The Expanse Book vs. TV Recap: Dulcinea

So, The Expanse is finally here: the first episode of the adaptation of James S.A. Corey’s space opera series, Dulcinea, aired last night, with the second airing tonight. The big question is: how does it line up with the first novel, Leviathan Wakes?

The show opens with a particularly claustrophobic scene with Julie Mao locked in a locker aboard the Scopuli. We watch as she grows more and more desperate and forces her way out into an abandoned ship. It’s a pitch-perfect adaptation of the book’s prologue, with a hint of something extremely frightening going on.

We jump to Ceres Station, with a Belter providing a great little info-dump that captures the Belters’ problems with the rest of the system, while the camera swoops through the station, capturing the life of the place in a really cool special effects shot. It’s a scene that reminds me a little of Joss Whedon’s single-shot introduction to the crew in Firefly. After a moment, we catch sight of Detective Miller, watching the narrator speaking before a crowd.

The book actually opens with Holden’s perspective, but thinking about it, the way the show has been set up, this makes a bit more sense: it’s a better introduction to the politics that motivate the overarching narrative. It’s not long before we’re back into adaptation territory with Miller and a call girl talking at a crime scene, with Havelock trying to catch up.

Every line of dialogue and every background character is providing dense information at lightning speed. It’s not too long before Miller is assigned to a dead end case on Ceres station to locate a missing girl, Julie Mao.

This is where the show is really shining. If you pick up the book and read along, the scene plays out just as it does in the book: Captain Shaddid looks just like I imagined her, right down to the phrase “Miller whistled low” on page 22. Here’s the thing with adaptations: books and films and TV are all different medium, and what works in Leviathan Wakes won’t always translate into the screen exactly. But, when the writers could, they did, and you get scenes like this.

Then, we jump to the Canterbury, where an unfortunate miner has lost his arm, providing good context for the dangers of space. We’re introduced to Holden and Ade Tukunbo having a private moment in their cabin, offering a good opportunity to demonstrate how gravity works on this show.

It’s not long before we’re introduced to Naomi, Shed, Alex, and Amos. There are some minor changes, all to serve the purpose of conveying the world. The biggest difference is Holden’s promotion to XO, taking over for  the soon-to-be-ex-XO, played by Jonathan Banks of Breaking Bad, who seems to be here for stunt casting purposes (with a neat little reference to 2001: A Space Odyssey). The crew is on the way to Ceres after a successful ice haul. They pick up a strange signal near a non-belt asteroid that appears to be from an abandoned ship. In a change from the book, they disregard the signal and decide to press on. Holden later listens to the signal, logging it when he hears a woman’s voice pleading for help.

The real departure from the book comes when we meet Earth’s U.N. undersecretary Crisjen Avasarala, who doesn’t show up on the page until book two, Caliban’s War. She’s brutally interrogating a Belter spy found on Earth. The scene exists to help push along the drama and tension between Earth and the Outer Planets Alliance, which picks up later in the series. This is another example of the show’s outstanding casting—Shohreh Aghashloo simply is this character.
We jump back to Ceres Station, where Miller responds to a call where a housing development’s air filters crapped out, showing off Miller’s darker side. He’d taken a bribe earlier in the episode, and in some ways, the call is his fault.

The scene jumps back to Holden, where the crew has discovered that the beacon has been logged, and they’re now required to investigate. This is one of the more spectacular scenes in the episode, as the Cant flips and burns to catch up with the beacon. It’s a tense, fantastic sequence that isn’t exactly in the book, but which is perfect for television. After that, the crew is assembled: Holden, Alex, Naomi, Shed, and Amos board the Knight and take off for the Scopuli. They swing in and board the ship, finding that it’s abandoned and that there’s something really suspicious about it. When they discover a beacon on the ship, the Cant sends along a warning: another ship has appeared in their scopes, and they rush to escape from the abandoned vessel.

We jump to a touching scene of Miller meeting a girl playing with a bird, which prompts him to go back to the landlord. He shoves him into an airlock and begins to cycle it, ordering him to change out the air filters next time. Miller might be corrupt, but there’s good in him somewhere.

We close out the episode with a frantic chase as the mysterious ship launches missiles at the Cant, nuking it. The ship explodes, and the Knight and its stunned crew are left behind.

The first episode runs to page 54 of the book. The final verdict? It’s not entirely the book, but what the changes and additions there are were designed to quickly introduce a complex world, which is no small task.