Ryan Shoots First: The Expanse (S4 Ep1) “New Terra”
The Gold Rush is on! After a long wait, a cancellation and revival one of the best shows on TV, The Expanse, is back and bingeable thanks to Amazon! It wasn’t that long ago I was pleading with you all here to check out the first 3 seasons and I’m excited to dive into the season 4 premiere and see what may be different under the Bezos Empire.
In “New Terra” for the first time in the history of the series, Holden and company have a sense of calm. With the assembly of The Sol Ring the worlds of man are in limbo as everyone tries to figure out what to do as the promise of new worlds and new fortunes are worth the risk to many. The show still feels the same but I will say the sets seem a little bigger and things a little sharper on the Amazon dime. The premiere sees Holden and the Rosinate heading into the brave new world in search of what may be remnants of the Proto Molecule. After the UN, Mars and OPA set up a blockade to prevent ships from entering the ring a group of refugees that broke the blockade are surviving on a new world. Naturally as always is the case with The Expanse politics plays a huge part as the presence of the Rosinate makes the refugees living there uneasy. Holden still plagued with the proto-ghost of Miller is drawn as well to what lies beyond the ring.
I can’t imagine what it’s like to work on a series, it is canceled, resurrected then go back to work after a long hiatus but props to everyone involved for not missing a beat. Everyone’s Belter accents are on point and back in the groove. As mentioned above this is the quietest the show has been since its premiere as through the first 3 seasons one crisis flowed directly into the next. That does offer this season as a great launching point for anyone new, as with the big revelations and events at the end of season 3 this feels like a fresh start. Naturally, it does not take long for the situation to get hairy and our favorite gunship to be caught squarely in the middle. The locations and scenery all still look top-notch but if I had one gripe the ships CGI actually looks a tad worse. They just look shiny and shiny was never anything you would use to call the first 3 seasons over on SyFy. It’s not bad just not what I expected with the move to Amazon. The show still prides itself on its practical take on how science and human physiology works in space and it is one of my favorite aspects of the show.
The episode specifically is rather slow-moving, likened to the first day back at school after the summer break. Some set up and catching up before the final bit of the episode ramps up to push us into the rest of the season. Still with the show spending the last 3 seasons obsessing over how gravity reacts to the human body and how everything in our solar system works it will be interesting to see them get to go crazy in all-new worlds with all new rules. I hope that they put as much thought into how these new systems behave and don’t just throw up their hands and go “Sci-fi!” This season stands to reset the show for a new audience but maintains the hard science factor that garnered the cult following that got it revived from the dead. I look forward to powering through the rest of the season and providing a full review of the season soon but for now, The Expanse is back, bigger than ever into the unknown!
