pheller said:Altered Carbon certainly got a LOT more interesting with THAT scene, and it did a good job of world-building, I just felt the main plot line was a bit dull.
Hmm, there's so much of "that" in Altered Carbon that I'm having trouble thinking of a specific "THAT." 
And yes, while it had its problems, I seriously enjoyed Altered Carbon. I wouldn't say it was a Good Show like I said the Expanse was, though - more of a guilty pleasure for me.
Ashyukun (Robert) said:Altered Carbon was a decent, pulpy Cyberpunk story but almost closer to fantasy than pure SciFi. The Expanse is almost as pure of SciFi as you can get- though the protomolecule falls into the 'magical science' category the rest of the show does a pretty good job of being as realistic as possible with regards to where humanity would be technologically without intervention and it's worth watching simply for that fact. The first time the line 'They're decelerating hard at us' was uttered I was almost cheering because I'd not seen a franchise get spacecraft physics so right before.
Yes. Expanse does do a great job with physics. They seemed to be selective about communication delays in the show. And gravity is oddly consistent everywhere. Now if that is just one of the things I need to accept (humanity has solved gravity via some powered gravity generator), no big deal, just like the crazy rocket engines that can endlessly accelerate - which they did address at least.
Altered Carbon is very much like a few sci-fi novels I've read (and hated) where the premise is "Its the future and humanity can do everything".
In reply to ProDarwin :
They "handle" the gravity issue in The Expanse with mag-boots. They occasionally make a point of focusing on them being activated by a character, but usually they take them for granted. Let's face it - people floating around every scene gets expensive to pull off. But other parts are well done - like how they get into their space suites when going into battle with the assumption the ship will probably get punctured and lose pressure and atmosphere. Then they have to fix the ship before they can go back to normal.
Ian F said:In reply to ProDarwin :
They "handle" the gravity issue in The Expanse with mag-boots. They occasionally make a point of focusing on them being activated by a character, but usually they take them for granted. Let's face it - people floating around every scene gets expensive to pull off. But other parts are well done - like how they get into their space suites when going into battle with the assumption the ship will probably get punctured and lose pressure and atmosphere. Then they have to fix the ship before they can go back to normal.
They only handle it that way in low grav situations. Many times they have artificial gravity on the ships, right? They sit and eat food like normal, set down tools, make coffee, etc. They only turn off gravity for combat scenarios I thought?
I thought the big ships did something similar.
Are they using grav boots on the small moons they visit too? Eros seemed to have normal gravity yet would have near zero G based on size/mass.
In reply to ProDarwin :
I thought they were pretty consistent with comm delays, but it was sometimes difficult to tell how far apart different parties were to really judge it. They handled gravity pretty well on the whole- 90% of the time when they're in the ships, they're at about 1G of accel/decel (burn halfway there accelerating 'forward', flip, and burn the rest of the way 'backward' to decelerate). When not under accelerated-G's they're using the mag boots as Ian noted- and when having to actually maneuver/push past a normal 1G acceleration they're generally strapped into their crash couches (which reminds me, the 'accel juice' was another kind of pseudo-science hand-wave). And of course there's the rotationally-generated gravity of the Nauvoo/Behemoth.
The Epstein drive is a much more significant "magic" handwave than the "juice". It's at least plausible that there might be injectable drugs that would have a short term improvement on human ability to tolerate sustained high-gee acceleration, but the Epstein drive requires violating quite a few laws of physics. (And yes, the protomolecule and the associated technology it demonstrates are even further beyond that)
As for gravity, they spend enough time on it to acknowledge that the characters are in zero gee, present magboots as the solution, and then don't worry about it too much. Given the realities of TV/film production, that's a completely acceptable way of dealing with it, IMHO.
Epstien drive is total magic, but it doesn't bother me whatsoever. They specifically address it, and it is what enables the human race to spread out in such a way. I can accept that.
Its kinda like superhero stuff. Acknowledge that its special and violates physics, establish the rules, then stick to them. The Expanse does that really well, for the most part and I appreciate that.
The handwave that bothers me more is with Melba/Clarissa implants and "chemical restraints". That came out of nowhere, they barely address it and it makes little sense.
In reply to ProDarwin :
It makes more sense in the books. They're basically black market implants that boost adrenaline on demand.
They're also leaking which is causing the issues you see her exhibiting.
The TV adaptation skipped a lot of her backstory.
Gravity is always a scientific problem with SciFi stories. Humanity is still only in its infancy in even understanding how gravity even works. So any sort of gravity generator will be magic for a long time.
The idea of implanted drug delivery systems is something totally believable to me. Given the need and funding, we could have that technology within a decade from now, much less 300 years from now.
dculberson said:pheller said:Altered Carbon certainly got a LOT more interesting with THAT scene, and it did a good job of world-building, I just felt the main plot line was a bit dull.
Hmm, there's so much of "that" in Altered Carbon that I'm having trouble thinking of a specific "THAT."
The character who you don't expect to see full-frontal and when you do it's like holy crap.
Ashyukun (Robert) said:Altered Carbon was a decent, pulpy Cyberpunk story but almost closer to fantasy than pure SciFi.
There's actually not a lot of farfetched tech in Altered Carbon. The titular material used to make the cognitive stacks is the closest thing to "magic" in the series. Most of the rest could pass for hard sci-fi (although a number of the aircraft shown suffer from Helicarrier-type problems). I giggled at the appearance of...a particular 3d printer (don't want to spoil anything) on the show, but the concept isn't ridiculous. I also recall a gun firing steerable bullets that seemed to play fast and loose with physics, but steerable bullets are a real thing.
GameboyRMH said:Ashyukun (Robert) said:Altered Carbon was a decent, pulpy Cyberpunk story but almost closer to fantasy than pure SciFi.
There's actually not a lot of farfetched tech in Altered Carbon. The titular material used to make the cognitive stacks is the closest thing to "magic" in the series. Most of the rest could pass for hard sci-fi (although a number of the aircraft shown suffer from Helicarrier-type problems). I giggled at the appearance of...a particular 3d printer (don't want to spoil anything) on the show, but the concept isn't ridiculous. I also recall a gun firing steerable bullets that seemed to play fast and loose with physics, but steerable bullets are a real thing.
Instantaneous communication across the galaxy is a pretty good one. Although I guess you could argue that humanity has mastered quantum entanglement and its applications.
^Okay that one is magic. FTL communication is, as best we know, theoretically impossible, and if it were possible it could be used to violate causality.
pheller said:The character who you don't expect to see full-frontal and when you do it's like holy crap.
See, that's where you went wrong with Altered Carbon. Expect to see ALL the characters full-frontal.
FTL communication is theoretically possible, as noted, by using quantum entanglement, which has been demonstrated (to a very slight degree). It is a truly bazaar phenomenon, but is entirely reasonable to assume it could be used for communication in the future.
I have only seen a few minutes of this show, but was very impressed by the use vector based motion. None of that stupid "airplanes flying through space" crap (scientific wise).
aircooled said:FTL communication is theoretically possible, as noted, by using quantum entanglement, which has been demonstrated (to a very slight degree). It is a truly bazaar phenomenon, but is entirely reasonable to assume it could be used for communication in the future.
Nope, it's a FTL phenomenon but can't be used for FTL communication. The problem is that by its nature it can only transmit uncontrollable random noise. Check this out:
Also this:
https://www.askamathematician.com/2012/07/q-how-does-instantaneous-communication-violate-causality/
I thought Altered Carbon was true to it's point. Alien magic tech drives the core sci-fi plot device. The result is humanity mostly loses any respect or connection to their "sleeves". If that, then nudity is no different than wearing old sweat pants to paint the house.
The show makers dove into that core concept and thus the show has a don't care attitude in any nudity or murder or sex. Heck near the end I realized none of the characters were appalled by a whole corporate business that does something unspeakably horrible by today's standards. If they didn't cheat (which was the "real" problem for the characters) they would all be fine with it happening every day.
Back to the Expanse.. I remember the show directly dealing with how and when gravity was being generated through burning. Even tailoring the burn to less than Earth so the Mars and Belter guys were comfortable. Also, they never assumed FTL communication and talked directly about how long a message would take to get from Eros to Earth or Tyco Station. The show just didn't explicitly show a clock and date of the characters living that time delay. At a certain point just shy of fast as light communication can happen within our sphere of colonization.
Ian F said:I'd need to read the books, but I wonder if the writers knew they may not get past season 3 and wanted to tie everything up as neatly as possible, thus condensing the war and ring stories into one season.
This. I just finished binge watching S1 through S3 of The Expanse on DVD from the local library. Haven't read the books. I was somehow let down with S3. Maybe I was just longing for more Miller in the storylines. One thing bothers me, though, and that is the protomolecule contamination on Rosinante was never developed...
In reply to stroker :
Don't worry Miller makes a return in Book 4.
Season 3 was pretty significantly condensed but they hit all the major points to setup the second trilogy.
SyFy apparently only collected revenue from the premier showing I gather from various news outlets. (I hope they threw whoever negotiated that out on the street.) So there wasn't much incentive to do anything after the first showing.
It's probably better that Amazon is the one holding the rights to it now as the series will get more love.
The0retical said:In reply to stroker :
It's probably better that Amazon is the one holding the rights to it now as the series will get more love.
I doubt Amazon will do DVD editions of their seasons, so I'll be SOL. They haven't done any DVD's of "Man in the High Castle" so I'm screwed on that, too...
stroker said:The0retical said:In reply to stroker :
It's probably better that Amazon is the one holding the rights to it now as the series will get more love.
I doubt Amazon will do DVD editions of their seasons, so I'll be SOL. They haven't done any DVD's of "Man in the High Castle" so I'm screwed on that, too...
I've said it before, when an ad for some series or movie says "Available exclusively on (insert name of paid and region-locked online platform here)," all I hear is "Same-day top-quality rips!" 
watched another episode at lunch... damn this series is really good.
GameboyRMH said:stroker said:The0retical said:In reply to stroker :
It's probably better that Amazon is the one holding the rights to it now as the series will get more love.
I doubt Amazon will do DVD editions of their seasons, so I'll be SOL. They haven't done any DVD's of "Man in the High Castle" so I'm screwed on that, too...
I've said it before, when an ad for some series or movie says "Available exclusively on (insert name of paid and region-locked online platform here)," all I hear is "Same-day top-quality rips!"
Available exclusively on bittorrent
dculberson said:pheller said:Altered Carbon certainly got a LOT more interesting with THAT scene, and it did a good job of world-building, I just felt the main plot line was a bit dull.
Hmm, there's so much of "that" in Altered Carbon that I'm having trouble thinking of a specific "THAT."
And yes, while it had its problems, I seriously enjoyed Altered Carbon. I wouldn't say it was a Good Show like I said the Expanse was, though - more of a guilty pleasure for me.
Me too, are we talking sword fight here?
I liked Altered Carbon better than the 2nd season of The Expanse, but the 1st and 3rd were way better. Altered Carbon was good TV but it wont ever hot my top town or top 25 favorite shows
I started watching Altered Carbon. The first episode was good.
If there's one thing I noticed after watching, it's while some of the advanced tech is cool, these are otherwise worlds I'm not sure I'd want to live in (this goes for the Expanse and the Firefly 'verse as well). Great if you are uber-rich and less so if you're not.
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