UNCUT - The Expanse Season 1 Episodes 4-5
More syncs have been added including where the episode starts after the recap.
Comments (40)
A little late watching this one, but yeah this season heats up pretty fast with episode 4. I told you to keep an open mind about Amos. He's easily one of the most unique characters I've ever seen and he's got some iconic moments. Seems like you guys are having a lot of fun watching which is great to see. Gonna watch the next batch tomorrow.
*You're late*?? I just finished watching the series in February 2026 and now doing my first rewatch here. I gotta say, it's much easier to keep track of who is doing what and why the second time around. I was developing an eye twitch halfway through season 1 the first time around
I was struck by your comment about 'people don't invent instruments anymore.' Synthesizers were developed and introduced in the decades leading up to the 1960's, the weird "Blaster Beam" which you hear making those long, drawn-out creepy groaning sounds in Star Trek: TMP was created in the 1970's, the guitar synth was invented around the same time, I believe. New variations on instruments are created all the time, the form and use of them is constantly fluid. I've got the Hydrasynth, a wave-morphing all-digital synthesizer which I consider extremely ground-breaking, it features a strip across the top that can be programmed to do all manner of exotic things with the sound you're making. People making new variations on how to create a musical sound is constantly happening.
Don't forget the theremin. :)
Thanks for adding the sync up after the recap. I didn't have recap on my version and it made things difficult the first episodes
A lot of us are advantaged in understanding what's going on because we read the books. There is A LOT of detail and explanation in fleshing all these factions out that just can't be done on screen. Definitely a learning curve with the show.
I had not read the books and it never troubled me. I am often confused when people get annoyed at not understanding everything early on, just sit back and absorb. Maybe Columbo ruined people because they need to know all at the start :)
Think of the narrative structure like Game of Thrones: Big cast of characters, plotlines happening in places completely distant from each other...will their paths eventually cross? And how? Would be interesting to find out. BTW, in case its not already been covered...OPA = Outer Planets Association...basically a sorta underground independence movement that both Earth and Mars consider terrorists.
"I would have been nice to see an ocean on Mars." One of my favorite lines of the show. Hard to even imagine generations of people living and dying having never breathed the air under an open sky...never seeing an ocean with their own eyes. What would that be like? Breathing air under a blue sky after a lifetime of being trained that being outdoors without a pressure suit means death? Its sort of thing that makes the Martians, despite being human, actually alien to the Earthers. They truly have diverged as a branch of humanity in their culture and their experience. Its fascinating stuff. Love the show, thanks for watching. :)
Phoebe is a Saturnian moon. Small one, irregular. Probably a captured object.
By the way, the name “Rocinante” is a very heavily-laden allusion. Rocinante was the mount of Don Quixote, who is famous for tilting at windmills in the novel “Don Quixote de La Mancha” (1605) by Miguel de Cervantes. It’s about a man who is driven insane by reading too many stories about mediaeval knights and comes to believe that he actually is one. He rides around with his servant Sancho Panza, imagining that he is slaying dragons and rescuing fair maidens. The name Rocinante is a pun that can be alternatively interpreted to mean “trusty steed” or “old nag.”
I believe in this case it's a Rush reference, to the song "Cygnus X-1" "On my ship the Rocinante / Wheeling through the galaxy." Could be wrong, but it seems likely the author(s) could have been Rush fans.
Regarding the slingshot club and linking back to TNG, Picard took the helm in Booby Trap (306) and performs a "slingshot" with the 1701D around a large asteroid. Using gravity assist (slingshot) maneuvers is pretty much standard for all NASA and ESA interplanetary missions to save fuel, increase speed, and change trajectory. For example, Cassini performed multiple gravity assists past Venus, Earth, and Jupiter on the way to Saturn.
Love this show love this channel
Alex and Amos knew Holden recorded the message about them being taken by the Martians. But they had no way of knowing if the message was ever received. Alex said in episode 3 that they were in range of their jamming system. So they would have assumed no one got the message. So this would be news to them. The fact that the Mars ship wasn't jamming them (now after they know) clearly indicates that they had nothing to do with what happened to the Ice Hauler. They were simply responding to a distress signal. There harsh reaction would have been generated just from the message Holden sent out. Not from anything prior. Of course thinks to what happened to all of them, they are already convinced that at least this Martian ship had nothing to do with it. And of course, they would have no ability to know how much of an impact that message would have for the system. Just as when something happens int he world today. No one knows with certainty which story is the one that just gets to the general public.
I really couldn't tell in your review if you actually understood what was happening in the slingshot club. One of the things the show does that I love is it expects you to pay attention to what you are watching which isn't typical for most entertainment programming. It expects you to pay attention to dialogue (even off camera dialogue or background news feeds), to see what's on visual displays, and to follow the camera and you get to examples just in this episode. Miller is searching for data un the sherpa's workspace, he isn't finding anything the camera gives a little footage of an upside down robotic frame that looks like a rat. Miller leaves goes to Julie and pulls chip out of her rat that we have seen previously. No dialogue. Just a camera pan letting the audience know exactly what Miller has discovered. The 2nd is the slingshot club. We get a computer display of several bodies in the system, and a line indicating a path rotating around those bodies. Indicating someone is using gravity asset to pilot around multiple bodies in the system. You hear them betting, so clearly bets are being taking on the pilot. And we see the pilot, whose environment we see getting redder and redder before signal is lost. Indicating the bet is on breaking a speed record. The way you build speed is skimming as close as possible without burning up around those bodies. Burning up means you went to close.
Lol at how fast Alex did a 180 on Amos. :)
Love Jared Harris in this or in fact anything he does.
His father too. I haven't seen anything starring Richard or Jared Harris that I haven't enjoyed
This has been a great January so far - an excuse to rewatch both TNG and The Expanse, the best 2 sci-fi series IMO. I thought this show might be a bit heavy on the hardcore sci-fi stuff for you guys but glad you’re enjoying it so far. The character and world building is absolutely top notch. I know space battles aren’t your thing but they look amazing in this!
It's heavy on science BUT the characters are awesome, so it's the perfect blending.
Just for clarification, Julie is an Earther, they mentioned it one or two times. They just called her "one of ours" because she's helping the belters. Phoebe is a Moon of Saturn. And the Sol-system is as follows: Sun - Mercury - Venus - Earth - Mars - Belt (including Ceres) - Jupiter - Saturn - Uranus - Neptune
As I do the watchalong with you, I find myself screaming watch the scene. Listen to what's being said as you are chating with each other. I know but I'm obsessive about this show and TNG, it's whines me up, no end when you miss so much of the storyline and the ask what's going on. But keep at it, I'm sure you will get better. 😁😁👍
I never warmed to Holden as a character so it’s interesting that you guys don’t like him so far.
He's not the most "flashy" guy, but he's honest, loyal, intelligent, honorable and risked his life for the other crewmembers. I never get why people don't like him, he's got so many good qualities but he's not perfect, which makes him very relatable. But to each their own I guess :)
I don’t know if anyone has told you about this, but the original novel that this series is based on was written based on a role-playing game that a bunch of friends were playing. So all the original main characters were based on the player characters of the people in the gaming group. But early on in the game, one of the players had to drop out of the campaign, so the game master had to come up with an in-story way of removing his character from the game. So, that’s why Shed started out as one of the main characters, but gets unexpectedly decapitated in this oddly early episode.
Their original intent was to design an MMORPG set in the universe, but then changed their minds and did a series of (nine) novels. There's (naturally) an Expanse Roleplaying Game (pen and paper), that includes a short story in the intro to the manual that has never been released anywhere else.
Alex came around on Amos that quickly without Patreon comments? Impressive.
I don't know if it's just me but I keep having to pause the patreon video because my playback on Amazon lags behind. Maybe it's the same issue that TNG had a while back where one is running at a slightly lower framerate than the other?
Possible. Nothing we can do on our end for that unfortunately. It would typically only cause 1-2 second drift over an hour though so it shouldn’t be constant pausing
Dang, I forgot how much I really liked this show! Hope you watch it all!!
The name Rocinante is a reference to the book "Don Quixote." It was the name of his horse.
Glad to see that you 2 start to like it more....
i think you guys will really come to love the 4 in this show (Holden, Amos, Naomi & Alex). the character stuff in this show is phenomenal. and i think you'll be satisfied with how they wrap season 1. the raspy voice girl is Chrisjen Avasarala
Almost every single character of any significance you well find to be a well rounded three dimension character. This show f'ing excels both at world building, but also extremely solid across the board character work. The authors of the book series, do help write the show but aren't the show runner. The Show runner is a name you have yet to see in another show. While I am an original lover of Trek from the late 60's, and that love has stayed with Trek in almost all of its forms (sorry I never, ever liked the animated show). For my money the Expanse is simply put the finest scifi space based program to ever air.
For a long time the rule was SciFi (later SyFy) made good tv shows and shitty movies. It was kinda their thing.
Thats fairly accurate, A lot of their shows weren't deep, but solidly entertaining. And their movies, well with very few exceptions were garbage.
I really needed this today. Awesome show and AWESOME timing. <3
Agreed on all counts!
Oooh! This is up sooner than I had expected! Can’t wait to watch!