Navigating the Void: Political Intrigue and Power in The Expanse Season 1
If you think of sci-fi shows in which the actions and stories are set mainly in space, chances are most of you can immediately remember Star Trek: The Original Series, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Stargate SG1, the reboot of Battlestar Galactica, and Babylon 5. It has been like that for quite a while, but now at last you can add to the list another memorable TV show called The Expanse, based on a novel series of the same name by James S. A. Corey. Unlike Battlestar Galactica or Babylon 5, however, you have no episodic structure in The Expanse. Instead, it delivers a rather long story arc, and quite a complex one at that. Here is a deeper look at the political intrigue and power in the Expanse Season 1.
Events in The Expanse are set in the future where humans have colonized the solar system. Earth is still inhabited despite running low on resources, but humans have also established a colony on Mars. Another massive colony lives on the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Because of the differences in their environments, those three civilizations – despite all being originally humans – are physically different from each other. Earthers are the wealthy elite, whereas the Martians can be considered the rising middle class. The Belters are the working class who can no longer return to Earth because their bodies wouldn’t be able to survive the increase in gravity.
To add to the political intrigue at play, The Expanse Season 1 introduces us to the Outer Planetary Alliance (OPA), which began as some kind of advocacy group on behalf of the Belters, but gradually became a sociopolitical movement of its own and perhaps even a borderline terrorist group.
The Expanse’s complex story arc starts with multiple fragments that will eventually intertwine, approaching the end of Season 1. One of the first major fragments belongs to Joe Miller, a detective born on the dwarf planet of Ceres in the asteroid belt. He is on a mission to find a missing young woman named Julie Mao. Another big fragment concerns the crew members of an ice hauler Canterbury, including Jim Holden, Naomi Nagata, Amos Burton, and Alex Kamal. When they receive a distress call from a freighter called the Scopuli, they immediately take the shuttle “Knight” to investigate the matter. It turns out no one is aboard the Scopuli, but they discover a Mars-made distress beacon planted in the freighter. As the crew make their way back to Canterbury, a stealth ship destroys the ice hauler with nuclear torpedoes. They assume the Martians are behind the attack.
The Knight is then rescued by the Donnager, a flagship of the Martian Congressional Republic Navy. With the political situation already on the brink of collapse between the MCRN and the United Nations, the Martians are determined to get all the collected sensor data captured from the mysterious stealth ship. However, it doesn’t take long until the same stealth ship attacks the Donnager, which further complicates the mystery and escalates the tension not only between the MCRN and the UN but also the OPA. The former crew members of the Canterbury narrowly escape the attack on a frigate called the Tachi. To avoid detection, they rename the ship to “Rocinante” and change the transponder as well.
Jim Holden and co. find safe refuge at the Tycho Station, the largest construction platform in the entire solar system. It turns out that the station is home to OPA’s secret headquarters under the command of Fred Johnson. The crew of the Rocinante makes a tentative alliance with the commanding officer and is sent to investigate a derelict spaceship called the Anubis. There are reasons to believe that Anubis was responsible for the destruction of the Scopuli and the Canterbury. The crew discover a strange crystallized structure growing around Anubis’ reactor – this structure or organism is later known as the protomolecule. They also figure out that a shuttle from Anubis had departed for the Eros Station in the Asteroid Belt, so they destroy the ship and follow the shuttle afterward. On Eros, the crew finally cross paths with detective Joe Miller.
A joint investigation between the crew of the Rocinante and detective Miller unveils that Julie Mao was accidentally infected by the strange structure – the protomolecule – Holden saw on the Anubis. The man behind the protomolecule is none other than the woman’s own father, Jules-Pierre Mao, who has been working secretly for the UN in a project to weaponize and commercialize the protomolecule. In fact, he has infected the entire population of Eros and faked a disaster that would force everyone into shelters. The plan involves exposing Eros to radiation, which encourages the protomolecule to consume all the infected. Detective Miller along with the crew of the Rocinante barely make it out alive.
We think The Expanse series, for most of the first season, can feel like two separate shows running as one. First, you have the story of detective Josephus Miller, an agent of Star Helix Security at Ceres Station. He’s rough around the edges, but still a reliable hero in many tricky situations. The other show chronicles the journey of James Holden along with all the surviving crew of the Canterbury, who unfortunately find themselves trapped in the middle of interplanetary political power struggle and conspiracy. While Miller and Holden have somewhat different approaches to just about everything, their unique viewpoints of a shared mystery link the narrative together well enjoyably.
What’s your favorite episode of The Expanse Season 1? Do you think Julie Mao deserves more screen time? We’d love to hear from you.
Other Things You Might Want to Know
The Expanse Season 1 Main Cast:
Thomas Jane as Joe Miller
Steven Strait as James Holden
Cas Anvar as Alex Kamal
Dominique Tipper as Naomi Nagata
Wes Chatham as Amos Burton
Paulo Costanzo as Shed Garvey
Florence Faivre as Juliette Mao
Shawn Doyle as Sadavir Errinwright
Shohreh Aghdashloo as Chrisjen Avasarala
How many episodes are there in the first season?
Season 1 of The Expanse comprises 10 episodes aired from December 14, 2015, to February 2, 2016.
Where did the Protomolecule come from?
The Protomolecule was sent to the solar system by an alien civilization about 2 billion years ago. Earth was its original destination, but the asteroid was captured by Saturn’s gravity and eventually became a moon known as Phoebe.
