1-01. "Dulcinea"
Written by Mark Fergus & Hawk Ostby
Directed by Terry McDonough
First aired 14 December 2015
SYNOPSIS
A young woman is held captive in a small enclosure. Based on the sounds, it's possible she's aboard a spaceship caught in a battle. Eventually she breaks free, only to find the ship is now deserted—save for something quite frightening in the engine room.
As we see various ships being ferried in and out of a very busy space port, we hear a voice introducing us to Ceres, providing a brief history of this large, colonized asteroid. We follow a small drone passing through various parts of the asteroid, until it arrives at a bustling commercial area, and our narrator is revealed to be a protester speaking to a crowd about increasingly-restrictive water rations. In the crowd are Detective Josephus Miller and his rookie partner Dmitri Havelock. After investigating a murder in a poor area of Ceres, Miller is tasked by his boss to find Juliette "Julie" Andromeda Mao, daughter of rich industrialist Jules-Pierre Mao. Her photo reveals her to be the young woman aboard the ship earlier.
At her home on Earth, UN Deputy Undersecretary Chrisjen Avasarala boards a shuttle that ferries her to a secret Black Ops facility in New York City. There she interrogates a Belter suspected of being an operative for the OPA (Outer Planets Alliance) caught carrying contraband stealth technology.
Preparing to return to Ceres, the ice hauler Canterbury receives a distress call from the Scopuli, a small freighter in the asteroid belt. The captain suspects it's pirate bait, and orders the SOS to be ignored; however, acting Executive Officer James Holden secretly reports the distress call to headquarters, forcing the Canterbury to respond. Holden is ordered to mount a rescue mission, and assembles his crew: ship's engineer Naomi Nagata, pilot Alex Kamal, mechanic Amos Burton and medic Shed Garvey.
The crew of the shuttle Knight arrives at the Scopuli to find it damaged and deserted. While searching the freighter, they learn the distress call was being broadcast by a transmitter deliberately planted on the bridge. When the Canterbury sends them an urgent message that a mysterious ship has suddenly appeared nearby, the crew races back aboard the Knight. The mysterious ship—evidently equipped with stealth technology—fires missiles; as the crew of the Knight attempts to evade them, they discover the missiles were instead intended for the Canterbury, which then explodes in a nuclear fireball.
ANALYSIS
"Canterbury, burn like hell, you've got incoming!"
It's a lot to take in all at once: so many characters, locations and situations. The pace starts out relatively slow, then accelerates toward the end, leaving one feeling like a deer in the headlights—but not in a bad way. The carefully-crafted plot puzzles were enough to keep me watching, confident the series would improve as it went along—not that it was a bad start by any means.
Ceres is impressive and visually rich, and the subway-like mass transit vehicles create perfect scene transitions. Curiously, Belters speak English sprinkled with words in "Belter Creole," yet there are no subtitles, which is unexpected, curious, but not off-putting; the words' meanings can often be inferred, to some degree, by context, but the writers take care to avoid leaving out vital story information.
Our introduction to James Holden is via a somewhat gratuitous sex scene that also happens to reveal, quite cleverly, how one important aspect of the Universe works in this program: on spaceships, there's no artificial gravity; instead, gravity is created by engine thrust. Outstanding. There's also not a single android to be seen; in fact, there aren't even any talking computers. Very refreshing.
Technically, the visual effects are first class, worthy of a big-studio feature film. Performances are quite good across the board (brother, can Florence Faivre scream!), and Clinton Shorter's score is terrific, especially when the Canterbury does her "flip and burn" maneuver: it made me glad I have a superior sound system.
Best Scene: The Canterbury's destruction is certainly the most memorable, although the emotional impact of it becomes stronger on repeat viewing after seeing the rest of the season and getting to know the characters better.
Best Line: After Miller tackles a menacing-looking prisoner at Star Helix headquarters, Havelock asks if there are any laws on Ceres against beating up suspects. "No laws on Ceres," Miller replies, "just cops."
Hard Media Extras: Included are four brief deleted scenes, all of Miller and Havelock chatting. While they don't add anything of consequence to the story, they are interesting from a production standpoint, as they have no visual or sound effects. One clip of Miller explaining Belter tats to Havelock relates tangentially to something Anderson Dawes says to Miller in "Rock Bottom." Also, one clip raises another trivial nit I have to pick: those "Previously on The Expanse" recaps will occasionally feature clips that never appeared in any episode; one of these deleted scenes appears in the next episode's recap.
SCORE: 