The Expanse - 'The Big Empty' and 'Remember the Cant'

Parts of the big empty are notably full.

With Westworld wrapped up for the season, it's time to go back to some of the other stuff. The Expanse moves on from its opener with 'The Big Empty'. While Miller follows the trail of Julie Mao to the doomed Scopuli, Avasarala pursues the rumoured acquisition of stealth tech by the Outer Planets Alliance and the survivors of the Canterbury struggle to repair their shuttle enough to have any hope of rescue. When rescue does come, it is in the form of a Martian warship, and Holden makes the fateful decision to broadcast a message telling the world that it was an apparently Martian ship that destroyed the Canterbury.

The decision to cancel the One Direction concert did not go down well.

Since the loss of the 'Cant' has intensified water shortages on Ceres, this broadcast ignites tensions and leads to rioting outside the Martian embassy in 'Remember the Cant'. Avasarala's politicking angers the Martians, but confirms to her that they are not behind the attacks; someone else is fomenting a war. Miller is pulled off the Mao investigation, but tells his chief that Mao seems to be up to the eyeballs in this, explaining that she left aboard the ship that the Cant was going to rescue. The survivors of the Cant are questioned by the Martian navy, who want Holden to recant his former broadcast and blame the Cant's engineer, Naomi Nagata (whom they believe to be an OPA operative,) for the ship's destruction.

Then the Martian scopes pick up a ship on fast approach.

The Expanse is, essentially, far less scifi than it is a big, complex political thriller that happens to be set in space. Space provides the specific issues, but actually the same story could be told in an entirely terrestrial setting, requiring only a suitable choice of restricted transportation, resource shortage and political tension. I say this not as a criticism, but because I think that it shows that scifi is growing up and telling stories that are not wholly defined by their genre. The Expanse is science fiction, but it is also a dense and relevant political story, and an espionage thriller.