Nope nope nope, gotta say no to that one.

You’re entitled to your opinion, even if it’s wrong. But no.

Are the references in the book dated? Yes. It is a product of its time, before there was a full realization of what full on global nuclear/biochemical warfare would do to the planet. The movie is good, I enjoyed it. I wouldn’t put it on par with the book. Even the Gaffigan theory doesn’t work, because when I read the book it took me two hours, and then I took a nap

Thank you for listening to my TED talk

Yeah, gotta agree. At least until the ending/final season.

And I like the books! They’re trippy and engaging. But in terms of the story being told and how well it’s executed, the show was just better done

The show can see the future, which helps the early seasons a lot. Knowing what happens in the later books allows them to bring stuff forward. A great example of this is in the pilot when Avasarala is torturing a Belter and questioning him about stolen stealth tech. This is a character that doesn’t even appear in the first book and it is setting things up that don’t become important until book/season 4/5.

The authors being active writers on the show and senior producers on the later seasons also helps. They aren’t in charge, which means people with TV experience make the show work, but they keep the voice consistent. Regardless of who is credited as writer on an episode, nearly all Amos stuff in the first two seasons is written by one of the authors so that his mentality would be consistent. Throughout the whole run of the show, pretty much all the formal speeches are written by the other author.

The last thing that really helps them is the drive to be faithful to the story of the source without being slave to it. This leads to many small changes that slot actors they already have into story beats, giving the viewer more connection to what they see. Drummer, for example, is a tiny character in the books but the actress was great so they kept slotting her in instead of having a different Belter for everything. She even erased the existence of a main POV character and took on that role, outlived his role and just kept going. That then leaves his character design available, so he ends up being a major character in season 5, a completely different book.

We can thank Game of Thrones for a lot of that. One of the authors worked for GRRM for a while and was involved in his side of the early seasons of GOT. Even early on when it was well received, GRRM was getting frustrated by the changes the show was making without regard to knock-on effects. When selling the TV rights for Expanse, they fought to be in the room for both writing and production so that they could have a say when decisions were being made as opposed to just being asked for feedback after the fact.

Also the supreme elevation of Camina Drummer. TV Drummer is the good shit and Cara Gee is fantastic.

But the show is also worse because of the pressure cancellation. They crammed in as much Laconia as they could and it’s not bad, but it does feel rushed and incomplete.

Dissenting view, I absolutely loved the books. Couldn’t stand the show.

I thought the first season was just OK, but after that it just went off the rails for me. The combining of different narratives from different books, the combining of characters and some of the casting choices just irked me.

Some of the casting was great (Avasarala being the best casting choice IMHO) but others were awful, such as Naomi (again, IMHO).

I’m glad others liked it, and I know I’m in the very small minority, but that’s OK.

I still have the books to go back to and re-read for a 4th and 5th time of I want!

This one feels a little unfair since you’re comparing decades of history across dozens of characters, with so many peaks and valleys.

I considered bringing up Batman The Animated Series myself, since I agree with many fans that it’s possibly the best encapsulation of that character overall. But I still feel like the very best Batman comics, like Dark Knight Returns, beat it out as self-contained stories. Also there are side characters like Catwoman who definitely have better representations in the comics, because there they’ve had entire series devoted to fleshing them out.

On the Marvel side, I’d take Brian Micheal Bendis’ run on Ultimate Spider-Man over any film, but that benefits from being a full decade worth of monthly tales with a single extremely strong creative voice. Hard for a two hour movie to beat that.