Hailed by some fans as the best science fiction series ever, The Expanse (based on a series of books by James S.A. Corey) focuses on humankind several hundred years in the future, when Mars has been colonized and miners extract precious ore from a region of asteroids known as The Belt. As Mars becomes a bigger military power than Earth, the two fight over resources, while a renegade ship’s captain and a police investigator are brought together over a missing girl that may be the link to civilization’s collapse.
Due to its recent accolades and growing fanbase, The Expanse has been brought up against the heaviest hitter of science fiction television, Star Trek. Is it the best sci-fi show of the 2000s? The two most recent series in the franchise, Star Trek: Discovery and Star Trek: Picard have taken a Utopian vision of the future and applied some of the gritty, hard science practicality The Expanse is known for, so the decision isn’t easy. Here are 5 reasons why The Expanse is the sci-fi show of the 2000s (& 5 why it’s still Star Trek).
THE EXPANSE: THE BELIEVABLE SCIENCE
The Expanse puts the “science” in science fiction, and the genre is all the better for its accurate showcasing of many of its practical concepts rooted in real physics. You won’t find any ray-guns or warp cores in it, because it depends on extrapolations from real-world scientific things.
For instance, characters that exist on a planet with gravity versus one without have physiological differences. High G-burns actually affect the human body. The Expanse offers a realistic reflection of interstellar society 250 years in the future that seems plausible.
STAR TREK: THE MORAL LESSONS
When Gene Roddenberry first created the Star Trek: The Original Series, it was meant to showcase a better future with a Utopian society, where war, famine, and disease had been eradicated and humankind worked together with alien cultures in the pursuit of noble concepts like education and exploration.
The franchise continues into the 2000’s with series like Star Trek: Discovery and Star Trek: Picard, where the moral lessons of the original series are influenced by the new era in which they’re made. Viewers watch Star Trek for the better tomorrow it promises, even in the most difficult of times.
THE EXPANSE: THE DENSE PLOT
When you first start viewing The Expanse, you’re thrown into a world you may not altogether understand. There’s geographic factions at war, politicking on an interstellar scale, and a missing persons mystery all woven together to create an intricate and complex plot.
It’s unapologetic in its denseness, and provides very little in the way of hand holding. The audience is expected to follow along and expend lots of brain cells in the watching, without a lot of exposition to guide them. They learn things in the same way and at the same time that the characters do in many cases.
STAR TREK: THE DIVERSITY
The Star Trek franchise has long been celebrated for its diversity. Not only did the original series have things like interracial couples and Russians working alongside Americans before the Cold War was over, it also had a wide variety of alien beings to analyze the human condition through the lens of different civilizations.
Star Trek: Discovery has continued that tradition with a serialized story starring a woman of color, a balanced cast of male and female actors, and normalized same-sex relationships. Star Trek: Picard has also given us in its preliminary episodes a focus on political refugees.
THE EXPANSE: THE COMPLEX CHARACTERS
The Expanse has introduced a myriad of complicated characters who are given a wide range of motivations and personal history. Its characters make difficult decisions with morally ambiguous consciences, and it asks that audiences understand, if not fully empathize with them.
Because it doesn’t take place solely on a starship, or in a space station, but on different planets and in different atmospheres, it shows you a wide range of characters not all hard-wired to simply serve one captain or one crew. And their characters develop and progress over the series with their own agendas.
STAR TREK: THE ICONIC CHARACTERS
Every single series in the Star Trek franchise has given sci-fi a plethora of memorable characters that individually have come to be considered iconic in their own right. The original series had Captain Kirk, Mr. Spock, Scotty, and the rest of the crew, while Star Trek: The Next Generation had Captain Picard, Data, Riker, and others.
It’s because of the iconic status of a character like Jean-Luc Picard that over twenty years after TNG has gone off the air, Patrick Stewart has returned to reprise his famous role. Even people that never watched him in his debut performance demonstrate curiosity about seeing him in Star Trek: Picard.
THE EXPANSE: THE WORLD BUILDING
The tension that exists between Earth, Mars, and the Belt is palpable from the first episode of the series. It only continues to grow, and as viewers bounce from environment to environment, and every character that lives there, they begin to feel the sense of a very lived-in world.
The Expanse really does expand with every episode and every season. New technology is introduced along with new characters and new environments, and each time it’s done in a way that doesn’t feel too smooth, too perfect, or too sterile.
STAR TREK: THE FUN
As a soft science franchise, Star Trek series are good plain fun. Harrowing situations are saved by particle accelerators, enemies are vanquished with proton torpedoes, and the solution to a perplexing problem is provided by the rapid-fire delivery of a line of technobabble.
Like good space operas, Star Trek: Discovery and Star Trek: Picard, the most recent series in the franchise, provide majestic over-arching plots that focus on larger-than-life concepts without the need to be grounded in reality. There is often mysticism, wonder, and whimsy attached to them to balance out the practicality.
THE EXPANSE: THE VISUALS
There’s no denying that the visuals in The Expanse are nothing short of stunning. Not every scene is beautiful because it’s aesthetically pleasing in a traditional sense, but because nothing is sterile and smooth, rather everything is tangible and visceral.
STAR TREK: THE TIMELESS EPISODES
Since Star Trek: The Original Series, sci-fi fans have fondly recalled episodes of their favorite Star Trek show, able to remember exact lines of dialogue, singular scenarios, and particular circumstances that coalesced into one timeless hour of television.
Though both Star Trek: Discovery and Star Trek: Picard are serial television, and depart from the traditional episodic programming all other Star Trek series were known for, they still have episodes that contain timeless qualities that are intrinsically Star Trek in nature, and give viewers a certain benevolent, nostalgic feeling every time they watch them, like the introduction of Captain Pike or an exchange between Picard and Data.
