Miller is grateful and offers Amos a drink. Amos has a no problem with Miller killing the scientist, but agrees that it's probably best for him to leave.

Naomi tells Holden not to feel too bad about all of it, but he's still upset that Miller shot the scientists even though he was willing to talk. Naomi sets him straight that working out a deal to continue the research was absolutely not an acceptable option.

The kid and another Belter find Miller in the bar and think he's the coolest guy now. If it had been up to them, they would have killed all the other prisoners too, and they tell him to come and stay at their place.

Johnson's lieutenant is taunting Naomi and Alex how they got their ship shot to pieces, and Alex quickly insists that they won't be scrapping it.

Johnson, Holden, and Amos go to interrogate the scientist they captured, who clearly seems to be not completely mentally sound. When he hears his boss is dead he only worries about the project. When Johnson tells him he will go to trial for genocide or work with them, he is relieved, thinking Johnson wants to continue the project. The idea that they would want to make a cure for the protomolecule seems puzzling to him. Holden tries to appeal to him that he could use his knowledge as a medical researcher to help people dying from a terrible disease like his mother did when he was a child, but his reply is that he's loyal to his dead boss for having given him this life as a researcher. Reminds me quite a bit of Amos.

Miller is not having a good time with having the kid as a room mate. He's particularly appalled that the loud music he's playing uses samples from a creepy sounding signal that is coming from Eros. He thinks the kid should not be looking forward to be going to war, but Miller also starts to identify more with the other Belters than before.

Naomi goes having fun with Johnson's lieutenant and Alex runs more simulations of the battle at the station, that still always comes out with the Rocinante getting destroyed by the Stealth ship.

The doctor on Tycho Station discovers that something was done to the brains of all the prisoners they made on the secret research station that mostly erases their sense of empathy. Amos wonders if this can be reversed, which it isn't. Holden wonders how they can appeal to someone like that, and Amos appears to have a thought about that.

The Martian sergeant gets some words from her lieutenant about the bad discipline in her unit. Their next assignment will be guard duty on Ganymede, but she makes it very clear her team is all thirsting for blood and wanting to invade Earth. She's reminded that their duty as soldiers is to do whatever tasks they are ordered to, regardless what they would want to do.

Chrisjen's friend comes to her to tell her he has a secure connection to Johnson, but the OPA is really bad at keeping secrets. If she send Johnson a secret message she will be guilty of treason, but she still can forget about the whole thing.
Johnson and his lieutenant get the message in which she apologizes about what she said about him on TV. There are people in the security council that want to start a war, but she still has no idea why. If he has any information that could de-escalate the conflict, he needs to share it quickly. Johnson has an idea, but his lieutenant warns him that he already threw the guy who tried to assassinate Chrisjen out an airlock. If the rest of the OPA learns that he's working with her now, they will surely turn against him. He replies to her they are the only two people who will know about this, and I guess she catches that hint.

Amos goes to have a private talk with the captured scientist, who is currently painting the chemical structure of a compound on the window with leftover sauce from his food. Amos tries to describe how they found Julie Mao, and the chaos and the disgusting mess that went along with her death. The scientist first seems to begin to feel revulsion, but then says that she wasn't dead, but transforming into fantastically orderly crystal patterns. He's more than happy to explain to Amos what happens during the transformation and the forming of a central crystal that serves as a power source. Amos seems to have some kind of idea and walks out.

Miller walks around on Tycho Station and goes into the Mormon church. A man inside approaches him and Miller tells him he would like to know about the journey they are planning.

Amos goes to Holden and tells him the scientist reminds him of pedophiles he met in the past and how they think. He thinks the scientist doesn't want to talk with Holden because Holden wants to take away his obsession with the blue stuff, and instead they should encourage him to share his fascination with them.
They go back to the cell and Holden shows him images from Eros, and the scientist is very happy to explain what they were doing. They found the blue stuff on Phoebe and began to study it, but they needed bigger experiments and so they killed the Martian scientists on Phoebe, destroyed the computers, and left with their samples. Holden says the stuff got out on the Anubis and the scientists really wants to know what they saw specifically. Holden tells him about the reactor and also that they destroyed the Anubis, which devastates the scientist. Amos quickly jumps in to remind him that some of it got to Eros where it thrived, and the guy is happy again. Holden wants to know if it can be controlled and the scientist says that that's what they were trying to learn. He might be able to find a way if he can have all the data on the blue stuff back.

Johnson comes to the prison and gives the scientist a recording of the signal coming from Eros. After making some adjustment to it, it starts to sound like mumbling voices. He works some more on it and identifies it as some kind of counter related to something being build.

Chrisjen is getting a message and is hesitant to open it, but when she does it's an image of a stealth ship along with its coordinates.

Holden finds Alex still running battle simulations and trying to destroy the canon before it shots one of the boarding ships. He then goes to Naomi to tell her that they found human voices in the signal coming from the blue stuff on Eros. The people can not be saved, but they have to do something. Which most likely is annihilating Eros completely. Naomi says she's with him on that.

Miller comes to Johnson's office and tells him they have to go back to Eros and destroy the thing. He also tells Johnson that he didn't kill the lead scientists because he was crazy, but because he was making sense. And if given an opportunity, someone would have helped him to continue with his plan. Johnson does not deny that. He also wonders how they could possibly destroy an asteroid of that size, to which Miller's answer is to use the Mormon's giant ship.

--

I wasn't too pleased with the previous episode, but this one was great. Amos gets his moment to really shine and display a lot of hidden depth.
There clearly is something not right with Amos head, but unlike most crazy characters in fiction, he is very much aware of his condition and he also understands it very well. When the doctor describes what was done to the brains of the prisoners, Amos recognizes that it is similar to him. And he also asks if it can be reversed. It doesn't seem to bother him that it can't, but he seems to believe that it would be preferable to make him more like others if it could. Hard to say if he suffers from his condition, but rationally it would be more convenient to not have it.

I also really like that his reaction is to think he can make the scientist talk and he goes to do it himself, instead of going to Holden or Naomi to explain his idea. Usually he leaves the initiative to them, but with this he seems certain that he can handle it by himself.
His first attempt is to tell the man about the chaos in Julie Mao's room and the mess caused by her transformation instead of trying to appeal to empathy for the pain and fear of the people being transformed. And it is disturbing to the scientist. It could be that Amos just had a guess about the guy, but I think the implication is that Amos finds these things similarly revolting, even though he never expressed discomfort about that to others.
Only 13 episodes in, and it's already "Classic Amos" when he starts a conversation with Holden with "Have you ever talked to a pedophile?"
Later when he explained the situation to Holden and Holden goes to talk with the scientist, Amos mostly stays out of it but occasionally steps in when Holden starts getting emotional and talking about destroying the blue stuff. Quickly directing the scientist's attention back to the thing currently growing on Eros and forgetting of Holden trying to destroy it. He clearly is paying complete attention to the conversation and constantly judging the mood. I really liked that.

Miller talking with the Mormons was also interesting. I think mostly he was just there to get information and pretending to be interested in their believes and mission. But at the same time he did appear to be searching and hoping for meaning, even if the Mormon believes were never a real option for him.

Naomi going out and having some fun with Johnson's lieutenant was nice, but it didn't really seem to contribute anything narratively. And for character moments they were too short. Though I have to say the lieutenant was an interesting character herself. She clearly is somewhat different in her own way.

[Dragonus45]

Reading the thread here has been interesting. I adore the book series so much but could just never get into the show for various reasons so seeing a fresh unbiased take on it has been refreshing.

[Rakaydos]

Man, if you're missing the subtext of "Chrisjen's friend's" history, it's probably going to feel weak when the ball drops.

S2E3: Static
Naomi going out and having some fun with Johnson's lieutenant was nice, but it didn't really seem to contribute anything narratively. And for character moments they were too short. Though I have to say the lieutenant was an interesting character herself. She clearly is somewhat different in her own way.

IIRC, the show writers merged Johnson's leutennant and one of Naomi's old belter friends into a single character, so jumping between the two may feel a little jarring, especially with Naomi's problems with Johnson last season. This is probably just to establish the two of them hitting it off well, to set up the "belter friend" parts of the story.

[Yora]

Speaking of which, I think I am done with being curious about how long it takes the show to help me learn the names of everyone. Seems like almost nobody ever addresses anyone by name. I tried looking up names, but most characters seem to have several names. If I am encountering new characters whose names are worth remembering for the future, please let me know what their established names are.

[Rakaydos]

Johnson's Leutennant is... Drummer, IIRC?
I dont remember the cheeky belter kid's name, but at this point he's already had 4 appearances over 2 seasons, so he probably has one.
The martian marine sergent's name is Bobby.

Spoiler: Continuity error-season 2 mention of a season 4 spoiler

Show

Also, the group led by Naomi's Ex was mentioned in Naomi's hearing, and she didnt react. Naomi doesnt have THAT good of a poker face.

The Morman ship is the Navoo.

And if you pay attention to the main cast's wardrobe, they still have some of their Scopuli/Pur'n'Cleen corporate clothing, and the martian military gear they use is branded the Tachi- which was the martian transponder code before they changed it to the Roci/Rocinante.

I'm pretty sure the dead mad scientist was Drucker, not sure about new mad scientist.

You havnt met Prax yet. And Ashford isnt until season 3.

[factotum]

The Morman ship is the Navoo.

Just to correct you there, it's the Nauvoo (note the U). Not sure what the name means or where it comes from.

It's kind of weird, given how powerful the Epstein drive is, that a bunch of Mormons are the only people planning interstellar journeys using it. The Nauvoo is intended to make a journey to Tau Ceti (12LY away) in about a century, so it must have a delta-V of approximately 0.24c. You would think there would at least be automated probes heading to other stars, but if so, nobody ever mentions them in the show that I can recall.

[Yora]

The LDSS Nauvoo. Love that designation.

[Tyndmyr]

Speaking of which, I think I am done with being curious about how long it takes the show to help me learn the names of everyone. Seems like almost nobody ever addresses anyone by name. I tried looking up names, but most characters seem to have several names. If I am encountering new characters whose names are worth remembering for the future, please let me know what their established names are.

See, this is...odd to me. Relevant names seem to be introduced early and often. "Scopuli" is visible in the opening shot, and we frequently have mentions of that to draw us back to it. Likewise, main characters tend to use their name, or have someone else speak it to them, when they are introduced. Holden speaks his own name to identify himself in the pilot episode when talking into the comms in his very first scene, right? And the names are re-used fairly early for emphasis.

The same is true for the other main characters, while it is not true for a lot of ancillary characters. Don't think we got a name for the crazy XO we see in the pilot. A good deal of the "filler" plot is introducing characters, dumping their name and a brief outline of who they are or what their backstory is. This isn't super unusual, but I'm at a loss to explain why you're not seeing names. Maybe because there's so many setting details being dumped at once?

[Yora]

Well, I don't have that issue with other shows. It's not that it makes keeping track of characters difficult, as most of them are very distinctive. I just don't know what to call them when I write about them.

[Tyndmyr]

Well, I don't have that issue with other shows. It's not that it makes keeping track of characters difficult, as most of them are very distinctive. I just don't know what to call them when I write about them.

Well, descriptors like hat cop do work well enough at any rate. Anyone watching will immediately know who is who by that standard.

[Cikomyr2]

Well, I don't have that issue with other shows. It's not that it makes keeping track of characters difficult, as most of them are very distinctive. I just don't know what to call them when I write about them.

I never have much problem u simply using nickname.

I still miss Hat Detective

[Yora]

Hat Cop. With his fiends Earth Cop and Lady Cop.

[Rakaydos]

I JUST noticed something in the opening credits, concerning an event that Yora just passed.

In season 1 and 2, when the credits shows the colonized moon, and then Mars, you can see Phobos and Deimos highlighted as points of interest.

In season 3 opening credits, it's the exact same scene, but there's a debris cloud where Demos was, before earth destroyed it.

[Yora]

S2E4: Godspeed

Chrisjen has the guy she blackmailed to send his spy on Tycho Station go looking for the stealth ship that Alex destroyed. His team finds that it's using one of the missing fusion reactors that the ambassador had discovered, and that all the dead people on the ship are working for a company that belongs to Mao. The same company also had a lab on Phoebe. She orders the destroyed ship to be tugged to a place where the Earther Navy will find it, and then she has an explanation how she knows about it.

Holden and Naomi come to Johnsons office were Miller is still waiting for them. Holden is not pleased. Johnson tells them that the Martian fleet that quarantined Eros was withdrawn to be ready for a war with Earth, and so there's nothing stopping anyone landing there and spreading the blue stuff across the other planets.
Even the Mormon ship is not big enough to seriously damage Eros, but they can use its engines to give Eros a push that will throw it into the sun. Then they blow up the docks to prevent anyone from landing while it's on its way. Holden does not like it, but agrees with the plan.

The Earthers find the stealth ship and link it to Mao, putting him and his company under investigation. So he flies over to the UN for a chat with his good friends Chrisjen and her boss Erinwright to clear things up. It's a weird situation where the men are making a show for Chrisjen, while she's already pretty certain that they are conspiring together. Mao says his conglomerate is so massive that a little biotech company barely appears on the radar, and that probably some OPA members stole resources from him to run their own stealth ship project. Each of his companies does its own hiring and firing and manage themselves as long as they remain profitable. Chrisjen finds it hard to believe that they would have been able to divert enough resources and funds to develop stealth ships and still running their normal business without a dent in the profits. She also would like to know what the company was doing on Phoebe before the Martians blew up the moon. Erinwright tries to claim this isn't relevant to the stealth ship issue, but can't really stop her from asking more questions without looking suspicious.

The Mormons are very much upset that everyone has to get off their ship because of a radiation accident and that they can't send any messages to their headquarters on Earth. Miller realizes that he can't fool them that he and Johnson are doing something fishy with the ship, but tells the leader to have faith.
Johnson is pleased that Miller seems to have his act together again and gives him back his gun (which he got from a UNN assassin on Eros, I think.) Holden still doesn't want to talk with him, but Naomi goes over to have a word. Miller tells her that he's taking the responsibility on himself to deal with the blue stuff on Eros. But who they will tell about the sample they hid on an asteroid and what to do with it he is leaving up to Naomi.

Mao is upset with Erinwright that Chrisjen is figuring out their plan. He's replying that she won't be any problem, but Mao is certain that she already knows the two of them are working together on this thing, and quite annoyed that he has to spell it out to Erinwright. It appears he has outlived his usefulness.

Amos is having a great day. Holden gives the command to drop off the explosives for the demolitions team at Eros. "'Bombs away.' I always wanted to say that."

Miller is having a bad day, having never flown through space in a space suit, but the miner kid is with him. When he tries to land he faceplants on a wall and drops his detonator, but the kid tells him not to worry as this happens all the time and so they always have spares.

The Rocinante checks Eros for any signs of humans but doesn't pick up anything. There's a lot of heat coming from the inside, though, and still the creepy signal sounding like human voices. Naomi does spot a small ship docked on the outside though. They check its registry and its a ship from Pallas station (which was not mentioned before, but Pallas is also where Tycho Station is). Alex sends a scout drone to look inside, and it's actually a very fancy medical ship. But someone inside the ship spots the drone and destroys it.
Holden and Alex get ready to board it, but the Rocinante gets a call. The ship turns out to be a team of emergency workers trying to rescue survivors. Holden plays along with the assumption that the Rocinante is an unmarked Martian special forces ship enforcing the quarantine on Eros. Since they claim they have not been able to find any airlock they could open yet, Holden thinks it's best to keep pretending they are Martian navy and shoo them away without telling them what's going on on Eros.

While they are setting up the eplosives, Miller spots an airlock with broken controls that is fully closed. He finds a dead man in a space suit from the rescue team, who has been killed by the blue stuff. So he calls Holden to tell him and Holden calls the emergency workers. They already figured out the blue stuff is not a disease and think it's a Martian bioweapon. They try to get their ship out of the Rocinante's jamming range (I assume they are communicating by short range laser at this moment) to reveal the truth, but Holden tells them to come back. The captain ignores him and Holden fires a missile that destroys them.
Miller and the kid are in the debris blast and Miller gets a leak in his suit, but he manages to seal it with a patch and still having almost 15 minutes of air left. Much worse, one of the demolition charges was damaged and the detonator can't be stopped or disabled. All they can do it to manually reset the timer back to 60 seconds. If it goes off it will detonate the explosives nearby, causing a big enough explosion to make Eros spin, and the push from the colony ship won't make it hit the sun. Miller sends the kid back to the ship and says he will keep his finger on the button.

He let's the Rocinante know and Naomi says there's still time to disarm it, but he tells them not to bother coming back for him. He sees the colony ship coming right at him, but then it misses Eros completely. Miller calls again to ask why the ship swerved. Holden tells him that it didn't, and that Eros dodged out of the way.

--

Nice episode. Lots of stuff happening.

That whole thing with the damaged bomb at the end felt a bit forced, but it seems that in the end it was just a reason to have Miller get a good look at the ship passing by. Though then again, it's another one of the dramatic fake-outs this show is so in love with, and seems to have at least one in every single episode.

Other than that, I think it's really good.

Miller isn't anywhere near as crazy as he was a few episodes ago, and actually seems to be back to his old form. And he's now starting to make friends with the OPA Belters, which is also nice.

The situation with the emergency workers was also a nice idea. But in the end it ended as it did because they had only 30 seconds, which wasn't enough to simply talk thinks out. Without that arbitrary time limit the whole exchange would not have made sense. That does drop it somewhat of its impact.

I liked the moment with Amos when Holden said the whole situation felt like cleaning up a crime scene. "Yeah... you are right. This really does feel exactly like cleaning up a crime scene!"

When the colony ship is launching from Tycho Station, they are attaching a simply ludicrous amount of thrusters to move it in the right direction. Even with that thing being mostly hollow, that's probably what it takes to move something that big without it taking several hours.

And Eros has just become a much bigger problem.

[factotum]

A thing about this episode that I always liked--if you look as the Nauvoo fires up its engines after launch, you can see the remnants of the scaffolding that was around the ship turning red and melting away in its wake. It's a minor detail, but you can tell someone on the FX team is really detail oriented like that. Makes a nice change from Babylon 5, where they didn't really lock down how big the ships or the station were until quite late on in the process.

The thing about Eros "side stepping" the Nauvoo is actually pretty important, not just a fake-out, because Miller was on the asteroid at the time and felt no acceleration--so that's an indication that the protomolecule is capable of doing stuff which is beyond the laws of physics as we know them. Given the size of the Nauvoo Eros had to have moved a good kilometre in a fraction of a second in order to get out of its way, which should have left Miller as either a red smear or floating off into space.

[Rakaydos]

We're fast approaching the climax of book 1.

Chrisjen Avasarala and Sgt Bobby Draper are book 2 characters, and once Eros is... resolved... you'll be meeting Prax, Dr Strictlen, and Mei.

[Yora]

The thing about Eros "side stepping" the Nauvoo is actually pretty important, not just a fake-out, because Miller was on the asteroid at the time and felt no acceleration--so that's an indication that the protomolecule is capable of doing stuff which is beyond the laws of physics as we know them. Given the size of the Nauvoo Eros had to have moved a good kilometre in a fraction of a second in order to get out of its way, which should have left Miller as either a red smear or floating off into space.

Good thing I already watched the next episode and writing on the review, because that's basically a spoiler. (Even though it's not a major story point.)

[Rakaydos]

Good thing I already watched the next episode and writing on the review, because that's basically a spoiler. (Even though it's not a major story point.)

The books had everyone freaking out over the physics violation a lot more clearly than the show did- When Naomi identified the waste heat, it was with the air of a drowning man reaching for a life preserver. Still violation conservation of momentum, but at least not violating the 2nd law of thermodynamics, too.

[factotum]

Good thing I already watched the next episode and writing on the review, because that's basically a spoiler. (Even though it's not a major story point.)

It's not? It's based on what happens in the episode--Eros suddenly moves aside without a person on board feeling any acceleration. That's totally beyond the laws of physics. And what else would be doing that other than the alien blue goop that's infesting the place?

[Yora]

S2E5: Home

The Security Council on Earth is in chaos. The saw Eros suddenly starting to move, right when the Mormon ship was heading straight for it. And the Mormons on Earth just reported their ship as having been stolen by Johnson. What really is concerning to everyone is how Eros could start moving without having any engines.

Eros has stopped spinning, but Miller is reporting that he's still feeling gravity. He also can see that Eros is starting to accelerate away from the Rocinante but he's not feeling any acceleration either.
Now people on Earth are really worried because it's heading straight for them.

Erinwright calls Mao to tell him what the hell is going on but does not get a reply.

The council thinks their best option is to send lots of missiles against Eros to turn it into rubble that will burn up in the atmosphere of Earth and then send a couple more nuclear warheads to kill off whatever is inside with radiation. Chrisjen remembers to send a message to the Martians, so they don't think the huge swarm of missiles is aimed at them.

Naomi thinks that they could at least try to destroy the blue stuff by Miller carrying one of the bombs inside. Meanwhile she will work on reprogramming the detonator so that Miller can get away, but I think he's not really worried about that anymore. Amos happens to be the one to ask if Naomi really thinks they can save him.

Miller is having a bad time trying to haul the bomb up a ladder while still having to reset the 60 second timer. He finds some corpses that have been left completely unaffected by the blue stuff. He comes across the blue lights flying through the air and they start acting strangely just the moment that the missiles from Earth are locking on to Eros.
Holden and Naomi tells Miller to continue anyway (presumably in case the blue stuff has other tricks up its sleeve). And it then does suddenly vanish from any radar. (And suddenly the Rocinante at Eros can communicate with Tycho station with no time delay?)

Johnson goes to the captured scientist to ask him what's going on. He calls the Security Council that the OPA has a ship close to Eros that can use a targeting laser to guide the missiles. Handing over control to half of Earth's nuclear arsenal to the OPA sounds crazy, but Chrisjen says they only have to hand over guidance and can still remote detonate the missiles at any time. And if Earth dies, the Belters have no hope to survive on their own. The General Secretary needs time to think about it, and Chrisjen would like to talk with the captain of the OPA ship. Nobody mentions the reply coming from Holden.

Eros keeps accelerating to escape the missiles and the Rocinante will have to go to 15g acceleration to keep up. The autopilot can keep pursuing Eros, but even with their seat and acceleration juice, anyone on board will only survive for a couple of minutes before their brains start bleeding.

The higher ups on Earth decide to evacuate to the Moon. Chrisjen calls her husband on the moon, who isn't used to the two second delay and starts talking in the middle of her sentences. Of course, she can't abandon Earth at a moment like this.

Miller gets deeper into the areas of Eros that are covered in glowing blue stuff, and finds some crystals growing to replicate human shapes, and also hears voices in the noise more clearly that sound like Julie Mao mumbling about things that were relevant to her. He also thinks the center of the growth is in her room in the hotel, and proposes that her mind was imprinted on the protomolecule. And it might be her wish to return home that makes Eros head for Earth.
He will try to talk with the protomolecule and if that fails, he can still blow it up with his bomb. The Rocinante does not have to keep up the pursuit and crush everyone on it. Holden quickly calls Johnson to tell him guiding the missiles in to Eros is off, and Johnson has no idea what he's now supposed to do with them.
Miller sees blue motes imitating that bird that hang out outside his window on Ceres and it guides him to Julie Mao's room. He finds her having turned completely blue and glowing, but looking otherwise like a normal human. She's also able to speak and he tries to convince her that she can't take Eros to Earth, but she doesn't understand why. He takes off his helmet and gloves to give her a kiss and let himself get infected.

Then Eros falls into the brown clouds of a planet.

--

"Hello? I would like to order 2000 liters of florescent blue paint."

That very last bit at the end was weird. For a while I was thinking like the atmosphere was really poluted, but on watching it again I figured out that it would probably be Venus, which is also in the neighborhood and looks like that. One of the TV screen even has a little crawl at the bottom that mentions Venus, but it's very quick and hard to read. Really wouldn't have hurt anyone to give at least a little voiceover that Eros instead flew to Venus.

Miller walking into blue stuff central was certainly interesting and pretty. But I feel like the dialog came across as gibberish. I got the idea of something of Julie Mao's mind being build into the blue stuff, which gave it the desire to go to Earth. But other than that I really had no clue what they were talking about.

That damaged bomb from the previous episode turned out to be more than just on cheap short fake-out, but I still think that part could have easily been written better.

They are really renovating the solar system this season. Phoebe, Deimos, and Eros destroyed. The solar system probably has not changed that rapidly for billions of years.

I like Johnson's lieutenant Drummer. She's funny in a slightly odd way. "Charming" doesn't quite feel the right word to describe it. I hope she's going to be around more, and I think I saw her before in some promo images.

Hmm... I don't know. This episode is certainly impressive in some way, but I don't really find much to talk about. And I also feel like it's mostly spectacle and somewhat light on substance. It's one of the highest rated episodes in the whole series, and I can totally understand why some people might find it amazing. But I feel its a bit shakey and creaky and not really getting the full oomph out of the material it covers.

Still very nice episode.