During our coverage of San Diego Comic Con 2015, I had the chance to catch the panel for the new SyFy series The Expanse. The show is based on a series of books and is a very lavish production for the network with a reported budget of $5-6 million an episode as well as episodes that are shot as stand-alone movies.
The panel began with the Producers telling us that we would be watching the premiere and that aside form a few unfinished FX shots, what we will see is pretty much what will air when the show arrives in December.
The show involves a conflict between three factions who have serious trust issues with each other. There is Earth which is mining resources from around the system, Mars who have become very well-armed and untrusting, and The Belters, miners who believe they are being exploited and have grown tall and thin in the low to no gravity workplaces that they must endure.
The show opens with a mysterious discovery on a space ship and then moves to an ice mining ship that in turn discovers a distress signal. The crew is at odds as to responding to the signal but someone has logged it as received which compels the ship to alter course to investigate.
At the same time, Detective Miller (Thomas Jane) is breaking in a new detective on his colony assignment. We see a mix of the have and have nots, as well as signs that Miller is taking money from the more shady side of the colony. Miller is an interest character in that he has a secretive past and walks both sides of the law while seeming to do what is right when he needs to.
Miller is tasked by someone of influence on Earth to find their missing daughter which in turn helps setup the early arch for the character.
There are multiple subplots such as those on Earth trying to keep the peace via any means necessary and the outcome of the episode does open a ton of possibilities as well as show the audience that this is a show that will take chances and pull the unexpected.
After the show ended, the cast and producers took the stage to answer questions from those in the audience, and much of it was about the book series and how they plan to connect events that are to come.
I found the premise of the show interesting and while watching it, I was entertained but at times thought it was a standard SyFy movie as many members of the cast were not well known to me and it seemed a bit slow in the pacing.
That all changed with the final 20 minutes as the show jumped deep into potential conspiracies, betrayals, and questionable motives by many of the main characters which has me very interested in seeing where this show will go next.
You can catch The Expanse on SyFy this December.
