The Expanse. Season 1 – Elenche Zetetique

Before reading – caution, there may be sudden spoilers!

Intro

Contrary to the recommendation to watch something first and then read it if you want to go deeper, I usually do the opposite – if I like something when I read it, I look for additional materials later.

That’s what happened with «The Expanse». For a long time, this series was periodically glimpsed in various anthologies, mentioned by authors I watch and read, so I decided and watched it. At the time of watching the first season I was in the middle of the third book, and at the time of writing this article I have already read everything – all 9 novels, also all the currently existing short stories and novellas.

As every person who reads books I have already had images of main characters in my mind, and as soon as the show began my brain started to compare them with characters shown in the series.

Essential detail

Before I begin, I just would like to say that I do not want to be that guy who annoys everyone and says «it is not like in the book!» regarding each mismatch. I do not demand from the creators of the series to strictly follow the descriptions from the books word for word. It is not about that. The creators didn’t really bother to make them believable within the confines of this fictional reality. The first glaring discrepancy is that there has to be a visible difference between belters and earthers. James Holden is from Earth, therefore, he has to be shorter then an average belter. On the contrary in the show we see that Naomi Nagata, born in the asteroid belt, is shorter then James Holden.

And this is important because one of the through lines of the entire narrative is this very aspect, which is emphasized very often throughout the series – people, despite the difference of races and nationalities, represented the same species when the habitat was limited to one planet, so that any individual could theoretically survive anywhere on it, but after going into space after some time, a subspecies of mankind was formed, which is fundamentally incompatible with living on planets with normal gravity (so-called gravity wells) close to Earth’s.

Considering the above, it doesn’t feel that way in the show because there is no visible difference between belters and earthers. There are some good moments in there that show this distinction, such as some of the characters from the extras, or the scene of Avasarala interrogating one of belters on Earth, but the main focus is still constantly on the main characters, and these differences are again negated.

The characters

Below I’ll run through the characters that I envisioned differently from the series. I’m certainly not going to describe all the characters, just the ones that caught my eye. ¹

Amos Burton

Aka Timmy, aka Timothy (just don’t call him that, he’s Amos to everyone).

This is my favorite character of the series – he’s always with his half-smile-half-grin, doesn’t get hung up on complicated philosophical things, knows how to listen, is completely rational, does his job perfectly, cold and calculating. Partly because he’s a psychopath (I’m 99.9999% sure), and he is fundamentally inaccessible and incomprehensible to part of the human emotional spectrum. The authors don’t directly say this, but they make a lot of hints about it.

I pictured him exactly like that – muscular giant at least two meters tall with his head shaved bald.

In the show itself, I didn’t see anything close to that – the actor even shorter than Holden, and not much more muscular than him.

I actually didn’t really understand why the show creators departed from the original here, and showed the mutual dislike between Holden and Amos. Amos would never act like that. Even in the most critical situation, he doesn’t give in to emotions – he is a psychopath after all.

For generating images with Amos the photo of Gordon Ryan (American professional wrestler) was used as the base.

Naomi Nagata

In addition to what was mentioned at the very beginning, I imagine her like this. I understand perfectly well that everyone has different tastes, but in my opinion, my versions are much prettier. Photo of Dola Rashad (american actress) was used as the basis for generating these images.

Alex Kamal

I read almost the entire book series imagining Alex exactly like this (left image), until I came across the following lines:

«Come up to the cockpit», said the black man, whom Holden called Alex. ²

Suddenly, almost at the very end, I needed to re-imagine him in a different way. In the series there was a complete miscast with this character, in my opinion.

It’s been repeated time and time again in the books that Alex is balding, so I tried to get that image of him.

And in the fifth book (Nemesis Games) it was mentioned that he’s of Jewish blood.

It was the neighbourhood where Alex had grown up. His father’s ashes were in the crypt at the synagogue, …

Even though Cas Anvar doesn’t quite fit the description, I’ll still point out that he portrayed Alex close to the original.

James Holden

I’ve seen James Holden like this, and by the way, the actor in the show is picked perfectly. As far as I remember, little attention was paid to his skin color, but I can assume that he must have a slightly darker skin, so he had several fathers and mothers (8 parents in total).

In my imagination it should be a not very memorable person, i.e. with a typical appearance, talking to whom after some time his image will asbolutely vanish – it will be possible to remember what this person said, but hardly what he looked like.

One of the main characters, along with his team, around whom the entire narrative revolves and where it all began, but in the background the authors, with their vague hints and allegories put into the mouths of characters of varying degrees, push the idea that it’s unknown whether things would have been worse if Holden hadn’t been at the center of events.

Joe Miller

To be honest here my version is inferior to the version from the show. Thomas Jane fits the role perfectly. After I saw him as a detective, further while reading, his image replaced my original one.

One of the variations of «What Dresden saw at the very last moment».

Julie Mao

I envisioned her much younger, since she’s 22. She looks older on the show, but either way, Florence Faivre is still pretty good for the role of Julie. Her character isn’t revealed much in the first season – just some passages where she meets the protomolecule, and scenes where she’s already lying dead in the shower, infected by the it.

Chrisjen Avasarala

Shohreh Aghdashloo did a beautiful job, but I have seen Avasarala like the image on the left.

On forums, in addition to comments criticizing her as an actress, I’ve also seen some that criticize her voice. In my opinion, it adds color to the character. Usually my imagination draws images, places, scenes very vividly, but while reading I don’t think much about what kind of voices they could have had. So after seeing and hearing Avasarala’s version from the show, my inner voice while reading her lines became Shohreh’s voice.

Fred Johnson

The actor portraying Fred is good, but in my estimation he should look older. Chad Coleman looks much younger, despite the fact that he was born in 1967 (by the way, he looks very good at 57!).

Judging by the appearance of the character, I don’t feel the weight of the decisions he once made that have left their mark on him. Something in his facial features makes it hard to believe that this man is a former colonel of the UN Marine Corps. My version below is more convincing.

Anthony Dresden

In the show Dresden himself appears in the immediate danger zone and performs the basic task – he is a secret manipulator, a gray cardinal, a man who should entrust things to the others. In the narrative even his appearance and behavior speak for themselves, pushing on the idea that he himself will definitely not willingly go where there are so many risks, and on Eros the risk was definitely there. The choice of actor Daniel Kash is not convincing for this role in my humble opinion.

The photo with Corey Stoll is taken as the base for the creation of the image.

A final note

Overall, the series makes a positive impression, and despite my slight grumbling about the cast, where I was only describing that my imagination pictured them differently – somewhere better than the show, somewhere not so much. Anyway each actor tries to play their role to the best of their ability. There are no complaints here. The budget of the series is eye-catching, and that’s not a problem for me either, so I’ll probably keep watching it.

References

When I started preparing the material and comparing the characters, I suddenly realized that I somehow vaguely envisioned Sadavir Errinwright when reading the books, but the casting is right in the bullseye. He reminded me of the character Bobby Axelrod from Billions. It is people with this appearance that I envision in these positions. ↩︎
Translated back into English from another language, so this passage may appear different in the original. ↩︎
Preview image taken from here. ↩︎