I watched about five episodes of Alias before I gave up. The reason was that they would always end on what seemed like a cliffhanger, but was really the climax that was meant to lead into the final act. It was a very artificial way of creating cliffhangers that was, in fact, just a rip in the middle of the plot. I'd argue that an effective cliffhanger is more the Inciting Incident of the next story - not the climax of the previous one.
The Expanse actually does something similar, but for whatever reason, it works a lot better. The story of Leviathan Wakes, the first book in the series, is divided between seasons one and two, and there's a transition to the second book, Caliban's War, in the middle of the season. We just saw the resolution of Caliban's War in the previous episode, and now we're getting into Abaddon's Gate. I haven't read the books, but there is a pretty clear divide here, in this case with a rather big time jump, not to mention a little isolated short story that ends in what is honestly maybe the most gruesome death I've ever seen on screen.
With Errinwright and Mao both arrested, and even SG Sorrento-Gillis resigned (we don't really see his fall from grace, as he came out of Errinwright's arrest as kind of an opportunistic victor,) the war with Mars seems like it's died down - presumably to previous Cold War positions. The biggest deal is the giant ring that the protomolecule has been constructing out beyond Saturn after the massive jellyfish/Lovecraftian god rose out of Venus and traveled there.
So what is going on with our people?
One thing that's surprising is that the Roci crew is now famous and kind of legitimized thanks to their many heroic feats. They have a documentary crew on board and there's new reports that portray them in a flattering light (though I've got a pet theory developing about the docu-crew that might be total BS.) Holden, Alex, and Amos have been invited to check out the ring along with a huge and totally-not-at-all-going-to-die-horribly group of UN representatives (including potential survivor of whatever horrible thing happens Anna Volovodov.)
Amos is, as always, reluctant to share anything about his past, and clearly misses Prax, even though he's glad that Prax is back home on Ganymede with his daughter. We actually don't get a ton in this episode for the Roci crew, though I'll come back to Holden.
Naomi has left the crew and is now working for Drummer, who has become captain of the Behemoth - the renamed Nauvoo, now the most powerful ship in the OPA. Indeed, we're seeing the OPA starting to adopt a more legitimate aesthetic, with some sort of hierarchy and a new logo that looks more precisely designed than the old Anarchy A.
Drummer is awesome as always, but while she and Naomi see eye-to-eye, the OPA leadership (which is apparently a thing now) sends a man named Ashford to be Drummer's XO. Ashford is an old space pirate, and seems to be very much your standard OPA tough guy when he has a violent confrontation with some old rival on the bridge of the Behemoth. But despite his snarky attitude, Ashford presents an enigmatic face: when Drummer wants to space a drug-supplier who provided the stuff that got one of her crew killed, Ashford argues in front of the rest of the crew that he ought to be taken to the brig and court-martialed like one does in a real navy. It's certainly good advice if the OPA wants to be seen as legitimate, but at the same time, Ashford's ambition and willingness to undermine his captain is on full display here.
Ashford could really go either way - a status-climbing future mutineer or a really useful, tell-it-straight-to-the-captain first officer. And it's David Straithairn, so that's good.
We're also introduced to a new character (I can't recall if she's named.) There's a group of what appear to be salvage workers working on some station (I couldn't tell if it was near the ring or not.) One of the workers, however, is clearly there for other reasons, as she plants explosives on the station they find, killing a friendly co-worker who finds the bomb after taking some kind of strength-increasing drug hidden in a false tooth.
That suggests to me that this is someone backed up by powerful resources, but we really don't know what the motivation is here just yet.
Second-to-last, let's talk about our poor one-shot Belter. We were introduced to the idea of sling-shotters in season one, where the super XTREME Belters get in tiny ships and attempt to fling themselves between various planets and moons at the fastest speeds attainable to beat previously established records, using the slingshot effect to accelerate as much as they can. Clearly a lot of people die this way, like we saw in season one.
But generally not like this.
Our Belter, a dweeb who is just trying to impress his super-hot and not very faithful girlfriend back on Ceres, blasts Belter covers of old Deep Purple Songs (seriously, "Highway Star" in Belter Patois is the kind of thing that could be cheesy but is actually awesome,) is breaking records, but it turns out all of the coverage of his shot are being pre-empted by all the news about the ring and the fact that the famous James Holden is heading out there to investigate (which, to be fair, has a very tabletop RPG feeling to it - like, why are these guys being sent other than "they're the System's greatest heroes?" Considering that the Expanse was originally conceived of as an MMORPG, if you think of the Roci crew as a group of RPG PCs, it actually works out shockingly well.)
So our dumb, horny, but ultimately innocent belter dude decides that if he's going to get his girl back, he's got to do something really unprecedented. So he changes course, getting ready to send his ship through the massive ring. Once he tells his girlfriend, she sends him a video where she shows him her boobs, which was what this was all about in the first place, and so he enthusiastically goes forward. Telling the UN ships warning him from proceeding the old "oops, sorry, technical difficulties. I'm totally going to stop once I can!" he proceeds to travel through the gate.
And then... uh... um... ew.
See, a field pops up within the gate that stops his ship cold. Everything in the ship goes from thousands of miles and hour to zero velocity in an instant. Well, everything that's a part of the ship. The belter guy, who is strapped into his chair but honestly this'd be ugly any way, keeps moving forward. And he's torn apart... like, depth-wise. It is super, super, super nasty.
What this means for the gate is a big question mark I'm sure we'll spend the rest of the season (and the first half of the next! Thanks, Amazon!) exploring. But for this one dude... that's a nasty way to go. At least it was very quick.
Ok, but I said I was getting back to Holden.
Holden is getting ready for some bunk time when he hears a familiar voice. He looks down and it's Miller, wearing his old stupid hat. And then Miller disappears.
Now, I have had a bit of this spoiled, but I've got to say it's nice to see Thomas Jane back, even if for now he's kind of a dream-like apparition. Given the nature of the protomolecule and Juliet's quasi-resurrection, it always seemed like a possibility that it could bring Miller back in one way or another, but we've got a few questions to ask - is this Miller really the same guy? Does he want to protect humanity from the dangers of the protomolecule? And how big of a presence is he going to be?
The fact that there's a bit of protomolecule on the Roci has been a dangling plot thread for a while now, so if this is the payoff, I'm pretty happy about it.
No comments:
Post a Comment