As a counterpoint, while I consider the shows to be oscillating between enjoyable and watchable (though admittedly only barely if we are talking about season 3), I found the books to be completely unreadable (well the first one at least - I'm not a masochist. I stoped there).

Abraham and Franck's prose is at best unremarkable when it's not plain bad and they have a bad habit of relying on characters acting, well, out of character and contrary to their interest when the story is stuck (which actually happens quite often and is something the show can't entierely escape sadly).

Season 3 was the absolute pinnacle of the show and some of the best scifi ever on tv. It completely blew my mind, and I’ve watched my share of Star Trek, Stargate, Babylon 5, Farscape, BSG, etc over the years. It completely pays off for the buildup of seasons 1 and 2.

I agree, S03 was awesome, but I'm finding I like S05 even more. I'm really sorry to see Bezos cancel it after next season. I was hoping for many more.

Book 6/season 6 is the end of the "original" Expanse; book 7 takes place decades later. If they want to make books 7-9 into Expanse: TNG they might want to recast the actors. Personally I wouldn't mind seeing the novellas made into pseudo-standalone movies.

Rumor is that is exactly what they are planning. A clean "break" at the show level and doing it as two "separate" shows would help simplify marketing and budgeting and contracts, especially with a recast.

This makes perfect sense to me. A time-skip of several decades would be tough to pull off.

I don't see an issue with using the same actors, people seem to live much longer lives anyway and some make-up will make them look older. I really want to watch the last three books as a big budget series. Jeff, if you're reading this, you should have the time and money now to make it happen. Please?

Blue Origin launching a streaming service would be so 2021.

Expanse but actually shot in space

Some of the novellas were actually part of the show.

Canceled it, then resigned as CEO, he knew what he was doing

Expanse enjoys the benefit of tighter plotting, modern special effects, better acting, and an almost total focus on the season's narrative arc as opposed to individual episodic stories (which have only minor world- and character-building). Still, I think B5, despite its many flaws, will always be the definitive TV space opera in terms of narrative arcs. Expanse has a tendency to get preachy, like BSG did, about politics. I found B5 a lot purer and more universal, but maybe that's just my selective memory/recollection.

I wish someone would remake B5 eventually, true to the original but dropping all the unnecessary material (and useless arcs), pulling in the TV movie plots, and addressing the telepath war.

Those other shows? I liked some individual episodes, but I think they're all a step down.

I’ll concede on B5’s story arc and also DS9’s, even if it stole from B5. But I do still think Expanse S3 rivals any season from any other sci-fi show, while allowing that it benefits from the modern tv format and special effects. B5 done today would have been amazing.

> Expanse has a tendency to get preachy, like BSG did, about politics. I found B5 a lot purer and more universal, but maybe that's just my selective memory/recollection

I agree but it's not fair to rate these series on that basis. BSG was really preachy at some points, but they got some of the other things so right, that it doesn't really matter.

> Still, I think B5, despite its many flaws, will always be the definitive TV space opera in terms of narrative arcs.

I think we would agree to disagree. Bears, Beets, BSG

> I wish someone would remake B5 eventually, true to the original but dropping all the unnecessary material (and useless arcs), pulling in the TV movie plots, and addressing the telepath war.

I'm actually curious as to what you think was unnecessary material. There was definitely some in S1, but the vast, vast majority of stuff spanning the first four seasons was important I'd say. Obviously the fifth season was different, but that wasn't really the fault of the show creator.

It was plotted and written in the era where a plot of the week had to carry an entire episode. Main characters can no longer be allowed to get entangled in a non-critical event for a full episode just to reveal something important about them for later. Writers have to be more clever than that. There's no room for "this time on B5, a rebellion/alien/telepath problem/encounter."

With 22-episode seasons like the original, I bet a good writing team could do something like this:

Season 1: building up the world, revealing the Shadows at the end

Season 2: Shadow war

Season 3: proxy wars

Season 4: Loose ends & Consequences, including Thirdspace and the telepath war. If there's enough material, maybe even move the telepath war to a 5th season. I always wanted to see what happened to the Vorlons' favorite telepath.

There should still be room, in seasons 1 and 2 especially, for some cute but essentially irrelevant subplots like Green vs Purple.

Damn, I can't believe I never watched Babylon 5, and I'm a big sci-fi fan. Still not too late, I guess, I rewatched Stargate SG-1 recently and it's just as good as I remember.

I envy you. That you can watch B5 fresh.

It has some dated CGI (Not bad for that time though) and some hammy, exaggerated acting. But the character development and story arc are phenomenal.

You will find many story lines are very topical _now_.

Well ahead of its time.

I agree, and I’m a bit disappointed by season 4 and 5. While they are enjoyable in their style, they are too much character focused compared to the perspective opened previously. Didn’t read the books, hope the story goes back to discovery and exploration after.

This does reflect the books. If they manage to continue, it'll... change in tone. Personally, I feel the material for season 4 and 5 was indeed among the weakest in the books.

I hope that you will continue to watch, so we get to see how they do the rest.

I must admit to having a completely opposite view to yours. I started with the show, and then read the books after having finished season 3. I absolutely devoured them at about 1 book a week until I caught up.

They're also quite different. The difference looks like two different groups of people playing the same published DND adventure: the worldbuilding is the same, the main events are the same, but the characters and their choices are very different, in my opinion (and it makes both the show and the books equally interesting).

And it should be made very clear that both writers of the books (they write under a single pseudonym) are heavily involved in the writing and production of the show. Character and story changes are done to accommodate the TV medium, or to better support a future storyline not originally thought out.

which is what tripped up some viewers with Season 5 as the books its based on were very individual character story driven.

how they handled the Cas Anvar (plays Alex) issue did require a change from the books but they did it at end of season so its not disruptive and gave the character a good exit (which the character deserved, not the actor)

Spoilers follow:

I'm pretty sure that they digitally removed him from some scenes on Luna at the end.

I just watched that and was wondering why they killed Alex. But then remembered there was some kind of scandal with Cas Anvar. Too bad, the character is great in the books, was looking for his deepening relationship with Bobby.